Globalization Unchecked: How Alien Media is Suffocating Real Culture

By Ramzy Baroud
November 18, 2009

A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her ‘top song’ for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is “a single lady.” The old woman’s son is mesmerized by what he sees. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the coffee shop. The man’s T-Shirt reads: “what the fxxx are you looking at?”

Respecting the message on his T-Shirt, I try to keep to myself, but find it increasingly difficult. The wife is completely covered, all but her face. The contradictions are ample, overwhelming even.

The attire of the family, the attitude of the ladies and even the man with the provocative T-Shirt are all signs of the cultural schizophrenia that permeates many societies in the so-called Third World. It’s a side effect of globalization that few wish to talk about.

It’s almost always about trade, foreign investment, capital flow and all the rest. But what about culture, identity, traditions and ways of life; do these things amount to anything?

True, Globalization has various manifestations. If viewed strictly from economic terms, then the debate delves into trade barriers, protectionism and tariffs. Powerful countries demand smaller countries to break down all trade barriers, while maintaining a level of protectionism over their own. Smaller countries, knowing that they cannot do much to hide from the hegemonic nature of globalization, form their own economic clubs, hoping to negotiate fairer deals. And the economic tug-of-war continues, between diplomacy and threats, dialogue and arm twisting. This is the side of globalization with which most of us are familiar.

But there is another side of globalization, one that is similarly detrimental to some countries, and profitable to others: cultural globalization - not necessarily the domination of a specific culture, in this case Western culture, over all the rest - but rather the unbridgeable disadvantage of poorer countries, who lack the means to withstand the unmitigated takeover of their traditional ways of life by the dazzling, well-packaged and branded ‘culture’ imparted upon them around the clock.

What audiences watch, read and listen to in most countries outside the Western hemisphere is not truly Western culture in the strict definition of the term, of course. It’s a selective brand of a culture, a reductionst presentation of art, entertainment, news, and so on, as platforms to promote ideas that would ultimately sell products. For the dwarfed representation of Western culture, it’s all about things, tangible material values that can be obtained by that simple and final act of pulling out one’s credit card. To sell a product, however, media also sell ideas, often one sided, and create unjustifiable fascinations with ways of life that hardly represent natural progression for many vanishing cultures and communities around the world.

Recently in some Gulf country, a few Turkish teenagers turned an Internet café into a shouting match as they engaged one another in some violent computer game. I desperately tried to mind my own business, but their shrieks of victory and defeat were deafening. “Kill the Terrorist”, one of them yelled in English, with a thick Turkish accent. The “Rs” in “terrorists” rolled over his tongue so unnaturally. For a moment, he was an “American”, killing “terrorists”, who, bizarrely looked more Turkish than American. As I walked out, I glanced at the screen. Among the rubble, there was a mosque, or what was left of it. The young Turkish Muslim was congratulated by his friends for his handy work.

There is nothing wrong with exchanges of ideas, of course. Cultural interactions are historically responsible for much of the great advancements and evolution in art, science, language, even food and much more. But, prior to globalization, cultural influences were introduced at much slower speed. It allowed societies, big and small, to reflect, consider, and adjust to these unique notions over time. But the globalization of the media is unfair. It gives no chance for mulling anything over, for determining the benefits or the harms, for any sort of value analysis. News, music and even pornography are beamed directly to all sorts of screens and gadgets. When Beyonce sings she is a ‘single lady’, the whole world must know, instantly. This may sound like a harmless act, but the cultural contradictions eventually morph into conflicts and clashes, in figurative and real senses.

More, it makes little sense, for example, that Asian audiences are consumers of Fox News and Sky News, while both are regarded as rightwing media platforms in their original markets. And what can Nepali television, for example, do to control media moguls and morphing media empires all around? Young people grow, defining themselves according to someone else’s standards, thus the Turkish teenager, temporarily adopting the role of the “American”, blows up his own mosque.

Globalization is not a fair game, of course. Those with giant economies get the lion’s share of the ‘collective’ decision-making. Those with more money and global outlook tend to have influential media, also with global outlook. In both scenarios, small countries are lost between desperately trying to negotiate a better economic standing for themselves, while hopelessly trying to maintain their cultural identity, which defined their people, generation after generation throughout history.

The Muslim family eventually left the coffee shop. The husband watched MTV throughout his stay; the young wife, clicked endlessly on her iPhone, and the older woman glanced at the TV from time to time, then quickly looked the other way. One is certain that a few years ago, that family would have enjoyed an entirely different experience. Alas, a few years from today, they might not even sit at the same table.

source: Palestine Chronicle

Olive oil and yoghurt, yoghurt and olive oil

by Hasan Abu Nimah
November 18, 2009

No matter how they're packaged, "peace" initiatives will do little until Israel's oppression of Palestinians ends.

As a child in early-1940s Palestine, I grew up in a small village of 1,500 individuals with its roots in biblical times. I would like to tell you an anecdote from my childhood that I recalled as I was reading the news the other day.

Life was simple, tranquil and often hard but despite the lack of modern amenities or even what was then available in the city, it was happy. There was no electricity or running water. We used kerosene lamps that gave poor lighting and kerosene stoves for cooking. The best stoves for indoor cooking were of the Swedish-made Primus or Radius brands. Weather-permitting, we cooked outdoors, often using a pottery pot, placed on three stones with a wood-fire underneath.

Food was tastier, simpler and healthier then, although we had no refrigerators. People dried fruits for the long, harsh winter, first by oiling them (which preserved tenderness) and then exposing them to the hot summer sun. Vegetables were sprayed with sea salt before drying. All our winter tomatoes were sun-dried, although nowadays that is a delicacy.

Bread-making was a well-honed process as well. You started with the grain, usually wheat, which was stone ground. I remember the mill was made of two round, heavy coarse black stones on top of each other with a three-inch diameter hole in the center of the top stone. Women (men never did the milling) turned the heavy top stone around with a wood handle while slowly putting wheat in the middle hole. Flour emerged sparingly from between the two stone wheels. The process was repeated daily as wheat was easier to store as grains than flour. Rarely, people carried their wheat to big mills in the city to grind all at once.

