Over 700 people have died in Gaza as of this writing. Muslims have woken up around the world. But is it really because of the numbers? Bashar al-Assad has killed over 180,000 Syrians, mostly Muslim, in two years -- more than the number killed in Palestine in two decades. Thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Syria have been killed by ISIS in the last two months. Tens of thousands have been killed by the Taliban. Half a million black Muslims were killed by Arab Muslims in Sudan. The list goes on. But Gaza makes Muslims around the world, both Sunni and Shia, speak up in a way they never do otherwise. Up-to-date death counts and horrific pictures of the mangled corpses of Gazan children flood their social media timelines every day. If it was just about the numbers, wouldnt the other conflicts take precedence? What is it about then? If I were Assad or ISIS right now, Id be thanking God Im not Jewish. Amazingly, many of the graphic images of dead children attributed to Israeli bombardment that are circulating online are from Syria, based on a BBC report. Many of the pictures youre seeing are of children killed by Assad, who is supported by Iran, which also funds Hezbollah and Hamas. What could be more exploitative of dead children than attributing the pictures of innocents killed by your own supporters to your enemy simply because you werent paying enough attention when your own were killing your own? This doesnt, by any means, excuse the recklessness, negligence, and sometimes outright cruelty of Israeli forces. But it clearly points to the likelihood that the Muslim worlds opposition to Israel isnt just about the number of dead. Here is a question for those who grew up in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority countries like I did: if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories tomorrow, all in one go -- and went back to the 1967 borders -- and gave the Palestinians East Jerusalem -- do you honestly think Hamas wouldnt find something else to pick a fight about? Do you honestly think that this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are Jews? Do you recall what you watched and heard on public TV growing up in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt? Yes, theres an unfair and illegal occupation there, and yes, its a human rights disaster. But it is also true that much of the other side is deeply driven by anti-Semitism. Anyone who has lived in the Arab/Muslim world for more than a few years knows that. It isnt always a clean, one-or-the-other blame split in these situations like your Chomskys and Greenwalds would have you believe. Its both.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 07:55:42 +0000
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