Mordechai Kedar: The Suffering of Africa – Sins of Europe Projected on Israel (JEWISH PRESS) By: Dr. Mordechai Kedar 06/11/12)
Source: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/dr-mordechai-kedar/mordechai-kedar-the-suffering-of-africa-sins-of-europe-projected-on-israel/2012/06/11/
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Those Africans who enter Israel illegally in order to find work are a
very small part of the general global problem of emigrants from
Africa who are searching for a new land that will allow them to live,
even with only a minimum income and standards of living – and the
main thing that drives them is survival. Their poor condition, in
Israel, in Europe, in North and South America and in Asia, raises the
question: how did an entire continent, where a billion people live,
about one fifth of the world population, arrive at such a low
condition, and how, among the 61 states and entities that it
comprises, not even one offers its citizens security, education,
health and welfare at a reasonable level. How did it happen that a
whole continent is torn by never-ending wars, mass murders costing
millions of lives, and famines that still threaten the residents,
most of whom want only to flee from it.
The one answer to all of these questions is: Europe, or more
accurately, the greedy lust of the European peoples in previous
centuries, which was reflected in colonization; and the way in which
the Europeans related to the peoples of Africa when they ruled it,
and the way that they left Africa and abandoned it to its suffering.
We must remember that in Africa there were never “peoples” in the
European sense of the word; there were tribes. These family-based
groups, over the course of generations, grew and split off to form
new tribes, but their members always remained loyal to tribal
culture. Traditionally, each tribe had its own religion, language,
customs, laws, dress, standards of behavior, living area, sources of
livelihood and economic interests around which every member of the
tribe would unite. To defend themselves and their sources of
livelihood, the members of the tribe formed a fighting group, without
which it would be extremely difficult for the tribe to survive. For
thousands of years the tribes of Africa lived this way undisturbed,
in continual balance between man and nature, between tribes and
neighbors, between man and his beliefs.
The European conquest and colonization that began in the late 15th
century, brought continual disaster upon the tribes of Africa: the
colonialists saw the black continent as a source of raw material for
European industry – gold, silver, copper, iron, zinc, aluminum,
diamonds, rubber and wood, and later, oil. But worst of all was that
the African was seen as a slave, an amazingly cheap source of labor
whose life had value only inasmuch as he could be exploited as a
cheap source of labor. The most obvious example of this is the
behavior of King Leopold II, king of Belgium (1835-1909), who ruled
as Czar of the Congo from 1884 to 1908, and regarded the Congo, and
all that it contained, as his private property. He used the residents
of Congo as slave labor in his mines and rubber industry, and a third
of the people met their death in this work. Slaves who could not
fulfill the production quotas that were demanded from them were
punished with amputation of a hand. Men were forced into slave labor,
families were destroyed and whole tribes were wiped out by famine.
Africans were considered lower than animals, and the wealth that the
king stole from the lands of the Congo served his large construction
building projects in Belgium. Many of the beautiful and stylish
buildings in Belgium are the result of his conduct, which earned him
harsh criticism from other countries.
During the period from the 16th to the 19th century, millions of
Africans were captured by European, Arab and local slave traders and
sold into slavery, mainly to South and North America. About one sixth
of the slaves did not survive the journey by ship, mainly because of
the miserable nutritional and sanitary conditions in these floating
prisons. Slave-hunters cast the tribes of Western Africa into a never-
ending chain of acts of reprisal because of their collaboration with
slave traders.
At the Berlin Conference in the year 1884, the colonialist countries
of Europe marked the borders of Africa as a “division of spoils,” and
became wealthy from the raw materials and the slaves that were
brought out from the lands of Africa. A not insignificant part of
European wealth today is a direct result of this act – the greatest
plunder in the history of mankind.
Failed States
During the 19th and 20th centuries, colonialism gradually receded
from Africa, leaving behind it states whose borders had been
determined by the interests of colonialism, not the natural division
of humanity in Africa. Borders grouped many disparate tribes together
which often were in conflict with each other, and in some cases
tribes were divided between states. This situation created states
whose populations struggle internally, and most were ruled, and are
still ruled by one group which took control of the whole country. The
tribe that is in control “buys” the loyalty of other tribes by
political appointments and economic benefits, a phenomenon that
creates a great deal of corruption in government.
The economy of the standard African state is controlled by the
regime, which divides the wealth of the state according to its
political interests. This situation causes groups who are not within
the inner circle of the regime to be marginalized, and thus are under-
developed, a fact which is reflected, among other ways, in a poor
educational system. As a result of this, its people are doomed to be
left behind in terms of vocational training, and they – a group that
may amount to millions of people – are left to a life of poverty and
unemployment because their area is under-developed in relation to
other sectors of the state in the regime’s favor.
The internal division of the states between those in favor and those
who are not, creates tension between the tribes, which adds to the
accumulated tensions that have existed between the tribes for many
generations. The result is tribal conflicts that degrade the
situation and cause civil wars to break out in the states quite
easily. Examples of this are many: Biafra at the end of the 60s,
which split off from Nigeria, resulting in wars for independence that
left hundreds of thousands of fatalities caused both by the sword and
by hunger; Rwanda during the nineties was an arena of horrific acts
of slaughter between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes; the Second Congo War
(1998-2003) took the lives of more than five million people; Uganda
experienced acts of mass slaughter in the days of Idi Amin; recently,
Charles Taylor, a former dictator of Liberia, was indicted for crimes
against humanity, meaning against his citizens; Somalia is
experiencing persistent tribal warfare which, as of today, has cost
the lives of tens of thousands, and its lack of government is
responsible for the phenomenon of piracy in the Indian Ocean; bloody
wars for 60 years between the Arab-Islamist government of Sudan and
sectors of the Christian-Animist South, which, during the last year
gained independence; the slaughter of hundreds of thousands during
the past decade that the government of Sudan carried out against the
people of Darfur, which is in the Western part of the state; in
Kenya, bloody street riots break out between the tribes every time
there are elections and in many other cases when there are bloody
conflicts.
These conflicts stem from no other reason other than the demographic
situation of the states of Africa, each of which is a combination of
different groups who are hostile to each other and share no unifying
factor. The modern framework of a state – institutions, a flag, a
hymn and symbols of sovereignty – have failed in the most important
task, which is to settle in the hearts of the people and to
substitute traditional loyalty to the tribe with a new loyalty to the
state. The differences between the tribes can even be seen in
external appearance – height, color, shade, the shape of the facial
features – as well as the level of education and development. These
differences are clear and continue to be a basis for discrimination
and various coalitions, and are used as a way to obtain the favors of
the regime or to be excluded from them.
In the states where there is oil, like Nigeria, the population is
divided between those tribes who profit from the oil, (usually those
who live in areas from which the oil is extracted or in land through
which oil is piped), and those tribes who see no earnings from the
oil. The tribes with oil defend their interests with hoarded weapons,
and the state can buy their allegiance only at a high price. However,
many times, tribes sabotage the pipes in order to steal and sell the
oil, and these acts of sabotage result in explosions and fires that
leave hundreds of people dead, wounded and burned. In Sudan, oil is
the reason for the war in the past few months between the state of
Sudan, whose capital is Khartoum, and the new state of South Sudan,
whose capital is Juba. It is from this failed state that many of the
illegal aliens who came to Israel originated.
The Influence of Islam
The states of the Sahara Desert in North Africa – Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco – are all Muslim, and also the states
south of the Sahara – Chad, Mali, Niger, Tanzania, Somalia, Eritrea,
Kenya and Nigeria – are mostly Muslim or a large proportion of their
population is Muslim. In these states, in addition to the tribal
tensions, there exists a high degree of religious tension, because
Muslims see themselves as believers of the true religion (“din al-
haq”), while the others – Christians and Pagans – are infidels who
adhere to a false religion (“din al-batal”).
During the past twenty years, in some of these states, struggles have
developed over the status of Islamic religious law (Shari’a),
compared to civil law, and the Northern sections – the Muslim
sections – of Nigeria, where tens of millions of people live, are
ruled today according to Muslim law. This is the direct result of the
Islamic Wahhabi penetration by propagandists who were schooled in
Saudi Arabia and work under its inspiration and funding. Struggles
develop in these areas stemming from the existence and activity of
non-Muslim houses of worship, modern schools, the sale of wine and
other spirits, and the status of women and their presence in the
public arena. In African Islamic countries, radical Islamic
organizations are active which have adopted the generic name, or
label, “al-Qaeda”. The processes of religious radicalization that the
African Muslim societies are undergoing is described in an article
that we published here a number of weeks ago.
This situation has poured oil on the fire of traditional tribal
rivalries which are now quarreling and fighting with each other
because of religion in addition to the previous reasons. As a result
of this, the civil framework of the country is weakened still
further, and additional sectors of its population have become
economically, socially and politically marginalized.
The Exodus
The eternal conflicts in the failing African states cause many
sectors to be lacking in basic necessities, and they search for any
possible way to save themselves from the poor economic situation and
the social, political and religious oppression that they experience.
Many millions of Africans are on their way to the developed world, in
order to find a new, peaceful and decent life. Millions have passed
and continue to pass through the Northern Sahara desert, in a journey
that for many of them will end in the the desert with a gathering of
vultures hovering over their carcasses.
Some of them arrive to states in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria,
Libya and Tunisia) and from there they sail in ships via the
Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Sometimes a ship
sinks, and its passengers become food for the sharks. Others enter
one of two Spanish enclaves – Sveta and Melia – which are located on
the Northern shore of Morocco; from there some of them are taken to
Spain, and some are sent back to their death in the Sahara. Some of
those who reach Egypt continue to Israel via Sinai, and if the
Bedouins do not kill them on the way to harvest their organs for
transplant, they arrive – at the end of a journey of continuous
torture and humiliation – to the border of Israel.
