What is the reason for the rage shown by Muslims? They were angry before the anti-Islam film insulting their Prophet, and they will remain angry tomorrow. So what is the reason behind this? Before I give an answer, I want to say that the New Yorker is my favorite American magazine. While Time and Newsweek are important professional publications, I often find in the New Yorker what I seek, and I usually rely on their list of upcoming and current plays to choose what I want to go see. The magazine also runs investigative reports, including by prominent writers of whom Seymour Hersh is my favorite. In addition, there is the editorial in the beginning of each issue, which is a commentary or an op-ed that is more often than not more objective than what I read in other liberal American publications. In the latest issue of the New Yorker, the opening editorial was entitled ‘Days of Rage', written by Steve Coll, who addressed the causes of the ongoing violent protests in the Muslim worlds against the West as a whole, but particularly against the United States. Coll made a reference to historian Bernard Lewis, and to his claim that Muslim rage is the result of the rejection of Western civilization, or as George W. Bush put it, because “they hate our freedoms". But Bush is a fool and he must have no doubt been told what to say, rather than coming up with it personally. As for Bernard Lewis, well, I personally consider him to be a revisionist historian akin to David Irving, [the Holocaust denier]. Lewis has a deep knowledge of Islam and the Muslims, but he uses this to reach conclusions that befit his pro-Israel leanings. Similarly, Irving knows a lot about Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and the Jews, and uses this knowledge to deny that 6 million Jews had perished in Nazi gas chambers. Both men are liars. The New Yorker article mentioned the Salafis and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed in an unforgivable crime, and the Islamists in both Egypt and Libya. The article tackled the issue of the iron fist and the cruelty seen on the streets in Syria and Bahrain. But I say that there is no comparison whatsoever between Syria and Bahrain. In the first, there is a popular uprising, while in the second, there is a coup attempt led by a group whose allegiance is to Iran and its leaders, and which is seeking to establish a Shiite regime on the basis of clerical rule. Furthermore, tens of thousands of people have been killed in Syria, while only a handful people have been killed in Bahrain. In the end, Steve Coll did not espouse any particular opinion, and sought instead to be objective. I read the editorial twice: The first time to see whether Israel was mentioned, and the second just to get a better grasp of its ideas. I found that Israel was only mentioned once in the article, in reference to the summer 2006 war with Hezbollah. But I dare say that Israel is the first and foremost reason for Muslim anger, or hatred, to use Bernard Lewis's words. Let's just say Israel is the first 20 reasons for Muslim anger. In truth, I can corroborate this view from what I have personally witnessed over the decades. The Suez Campaign in 1956, as they call it in the West, or the Tripartite Aggression, as we call it, when Britain, France and Israel jointly attacked Egypt, ended with the aggressors defeated. The popularity of Gamal Abdul-Nasser rose dramatically in the Arab world as a result, but so did that of the United States, as then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower had opposed the attack publicly. Then in 1958, a military coup took place in Iraq, and Egypt supported the coup (before breaking away with it later.) The United States sent the Sixth Fleet to Lebanon, where I saw the landing as a teenager, from south of the airport all the way to the shores of Choueifat. Yet no one objected, and within a few hours, I saw red wooden boxes with pegs and the words Coca-Cola imprinted on them, containing the famous beverages over ice blocks, with vendors selling coke and buying cigarettes from the young marines. Back then, the United States was providing aid to newly independent states though the Point Four Program. But today, all of its aid goes to Israel, more or less. The United States used to be a country of freedoms that supported colonized peoples. Relations then continued to be friendly with Arabs and Muslims until 1967 and the Six Day War, when bias to Israel began with then-President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson had a Jewish mistress named Mathilde Krim, who sometimes stayed at the White House with the knowledge of her husband, who if I recall correctly was a film producer, and also the knowledge of Lady Bird, Johnson's wife. The bias for Israel increased gradually, in parallel with anger and hatred on the other side, until the United States became fully committed to Israel, the occupation state that habitually murders women and children, and desecrates the Haram al-Sharif, [Islam's third holiest site]. There are many reasons for the rage, and the deterioration in the relations between the United States in particular and the Arabs and Muslims. But Israel remains the most important of these reasons; so much so that all other considerations are unimportant in comparison. This rage will not decrease, and the hatred will not go away, until the United States changes its policies in the Middle East. All other talk is nonsense. [email protected]
