JEDDAH, 27 March 2004 — Let us ignore the sheer barbarity of the act. My question is: Doesn’t Israel feel embarrassed that it needed to mobilize its army to go after an old quadriplegic man?
We will one day thank the fates that brought Ariel Sharon at the helm of affairs in Israel. History books are sure to mention that the beginning of the independence of the Palestinian people started under his bloody reign. It is people like Sharon who eventually lead their nations to destruction.
The martyrdom of Sheikh Yassin has surely pushed the Arabs to a new phase in their history, and I hope they will be able to use it well. Let us hope they will not let his death, like so many others before, be just that and nothing more.
If the Israelis are to blame for the physical death of Sheikh Yassin, it is the Arabs who should bear the moral responsibility for what happened in Gaza last Monday. It is normal to expect the worst from your enemy, but it is always disappointing and painful to watch your friends let you down.
It is Arab weakness and cowardliness which encourage Israel to ignore all international laws and all rules of engagement. For decades we have been giving in, refusing to stand up for our rights, backing down at every obstacle we meet, then signing humiliating so-called peace treaties. We have watched the genocide of the Palestinians with at best emotional empathy and at worst indifference. All this has resulted in the degradation of Arab life whereby Israelis can kill man, woman and child, destroy their homes, build walls and imprison them in modern-day concentration camps and finally kill a venerated leader with utter impunity.
There will always be tyrants and oppression but they can only flourish to the extent they find a fertile ground of servility. So don’t blame the Israelis, they are only obeying their nature, the nature of colonialists who steal peoples’ lands. Blame yourselves for not protecting your rights, for giving in to your enemy’s dictates and giving up. Please stop shouting your condemnations and going out in the streets burning flags every time Israel commits an atrocity. By now you should have realized that the enemy will only listen to action, and the world will only care for our pain if it too feels hurt. If you cannot get results out of the UN and other world bodies you might as well get out of them — believe me, no one will notice you leaving. But use your economic and political pressure and God knows you have many to get the world to listen to you. Else shut up and accept the fate you have written for yourselves.
Sheikh Yassin is the latest and, sadly, not the last attack on Arab honor and dignity. May his death lead to the birth of a resistance in the Arab world and a rediscovery of their self-respect.
Very often I wonder at the depth to which the Arabs are willing to sink in order to avoid asking for their rights. Have we finally hit rock bottom or is our capacity for sustaining humiliation boundless?
May Allah bless Sheikh Yassin. He lived and died an honorable man.
— Reem Al-Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.
