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2002
is the 54th year of the
creation of the State of Israel on
Palestinian territory. Much to the despair
of Arabs and Muslims worldwide, the West
continues to blatantly ignore the
fundamental truth about the creation of a
Jewish state in the heart of the Arab
world.
While the Israelis hail Israel’s
creation as the fulfillment of a biblical
promise to the Jewish people, Westerners,
particularly Americans, associate it with
memories of the Nazi massacres of Jews in
Europe, and thus attach in their memories
a degree of justice, atonement, and fair
play for the events of the past. Israeli
propagandists have exploited this
ill-defined sense of guilt in the West so
successfully, that the Zionist version of
the creation of Israel and Jewish history
is accepted as fact, at the expense of the
truth.
To Arabs and Muslims the year 1948 has an
entirely different meaning. It is called
“A’am Al-Nakba” or the “Year of
the Disaster.” In the memory of the
Palestinians, it is the year of the
dismantling of Palestine and the uprooting
of the Palestinian people from the lands
and homes that they had legally owned for
millennia. To them it seemed that they
alone have had to pay for the sins of
others in Europe.
It is the establishment of what is
essentially a foreign culture and an
oppressive ideology, Zionism, into the
heart of the Arab /Muslim world that has
brought inevitable strife, as one side
struggles to free itself from occupation
and the other uses violence and repression
to maintain its presence in a foreign
land.
Unfortunately, people in the West are
unfamiliar with the true facts about what
has happened and is continuing to happen
in Palestine. American and European Jews,
subject them to a barrage of propaganda
from Zionist oriented media that is often
owned, or written by American or Israeli
sympathizers. As the Zionists become more
aggressive, their propaganda becomes even
more strident and hate filled.
It
seems to all Arabs and Muslims that
Western governments, particularly the
American government, are keen to support
Israel’s views of contemporary history
and its interpretation of events in the
occupied territories. Western
governments seem to wear blinkers and have
selective memories, even when faced with
incontrovertible evidence about the truth
of Palestinian claims against Israel and
its actions in the Occupied territories;
they continue to support Israel, much to
the despair of all Arabs and fair-minded
people around the world.
What makes this situation intolerable, is,
that even the founder of the state of
Israel, David Ben Gurion, recognised the
underlying truth of what had been done in
Palestine by the Zionists, in encouraging
Jewish settlement in Palestine. During an
internal discussion with other leaders of
the Zionist movement on the Arab
nationalist revolt of 1936 /39, he said,
“We minimise Arab opposition to us to
the rest of the world. Let us not ignore
the truth among ourselves. The truth is,
that politically, we are the aggressors
and they defend themselves. The country is
theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas
we want to come here and settle down and
in their view, we want to take away from
them their country, while we are still
outside.” His comments neatly sum up the
underlying problems of Palestine today.
Until America and the West recognise the
validity of Palestinian claims to the land
and are prepared to take measures to
enforce its recognition, they will never
be able to bring peace to Palestine.
By exploiting American and European guilt
for what was done to Jews in Europe before
and during World War Two, the Jewish lobby
in America has had overwhelming success in
eliciting sympathetic media coverage of
events in Palestine, and this helps them
to blur the facts and skew them in
Israel’s favour. This has led to an easy
acceptance by the West of Palestinian
deaths and the curtailment of their basic
human rights. By submitting to American
pressure and doing nothing to deny the
facts, even when it is all too obvious
that Israel is in the wrong, Western
governments and the Western Media find
themselves unwilling to stand up to
Israel, and condemn their ruthlessness and
inhumanity towards the people of
Palestine. None have even tried to enforce
the UN resolutions mandating the right of
return for Palestinian refugees, the
return of all the occupied West Bank, and
the return of land stolen from the Arab
population since 1948.
As we move further into 2002, the outlook
for peace and a just settlement in
Palestine looks bleak. Israel, under the
leadership of Ariel Sharon, has no
intention of making peace; it is firmly
set on a programme of subjection and
containment in the Occupied territories,
and America, under the Bush
administration, is signaling support for
Sharon. Prejudice against the Palestinians
abounds in America, particularly in the
media, and this growing prejudice is
likely to tempt Israel to find a ‘Final
Solution’ of its own, for the Arabs of
Palestine.
For many decades now, there has been no
sign of a fair resolution of the
Palestinian conflict. It is at this low
point in Palestinian history that all who
know and understand the truth behind- this
conflict should step up to the plate and
bat for peace and justice. They must go
out and change opinions by bringing the
truth about Palestine to the attention of
as many people as possible. Once this is
successfully achieved, no leader of
America or any other Western country could
afford to go against popular public
opinion, for the struggle of a people to
save their homeland. Ordinary citizens of
Western democratic countries are like
ordinary people the world over- kind and
caring. They share the same sense of
justice and fair-mindedness that enables
them to see the truth and make moral
judgements based on fact.
If they were honestly informed,
they would see the justice of the Arab
cause in the struggle for Palestine.
So let this be a call to arms to all those
western intellectuals, journalists,
historians, politicians, pundits and other
sympathisers, to don their armour and
fight to establish the truth and show the
reality of the Arabs struggle for
self-determination in Palestine, by
vociferously refuting at every opportunity
the distorted propaganda put out by Israel
and its sympathisers. For the Western
‘Friends of Palestine’ this will not
be a comfortable task. They will be
attacked and vilified, labelled
anti-Semitic and branded supporters of
terrorism. As has happened in the past, to
others who have dared to speak out on
behalf of the Palestinians, their
livelihoods will be threatened and they
and their families’ lives held to
ransom.
Despite
all these hardships, it is only by
speaking out loudly and regularly, that
any real change can be made in the
West’s perception of the Arabs and
Palestine. Let the year 2002 be the start
of a great movement, when all the
sympathisers and supporters of Palestine
in the West become more actively engaged
in the search for a just resolution to the
conflict and bring about tangible change,
by placing themselves on the front line
for truth and justice- just as Palestinian
men, women, and children have been doing
for the last 54 years, at horrific cost
just to maintain a foothold in their own
land.
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