The dough made from this flour was left to ferment before being baked over hot round stones inside a thick clay dome called a taboun -- which many still use today. The taboun had to be heated by covering it with slow-burning straw and dry manure without flames; it took many hours before it was ready to use. The stones on the ground absorbed the right amount of heat for the baking process to be perfect -- producing delicious bread.

Women had to carry water many times a day from the village spring. I often wondered how young women balanced the large pottery jars perfectly on their heads without using their hands as they carried water up from the spring. During village celebrations, the women often danced with jars on their heads to demonstrate their skill, balance and prowess.

Jars, often larger, were used for storing olive oil to supply families with their needs until the next season. People used the same jars year after year, and the porous pottery became saturated with oil. People believed that the jars never needed to be washed because the oil in them never spoiled. Now we know that oil should not be exposed to either heat or light to maintain its color and taste. This wisdom was already built in to the thick-walled pottery storage jars.

Jars were also used to store homemade jams made of grapes, apricots and quince. From grapes they also made a heavy sweet molasses which was a great source of energy as well as a stable source of healthy diet in winter. All such winter supplies were naturally sterilized by prolonged cooking; they therefore kept well with no need for refrigeration.

Villagers were mostly illiterate, but that did not mean they lacked wisdom (though there was a boys school established in 1888, and girls had formal education when UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, established a school in the early 1950s). Despite the distance of formal governmental authorities or police (which ventured out of the city only when there was a serious problem), people followed strict rules and traditions of conduct toward each other.

The hard life that people led, and the necessity of putting all one's efforts into ensuring you had the means to survive, meant people had little time for nonsense. So, now, after this pleasant digression, let me now come back to the anecdote.

I remember that whenever my mother was upset, she would express her anger by uttering the Arabic expression "zeit ou laban, laban ou zeit." It meant nothing to me until I grew older and my mother explained this common expression of disagreement. My mother said that a man once asked his wife to prepare lunch. When the wife asked what he wanted, the husband answered "laban ou zeit," which means yoghurt with olive oil -- something people ate then and now with fresh bread as a simple and delicious meal. You mean "zeit ou laban" -- olive oil with yoghurt? -- the wife replied, reversing the order. No, the husband insisted, "laban ou zeit" not "zeit ou laban." The story goes that the disagreement between the two escalated into a furious quarrel with dire consequences. Neither the wife nor the husband wanted to admit that it made no difference no matter how one would arrange the two simple ingredients.

For the villagers, this story came to stand for any disagreement where the positions being put forward were essentially indistinguishable. So I found myself muttering this ancient expression last week as I read about a new "peace" plan offered by former Israeli deputy prime minister and former army chief Shaul Mofaz.

Despite the hype, it turned out to be nothing more than recycling of familiar worn-out schemes, repeatedly put forward by Israel and then abandoned: a Palestinian state with "temporary borders" on 50 to 60 percent of the West Bank with large Jewish-only settlement blocs annexed to Israel.

Of course Mofaz's scheme was presented as a great departure -- especially since he suggested that he would talk to Hamas in the course of implementing it. But just like all the previous schemes, Jerusalem and the rights of Palestinian refugees would be off the table. With the Palestinians offered no more than about 15 percent of historic Palestine broken up into isolated enclaves, it was simply a case of Mofaz offering "laban ou zeit," when all the other Israeli schemes offered "zeit ou laban."

Similarly, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to host an international summit in Paris to "break the deadlock" in the Middle East peace process sounds indeed like suggesting that putting the "zeit and laban" in a different container would change it into caviar. It is hard to understand how simple facts escape the notice of leaders of the caliber of the French president. The problem is not how, where, or who would attend, and at what level. Rather, it what the conference would be able to discuss with zero options at hand.

The same can be said for all the other "peace process" schemes from Madrid to Oslo to the Clinton parameters, the "Geneva initiative," the Road Map, Annapolis, and finally the failed mission of US envoy George Mitchell. They can all be summed up in that village wisdom which despite decades of Israeli oppression still survives, and provides much needed clarity, today: "Zeit ou laban, laban ou zeit."

source: The Electronic Intifada

Ukraine, WHO and the Geopolitics of Swine Flu Panic

by F. William Engdahl
November 17, 2009

Latest reports of what is being called a deadly Swine Flu outbreak in Ukraine according to on sight reports appear to be a political concoction by a threatened government to avoid election defeat and possibly declare martial law. The details indicate how convenient the current WHO "Swine Flu" H1N1 "pandemic" scare is for regimes in trouble.

Worldwide media reports in recent days have painted a picture of Ukraine as being under the Black Plague or worse. Pittsburgh Swine Flu "mapper" Dr Henry Niman had earlier predicted that H5N1 Avian Flu would mutate into a deadly human-to-human pandemic. It didn’t.

Niman’s map of the spread of alleged H1N1 Swine Flu since April has given the WHO, the US Government and CNN and major media a convenient graphic to create the image of a new type of "bubonic plague" threatening mankind unless we react with massive doses of untested vaccines from Big Pharma. .

Early on Niman reported about events in Ukraine: "The rapid rise in reported infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in the past few days raise concerns that the virus is transmitting very efficiently…the spike in fatalities and the frequency in hemorrhagic cases in Ukraine have raised concerns." Niman added the alarming note, "The number of infected patients has almost doubled to just under ½ million, compared to the report two days ago."

That’s pretty scary stuff. It conjures images of the reports of the Black Death in 1348 which is said to have killed up to 60% of Europe’s population. Though that history has been challenged, the image as well as the equally terrifying if incorrect panic image of the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918, are being applied in Ukraine.

Exact information about what is really taking place in Ukraine is far from easy. The country is one of the most politically complex and economically distressed states in Europe. One possible hypothesis, yet to be verified, emerges from the writings of Dr Lawrence Broxmeyer MD.

Broxmeyer suggests that the WHO and CDC wish to divert attention from a worldwide epidemic of tuberculosis, while focusing attention on flu instead. Indeed recently the WHO changed its categories of causes of death to lump death from influenza in the same group as death from tuberculosis and other pulmonary disease. Given the present Swine Flu hysteria, any pulmonary death seems to be reported as "death from H1N1 influenza." In a passing note the report typically notes the patient also suffered from lung problems.

