The View from Saudi Arabia: Aiding and Abetting a Holocaust

Middle East Online, January 11, 2009 - Cambridge Dictionary defines holocaust as “a very large amount of destruction, especially by fire or heat, or the killing of very large numbers of people” a situation that is currently in full force against Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians are being killed like insects not because of Hamas or because of Qaseem rockets or hand-thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews in the past were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians today are killed for being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even genetic title to that land.

What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be endlessly hunted and treated like animals? To have their homes demolished, their ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned, and denied in every inhumane way? Israel should face charges for War Crimes...

If Americans do wonder why the rest of the world detests US foreign policy and is accused as an implicit partner in this holocaust, then they should not look any further than the recent headlines: ‘US rejects Arab bloc’s ceasefire proposal.’ The US had objected to the proposal, which demanded an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip”, the lifting of Israel’s border blockade and the establishment of an international force to monitor the truce. Ever wonder the motive?

While the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, publicly condemned the Israeli attacks that had caused the deaths of four UNRWA workers, together with shelling a UN-run school that killed 40 people including many children earlier last week, and there are mass demonstrations in all parts of the world including Israel against this mass slaughter, US President Bush okayed the green light to the Israelis to invade Gaza with tanks and artillery.

In his weekly radio address, Bush held Hamas responsible for the latest violence, and proclaimed that 'no peace deal would be acceptable without tougher action to prevent Hamas and other groups from receiving weapons'. Why? So that they could be sitting ducks? No mention of the carnage of civilians was brought up. And sure enough, barely hours after he spoke, on January 3, US supplied Israeli tanks rolled into the Gaza Strip.A human being with no remorse and a perverted demolisher, he must have analyzed the vast wreckage around him at the end of his presidency strewn with colossal foreign policy failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and decided to go out in full fanfare – this time in Gaza.

Several years ago, he lied to the world about weapons of mass destruction to gather support for his illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. A few days ago, Israel employed a barely more credible excuse, the rockets as justification for its own barbaric shock and awe in Gaza. While millions of Americans face home foreclosures, health care uncertainties, job and pension losses, none of these crises currently threaten the flow of their tax dollars to Israel’s war machine. It is their money that buys F-16 jets made by Lockheed Martin to drop bombs on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, the world is wondering where the spirit of America has evaporated so quickly to, the very spirit that brought the first black President to the White House recently? Why the silence and subjugation to a government that falls nothing short of aiding and abetting a holocaust?

Tariq A. Al-Maeenab is a Saudi socio/political commentator living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.