Don't look there, it's Gaza

Self pity starts with the conviction that we are weak, incompetent, and unable to perform any action to deliver ourselves from the state we found ourselves in. This in short is the official “Moderate Arab” discourse. The blame falls on those who dare to take their destiny in their hands and use the capacities they have in order to deliver themselves instead of complaining and accentuating the pitiful state they are in.

When Hezbollah captured the two Israeli soldiers on the 12th of July 2006, the Moderate Arabs were immediately certain about the causality of the subsequent war: Hezbollah’s adventurous, rushed, and non-calculated decision is the cause of war. It turned out that Hezbollah’s decision was far from being uncalculated.

Gaza is under siege. The Moderate Arabs reformulate their causal statements. The siege is the result of the hand-made rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance factions on the neighboring Israeli settlement of Sedirot. Israel’s large scale siege is an act of self defense, say the Arabs. Of course, they do reject the human suffering involved in this act of self defense, but the blame is on those who dare to defy Israel.

It is not the fact that the Moderate Arabs are supporting Israel that is shameful; it is the hypocrisy that makes these Arab leaders cowardly enough not to be able to defend their decision and position. Instead they hide behind empty prose and strongly reject any accusation of being in the American-Israeli camp.

The mention of Israeli soldiers’ remains and body parts held by Hezbollah since the 2006 war instigated disgust in the stomachs of some Lebanese “leaders”. It is strange that the media consultants of these “leaders” did not realize that such statements would not resonate well in the minds of the people especially that Arab media does not refrain from showing Iraqi, Palestinian, and Lebanese body parts that no one ever expressed such disgust about. It is hard to believe that a militia leader can feel disgust from the mere mentioning of body parts.

The Arab “leaders” are not to blame. After all they need to care about the “stability” of their regimes. The blame falls on the people. The blame always falls on the people. When Ziad Rahbani’s last play blamed the Lebanese people for their destiny, it was met with an unprecedented negative critic even though it might be the most politically mature work of his. People do not like to be held responsible this is why they often prefer dictatorships. It is easier, more reassuring.

One and a half million people living in the most densely populated stretch of land in the world are under siege. They are the invisible spectacle of human suffering. No one wants to know, see, or hear about it. Only the Israeli government is honest enough to say that “we do not care if they are suffering”. Europe does not see, the United States do not mind, and the Arabs smile ridiculously because the white man smiles back; they do not speak, they cannot speak.

The Lebanese government is too disgusted by the mental image of Israeli body parts to feel disgust about the crime committed in Gaza. After all, if the suffering of their own people both during the 2006 war and amid the present economical crisis did not instigate any disgust why would the slow death of sub-human Palestinians do?

There is a definition of terrorism, and there are law texts describing what genocide means. We just need people to read it aloud.

But meanwhile we have more pressing matters: the Iranian/Shiite/Axis of Evil/Terrorism threat and the need to buy billion of dollars worth of American weapons especially now that the American economy is in trouble. Anyway there is an Arab Summit coming up, and the Arabs will certainly “object” on the situation in Gaza. When the oil stops flowing, the Arabs will start exporting “objection” to be used in Gaza’s power plant and Saudi Arabia will still be the biggest supplier of fuel.