Broxmeyer states, "Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are fully aware of a far more serious and ongoing tuberculosis Pandemic in the world today. Yet they choose to downplay the link, disregarding the similar flu-like symptoms tuberculosis often begins with. WHO freely admits that there were approximately 1.8 million deaths from tuberculosis in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available as well as that presently about one-third of the world's population, or two billion people, carry the TB bacteria."

Broxmeyer suggests that there is an underestimation of tuberculosis deaths using "flu" as the diversion: "Khomenko's 1993 study showed that the explosive contagiousness of just such influenza-like forms of tuberculosis are exactly the stuff that previous epidemics and pandemics could have been made of... But back in the US, the CDC and NIH seem to feel differently, ignoring everything but "the virus". There was much the same "Influenza" talk when in 1990, a new multi-drug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis outbreak took place in a large Miami municipal hospital. Soon thereafter, similar outbreaks in three New York City hospitals left many sufferers dying within weeks. By 1992, approximately two years later, drug-resistant tuberculosis had spread to deadly mini-epidemics in seventeen US states, and was reported, not by the American, but the international media, as out of control. Viral forms of swine, avian and human TB can be transmitted from one species to another."

He points to the similarities between the onset of the much-cited 1918 "Spanish Influenza" epidemic and that of today. However, as Broxmeyer notes, "a Press Release, issued on August 19, 2008, by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), contains a striking finding and conclusion: The 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide from the great 1918 Influenza ("Flu") Pandemic were NOT due to "flu" or a virus, but to pneumonia caused by massive bacterial infection."

Reports of low flying aircraft spraying in regions of Ukraine where outbreaks and lung-related deaths reportedly took place cannot be verified. What is clear however is that there is no scientifically rigorous proof of deaths or diseases that can be labeled H1N1 Influenza A in Ukraine.


Reality check?

The WHO, the organization responsible for declaration of the H1N1 Pandemic last summer, allowing governments like the USA and Ukraine to declare martial law and a national state of emergency, suspending all rights and imposing arrests and detentions, has validated the dubious Ukraine claims of out-of-control spread of Swine Flu. A WHO press statement November 3 declared, "Laboratory testing in Ukraine has confirmed pandemic H1N1 influenza virus in samples taken from patients in two of the most affected regions. As the pandemic virus has rapidly become the dominant influenza strain worldwide, it can be assumed that most cases of influenza in Ukraine are caused by the H1N1 virus."

The WHO added, "The outbreak in Ukraine may be indicative of how the virus can behave in the northern hemisphere during the winter season, particularly in health care settings typically found in Eastern Europe. Given the potential significance of this outbreak as an early warning signal, WHO commends the government of Ukraine for its transparent reporting and open sharing of samples." The samples have been sent to the WHO Mill Hill Influenza Reference Lab in London, not exactly inspiring confidence in a scientifically honest report given the record of UK health authorities in manipulating data to please the vaccine giants like GlaxoSmithKline. As of this writing, bizarre enough the WHO has yet to utter a single word of the test results at Mill Hill.

Nonetheless, WHO "strongly recommends early treatment with the antiviral drugs, oseltamivir or zanamivir, for patients who meet treatment criteria, even in the absence of a positive laboratory test confirming H1N1 infection." That means Tamiflu, the highly dangerous drug whose major shareholder includes former Pentagon head Don Rumsfeld. And it means GlaxoSmithKline, maker of the rival Relenza drug.


Ukrainian election geopolitics

The bizarre developments in Ukraine over the past two weeks are being blamed inside the country on intense Ukrainian election politics. In four months national elections in Ukraine are due. Among rival candidates are Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her chief rival, Arseniy Yatseniuk.

Since Washington financed and organized the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought a pro-NATO Victor Yushchenko in as President, Ukraine politics has been a geopolitical tug-of war between Moscow and Washington. How the current political games around allegations of H1N1 panic play into that tug of war is not yet clear.

The recent speech in Warsaw by Vice President Joe Biden offering Poland and the Czech Republic a "new and improved" version of US anti-missile defense against Russia only four weeks after Obama announced the US was backing out of a controversial earlier missile defense plan for the two eastern European countries underscores the shambles of US strategic policy towards Russia.

Russia has been quick to take advantage as might be expected, as a US missile shield on its borders, as I detail in Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, gives the US a long-sought nuclear primacy over its only potential strategic rival on the planet. At that point the resistance of the rest of the world to incalculable or objectionable US policies, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia or wherever, becomes moot.

It’s clear Moscow has been working quietly to bring Ukraine, an original part of Kiev Rus, and a strategically essential part of the Russian economy, back into a more friendly "NATO-free" relationship after five years of Orange Revolution chaos in Ukraine under Yushchenko. .

Yatseniuk, a 35 year old former banker and aide to Washington’s darling, President Viktor Yushchenko, has charged that Tymoshenko is deliberately fostering unnecessary panic in order to impose martial law and suspend elections that she might well lose to Yatseniuk.

There definitely are political games going on by one or another faction in the economically devastated Ukraine. Oleksandr Bilovol, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Health, claims the outbreak of flu cases in Ukraine has been essentially contained in 11 out of 25 Ukrainian regions, with the number of people allegedly stricken with H1N1 only 15% higher than figures reported in previous years. "Figures in other the regions are in line with 2007 and 2008," Bilovol said. As well the number of reported deaths is also in line with deaths annually attributed to ordinary influenza.

Could it be the reports of Ukraine "Swine Flu" pandemic in Ukraine have more to do with the country’s geopolitical location?

Tymoshenko declared the outbreak as the threat of the third level – the highest possible – to unlock spending of up to 3 billion hryvnias to combat the swine flu. Among measures imposed by the decree include shutting down schools and public gatherings for three weeks across Ukraine, with the government also considering introducing restrictions on movement of people between the regions.

Yatseniuk said the ban on public gatherings spreads fear and panic helping Tymoshenko to promote herself on television, while hindering other presidential candidates to campaign.

