Mat
09-04-2001, 01:20 AM
(Note: This is opinion and doesn't not necessary reflect the views of The Rave staff.)
Commentary By ABHINAV AIMA
Special to The Rave
On Oct. 2, I stood with teeth gnashing and fists clenched as I saw a picture of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy and his father, cowering for shelter in Gaza, trying to hide from the shots being fired by Israeli soldiers. A few moments later, bullets tore into the bodies of the young boy and his father, their last moments captured by the camera of a French TV photographer.
Most people in America went about business as usual that day, and probably did not lose much sleep over the incident that night. A few probably exclaimed, “That’s not right!” or “Oh, sweet Jesus!” and then went about their business and has a good night’s sleep. I, as usual, did not get a good night’s sleep, but I did stay awake and think about something British journalist, Robert Fisk, had told me last year in Beirut.
In 1996 Fisk had witnessed an Israeli pilot, flying an American helicopter, fire an American Hellfire missile into a Lebanese Ambulance and kill four children and two women. The next day, The New York Times report buried the incident in its sixth paragraph, and then spent two paragraphs trying to explain that the Israelis had fired on an ambulance carrying a Hizbollah “terrorist.” This was, of course, a lie as there was no Hizbollah guerrilla in the ambulance. This was also a war crime because the Geneva Convention specifically forbids the deliberate targeting of civilian targets, such as hospitals and ambulances, even if these facilities are believed to be harboring the enemy.
“If the things were the other way around,” Fisk asked me, “If, heaven forbid, four Israeli children and two Israeli women had been killed in the bombing of an ambulance, would the New York Times story have treated the story any different?” “Hell yes,” I replied, and immediately realized what I had just admitted. The American journalist who had filed the biased story was racist, the American editor who had allowed the biased story to run was racist – because they sure as hell would have done things differently if the women and children killed had been Jews.
So I wondered if, on Oct. 2, people would have reacted differently, actually given a ****, if the young boy and father, dying of bullet wounds in Gaza, had been Jews. Imagine if you will, a nice, young Jewish boy gasping his last breaths, eyes wide open in fear, dying on your TV screen.
Now, before all you hypocrites get your panties in a bunch and call me anti-Semite, allow me to tell you a bit about myself. I am a Kashmiri Hindu, and nearly all of my community loves and adores the Israeli army, all the more because they advise the Indian army on efficient methods of suppressing (killing) Islamic revolutionaries. Most people in my community don’t like Kashmiri Muslims (terrorists) who used American money and guns to conduct and ethnic cleansing of Kashmir in 1989-90 and drove almost all the Kashmiri Hindus out of the valley. Most of my community are bastard children of the Hindu-Nationalist ideology. I, unfortunately, am cursed with the twin gifts of education and empathy and can not giggle with glee every time I hear of a Muslim killed in Kashmir, just as I can not giggle with glee every time I hear of a Palestinian killed in Israel/West Bank/Gaza.
Many Americans, bastard children of the Capitalist-Democracy ideology, can not understand how the Palestinians could have become so upset over the visit of a Jew in their neighborhood? Did the Palestinians really need to start attacking those nice Jewish soldiers? What’s wrong with these damn Palestinians?
Many bastard children of bigoted ideologies around the world cringe is disgust every time they hear me address the Israeli soldiers as Jewish soldiers. Allow me to open your eyes, to the apartheid state that has existed in Israeli held territories for the last 50 years.
The Israeli army, to the best of my knowledge, does not have any non-Jewish officers. If you are not a Jew in Israel, and worse, if you are an Arab non-Jew, you have very little control over where you can work or live. Freedom of opportunity does not exist, even though Israel is a capitalist democracy. The non-Jewish Arabs (Palestinian Christians and Muslims), who come into Israel to work every day mostly work in menial jobs, even though they are qualified for better jobs, such as engineers or computer technicians.
