political writings

Français    English    Italiano    Español    Deutsch    عربي    русский    Português
Silvia Cattori
 
An Interview with Hedy Epstein
Israël: "I was not prepared for the horrors that I saw"
14 June 2007 | Hedy Epstein, 82, was born in Freiburg, Germany, in 1924 (*) and lived in Kippenheim, a village located approximately 30 km north of Freiburg. She was the only child of parents who died in the Nazi extermination camps. She is a tireless worker for human rights and for the dignity of all people. Hedy decided to visit Palestine in 2003. She returned terribly shocked with what she had seen there, women and children defenceless, Palestinians locked up into ghettos, an entire people brutalized.


An Interview with Greta Berlin
Sailing to Gaza
6 June 2007 | Greta Berlin, 66 years old, is a businesswoman from Los Angeles, CA. She is the mother of two Palestinian-American children and has been to the occupied territories twice in the past four years with the International Solidarity Movement. She is also a member of Women in Black Los Angeles. She is one of many other people, who have organized an unusual project, sailing a boat to Gaza. They intend to challenge Israel’s claim that they no longer occupy Gaza. Talking to her, she explains why she and the other courageous people are going.


Interview with Count Hans-Christof von Sponeck
United Nations implications in war crimes
16 March 2007 | For Hans Christof von Sponeck, the former assistant secretary-general of the UN, the United Nations, far from garding the respect for international law and the consolidation of peace, have themselves become a factor of injustice. Thus, the sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq caused a human disaster, whereas treaties such as the nuclear non-proliferation treaty are used to ensure the domination of certain powers and to threaten others. It is time to change the system completely.


The 2007 French Presidential election
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan : "France must withdraw from NATO"
30 January 2007 | The merger between the main French right-wing parties permitted to the Atlanticists to gain the upper hand over the Gaullists and to their champion, Nicolas Sarkozy, to become the UMP candidate. Getting in resistance, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan resigned from the only party of the right and announced his candidacy in the presidential election. He replies below to the questions of the Swiss weekly paper Horizons et débats.


The Strategy of Tension
NATO’s Hidden Terrorism
29 December 2006 | Daniele Ganser, professor of contemporary history at Bale University (France) and chairman of the ASPO - Switzerland, published a landmark book about "NATO’s Secret Armies." According to him, during the last 50 years the United States have organized bombings in Western Europe that they have falsely attributed to the left and the extreme left with the purpose of discrediting them in the eyes of their voters. This strategy is still present today, inspiring fear for the Islam and justifying wars on oil.


The intrigues of Mahmoud Abbas make the play of Israel and the United States
Palestine: People will vote with their stomach
20 December 2006 | The announcement of new presidential and parliamentary elections by Mahmud Abbas has plunged the people of Palestine, already suffering dreadfully from the terror spread by the Israeli army, into a series of bloody clashes. We have recorded the story of Ali, *a 35-year-old father of eight, who lives with his family in the cauldron known as the Gaza Strip. His worries are in contrast to the optimism and satisfaction with which the news of the new elections was presented to the world by Palestinian representatives such as Elias Senbar**


Israeli massacre
Beit Hanoun : "They shoot at anything that moves"
3 November 2006 | The testimony of a young Palestinian. " Beit Hanoun, with 30,000 inhabitants, has been the target of daily aggressions and air strikes since June 25. It is now besieged by Israeli troops. We have seen the tanks advance and take up their positions. "


Judicial Colonialism
The Assassination of Rafik Hariri: A Biased Investigation
15 September 2006 | A former criminal investigator of the GDR, who became a journalist after the reunification of Germany, Jürgen Cain Külbel is the author of a counter-investigation on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which the Voltaire Network presented to the Arab public during a widely covered conference in Damascus, May 7, 2006. In this interview, he discusses the political role of the UN Commission and the unexploited leads pointing to Israeli responsibility.


Interview with Sattar Kassem, in Nablus
« Palestinians will never surrender »
11 September 2006 | The Palestinians voted massively in favour of Hamas in the elections in January 2006. It was necessary to respect their choice. However, the European Union decided to punish them by ending grants, consciously putting millions of Palestinians in misery. The victory of Hamas caught not only those governments that had counted on a Fatah victory but also those parties and progressive movements who have never really listened to Palestinian opinion or heard their true aspirations


The Palestinian Vice-Prime Minister kidnapped by Israel
Tasneem Shaer: “My father is not a terrorist”
28 August 2006 | The Palestinian Vice-Prime Minister, Mr Naser Shaer, was kidnapped on 19 August by Israeli soldiers. Few weeks ago, Voltairenetwork published an exclusive interview with this very respectful personality by the Palestinians. Mr Naser Shaer, 45 years old, became Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Education in the new Palestinian Government formed by Hamas on March 2006. Former rector of the Faculty of Law at the National University of Al Najah in Nablus, Mr Shaer is a moderate person. He does not belong to any political party, and is not a member of Hamas as widespread in the media. Tasneem, his eldest daughter, gives to Voltairenetwork, in a very simple and sober way, her account of the abduction of Mr Shaer and the bad and humiliating conditions of his (...)


