Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the
Hanoun and Ghawi Families?
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban
Counter Punch,
12 Aug. 2009
I would like you, my readers, to try and imagine someone forcing his way
into your home without permission and ordering you at gun point to leave the
safe home you have built through a lifetime of toil and hard work and turned
into a sweet nest for your children and grandchildren. Imagine foreign soldiers coming from the far
ends of the world armed to the teeth with inherited hatred against you to expel
you from your home, replace you, occupy your land, and put an end to your
existence and history.
Like anyone else, you look round for help from family, friends and neighbours. You find
them busy currying favours with authorities they
think are capable of determining their destiny, while they themselves have the
key to their destiny if they stand for their dignity and for their rights. Despite their differences, you see them equal
before the Israeli occupier who erected checkpoints on their roads to humiliate
them, violate their identity and usurp their rights. Nevertheless, you see them preoccupied with
small battles among themselves forgetful of the only battle worthy of their
effort and their struggle: the battle for their freedom and their independence.
If you cannot imagine that because you have no experience of the crimes
and humiliation of occupation, just consider the case of the Hanoun and Ghawi
families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood
of
Arab and Muslim readers could read in the dim eyes of the Arab Muslim
mother, the feelings of disappointment, frustration and despair of all the
millions of Arabs and Muslims and of all the
‘civilized’ world which never tires of talking about freedom, democracy and
human rights. One could read a question
on her innocent face: are not we, Arab Muslim Palestinians, human beings?! Where are all those hundreds of millions of
Arabs and Muslims in the four corners of the world? Why do not they rush to our aid? Or are they like the scum of a turbulent
stream?
Despite the enormity of the crime and the tragedy, most of the Arab
media limited themselves to quick news stories about the Hanoun and Ghawi
families. The media also turned a page
on Judaizing the names of Arab villages and cities in
Instead of being preoccupied with Israeli threats to the rights and
sanctities of their brothers, particularly to the first of the holy Muslim
shrines, part of Arab officialdom is busy calculating the extent of the power
of
While the Israeli threat engulfs Jerusalem, and while Israeli
settlements are sprawling all over Palestine, and Ehud
Barak threatens to destroy all Lebanon if its people
reject Israeli hegemony; and after Iranian officials talked about the duty of
all Arabs to defend any Arab country threatened with aggression; and after
Turkish officials called on the Arabs to unite and face plots aimed at dividing
and weakening them, some Arab columnists responded by talking about the danger
of the ‘Ottoman Pasha’ and the ‘Persian enemy’.
Such articles are, of course, an integral part of a tireless campaign which has been raging
for years to weaken the Arabs and undermine them completely even with regard to
ties and relations which could contribute to their revival if they made good
use of them.
The fact of the matter is that the geopolitical and economic situation in
our region is in a transitional phase during which Arabs are suffering from
total weakness and deliberate division.
There is no disputing the fact that the coming age is the age of
knowledge. The Western, and particularly
the Israeli, attack against
Through the Nabucco pipeline and the South Stream project,
Turkey has insured the prosperity of Turkish economy and the power and status
for the Turkish nation for future decades and maybe the next century, while the
Arabs ignore the source of the strategic power which they have in their oil,
water and geographical position and destroy all the elements of their power by
division and fragmentation. That is why
their role is dwarfing internationally and diminishing regionally.
If Arabs continue on this course they will be no more significant than
the scum and froth over a stream.
Hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims failed to stand and defend
Prof. Bouthaina
Shaaban is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also
a writer and professor at