In the Israeli apartheid, the non-Jews are discriminated against every day, though this discrimination has been toned down in order to address the present culture of political correctness. Arabs in Israel who have been granted Israeli citizenship can vote and even become elected members of the Israeli Parliament. But, as it has become clear in the last few days, while an Israeli soldier will not fire at Jewish women or children, he will fire at Arab women and children, even if they are Israeli citizens. He will also walk into areas of Palestinian authority and fire at Palestinians who are demonstrating in areas controlled by Palestinian authority where, as per commitments on the Oslo, Wye and recent Camp David agreements, Israeli soldiers are not even supposed to be present.
But the question here is not of what Israeli soldiers or Israeli Jews do.
The question is why Americans, and many other bastards of bigoted-ideologies, are happy to live in ignorance and refuse to give a hearing to the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. Most apparent among these high profile bigots recently was journalist Christiane Amanpour who, after the failed round of U.S. brokered peace talks, asked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for his reaction to the Palestinian’s stubborn behavior, and grilled Palestinian President Yesser Arafat on his decision to turn down a generous Israeli offer. Clearly disturbed by this hypocritical line of questioning, Arafat took off his lapel mike and walked off the interview. Why had Amanpour behaved in this fashion, asking one party for their feelings and accusing the other of having none? Well, among other things, Amanpour recently married U.S. State Department employee James Rubin.
I know what it fells like to be persecuted for your race. I have seen the difference in the looks I get when I am a clean-shaven Hindu boy, and how soldiers train their guns when I grow a beard and fit a “terrorist” profile. I got the same looks from Israeli soldiers at the Lebanese border this year. Empathy – the ability to understand how it feels to be in someone else’s shoes. Ignorant bastards of bigoted philosophies have none.
So why did those damn Palestinians start chucking stones anyway? Because a Jew by the name of Ariel Sharon visited their neighborhood. You may not know who Sharon is, but the Palestinians can not forget him. He was the Israeli leader who laid a siege of Beirut and allowed a Christian militia, armed and funded by Israeli, to enter Palestinian camps and slaughter unarmed Palestinian men and women and children for two days.
In an editorial in the New York Times the day after the measure was revealed to the world, renowned columnist David Safire wrote:
“An immediate pullback from West Beirut is called for; some unilateral gesture of withdrawing a first contingent of troops back to Israel and waiting for the Syrians to match the move would be wise. Finally it might be seemly to offer to build housing for some newly displaced Palestinians as good as that of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The Lebanon operation, on the whole, was necessary and timely.” (William Safire, “All Hell Breaks Loose,” New York Times, Section A, page 15, column 2, Sept. 20, 1982.)
What the **** was he talking about? Build new housing?
How would Safire feel if I moved tanks into his neighborhood, laid a siege and sent in a militia to do to his family what the Elie Hobieka’s men did to the Palestinians? How would Safire feel if I stood with my army outside his house, declared a curfew for two days, while the militia raped his daughters, shot his sons in the back, took his pregnant wife and repeatedly stabbed her in the abdomen to kill both the baby and the mother? This is what Israel’s militia did to over 2000 Palestinians, while Ariel Sharon twiddled his thumbs for two days.
Would Mr. Safire, having so been robbed of his family, be happy if I built him a new house? Ignorant bastard child of bigoted philosophies!
The same ignorance and bigotry is available wholesale in the American. The most apparent of these currently is how all Palestinian Arabs in American media have magically become Muslim, whereas in reality about 40 percent of all Palestinians, including some rather dashing “terrorists,” are Christian.
Your tax dollars are buying the bullets, guns, tanks, attack helicopters and missiles that Israelis are using against unarmed Palestinians. Yet you do nothing because you don’t know and you don’t care. Those who yell out “peace talks” should think why Madeleine Albright and Ehud Barak are the only people smiling at these “peace” talks. The American government is an ally to the Israelis in their standoff against the Palestinians – the Israelis know this, so do the Palestinians. Why don’t you?
Ten years ago a group of Muslims came to my grandmother’s house in Srinagar, with American guns in their hands and American bombs strapped to their chest. They wanted to know why my people, the Kashmiri Hindus, had done nothing (collaborated) while the Indian government had crushed Muslims in Kashmir for 40 years.
Some day a Palestinian, Christian or Muslim, may come to your house, with or without a bomb, and want to know why you did nothing while your money supported the Israeli apartheid in Palestine. Think about what you will say to him, you ignorant bastards, and have a happy Halloween.
Commentary By ABHINAV AIMA
Special to The Rave
On Oct. 2, I stood with teeth gnashing and fists clenched as I saw a picture of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy and his father, cowering for shelter in Gaza, trying to hide from the shots being fired by Israeli soldiers. A few moments later, bullets tore into the bodies of the young boy and his father, their last moments captured by the camera of a French TV photographer.
Most people in America went about business as usual that day, and probably did not lose much sleep over the incident that night. A few probably exclaimed, “That’s not right!” or “Oh, sweet Jesus!” and then went about their business and has a good night’s sleep. I, as usual, did not get a good night’s sleep, but I did stay awake and think about something British journalist, Robert Fisk, had told me last year in Beirut.
In 1996 Fisk had witnessed an Israeli pilot, flying an American helicopter, fire an American Hellfire missile into a Lebanese Ambulance and kill four children and two women. The next day, The New York Times report buried the incident in its sixth paragraph, and then spent two paragraphs trying to explain that the Israelis had fired on an ambulance carrying a Hizbollah “terrorist.” This was, of course, a lie as there was no Hizbollah guerrilla in the ambulance. This was also a war crime because the Geneva Convention specifically forbids the deliberate targeting of civilian targets, such as hospitals and ambulances, even if these facilities are believed to be harboring the enemy.
“If the things were the other way around,” Fisk asked me, “If, heaven forbid, four Israeli children and two Israeli women had been killed in the bombing of an ambulance, would the New York Times story have treated the story any different?” “Hell yes,” I replied, and immediately realized what I had just admitted. The American journalist who had filed the biased story was racist, the American editor who had allowed the biased story to run was racist – because they sure as hell would have done things differently if the women and children killed had been Jews.
So I wondered if, on Oct. 2, people would have reacted differently, actually given a ****, if the young boy and father, dying of bullet wounds in Gaza, had been Jews. Imagine if you will, a nice, young Jewish boy gasping his last breaths, eyes wide open in fear, dying on your TV screen.
Now, before all you hypocrites get your panties in a bunch and call me anti-Semite, allow me to tell you a bit about myself. I am a Kashmiri Hindu, and nearly all of my community loves and adores the Israeli army, all the more because they advise the Indian army on efficient methods of suppressing (killing) Islamic revolutionaries. Most people in my community don’t like Kashmiri Muslims (terrorists) who used American money and guns to conduct and ethnic cleansing of Kashmir in 1989-90 and drove almost all the Kashmiri Hindus out of the valley. Most of my community are bastard children of the Hindu-Nationalist ideology. I, unfortunately, am cursed with the twin gifts of education and empathy and can not giggle with glee every time I hear of a Muslim killed in Kashmir, just as I can not giggle with glee every time I hear of a Palestinian killed in Israel/West Bank/Gaza.
Many Americans, bastard children of the Capitalist-Democracy ideology, can not understand how the Palestinians could have become so upset over the visit of a Jew in their neighborhood? Did the Palestinians really need to start attacking those nice Jewish soldiers? What’s wrong with these damn Palestinians?
Many bastard children of bigoted ideologies around the world cringe is disgust every time they hear me address the Israeli soldiers as Jewish soldiers. Allow me to open your eyes, to the apartheid state that has existed in Israeli held territories for the last 50 years.
The Israeli army, to the best of my knowledge, does not have any non-Jewish officers. If you are not a Jew in Israel, and worse, if you are an Arab non-Jew, you have very little control over where you can work or live. Freedom of opportunity does not exist, even though Israel is a capitalist democracy. The non-Jewish Arabs (Palestinian Christians and Muslims), who come into Israel to work every day mostly work in menial jobs, even though they are qualified for better jobs, such as engineers or computer technicians.
In the Israeli apartheid, the non-Jews are discriminated against every day, though this discrimination has been toned down in order to address the present culture of political correctness. Arabs in Israel who have been granted Israeli citizenship can vote and even become elected members of the Israeli Parliament. But, as it has become clear in the last few days, while an Israeli soldier will not fire at Jewish women or children, he will fire at Arab women and children, even if they are Israeli citizens. He will also walk into areas of Palestinian authority and fire at Palestinians who are demonstrating in areas controlled by Palestinian authority where, as per commitments on the Oslo, Wye and recent Camp David agreements, Israeli soldiers are not even supposed to be present.
