They Cannot Become Pure Americans

When I read the press campaigns waged by Neoconservatives and other American Likudniks against Islam and Muslims, I find a mixture of shamelessness and lies that can only be handled by these kinds of extremists. Yet I read everything I can get my hands on, and I find them attacking everyone, or whoever does not raise the white flag and surrender to Israel. I have even read articles from their campaigns in Time magazine, Newsweek and The Guardian on issues in which they do not commit to Israel or attack Muslims (and I have kept them all). I cannot but give examples, among them the Jewish Studies program at the University of California (UCLA), which invited a lecturer from the University of London, Professor Gilbert Achcar, who said that the holocaust had been a horrific event and criticized Haj Amin Al-Husseini’s collaboration with Hitler, but also said that the persecution and expulsion of Jews from the Arab World after Israel was established were limited, and denied Israel’s right to be established on the lands of Palestinians. Such comments made a Likudnik website attack the Jewish Studies program, as well as the lecturer, considering the Jewish program to be part of the problem. What problem? Zionist groups incited Arab Jews to leave their countries. In Iraq, the Zionists were of such a criminal nature that they organized attacks against Jewish centers in order to frighten the Jews and drive them to immigrate to Israel, that biblical fiction. The same website attacks the idea that there exists a “model Muslim American” and considers it to be deception, as Muslims cannot be good Americans. It then moves from this to attack an American television production company, as well as the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which is sober and objective to the point of being boring, for broadcasting a show about American Muslims. Of course, definitely, absolutely and certainly, American Muslim can be good Americans, like moderate Jews who demand peace. Indeed, American Likudniks pledge their loyalty first and foremost to an occupying fascist state, which I once against insist has no right to exist on Palestinian soil. A recent headline in one Neoconservative newspaper was “Radical Islam in the heart of Europe”. Its Likudnik writer speaks of a Serbian terrorist who fired gunshots at the US Embassy in Sarajevo, reaching from this the conclusion that the issue is one of “Wahhabis unsheathe[ing] terror[ism] in [a] campaign to impose Shariah”. Terrorism, even if it comes from Muslims, is caused by Israel and by the Zionist terrorism that started all other brands of terrorism. And had it not been for the existence of such a crime, the countering brand of terrorism would not have arisen, as most of it was originally a national liberation movement against occupation. And then there is the fact that the article does not ask why US Embassies around the world have become fortified citadels, and why a Muslim would fire gunshots at the US Embassy in any given capital. The reason is Israel and its control of US foreign policy, making the United States appear in every opinion poll as the country most hated around the world, and this applies to Europe before it does to our own Arab countries. The incident in Bosnia was also the topic of another campaign, in an article entitled “the Truth about Islam”, which I found to be a complete pack of lies. Likewise for another article, entitled “Facing the Truth about Islam”, with the similarity between their titles meaning that both of these vile authors draw from the same foul spring. They are “presumptuous” in that they hold interviews with one another in support of their own opinions, while those who ask and those who answer are both accused and condemned. Thus I read an interview that says that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the American Republican Party, a bastion of Israel supporters, who still support every war against Arabs and Muslims; or another with the title “How Civilizations Die”; and I find a Likudnik website holding an interview with the Likudnik author of a book entitled “How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)”. There is enough material for an encyclopedia, not a mere book, about their campaigns against Muslim individuals such as Haj Amin Al-Husseini, a man too honorable to be compared to Israel’s criminals, and freed prisoner Wafa Al-Biss, from whom the Israelis robbed her youth and her country, and whose family they killed, while objecting to the fact that she would be ready to carry out a suicide mission. Like her are women such as freed militant Ahlam Al-Tamimi, and Jumanah Imad Al-Bahri, the college student from California who refused to denounce suicide bombing, becoming the target of articles and television shows. And then there is the beautiful Rima Fakih, who held the Miss USA beauty pageant title for the year 2010, a young woman of Lebanese descent who so enraged the racists that they considered her to be “Miss Hezbollah” and targeted her on their internet websites, making Likudnik warmonger Daniel Pipes voice “doubts” over the background of her selection. Indeed, because there are many Arab beauties who have won titles in local beauty pageants in the US, there must certainly be a “conspiracy”. Of course, there is no conspiracy. And even if there turns out to be one, it would certainly not be of the magnitude of the conspiracy carried out against Iraq and its inhabitants, and the killing of a million Arabs and Muslims. Barack Obama may forget and forgive, but we do not forget and we will not forgive. khazen@alhayat.com