Posted on 09/27/2001 9:04:30 AM PDT by Illbay
Sept. 26, 2001, 8:47PM
DAMASCUS, Syria -- A morgue assistant pulls out drawers holding the mutilated corpses of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israelis. Doctors pummel the chest of a dead Palestinian in a desperate attempt to revive him. The body of an infant, swathed in bloodied blankets, is held by a grieving parent.
These raw images -- aired almost daily on Arab television since the Palestinian-Israeli clashes erupted a year ago -- haven't lost the power to touch the hearts of Arab viewers.
Indeed, they have fed a buildup of Arab anger -- not only against Israel but also against the United States, its chief ally, already resented for imposing 11 years of sanctions and carrying out repeated airstrikes on Iraq.
That anger provides a potential base of support for the militants, who can use it to keep governments from cracking down on them. The outrage has also left many Arabs grappling with conflicting emotions over the Sept. 11 suicide attacks in the United States.
Some governments -- while decrying the deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania -- have echoed murmurs in the streets that the United States brought violence on itself by angering Arabs. Others have made it clear they want to be sure U.S. retaliation doesn't target nations like Iraq or groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, who are heroes to some Arabs because of their anti-Israel stance.
"We feel outraged by what happened in the United States, but we want the world to feel the same about the daily Israeli killings of Palestinians, the demolishing of houses and the humiliation of the people," said Wafa Mohammed, a shop owner in Jordan.
"If the United States had sympathized with the Arabs, the destruction that took place in the United States wouldn't have happened," said Mohammed Tohami, 22, an Egyptian frame maker.
"There's a feeling among Arabs that the United States is totally responsible for what's happening in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," said Imad Shueibi, a Syrian political analyst.
The Palestinian-Israeli clashes began one year ago Friday. The spark, the Palestinians say -- or the pretext, according to Israel -- was a visit by then-opposition Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to the holiest and most disputed site in Jerusalem, which Jews call the Temple Mount and Palestinians Haram as-Sharif.
Since then, 642 Palestinians and 177 Israelis have been killed. Many of the Israeli casualties were civilians who died in Palestinian suicide attacks against discos, restaurants, markets and train stations or shootings with machine guns and mortars.
The resulting resentment cannot be ignored as President Bush -- who has threatened to punish Afghanistan's Islamic rulers harboring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden -- assembles U.S. forces for a retaliatory strike. Bin Laden has portrayed himself as the champion of Muslims and Palestinians.
Adding to the pressure on the mostly secular Arab governments are fatwas, or religious edicts issued by Muslim clergymen warning the governments against joining the anti-terrorism coalition.
If you don't like the truth, don't blame me.
Richard W.
The Muslims are not in favor of terrorism. Right.
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'Palestinians See Themselves In Islamic War Against The West' Jerusalem (CNSNews.com)
Based on reports in their own media and in school textbooks, the Palestinian Authority sees the Palestinians as part of the larger Islamic community, which is waging a war against the West, said Itamar Marcus, director of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Media Watch. PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has declared himself to be on the side of the U.S. in its war against terror, but Marcus, whose organization has been monitoring the PA press and media on the topic for the last four years, says it is not true. "[The Palestinians are] trying to create this perception that they're supporters of America. It is not true," Marcus said in an interview. "They have been viciously hating for years and they've taught people to hate America ... That's why everyone went out in the street and celebrated [when the World Trade Towers and Pentagon were attacked] because they had been getting so much anti-American [material]," he said. A cartoon in the largest circulation daily in the PA, Al-Quds, on September 22, showed a blind-folded President Bush, holding up a bloodied dagger in one hand and a broken scale of justice in the other, captioned "Infinite Justice." But according to PMW translations of the PA press and media, as far back as 1997, PA officials and official PA newspapers were recorded as displaying anti-American sentiments. In a compendium of hatred against America, compiled after the September 11 attacks from their previous records, PMW lists 41 cases of strong Anti-American sentiments in 1997 alone ranging from the burning of American flags at a PA-sponsored rally to calls for the destruction of the U.S. by PA officials. The PA-appointed Mufti (Islamic religious leader) of the PA Ikrima Sabri called on Allah to "destroy America as it is controlled by Zionist Jews." "Allah will avenge, in the name of his