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THIS ATROCITY WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
a lesson in sheer hypocrisy
For a lesson in sheer hypocrisy, it'd be hard to do better than to compare the deafening silence on the slaughter of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat with the hysteria over Israel's counter-terror campaign in the West Bank.
In Gujarat, at least a thousand innocent civilians have been burned or hacked to death by Hindu mobs in ongoing pogroms, while Indian police do little to protect them.
But where's the UN fact-finding mission about to descend on New Delhi?
Where's the Saudi minister desperately concerned about his co-religionists and threatening an oil boycott?
Where are the European politicians' inane references to the Holocaust?
Where, too, are the American groups who fretted about "anti-Islamic" feeling in the United States - and "murderous" U.S. bombing in Afghanistan?
For that matter, where are the hordes of international journalists? Why isn't CNN on hand 24/7 recording every splatter and gasp - and promulgating every bizarre conspiracy theory?
The answer?
None of the above care about the unfortunate Muslims of Gujarat - because these poor folk can't be painted as the victims of Israelis or Americans.
Hindu mobs first went on a rampage in the Gujarati capital of Ahmedabad on Feb. 27, after Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims and activists, killing 60 people.
Police stood by as Muslim businesses and homes were torched, often with families trapped inside. Several hundred people were murdered in the first few days. Similar rioting has continued in the area ever since.
The official death toll is now 900.
Some foreign observers, including Human Rights Watch, claim that the real number is closer to 2,000 and have charged that the violence was orchestrated by the state government.
It is unlikely that Gujarat state officials were directly involved in the killings. But it's clear that the state and federal governments have failed to protect Muslim citizens from sectarian violence.
This is a betrayal of everything India's secular, democratic state is supposed to stand for. But it's not all that surprising: Tragically similar horrors on a huge scale have been all too frequent in India for more than half a century.
What is surprising - and far more disappointing - is the hypocrisy of the world's Muslim and Arab governments and those in the West who have joined them in their unjust demonization of Israel, but who choose to ignore a genuine, ongoing atrocity.
In Gujarat, at least a thousand innocent civilians have been burned or hacked to death by Hindu mobs in ongoing pogroms, while Indian police do little to protect them.
But where's the UN fact-finding mission about to descend on New Delhi?
Where's the Saudi minister desperately concerned about his co-religionists and threatening an oil boycott?
Where are the European politicians' inane references to the Holocaust?
Where, too, are the American groups who fretted about "anti-Islamic" feeling in the United States - and "murderous" U.S. bombing in Afghanistan?
For that matter, where are the hordes of international journalists? Why isn't CNN on hand 24/7 recording every splatter and gasp - and promulgating every bizarre conspiracy theory?
The answer?
None of the above care about the unfortunate Muslims of Gujarat - because these poor folk can't be painted as the victims of Israelis or Americans.
Hindu mobs first went on a rampage in the Gujarati capital of Ahmedabad on Feb. 27, after Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims and activists, killing 60 people.
Police stood by as Muslim businesses and homes were torched, often with families trapped inside. Several hundred people were murdered in the first few days. Similar rioting has continued in the area ever since.
The official death toll is now 900.
Some foreign observers, including Human Rights Watch, claim that the real number is closer to 2,000 and have charged that the violence was orchestrated by the state government.
It is unlikely that Gujarat state officials were directly involved in the killings. But it's clear that the state and federal governments have failed to protect Muslim citizens from sectarian violence.
This is a betrayal of everything India's secular, democratic state is supposed to stand for. But it's not all that surprising: Tragically similar horrors on a huge scale have been all too frequent in India for more than half a century.
What is surprising - and far more disappointing - is the hypocrisy of the world's Muslim and Arab governments and those in the West who have joined them in their unjust demonization of Israel, but who choose to ignore a genuine, ongoing atrocity.
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Hindu Muslim violence is evidently not newsworthy because it does not involve the Holy Land much beloved in the Western tradition. Or another way of putting it is that propaganda points important to the West cannot be scored.
