Opinion Editorials, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Exporting September 11
By Naseer Alomari
Jordan Times, Monday, November 24, 2003
THERE WAS a time after Sept. 11 when the word terrorist meant something really bad. The term has lost its solemnity right after the Israeli government had opportunistically borrowed it and used it to describe any Palestinian child who threw a stone at an Israeli bulldozer that had just illegally demolished his house. For more and more Muslims, the word terrorist, when used by US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, today means a Muslim or Arab who resists the American and Israeli agenda in the region. Bush and Sharon would disapprove of such narrow definition for it excludes the Europeans who believe in equal human rights for the Palestinians.
To a sceptical global audience, Bush's war on terrorism has become a sham. Not only has it failed, it has also planted terrorism in countries like Iraq, where people never experienced suicide attacks, car bombs, or daily senseless death. Indeed, there was violence in Iraq before the American invasion, but there was definitely no terrorism with global reach. Today, Iraq truly threatens the region and the world.
Thanks to Zionists and neoconservatives, Iraq has become a true danger to world peace, second to the state of Israel. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have also entered a new violent stage as a result of Bush's actions in Iraq and his anti-Muslim stances and rhetoric.
In his latest joint press conference with Blair, Bush repeated his trite, logically flawed rhetoric about “ruthless terrorists who hate freedom” to a sceptical world audience and a disgusted Muslim street. Glancing at his unimaginative key word list that was poorly prepared by his staff, Bush emphatically repeated what he has been saying about defeating terrorists since Sept. 11. Stuttering and searching for the words that he had repeated over and over again, he fooled us into thinking that he had something new or thoughtful to say about why more Muslims, Christians and Jews are getting killed since his war on terrorism started.
The smirk he had seemed to overcome returned to him during the press conference, that facial expression which belied his professed sorrowful words for the loss of innocent lives in Turkey and Iraq. Glossing over the bloodshed that he, Blair and “his man of peace”, Sharon, have recently brought to the Middle East, Bush spoke of progress and democracy in the region when every single piece of news coming out of the Middle East speaks of carnage.
Bush would like us to believe that the bloodshed that has claimed the lives of American soldiers, innocent Iraqis, Turks and Saudis is progress. And why does he smirk joyfully despite the bloodshed in the streets of Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Palestine? Is it that for him, Muslims were responsible for Sept. 11 and all Muslims have to pay for it? Guilt by spiritual affinity?
Bush has exported Sept. 11 to the world. That mission is accomplished.
The writer is a Jordanian assistant professor of English education at Ittihad University, UAE. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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