Recently, Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote an article for Tikkun magazine stating that Israel has crossed a moral boundary in its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. While I thank him for his thoughts on the plight of Christian and Muslim Arabs, I have news for Rabbi Lerner and his friends: Israel crossed the “moral boundary” decades ago when it started its plans for the dispossession, slaughter and terrorism upon the Palestinians.
It is disgusting to me that Israel can get away with mass slaughter and all our Western “leaders” can ask for is “restraint” from Israel.
It is horrifying that whenever Israel threatens to “get even more harsh,” all our Western “leaders” can do is tell the Palestinians that they must do more.
I am not sure what standards of morality our fellow Americans use but I am left speechless when they support Israel so blindly and absolutely. I can only think that such people must hate Arabs, Muslims and Islam with such absolute venom that any measure taken against us can only be applauded. How can people spout “Freedom” or “Democracy” or “Judeo-Christian values” or “Our American way of life” and yet be so inhuman and un-Christian in their attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims?
What the United States and the European powers should be doing is forcing Israel to stop and to stop now. Unfortunately, such an action was only undertaken once and that was during the 1956 Suez Crisis by President Eisenhower.
What the “Civilized, Judeo-Christian” world should be doing is to freeze all money transfers to Israel and use all financial aid pledges to Israel to rebuild Lebanon and Gaza. While this would be a truly great act, don’t hold your breath. The “leaders” of great “democracies” are too cowardly to be moral.
Sadly, I have also prayed in vain for a change among Muslims so that we can all gather together to take our fates in our own hands – to gather the political strength to force a change of attitude toward us in our new countries.
I grieve that once more Muslims will sit it out and watch the slaughter of Muslims and Arabs (many are Christians) and only grumble among ourselves.
I fear there may be some idiotic Muslim who will decide to take matters into his own hand and perpetrate some terrible act on people whose only guilt is inaction (just like the Muslims themselves). This will only fuel more fire against us.
The tragic fact is that our own cowardice and our own apathy is the cause of Israel’s bare-faced behavior and the support it by Western nations.
As Muslims, it is indeed only our fault.
Jeff Siddiqui of Lynnwood is a member of American Muslims of Puget Sound.
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