The Twelve Tribes of Israel formed the first constitutional monarchy in Palestine about 1000 B.C. The second king, David, first made Jerusalem the nation's capital. Although Palestine eventually was split into two separate kingdoms, Jewish independence under the monarchy lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.4
When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. "The great majority of the Arab population in recent decades were comparative newcomers-either late immigrants or descendants of persons who had immigrated into Palestine in the previous 70 years."5
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not."6 In fact, Palestine is never explicitly mentioned in the Koran, rather it is called "the holy land" (al-Arad al-Muqaddash).7
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.8
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."9
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."10
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
April 14, 2002
BY MITCH ALBOM
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
When suicide bombers attacked America last September, nothing could stop our retaliation.
Yet when suicide bombers attack Israel, week after week, Israel is told -- even by Americans -- to back off. When we bombed Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda
was organized, it was a mission to "smoke them out."
Yet when Israel attacks its hornet's nest of terror, it is accused of "occupying" and told to retreat.
When we fired on Kabul, from the safety of the air, we said innocent people would be caught in the crossfire and, sadly, this was war.
Yet when Israeli soldiers go door to door in Palestinian areas, the most dangerous yet humane way to root out terrorists, we call them "murderers"
the moment one civilian is killed.
When Osama bin Laden denied any involvement with Sept. 11, we said he was lying and vowed to get him "dead or alive."
Yet when groups tied to Yasser Arafat boldly claim responsibility for suicide attacks, Israel is told not to harm their leader. When we struck
back against extremist terror, Israel was behind us.
When Israel strikes back, we say, "Enough is enough." You tell me. Is that hypocritical?
Sympathize and negotiate When we were scorned by critics who thought our treatment of prisoners in
Guantanamo was inhumane -- because we bound them, gagged them and blindfolded them -- we bristled and said, "These are dangerous people." Yet
when Israel demands certain Palestinians strip and stay on the ground, we say this is outrageous and must be stopped. When a videotape emerges showing bin Laden speaking of Sept. 11, we say it proves the man is evil.
Yet when Israelis produce documents to show Arafat funds terror, they are accused of forgery.
When certain Muslims suggest we hear out bin Laden and Al Qaeda, that we understand their cause and the reasons for their anger, we grit our teeth and say those people want us dead, why should we talk to them?
Yet when Israel says the same thing, it is told it must be sympathetic and negotiate -- even with people who deny Israel's right to exist.
You tell me. Is that hypocritical?
War means death. There are innocent victims -- Palestinians as well as Israelis -- on all sides of this equation.
But let's be consistent. Our nearly 3,000 dead in the World Trade Center was horrific, but Israel, relative to its small population, has lost a half-dozen World Trade Centers in the last 18 months -- all to suicide bombing. Every time you see five Israelis dead in an attack, it is like 250 Americans dead here. How many of those events would it take for us to lash out with all our power?
Would we pause and consider that the enemy wanted its own state? Or that its people were "desperate"?
No way. For radical groups such as Hamas and Hizballah, statehood is not a stop sign anyhow. They want Israel obliterated, state or no state, the same
way bin Laden wants Westerners obliterated. Bin Laden had his own country. He had billions. Did land and money keep him from murder?
No. No more than desperation drives you to it. There have been desperate people in Rwanda and Bosnia, yet they never chose to blow themselves up.
There have been occupied people across the globe -- even right here, with American Indians. Would we accept if descendants of the Sioux Nation began blowing themselves up in shopping malls?
There is a difference between "desperate" and "brainwashed." Desperate people want to make their lives better. Brainwashed people think "kaboom" sends you to heaven. Innocents are being killed on both sides. The difference is, for Palestinian terrorists, those are the targets.
We can tell the Israelis to stop, but we wouldn't stop. We can tell them to negotiate, but we wouldn't negotiate. We can see their dead and say it hurts as much as ours, but we don't mean it. Because if it were ours, we'd be doing what they're doing. And we'd damn anyone who spoke against us.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom [at] freepress.com.
http://www.boycottisraeligoods.org./index.php