I have come to the conclusion that the political principles of the American Founding Fathers have been so consistently undermined in recent times that they have little or no relevance now. Let me tell you how the Arab world sees the US role in the tragedy of the Palestinian people in their criminally occupied lands. You are to meet Crown Prince Abdullah, who embodies the qualities of integrity, truth and honor. He will give you the key to bringing about real, lasting peace in the Middle East, if you act on his advice.
The Arab people - from Morocco to here in the Arabian Gulf - were all shocked into utter disbelief when you described Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "man of peace". On the same occasion you made a statement that held President Yasser Arafat - besieged in a room, guns pointing at him from every direction - accountable for all the violence. Worse, 72 hours after Sharon insisted that Arafat condemn terrorism in Arabic, you repeated the same words. Consequently every Arab man, woman and child knows exactly what it feels like to be slapped in the face.
On the one hand, an attack of genocidal proportions against a defenseless people is conducted by a nuclear power illegally occupying that people's land, and this barbaric attack is carried out with military hardware supplied free of charge by the United States. On the other hand, the United States condemns - with no hint of sympathy or understanding - the hopeless acts of that occupied people's resistance.
Mr. President, while you are speaking of Israel's rights, the Israelis are carrying out unspeakable acts of repression. A senior Israeli officer earlier this year urged the army: 'Analyze the lessons of how the German Army acted in the Warsaw ghetto.' And this was not just empty rhetoric. Consider what the Israelis have been doing: shooting at Palestinian ambulances and medical personnel; imposing a blanket ban on independent media reports; deliberately executing Palestinian children 'for sport'; leaving the wounded to die a slow death in the street where they fell; burying hundreds alive after demolishing their homes on them; engaging in a chilling process of rounding up all Palestinian males between the ages of 15 and 50, writing numbers on their wrists and foreheads and afterward torturing them in what seems to have all the hallmarks of a concentration camp. They even used Palestinian civilians, stripped to their underwear, as human shields.
The Israelis have begun to resemble the Nazi regime, which committed so many unforgivable crimes against the defenseless Jews of the world. Indeed, the Portuguese Nobel laureate for literature, Jose Saramago, has spoken of the 'spirit of Auschwitz' in depicting the recent horrors carried out by the Jewish state in the occupied territories. A Belgian MP recently put the matter bluntly. 'Israel,' he said, 'is making a concentration camp out of the West Bank.' So it should not surprise you to learn that Arabs the world over hold you personally responsible for not reining in this unbridled terror.
While the UN envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, describes Israel's actions as "morally repugnant", we hear only US threats to veto resolutions calling for a UN probe into the Jenin massacre. So the Arab street now believes that Israeli sympathizers have managed to infiltrate every part of the US Government, so much so that it has been crippled by their presence and is unable to deal with Israel as it would with any other rogue state. And who can blame them for thinking this? The US moved mountains and sometimes blew them to pieces to implement UN resolutions on Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet is silent when it comes to implementing UN resolutions 242 and 338.
Why did not Mr. Powell visit the Jenin camp to view for himself what had happened? What can justify silence in the face of the alleged massacres there, when a massacre of innocents on September 11th caused the United States to launch its own so-called war against terror?
The Palestinian activists blow themselves up because they have lost all hope for the future. You have made it clear to the Palestinian people that they have no reason to hope for justice and dignity. In this sense, you push them toward their final acts of pathetic self-sacrifice, as you are in effect telling them that this is the only chance they will ever get to make a difference.
Mr. President, the Arab people want to live in peace. No Arab mother wants her son or daughter to die. But the Palestinians want their own sovereign country in which they can exercise their God-given right to self-determination, and plan for their children's future - a future so normal and favorable that the idea of suicide bombings becomes alien to them. They are asking for no more than what is right, morally and politically. And for that reason, God will help them to overcome.
Khaled Al-Maeena
