nato institutes a racialized eurafrican union

Video - Gaddafi was a stalwart against the eurafrican union

newamericanmedia | Rushing into the center of Tripoli, jubilant Libyan rebels shouted: "We've got kinky head!" The slur was directed at Seif Al-Islam, the dark-complexioned son of strongman Muammar Gaddafi, who as it turns out had evaded capture. Since the start of the rebellion in February, the Arab militants of the Benghazi-headquartered National Transitional Council (NTC) have repeatedly perpetrated overt acts of racial violence, including mob lynching and physical mutilation of unarmed black Libyans, indigenous Berbers and Tuareg nomads among them.

The NATO-led multinational intervention force, known as Operation Unified Protector, has tolerated heinous race crimes that would be severely prosecuted and punished if they had occurred in Paris, London, Washington D.C. and Ottawa. The unwillingness of NATO to stop or even acknowledge the racist terror tactics puts into question the underlying strategic objective behind the intervention - a geopolitical project known as the Mediterranean Union (MU).

The hate crimes bring an uneasy and practically unspeakable issue to the world's attention - Arab racism. It is simplistic and historically incorrect to attribute this variant of racism to Arab slave trading, even though most of the raiding groups who captured African villagers for colonial plantations in the Americas were comprised of Arabs. Europeans and white Americans were also enslaved by North African pirates, a practice that provoked the United States to wage the two Barbary Wars in the early 1800s. In contrast to the race-conscious European and American plantation owners, the Arab world then perceived bondage as simply a category of human capital, irregardless of the captives’ race.

At the level of household and community, intermarriage with persons of African ancestry has not been a major problem throughout most of the Arab world, so long as the spouse belongs to the Islamic faith and follows the customary rites and habits. Sharply contrasting with America's discriminatory segregation policy during his lifetime, this is the Islamic multi-racialism that Malcolm X observed in Mecca.

The Race Card

Arab racial attitudes, therefore, cannot be simplistically reduced to skin tone but are more an issue related to culture, especially the residual beliefs and customs of so-called "kaffir" or pagans. Ever since the Umayyad invasion that swept across North Africa in the 7th century, the Arabs encountered, subdued and incorporated an array of tribes in the Saharan region, or Magreb. Black Africans who adopted the totality of Arabic cultural behavior integrated with relative ease into the dominant society, many ascending to high rank. Those who stubbornly held to their "superstitious" beliefs in native deities and matriarchal customs, including many Berbers and the majority of the Tuareg, were deemed Africans and not Arabs.

These ill-defined racial divisions helped European colonizers promote institutional discrimination during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The biases of French, Italian and British colonial administrators were imposed on the Semitic peoples - Arabs and Jews of North Africa and the Levant. The stress on skin tone - white standing for civilization and black for savagery - was already well-established in Europe and North America. Color-based images were deeply ingrained, for example, in a long-haired Nordic Jesus of Nazareth, as opposed to the "kinky head" that he was likelier to have been, versus swarthy despots and tanned Saracen pirates. European scholars, writers and artists recast the history of North Africa into racial stereotypes, portraying light-skinned pharaohs when, in fact, most ancient statues reveal African facial and physical features.

Skin tone affected a Semitic individual’s chances of employment and career promotion under European colonialism. The lingering sense of insecurity is still reflected, for instance, when some - not all - of my Arab friends try to pass themselves off as whites inside posh lounges in Berlin or even Dubai, an understandable guise in our present context of the war on terrorism. Prejudices of the master are adopted by the servants, and "second-class whites" can often be more vicious and vulgar in their racism. Extreme examples can be seen in the propaganda posters of the Maronite Christian militias of Lebanon, presenting themselves as lily-white crusaders against the dark hordes.

Son of Africa

More than any other leader in the region, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi challenged this deplorable legacy of European colonialism and Arab conquest. Proudly adopting sub-Saharan- style robes and turbans and embracing the indigenous cultures of the continent of his birth, he declared Libya to be an inseparable part of Africa. The Libyan leader took the identity issue a giant step further, financing and arming Africans to fight European supremacy and, in Nimery's Sudan, against domination by the Gulf states.

If there is one thing that the second-tier "white" of Arab or Israeli descent disdains more than a black African it is, of course, the "kaffir lover," a charge often leveled against Gaddafi. The race hatred is so intense that even American diplomats have had to warn the Benghazi rebels against committing massacres. The warning is being scoffed at by the gathered clan of special-forces commandos, warships and air forces from 19 European, North American and Mideast nations, which are launching indiscriminate attacks on Libyan cities.