Opinion Editorials, January 2015

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 It is really hard to give a passing moral grade to Sunday's march in Paris, which came in the aftermath of the terrorist attack targeting an anti-Islam weekly magazine. But that is only if one is willing to be truly faithful to his or her moral conscience and rectitude
 
Indeed, there are so many legitimate reasons questioning the moral credibility of the huge march.
 
For example, one is prompted to ask why we don't witness such a march when far greater and more blatant crimes take place elsewhere.
 
Crimes against humanity, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, have recently taken and continue to take place in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Mali, Central Africa, and Myanmar, without the world raising its eyebrows, or indeed rallying to voice its revulsion at these blatant monstrosities.
 
In Syria, government warplanes have killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, by way of dropping crude powder barrels on civilian neighborhoods throughout Syria.
 
In Gaza, Israeli warplanes, supplied by the United States, dropped one-ton bombs on multi-story buildings packed with civilians, reducing them to rubble. Predictably, the result was mini-Auschwitzes, mini-Dachaus and mini-Bergen Belsens all over the coastal enclave. How else can one describe the utter systematic destruction of 100,000 homes, filled to capacity with men, women and children?
 
In Iraq, the country of the "Manifest Destiny", besides killing or starving to death two million Iraqis, half of them children, the US has saturated the Iraqi landscape with deadly depleted uranium that will continue to kill Iraqis for 50,000 years to come.
 
In Pakistan and Afghanistan and Yemen, American drones have killed and continue to kill numerous helpless civilians…."who were mistaken for terrorists."
 
The "mistakes" have occurred numerous times that any honest observer has no choice but admit these "mistakes" are actually a malicious expression of official policy to murder and maim innocent Muslims.
 
In the final analysis, real mistakes occur once, twice or even ten times. But when these "mistakes" are repeated every day and every week, it is clear they are deliberate crimes.
 
So, I ask once again: why is it that we don't see the leaders of the world rally against the genocidal terror of states like Israel? Has not Israel, whose criminal Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is seen walking rather ostentatiously in the front rows of dignitaries attending the Paris march, stolen Palestine from its legitimate and rightful proprietors?
 
Hasn't it murdered thousands, destroyed thousands of Arab homes, bulldozed hundreds of Arab villages, and dispersed millions to the four winds? So why is it that there are no world leaders rallying against Israeli terror, which everyone knows in the depth of his and her heart amounts to crimes against humanity?
 
Yes, Virginia, these political animals, know the truth too well. But their hearts are full of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
 
In fact, the fact that a vile mass-murderer and terrorist like Netanyahu is featured rather prominently in the hypocrisy show in Paris epitomizes the moral bankruptcy of not only France but our entire world.
 
Many French and non-French citizens might be tempted to think that the Paris march bolstered or would bolster the moral dignity and national honor of their country.
 
With all due respect, I strongly disagree.
 
In the final analysis, hypocrisy and dishonesty are the ultimate antithesis of human dignity.
 
France and other western nations compromise, not bolster, their national honor by watching, rather passively, Israel and other nefarious entities around the world perpetrate genocidal crimes against nations and peoples whose only guilt is that they are not sufficiently militarily strong to fight their tormentors and grave-diggers.
 
Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely against the crime of killing innocent people at the Charlie Hebdo offices. However, as the brave and honest former French Prime Minister Dominique de Vallpine said the other day, the terrorist crime at Charlie Hebdo was only made possible thanks to the far superior crimes of western insolence and aggression against the Muslim world.
 
You pushed some of our young men and women to the edge. Yes, they are not innocent, but you are decidedly guilty because it was not Islam but your outrageous crimes against Muslims around the world that made these misguided people do what they did.
 
After all, France probably killed more Muslims than did Nazism kill Jews in the course of the Second World War. And the United States has most probably killed more Muslims than did Adolph Hitler kill Jews.
 
In other words, we are effectively talking about a real western Christian holocaust against Islam and Muslims.
 
These are not ancient grievances that level-headed people would forget in due time. The West, either directly or indirectly, continues to kill and maim Muslims around the clock.
 
I know that lumping all westerners and Christians in one basket is wrong. This is because one has to make a clear distinction between what a religion says and what followers do.
 
But this effort applies to all of us, Muslims, Christians and others.
 
Once again, I sincerely believe that the chorus of hypocrisy in Paris was a public relations disaster for France and its leadership. Needless to say, this has been made possible thanks to the participation in the march of the likes of Netanyahu who carries on his dirty hands the blood of thousands of innocent people, including children.
 
Finally, I would like to communicate a few words to my readers. The mother of all problems and violence and terror and instability is the evil entity known as Israel.
 
Don't you ever believe the notorious liar, Netanyahu, who tells you that Islam is the enemy of the West.
 
Islam is not the enemy of anyone. Islam is the enemy of only one thing: Oppression.

But since Netanyahu himself encapsulate oppression and racism, it is natural that he dreads and tries to defame the peaceful religion of Islam, which immensely respects the religious traditions of Christianity and Judaism.
 
None the less, the West is by no means innocent. The West, especially Great Britain, inserted the venomous snake into the child's bed. The guilty party is not the snake but those that inserted the sake into the child's bed.
 
The criminal cannot claim innocence by arguing that he didn't know that the snake was poisonous and that it would kill the child.
 
This is why the West is likely to continue to suffer until this enduring gigantic scandal, called the Palestinian question, is rectified.
 
I would be outright dishonest if I claimed there was any other solution for the persistence of violence in the West as well as the Middle East...
 

Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist and political commentator living in Occupied Palestine

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

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