THE EVIL EMPIRE
By Michael S. Ladah
Especially during the last couple of years, many of us have
been outraged that we are being manipulated by the American press. It is apparent that
most of the news media in this beloved country of ours take us the public for idiots when
it comes to news and commentary about the Middle East.
It is also apparent that to the people of the Middle East, Arabs, Persians,
Pakistanis, and perhaps others, we have become the Evil Empire.
My understanding of the Middle East and the Palestinian
question is obviously not the result of what I learned from our media. My understanding is based on the moral principles I
learned with the help of my Quaker friends, my Moslem colleagues and the writings of this
country’s forefathers. Our country and
the American people subscribe to the principles that are the basis of our declaration of
independence, that we are all created equal and that we are all entitled to equal rights
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We
subscribe to the basic principles upon which our constitution was founded; these
principles deny anyone’s right, divine or otherwise, to oppress us or deny us our
God-given rights. These are the principles
that many in our government and among our news media seem to believe are the entitlement
of the people of this country and its allies only, to the exclusion of all others. Their understanding of right and wrong seems to be
skewed when it comes to the interests of the United States in the Middle East as these are
confused with the interests of Israel and the practices of the Israeli government and its
military machine. We, the Americans, go to war
to uphold principles of human rights, freedom and democracy against countries that violate
them, but sit back defenseless when Israel commits flagrant violations of these same
principles.
It is unfortunate that our news reporters and commentators
feel that they must act as the defenders of Israel and its colonial policies, even more
than the Israeli reporters and commentators in the Israeli press. Why do our news media have to be the apologists for
Israel instead of holding Israeli leaders and their military acts to the high standards of
morality like anyone else? The Israeli
government continues to portray Israel as the victim of aggression from Palestinians armed
with rocks, rifles and home made bombs even today when Israel has one of the world's
largest armed forces, subsidized by our tax money. The
American press should work on informing the American public instead of pandering to AIPAC
and other defenders of Israel.
As if not enough deception has been perpetrated on the
Palestinians, Moslems as well as Christians; now the President of the United States has
proven that he has little understanding of the Middle East.
He appears to have delegated Middle East policy making to his pro-Israel biased
advisers like appointing the cat to administer fairness to the mouse. I doubt that he was deliberate in misleading the
American public by announcing his latest policy on Palestine. The question remains, however, did he
unsuspectingly join Sharon’s public relations campaign to take the American public
down a path that is bound to create even more enemies for this country? What did he mean when he dictated that the
Palestinian elections must produce a leadership the US can work with? Did he mean to say that the Palestinians should
elect pro-America, pro-Israel leaders? Did he
mean to say that the Palestinians should elect defeatist leaders who would collaborate
with the Israelis and let them swallow the remainder of Palestine into their Greater
Israel dream? What did he mean when he
didn’t say anything about the Israeli invasions of Palestinian towns and villages,
and changed his mind about demanding that Israel pull back immediately from Palestinian
towns and countryside? When should the Israeli
military end the occupation and repression of Palestinian civilians? U.S. Presidents have come and gone since the
Palestinian Nakba of 1948 while the suffering of the Palestinians has persisted under the
yoke of the Israeli occupation for what seems eternity to the Palestinians. Should they then elect leaders who will kneel to Israel
while the Israeli military scorch the Palestinian towns and countryside? Should they worry about their institutions while
they are under a foreign brutal occupation? Will
they be able to hold national elections under the Israeli guns? They can not access their medical institutions and
providers for even emergency medical care, so how can they travel over dirt mounds and
barricades and across ditches to reach their polling stations? Our president and his advisors apparently expect
miracles from ordinary Palestinians and don’t see that the root cause of the problem
is the Israeli occupation. Ending the
occupation will eliminate all basic elements of the problem.
The U.S. Administration and the Israeli government claim
that the Israeli military must remain in control of the West Bank and Gaza to maintain law
and order, and if they withdraw there will be a security vacuum. That is obviously an excuse to delay ending the
occupation, for an Arab or a UN peace keeping force can better fill that vacuum.
In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, we demanded
from the Arab countries that they were “either with us or against us.” The two leaders of the Arab world, Egypt and Syria,
told this country that they would deal with any power that served the economic interests
of their hungry masses, but they would remain neutral and non-aligned. In response, we tried to bring Egypt to its knees
by denying it loans, from the World Bank, which would have financed the building of the
Aswan Dam, the largest project ever in the history of Egypt, and denied Egypt any economic
assistance. We refused to sell arms to Syria
and got very upset when Syria bought their arms from other providers. Yet, we continued to expect Egypt and Syria to be
“with us.” Needless to say, Egypt
and Syria, and most of the Arab masses, continued to be neither with us nor against us. After 50 years, the President has again called on
the Arab countries to be “either with us or against us.” Yet we continue with our efforts to humiliate the
Arab masses through our unqualified support for the Israeli bankrupt policies of
occupation, colonization and apartheid. No one
should be surprised, least of all our policy makers, if we are told that the Arabs can be
with us only if “us” does not include Israel and its policies that violate our
American principles.
We are now inching toward a policy through which we are
getting closer to holding the Palestinians as the aggressors, on their own land, toward
the occupying Israelis. Yet, the Palestinians
neither threaten our political interests nor our economic interests in the region. On the contrary, it is Israel and its policies, and
our support and defense of the Israeli interests that have jeopardized the American
interests there.
Israel should end its colonial policies in Palestine. What Israel has done is contrary to the principles
that we hold dear in this country, for our people and universally. We should force the Israelis to respect these
principles and abandon their policies that violate them.
We, the benefactors and protectors of Israel, should mend our policies toward the
Palestinians and peoples of the Middle East and continue to identify and condemn the cause
of the evil on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For if we don’t, who is to blame if the Arab
and Moslem worlds are not with “us”? Who
is to blame if they see America as the Evil Empire and our President as the leader of the
dark side?
© 2002 by Michael S. Ladah. The writer is an Arab American who lived and worked
in various parts of the Middle East. He is the author
of “Quicksand, Oil and Dreams: The Story of One of Five Million Dispossessed
Palestinians.” He may be reached at
ladah@hotmail.com
|