Yatseniuk is Tymoshenko’s biggest rival as both compete for votes in western regions of Ukraine. He is perhaps the only candidate that may challenge Tymoshenko in the first round of vote on January 17, 2010 to enter the runoff with opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych.

Yatseniuk said the panic spread by the government helps overshadow issues politically damaging to Tymoshenko, including pedophile and the murder scandals involving Tymoshenko lawmakers, and

Ukraine’s dismal economic performance.

Prime Minister Tymoshenko, whatever the real facts of the case, is using the WHO Swine Flu panic scenario to the hilt. In a recent statement, she stated, "We cannot relax even for a moment because the World Health Organization predicts two more waves of flu, including the bird flu, are expected in Ukraine. There is no alternative to vaccination. The entire world is going this way…" A day earlier she admitted she was not vaccinated and that she prefers "like all other people" plans to rely on garlic, onion and lemon as a way of preventing the flu.

Ukraine Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn accuses Tymoshenko as well, declaring, "You've organized the flu epidemic in order to avoid responsibility for not supplying heat to houses, schools, higher educational establishments, and kindergartens," he said in Parliament. And Orange Revolution President, Yushchenko has declared there was no reason for declaring an emergency in Ukraine. "There are no such reasons," Yushchenko said. "I am not a supporter of measures that freeze the country, restrict its operation to levels that is hard to justify."

Ihor Popov, Deputy Chief of Staff to Yushchenko, said that in case of emergency the election, which is due on Jan. 17, 2010, would have to be "rescheduled."


Germany joins Swine Flu corruption

Not only is the Ukrainian government apparently using fears of Swine Flu pandemic to change the domestic political calculus, and President Barack Obama using the fears to impose an unnecessary state of emergency. Now it comes out that the responsible German health authorities are caught in a corrupt conflict of interest with the very pharma giants profiting from government decisions on "anti-swine flu" vaccines.

The recent issue of the German weekly Der Spiegel, reports that members of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI), which claims to be an independent scientific advisory body advising EU member governments on policies regarding H1N1 influenza, is anything but independent.
It’s being financed by Big Pharma. ESWI claims it brings together scientific "key opinion leaders in influenza." However the sole financial backers are 10 pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline -- manufacturer of the German swine flu vaccine -- and Roche -- producer of the antiviral drug Tamiflu.

The group lists Walter Haas as one of its scientific advisers. Haas coordinates Germany's flu pandemic preparedness measures at the Robert-Koch-Institut (RKI), the federal institute for disease research. ESWI portrays itself as an independent group of scientists. But even the organization's own statute tells a different story, describing its role as advising politicians and health authorities on "the benefits and safety of influenza vaccines and antivirals" and initiating "a policy for antiviral provisions."

The degree of fraud, deceit, official coverup and outright criminal endangerment of the broad population by the current Swine Flu hysteria is seemingly without precedent.

source: Global Research

Israel uses Palestinian prisoners as guinea pigs to test drugs

Palestinian Information Center
November 16, 2009

GAZA- Sawasya-center for human rights stated Monday that Israel uses Palestinian prisoners as guinea pigs without their consent to test the efficacy of new drugs manufactured by its health ministry on their bodies, calling for an immediate investigation into this violation.

The center cited as evidence that Israeli interrogators gave prisoner Zuhair Al-Iskafi an injection he never saw before which resulted in losing his hair all over his body permanently, adding that similar incidents happened to other prisoners.

The center appealed to Arab and international media outlets to highlight this serious issue and expose the Israeli violations committed against Palestinian prisoners.

It also called on human rights organizations and the world health organization (WHO) to send a delegation of medical specialists to the occupied Palestinian lands to visit Israeli prisons and examine the detainees who were subjected to these tests.

In another context, the Palestinian prisoner committee reported Sunday that the Israeli administration of Hadarim prison decided to deprive five Palestinian detainees from pursuing their academic studies at Hebrew universities without giving reasons.

The committee called on human rights organizations to intervene and pressure the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) to reverse this arbitrary decision taken against the prisoners, asserting that this measure is a prelude to depriving other prisoners from their right to education.

For its part, the popular resistance movement stated Monday that the Palestinian resistance will not rest until it frees all prisoners from Israeli jails.

During a sit-in in solidarity with prisoners held in the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza, spokesman for the movement Abu Ali Azaalan talked about the suffering endured by the Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails and stressed the need for official and popular action to stop the Israeli violations against them.

source: uruknet

Palestinian History and Identity in Israeli Schools

By Sa'id Barghouti - Published in Nakba Education on the Path of Return (Autumn 2009)

Children from Kufr Qasem develop their own activities to educate one another about history, geography and their rights as part of Badil's Youth Education and Activation project, August 2009. Badil

This article is based on my personal experience as a teacher of Palestinian students in Israeli public schools and through my work as school inspector and history curriculum team coordinator for Arab schools from 1975 until 2004. During this period I was engaged in efforts at textbook reform, and on research about Israel's education system which I undertook for my doctoral dissertation.¹

Background

Israel has a highly centralized public education system which is operated and controlled by the Ministry of Education. The only major exception is the ultra-orthodox Jewish education system which enjoys autonomy for ideological reasons.² The state education system operated by the Ministry is composed of two separate streams: the public secular stream, and public national religious stream.

Palestinian students make up one quarter of all students in the Israeli state education system.³ All public schools in Palestinian communities in Israel belong to the public secular stream; no public religious schools are available for Palestinians. Public education for Palestinians is administered by the Department for Arab Education, which is a special administrative entity within the Ministry of Education and under its direct control. The Department for Arab Education has no autonomous decision making authorities.

