Ayoon Wa Azan (They are trying to divert attention away from it)

Yesterday, I proposed a Christian-Muslim alliance against Israel (not against Jews), and gave examples of the hostility harbored by Western churches against Israel. Today, I want to draw attention to the efforts by Israel, its lobby, and the evil gang of American Likudniks and neoconservatives to spread fear of Islam and Muslims in the Christian West. To be sure, they realize that the growing grounds for Christian hostility against Israel are valid and extant, and so they are trying to divert attention away from this. Nevertheless, I want to introduce this topic by noting the non-religiously motivated hatred of Israel in the United States. Indeed, well informed Americans know that their country is undergoing a severe economic crisis, and yet most U.S. aid goes to Israel. If we add tax-exempted donations to the official annual figures, we find that Israel takes more than $10 billion each year. In other words, six million occupiers receive more aid than the rest of the world put together. Does Israel deserve this aid? There were Israeli spies detained, tried and imprisoned in the United States. Furthermore, