AGAINST US IMPERIALISM AND JEWISH POWER

Ziad Shaker al-Jishi, Chairman of NACAZAI
(North American Committee Against Zionism and Imperialism)

Interviewed by Husayn Al-Kurdi

You have a distinguished background. Tell us about your illustrious father and about the circumstances in which you grew up.

I grew up in Dubai, the son of two Palestinian refugees from Lebanon. My father's village in Palestine was Al-Kabri which was totally destroyed in a vindictive manner by the Jews after the killing of dozens of Jewish invaders. What remains of its ruins today are grazing grounds for the cows of the Jewish enemy settlers. My mother's town Tarsheeha has an illustrious history of fighting the Jews and was one of the last towns in the Galilee to heroically resist before falling into the hands of the invading Jews after being aerially bombarded in the war of al-Nakba (The Catastrophe) of 1948. To this day Tarsheeha maintains its Arab character with all attempts at turning it Jewish failing, as in when the enemy tried to settle Jews in the town and were unsuccessful.

My mother's side of the family is filled with freedom fighters and all her uncles either fought in Lebanon in the 1970's and 1980's or in Palestine in the 1948 war; they fell martyred, were injured, or were imprisoned. My grandfather Mustafa from my mother's side was a martyr in the late 1970's as a member of Fatah in Lebanon. Our home was a patriotic Palestinian home that believed in Palestine being Arab and dreamed of the day we returned to our villages and towns in Palestine in the upper Galilee. Ours was an Arab nationalist home that was influenced by the Ba'ath and Nasserism. My mother's side was more Nasserite and my father, although never politically active, was influenced by the thought and work of the great Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party of Iraq.

You are the Chairman of NACAZAI. What is NACAZAI and what does it do? How can people find out more about it? NACAZAI stands for the North American Committee Against Zionism and Imperialism. It was founded in 2003 after the events of September 11, 2001 in the US put an end to the anti-normalization work of its predecessor NACAZAR, the North American Committee Against Zionism and Racism. It was co-founded in December 2003 by a group of American and Arab leftists meeting in Los Angeles who believed the work of anti-normalization with the Zionist enemy "Israel" must continue and must also be decisively anti-imperialist in nature.

The primary task of NACAZAI as a committee is to function as a propaganda organ which has operated within the boundaries of North America; however, in the last five years of its existence it has reached many of the international forces fighting both Jewish international power and US imperialism, from Belarus to Cuba, from Zimbabwe to Venezuela, and from Sudan and Somalia to Mauritania.

Over the course of our work we have concentrated on pushing for better study of the example of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as the premier and most advanced revolutionary anti-imperialist force in the world today fighting US imperialism. Under the leadership of the beloved leader Comrade Kim Jong Il and the great leader Kim Il Sung, the DPRK over the course of its history has liberated its land from Japanese imperialism, built a formidable and lasting socialist state, is now and has been since June of 2000 working to re-unify the southern and northern parts of its nation, and has ushered in the era of nuclear empowerment to its resilient people in the last few years.

On the anti-Zionist front we have promoted the example of the great Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party in Iraq as a formidable and illustrious example of genuine anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist work in the world today. We have promoted the Ba'ath in Iraq as not only the vanguard Arab revolutionary party in Arabia today but also a formidable enemy to US imperialism and Jewish international power the world over that is about to deliver Jewish and imperialist power a decisive defeat in Iraq today.

The Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party, the thought of Al-Ustadh Michel Aflaq, and the life of President Saddam Hussein have been focal points of our study, and NACAZAI in turn has worked diligently to spread this information to our readers through our ongoing propaganda activities. Interested parties can access our work on our website at www.nacazai.org or write to us for more information.

You recently returned from the Middle East. Where did you go and what did you see?

I visited both the Dubai and Syria. Conditions in Syria are getting worst. A lumpen society is quickly evolving, and criminal acts are about to explode in the open in the streets once the socialist system is finished off. They are calling this liberalization of the economy and modernization but we all know it is to break down what remnants of socialism there are and to create a bourgeois capitalist society. There are areas in Damascus where the super rich live and thrive while most of the people are starving and eating off of garbage cans. The small rural town I was staying in suffers from lack of water and regular power outages. A general desertification is apparent in all of Bilad al-Sham (the area of Greater Syria) and there is also a severe drought in Lebanon and Jordan. What once were large fig and olive tree planted fields are now desert-like with dying figs, grapes, and olive trees that are blue and grey, shriveled up instead of flourishing and blooming. The heaps of garbage in the street are increasing, people's convictions are being stripped (destruction of their ideology), and a lumpen type behavior similar to the type we witnessed in the Eastern European block and ex-Soviet Union is notable. The lack of ideological conviction leads to humans breaking down in ugly ways when material means are absent. Black marketeers are everywhere and people are stepping over each other for money.

