Opinion Editorials, July 2015

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The recent acts of terror in Kuwait, Tunisia and elsewhere must be condemned in the strongest terms. In the final analysis, killing innocent human beings, regardless of their race or creed, is totally unacceptable.
 
This is stated rather plainly and unequivocally in the Holy Quran, Islam's Holy Scriptures, in Suratul Maeda, verse 18:   

“Because of that We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone killed a person not in retaliation of murder, or (and) to spread mischief in the land - it would be as if he killed all mankind, and if anyone saved a life…"
 
But condemnation alone is not enough.
 
We must understand the terror phenomenon objectively, irrespective of parochial political calculations. Otherwise, terror will continue to ruin nations and claim more and more innocent lives.
 
First of all, we must fully understand the motives and incentives that make the terrorists do what they do.
 
Moreover, we must never flinch from asking the "unpopular" and "politically incorrect" questions because otherwise we would continue to revolve in an empty circle.
 
In occupied Palestine, it took Israeli security experts many years to realize that the Nazi-like treatment meted out to innocent Palestinians was first and foremost responsible for the appearance of the so-called "suicide-bomber" phenomenon which many Palestinians and their supporters refer to as Martyrdom operations.
 
About two decades ago, the news anchorman of the Israeli state-run TV asked me how Palestinians would explain this suicide bomber phenomenon to the Israeli people.
 
I remember my answer sounded like this: "Israel is offering Palestinian youngsters either of two choices, death at the Jewish slaughterhouse, or blowing up their bodies into bits and pieces in the streets of Israeli towns. Many young Palestinians are going for the second choice".
 
The prominent journalist, who died several years ago, said initially that my answer was too shocking and too brazen for most Israeli Jews to digest but later readily acknowledged that what I said represented the "harsh truth" and contained elements of truth.
 
The Nazi-like treatment meted out to innocent Palestinians often defied linguistic description.
 
It included manifestly barbarian acts of pornographic violence targeting basically innocent people such as demolishing homes, throwing innocent occupants onto the street, murdering people, including children, without charge and trial and barring badly ill people from reaching hospitals.
 
In many respects, the repression was reminiscent of the repression experienced by European Jewry during the Nazi era.
 
Predictably, this dark evilness on the part of the Israeli political-military establishment drew an unexpected reaction, forcing many Palestinians, mostly in the prime of their lives, to turn themselves into human bombs.
 
Today, we are watching a similar phenomenon unfold in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East.
 
Unfortunately, many politicians and commentators choose the easy but erroneous rationale to explain the terror phenomenon such as claiming that the terrorists do what they do because they have been indoctrinated to be violent. Others, especially those harboring an anti-Islamic agenda, unhesitatingly point an accusing finger toward Islam itself, although any cool and fair analysis of Islam will show that it is totally and absolutely innocent of all insinuations in this regard.
 
Consider this
 
Today, as hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world gather together each evening to break their day-long fast, they can't help being affronted with the phantasmagoric images of Muslim civilians being massacred en mass in Syria in full view of the world.
 
So far, as many as 250,000 Syrians have been killed at the hands of their sadistic regime of Bashar el-Asad which is openly backed and actively supported by Russia, Iran, Hizbullah and sectarian gangs from many parts of the world.
 
Just two days ago, a regime helicopter gunship dropped a huge barrel bomb on an Aleppo home where eight members of a local family were breaking their fast.
 
The entire family was annihilated.
 
This is not an isolated example. Crimes of this nature occur nearly every day as the world watches passively.
 
According to human rights observers, more than 30,000 people in Syria have been tortured to death at the hands of Nazi-like regime.
 
In fact, one would exaggerate little by comparing the regime of Bashar el-Assad to the worst criminal regimes in human history.
 
Now, doesn't the continuation of this thunderous genocide give the terrorists, e.g. IS a point? Doesn't it help them recruit thousands of additional frustrated youths to their cause?  What would the leaders of US, UK, France and other western countries suggest these frustrated Muslim youngsters do under these circumstances? Pretend these genocidal atrocities are occurring in distant galaxies?
 
And Palestine…
 
The Palestinian plight has been going on since the creation of the criminal state of Israel in 1948. Since then Israel has been murdering, maiming and tormenting Palestinians nonstop in an effort to force them to leave their ancestral homeland.
 
Last year, Israel wantonly used its American-supplied death machine against the thoroughly starved and hermetically blockaded people of Gaza.
 
The Nazi-like blitz, which lasted for 51 days, destroyed as many as 100,000 homes and killed as many as 2100 Palestinians, the vast bulk of whom were innocent civilians, including more than 550 children.
 
The world, the so-called civilized world, contented with watching American-supplied war planes, such as F-15s and F-16s, drop one-ton bombs on multi-story apartment buildings packed with terrified men, women and children, transforming these buildings into rubble in a matter of seconds and exterminating every human being inside.
 
Interestingly, this pornographic crime against humanity occurred as world leaders and diplomats snidely urged "both sides to exercise restraint"? This was more than just adding insult to injury. It was complicity to a crime against humanity in broad daylight.
 
Now, doesn't this gigantic moral failure on the part of the world community give presumed terrorist groups  a real justification for committing their own crimes for a hundred years to come?
 
Moderate Islamists who consistently rejected violence tried to walk in the democratic path in Algeria and recently in Egypt. But when they won elections, they were brutally massacred, tortured to death, ruthlessly repressed and eventually declared "terrorist groups." 
 
Needless to say, this happened in full view of western democracies which instead of isolating and boycotting the murderous tyrannical regimes; effectively encouraged them to strangle every democratic voice and every expression of political freedom in their respective countries.
 
To be sure terror is not our destiny as Muslims.
 
However, we have to make a clear distinction between "cause" and "effect, "because in the final analysis we cannot eradicate the "effect" if we leave the "cause" intact.
 

Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist and current affairs commentator living in the West Bank

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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