Prophet, the colonialist settlers who are the descendents of monkeys and pigs," he said on the Voice of Palestine radio in July 1997. Sabri was questioned by the Israeli police shortly after September 11 this year for having called for the destruction of America in a sermon in the weeks leading up to the attacks. Hafez Al-Barghuti, the editor of the PA's official newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote that history "does not remember the United States, but it remembers Iraq, the cradle of civilization, and Palestine, the cradle of religions. "History remembers every piece of Arab land, because it is the bosom of human civilization. On the other hand, the murderers of humanity, the creators of the barbaric culture and the bloodsuckers of nations, are doomed to death and destined to shrink to a microscopic size, like Micronesia," he concluded. Later, in November of 2000, a survey conducted by the Program for Educational Development of Beir Zeit University, in Ramallah showed that 73 percent of Palestinians supported military action against American targets in the region, including suicide missions against American interests in the Middle East. Al Hayat Al Jadida, which published the poll noted that, "it is interesting that the support for the attacks against American targets among academics reached 77 percent compared to 70 percent among illiterates." "The message that we're trying to get out is that Americans should understand the Palestinians see themselves in a global war of Islam against the West," Marcus said, citing two passages from PA published textbooks, which say that Islam will conquer the West. "We do not claim that the collapse of Western civilization, and the transfer of the center of civilization to us [Islam] will happen in the next decade or two or even in fifty years, for the rise and fall of civilizations follow natural processes," says an eleventh grade textbook, Some Outstanding Examples of Our Civilization. "Even when the foundations of a fortress become cracked it still appears ... to be at the peak of its strength. Nevertheless [Western civilization] has begun to collapse and to become a pile of rubble," it continued. "Since the beginning of our reawakening ...We awoke to a painful reality and oppressive imperialism and we drove it out of some of our lands and we are about to drive it from the rest," the text concludes. A seventh grade Islamic education book says that "Islam, the true religion ... will defeat all other religions and it will be disseminated, by Allah's will, through the Muslim Jihad fighters." Marcus stresses that although America does not see its current battle as a war against Islam, the Islamic people themselves have "defined it as Islam's war against the West." "This is a war against the Judeo-Christian tradition and Allah has guaranteed that they will defeat the West. This is what they're telling their people," he added. Marcus said two years ago his organization had already published a report on Islam's war against the West based on PA textbooks, but people tend not to take note until after the fact. "Everything was written. People just haven't been listening to what's been said," he said. "People see the world through their own glasses," Marcus said. "We don't want to destroy other people, [so] why would other people want to destroy us? ... We cannot imagine why somebody would want to destroy America or destroy Israel
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Of course it's true we are resented by the Arab world. The successful are generally resented by the unsuccesful.
We were also resented by the Japanese and Germans in 1941, the Russians for most of the 20th Century, and the Iraqis in 1990.
We were resented by the Indians when we imigrated here from Europe. The Southerners resented the Northerners, especially in the 1860s (especially during the North's invasion of the South).
The Mexicans resented us in the 1830s when we invaded their territory, defeated Santa Ana in a series of battles and captured Mexico City.
Finally, I resent your obtuseness, lack of historical knowledge, and support of the enemies who have just killed 7,000 of us in a sneak attack on civilian men, women and children. And then you have the gall go actually post on this website.
You are a moral and intellectual cretin.
Love and peace.
Stick to NASCAR threads. You know more and make more friends there.
Big difference. We have a strategic interest, or so it is claimed, in keeping the Gulf states from being taken over because of all the oil supplies there. We have ZERO strategic interest in defending Israel. Our support of Israel is about as irrational as foriegn policy gets.
Put it another way, why should we take sides in a conflict when our intersts have absolutely nothing to do with who wins? Why then are we not staying out of the Israeli-Palestinian fight?
So, I support Bush in his efforts. I decry the anti-Americanism on America's campuses, and I think most Arabs and those who profess affiliation with Islam want to kill us. I say kill them before they kill us. It's a confusing situation, and anyone who does not take a look at the Israeli aggression in the Mideast is missing an important part of the equation. God Bless America!!!
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