Aby The Liberal

Aby July 31st, 2007

I once had a discussion with a Canadian colonel and a few of his colleagues serving the NATO forces in Belgrade, about Zionism and the side effects it is causing to the world peace. It appears that in the western world especially the Anglo Saxon USA, UK or Canada, any ideological anti-Zionism is considered as Nazism and the majority unable to see the middle path of humanity. In 1975 the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 was passed stating that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” which was later ratified due to heavy Anglo-US opposition. Today a lot of North Americans see Zionism and Jew appeasement as an answer to Nazism, which is considered as short sighted and racist by neutral countries in modern Europe, Asia and Africa alike.

Anti-Zionism protests in Europe during the Israeli aggression on Lebanon in 2006.

Modern Zionism arose because of the several complex political and social developments that took place in the world during and after the World War 2 in Europe. The genocidal mass massacre of Jews under Hitler’s regime in National Socialist Germany gave a guilt complex to Americans as they contributed to the Nazi Holocaust in several ways - financially and politically. There are also religious beliefs among those of Abrahamic faiths that the Jews are people of God and need to be rehabilitated to Israel and protected at all costs which gave them a justification for Zionism. These factors culminated to the widespread Jew appeasement in Anglo-US countries. It also led them to the creation of a religiously polarised Jewish state of Israel. This developments gave a cause and justification to the later Nazi supporters and anti-Semitic hate groups in US and abroad. It also created unhealthy anti-Semitism among Arabs because of the blatant Zionism in their homeland by the Allied victors after the World War 2 (most notably the Palestinian conflict and Suez Canal Crisis).

The Jews by their very nature are peaceful and intellectual people, who have proved themselves time and again by their countless contributions to the cause of modern science, humanity and politics. It is an insult to this community to think that they cannot live in normal secular and democratic societies without the aid of appeasement and Zionist policies. Nazism is half a century old ideology, hardly of relevance today. The western obsession with Nazis has created a positive heroic view of Nazis in youngsters who often take to Neo-Nazism as an expression of their rebel attitude. It can hardly be countered by Zionism, which is the form of extremist racism standing at an opposite pole to Nazism. Neither is Nazism as justification of Zionism and nor is Zionism as justification of Nazism. Jews are after all humans like us; we cannot have a world order where Jew appeasement regains supreme over the human rights of other humans, especially in countries like Yugoslavia and Palestine. This would make us no better than the original Nazis, if we were to counter racism with equal and opposite racism.

• World Politics , World Culture , Humanity
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Aby July 13th, 2007

We often come across news and hear of domestic abuses, sexual harassment and many other kinds of targeted crimes against women and children. There is one kind of abuse quite unheard of in the western world, which surpasses in cruelty and brutality all the abuses mentioned above. It is termed Female Genital Mutilation, FGM for short and is practised often in African Muslim countries either as a religious or cultural practice. The mutilation of the female genitalia, which is carried without an anaesthetic ranges from removing the clitoris to cutting off the entire external female genitalia altogether.

A news channel clip on beliefs and culture which motivate FGM in Africa (Click on video to play)

FGM is considered illegal in most developed countries, yet this does not stop parents flying their daughters to Africa to conduct it or smuggling in quacks to perform FGM in secret rituals. It is often difficult to prevent such incidents which are disturbingly common, performed in a cloak of secrecy so that it does not come to the notice of legal authorities. It has been often suggested in the European Union and United Nations about taking strong initiatives to put an end to this practice in Africa and other regions where it is practised. But it is feared that such strong moves might be considered as cultural imperialism by the practising communities and could create a negative impact against the western world. Of all the crimes against women, FGM with its health and human rights implications is one of the worst.

FGM and Health Concerns
As FGM is most often conducted without anaesthesia and non-surgical conditions, it can result in extreme pain, clinical shock, infections like tetanus and severe bleeding till anaemia. These are the short term implications with 20% of the cases being fatal. The long term implications are cysts, complications during menstruation and childbirth, endangering the life of both the mother and the baby. Women who have suffered genital mutilation are twice as likely to die in childbirth and three times as likely to give birth to a stillborn child. A wide range of psychological and psychosomatic disorders have been attributed to FGM, for example, disordered eating and sleeping habits, changes in mood and symptoms of impaired cognition, according to reports by World Health Organisation

FGM and Human Rights Concern
FGM is often conducted in very young girls below 15 years of age, without their consent and option to refuse. Since FGM involves the deformation of healthy organs, it violates the right to bodily integrity. FGM threatens the life and health of the girls and women violating their right to life and also their right to standard of living adequate for the health and well-being. All these rights violated are a part of Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The act of FGM violates at least one human right right to bodily integrity explicitly and intentionally and the others indirectly as adverse effects of FGM.

Although FGM is made illegal in most of the developed world including Europe, UK, USA, Canada and Australia in the last few years, it is still practised among migrant African communities in secrecy (where it is illegal) and in abandon (where it is not illegal). Protection of human rights does not imply cultural imperialism, whatever it may look like to the communities concerned. It is a shame that fear of being perceived as cultural imperialists makes the civilised the world reluctant to stop such violation of human rights from continuing in abandon at foreign soil and in secrecy on home soil.

Further Information -

• WHO Section on Female Genital Mutilation

• Internationalism , Crimes , Humanity
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