| 06 Jan 2009 |
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The Gaza War Through Arab Eyes
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Since the start of the recent clashes on Christmas Eve between Hamas and the Israeli military, spokespeople for the Israeli military have gone on record to stress that this war is not against the Palestinian people, but against what the Israelis call, "terrorists."
Many Palestinians beg to differ. The members of Hamas in charge of Gaza were elected by the people of Gaza in one of the most democratic balloting the Middle East has ever seen. This has been confirmed by international observers. To say that there was no election fraud in Gaza would be stretching the imagination. But then again, in last November's presidential elections in the United States, Mickey Mouse was given a voter card in the state of Florida.
Of course Hamas went ahead and marred their image when they overthrew the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in what amounted to nothing less than a military coup. And a bloody one at that.
Indeed, Israel's war is not with the Palestinian people, but with terrorists who fire rockets at innocent civilians living in the southern part of the country.
But as one reader wrote to ask, why was a seven-month old beautiful baby boy - now lifeless - carried in his father's arms, seen arriving at a Gaza hospital? What acts of terror did the seven-month-old commit?
In the same footage, the baby's grieving father begs for salvation. He says there are at least a dozen family members who are either bleeding to death or have already bled to death in a farming compound and the ambulances can't get there because of the ground invasion.
Of course these are rarely images seen in the West. They don't mix well with breakfast or dinner. But it would benefit the West, especially Americans, to see such images. The reason for that is not to promote anti-Israeli feelings, but rather to help Americans understand "why do they hate us so much?"
The footage seen on Arab satellite networks are very different from the anesthetized versions seen in North America and Western Europe. Truth be told, often the images seen on some Arabic channels are "obscene" in the detail of suffering they show. As the reader from the Middle East said, "these are the images of what is really happening."
Once again the schism between the way the Middle Easterners see the conflict is entirely different from the way the rest of the world sees it. And once again Americans will ask, "Why this hate." The answer can be found on Al-Jazeera.
© Middle East Times 2009
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