Thursday, September 11, 2008

Where Is The Rage?


A Great Piece

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan
Palestine Chronicle

"Where is the rage? Where is the Arab chivalry (nakhwa)? Where is the Islamic passion (Rahmah)? Where are the Arab human rights organizations? Where are Abu Mazin and the rest of the Palestinian leadership? The UN refugee agency says there are about 2,500 Palestinians mostly widows and orphans, victims of the violence in Iraq, languishing for the past two years under canvas tents in the Iraqi desert at the Syrian border. These refugee camps lack basic services or medical facilities and the temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in summer and dips below zero degrees in winter. Syria and Jordan have accepted more than two million refugees from Iraq but they have denied entry for Palestinian refugees who have been trying to escape the attacks and persecution in Iraq. There is no room for these most vulnerable Palestinians in the Arab countries that stretch from the Atlantic Ocean in the west along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Persia in the east, and the Arabian Peninsula. What would happen if these refugees were Jews or French or Japanese?.....

Arabs lost their souls and conscience when they accept torturing innocent widows and orphans in the desert just because they are Palestinian refugees. No wonder Arab world justice systems have been universally identified with torture and human rights abuse. The most frightful threat to a prisoner in the US custody, even in the infamous American Guantanamo Base, has been to send him back to an Arab country for investigation.

Just a week ago, Abu Mazin assured the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon that they would be “among those who will return to their soil [in Israel]” a rhetoric they had been hearing for the last sixty years. He also expressed satisfaction with their conditions in Lebanon even with “ninety-five different kinds of jobs which Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are forbidden by law to undertake”.

Abu Mazin and all Arab leaders have no credibility when they talk about Palestine as long as orphans and widows are languishing in the Iraqi desert and the children of Gaza go to bed hungry and without a future to look forward to. "

No comments: