Supporting Palestinians for all the wrong reasons!
By Khurshed Alam Chowdhury
Maryland, USA
[Author’s note: This essay contains solely the opinion of mine that should be judged by factual, ethical and humanitarian cause, and not by any emotion. I will welcome any rebuttal with good logic and factual happenings, though. I urge the readers to judge my opinions by logic and ethical standard and no personal attack please when you write rebuttals. I know I should not be sticking my neck out there but my conscience is urging me to express my views on this delicate Palestine-Israel conflict.
Dear Moderator(s), Please post the article I am sending now in Mukto-mona. This a little modified and better. NFB editor posted the wrong one ( http://www.bangladesh-web.com/news/apr/25/g25042002.htm#A1 ) I sent. I have already got a deluge of response (more than 10 so far) right from the readers of NFB. Perhaps more are on the way. Folks come forward with your comments in my article. It seems I have opened a new subject to discuss.]
Israeli-Palestinian problem has recently reached a serious point. This is, of course, very complex problem of the past 75 years or so. I am not going to analyze the problem in details, because it is far too complicated. My purpose of penning this essay is to ask and understand why do we, the Muslims, blindly support the Palestinians. I am tempted to know why 98% of Muslims unanimously support Palestinian Arab. To me it seems as if most Bangladeshi Muslims support Palestinians only because they are Muslims. I doubt it very much if they would support the people of Palestine if they were Buddhist, Christian, or Hindu! I would not support Palestinians or Israelis based on their religious identity. Actually, I support both the people of Palestine and Israel, because, as a human being they both have the equal rights to exist in their own independent land.
In many social gatherings, I often experience very hot discussion about the Middle East conflict. One thing is obvious; almost 98% percent of Bangladeshi Muslims almost blindly support Palestinians, and they vehemently criticize Israel. They also hate Jews very much. Most Bangladeshis apparently do not know the historical background of the Middle-East conflict. They only know that Jews have occupied Palestinian Muslims land by force, hence Israelis are the occupation force in the conflict. The truth is, that part of the landmass (small narrow strip of land between Jordan and the Mediterranean sea) is the historic motherland of both Israelis and Palestinians. Therefore, no party should be considered as the occupier of other's land. These people lived there for thousands of years, and they were fighting for their survival historically.
Let us not make any mistake about it that Bangladeshi Muslims support Palestinians not as the oppressed or deprived people; rather they support Palestinians as part of a sacred cause of Islamic Umma or Islamic brotherhood. There are many oppressed or deprived nations in the world, but Bangladeshi Muslims hardly care for their cause. For Palestinian cause, Bangalees not only give political support, they also give physical and spiritual support. It is learnt that many Bangalees even engaged in the freedom fighting, time to time, on the side of Palestinian Muslims. Imams of almost all the mosques in entire Bangladesh regularly pray in their Munajaat for the Palestinian cause. Surprising to note— in 1971 freedom struggle, not a single Muslim country (both Arab and non-Arab) supported the oppressed people of Bangladesh. They rather supported and prayed for Pakistan— the occupied force. Even the Imams (except a few) of then Pakistani Mosques diligently prayed for the well being of Pakistan. Here again, the noted Islamic brotherhood was very much in the forefront of their mindset. When I raised this issue of Bangalees not getting support from the Islamic world in our ’71 freedom struggle with those emotional Bangalees who are now supporting the Palestinians, I got no clear sensible response from them. They feel quite awkward as can be seen through their deportment.
On the contrary, Israel was among the first few nations who supported Bangalees freedom cause, and Israeli Government offered to supply weapons for the Bangalee freedom fighters. Mujib Nagar interim Government did not accept Israeli help for fear of losing Muslim Arabs’ support they were banking on. Alas, no “Arab Muslim brothers” supported Bangalees’ cause in 1971. Rather, some Arab regimes termed Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib as the Gaddar (betrayer) of Pakistan. How quick do we forget that pathetic episode?
Who does Genocide?
Like any other human beings, Palestinians also have the right to fight for their existence. However, unlike all various freedom fighters of the world, Palestinian freedom fighters do not target only Israeli Military. They want to kill military and any civilian under any postures, or any places they could find. This cannot be compared with any conventional freedom struggle. This is purely a totalitarian and fanatical attitude by the Palestinians.
