In this mailing:
- Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians in Syria Killed, Injured, Displaced
- Samuel Westrop: Blaming America
Palestinians
in Syria Killed, Injured, Displaced
Arabs, Human Rights Organizations,
Media Yawn
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
May 10, 2013 at 5:00 am
May 10, 2013 at 5:00 am
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It is not
only the Arabs and the Palestinian governments who are turning a blind eye to
the mass displacement of Palestinians. Human rights organizations and the
mainstream media in the West are also ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.
This is, after all, a story that lacks an anti-Israel angle.
More than 55,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee Syria to
Lebanon and Jordan over the past two years, according to figures released by the
United Nations Work and Relief Agency [UNRWA].According to Palestinian sources, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria, most in recent months, by both the rebels and the Syrian army.
Most of the Palestinians who fled Syria have found shelter in neighboring Lebanon, where more than 500,000 Palestinians live in several refugee camps in different parts of the country.
It is worth noting that Palestinians in Lebanon are subjected to apartheid laws that deny them work, social and health benefits, and freedom of movement.
UNRWA now estimates that approximately 235,000 Palestinians have been displaced inside Syria since the beginning of the conflict two years ago.
Just two weeks ago, some 6,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Ein al-Tal, a refugee camp near Aleppo in northern Syria.
This was not the only UNRWA-run refugee camp in Syria to be targeted by both the opposition and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
"Ein al-Tal is the latest manifestation of a cycle of catastrophic violence in which the conduct of all parties has transformed refugee camps into theaters of conflict in which heavy weapons are used, resulting in severe suffering for Palestinian civilians," UNRWA said in a statement. "Palestinian refugees in Syria are being killed, injured and displaced in greater numbers than even before."
And what have the Palestinians' two governments – Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – done to help the displaced Palestinians? Almost nothing, according to the displaced families.
What have the Arab countries done to help the Palestinians fleeing Syria? Almost nothing.
Neither the Palestinian governments nor the Arab countries has even asked for an emergency UN Security Council session to discuss the new Palestinian tragedy.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is too busy touring the world and fighting with his prime minister, Salam Fayyad.
The Hamas government is too busy inciting Palestinians and preparing for the next wave of terror attacks against Israel.
As for the Arab countries, why should they care about Palestinians when hundreds of Syrians are being killed every day and no one in the Arab world seems to care?
It is no secret that most of the Arab governments despise the Palestinians and continue to treat them as third-class residents and a potential threat to Arabs' national security.
The Arab League foreign ministers who recently met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington did not even bother to raise the issue of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes in Syria.
For these ministers and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, construction in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank is more urgent than the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians.
But it is not only the Arabs and the Palestinian governments who are turning a blind eye to the mass displacement of Palestinians. Human rights organizations and the mainstream media in the West are also ignoring the plight of the Palestinians. This is, after all, a story that lacks an anti-Israel angle.
Related Topics: Syria
| Khaled Abu
Toameh
Blaming America
by Samuel Westrop
May 10, 2013 at 3:00 am
May 10, 2013 at 3:00 am
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If there is
one consistent response that should unite people across the Western world, it
is that those who commit terrorist acts or who support terrorist groups are
alone responsible for the murderous result. Why must the victims of the Boston
bombing be blamed for being murdered by America's enemies?
Before the blood was even cleaned from the Boston sidewalks, a number of
opinion pieces and cartoons published in Western media suggested that those
killed or maimed in the blasts were suitable victims – the result of an America
that has refused to acknowledge the consequences of its actions.After Bin Laden's death, America was condemned. In the wake of the Boston bombings, America is now once again condemned. Whether in the pursuit of justice or as the victim of terror, the United States is often portrayed as the villain. Why have some commentators expressed feelings of schadenfreude instead of solidarity? Why must the victims of the Boston bombing be blamed for being murdered by America's enemies?
On April 17th, Le Monde's front page included the cartoon below, which mocks the victims of the bombing and lays the blame for those murders on a violent American society.
In Germany, a satirical publication Titanic mocked, with little explanation, America's supposed failure to understand the consequences of its foreign policy.
In Foreign Policy Journal, Richard Falk, the UN's "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories," penned an article in which he claimed, "The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks … As long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy."
In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party offered its thoughts "to the Arabs, Muslims and South Asians who would inevitably be blamed for this nightmare."
Writing in the Guardian, columnist Glenn Greenwald commented that, "it was really hard not to find oneself wishing that just a fraction of that compassion and anger be devoted to attacks that the US perpetrates rather than suffers. These are exactly the kinds of horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade, with very little attention paid."
Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, told Iranian state news that: "Very often, people get incredibly angry about injustices that they see. They would have been reading about the torture at Guantanamo Bay, at Baghram airbase … People get angry — they lash out. … this fuels the anger of the young men, who — as we saw in Boston — went out, and, out of anger and demand for revenge, claimed lives in the West."
Two years ago, in May 2011, many Europeans were also unhappy. They considered the killing of Bin Laden an unjust and illiberal act – typical of a bullying, arrogant America.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, claimed the death of the Al Qaeda leader left him with "an uncomfortable feeling." Ken Livingstone said that the killing "appalled" him.
European commentators condemned the American response to Bin Laden's death. The French newspaper Libération stated that the celebrations were an example of the "toxic rhetoric" employed in the war against terror, and that the jubilant crowds in New York in Washington were "unprecedented in a democracy." L'Express stated that those celebrating were the same as the "turbaned barbarians who danced the night of September 11th. It is to tell them the ghastly competition continues between them and us."
Gary Younge, writing in the Guardian, commented:
"Americans have a right to grieve and remember those who died on 9/11. But they have no monopoly on memory, grief or anger. Hundreds and thousands of innocent Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistanis have been murdered as a result of America's response to 9/11.
…
"If "they" killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad then "they" also bombed a large number of wedding parties in Afghanistan, "they" murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and "they" gang-raped a 14-year-old before murdering her, her six-year-old sister and their parents near Mahmudiyah. If "they" don't want to be associated with the atrocities then "they" need to find more to celebrate than an assassination. Vengeance is, in no small part, what got us here. It won't get us out."
Those commentators who ascribe victimhood to the perpetrators of terror instead of its casualties share an essential idea with those responsible for the Boston bombings. Although one faction justifies its view with blood and the other with ink, their message is the same: that terrorism can be justified.
If there is one consistent response that should unite people across the Western world, it is that those who commit acts of terrorism or support terrorist groups are alone responsible for the murderous result. By painting such atrocities as a question of moral ambiguity, rather than as an outrage to be condemned and as a threat to be fought, these opinion writers and cartoonists only embolden terror and weaken the West's ability to defend its freedoms.
Related Topics: Samuel Westrop
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