In response Why hate Americans? [Archives:2002/46/Focus]

BY JUDITH BROWN, UK
[email protected]
I would like to respond to the opinion of Allyn Cee published in Issue 44 of Yemen Times entitled “Responding to: ‘Has U.S. learned a lesson?'”First of all, let me introduce myself. I am a British middle-aged nurse who has no family connections with the Arab world, except that as an aid worker I became a privileged witness to suffering of Arab people.
You inadvertently answer the question “Why do Arabs hate us (Americans)” in your first paragraph when you say that Americans don’t really care why this is so. Unless you see a two-way relationship between America and the Middle East we will not achieve peace for the West or Arabs.
My reply was “Exactly!”
When were the Middle East consulted on who is to rule America or European countries? Whether we like democratically-elected leaders in another country is surely not an issue for us. But the Arab countries still have a right to a democratic process, unhindered by paranoid American and Western policies. If we start to treat Arabs like the intelligent adults that they are rather than treating them as incompetent we will start to get somewhere.
I would like to answer your questions relating to Palestine and Palestinian people. I don’t know whether you have had chance to witness at first hand Israeli occupation. I have, twice, once when I worked in South Lebanon and once in West Bank.
What I saw surprised me greatly because it was not what I expected to see and shocked me to the core; ordinary, innocent Arabs killed, tortured, dispossessed, living in a state of perpetual insecurity as attempts were made by the illegal Israeli occupiers to drive Arabs from their rightful land.
Look at the settlements in West Bank and they tell a story without words. The settlement of Gilo which faces Bethlehem and Beit Jala looks to me to be in perfect condition. The condition of the houses of Arabs facing that settlement are totally bombarded, windows broken, extensively damaged by gunfire from the direction of settlements to the extent that they are totally uninhabitable.
Negotiated for independence
Remember, Palestinian Arabs under occupation tried to negotiate for independence with Israel from 1967 to 1988 with very little violence and were rebuffed by the West and got nowhere. It was in desperation that they began their first Intafada.
They have been rebuffed and misrepresented in their serious participation in the peace process and America has not been an honest broker. The Palestinian response, and some tactics I disagree with totally, follows a long vicious military occupation and it is not unprovoked aggression, and to find a solution we must view the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in that context.
If you want to check that this is so I would be more than willing to take you on a trip to West Bank to see for yourself. You can meet ordinary Arabs who are not fanatics, some of them Christians, some Muslims, who are at their wits end as they are gradually pushed into smaller and smaller areas in the West Bank, deprived of all that is rightfully theirs including their human dignity.
Nobody steps in
Nobody in the world, either Arab nor other country, steps in to stop it happening simply because they are frightened of offending America, Israel’s powerful friend.
You conveniently forget that we supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons including gas when it suited us to do so; the West encouraged him into war with Iran. And incidentally, just a point relating to Kuwait, some believe there’s evidence that April Gillespie the American representative was consulted by Saddam Hussein before he illegally invaded Kuwait and was given a go-ahead. He walked into an American-set trap.
This adds a different dimension into America’s reasons for wanting to attack Iraq now. It also demonstrates how we in the West may at times be mislead by our governments and our media.
You are assuming the war (and I agree it is war) between the Middle East and the West is driven by religious fanaticism. You are wrong. However I think that both Muslims and the West abuse Islam by using it as a reason for the conflict.
The reason is not ideology, but simply because we in the West are trying to grab all that rightfully belongs to Arabs, including their land, water and oil, without considering their human rights, property rights and security rights. You assume that killing by terror tactics somehow is worse or more cowardly than killing by our high tech weapons. You are naive. As an aid worker who has worked in war zones, there is no more or less pleasant way of being killed in conflict – both are dreadful and inexcusable, and in both instances the leaders sit in relative security whilst the ordinary militants/soldiers and civilians are killed.
What I ask is that you look at your own attitudes. Racism against Arabs unfortunately is rife in USA and you are a product of your own culture. What a pity. Arabs are just as nice as other people in the world and you are missing out on their friendship. What did you expect to happen by sending an anti-Arab racist letter to a newspaper an Arab country? Did you expect that they would all read it and say “Now I know where I am going wrong” and then lie down and allow your country to dominate them?
Of course they won’t. You are fuelling the misunderstanding between cultures by making us in the West appear racist and intolerant, whereas many of us (including Americans) are supportive of Arab rights. You are causing us to be essentialized just as you are essentialzing Arabic people. You are causing conflict, not diffusing it.
You are assuming that if Communism had won the Cold War, the world would be a lesser place and thus we have all been “saved” by America. This is conjecture and comes from a distorted world view; we simply don’t know if this would be so, as those in the Communist countries were lead to fear us in the West and vice versa.
You are expressing a fear based on potent imagery which now can not be proved one way or another. What we do know is that we are heading into a very dangerous world now as America confronts the Islamic world and misrepresents the Arab with images of irrationality and aggression in order to try to win the propaganda war.
Let’s hope for peace mad leaders
Let us hope that at some point in the future we will all have leaders who are peace mad. Then maybe we can make progress and start to appreciate each other for what we are and learn from each other how to live our lives better. Learning between cultures is a two way process and not as you assume, a one way street. This is something which I am privileged and grateful to have found out for myself.

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