US President Bush wants Arab governments to denounce incitement to terrorism.
The demand is deeply insulting. Arab governments have consistently condemned terrorism wherever it occurs. But Arab condemnations are ignored in the West. They are ignored because, that way, Western politicians and the generally hostile media can pretend they never happened. They need that pretence because they are determined to believe the worst of the Arabs.
That is what makes the Bush’s demand so offensive. It is based on the old libel, repeated ad nauseam by the Western media, that Arabs are devious, dishonest and not to be trusted. The underlying suggestion is that Arab governments have till now either supported terrorism, actively or covertly, or done nothing to prevent it.
Bush’s demand is also demonstrably biased. What about Israeli terrorism? Where is the presidential insistence that no one should support Sharon’s terror attacks in the West Bank. The absence is telling.
Much of the Western media constantly searches for any pretext to condemn Arabs, either as individuals — be it with salacious stories of dishonest businessmen or immoral sheikhs — or corporately; mocking and condemning the policies and views of entire states. What other nation receives such abuse? What other nation faces the demand, time after time, to prove its good intentions? No one else, certainly not the Israelis, are so constantly challenged in such an offensive manner. Arab actions are subjected to a scrutiny that is both racist and consciously malevolent. Stories are twisted and distorted.
Thus, when Prince Naif recently endorsed a plan to send three million riyals to 216 Palestinians families who had lost a son in the intifada, some US newspapers tried to libel it as support for terrorism.
The bias is self-evident. In the US itself, people have also been raising funds for the Palestinians and expressing outrage at the blitzkrieg against them. It is happening, too, across the EU. Indeed, EU officials have even gone as far as to mention the “S” word: support for sanctions against Israel is growing. But no one in the Western media is so bold as to suggest that the EU and those American and European fundraisers support terrorism. Only Arabs are condemned.
Doubtless, there will be more of it after yesterday’s Telethon in aid of the Palestinians suffering under Israeli oppression and similar appeals in other GCC states. Because of our gifts to Palestinian orphanages, hospitals and clinics, we will be accused of aiding and abetting terrorism by those who believe that Israel alone has the right to exist.
If support for terrorism means standing shoulder to shoulder with a people oppressed, beaten and murdered, a people who want only the right to be free and decide their own future, then we plead guilty — and are proud of such guilt. Yes, we want to help strengthen the Palestinians to resist their oppressors.
We are only amazed that the West, which sets such great store on liberty, does not stand solidly alongside us in this just cause.