Up until 1987, the Department for Arab Education was headed by a Jewish-Israeli director who was appointed by the Ministry and involved in policy making to ensure control over the Palestinian population.⁴ Since then, Palestinians have been appointed to lead the Department but have been excluded from policy decision making as a result of parallel organizational reform which provided for the integration of Arab public schools into the Jewish public education system and its local authorities. Thus, while the Department for Arab Education continued to exist and came to be headed by a Palestinian employed by the Ministry, the heads of Arab Education have held no real power. The Department is only meant to oversee the education of Palestinians and answer to Jewish-Israelis who continue to be in charge.⁵

From the beginning, Israeli politicians saw in the state education system, an instrument to realize Zionist political objectives: the founding of a Jewish nation with a shared identity rooted in Zionist beliefs.⁶ Conversely, the educational system was used to ensure a complete lack of Arab and Palestinian identity among the Palestinian citizens of the state.⁷

In 1953, Israel passed the Public Education Law with the aim to centralize the education system. In this context, the goals of public education were defined and formalized for the first time. The first goal stated that the educational system seeks to “raise youth on the values of Israeli culture, and love of the [Jewish] nation and people of Israel.”⁸ This goal remained in place throughout subsequent amendments of the law. No positive goals have been formulated for the education of Palestinians based on the values of Arab, Muslim, and Christian culture and the Palestinian nation. Thus, the teaching of Palestine's history in Israeli schools, both Jewish and Arab, is based on the Zionist narrative which holds that Jews are one people that formed their identity in the land of Israel (Palestine) more than one thousand years ago, and returned to it to form that identity again.⁹

Of course Palestine was, and has remained, inhabited by its Arab-Palestinian population, who have marked it with its culture, landmarks, and language. But the Zionist narrative avoids facing this reality. This is expressed in Israeli educational texts and curricula through:

• the secularization, of myths from the Torah, i.e. their transformation into “facts”: the myth of “the promised land”, for example, is turned into an actual “land of the forefathers” and the presentation of Israel as “the historical homeland of the Jewish nation;”
• promotion of a system of social beliefs, such as “we are victims,” “we call for peace,” “our wars are defensive,” “our arms are pure,” “Palestinians hate us,” “they are the aggressors;”¹⁰
• selectiveness in the choice of facts and explanations, ignoring contradictory arguments, especially facts connected to Arab-Palestinian history, or at best, presenting them as a “narrative” that is part of distorted history.

Main findings from research

In 1953, the Ministry of Education issued the first history curriculum for Jewish public and religious elementary schools.¹¹ This curriculum was translated into Arabic with some adjustments,¹² and Palestinian students were expected to learn the same narrative as their Jewish peers. Arab and Jewish teachers were subsequently charged with the task of preparing textbooks according to that curriculum. History at that time was taught in a complete chronological cycle, with ideas introduced in elementary school (fifth through eighth grade), revisited and expanded upon in High School (ninth through twelfth grade). In my research, I undertook, among others, to investigate how Zionist history has been presented to Palestinian students in history textbooks up until 1975.

Early history textbooks for Palestinian fifth graders,¹³ tell the history of Palestine from the perspective of the [Jewish] “people of Israel” based on the Torah. Exceptions are a few scattered paragraphs which state that the Canaanites colonized the mountains of “Judea” and the “Negev,” the Jebusites colonized the mountains of Jerusalem, and that Palestinians differ from Canaanites and are not Semites.¹⁴

As expected, the texts were strongly driven by the Torah: “The Hebrews were begot from Abraham, who crossed the Euphrates and settled in an area which naturally splits into three parts, including the middle region, called Sharon, and the northern region, which is separated from the middle region by the Jezreel Valley.”¹⁵ Canaanites that lived in that area are described as “the primitive tribes.”¹⁶

The textbook then mentions Jacob, calling him by his last name, Israel: “Israel became the father of the Israelite tribes.”¹⁷ It then describes the exile of the Israelites to Egypt, and their flight from Egypt, led by Moses: “The exodus of the Israelites led by Moses was an important event in their history that remained in the nation’s mind with the passing of eras. It was a great event that placed them in history as a nation.”¹⁸ When the book gets to Joshua Ben Nun, it points to his heroic feats and the sacrifice of his people, “which secured victory for them against their enemies.”¹⁹

The textbook follows the narrative from the Torah, era after era, until the destruction of the temple and the Babylonian capture. From there, the Jews return from captivity during the reign of Cyrus the Great. The book does not deviate from heroic descriptions of the Israelites, justifying all of their wars, and describing the indigenous population of Canaanites and others as “enemies and primitive people” while using contemporary Hebrew names for names of places and localities, and ignoring their original names.

This method is repeated with regard to the history of Palestine under Hellenic rule. The main thrust of the text here concerns the heroic deeds of the Maccabees and their wars, “Judah Maccabee went forth with his brothers to secure the foundations of governance and protect the people from enemies, battling the Adamites, and Omarites and the inhabitants of the Galilee, as well as standing up to military campaigns of the Seleucids.”²⁰

Sixth grade history textbooks do not differ in method or content. The history of Palestine under Roman rule is the history of Jews in “Israel” until the destruction of the temple in 70 BC. About seven hundred years of the indigenous Palestinians' history is absent from the pages of the book until the onset of the Arab-Islamic conquest. It briefly mentions the Arab conquest of Jerusalem under the heading “The Conquest of Jerusalem,” with one sentence in particular standing out: “Omar [the second Muslim caliph] treated the Jews, who helped the Muslims, well, left them their property and pardoned them from paying taxes.”²¹ The aim of this sentence is to provide assurance of a Jewish presence in the city at that time.

Although this book revolves around Arab-Islamic history and Islamic civilization until the fall of the Abbasid empire, it does not mention Palestine until the start of the crusades. It also remains silent about Arab initiatives in Palestine, such as the building of Ramla by Sulayman bin Abd al-Malek, and the construction of the Hisham Palace in Jericho. Casual mention is given (pp. 155-156) of the building of the Dome of the Rock, and then the Aqsa mosque, during the reign of Abd al-Malek ibn Marwan.

Returning to the history of Palestine, a history textbook for seventh graders called “Yearning for Zion” contains the following sentence: “facing [the Christian oppression of Jews in Europe], their attachment to their beliefs grew and their desire to return to Zion, the land that the Romans forced them out of in the first century AD, deepened.”²² Under the heading “The Relationship Between Jews in Diaspora and the Land of Israel” the book reviews at length stories of individuals or small groups of Jews that immigrated to Tiberias, Safad, and the villages of Galilee between the years 1141-1662. It describes their achievements in every field, portraying them as the ones who made the area blossom.

To sum up, the textbook omits the history of Palestine from 638 to 1791 except insofar as it pertains to Jews. The two main exceptions are the construction the walls of Jerusalem by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1542, to protect the city from Bedouin attacks (p. 186), and the mention of Napoleon's siege of Akka (p. 301).

The Zionist historical narrative is completed in the eighth grade history textbook²³ which presents the contemporary history of Palestine. The topic is divided into two units: “The English in Israel” (instead of the British Mandate in Palestine) and “The Founding of the State of Israel.” Thirty of sixty class periods that eighth graders must attend are devoted to this second chapter. In the spirit of the curriculum, the narrative in this book revolves around subheadings with suggestive meanings, such as “The Continuous Yearning for Return and National Independence” (pp. 178-182). This chapter, as well as the chapters that follow, address at length everything that has any connection to contemporary Jewish history from the perspective of the Zionist historical narrative, until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Under the heading “War of Independence” (p. 222), the book states that “the armies of the Arab countries entered the country in May of 1948 and fought against the Israeli forces . . . which were able to push back these armies until the four countries that have shared borders with Israel were forced . . . to sign a truce.” As for Arab-Palestinian society, it is completely absent in the textbook. Moreover, not even one word is spent on the Palestinian refugees.

This trend repeats itself in the high school curriculum and textbooks, and which are all translated from Hebrew, with the only exception of the book The History of Arabs prepared by Salman Falah (a former education inspector) who writes that Omar Ibn al-Khatab divided greater Syria into the regions of Hims, Hama, Aleppo and Israel [sic].²⁴

Efforts at educational reform

In 1975, I began my work as school inspector and coordinator for the history team in the Arab schools and set out to change the situation. A first success came in 1976 when a new curriculum was issued for elementary and middle schools.²⁵ The new curriculum differed from its predecessor in the following ways:

• The name “Palestine” was inserted into the curriculum for the first time, instead of “the land of Israel.” Places were named using their original Arabic names rather than the Hebraized names of the older curriculum;
• The emphasis on the Torah narrative was reduced, and the histories of other peoples, like the Canaanites, were highlighted. Emphasis on the Zionist narrative of the history of Palestine was reduced, and an Arab-Palestinian historical narrative was introduced for contrast. For instance, a new headline read: “The beginning of Jewish colonization and the Arabs in Palestine²⁶” instead of the previous “Yearning for Zion and the Return to Israel.” In other words, the focus of the curriculum shifted from the Zionist historical narrative of Israel towards a history of Palestine.

Following the publication of the new curriculum, I also oversaw the preparation of a series of books that replaced the previous textbooks. A new book which most strongly related to Palestinian history was a history textbook for the sixth grade.²⁷ It said, for example, that “The Torah states that the prophet Moses . . .” (p. 26), and that “Joshua Ben Nun resorted to subterfuge in his battle against the Canaanites” (p. 28). This stylistic change, which makes mention of the Torah in reported language, improved the objectivity of the text, allowing for a critical approach towards the Torah-Zionist narrative. A seventh grade textbook surveying at length the history of Palestine under the rule of the crusaders, moreover, notes: “The crusaders also built relationships with the Muslims in their everyday life by hiring Arab craftsmen, as well as being influenced by their Eastern style of dress and manners.”²⁸

Part two of the history textbook for the eighth grade contains the heading “Palestine in the Age of Political Organizations”, and says: “For forty years in the nineteenth century, the Ottomans tried to control the inhabitants of Palestine by recognizing local leadership.”²⁹ In this way, the Arab-Palestinian narrative began to gain ground in textbooks, albeit in a limited fashion.

As for high school, I oversaw the preparation of a new curriculum in 1999, which was only approved by the Education Ministry after a two-year long battle. This curriculum included an entire unit called “Modern Arab-Palestinian Society.”³⁰ It covers the Palestinian presence on the land until 1948. In the unit on “The War of 1948,” we prepared a chapter titled “The Origin of the Refugee Problem (Expulsion? Escape?).”³¹ By the time I stopped working with the Ministry of Education in 2004, a version of the textbook that included this chapter had not yet been published. The Arab-Palestinian narrative did however appear in a general, brief form in the three sections of textbooks over which I oversaw preparation.³²One chapter ends with the sentence, “many Palestinians whose cities and villages were occupied were forced to leave their homes and became refugees, because of the dangers of war and its destruction, and because of a number of massacres that were perpetrated against them, such as the Massacre of Deir Yassin in April 1948.”

The ideological backlash

In April 2004, I left my post at the Ministry of Education, but I continued to follow the government's development of the curriculum. A new high school curriculum was issued in 2007³³, which was followed in 2008 by a new curriculum for elementary and middle school levels,³⁴ replacing both the 1976 and 1999 curricula. The new curriculum for elementary school completely erased modern Palestinian history. Also erased was the unit called “The History of Arab-Palestinian Society in the Modern Era” for high schoolers. Again, the Zionist historical narrative is imposed on Palestinian students in history textbooks which ignore the history and culture of the Palestinian people. Just as in the period before 1975, anything connected to the history of the Palestinian people has been erased in the revised curricula of 2007 and 2008.

Such orientation will leave a negative impact on students in the long term. First, the connection between the Palestinian-Arab students and their history, culture and identity is severed. This effect is reinforced by the lack of extra-curricular educational activities in Arab schools, such as the commemoration of important events, including the Nakba, massacres, and important political events. This in addition to the prohibition on commemorating national personalities and thinkers such as Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said. Such commemorations are now about to become explicitly banned by the Ministry of Education. Severing this connection means that the cultural wellsprings, which allow students to build their collective history and identity, are dried out. As a result, students are likely to slide towards alienation from their homeland, and opportunities for reflection on the Palestinian people's history and their ongoing Nakba, which are vital for students to form their world view, are missed.

