A few weeks ago, a 71-year-old man stabbed a 6-year-old boy 26 times and injured his mother while shouting, “You Muslims Must Die.” The victim, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was a Palestinian American who loved his family, soccer, and basketball. The alleged killer, Joseph Czuba, was not a stranger or a distraught drifter; he was the landlord of the building where the young Wadea lived, had a good relationship with the boy’s family, even building a treehouse for Wadea, bringing him toys, and allowing him to swim in a makeshift pool. Czuba, reported, was an avid listener of conservative right-wing radio shows that covered the Israeli-Hamas war; there is no such thing as right/left-wing Media; the American media loses its wings and head when it comes to covering Israeli atrocities.
The news coming out of Israel incensed Mr. Czuba, who thought that the Palestinians were coming to hurt him, his wife explained. An ordinary man who probably didn’t know the difference between Hamas and Humus turned into a monster; his love became hate, his gentle touches turned to stabs, and a six-year-old child became a threat. “I am not a threat,” a sign carried by some of Wadea’s classmates and friends as they stood on an Illinois basketball court in an emotional vigil for the Muslim boy. Since Hamas militant’s surprise attack on Israel, the media, political leaders, pundits, and major corporations have adopted the Zionist narrative, ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians, demonizing them, describing Palestinians who resist occupation and the stealing of their lands as animals, barbaric and Nazis. They were giving the Israeli military a free hand to terrorize almost three million Palestinians, trapped in Gaza and commit genocide. How do ordinary people commit monstrous acts? Most of the Nazi Germans who took part in the extermination of millions of Jews were ordinary people who followed the law, explained sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his Book Modernity and the Holocaust. Modernity made the holocaust possible in Germany, it is making it possible again in Gaza. Now, we have thousands of ordinary Israelis, former teachers, lifeguards, Mechanics, accountants, fathers, and mothers committing monstrous acts in Gaza, and the children of the Holocaust are committing one! Still, as Nazim taught us, if you are going to wipe out a race, you need to kill all the children. The whole world was disturbed by the monstrous act of a 71-year-old landlord who stabbed a Six-Year-Old Palestinian 26 stabs because he thought the young boy would bring all the Palestinians to kill him. This paranoia and self-doubt lead to a reflexive overkill that is happening now in Gaza. The 75-year-old apartheid State of Israel, the lord of the promised land, has been stealing Palestinian lands for years, stabbing the Palestinians thousands of times, turning millions into refugees. The overkill reaction of the most destructive military killing machine in the Middle East, trying to get back some hostages -prisoners of war, according to a Hamas spokesman; dropped enough bombs on Gaza that equal Hiroshima , destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and roads, turning Gaza into a killing field, a concentration camp. Americans justify atrocities and world crimes committed by the Israelis against the Palestinian people but encourage and participate in the genocide. When the Palestinians challenged the Israeli superior power, it responded to feelings of self-doubt and paranoia by showing a reflexive self-destruct and overkill. The Israelis have been following the American template of extermination of the indigenous people, those who stand or challenge its racist narrative. As Chris Hedges explained, “The extermination of those whose land we steal, whose resources we plunder, and whose labor we exploit is coded within our DNA. Ask Native Americans. Ask Indians. Ask the Congolese. Ask the Kikuyu in Kenya. Ask the Herero in Namibia who, like Palestinians in Gaza, were gunned down and driven into desert concentration camps where they died of starvation and disease—eighty thousand of them. Ask Iraqis, Ask Afghans. Ask Syrians. Ask Kurds. Ask Libyans. Ask indigenous peoples across the globe. They know who we are.” This attack was carried out by young Palestinians who had never been on the other side of the fence; they used the spectacles of images to create a new reality and narrative in a hyperreal world. When your existence is an act of terrorism? When you are facing a superpower and under total domination, when the world abandons you, when all human channels are closed, then you want to challenge the dominant system, you go for the spectacle, for the symbolic violence, you use your death as the weapon to show you still alive. The French intellectual Jean Baudrillard explained the spirit of the 9/11 terrorist attack, “Never attack the system in terms of relationship or force. That is the imagination the system itself forces upon you. Shift the struggle into the symbolic sphere, where the rule is that of challenge, reservation, and outbidding:” When Israel destroys Gaza, and the 3M plus Palestinians vanished, as Israel wishes to do now. When Israel has total domination, no one will challenge it; Israel’s existence will fall on its own power weight, self-destruct, and commit national suicide. As Jean Baudrillard said, “The fear is not terrorism, but the state of ending terrorism”! As an Arab/Muslim, you have to audition to everyone to prove you are innocent. You need, before starting any conversation, to condemn Hamas as if Hamas were behind Nazim, Fascism, Communism, racism, imperialism, and slavery. History is the ultimate judge; We condemned Yasser Arafat, then gave him the Nobel Peace Prize; we condemned Nelson Mandela, then gave him a Nobel Peace Prize; we condemned Martin Luther King, who started a civil rights movement, and most of all, over 2000 years ago, they condemned a Palestinian from Jerusalem, now he has more than a billion followers.
Ahmed Tharwat
Host and Producer of the Arab American TV show Belahdan TV
Blog at Notes From America
Follow Him on Twitter