The phenomenon of the emigration of the poor and tormented Africans
has stirred the peoples of Europe, and in a gesture of remorse for
what they did in Africa, they drafted an international covenant demand
ןing from the modern states to treat the refugees in a fair way. The
salient point in the covenant is that a developed country is
prohibited from sending a person back to a state in which his life
will be in danger. This rule applies to the great majority of
Africans who arrived to Europe illegally, consequently there is no
legal way to return great numbers of illegal immigrants in Europe
back to Africa. Europe ruined their lives in Africa, and now they
come in hordes to Europe, changing its character beyond recognition.
This is history’s sweet revenge.
The UN World Conference Against Racism – Durban 2001
Toward the end of the previous millennium some African intellectuals
initiated the claim that Europe should be made to pay damages to the
African peoples for hundreds of years of economic exploitation, mass
murders in the mines and the fields, slave trade and having
established failed states. The amounts that were mentioned in this
connection were in the hundreds of billions, and just having raised
the claim aroused horror in the hearts of the European governments.
They knew that the post-colonial discourse that developed in Europe
in the previous generation would cause broad ethical support for the
African claim.
In order to introduce the claim onto the international agenda, the
African states decided to convene a conference against racism, which
would condemn the racism of today and of the past, and would impose
upon the European states the responsibility for the racist way in
which they related to the peoples of Africa in the previous century.
This responsibility would be the basis for the monetary claim. This
conference met in Durban, South Africa in September of 2001.
Politicians and European public figures, who have no desire to open
the wounds of the past and stand in front of the mirror of history
that will reveal their great wealth from Africa and their ethical
nakedness, searched out a scapegoat, onto whom it would be possible
to place all of the sins of their colonialism. Together with Arabs
(descendants of the slave traders) the sacrificial victim was found:
Israel. Their preparatory conference, which was held in Teheran (a
well-known stronghold of human rights) determined that (1) Israel is
an apartheid country and therefore they must impose boycotts and
condemn the countries that support it. (2) Israel is a country of
occupation, and occupation is a crime against humanity and endangers
world peace. (3) Zionism is racism. (4) The state of Israel violates
the human rights of Palestinians. (5) Israel carries out genocide,
war crimes and crimes against humanity, and therefore it is necessary
to conduct an armed struggle against it. (6) There has not only been
one holocaust. Relating to the holocaust in the plural demonstrates
that the Jewish people have not undergone a unique holocaust
experience compared to disasters that have occurred to other peoples
in the world, like the slaving of the blacks in Africa or the
holocaust that Israel carries out upon the Palestinians. (7) The
state of Israel was conceived in sin because it was established by
means of ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the area.
An anti-Israel spirit dominated during the talks on human rights, so
much so that most of the decisions of the Conference on Human Rights
of the UN relate to Israel, while ignoring -partially or totally –
wholesale violations of human rights in most countries of the world,
from China to Russia, from Myanmar to Venezuela, not to mention Iran
and the Arab countries. Only the Arab mass murders during this past
year drew the attention of this council enough to produce some
lukewarm decisions concerning the situation of human rights in the
Arab world.
The Durban Conference, which was originally intended to deal with the
sins of European racism and the damages that Europe should pay to
Africa, was hijacked by the Arabs with European collaboration, in
order to represent Israel as the last colonialist left in the world,
upon whom it would be possible to impose the responsibility for all
the sins of European colonialism. The Durban Conference and the
world “forgot” that Britain still rules many colonies, some of which
are thousands of miles distant: Islands in the Atlantic Ocean:
Falklands, Corex, Caicos Islands, South Georgia, Sandwich Islands,
Ascension Island, Saint Helena, Tristan da, Montserrat, Cayman
Islands, Virgin Islands and Bermuda. In the Indian Ocean – Diego
Garcia (from where British and American planes left to bomb Iraq), in
the Pacific – Pitcairn, and even in Europe – in Gibraltar and in
Cypress – Britain still maintains colonies.
France also maintains its colonies thousands of kilometers from
France: Guadeloupe, Reunion, French Guiana, Butte, French Polynesia,
Saint Barthelemy, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna,
New Caledonia and Hadley. There are those who claim that also the
French rule of the Mediterranean island of Corsica is a foreign
occupation. Does anyone in the world remember this French
colonialism, that continues until today? And this is not the end of
the list of colonies that still remain under the rule of European
countries.
European colonialism is alive and well, and continues to ruin the
fabric of life in Africa and in many other places. Israel serves
Europe as a scapegoat on whose head they can pile their dirty sins of
repulsive European racism that were accumulated over hundreds of
years. Israel must cope today with the difficult problem of
infiltrators from Africa, and it must solve this severe humanitarian
problem according to the rules established by … Europe.
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.co.il/2012/06/mordechai-kedar-
suffering-of-africa.html
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