Does  oppression justify uglier oppression?!

By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

In Autumn 2000, and in one of the most brutal moments in time, the Israeli soldiers continued for 20 minutes non-stop shooting at Mohamad al-Durah, the Palestinian child martyr, in front of the cameras of the world’s satellite channels, while he was franticly seeking shelter from their bullets against his father’s body. Except for the American Administration, of course, the whole world condemned this ugly crime. Al-Durah became a symbol of the childhood assassinated by the occupation, whose crime unveiled one of his many abominable criminal faces. Ever since, however, the Israeli occupation troops have killed hundreds of Palestinian children in the occupied Arab territories, while at their school desks, on their way back from school, playing in front of their homes or sleeping in their beds. None in the world knows their names, no one recalls how they were brutally hunted for no guilt they committed except for being the victims of a deliberate racist policy that launching a war of genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine so that occupation and settlement become a de facto that no one could question or dare change. The mothers of those child martyrs, however, still grieve their loss ever since the day their children were deprived of their sacred right to life. The only lesson learned from Al-Durah’s death was for the occupation troops future benefit: they should never allow the media to witness their crimes so that they could continue unimpeded by the world’s appalled public opinion.

The same ugly picture reemerges today in Iraq with the utmost humiliation of the Iraqi detainees, arbitrarily arrested and subjected to physical and psychological torture by the American occupation troops. The photos published everywhere show the jailers sadistically standing over their humiliated and tortured victims to take souvenir snapshots for bragging among families and friends. This only shows that these practices were routine performed according to deliberate plans and in compliance to regular unambiguous instructions applied in American custodies everywhere. The dilemma that befell the American Administration was not in responding to the world’s horrified reactions condemning the torture and immoral humiliation of the detainees, restoring their sense of human dignity, or guaranteeing that no such torture could be carried against any other prisoner in any of the many other American prisons spread around the world. What mattered the most was proving those responsible to be irresponsible, and for the “champions of democracy” to prove that “democracy” has nothing to do with such practices, even if they were carried out by soldiers in uniform representing the political will to spread “democracy” with armies and fleets.

Unless the world is careful enough, the concealment of truth, deliberately practiced by Israelis in Palestine when children are killed and houses are demolished, will surely happen with the prisoners in Iraq. Torture will continue, but away from cameras and spotlights, evading the world’s eyes, ears, and words of condemnation. The world, therefore, should not allow such practices to pass unpunished. The world should lay down the  measures that guarantee International Organizations’ access to the real information about what happens in American prisons, instead of allowing them to be blacked out. The world’s awareness should be raised about any such violations, and the Iraqi prisoners’ files should be opened so that all of us could learn about the reasons behind their detention and what really happened to them. Likewise, we should all know what is happening to Marwan al-Bargouthi, to his son, to Samir al-Quntar and to the thousands of Palestinian men and women in Israeli prisons, who could be in a situation similar or worse than that of the Iraqi prisoners. The difference is that the world is still unaware of the reality of what is happening in the Israeli prisons.

In Asharq Al-awsat, edition 9297 dated 21/5/2004, Mrs. Aisha Bakr, along with other similar commentaries, asked about the crimes and oppressive practices that befell the Iraqis under the Saddam regime, and the other practices of other Arabic regimes whose security apparatuses have violated human rights. Such practices were condemned by us Arabs, at a time when Saddam and his likes enjoyed the support or silence of the American administration and its allies for such brutal acts, including Halabjah and torture in prisons.

In all cases, the torture in Saddam’s prisons does not justify the crimes committed by the occupation troops in Abu Ghareib at all. Did these troops not come to Iraq to liberate Iraqis from the oppression of the tyrant who turned Iraq into a living hell? What logic allows those who condemn human rights violations in other countries to let their troops commit the ugliest of crimes against basic human rights in their own prisons? To all the Arabs who are calling for tolerating the American oppression under the pretext of the mere existence of oppression in Arab societies, I would remind them that the western powers themselves have confessed through their senior officials to having supported dictatorships in the Arab World for long time. In the meantime, they gave no heed to the liberal and national Arab  governments who have been trying to consolidate secularism in their societies. The criteria for invaders today is not freedom or dignity for Arabs. In stead, it is humiliating and degrading their dignity to serve assaulting their identity, land and history. Those who have read Huda Shaker’s report on the suffering of Iraqi women prisoners and the dreadful tortured Salah al-Rawi suffered at the hands of his American jailers at Abu Gharib --- unmatched by Saddam’s own-- , and those who watche thousands of Palestinian families praying next to the ruins of their homes in Gaza and Rafah; they realize that their human duty demands they take action to guarantee that nothing of the like could be repeated in the future. Arabs too should do something against all and any wrongdoing or crime, even in their own countries. It is rather masochistic that some should justify the American crimes with Saddam’s similar or worse ones. Crime and injustice are never  a justification of some worse cruelty. It is the crime that should be condemned irrespective of who committed it, but it’s most abhorrent when it’s committed in the name of liberating the very same victims. We should all realize the danger of this era, for it is no longer a matter of some battle here or there. It is now a matter of life or death for all humanity and we all have to start making choices. We should not allow these crimes to pass unnoticed, for all of us are being targeted and humiliated. Those who stand against wrong in Palestine and in Iraq are the very same people who oppose wrong everywhere else. It is not just a matter of counting the victims or belittling the crimes. Hurting one human being should provoke condemnation from the conscience of us all. This is the eternal wisdom in God’s saying in his Holy Quran: “He who kills a living soul for no reason of killing another soul or spreading evil in the land, it is as if he has killed all humans.” Defending right and fighting injustice are inseparable. Strugglers through history have found that the oppression of foreign occupation is the cruelest and most humiliating of all oppressions. Occupation in Palestine and Iraq prove this on a daily basis.

The strangest thing of all in the reactions to the ugly humiliation the Iraqi prisoners suffered, is that writers in British or even in American papers, did not attempt at finding justifications for the criminals as some Arab writers did. Their motive is rightly their fear that such practices could find their way to their own societies, and that instead of changing the regime in Iraq, their own societies will become worse. Thomas Friedman himself, who doesn’t like Arabs, is sounding alarm about the lack of moral authority in Iraq. He further criticized Bush for praising Rumsfield instead of sacking (Asharq Al-Awsat May 13, 2004). In its opening article on May 13, 2004, the Guardian found that it is a great danger to the world that its superpower refuses to give any consideration to human rights laws and organizations. By keeping its prisoners outside the frame of law, the Guardian concludes, this superpower is unqualified to play the role it should play in the world today. Other western writers sounded alarm that Nazism started under the pretext of fighting terrorism then expanded its practices. Some have also indicated, such as Jonathan Raban in the Guardian Weekly of May 13, 2004, that what happened in Abu Ghreib is a mere translation of some Orientalist theories that depict people of the Orient as governed by their whims rather than their minds and logical judgments, that is the crime was a translation of a racist policy against Arabs and Muslims. Raban wondered, like many others, about minuscule amount of anger expressed by Arabs in the midst of such events which are most threatening for them and the whole world. Arab writers should have better talked about Israel’s violation of the Geneva Conventions and all international laws in Palestine. They should have written about the support endowed to doctrine of assassination and settlement, and how it will consequently lead to “Abu Ghreib” kind of practices that could spread to other countries in the world, including the practices’ own country of origin. This might then alarm and anger the world’s thinkers and urge them to take real actions that could definitely guarantee an end to these criminal practices, and reveal and  uproot their likes in Palestine and Afghanistan. So, shall we get  a bit more enraged so that we could express our anger with honest and bold discourse?