It is tragic to witness the transformation of a victim into the worst perpetrator of that which he suffered from in the past. But this is what is unfolding before our eyes.
This statement is evidently clear in its meaning and intent. The entire world knows that what I have in my mind is the Israelis and their loss of all sense of morality and reason. They have descended, without any inhibitions, into unprecedented savagery directed against the defenseless Palestinians.
Rarely have a people suffered under such brutality that they are denied the very essence of their humanity.
Seen through the prism of the Israelis and the Western press and the elite, the Palestinians never die or are maimed. Their homes are never destroyed nor their infrastructure is decimated. Their leaders are never assassinated or abducted. No, the Palestinians can't suffer or feel pain or bear the weight of oppression; they simply fade away and are never heard of again.
It is truly ironic that the words of Shylock are far more apt today to describe the Arab than the Jew and it is even more ironic that the hand which kills, destroys and tortures is that of a Jew and that its victim is the Arab who has been the Jew's cousin, friend, neighbor and colleague not for decades but centuries. Arabs are the one people who never committed pogroms at any time in history against Jews or built gas chambers to cast the Jews into or ghettos to imprison them in.
Instead the Arab has received the Jew and honored the Jew in his land and protected him from the predatory West and this not for decades but centuries and, hopefully, this will continue.
There can be no age more ironic than the one we live in whereby the victim has turned into the criminal and the innocent are condemned for being victims and nothing more.
Today, any Arab who stands up for the right of the Palestinians to exist as human beings (whether he does it verbally, physically or financially) is branded and condemned as a terrorist or as encouraging terrorism by the West, Israel and even some Arab governments. Our own people have turned into jailers and torturers in the employ of the West. Censoring our media, restricting all kinds of demonstrations condemning the actions of the Israelis against our Palestinian brothers.
The absurdity of the Arab world has reached such heights that certain people in our region refuse to meet the legally elected representative of the Palestinian people but rush to hold meetings and shake hands with the Israeli leaders.
Now, at this moment what is the reaction of the Arab leaders and the Arab League to the ethnic cleansing going on in Palestine? Their answer is one of defiant inaction, an aggressive surrender to the inevitable massacre of the Palestinians. The Palestinians are the first people to be exterminated live on TV. We could call it the Big Brother Holocaust, the reality TV of ethnic cleansing.
However, the greatest criminals are not the Israelis, for they are only following the natural instincts of a colonizing and thieving nation at any given moment in history or place. No, the real responsibility for the depth of depredation which the Palestinians suffer today lies at the door of every Arab. They might not bear the direct criminal responsibility for what is happening in Palestine but they surely bear the moral responsibility.
They know they can stop the tragedy; yet, they take no action and opt simply to change the TV channel and watch the World Cup.
- Reem Al Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.
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