Who are the real terrorists?
When the word "terrorists" is heard, most people in the west think of relatively the same thing. Long-bearded men with long dresses called "thawb" that dangle to just above the ankle, or veiled women with nothing visible to the public but their eyes –if they were shown at all, or young men and children dressed in t-shirts and blue jeans, their face and head wrapped with a checkered red and white "shmaagh," throwing rocks. This is the typical image formed when "terrorists" are mentioned. Am I surprised? Hardly. Can I blame them? Only partially. The reason that I can't completely blame them is because what they see, they believe, and this is what the media is feeding them. Why I can blame them partially, however, is for believing the media submissively without further investigation. Not only has the media made us believe their distortions of reality as if they were concrete facts, TV has also made us insensitive to what we see. Maybe this insensitivity is the reason why most people couldn't care less about what is going on with the people on the other side of the world; especially those whom they consider "terrorists." In fact, these alleged terrorists are victims of terror. To see this, we must probe beyond the US and allies' double standard's of "terrorism," and the media's biased attempt for cover-up.
"It is fashionable to denounce Palestinians for encouraging their children to confront the Israeli army. Yet, as one Israeli commentor has pointed out, the Jewish 14-year-old who destroyed a Syrian tank in 1948 is still venerated as a hero," says Gabor Mate, a Jewish writer in the Globe and Mail (1/11/2000). These young rock-throwers are called "terrorists," yet the reasons behind them throwing these rocks in the first place are completely ignored. The Jews in Palestine have caused genocide of the Palestinian people, yet the world stands and watches with folded arms –if they are not approving and supporting them, that is! Not a single Western country has condemned Israel for its disproportionate use of force against civilians. Using helicopters and tanks against unarmed civilians breaks all international laws and customs yet not a single Western country has criticized Israel for using these means against the Muslims. The US abstained from a UN Security Council resolution convicting Israel indirectly for its actions against the Muslims of Palestine!
The media has done more than its share of distorting the reality of the situation to the general public. They use terms like "fighting," "violence," and "clashes," whereas these are terms used between two adversaries that have some comparable strength against each other. What is happening in Palestine is the extermination of Muslims. They also report that a number of Palestinians "died," whereas a number of Zionists were "killed." Over a hundred young, healthy Palestinians don't just suddenly "die" as they are walking down the streets: the term is used so as not to implicate that the Israeli's are murderers. Not only that, but they talk about "violence that has killed over 100 people," giving the impression that equal numbers of Zionists and Muslims have been killed. They fail to mention that over 95% of them are Palestinian's and it's not "violence" that killed them: it is armed Israeli soldiers that have murdered them! Palestinians are being killed by the dozens and they are just mentioned as a statistic, yet when one Jew is killed, it becomes headline news. When two Israeli soldiers where killed by a group of Palestinians for coming into "Arab territory," it made first page news. Even Clinton condemned it in a statement. It was called "cold blooded murder." Again, the double standard surfaces.
It is well known that the West condemns and looks down upon crimes done against children by adults. As an example, the whole of Britain wept at the massacre of the sixteen school children in Dunblane by Thomas Hamilton in 1996. They shed tears at the murder of 8-year-old Sarah Payne a year ago. Yet this same public remains silent at the continued massacre of Palestinian children by armed, trained, Israeli adult soldiers. Does the fact that the Jews suffered during the Holocaust permit them, under international law,
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