Asalaamu alaikum.
This letter is written by Sr Afnan H. Fatani
(Afnan Fatani is a Saudi professor of English language and style. She has
published several papers on Arabic linguistics. She is based in Jeddah.)
A letter of protest and condemnation
To the US ambassador:
Just because we don’t demonstrate by the thousands in the streets of Jeddah.
Just because we don’t march to the US Consulate on the corner of Palestine Road.
Just because there are no overt signs of mass fury and public outrage on the
Corniche or at malls in Jeddah.
Just because we don’t riot in front of McDonalds and T.G.I. Fridays and pelt
their doors with stones and rocks. Just because we don’t burn US and Israeli
flags and burn effigies of Sharon and Bush, chanting “Death to America” — “Death
to Israel.” Just because we don’t wear FREE PALESTINE tee shirts and checkered
Palestinian scarves. Just because we don’t boycott American and Israeli
products, Helena Rubenstein (HR) and Marks & Spencer, lurking sinisterly in
every corner of our shopping malls. Just because we don’t travel on solidarity
missions to Bethlehem and Ramallah along with other writers, intellectuals and
peace activists. Just because we abhor violent protests and the sight of police
retaliation with clubs, water cannons and tear gas grenades. Just because we
don’t use the rhetoric of a simple housewife riding the Cairo metro — “Anyone
who eats at Burger King and drinks Pepsi is drinking the blood of the
Palestinian people.” Just because our students do not organize anti-American
rallies and gather for peaceful protests inside university campus. Just because
we are unable to personally deliver this message right at your embassy door.
Just because we don’t and we don’t and we don’t … that doesn’t mean we are not
outraged at US biased support for the slaughter of Palestinians and US
unwillingness to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions ordering it to
withdraw from the West Bank cities.
That doesn’t mean we are not appalled by the ominous role of the US in Palestine
and its cold-blooded willingness to condone the assassination of those who dare
to fight for their basic human rights. That doesn’t mean we are not shocked by
your president’s vindictive and personal hatred for the elected leader of
Palestine. That doesn’t mean that we do not hold President Bush personally
responsible for all the carnage and wanton destruction in Palestine and for any
and all future massacres of Palestinian refugees. That doesn’t mean we do not
accuse President Bush of sponsoring and funding the terrorist state of Israel.
Just because American tanks are not rumbling through Palestinian towns and
American soldiers are not roaming the streets of Ramallah and Bethlehem, that
does not make your current government any less responsible for the current
plight of the Palestinians.
Here is our list of 10 condemnations:
1 - We condemn President Bush’s speech on Thursday. Leaders of great and
powerful nations like America should be magnanimous and generous, not cruel and
vindictive. Blaming an isolated Arafat and a desperate 18-year-old Palestinian
girl for the violence and Israeli atrocities in the West Bank is not just
simplistic, it is evil. It is an incitement and a license to kill anyone who
dares to speak out against the Israeli tyrants that America sponsors and funds.
We will, therefore, hold President Bush personally responsible for the
inevitable murder of Arafat and for the point-blank executions of innocent
Palestinian teenagers now trapped in the closed military zones of Ramallah and
Bethlehem.
2 - We condemn President Bush’s speech because it is written with the intent to
sow discord and distrust among Palestinians and Arabs. According to his logic,
if we the Arabs want a “peaceful” Palestinian state then we must kill Arafat,
kill our resistance movements, kill our peace activists, kill our
anti-occupation activists, kill anyone who dares to oppose Israel and America,
kill anyone who says NO, and especially kill the warriors of Hamas and Jihad.
Only then, Bush tells us, will he and his Israeli aggressors allow the original
inhabitants of Palestine to regain what is rightfully theirs.
3 - We condemn the fact that a notorious war criminal like Sharon is welcomed
with open arms and accorded red-carpet treatment at the White House, while
Yasser Arafat, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is shunned and abhorred. When the
Jews first came to Palestine from the ghettos of the world, these bands of armed
settlers formed terrorist organizations like the Haganah that maimed, killed and
bombed the original inhabitants into fleeing their land. Sharon, Barak and other
leading figures in Israel were and still are, members of this coalition of
terror. Why is America rewarding them for their evil? Why are they not branded
as enemies of the state? Why are their names and photos not listed on the FBI’s
most wanted list? Or is this infamous list meant only for Arabs?
4 - We condemn President Bush’s belated verbal call on Israel to withdraw from
the West Bank cities of Palestine. His half-hearted appeal rings hollow as long
as he continues to supply Sharon with the weapons now being used on the streets
of the West Bank, and billions of dollars in aid and continued moral support.
5 - We condemn President Bush’s racist call to Arafat “to do more to curb
terrorism,” while all the time praising the barbaric actions of Sharon, a
remorseless sponsor of the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
6 - We condemn President Bush’s personal support for Sharon’s genocide and
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and his terrorizing of inhabitants into
fleeing.
7 - We condemn President Bush’s support of the illegal Israeli occupation and
its colonial policy of settlements, mass murder, expulsion and transfer.