Interview with the Palestinian Vice-Prime Minister
Naser Shaer : "The Palestinians are strongly united against the sanctions"
4 August 2006 | Doctor Naser Dine Muhammad Ahmad Shaer is the Vice- Prime Minister and Minister of Education and higher learning in the Palestinian government formed by Hamas. Born in 1961, originally from Nablus, father of six children, this professor of law and legislation, rector of the Faculty of Law at the National University of Al Najah, hunted by Israel, finds himself obliged to live in clandestinity. He talks here about a subject the “West” refuses to admit: that Hamas is well integrated into the social fabric and that, confronted with Israeli oppression — as with the Lebanese and Hezbollah —Hamas is “like a fish in water” in Palestine.


Israeli terror and collective punishments
Gaza: Israel is waging a war of ethnic “cleaning”
2 August 2006 | A report from a Palestinian refugee from the camp Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza, while Israel maintains the complete closure of the Gaza Strip and continues its war in the northern part, cynically named “Summer Rain” – a war that has killed close to 200 people and left thousands wounded.


A Palestinian reports from Gaza
"Israel wants to drive us out our lands"
31 July 2006 | Khaled lives precariously in a refugee camp in Gaza. His poignant reports have been translated into many languages. Today, his voice, usually cheerful, was filled with revolt and a great lassitude.


Tsahal
A Barbarian Army
22 July 2006 | In Nablus, as soon as night falls, one feels even more violently the climate of terror coming from Tsahal, that army of vandals equipped with such an impressive arsenal. Every night dozens of vehicles loaded with soldiers invade the besieged city. Recently, however, the population of Nablus is even more choked and persecuted than is usual.


Palestine under military occupation
Nablus: "It is our life"
18 July 2006 | While the world witnesses the destruction of Lebanon by Israel, the occupation of Palestine goes on its way . While the cameras are turned towards Beirut, all elements are brought into play to suffocate the Palestinians and to force them to flee their shelters. Sylvia Cattori went to the field and described the terror to which the Nablus inhabitants are subjected.


Israeli war crimes
Gaza: “We are suffering together”
14 July 2006 | The testimony of this Palestinian family father living in northern Gaza – who in this Israeli war context wants to remain anonymous - gives an idea of the discouragement of the people of Gaza, one year after the dismantling of the Jewish settlements and the departure of the settlers. The Israeli army has returned to Gaza, its troops occupy the centre of Gaza, flanked by a dozen of tanks and army bulldozers. They destroy the crops, the greenhouses. For two weeks, F 16 and drones have been bombing houses inhabited by large families, leaving hundreds of killed and wounded. And all this happens in the world’s general indifference. In other words, nothing has changed.


Interview with Doctor Juma al-Saqqa of the Shifa Hospital in Gaza
Israel uses chemical radioactive weapons
11 July 2006 | .


Gaza under the fire of the Israeli army
"We have nothing left to lose"
27 June 2006 | A testimony of a Palestinian living in Gaza City*. Silvia Cattori asks him in particular how people lived, on the spot, the capture of the Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, on June 25 2006 in Gaza, and on what it means for the Palestinians.


The Yugoslav Caldron
Jürgen Elsässer: “The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists”
15 June 2006 | In his latest book, “How the Jihad Came to Europe”, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.


The intrigues of Fatah
"Collaborators with the Israeli Occupier are Among Us"
11 June 2006 | A Palestinian living in a refugee camp in northern Gaza gives us his account of the current situation The voice that you hear below is that of a young Palestinian baker who voted for Hamas in the recent election, hoping they would be able to lighten the suffering of his people. We think that his account sincerely reflects the feelings of a large part of the population of Gaza and can help us to rethink our biased way of seeing the situation there.


From colonisation to interference
For Ahmed Ben Bella, the liberation of the people in the South is still unachieved
21 April 2006 | While a debate is underway in France on the benefits of colonisation and responsibility of Arabs in the digression of their societies, the former Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella recalls several historical truths: the illegitimacy of one people dominating over another - that took place formerly in Algeria and today in Palestine; the global reality, and not an Arab one, of colonisation and the struggle for national liberty; Western interference by overthrowing nationalist governments and revolutionaries in countries in the south of the world; and maintaining the aftermath of colonisation. He emphasizes that today, it’s the Christian Evangelical fundamentalists who export violence.