But the question here is not of what Israeli soldiers or Israeli Jews do.
The question is why Americans, and many other bastards of bigoted-ideologies, are happy to live in ignorance and refuse to give a hearing to the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. Most apparent among these high profile bigots recently was journalist Christiane Amanpour who, after the failed round of U.S. brokered peace talks, asked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for his reaction to the Palestinian’s stubborn behavior, and grilled Palestinian President Yesser Arafat on his decision to turn down a generous Israeli offer. Clearly disturbed by this hypocritical line of questioning, Arafat took off his lapel mike and walked off the interview. Why had Amanpour behaved in this fashion, asking one party for their feelings and accusing the other of having none? Well, among other things, Amanpour recently married U.S. State Department employee James Rubin.
I know what it fells like to be persecuted for your race. I have seen the difference in the looks I get when I am a clean-shaven Hindu boy, and how soldiers train their guns when I grow a beard and fit a “terrorist” profile. I got the same looks from Israeli soldiers at the Lebanese border this year. Empathy – the ability to understand how it feels to be in someone else’s shoes. Ignorant bastards of bigoted philosophies have none.
So why did those damn Palestinians start chucking stones anyway? Because a Jew by the name of Ariel Sharon visited their neighborhood. You may not know who Sharon is, but the Palestinians can not forget him. He was the Israeli leader who laid a siege of Beirut and allowed a Christian militia, armed and funded by Israeli, to enter Palestinian camps and slaughter unarmed Palestinian men and women and children for two days.
In an editorial in the New York Times the day after the measure was revealed to the world, renowned columnist David Safire wrote:
“An immediate pullback from West Beirut is called for; some unilateral gesture of withdrawing a first contingent of troops back to Israel and waiting for the Syrians to match the move would be wise. Finally it might be seemly to offer to build housing for some newly displaced Palestinians as good as that of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The Lebanon operation, on the whole, was necessary and timely.” (William Safire, “All Hell Breaks Loose,” New York Times, Section A, page 15, column 2, Sept. 20, 1982.)
What the **** was he talking about? Build new housing?
How would Safire feel if I moved tanks into his neighborhood, laid a siege and sent in a militia to do to his family what the Elie Hobieka’s men did to the Palestinians? How would Safire feel if I stood with my army outside his house, declared a curfew for two days, while the militia raped his daughters, shot his sons in the back, took his pregnant wife and repeatedly stabbed her in the abdomen to kill both the baby and the mother? This is what Israel’s militia did to over 2000 Palestinians, while Ariel Sharon twiddled his thumbs for two days.
Would Mr. Safire, having so been robbed of his family, be happy if I built him a new house? Ignorant bastard child of bigoted philosophies!
The same ignorance and bigotry is available wholesale in the American. The most apparent of these currently is how all Palestinian Arabs in American media have magically become Muslim, whereas in reality about 40 percent of all Palestinians, including some rather dashing “terrorists,” are Christian.
Your tax dollars are buying the bullets, guns, tanks, attack helicopters and missiles that Israelis are using against unarmed Palestinians. Yet you do nothing because you don’t know and you don’t care. Those who yell out “peace talks” should think why Madeleine Albright and Ehud Barak are the only people smiling at these “peace” talks. The American government is an ally to the Israelis in their standoff against the Palestinians – the Israelis know this, so do the Palestinians. Why don’t you?
Ten years ago a group of Muslims came to my grandmother’s house in Srinagar, with American guns in their hands and American bombs strapped to their chest. They wanted to know why my people, the Kashmiri Hindus, had done nothing (collaborated) while the Indian government had crushed Muslims in Kashmir for 40 years.
Some day a Palestinian, Christian or Muslim, may come to your house, with or without a bomb, and want to know why you did nothing while your money supported the Israeli apartheid in Palestine. Think about what you will say to him, you ignorant bastards, and have a happy Halloween.