The second impact of a Zionist historical narrative in curricula, including the use of Hebrew names and the Hebraization of Arabic names of places in textbooks, is to raise students on the idea that the country, Palestine, called Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), belongs to Jews. Palestinian students are inculcated with the idea that Jews are the original and oldest inhabitants of the land and the most attached to it. Raising Arab-Palestinian students on this idea, while not providing adequate cultural and historical knowledge to challenge it, encourages alienation from their homeland.

Feelings of alienation will later on undermine the capacity of students to tackle oppressive policies, especially in matters of land and social culture, and transform them into easy prey for the dominant Israeli political discourse which can be summarized as follows: “this is the land of the Jewish people. We returned to our rightful historic homeland and built it up. You Arab-Palestinians are just ‘passers-by,’ strangers to this land, and a source of annoyance to our presence.” This is the discourse underlying Israeli political demands for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Palestinian history teachers can do little to correct this negative trend. They are limited by the state curriculum and textbooks, and banned from deviating from these texts. They are also monitored by officials in the schools, and by the Ministry of Education. Ultimately, Palestinian students have no choice but to memorize history as it is presented in the textbooks, because they will take their final high school graduation exams (bagrut), in which the Ministry of Education prepares the questions and evaluates the students' answers.

Some would argue that history classes and textbooks are no longer central for students to get to know their history and build a collective memory and identity. New means of communication, as well as the role of television and computers, have become the “vectors” of that memory. Scholars, however, agree that school textbooks, and especially history textbooks, have remained central in building memory and fashioning identity.³⁵ This, because students, like others in society, absorb information from various sources in a haphazard and unsystematic manner, and usually in an individual setting. History classes on the other hand, meet day after day, year after year, and from an early age until maturity. School history education is delivered through systematic, didactic and pedagogical methods, and in a collective setting with peers. History classes and history textbooks therefore remain the central and strongest element in the fashioning of identity, and play a crucial role in building collective memory, or, as in our case, erasing it.

Source and endnotes

Britain must de-Zionise Itself Immediately

November 17, 2009 By Gilad Atzmon

On Monday the British TV broadcaster, Channel 4 screened Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, a devastating expose of the Jewish lobby in the UK*. ‘We couldn’t find a conspiracy’ affirmed Peter Oborne the Daily Mail’s political commentator behind the film. He was right. After running the show for so many years, the Jewish lobby’s purchasing of British politicians and media presence is in the open.

The Guardian reported today that two years ago a controversial study by American academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer explored the influence of the Israel lobby over US foreign policy “but Britain's pro-Israel organisations have been subjected to far too less scrutiny.” This is indeed the case, and as Oborne disclosed, both British politicians and Zionist pressure groups enjoy it to the max.

In the film Sir Richard Dalton, a former ambassador to Libya and Iran, said: "I don't believe, and I don't think anybody else believes these contributions come with no strings attached." I would suggest that ‘strings attached’ is a very gentle way of putting it. ‘Chained to submission’ would be far closer to the truth.

Seemingly a British, consensus case against Zionism and Zionist infiltration is piling up.

The Jewish community is not happy at all. After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they are used to being untouchable.

Labor MP Denis MacShane, who operates as the House of Common’s UK equivalent of the ‘anti defamation league’ told the Jerusalem Post "if there is a Jewish /Israel lobby here, it is not very effective, as Israel is almost treated as a pariah state in the media and has few friends in politics."

MacShane may be right; one cannot buy friendship with money. But according to Monday’s broadcast one can certainly buy British politician’s subservience for just a few shekels. According to the Guardian 50% of the Shadow Cabinet are now ‘friends of Israel’. In that context one common saying comes to mind. “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”

I would assume that if there was any public respect left for the British Parliament, British political parties and the BBC, it should be gone by now. Just a few months ago Brits were devastated to find out about their MPs' personal expenses bills. Yesterday they learned about their leading politician’s affiliation with the darkest possible regime and ideology around. They also learned that their national broadcast corporation is influenced by Zionist pressure groups run from Jerusalem.

Mark Gardner from the Zionist ‘Community Security Trust’ is not happy either. He complained that Dispatches producers behaved as if they were investigating a “criminal gang rather than various Jewish community-linked organizations,"

Gardner is also correct. It is indeed tragic to admit that the Jewish lobby is far more worrying than a criminal gang. It is there to serve a murderous state with a devastating record of crimes against humanity. Thanks to the Jewish lobby, we are all complicit in the Zionist crime. Not only are those lobbyists heavily corrupted and removed from any ethical value system, they also corrupt everything they touch. They obviously contaminate every politician who is happy to take their shekels. Consequently they incriminate us all as a society.

Watching Cannel 4’s Dispatches yesterday I wondered to myself whether this is the ‘democracy’ some British politicians, such as David Miliband insist on spreading around. I also wonder whether this is the governing model that Jewish Chronicle writer Nick Cohen and the Israeli Hasbara committee author David Aaronovitch were trying to promote when they were supporting the invasion of Iraq back in 2003.

Political commentator Peter Oborne indeed fulfilled his promise. He told us almost everything we want to know about the lobby, “who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying.”

However, there is a single observation that must be added. People out there must never forget that Britain was taken into a war that cost more than a million Iraqi lives and at the time Lord Levy was the Number 1 Labour fund-raiser. Putting the two together: an illegal war that only serves Israeli interests and Sir Richard Dalton’s observation that Zionist ‘contribution’ comes with ‘strings attached’, leaves a very bitter taste. Due to its heavily corrupted politicians, Britain is now willingly serving the darkest possible racist national ideology and supporting a criminal terrorist state.

British politicians and media are caught in bed with too many Zionist wolfs. In order to reclaim sovereignty and dignity, Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately.

*In Britain at least the TV program can be seen here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3010424

Jordan's king rejects pro-Israeli's anti-Iran plans

Press TV - November 17, 2009 15:20:44 GMT

Jordan's King Abdullah II has expressed his country's “rejection” of any anti-Iran measure, speaking to a visiting group of a major pro-Israeli lobby group in the US.

The rare pro-Iran expression by the King of Jordan, which has formal diplomatic relations with Israel, unlike Iran which considers the entity as illegitimate, came during a meeting Monday with a delegation representing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israeli pressure group in the US that widely influences American foreign policy in the Middle East.

