It is Past Time for Muslims and Arabs to Stand Up

We all know of neighborhood bullies with rich and powerful parents who invariably ruin the lives of weaker kids with impunity. The reason bullies can get away with what they do is because of how they are brought up, supported and backed by their parents. What has been happening in the Middle East since 1948 and the horrors we are witnessing today in Gaza are a reflection of the same. Israel is the nuclear-armed bully and its backer is the United States. Simply said, Israel could not and would not do all it does were it not for America’s backing. America is as much, if not more, to blame for the crimes that Israel commits on a daily basis. Americans may not realize it now but there will be blowback and all this will haunt them well into the future.

Again to place Palestinian and global outrage in context, here are the bare facts. Since 1948, about a million Palestinians have lost their homes and land without commensurate compensation. Israel continues to build settlements on occupied lands in contravention to international law. Arab Israelis are treated as second class citizens with limited rights, while Jewish Israelis rule the roost. Jews can reclaim their lost lands and homes but Arabs cannot. When Arabs protest evictions or the building of settlements on their homeland, they are called terrorists, a label that apparently allows Israel to commit crimes with America’s backing. If rockets are fired into Israel in protest, Israel and America claim that Israel has a right to defend itself with brutal force and destruction. And then anything goes — they evict more Palestinians, confiscate their property, limit their rights and as soon as they protest they bomb them with impunity, murdering women, children and other civilians and destroying all their property with American supplied weapons and implicit complicity. These are crimes against humanity. If any country beside Israel were to do this, the American media and U.S. politicians would be condemning such actions. When Israel does this America looks the other way. Washington’s duplicity is over the top!

Palestinians have lost their land, their homes and their dignity. How would an American feel if this happened in the U.S.? If they fought back, would they be called freedom fighters or terrorists? Are we to believe that Americans fighting for their freedom from England were terrorists? Today, Gaza is the largest prison in the world. Israel has cut this densely populated area off from the rest of the world, something that is in itself akin to a declaration of war.