Received from the progressive Arab blog Yansoon, June 21:
Open Letter to Gaddafi Supporter Cynthia McKinney from Disappointed Palestinians
Dearest Cynthia McKinney,
Two years ago, you spoke out against Israelâs human rights abuses in Palestine. You were even put in an Israeli prison after your attempts to help deliver medical supplies and humanitarian aid on a ship to Gaza in 2009. For your sacrifices, you gained respect from many Palestinians all over the world.
However, we canât help but be irked by your recent stance on Libya. Itâs fine to be against NATO intervention in Libya. Youâre entitled to your own opinion. But to praise Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi is completely unacceptable. Anti-intervention shouldnât equate to whitewashing Gaddafiâs crimes.
Last month, you appeared on Libya State TV, a propaganda organ of the Gaddafi regime. In an interview, you said that the âlast thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war⌠I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of warâŚare not what the people of the United States stand for and itâs not what African-Americans stand for.â
Maybe you could have garnered some legitimacy with that statement if you werenât speaking on a station run by Gaddafi. Or even better, if you at least offered some recognition that Gaddafi is guilty of perpetrating âdeath, destruction and warâ on his own people.
In the interview, you also claimed you were in Libya on a âfact-finding missionâ to âunderstand the truth.â But Ms. McKinney, you were only in Tripoli, a city under Gaddafiâs control. If you were really on a trip to Libya to see the truth for yourself, why didnât you go to Benghazi and speak to the opposition movement as well?
Not only that, you praise Gaddafi in the interview, asserting that his Green Book advocates âdirect democracy.â You also declare on your Facebook page that Gaddafi was âdemocratically elected.â Umm, you obviously havenât met any Libyans before your trip to Tripoli. If you did, youâd know how the majority of Libyans feel about him. And if anything, someone ruling over a country for 42 years should be a hint that they arenât democratically elected. Claiming that Libyans wanted Gaddafi as a leader is like saying Palestinians asked for Israel to occupy them. It just doesnât make sense.
Now, youâre on a nationwide speaking tour, Eyewitness Libya: Cynthia McKinney reports back on the Massive Bombing of Tripoli. Also speaking on the tour will be Akbar Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Brian Becker, National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition.
First of all, why arenât there any Libyans speaking on this tour? Secondly, Nation of Islam? Really? The Nation of Islam has defended Gaddafi since the beginning of the Libyan pro-democracy protests in February. Of course, this is probably because the Libyan government has given the Nation millions of dollars over the years.
Not only are Libyans not invited to speak on your tour about Libya, but in Los Angeles, Libyans have been denied entry into the event itself.
Ms. McKinney, this is truly a disappointment. You support the Palestinians, but you are not supporting the Libyan people in their fight for freedom and dignity. What exactly is your motive? A charitable explanation is that you are just completely naĂŻve to Gaddafiâs atrocities. Another reason is that you might support Gaddafi for ideological reasons, like Chavez or Castro. Or, worst case scenario, you could just be another tool on Gaddafiâs payroll. Whatever the case may be, we are extremely disheartened.
The Palestinian and Libyan peoples are connected, both struggling against state-sponsored brutality and political repression. Palestinians stand in solidarity with our Libyan brothers and sisters in their revolution against Gaddafi, as well as others rising up against oppressive dictatorships in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. The Palestinian movement for human rights, civil rights and equality has been invigorated and inspired by these pro-democratic movements.
Ms. McKinney, your pro-Gaddafi stance is completely hypocritical and contradictory to your support for the Palestinians. Unless you retract your statements supporting Gaddafi, we donât think you have any business sailing to Gaza again. We refuse to accept opportunistic support from people who advocate for murderers.
Sincerely,
A Group of (Severely) Disappointed Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank, and the US
See our last post on the McKinney controversy.
Why don’t they name
Why don’t they name themselves so the note can be verified and McKinney can respond to it? For a country that has been through COINTELPRO, anonymous letters are not the way to go.
Are there Libyans in the United States who have volunteered themselves as an antiwar voice? The exile community here all seems to be cheering NATO. Opposition to NATO is the focus of the speaking tour it appears, not political endorsement of Gadaffi.
Why does this open letter from supposed Palestinians, the people most besieged by imperialist aggression over the decades, say nothing about the imperialist bombing?
It is a bizarre letter. Where is the open letter to the rebels of Benghazi to withdraw their support for the butchers of the Iraqi, Afghan, and Palestinian people, and to stop appearing on the imperialist propaganda stations?