In the meeting, King Abdullah called for "dialogue" as the only channel for resolving the dispute over Iran's nuclear case.

His comment came after Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon rejected speculations that the warnings of any military attack on Iran are just a bluff, insisting that they are very real.

According to anti-lobbyist groups in the US such as 'Common Cause,' AIPAC gives money to over 90 percent of US Members of Congress and has virtual control over every congressional committee and subcommittee that is responsible for making foreign policy in the Middle East.

Although some members of AIPAC have been charged and convicted of spying for Israel, the lobby group continues to function and influence policy decisions in the US unhindered.

Meanwhile, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again made the provocative statement last week that Washington will keep every option on the table when it comes to halting Iran's nuclear program, hoping that it would serve as a 'warning' to Tehran.

"We've always said that every option is on the table. Our goal is to prevent or dissuade Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," Clinton claimed.

Iran has reiterated that its activities are conducted in line with its obligations to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which it is a signatory, and that it only seeks the civilian applications of the technology.

Western nuclear powers, namely Britain, France, Germany and the United States continue to claim, under heavy pressure from Tel Aviv, that the Iranian government is after nuclear weaponry.

This is while Israel is widely known to possess over 200 nuclear warheads and refuses to sign any international atomic regulatory and non-proliferation treaty.

“Israeli Ministries Funding the Rabbi who Endorses Killing Gentile Babies”

Al Manar

17/11/2009 - Israeli daily Haaretz published a report on Tuesday in which it said that there are Israeli ministries funding Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the rabbi who endorsed killing gentile babies.

The Haaretz repost says:
“Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers. True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them. The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.”

“Is that so? Not really,” Haaretz continues.

“For example, government ministries regularly transfer support and funding to a yeshiva whose rabbi determined that it is permissible to kill gentile babies “because their presence assists murder, and there is reason to harm children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us … it is permissible to harm the children of a leader in order to stop him from acting evilly … we have seen in the Halakha that even babies of gentiles who do not violate the seven Noahide laws, there is cause to kill them because of the future threat that will be caused if they are raised to be wicked people like their parents.”

Lior Yavne, who oversees research at the Yesh Din human rights organization, checked and found that in 2006-2007, the Ministry of Education department of Torah institutions transferred over a million shekels to the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.

The Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs has allocated over 150,000 shekels to the yeshiva since 2007, on scholarships for students with financial difficulties studying there. And what can they learn with the help of public funding from the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira? According to selected items published last week in the media, the boys can learn that Teitel is not only innocent, but also a real saint.”

“Their spiritual leader stated in his book, “Torat Hamelekh” that “a national decision is not necessary in order to permit the shedding of blood of an evil kingdom. Even individuals from the afflicted kingdom can attack them.”

The commandments in the book do not suffice only with gentiles; you can also find in them approval to attack leftist professors: every citizen in the kingdom opposing us who encourages the fighters or expresses satisfaction with their actions is considered a pursuer and his killing is permissible,” wrote the rabbi and adds, “and also considered a pursuer is someone whose remarks weaken our kingdom or have a similar effect.”

Not long ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that he would ask European Union countries to halt their support for the Breaking the Silence organization because he was displeased with their publications.

The Israeli minister surely has reservations about the rabbi’s publications. He is invited to approach his colleagues at the Ministry of Education and at the Ministry of Social Affairs.”

Israeli army kidnapped 6200 children since 2000 Official report

Middle East Monitor
November 16, 2009

An official report, received by Arab League from the minister of prisoners' affairs in the Palestinian Authority (Ramallah), revealed that the Israeli occupation forces have kidnapped about 6,200 Palestinian children since the beginning of Al Aqsa Intifada (2000), including approximately 337 children still detained in Israeli prisons and interrogation centers.

During last Saturday's meeting of the Arab League's permanent delegates council, which was set to discuss the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Minister Issa Qaraqe introduced the report, which unveiled the "repressive, inhumane practices of the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian children in Israeli prisons and detention camps," stressing that this violates the rules of international law, conventions on children's rights, and all international norms.

The report pointed out that "any person under the age of 18 is considered a child, according to international law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and, recently, Israeli domestic law," and according to the definition of juvenile by the United Nations' Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, which were adopted in the General Assembly Resolution 45/113, dated December 14, 1990.

Qaraqe stated that the Israeli occupation authorities "deprive detained children from the basic rights granted by international conventions, such as the right to know the reason for their arrest, the right to counsel, the right of families to know the reason and the place of detention of their child, the right to appear before the judge, the right to object to the charge and lodge an appeal against it, the right to communicate with the outside world, and the right to a humane treatment that preserves the dignity of the detained child."

The report warned that the occupation authorities, "blatantly violated the rights of detained children"; dealt with them as "potential subversives", "and subjected them to different types of torture and cruel treatment, such as beating, sleep deprivation, starvation, sexual harassment, and deprivation of visits. The occupation forced applied the worst mental and physical means to extract confessions from child prisoners and to pressure them to work for Israeli intelligence."

The report also mentioned that during the first Intifada, massive numbers of children were arrested and detained on charges of throwing stones and other forms of political resistance, whereas, during the second intifada, Tel Aviv began adopting administrative detention against Palestinian children and it started convicting and detaining children under the age of 14 for periods of up to 6 months. The report further stated that, according to the 2002 annual report of the Defense of Children International organization, those arrest patterns did not exist during the years of the first intifada.

Pakistan Taliban airs video denial

Aljazeera English

November 16, 2009

Attacks that have continued across Pakistani towns and cities are being blamed on Tehreek e-Taliban, Pakistan's Taliban.

However, the group has issued its first video statement denying involvement in targeting civilians and has blamed external forces for at least two recent blasts.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman of the Tehreek e-Taliban, posted the video statement on YouTube on Monday.

The message refers to a bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad, which the spokesman said was orchestrated to prepare the ground for a military operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold for Pakistan's Taliban fighters.

He also said his group had no role in the bomb blast in a Peshawar market that killed at least 100 people as well as an attack in Charsada, a town located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Tariq said Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians, but that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.