Annan typifies "gutless" and "xenophobic" response to suicide bombings

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINE


http://www.iap.org/index2.html



Language is Criminal

By Ramzy Baroud - Oct 24, 2003

A solemn message was delivered on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in Seville, Spain. "Suicide bombings are immoral. They are
counter-productive. They must be stopped," he said. Annan's seemingly
upright observations however, underscored a profound, even a
formidable presentation of a political and intellectual trend,
essential for Israel to sustain its genocidal war against the
Palestinians.

Oddly, according to Annan's vision, the ills of the Middle East start
at that critical moment when a young Palestinian detonates himself in
a crowded Israeli street. The historically attentive Annan, must've
know that he deliberately omitted a vital sequence from the equation.

The Secretary-General's observation is certainly not the exception,
but the overpowering norm. He is only a block in a grotesque edifice
of, if not bigotry, then intellectual gutlessness: if one's peace
vision is not set in motion with a ruthless condemnation of
Palestinian violence then it's chances of being embraced are
diminutive.

Censuring Palestinian violence is nothing to frown upon, granted that
such violence was not employed in cases of self-defense and targeted
innocent civilians whose correlation with the conflict was being in
the wrong place at the wrong time. But the trend of intellectual, and
thus political gutlessness appears to place Palestinian violence in a
vacuum, and undresses it from any meaningful relevance to the larger
political and historic spectrum of the overall conflict. Indeed,
Palestinian violence becomes the inventor of the conflict rather than
one of its wretched, albeit predictable outcomes.

Bush, expectedly, is the most obvious and applicable example. "I
condemn unequivocally the vicious act of terrorism committed today in
Haifa," he said, speaking of the "murderous action, aimed at families
gathered to enjoy a Sabbath lunch, killed and injured dozens of men,
women and children." The Haifa bombing struck on October 04. Israel
'retaliated' by bombing Syria, marching into a destitute refugee camp
in Gaza, killing a total of 15 Palestinians. Bush's pathos hurriedly
evaporated. Israel "must not feel constrained" in defending itself, he
said of the Syria attack, while other administration officials drew on
the same logic following the Gaza onslaught.

What Annan and Bush have in common is that both are members of the
so-called 'quartet' for Middle East peace. They, along with the
European Union and Russia are now the godfathers of the dormant peace
process. To activate it, the quartet's impartiality is key.

But statements, routinely issued by European and UN officials, and of
course American, contest the presence of such partiality. While
Palestinians are enduring the brunt of the Israeli aggressions
unprotected, their humble, and often-desperate self-defense endeavors
never escape the harshest condemnation. Israel, in the meantime, is
hardly reprimanded if it goes too far punishing its subjects. Only the
'disproportionate use of force' that concerns Annan for instance,
while Palestinian violence is to be abhorred without any
qualification.

Just a week after the ensuing of the Israeli 'operation' in Gaza, the
Israeli army carried out deadly strikes focused on another refugee
camp: Nuseirat. The death toll swelled to 13 and the wounded exceeded
the one hundred mark.

Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for Common Policy was one of
very few who kindly protested the strikes. He laid down his argument
with the almost ritual pacification: "The EU fully recognizes the
Israeli right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks." But "I
urge the Israeli government, to exert maximum effort to avoid civilian
casualties." It was not the missiles tossed at a refugee camp that
posed Solana's dilemma, but the lack of precision that resulted in the
high death toll among civilians. Under international law, Israel's
mere presence in the refugee camp is illegal, let alone its
decades-long occupation, but this seems to bother no one. The EU is
often dubbed a 'partner' in the peace process.

With the lack of concrete denunciation, Sharon's military machine
could hardly fight the temptations, railing against Ramallah two days
later: issuing a curfew, closing down media offices, raiding a mosque
and, of course, robbing the lives of a few during the raid.

The intellectual gutlessness is of course not enough to smother the
international uproar that such Israeli aggressions are deemed to
generate. That's what the media is precisely used for. The Haifa
bombing, for instance, was described as "holiday horror", on a British
Observer headline, a heading that reincarnated itself with gruesome
images and angry bolded words across Europe and North America. The
Gaza invasion coverage was hardly as fumed, and even repeatedly
accredited Israel's 'security concerns' over alleged tunnels used in
the camp to smuggle weapons. Shortly after, the bombing of Nuseirat
was not what interested the New York Times, who chose a different
angle to lessen the horrific nature of the Israeli bombing: "2 sides
sharply split on how Israelis killed 7 at Gaza camp."

Even the disapproval of Israel in mainstream western media, mostly
displayed in editorials and the carefully chosen commentary, is often
a result of wallowing on behalf of the occupier, not out of empathy
for the occupied: 'construction of settlements threatens Israel's
Jewish identity'; 'apartheid wall endangers two state solution', hence
Israel's 'demographic needs'; 'violence damages Israeli economy' the
state of mind of its ever-anxious population, and so on. In short, the
presentation of the Arab Israeli conflict in its most critical stages
is governed by a xenophobic pattern, that, even in its healthiest
formation, remains consumed by the interest of the aggressor, rather
than the subjugation of the victim.

The explanation of this chauvinistic tact cannot simply remain
confounded to a set of individuals, organization or religious dogmas,
nor it can be erased by the mere realization of its existence.
Nonetheless, it ought to be branded with designation it deservingly
earned: racism, in its most raw definitions.

Without the endorsement of Western apologists of its state-practiced
terrorism, Israel could not have possibly sustained its military
occupation of Palestinian land all of these years. While the political
circle, presently manifested in the "quartet", pacifies, even
justifies the Israeli aggressions, the media devises a reversed
reality, depicting the cruel oppressor as a blameless seeker of
security swindled by a hostile, malicious nation, vested with
militants and afflicted with anti-Semitism.

While such generalized conclusions might for now provide a somewhat
gratifying answer, at least for me, it can hardly soothe the pain of a
refugee from Nuseirat, shocked by the scene of blood and haunting
screams of hurt innocents: "Where is the world, where is the United
States and the United Nations? Why do they keep silent to see us being
slaughtered like sheep?"


About the Author: Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American journalist
and editor-in-chief of The Palestine Chronicle online newspaper. His
articles were published in newspapers around the world, including the
Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune and the Japan Times,
among others. He is the editor of the anthology: "Searching Jenin:
Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion." Baroud is also a
researcher for the Qatar-based al-Jazeera Net English. He can be
reached at editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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