Israel infiltrated and controlled successfully the Palestinian authorities
Gaza: «The Palestinian people are fed up with traitors»
3 April 2006 | Interview of Omar, a resident of Gaza. He denounces in particular the role of Rashid Abu Shabak, chief of preventive Security, and of Mohammed Dahlan, in the assassination, on March 31, 2006 in Gaza, of Abu Youssef Al Qouqa, chief of the Salah Ed Deen Brigades, the armed wing of the of the Popular Resistance Committees supported by Hamas.


Axis for Peace 2005
The “War against Terror” is a War against the People
16 March 2006 | In this interview recorded by Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori in November 2005 - more than six months before the war launched against Lebanon by Israeli army in summer 2006 – Youssef Aschkar was warning that the destabilization of Lebanon, Syria and Iran was under way, and that Lebanon was the country most threatened and most vulnerable to the Israeli menace. In the light of the recent developments in the region, the accuracy of his analysis appears impressive and almost prophetic.


The Chomsky/Blankfort Polemic
"The anti-war movement has failed"
17 February 2006 | Tel-Aviv and Washington are linked in the Middle East. That’s a fact. But the importance of this link in Washington’s colonial politics is being debated in the anti-imperialist movment. For the US Jewish, anti-Zionist journalist Jeffrey Blankfort, Israeli influence is central to US policy and the anti-war movement has failed because of their inability to understand the importance of this lobby. Having developed a radical approach to this question, going so far as to deny the energy factor in the war in Iraq, Mr. Blankfort nonetheless opens interesting paths on Zionist influence in the United States. We reproduce an interview he gave to journalist Silvia Cattori.


Palestinian Elections
What is the political program of Hamas?
20 January 2006 | The Palestinian legislative elections held on January 25, 2006, in which Hamas won a majority of votes, appear to be a political earthquake. The Atlantist media make efforts to demonize Hamas. In order to have objective information, Voltaire Network offers a long interview with the spokesperson of this Muslim movement. In his answers to Silvia Cattori, Moshir al Masri introduces a resistance movement against a situation of extreme violence that has nothing to do with the fanaticism they are accused of.


Axis for Peace 2005
Salim el Hoss: “ America is democratic inside, despotic outside”
4 January 2006 | In an interview granted to Silvia Cattori former Lebanese Prime Minister Salim el Hoss expresses his concern about the US-Israeli plan for the “reconfiguration of the Great Middle East”, that is the Yugoslavia-like transformation of the region. Salim el Hoss suggests that the weakness of Arab regimes turns them into easy preys for the United States, a democratic country inside, but a country that imposes its despotism on the rest of the world.


Exclusive Interview
Mordechai Vanunu: “Having the atomic bomb is what has allowed Israel to fearlessly carry out its apartheid policy”
14 October 2005 | In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an engineer at the Dimona nuclear centre, revealed to the Sunday Times the existence of the secret Israeli nuclear program. He was Kidnapped in Italy by the Israeli secret services following his contacts with the British reporters and before the publication of the article with his revelations, he was judged behind doors and jailed for 18 years. Although he is still banned from contacting reporters, Mordechai Vanunu answers Silvia Cattori’s questions in an exclusive interview for Voltaire Network.


Testimony from Palestine
“Since the settlers’ pullout, the Israeli army has been using heavy artillery against the inhabitants of Gaza”
3 October 2005 | Although it was very publicized by Israeli media, the settlers’ pullout from Gaza does not guarantee a return to the peace process but, on the contrary, announces an intensification of repression. The departure of the Israeli population from Gaza opens the way for the army of Tel Aviv to act with complete freedom. On orders from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and with the consent of President Abu Mazen, the candidates of the Hamas movement for the legislative elections are either kidnapped or killed. The Palestinians are no longer submitted to the Israeli controls in check points, but they are now under the fire of the heavy artillery of the Israeli Army (Tsahal) that fires against urban areas. Silvia Cattori offers the testimony of a Gaza dweller.


Interview
Israel Shamir: “Equal rights in Palestine/Israel is no utopia”
16 September 2005 | Writer and journalist Israel Shamir is one of the most committed Israeli personalities against the Jewish definition of the State of Israel and the system of apartheid it has created. His detractors present this former spokesperson of MAPAM (the Socialist Party of Israel) and former translator of president Herzog, as a “Self-hating Jew” whereas his supporters believe he is “one of the greatest Israeli intellectuals.” Israel Shamir answers Silvia Cattori’s questions about the defamation campaign against him and the ways of fighting racism in the state of Israel.


Violations of the rights of the child
Israel imprisons children : It is urgent to worry about it
17 April 2005 | The world says nothing. There are hundreds of Palestinian children imprisoned in the gaols of the State of Israel (1). They are in extrajudicial detention. Considered as "administrative detainees" by Israel, they are crammed into cells infested by insects.



1 | 2 | 3 | 4