Posted on 06/19/2004 5:20:49 AM PDT by Jeff Gordon
"This act is to heal the hearts of believers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula," Johnson's captors said in a statement posted on the internet late on Friday.
Since US-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, already waning international attention on resolving the raging Palestinian-Israeli conflict has diminished significantly.
With almost daily reports of ferocious Israeli invasions, Palestinians being crushed to death as their homes were demolished over their heads and Iraq increasingly spiralling out of control, it is not surprising that the Arab street is frustrated with the United States.
While Arabs were horrified by the nature of Johnson's death, they said such incidents were bound to occur as long as Israel continued its brutal occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with virtually no intervention from the international community, along with the occupation of Iraq.
Bloodbath
Dr Bahaa Ghalayani, an obstetrician/gynecologist at the Aawda Hospital in the northern occupied Gaza Strip, said Johnson's killing was "horrible and unacceptable. This person has nothing to do with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
"Since Americans were sent to Iraq it's become a bloodbath...Please ask the Europeans and Americans what they expect the reaction to be"
Dr Bahaa Ghalayani, Palestinian
However, Ghalayani said that "the events in this area (Middle East) are crazy. We have foreign troops everywhere.
"What are they doing in Iraq? Why are they depriving natives from their most basic rights?" he asked.
Ghalayani, who hails from Gaza City and faces the daily struggles of an occupation, said foreign troops are killing Palestinians and Iraqis in cold-blood.
"Since Americans were sent to Iraq it's become a bloodbath," he said. "Please ask the Europeans and Americans what they expect the reaction to be…They are expected in these circumstances," he said.
Johnson, however, had nothing to do with his government's foreign policy, said the physician. He expressed frustration at what he said is increasing Western interference in the Middle East's internal politics.
"We can rule our own nations," he said.
"I wouldn't say those who killed him are mad - the mad are the Americans and Europeans who came to this region and interfere in everything."
Internal battle
Umm Khalid Ashur, a housewife living in the occupied Gaza Strip town of Tal al-Hawa, said: "Our cause is between us and Israelis within our nation… (Johnson) wasn't fighting us. Our struggle should be face to face with Israelis."
More Arab funerals fuel greater Arab anger in the region
She expressed concern that the international community will take a hostile stance towards the Palestinians if their fight spread.
Iraqi television news director Salam al-Amir agreed, saying that there will probably be a backlash in occupied Iraq where foreign troops will be harsher with civilians.
"Innocent people are being sacrificed for the sake of politics," he said. "What will happen next? How are we going to benefit from this?"
Jordanian journalist Nur al-Din Shahadi said Washington will seize the latest incident to justify any future violence it will inflict in the Middle East under the guise of a war on terror.
"The United States is the only one to benefit from this incident," he said.
Another Jordanian, Kawkab Hanafna, said such killings were being carried out under the banner of Islam but they were prohibited in the religion.
Sanna Qandil, a Palestinian-Jordanian secretary working in Amman, said the Johnson's killing was not out of the ordinary taking into consideration the violence across the Arab world.
"Let Americans know what it feels like to be a Palestinian, to lose a mother, child or father," she said.
palis = it's all about them.
If you kill an American, you too should die after you have seen your loved ones die painfully.
THAT THEY WILL UNDERSTAND.
We have three options when dealing with terrorists:
1. Die
2. Convert
3. Kill them.
GWB and I vote option 3. Sexy's boytoy wants to dwadle until they suceed at option 1.
Unfortunately, we have become too civilized to apply the lessons of the Fourth Punic War.
How long has it been since the U.S. has tested its nukes? We shouldn't let them sit on the shelf too long without knowing whether they work or not.
And we're giving them what, now? Tens of billions of our dollars for reconstruction. Free medical care. New buildings. All of this while they kill us, the aid workers, and anyone else at hand.
Realize that the terrorists are not the deviants from the norm. No, the terrorists are the norm for adherents of is-slime.
This is such a load of BS. These freakin' Arab barbarians are equating the murder and beheading of Paul Johnson as something related to the Iraq War or the ongoing conflict between Irael and the Palestinians.
Nothing could be furhter from the truth. The Saudi barbarians simply wanted to get in on the "fun" and found an American who had nothing to do with any of this BS to murder and that's what they did.
If we recall (which the media conveniently ignores) these barbarians initially stated that they were going to subject Mr. Johnson to the same humiliation as the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Well, maybe I have a faulty memory, but as I recall it, NONE of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib were murdered and beheaded.
It's just another Arab/Muslim lie. No wonder these people tend to remind us so much of Bill Clinton - they are all the same person.
Let me get this straight. Follow along with me.
Bush is criticized because he said that Saddam Hussein was involved with planning 9/11... only he didn't say that at all. The media says, "It was a pretext to go to war."
Paul Johnson, an American working in Iraq, ostensibly is killed because Israel is leveling the homes of the families of Palestinian terrorists, but the media doesn't see any pretext to that at all.
Nope, no media agenda at all. Nothing to see here. Move along.
"palis = it's all about them."
Good point! They are like the teenage girls of the political world, in any and every event they ask: What about me?!??!!?
Sorry teenage girls around the world, but I've got one and I was one and you gals are horrid!
Should that human waste continue to breathe, after Iraq takes the reins, he will survive.
Should he do so, and become empowered once again, this war will have been for naught, and I can just imagine where we will go from there.
The comments of Ghalayani, the doctor, sound decidedly mixed. One mustn't forget that the Pal culture is one of fear and oppression. Especially one as prominent as he is knows that he must not sound too critical of the powers that be. It's so very easy to be labelled a collaborator and end up decorating a bridge superstructure. For the Arabs to admit moral failings is a very difficult thing, as their culture is build upon an exaggerated and misguided sense of honor. He mustn't get too close to that.
Nonetheless, the truth will not be buried forever. I suspect there are many in Arabia who are wrestling with their consciences.
Seek out the families and home villages of the thugs. Liquidate their families and level their ancestral homes. The ancients knew how to squash thier enemies. We battle an enemy who lives in the 6th century. They haven't advanced: morally, mentally, politically, spiritually, since then.
One other intolerant thought I have about the Nick Berg/Paul Johnson murders. The barbarians who have performed these murders did so to get us stirred up because they love seeing our reactions on threads like this. Courtesy of us and the barbaric, unjustified murders they have committed, they are getting their 15 minutes of fame.
Suppose we turn the tables on them? Suppose we declare that, as a result of their barbaric murders, Mr. Berg and Mr. Johnson are martyrs who died for our cause? As martyrs, they get to ascend to Paradise and claim between them, 144 virgins!!! The Muslims might think twice if they believe that THEY have caused 144 virgins to be taken out of the virgin pool that is supposedly reserved just for Muslim martyrs!! It could mess with their heads a little.
Nukes? We'll never use them 'til we're glowing in the dark ourselves.
Make that... "an American working in Saudi Arabia"
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