You wicked bastard!!!!
Stop your lying! You are not no damn Palestinian. These are words of a wicked Jew, Gentile or one of their agents! You wicked bastard!
Quadruple exclamation points????
I suggest you guys address your criticisms to Yansoon. We just reprinted the letter.
You attributed the letter to ‘Palestinians’ without any evidence
You didn’t just “reprint the letter”, Bill. You also, in your page title, repeated the attribution of the letter to ‘Palestinians’ without any evidence to back up that claim.
Please do not, BTW, take this brief comment as a position paper on the issues raised by the letter or by any other critics of McKinney.
P.S. Unfortunately, there was no room left for any exclamation points or question marks in my Subject line for this comment!!!!!!!!!!????????? (:->)
And you are questioning it without any evidence
We have no reason to believe Yansoon misrepresented the letter. Do you? If so, please share it with us.
I always question …
I always question assertions by anonymous people who invoke alleged facts about themselves or their personal experiences that cannot be independently verified. And even if those who maintain the Yansoon web site should be proven to be impeccably honest, their failure to claim any knowledge about the allegedly Palestinian letter writers means that their presumed honesty doesn’t add to the reliability of the claims of the latter.
“allegedly Palestinian”?
I have no reason to question Yansoon’s bona fides, and neither do you. Spend some time poking around on Yansoon’s articles, comments, links, etc. There is absolutely nothing there that smacks of subterfuge or ulterior motives. This is empty speculation in a bogus attempt to discredit people who are saying something you don’t want to hear.
Did you read my last sentence?
I wrote:
Please show me where the people maintaining the Yansoon web site stated that they vouch for the bona-fides of the allegedly Palestinian writers. I suspect that they are just as willing as you are, Bill, to take such things at face value. I’m not!
“allegedly Palestinian”?
Why should they have to “vouch for the bona-fides of the allegedly Palestinian writers”? There is absolutely nothing implausible or suspicious about the letter. This “allegedly Palestinian” line is baseless and utterly condescending.
To all supporters of Gaddafy, Castro, Chavez, Hitler, Stalin
May Allah condemns the Nation of Islam, Ms Kinney and all of you supporters of Gaddafy, Castro, Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin and the communist to hell. Hell is where you all murderers, dictators, communist, and the supporters of those murderers such as Nation of Islam belong. God is great! God will send you to hell. Palestine, Libya, Vietnam, China and other oppressed people will be freed from murderers, dictators and communist.
I don’t fear your ‘allah’/’god’, but ‘his’ nutcase believers.
As a communist who has, at least in some respects, defended, if not supported, all those you mention except Hitler, I have no fear of retribution from an imaginary god. I do, however, fear violence from those who think their allegedly omnipotent god needs their worthless selves to do ‘his’ work for ‘him’. For that reason, I am making this comment anonymously.
Reminds me, BTW, of a T-shirt I saw once that said, ‘God save me from your believers’.
McKinney takes pro-Qaddafi show on the road
The vile International Action Center is promoting what it calls a McKinney Libya Tour, with gigs in Houston, Minneapolis, DC, Atlanta, Albany, Newark, NYC, Boston and LA over the next weeks. Will actual Libyans again be barred from attending? Will any North Africans, Berber ex-pats or American progressives of good conscience be out there to picket? Will the Green Party finally repudiate her over her shameless shilling for a dictator and war criminal?
McKinney and the Green Party
Bill,
This is just another reason I haven’t joined the GP. Weird left looney coalition politics. I think I will hold out until NYS GP Officially repudiates the stumping.
Well then again I’ve never joined any party. Hasn’t hurt me yet.
ISO diss McKinney/ANSWER Qaddafi fan club
Although it appears as a “comment,” which may be a means of distancing themselves from it somewhat, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in their online Socialist Worker newspaper runs a piece entitled “A disservice to the antiwar movement,” arguing that “ANSWER is wrong to tie the anti-imperialist struggle to the defense of a tyrant like Mummar el-Qaddafi.” It states rather obviously: “Forums held in June by the antiwar group ANSWER opposed the U.S. bombing of Libya–but also portrayed the Qaddafi regime as progressive.”
We certainly don’t agree with the sectarian ISO about everything (in fact, we’ve had to call them out on a few things before), but we give them total creds for being one of the few voices on the American left to forthrightly take this issue on…