Mass graves for piles of lies

Bouthaina Shaaban


Tuesday, May 25, 2010

 Listen to the Article - Powered by

When Israel has proven its aggressive nature to the whole world, when the savagery of its wars against its neighbors for over 60 years and the blockade it is imposing on unarmed civilians in Gaza have been exposed, and when its government has shown the extent of its extremism, the United States embarked on an effort to start negotiations of any kind between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is acknowledged by everyone that these negotiations are not based on a clear frame of reference, particularly in relation to Jerusalem and the return of the refugees. This is meant as a cover to the policies of those who launched the war on Gaza and have never stopped robbing the Palestinians of their land, destroying their homes and killing their children. Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremism is such that he wants to give a religious Jewish interpretation to the ethnic cleansing of Arab East Jerusalem.


These negotiations exclude an important section of the Palestinian people and dismember Palestinian existence as a result of Jewish settlements and the destruction of Arab houses. Despite the various obstacles Israeli officials created for the negotiations, the one issue which all Israeli authorities insisted on with the US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, was “solving security problems.” A statement made by Shimon Peres said that settling security issues is “of paramount importance,” and repeated the alleged missile story.

This security thesis repeated by Israelis on every occasion in an elaborate and deliberate attempt to mislead public opinion about the truth of what is going on in Palestine in terms of massacres and ethnic cleansing. The repetition of the same words by American officials is part of this misleading process to hide Israeli savagery. The fact is that Palestinians’ security and Middle East security in general are threatened every day by a force supplied with all kinds of American weapons.

This is what Obama did when he asked the US Congress to earmark over $200 billion to provide Israel with a new arms system to scale up its aggressions against its neighbors and undermine Middle East stability. Foregrounding security aims in essence to persist in this process of deception to obscure the savagery of Israeli occupation, the illegitimacy of Jewish settlements, the atrocities of deliberately killing civilian Palestinians, destroying their homes, desecrating their sanctities and burning and Judaizing mosques. At the same time, Israelis and their allies carry on with their mantra on commitment to the protection of “Israel’s security,” while sticking the label of terrorism to simple unarmed reactions to Israeli crimes against the indigenous population.

Let us imagine for a moment that the mosque burned down by Jewish settlers in southern Nablus was an Israeli synagogue burned by Muslims! Imagine the amount and speed of denunciations the highest ranking officials in Europe and the United States would have made against the brutality of the act and its violation of the values of tolerance, human rights, democracy, etc.

This absolute bias against the Arab victim, not recognizing the pain and suffering of Palestinians, and burying these pains in the massive graveyard of a blackout is the result of decades of Western propaganda for Zionism first against Bolshevism, then against communism, then against Arabs and now against millions of Muslims in general.


But in recent years some facts started surfacing on top of these mass graves of real information, particularly when blind official Western support of Zionism resulted in tragedies which affected millions of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also damaged even the security and vital interests of the American people. In more than one place, there have been attempts to put an end to this grave injustice which uses a massive media machine spreading blindness all over the world. J street was launched in the United States on October 25, 2009 and in Europe on May 4, 2010. Despite the fact that it has Israel’s interests at heart, it does not support the crimes of Israel’s generals and their thirst for genocide. It supports Palestinians’ right to establishing their independent state. Some international bodies have also started to call for prosecuting Israeli war criminals.

Talking about Israel is no longer the taboo it used to be. Although this is only a minor shift, but it is a significant improvement on the way things were two decades ago.

In this context, the meeting Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, held with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal angered the Apartheid leaders of Israel who rejected a call from Medvedev and Turkish President Abdullah Gul for Hamas’ participation in the peace process raising the question whether Russia is taking a position “in support of Islam” (see Yedioth Ahronoth, 13 May 2010: “Russia moving closer to Hizbullah too”). This interpretation implies an accusation to anyone who believes in the right of the Palestinian people to freedom of supporting Islam and Hizbullah, i.e. terrorism. This misleading campaign against Islam and Muslims aims at diverting attention from Israel’s crimes in Palestine and the crimes committed against civilians in Iraq and still being committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If a country the size of Russia has taken this courageous decision to stress the importance of the unity of the Palestinian people for achieving just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East, this means there is a fundamental change which has started to emerge. It means that the dark epoch of blind Western support to Israeli crimes is almost over and that some sense is returning to the world conscience.

Russia’s offer to provide Syria with peaceful nuclear energy and signing an agreement with Turkey to build nuclear reactors means that intimidation and blackmail are no longer effective. Putting Israel’s nuclear capacity on the agenda of the IAEA meeting next June means that the world is really fed up with the arrogance of a criminal occupying force hostile to peace and a violator of international law. It is an indication that the process towards achieving real international justice and giving a fair deal to the Palestinian people has started slowly but surely.

Bouthaina Shaaban is political and media adviser at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates.