When I was young in Beirut, a ‘Zionist conspiracy' stood behind every international calamity or Arab failure. Zionism was the scapegoat for every sin and mistake. As I bade farewell to my teenage years, I discovered that the world is full of conspirators. For a period of time, I – along with an American colleague at the Daily Star – focused on the Bilderberg Club, or Group, which was founded in 1954 and was initially headed by Prince Bernhard. To this day, the Bilderberg Club continues to hold annual meetings for people of influence in the fields of politics, banking, business, the military and media. However, the group does not issue any information regarding the deliberations that take place in it, prompting many to consider the club a conspiracy by financial and political mafias to rule the world. Conspiracy theories, then, have been haunting me since those days. I found out that causes behind them differ from case to case, while all converging when it comes to explaining a given event through the logic of conspiracy theories. Many Arabs and Muslims today still believe that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were a Zionist conspiracy. They continue to hold this position even when al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the attacks in New York and Washington. Similarly, other Arabs and Muslims claim today that the bombing outside of the church in Alexandria is another Zionist conspiracy carried out by Mossad, as I read in several comments and news items that I received without requesting them. Such a phenomenon involves naivety and even brainwashing. However, the most important reason behind it is that Arabs or Muslims, who choose to refute accusations against their people, do not want to believe that Arabs or Muslims like them are capable of committing such heinous terrorist crimes. Between 2001 and 2010, the same ‘Zionist conspiracy' was behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Lebanon in 2005, and the reason was to attempt to exclude parties, because if they are proven guilty, then this would lead to a political catastrophe or a return to the civil war. (The conspiracy has since become a Zionist-American conspiracy given the depth of the relationship between the two sides.) My only comment on the ever-present Zionist conspiracy is “I Wish it were so”. If Israel had indeed perpetrated the terrorist attacks of 2001, murdered Hariri in 2005, or carried out the bombing in Alexandria, Israel would have paid a steep price that would benefit us as much as Israel benefited from the crimes perpetrated by terrorists who sprouted in our midst. I also found out that there is something in common to our interpretations of deplorable events by means of a Zionist conspiracy. Israel is a state of occupation, murder and destruction. Its successive governments are criminal and fascistic, and subsequently, they ‘fit the profile'. A tall handsome athletic man would fit in any clothes and any clothes would suit him. Similarly, Israel fits the profile for all crime, as it perpetrates them on a daily basis. Its mere establishment on Palestinian land is a crime, and so are the ongoing occupation, settlement, demolition of people's homes, and killing women and children among other crimes. Israel lives at the expense of the United States and has almost undermined all American interests around the world. Israel spies on the U.S., and hardly a year goes by without news about spies working for Israel, some including Likudnik Jewish Americans who are in the end only loyal to Israel. A few days ago, I was reading about Israeli spies who contacted Arab and Muslim Americans claiming to be intelligence or FBI agents. The spies asked them to snoop on their Arab and Muslim neighbors. While some of those who were contacted refused their request, others were suspicious and reported the matter to the American police and an inquiry was opened. More to the point, Mossad assassinates people in Arab countries, Africa, Europe and any place it can reach. It forges passports belonging to countries that are supposed to be Israel's allies. Since the U.S. Congress supports Israel so staunchly that it borders on betraying U.S. interests, successive Israeli governments have never stopped committing crimes against Palestinians, all neighbors, and around the world. Today, Israel is the only remaining neo-Nazi state in the world, the only apartheid and the successor of the former regime in South Africa. Israel is also the state that holds the biggest record when it comes to condemnations issued by the United Nations and its committees, which means that the whole world shares my opinion on Israel. It follows from the above that it is easy to accuse Israel of any crime committed around the world, because Israel's record shows that it has committed similar crimes. Of course, this logic is evasive. I condemn the Arabs and Muslims who use the Zionist conspiracy to deny their responsibility for the terrorism perpetrated by the deviant group amongst them, and their negligence, failure, weakness and worthlessness to themselves and to other people. Israel is indeed very malevolent, but we are not exactly a bouquet of roses either. [email protected]
