For the past three decades, Muslims have celebrated the Eid after Ramadan by saying that it is worse than the ones before. Since the world has become a global village with all the latest technological breakthroughs, our pain and sorrow have also increased.

Thanks to this technology, we are able to see on a daily basis the atrocities and barbarisms committed by Israel against our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Not only do we see them, we often see them on our TV channels live as they are happening. In the past, on the other hand, we were not always able to see for ourselves the images of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. We were unable to view the French colonials’ attempts to hold on to Algeria.

We were unable to view the Israeli airstrikes on Egypt that lasted only a few minutes but transformed the Egyptian airforce into rubble. After those strikes, Israel was able to occupy the remaining lands in Palestine and some important parts of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. A decade later, Israel occupied Beirut under the pretext of the Israeli ambassador’s having been assassinated in London. Some years later, the butcher Sharon directed the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla.

Strange as it may seem, Sharon the criminal has returned to power — not as minister of defense this time but as prime minister. The bloodthirsty man gained the highest position in Israel with the support, tacit and otherwise, of Western colonial and Christian forces. Those forces saw a chance to increase the size of Israel as the land where Jesus would be reborn. Just as the Jews use the old tales and legends as the justification for their atrocities in Palestine, so do the Christians use Israel in order to achieve their claims for Jesus and the Promised Land.

The truth is that Sharon has no respect for the West and this is borne out by the contents of a book, ‘Sharon’s Life’, put together by a group of Israelis. In the book is a reprint of an interview Sharon gave to a Paris-based newspaper in which he attacked the West for allowing representative offices of the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He went on to say that he thought Western governments were hypocritical and that was the reason he never took Western politicians seriously.

This is only a single example of Sharon’s opinion of the West and its institutions. In addition, if we speak frankly, Sharon’s ideas and feelings are no different from those of many other countries that welcome and support his policies. The Western world in general and the United States in particular bear a great and terrible responsibility for letting this bloodthirsty animal out of its cage to strut and fret upon the international stage and to commit whatever atrocities he wishes in Palestine.

In the end, however, the White House and No. 10 Downing Street must be held accountable for Sharon’s crimes.