With this liberalization of the economy, prices are increasing everywhere, the Safawi Iranians are also everywhere, and the road to normalization with the Zionist enemy is in full swing. Prostitution and even signs of once almost extinct drugs are slowly but surely making a showing, as are daring robberies (such as Jewelry shop heists). We spent our time amongst the dirt and dust in our small apartment. We spent a week upon our arrival without water, sleeping on a mattress on the floor with occasional electricity outages, no air conditioning, and a shortage of food. The garbage outside of our building led to massive mosquito attacks, and when you opened the windows the heat and mosquito bites prevented you from sleeping at night. I would wake up in a sweat six or seven times an evening. and we developed skin rashes from all the mosquito bites we received. I had to do everything by hand, such as fixing the toilet and the stench of urine and human waste was suffocating in the place. It felt like being in a war-zone not a "vacation", and this is surely how the working class, peasants, and poor live every day, in these inhuman and degrading living conditions.

In contrast, Dubai was the exact opposite, similar to Beverly Hills with shopping malls and a lavish lifestyle of cafes and restaurants resembling Manhattan, London, or Los Angeles, with all the cosmopolitanism Jewish money can muster. The same lumpen type mentality exists here, but instead of fighting over $1 and $5 bills as in Syria, in the UAE people were fighting, swindling, and killing each other thousands and more.

Construction work is booming in this globalized city. Worker strikes were everywhere in the construction sites that housed Asian workers, but they were quickly bought off by the money the government threw at the mostly Indian as well as Filipino, Nepalese, and East Asian workers. There is now diversification of the imported labor classes who once were predominantly Indian and Pakistani but one now sees people from all over Asia.

Dubai is booming with Mafia and Jewish money, and the Arabs who live there are so immersed in the pursuit of pornography, Russian prostitution, and making money that they do not even know if commander Izzat al-Douri is still alive, let alone the prospects of victory of the Iraqi Resistance. The rulers of Syria and the UAE are ordered to normalize relations with Iran and the Zionist enemy, and they are quickly obliging while keeping a media blackout over the resistance activities taking place in nearby Iraq. The ones I used to know from high school who would swear by the Arab identity of Palestine decades ago when we were in school together. Now say they are ready for peace with "Israel". Mind you these are rich technocrats now and do enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle. They could even benefit from business opportunities with the "Israelis" and so are not representative of the average poor Arabs in the streets of Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, or Syria who hate "Israel" and want to fight it. While I was in the UAE, the government received the traitor Maliki government of Iraq on the road to its "normalization". I am sure this is something the US ordered.

What is your assessment of the contending forces and currents in Iraq and in the Arab nation? What about the role of Nasserism, the status of al-Qa'eda, the part played by Iran and its accessories? Finally, who is the Resistance in Iraq and what role does the Ba'ath Party play in it and what is the Ba'ath in terms of Arab nationalism and anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggle? As I mentioned above the premier organization, and the one Arabs and Muslims need to study and support is the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party. The Ba'ath has proven that it is the only genuine Arab party that has the correct ideology, organizational capability, leadership, and revolutionary program which can fight and defeat the Zionists, American imperialists, and Safawi Iranian hegemony sectarian forces relentlessly and without fail. The Ba'ath has a renaissance development and uplifting program for the Arab and Muslim Ummah and is an inspiration for all struggling peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It is well on its way to accomplishing liberation and independence, Arab unification, and socialism for the Arab nation and for Muslim people everywhere.

Gamal Abdel Nasser was a great Arab leader and is well respected and his legacy commemorated, but the status of Nasserism today is largely ineffective because with the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser that movement was significantly weakened. A good evidence of this is the careless way Nasserites promote Hizbullah and Iran and don't give enough attention to the central struggle the Ba'ath is leading against the US and "Israel" inside of Iraq.

Al-Qaida has done significant things to weaken the grip of the US around the world. Their presence in Iraq has been negligible though, and they are widely hated for their sectarianism, as much as the Iranians are hated for their sectarian agenda.

The main force behind the Iraqi resistance is the higher command of Jihad and Liberation as headed by dear Comrade Leader al-Mujahid Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Secretary-General of the valiant Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party in Iraq. In my estimation 80% of the Iraqi resistance is carried out by the Ba'ath, with the remainder by Islamic groups.

I anticipate the return of the Ba'ath to power in Iraq after the defeat of the Americans is completed because of its wide appeal amongst patriotic Iraqis. That eventual outcome will usher in a great new base for the Arab revolutionary program in the whole area and Iraq will be at the center of it.

As to Iran, as you know Iraq is being occupied currently by three forces: America, the Zionists, and Iranians. All three are equally dangerous and must be driven out of Iraq in defeat. Iran in particular played the most destructive of roles as it murdered President Saddam Hussein, spread sectarian killings inside of Iraq and infiltrated and took control of the US puppet government setup with Maliki. Iran is a serious hegemonist force in Iraq and all over the Arab world and one that needs to be driven out for Iraq to regain its freedom. Even the Americans have confessed this. The Baker-Hamilton document gives a prominent occupying role to Iran in Iraq once the US is driven out.

You were detained and harassed upon your return at the airport. What happened, and is this what happens to you whenever you travel?

Yes, this happens to me every time I have entered the US since my attendance at the Pyongyang re-unification conference in 2005. Indeed, I think these methodical methods of detention and interrogation increase our resolve because they show that the work we are doing at NACAZAI is affecting the enemy and he in return practices his psychological warfare by harassing us and practicing a method of intimidation in our every move. I always contend that there are four levels of state repression:

Level 1 Harassment
Level 2 Imprisonment
Level 3 Deportation
Level 4 Martyrdom

We at NACAZAI are at level 1, and when the enemy escalates things depends on the effectiveness of our upcoming work.

As to their methods they are very sinister indeed, and I have yet to hear them offer an outright accusation of anything or even a mention of NACAZAI. This time around they wanted to know whom I had met with and where I had been. This is the second time they prepared a civilian- looking person who simply attended the interrogation and took notes as if interested in gathering information. At one point I told the Mexican lady interrogator I did not want to provide her any information about where I had been and who I had met with and they asked me to leave the room. Then they sent me a "Muslim" brother to softly ask me to cooperate. He told me what should take an hour or two may lead to five hours if I did not "cooperate". When I told them I had been to Damascus (which is what they wanted to know), I said I was going to file a lawsuit against them, and that next time I would bring a lawyer to this little chat we were having. I threw a temper tantrum and they backed off. Later they told me I could have been held for two days, so that it's best that I simply cooperate next time and give them the information they ask of me. They confiscated my wallet and cell-phone and subjugated my five-year-old daughter to the whole episode.

They went through my bags with a fine-tooth comb and asked about the books I had with me. Unlike previous times there was a checkpoint set up for arriving passengers and I did not know that I was the star of the party! They were looking for me upon arrival from the UAE. I had a three- officer welcoming party to escort me straight into detention and interrogation. On previous occasions I had to stand in the passport line and wait to be sent to interrogation and detention. So you can say I get the red carpet VIP treatment now!

They also changed officers at their office. Last time it was two White border officers. This time there was a Mexican lady and a White lady in civilian clothing for the interrogation. I noticed if you start getting mad with them and throw a temper tantrum then they back off but if I hadn't done that what would have been an one-hour gathering of information magically got reduced to five minutes. They are basically gathering information about us and spying on me and our organization.

Then they sent in an apologetic Muslim brother form Pakistan who spent about 10 to 15minutes with me to get out that I had been to Syria, which my passport stamp showed anyway! So in essence what I am saying is if you make them pay for their questions and resist them, what would have been one to two hours of interrogation is now reduced to 25 minutes and what would have been a ten-page record is now half a page.

If you notice every time they do this we use it for propaganda work and make them pay for it on our website and through mass public exposure and appeal. The civilian clothed interrogator who had all five minutes of information to jot down makes me believe she is FBI or CIA. I tried to take a peek at her badge but she was a little far and aloof. I think it said "Homeland Security."

Anyway, the three-person welcoming party leads me to believe they are giving us special attention from here on and the civilian cloth-person leads me to believe we are being under surveillance. As to the intent of this little party, I think it is to harass us, to send the message we are being watched closely, and to psychologically break me down.

What kind of future looms for the Arabs, the USA and the rest of the world, and what will NACAZAI try to do about it?

Jewish power and American imperialism are the source of great misery for the Arab people and the rest of the world, and they must be smashed. We have made great progress in the last decades for the revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle both in the DPRK and Iraq. We at NACAZAI from our geographic position have tried to contribute to this just and worthy effort to rid the world of both Jewish power and American imperialism. We at NACAZAI emphasize the importance of ideological preparedness of the anti-imperialist masses all over the world. For that purpose we have produced materials to get people to read and study and we promote and publicize ongoing revolutionary action, with particular attention to the bastions of anti-imperialist struggle around the world. The liberation war in Iraq, the al-Aqsa Intifadah in Palestine, and the new nuclear era of the DPRK are all extremely important struggles worthy of study and support towards the road of final victory for the oppressed and national forces of the world seeking independence, freedom, and advancing development.


Release Date: 8/28/08

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