You Are an Arab; Imagine That (Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it ALERT).

“Why are Arabs always angry?” a reader recently asked me, in a message filled with sarcasm and thoughtlessness. I refrained from replying right a way, because he seemed little interested in listening. I couldn’t help but wonder how he might feel if he himself was an Arab. So, I am writing back ..

For years you watch Palestinians being slaughtered, their land invaded and reinvaded, and for years witnessing the United States government block any attempt to punish those who aggressed upon the people whom you call “my people”.

Not only have the United States’ vetoes at the United Nations Security Council suffocated any initiative to deploy even unarmed observers to provide badly needed protection for Palestinians, but, thanks to billions of annual US funds, Israel manages to expand illegal settlements and provide its army with the greatest killing machines of all time.

Your human rights are never brought up unless an outside power is using the subject to inflict political pressure on your ruler. You’re worth a press release by a human rights group once every blue moon, a release that no one bothers to read. You simply matter to no one.

You are an Arab and have been watching Iraq being invaded under the pretext that it possesses weapons of mass destruction, enough to annihilate civilization, as we know it. You are gripped by fear, not fearing the harm of the alleged weapons, but the disastrous attack and occupation of a battered country, one that you often called the center of your civilization.

Then, since you are still an Arab, you watch giant multinational corporations flood Iraq, to buy and sell its oil without the consent of its people. In fact, you witness Israelis flooding the “center of your civilization”, seeking cheap oil and demanding pipelines that would go through their ports.

Meanwhile, Israel still holds millions of your Palestinian brethren hostage to curfews and checkpoints amid the constant fears of endless deadly strikes and assassinations.

To your surprise, you learn that no weapons of mass destruction are even found in Iraq. You hear top American officials say that Saddam might have in fact destroyed his weapons prior to the invasion. You hear another say Iraq is swimming in oil. You knew it all along and were shunned when you tried to explain what you had discovered.

You watch thousands of right wing missionaries flooding the weakened Iraq, vowing to convert your people to a religion that is not theirs. Others call your prophet a “devil” and your religion “evil” and demand that your school curriculum change to fit the agenda of some think-tank 15,000 miles away from your home, alien to your culture, language and heritage.

You learn of occupation soldiers mass raping your brothers and sisters in Iraq. The British daily mirror tells you that soldiers enjoyed themselves to the point that they took photos of raped men to commemorate the occasion, and were only uncovered by a chance.

You cannot help but notice that American weapons were not only killing Iraqis, but Palestinians too. You learn that mostly American made weapons are the ones that claimed the lives of those Palestinian children you keep seeing on television.

You learned that the man who caused their death, Ariel Sharon has been granted a new title, “a man of peace” by President George Bush. You wonder if Bush realizes that Sharon’s last nickname was the “Bucher of Beirut.”

You try to escape. You invested in a small satellite dish and decide to watch mindless entertainment. To your surprise, you and your people are the hot topic for entertainment. In Hollywood, you are filthy, smelly, repulsive and backward. You deserve no respect. You are the bad “Ayrab”, the devious womanizer whose death in the end of a movie must symbolize a happy ending.

You try to once more escape, this time you run away from oppression, poverty and your bitter memories. You sneak into France, to Italy, to Spain, to Australia, to the US. You think your college degree will open doors for you. They are all sealed and you find your self handcuffed and “shipped” back.

You lose it one day, and escape to Tora Bora in Afghanistan with all the other “angry Arabs.” They are all killed when a “war on terrorism” is declared. You find your way through Pakistani villages to your home country and there you are caught and tortured. Once you even cross the desert to Iraq. There you are killed. Your body is left on the road leading to Baghdad for days.

Then your brother decides to chase after another destiny. He chooses another route for himself. He manages to live in the United States. He spends his nights writing letters to the editor expressing the rage you once felt. They are never published. He reflects on his feelings by keeping a journal filled with poetry, flags and pictures he draws of Palestinian children.

