I just got done reading Juan Cole’s Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East, and I thought it was very interesting that Napoleon invaded Egypt under the premise that he was going to liberate Egypt from the tyranny of the Ottoman Beys and export Republicanism, all the while massacring thousands and burning entire villages who opposed his “liberation.” I can’t help but think how once no WMD’s were found in Iraq, Bush stepped up his rhetoric about liberating Iraq from Saddam’s tyranny and seeking to export liberal democracy. What a sham.
I’m currently reading Zaki Chehab’s Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement and I found this excerpt very disturbing:
“One of the Informant’s [Palestinians hired by Israeli intelligence to do the occupation’s bidding] assignments was to earmark young men who were regular mosque-goers to size up how willing they would be to join Al Qassam Brigades [Hamas’ military wing] or Al Jihad Al Islamic (Islamic Jihad). He would then recruit them into small cells of just two or three people and supply them with money and weapons. One commonly used double-bluff tactic by Israeli intelligence was to command these ‘dummy’ Palestinian cells to attack Israeli patrols or checkpoints in the Gaza Strip. When they got close and before they had a chance to open fire, they would be killed instead. Israeli forces would then claim they had been forced to attack. Many Palestinian analysts became aware of this and suggested that both the Israeli government and the IDF were using such tactics in order to raise morale amongst their soldiers. It became apparent that these pseudo-attacks coincided with periods when many towns and cities in the heart of Israel were suffering bombing campaigns by Palestinian groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. (Chehab, 77)
Pouya! Excellent Post! Very well done. Juan Cole is a phenomenal scholar (on Iraq in particular) and his web site should be read by everyone. The execution of Palestinian collaborators is something that I havent read much up on, so its good to read about the dynamics of it a little here. (By the way, do people know what the French after the Nazi occupation and SOuth Africans did to THEIR collaboraters? I can say it wasn’t exactly “civilized”, oppression and ZIonism arent civilized, and liberation movements should do their utmost to et rid of collaboraters who bring so much harm onto movements/occupied populations).
Here- and Im assuming that Chehab used serious scholarship and sources to back up what he wrote- it is such a clear and present example of how people who could have been recruited for serious resistance were picked off and murdered like pigeons. We see the harm of collaboration most blatantly.
Again, Pouya, Bravo!