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Revealing Facts or Establishing Them? WikiLeaks. Why and How?
21 December 2010 By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban
The avalanche of top secret cables leaked from the
American departments of state and defense is still an
intriguing enigma to many commentators and political
analysts. A large portion of the hundreds of thousands
of secret documents and cables posted on WikiLeaks are
about the Middle East and the events which happened in
the region during the past decade. They cover the wars
waged by the United States and its armed wing on Iraq,
Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza and their efforts to
destabilize Arab countries, weaken them through
military bases and drain their cash liquidity under
different pretexts. The process culminated in
assassinating major political leaders in Lebanon to
achieve political objectives. Now we can see all this
on WikiLeaks. Why and How?
TV stations hurried to interview the website’s founder
and owner, Julian Assange – the other enigma, who, on
the one hand, appears to have obtained all these
documents without an apparent effort, and, on the
other, has been indicted in Sweden on charges of rape.
This makes the whole issue more sensational. So, is
indicting Assange meant to say that the leaks are
impossible to control?
After Assange received threats and applied for asylum
in Switzerland, his website revealed tens of thousands
of confidential cables exchanged between American
embassies in the Middle East and the US state
department, between the State Department and Arab
officials or between Israeli and Arab officials. The
dominant subject in these cables is the convergence of
views between Arab and Israeli officials on Iran; and
that source of danger is not Israel alone but Iran as
well. Some Arab officials even share this concern and
call for putting an end to Iran’s nuclear program. So,
are we supposed to follow the theory that my enemy’s
enemy is my friend?
What is remarkable is that most American embassies in
the region have leaked minutes of meetings which aim
at distorting the image of the Arabs, even by some of
their officials when they stress that "a Palestinian
state must be demilitarized, without control of its
airspace and electro-magnetic field [sic], and without
the power to enter into treaties or control its
border". (See Robert Fisk, The Independent, 30
November 2010). The documents also contain a denial by
Major General Amos Gilad of the Goldstone report about
the war on Gaza. The leaks make the situation more
murky when they reveal that some Arab leaders describe
Benjamin Netanyahu as “elegant and charming”. The
Israeli envoy to an Arab country says that the
country’s leader has "a strategic view of the region
that is curiously close to the Israeli one". The
question is: how could American ambassadors to a
number of countries leak hundreds of thousands of
secret documents without their government raising any
question or making a case against these ambassadors
for breach of their professional integrity? The second
question is why didn’t we read any leaks which indict
the Israeli Mossad known for assassinating and
torturing Palestinian leaders and activists, although
there are indications of its involvement in
assassinating Lebanese figures with the purpose of
achieving well known and declared Israeli objectives.
What the “secret” documents have revealed is that the
United States does not support – in reality not in
statements – either democracy or freedom in the Middle
East. The example it struck in destroying Palestinian
democracy is still alive in the minds and well known
to everyone. The revelations about torturing prisoners
and violating human rights are also well known. What
is new, however, and what could be behind releasing
all these documents, is to show a new reality at the
heart of the Arab world. It shows the amount of
support that Israel and its strategies and policies
enjoy, even among Arabs’ political leaders themselves.
The worldwide coverage of the leaks overshadowed the
International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People marked on November 29. It also coincided with
new arrests, threats and racist policies against
Palestinian civilians. Statements by Israeli Foreign
Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, that “settlement freeze”
should be eliminated from Israeli terminology, went
unnoticed and without comment from Arab politicians.
And Israel once again arrested elected members to the
Palestinian parliament, in addition to atrocious
Israeli crimes against Palestinian children. (See Avi
Issacharoff’s “Childcare experts condemn police
treatment of Palestinian stone-throwers”, Haaretz, 1
December 2010). Issacharoff writes about the suffering
of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli police
and the treatment they are subjected to which should
be a disgrace to human history and not only Jewish
history. This suffering did not merit any coverage in
the Western media, nor even in the Arab media.
If things are measured in terms of their outcome, then
WikiLeaks did not offer the Arabs or the Palestinians
any insight into the Israeli crimes committed against
them. Neither did they push forward this struggle one
single inch towards finding justice to the Palestinian
people who are oppressed and deprived of freedom,
democracy and human rights. They are the native people
oppressed on their own land and being subjected to the
same ethnic cleansing that native peoples have
undergone on other continents.
After the media’s massive and absolute disregard to
the suffering of the Palestinian people which did not
cause any pangs of remorse in humanity’s conscience or
move it towards achieving justice, come hundreds of
thousands of Wikileaks documents to overlook
completely Israeli crimes against this people. On the
contrary, they came to confirm that Israel’s vision
for the region and its future is shared by many Arab
leaders who did not so far dare declare their support
of Israel against their own people. So, is this stage
managed process intended to move this conflict yet
another step against Arab rights and in favor of
Israel which still occupies Arab land and usurps their
rights? Prof. Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media
Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister
of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at
Damascus University since 1985. She's got Ph.D. in
English Literature from Warwick University, London.
She was the spokesperson for Syria. She was nominated
for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
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