He hears US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice threaten other countries in your region that they will be dealt with through a “made in America” solution.

Later that night, he watches a program aired by BBC called “Israel’s Secret Weapons.” The program says that Israel is the “world's sixth largest nuclear arsenal with small tactical nuclear weapons ... as well as medium-range nuclear missiles launchable from air, land or sea.”

He also learns that Israel has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities and used an unknown gas against Palestinians in Gaza two years ago that sent hundreds of people to the hospital with severe convulsions.

No US official comments on the reports, except Mrs. Rice, who describes Israel as the United States’ partner and exchanges friendly smiles and warm handshakes with those who developed such deadly agents when she is in Tel Aviv. Also, the overwhelming majority of the US Congress just finishes signing a letter to Bush demanding that he never pressure Israel.

Your brother writes a letter to the editor expressing his dismay, as he never did before. No one responds and the letter is never published. Instead, he resorts to his journal. He writes a poem filled with curses and angry phrases that didn’t rhyme.

*Ramzy Baroud is the editor-in-chief of Palestine Chronicle, and the editor of the anthology titled: “Searching Jenin, Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion.” He can be reached at editor@palestinechronicle.com

Disclaimer: Letters, articles, cartoons and other elements on the Commentary, Other Opinions and View pages do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of the Palestine Chronicle, nor can the Chronicle be held accountable for these views.

> Imagine for a moment that you are an Arab.

Hopefully an Arab male.

>For years you watch Palestinians being slaughtered,

Couldn't be in response to the women and children Palestinians blew up in the name of driving the jews into the sea and organizations which will NEVER agree to recognize Israel or it's people outside a graveyard.

> their land invaded and reinvaded, and for years witnessing the United States government block any attempt to punish those who aggressed upon the people whom you call “my people”.

As I understand it most all of Israel's territorial gains occurred after the arab states started unprovoked wars. Arabs attacked, the Israelies win and each time Israel gets a little bigger to protect the core.

>Not only have the United States’ vetoes at the United Nations Security Council suffocated any initiative to deploy even unarmed observers to provide badly needed protection for Palestinians, but, thanks to billions of annual US funds, Israel manages to expand illegal settlements and provide its army with the greatest killing machines of all time.

Ya the US kinda pays attention to both sides and hey, we decided the arabs (who started all those wars, who decided blowing up women and children was ok) weren't worthy of being backed. But despite that the US still contributes cash to the palestinian authority and the US contributes BILLIONS in foreign aid to egypt.

>Your human rights are never brought up unless an outside power is using the subject to inflict political pressure on your ruler. You’re worth a press release by a human rights group once every blue moon, a release that no one bothers to read. You simply matter to no one.

Human rights are often a casualty of war and Palestinians have declared war on Israel to the extent that they rejected their own guaranteed state in the 2000 peace settlements.

>You are an Arab and have been watching Iraq being invaded under the pretext that it possesses weapons of mass destruction, enough to annihilate civilization, as we know it. You are gripped by fear, not fearing the harm of the alleged weapons, but the disastrous attack and occupation of a battered country, one that you often called the center of your civilization.

You're right, it was a pretext. In reality the US went in to give itself a base in the war on terror that bordered Saudi Arabia and Iran and Syria all touchstones of support for radical islamic terrorism. In the process we got rid of a butcher that caused more death to muslims and arabs than all the victims of arab/israel history in the last century.

>Then, since you are still an Arab, you watch giant multinational corporations flood Iraq, to buy and sell its oil without the consent of its people. In fact, you witness Israelis flooding the “center of your civilization”, seeking cheap oil and demanding pipelines that would go through their ports.

I guess it was about oil as well but only in that it allows for an option other than military when dealing with Saudi Arabia. The major benefactor of the first sale of Iraqi oil went to TotalFinaElf a french oil company, imagine that. Since the Arab press has been so wrong about America and Iraq perhaps you might want to consider waiting on this statement before opening yourself up to being totally discredited yet again.

>Meanwhile, Israel still holds millions of your Palestinian brethren hostage to curfews and checkpoints amid the constant fears of endless deadly strikes and assassinations.

Couldn't have anything to do with those suicide bombers blowing themselves up on Israeli busses eh?

>To your surprise, you learn that no weapons of mass destruction are even found in Iraq. You hear top American officials say that Saddam might have in fact destroyed his weapons prior to the invasion. You hear another say Iraq is swimming in oil.

Every nation on the security council believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programs they differend only on enforcement of the relevant united nations provisions. You hear the arab press yet again gets its facts wrong because the official said "Iraq could not be dealt with economically with sanctions like North Korea can because Iraq floated on a sea of oil." (paraphrased) this is why economic sanctions refused to disloge sadam (that was the goal of economic sanctions remember) and that is why a military option was ultimately necessary. Had Iraq not had oil resources to support it, economic sanctions may well have toppled Saddam and made life better for everyone.

> You knew it all along and were shunned when you tried to explain what you had discovered.

The arab press knows nothing, even calling it "fiction" is too generous. Fantasy is a better word.

>You watch thousands of right wing missionaries flooding the weakened Iraq, vowing to convert your people to a religion that is not theirs.

If Islam is the true religion then it should be able to survive easilly in an area where there is freedom of religion. If we hear that the US is shutting down the mosques THEN perhaps we should be worried but a free Iraq will have a greater degree of freedom of religion than most Arab states are used to. On the bright side, their government won't be killing thousands of its citizens every month.

>Others call your prophet a “devil” and your religion “evil” and demand that your school curriculum change to fit the agenda of some think-tank 15,000 miles away from your home, alien to your culture, language and heritage.

Well to be honest, you really don't see christians hijacking planes and slamming them into mecca, or budists slipping on shoe bombs. For that matter you don't see STATANISTs doing these things. However it's worth pointing out that in the aftermath of 9/11 President Bush worked HARD to difuse anger toward Islam and Muslims publically and in his speaches where he lied and called ISlam a religion of peace and we should be tollerant.

As for your school curriculum maybe you're critisized because the civilized world doesn't belive CHILDREN should aspire to being suicide bombers (taught in your textbooks) or learn racism and intollerance in textbooks (remember the western world spent hundreds of years stamping out this evil that you teach in your textbooks).

>You learn of occupation soldiers mass raping your brothers and sisters in Iraq. The British daily mirror tells you that soldiers enjoyed themselves to the point that they took photos of raped men to commemorate the occasion, and were only uncovered by a chance.

Did you also learn that the english soldiers were courtmartialed? Problem, problem caught, problem punished, problem solved. As for the mass raping, that is an ARAB trait (see Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) there have been no mass rapes by coalition forces in Iraq if you're going to make a statement like that you better have proof, you better have witnesses, you better have video or photos and all the more so because you are arab and yes that's discriminitory but hey, we read Memri -- we see what the arab press publishes.

> You watch your people’s history looted and set ablaze.

All 30 some odd museum pieces whoopdiedo and the investigation is pointing to an inside job since the museum workers said the locks and doors weren't broken. As for the 300,000 museum peices? Well they were just stored by the curators for safe keeping. The end result is 30 missing pieces.

>You cannot help but notice that American weapons were not only killing Iraqis, but Palestinians too. You learn that mostly American made weapons are the ones that claimed the lives of those Palestinian children you keep seeing on television.

Funny. Every Iraqi wields a kalishnakov, by your logic we should go bomb russia.

>You learned that the man who caused their death, Ariel Sharon has been granted a new title, “a man of peace” by President George Bush. You wonder if Bush realizes that Sharon’s last nickname was the “Bucher of Beirut.”

Or Arafat's nickname which is too obscene to post here.

> You try to escape. You invested in a small satellite dish and decide to watch mindless entertainment. To your surprise, you and your people are the hot topic for entertainment. In Hollywood, you are filthy, smelly, repulsive and backward. You deserve no respect. You are the bad “Ayrab”, the devious womanizer whose death in the end of a movie must symbolize a happy ending.

Ya, you can't blow up a people's buildings and airplanes and expect them to like you. But hey, arab deaths are happy endings you get to be martyers and go to heaven where you can sate your pedophilic impulses on virgin pre-pubecent girls and boys (!!!!) Sometimes I think Pershing had it right when he had his bullets dipped in pigs blood before he ordered his men to shoot muslims.

Lets go over this again. Blow up people's buildings, don't expect them to make movies about what great people you are.

> You try to once more escape, this time you run away from oppression, poverty and your bitter memories. You sneak into France, to Italy, to Spain, to Australia, to the US. You think your college degree will open doors for you. They are all sealed and you find your self handcuffed and “shipped” back.

Ya, if you overstay your visa you get deported -- it's called the rule of law. Next time be smarter and stay in France.

> You lose it one day, and escape to Tora Bora in Afghanistan with all the other “angry Arabs.” They are all killed when a “war on terrorism” is declared. You find your way through Pakistani villages to your home country and there you are caught and tortured. Once you even cross the desert to Iraq. There you are killed. Your body is left on the road leading to Baghdad for days.

Wow you terrorists sure do get around! I mean who but a terrorist would possibly want to go to Tora Bora before 9/11? Huh?

>Then your brother decides to chase after another destiny. He chooses another route for himself. He manages to live in the United States. He spends his nights writing letters to the editor expressing the rage you once felt. They are never published. He reflects on his feelings by keeping a journal filled with poetry, flags and pictures he draws of Palestinian children.

His letter will no more be published than you will publish mine. What you leave off of course is that your brother is perfectly free to make his own newspaper and publish whatever he wants. Of course his audience is equally free not to buy trash.

>He hears US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice threaten other countries in your region that they will be dealt with through a “made in America” solution.

Yup. War on terror. World is being changed as surely as it was being changed to address the cold war. You guys just had to slam those planes into the building. Oh and before you protest it wasn't the palestinians don't for a SECOND think we in the US did not see the Palestinian streets errupting in celebration.

You are not our friends, do not expect to be treated as a friend, not in your current condition.

> Later that night, he watches a program aired by BBC called “Israel’s Secret Weapons.” The program says that Israel is the “world's sixth largest nuclear arsenal with small tactical nuclear weapons ... as well as medium-range nuclear missiles launchable from air, land or sea.”

Cool. Maybe the arab states will think twice about trying to invade Israel again.

>He also learns that Israel has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities and used an unknown gas against Palestinians in Gaza two years ago that sent hundreds of people to the hospital with severe convulsions.

Pictures, witnesses, hospital toxology reports.

>No US official comments on the reports, except Mrs. Rice, who describes Israel as the United States’ partner and exchanges friendly smiles and warm handshakes with those who developed such deadly agents when she is in Tel Aviv. Also, the overwhelming majority of the US Congress just finishes signing a letter to Bush demanding that he never pressure Israel.

Yes Israel is a friend. They're a democracy, they respect the human rights of their citizens, they don't blow up our buildings.

>Your brother writes a letter to the editor expressing his dismay, as he never did before. No one responds and the letter is never published. Instead, he resorts to his journal. He writes a poem filled with curses and angry phrases that didn’t rhyme.

Instead of posting his letter on the internet (see dear_raed.blogspot.com) instead of starting his own paper, instead raising funds to take out ads. Instead of all the productive things he writes a poem in his journal before he straps on a suicide vest on orders of a mullah who issued a fatwah the mullah will never follow.

> I still cannot help but wonder: If you were an Arab, wouldn’t you be angry?

Yea, very angry I lived in such a screwed up, hate-filled, society.

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