4 - 10 October 2001
Issue No.554
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 - 10 October 2001 Issue No.554 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Israeli terrorism
With a callous savagery unusual even for this military state, Israel is using the 11 September attacks as a pretext to unleash US-made Apache helicopters and F-16 jets on defenceless Palestinian towns and villages.The raids yesterday morning on Jenin and neighbouring Palestinian areas, in which nine Palestinians were killed and scores wounded, are an act of naked aggression it is no exaggeration to call terror. The Israeli occupying forces and the ruthless Israeli settlers -- backed all the way by Israel's unscrupulous political establishment -- are the real terrorists here. They have been killing, brutalising and intimidating the dispossessed Palestinian people for generations in a merciless bid to grab ever more Palestinian land.
In sharp contrast to the Israelis' cynical exploitation of the 11 September attacks, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat mourned America's dead and donated blood in a gesture of empathy for the victims' suffering -- a suffering with which his people are all too familiar. The spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, also condemned the attacks, while offering some historical perspective: "America's racist policies," he noted, "must not be forgotten."
Israeli leaders, on the other hand, saw 11 September as nothing more than a golden opportunity to move ahead with their genocidal agenda in the West Bank and Gaza. Crucial to the Israelis' strategy of annihilating the Palestinians is to first strip them of their humanity: the occupied territories were promptly quarantined off and declared a "hornet's nest" of "extremist Islamic" suicide bombers. A truly inhuman onslaught followed.
The Arab and Muslim worlds, and peace-loving people the world over, are watching developments closely. Israel's atrocities cannot go unnoticed, and the United States cannot continue to stand by as the Palestinians are butchered. For the US to weed out terror, it must first change its image as Israel's prime supporter.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page