As Gaza prepares for round two, will the Arabs care?

The silence of the Arabs on Gaza, from officialdom and from some people, in fact many, many people, is because they can see only their own individual tragedies, tragedies they place squarely at the feet of 'political Islam' and the violent brutal methods this political military construct uses. 

Some Arab media in fact justify Israel's genocide in Gaza and blame the Palestinians. They blame Hamas for fighting an unequal war; they question why Hamas chose Ramadan to start a fight with Israel. The Arabs are silent because they can't see the forest for the trees. They forget that it was Israel's ludicrous accusation of Hamas that it was behind the kidnapping and killing of the three settler youths that raised tensions to boiling point and prompted an already imprisoned and frustrated population in Gaza to decide to make a push to break the siege once and for all.

Arab populations are no longer a solid mass of support for the Palestinian cause, if they ever where in truth, they question whether their support of Palestinians in this fight would only serve to hand a moral victory to the hated Hamas on a silver platter, which they see as another incarnation of violent Islamist movements. They don't see Palestinian resistance fighting Israeli troops valiantly; they see meddlesome, violent, uncompromising islamists threatening the peace in yet another corner of the Middle East. They don't see Palestinians dying at the hands of a hated occupier that is an extension of European colonialism, they see hapless human shields and they feel sorry for them but they figure they can do little for them, after all the people of Gaza are condemned.

While such a view of the situation is anathema to an Arab nationalists and unwavering enemy of Zionism like myself, I understand it, barely, but I don't have to like it and I don't have to accept it as an unchangeable fact. We are all in this battle together and all we need is to recognize this fact. The enemy knows us well, do we know him? We are the target of a systematic attack to break us into tiny little pieces, into easily contained ethnicities and sects that hate and mistrust one another.

I refuse to accept the theory that suggests the Arab Spring was a natural and spontaneous upheaval in response to brutal dictatorships in some of largest and best-organized and armed Arab States. We have been living with these dictatorships for decades and nothing happened, in fact many of us had been living very well, society was functioning, economic exchange and the day to day mundane activities of a normal country were for the most part unhindered by these dictatorships, then something happened. Yes, something happened, what exactly that was we will be told enthusiastically by analysts in the pay of some political camps and by so-called credible news media, both regional and international, but the truth, the real truth remains well hidden.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but Gaza was a bucket of water in the face of all Arabs, it offered us a unique opportunity to wake up from our Zombie-like state, to break the spell that hate and suspicion for one another had cast over us. We have failed to do so, instead, many of us continue to insist that it is Hamas that is to blame, and secretly or not so secretly, some of us even nurse a secret hope that Israeli troops drag those pesky Islamist fighters by the scruff of their neck and destroy their tunnels and rockets, then peace would reign, a Zionist peace! That is an oxymoron if I ever heard one and those who believe in that peace are simply morons!

We are moved for a few days, a week or two, then the undenaible certainty of the systematic, mechanical murder of Gaza sinks in, like an intravenous drug, a pinprick, then calm washes over us. ‘It’s not our problem, let the Gazans deal with it, let the world powers argue over what makes a truce or ceasefire, we want to go back to ranting over our own issues.’ Yes, Gaza can only capture the Arab public’s attention for so long, anger fills us, we scowl and shout at the TV screen, we cry when we see so many tiny bodies that will never wake again, then frustration sets in, we can do little more than we have, we tell ourselves  and life goes on. Hamas is still the enemy, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, the Islamists in Libya whatever they are called; all of these are our enemy. Israel, is strong, well funded, supported, armed, a Western oasis in the backward Middle East, it’s little wonder so many Arabs envy them and want peace with them!

Palestine, is a memory, a beautiful memory of a simpler time when every Arab knew who their enemy was without reluctance and without question. Israel, however, is still an ugly reality, where everyone knows who their enemy is, where all are resolved to defeat that enemy. Do the Arabs know anything at all that is not regurgitated into their ears by news media whose political agendas should be clear to us all by now?

Now the truce is extended and the Palestinians pick up the pieces, the crumbled concrete and decomposing bodies, which is all that is left. Part two of 'carnage Palestine' is still to come, but will Arab sympathy return, all I see online is dwindling tweets and Facebook posts on the subject and Arab interest and concern seems to wane. Palestine is alone, all alone and the idea of that fills me with fear and dread, I can’t nor do I want to imagine what that feels like. Only God, it seems, can help them now. Allahu Akbar