Like most peace-loving, pro-life individuals around the world, I watched with tearful eyes, a heavy heart and a sense of helpfulness the horrific, scary images from the Beit Hanoun massacre: Crushed babies, mutilated bodies of men, women and children, faces covered with blood, limbs and bones scattered all over the place and endless rows of coffins ready for burial.
With the alarmed, angry majority in the Arab and Muslim world, I heard the loud screams of orphaned children, the heart-rendering sighs of wounded victims, the sad wails of bereaved mothers, the loud cries of newly widowed men and women and the familiar calls for help, which always fall on deaf ears.
It is scandalous that the 59-year-old Palestinian tragedy has not yet touched the hearts of the men and women, who possess the political influence, the might and the power to put an end to it. It is shameful that a magic wand has always been used to stop the international community from finding a fair and just solution to the chronic Palestinian-Israeli problem.
One wonders how long the international community will maintain its silence in the face of horrendous crimes committed against humanity. How long will the Palestinian people remain trapped in an inhumane, difficult, hazardous situation and left to face death, to wallow in their blood before the strong, helping hand of the international community is extended to them?
Will there ever be an end to the Arab wait for Godot, namely a fair solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem, a viable state for the Palestinian people and peace, security and stability in the Middles East?
The systematic killing and imprisonment of Palestinian men, women and children has nipped the peace process in the bud and reinforced and raised very high the psychological wall that separates Arabs and Muslims from Israelis and Jews. The injustice against the Palestinian people breeds fury in Arab and Muslim hearts, promotes anger in the Arab and Muslim streets and fuels hatred for those who shield killers from punishment, applaud injustice and condone the slaughter of innocent civilians.
Anyone with a conscience, a degree of intelligence and commonsense would not accept that the Beit Hanoun massacre is the result of “a technical failure”. Anyone with a functioning memory will immediately see that Beit Hanoun is one in a series of horrendous massacres in which thousands of innocent Palestinians have perished — Dar Yassen, Tal Jaffar, Sabra and Shatila, to name but a few.
We wonder how the international community would have reacted had a Palestinian, an Iranian or a Sudanese committed a massacre on the same scale as Beit Hnoun and non-Arabs and non-Muslims had been killed? Would the international community have accepted that the crime was the result of a “technical failure”?
Would a veto power have been used to abort a resolution that condemns the crime and its perpetrator? Would not hatemongers and professional troublemakers have used the massacre to fan the flame of Islamophobia? Would not the most sophisticated war machinery have been swiftly deployed in densely populated areas to indiscriminately wound, maim and kill the largest number of innocent men, women and children, demolish their homes, burn their orchards and destroy their livelihood?
In literature we talk of the Theater of the Absurd, while in reality we live in an absurd world, where crazy ideas blossom, strange events take place, the unacceptable is accepted, our Palestinian and Iraqi brothers, sisters and their children and grandchildren are slaughtered like sheep by sophisticated weapons manufactures away from home.
In our absurd world voices that condemn crimes against Arab and Muslim civilians are silenced or crushed, men and women who express disapproval of the ugly “facts on the ground” face punishment, exclusion, discrimination, demotion, loss of jobs or social status, men and women who fight illegal occupations are called “terrorists”, killed or arrested, imprisoned and tortured.
In our absurd world calls to punish the Sudanese government for the humanitarian crisis in Darfur are trumpeted hard and loud, while a reasonable demand for an international investigation into the horrendous massacre in Beit Hanoun is denied.
In our absurd world democracy destroys souls, cities and infrastructure when it is on the march, soldiers who slaughter children, babies, men and women in cold blood are praised and decorated, generals who commit fatal mistakes receive undeserved accolade, attempts to create a “New Middle East” give rise to a mess hard to clear, a chaos hard to end, a quagmire that grows deeper by the day and a mounting death rate that has memorably been called “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
Our absurd world is a theater, where bizarre ideologies are proudly displayed, horrendous acts of horror are played and replayed, stones and primitive missiles are equated with apache planes and cluster bombs, collateral punishment, bombardment of cities, killings of innocent Arab and Muslim civilians in homes, in cars, on the street are called “acts of self-defense”, the slaughter of Iraqis celebrating weddings and Palestinians celebrating the first day of a school vacation on the beach are blamed on “technical failures”.
In our absurd world the imprisonment of thousands of women and children goes unnoticed, while the capture of one soldier is used as a pretext to invade a neighboring sovereign state, kill thousands of its citizens and smash its infrastructure.
The Arab and Muslim silent majority is sick to its stomach watching the bloody, horrific images from Beit Hanoun, from Gaza, from Lebanon and from Iraq. Every honest, conscientious, sensitive or God-fearing person in Africa, Asia, Europe, South and North America must be shocked at the problems that so-called “democracies” have created in the Middle East and saddened at the severe pain and misery they have inflicted on innocent people.
Had John Osborne, Samuel Becket and Eugene Ionesco not left our absurd world in the previous century, the Beit Hanoun massacre and the sad facts on the ground would have inspired them to produce great masterpieces that would have enriched world literature. “Stuff Happens” would have surely been the title of one of their plays.