8 - We condemn President Bush’s denouncement of our state organizations,
religious schools, charities and educational institutions as inciting terror and
hatred of the West. What about your Klu Klux Klan, your Timothy McVeighs, your
Waco militants? What about your biased Zionist-controlled media and your
anti-Arab journalists like George Will and Rosenthal? What about Hollywood and
its hostile stereotyping of Arabs as terrorists and bandits? Aren’t those
incitements that Bush could do more to curb? What about your own federal
institutions? Your congress, your radical senators, your pro-Israeli Capitol
Hill, and your strong Zionist lobbies who back Sharon, cheer him on and applaud
his barbaric actions. What about your anti-Palestinian lawmakers gearing up to
further condemn and impose new sanctions on Arafat and the Palestinians while
happily ignoring Israel’s brutal take over of Arab homeland? What about your
congressmen’s constant conferring with Howard Kohr, the executive director of
the American-Israeli Public Relations Committee (AIPAC), before every bill they
pass just to make sure they “get all the details right” (as journalist Barbara
Ferguson reports). What about the smug, racist views of your Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Henry Hyde’s smug smiles and obnoxious statements:
“Sharon is doing what we in Texas describe as “A man’s got to do what a man’s
got to do.” How sinister! How evil! How degenerate!
9 - We condemn President Bush’s support of religious extremists in Israel and
his self-proclaimed bond of loyalty to radical ultra-orthodox Jews. Where is
Bush’s indignation at the incitement, hatred and racial superiority preached by
these racist groups? As Israel Shamir explains, “the Talmud preaches compassion
to animals. But there is a profound lack of compassion toward non-Jews. They are
frequently compared to animals. In the Talmud, marriage to a Gentile equals
bestiality… In an interview, a Shabak official, Ehud Yatom, boasted he smashed
a Palestinian prisoner’s head with a stone. He is supported by many MPs and by
the Israeli public.”
10 - We condemn the racist and tasteless statements of the American ambassador
in Bahrain who called on Arab students at a university gathering to observe a
moment of silence for Israeli victims of the conflict with Palestinians. Do you
in America observe a moment of silence for the native American victims your
forefathers slaughtered. Do your schools and universities bow their head in
silence for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the victims of Vietnam,
Iraq, and Afghanistan. You and your Israeli friends have no right to occupy our
land, confiscate our territories, brutalize our civilians and then ask us to
show sympathy and to honor your dead. Where is your sympathy, not ours? This is
our sacred homeland and no radical, racist settler from America or Europe is
going to drive us out.
Here is a list of 10 Israeli atrocities President Bush and his administration
are quick to defend:
1 - The “bored, overfed, sadistic Israeli soldiers are daily humiliating,
beating and often murdering the local people.” Men are stripped to their
underwear to walk through checkpoints. Tanks are placed at hospital gates. Women
are forced to deliver their babies in the streets. (Courtesy of Israeli
journalist in Jaffa - Israel Shamir)
2 - Rogue Israeli soldiers are killing unarmed civilians. “Their preferred
victims are children. They abuse children of the refugee camps and shoot and
maim them on a daily basis”(Courtesy of the above Israeli journalist).
3 - Israeli tanks are firing at ambulances trying to rescue the wounded.
4 - US jets with Israeli pilots have bombed the school for the blind in Gaza.
5 - Palestinian civilians continue to suffer from lack of electricity, water and
food supplies.
6 - Israeli tanks fired on the buildings of the Medical Relief Organization
where a number of Italian peace activists are barricaded in a show of solidarity
with Palestinians.
7 - So far around 1,500 young Palestinians have been arrested in racist and
senseless mass arrests in Ramallah and other West Bank cities.
8 - Bodies are still piling up at the Ramallah hospital morgue and denied proper
burial.
9 - There is widespread vandalism as Israeli soldiers loot civilians and banks
in their door-to-door search for illusive so-called terrorists.
10 - As I write, Israeli soldiers are storming the Church of Nativity where
unarmed Palestinians have been given refuge by peace-loving bishops and priests.
A repeat of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre is pending.
Here is a list of 10 things we will NEVER do:
1 - We will never applaud Israeli and American destruction of Palestine.
2 - We will never label our resistance movements as “terrorists” and Israeli
terror as “retaliation.”
3 - We will never relinquish our right to Jerusalem.
4 - We will never stop aiding all our people in Palestine, including those who
choose to die as martyrs.
5 - We will never applaud US jets leveling any of our cities.
6 - We will never stop protesting your biased war on terror and your blind
support of Israeli brutality. You call this incitement; we call it courage,
faith and resilience.
7 - We will never stop calling for the end of the illegal Israeli occupation of
our homeland.
8 - We will never stop honoring our martyrs and observing a moment of silence
for our fallen warriors.
9 - We will never forget the Palestinian Holocaust of 1948. We will never watch
idly as Israel and America orchestrate a new one in 2002.
10 - We will never side with the Bushes and Sharons of this world. We will never
side with genocide, mass murder, transfer and expulsion. I guess this means,
according to Bush’s simplistic either-or logic, that we are on the side of the
terrorists. So be it. We believe we are on the side of the martyrs, on the side
of decency, humanity, civility, fortitude and freedom; concepts which your brave
American warriors of the past once strove so valiantly to uphold. But Alas, no
more.
In short, Mr. Ambassador, we do not care if we incur the wrath of your President
Bush. We do not care if you deny our citizens a US visa or freeze their assets
in American banks. We do not care if our children never attend your schools and
your universities or our tourists never enjoy the wonders of Disneyland or
Universal Studios. What we care most for is our faith, our dignity and our
sacred homeland.
He who granted victory to David against Goliath, to Moses against Pharaoh, to
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) against Abu Lahab, will grant victory to the warriors of
Palestine against Sharon and Bush and those who sponsor them. Beware Mr.
Ambassador that the curse promised by the Lord to the misbehaving children of
Israel (Deut. 28) does not fall upon your own heads.
Here is my signature. Here is my name. Let it be the first name listed in this
letter of protest and indignation. See! I am not afraid. I dare to speak. Along
with Israel Shamir, I call “for citizens to take arms against the bloody
dictator Sharon.” If and when this petition ever reaches your embassy doorstep,
I am confident the list of names will have grown and grown and grown.