In 1971, Bangalees were also fighting Pakistani occupation force. Pakistani Military Junta, purely a foreign occupied force, was gratuitously killing our freedom fighters and our innocent civilians (old men, women, and children) rather indiscriminately. Our freedom fighters (Mukti-juddha) were killing Pakistani soldiers by surprise ambush (by time-bombs, grenades, machine-guns etc.). Nevertheless, our freedom fighters were never killing Pakistani civilians, never targeted any civilian family members of the Pakistani soldiers. They never blasted any suicide bombs while Pakistani civilians were engaged in a wedding ceremony or dining in the Kebab House, or in any restaurant. So, why these Palestinians are suicide bombing innocent women and children in school, bus, pizzeria, wedding ceremony, birthday party, or anywhere just to kill any people who have faith in Judaism? Why can’t they target Israeli soldiers, politicians, or any military installation? I think answer to the above question lies with the childhood brainwashing and the hatreds implanted into the minds of all Muslims to hate Jews.
War Crime issue
Many Bangalee Muslims may readily opine that Sharon should be tried for war crimes. I do not consider Sharon is committing any war crimes in this present war against terrorism. His force is not there in West Bank to kill any civilians. His force is there to rout out the elements of terrorist suicide bombers. Sharon’s forces were to fight house-to-house (very difficult war indeed) to rout out any terrorist cells. And obviously there could have been some resistance from the Palestinian side. Hence, killing of some Palestinian bystanders was quite possible in this type of rules of engagement as a conduct of war. Israeli soldiers were not there to kill any Palestinian civilian intentionally. If they were so adamant about killing the Palestinians, they could easily have killed tens and thousands just by one day, if they wanted. However, that was not Israelis’ intention at all. One thing is Israelis were in the West Bank to respond to an openly declared war shoved upon them. They went to the war zones with tanks and cannons. Their presence was quite obvious and the Palestinian, civilians had the choice to flee the danger zones, even though, some civilians would have been trapped in a war.
On the contrary, Palestinian Suicide Bombers (or, Homicide Bombers) silently entered Israeli pizzeria, children-loaded school bus, wedding house, birthday ceremony, restaurants, and vacationers in the sunny sea beach and busy shopping malls in the treacherous disguise of any innocent civilian Palestinians with dynamite-belt hiding inside their cloths. No signals and no signs of any hostility, which could alert Israeli innocent civilians to save their lives! The Palestinian suicide bombers come to Israel solely to kill any civilians they could find. That is not the case with Israelis. The horrific after-scene of any suicide bombing is no less horrendous than the damage caused by Israeli war machine in Ramallah or Jenin. Even then, I do not weigh the killings by Israeli war machine and Palestinian’s suicide bombings by the same scale of justice. I consider those suicide bombing incidents utterly inhuman and war crime by any ethical standard. And, I consider those Israeli war damage and killings as the usual consequence of any conventional war. Of course, if the Israeli soldiers committed any intentional massacre of innocent civilians, then it should be considered as a war crime.
In any war process, soldiers sometimes even kill their own by friendly fires. Americans killed their own soldiers by mistaken bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other day, American faulty bombings killed 4 Canadian soldiers in the war of Afghanistan. This is the true game of any war.
Similarly, to the Sharon’s invasion of West Bank, Americans are in Afghanistan to rout out terrorists and not to kill civilians, though some civilians may be killed in the war process. On the contrary, al-Qaeda guys came to USA solely to kill some innocent civilians. Therefore, if Sharon is being tried for war crimes then Bush should also be tried for war crimes.
In conclusion, the point that I wanted to make is, we cannot judge killings by sheer Ummatic emotion, rather, killings should be judged by the purpose and cause. Bangalee Muslims should not support any foreign party just by their religious identity alone. Rather, we should support a party by the humanitarian and ethical cause only. Most of all, civilized world should never support any form of terrorism including suicide bombings to kill innocent men, women and children. I urge my readers to think clearly about this mess in the Middle East. For humanity’s sake let us not support one group because they happen to be Muslims.
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The article is published at ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/5638 )