Opinion Editorials, December 2015

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Khalid Amayreh

The West is engaging in a futile war of attrition against radical Islamists who occasionally perpetrate manifestly criminal acts contradicting the basic principles of Islam.
 
Some of these groups cite legitimate grievances that make honest observers wonder if the West, including France, really occupies the moral high-ground.
 
However, without delving deep into the subject, I would like to make a few suggestions which I hope will contribute to defeating and hopefully eradicating terror from the face of earth:
 
1-    The existence of Israel is the mother of all crimes against humanity. It is the scandal of all scandals. The West is first and foremost responsible for the creation and persistence of this huge crime. France, the purported land of liberty, gave Israel a nuclear reactor in the mid-1950s, enabling the criminal state to impose its hegemony over the entire region. Needless to say, the adage "let bygones be bygones" doesn't apply to the Palestinian problem because the crime is as relevant today as it was when Israel was misbegotten by the West 67 years ago. Hence, if the West is truly serious about eradicating terror, it will have to undo that colossal crime.
 
2-    In the last century alone, the West murdered more than 100,000,000 people, many of them Muslims. The West, therefore, must come to terms with its crimes and sins. Claiming innocence, let alone civility, is therefore a prima fascia mendacity that honest people won't digest. So, the West is in no position to lecture the rest of the world on terror.
 
3-    The West must stop embracing, backing and propping up manifestly criminal and terrorist regimes in the Middle East such as those of Bashar el-Assad and Abdul Fattah al-Sissi. The West itself keeps repeating rather ad nauseam that it stands for human rights and civil liberties as well as democracy, whereas we all know that embracing tyrants and mass murderers contradict all pretensions about democracy and human rights. So if you are serious about defeating terror, try first to defeat your own morbid propensity to side with evil leaders and evil regimes that murder and torment their people.
 
4-    You have to disavow your ignominious record toward Islam and Muslims, which is based on ignorance, fear, hatred and fanaticism. Muslims are not your enemies. Their quest for freedom, dignity, independence and prosperity doesn't make them your enemy. Muslims are very much like you. Their concerns and preoccupations are very much like yours. Yes, there are tiny groups that behave in a sinister manner, but the vast majority of Muslims are normal people. So if you are serious about defeating terror, don't alienate the vast majority of Muslims who are moderate.
 
5-    Don't blame Islam for the excesses of terrorists who have a Muslim background. You have to learn to distinguish between what Islam says and what some of its followers do. You see, we Muslims don't blame or incriminate Christianity for the wars of aggression carried out by western nations against Muslims. Nor do we ridicule or insult Jesus for the crimes of western nations against Muslims. So why do you blame Islam for the actions of ISIS and ridicule and insult our Prophet? Indeed, if you are serious about defeating terror, don't ridicule or insult our religious symbols.
 
6-    Don't murder the innocent under the pretext of fighting terror. We have seen thousands; even hundreds of thousands of Muslims perish as a result of your criminal wars and sanctions against Muslim countries. In the 1990s, the American-led sanctions against Iraq killed as many as half a million Iraqi children, that is more children than those who were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined during WWII. And when Madeline Albright was asked to comment on the genocide, she said rather tersely, it is worth it. So, if you are serious about fighting terror, please don't kill our children. When you murder our children even as revenge for the loss of yours, you stand on an equal footing with Da'esh, pure and simple.
 
7-    Don't protect corrupt criminals who steal and smuggle their people's wealth. That helps impoverish the people and leads to a lot of indignation against you.
 
8-    Finally, terror is almost always the effect of a greater terror, regardless of the appellation. So if you are serious about fighting terror, search for the root cause.
 
9-    There is no such a thing as "Children of a lesser God." So remember always that, others, including Muslims, are entitled to the same rights and liberties which you take for granted.
 
10- I know the victims of recent Paris bombings were innocent. I pray for the speedy recovery of the injured. However, you are not more innocent than the Muslim civilians, who are in the hundreds of thousands, who have been murdered and maimed by regimes supported or tolerated by your countries. At the very least, they didn't choose their regimes, but you did choose yours.
 

Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist and political commentator living in the West Bank.

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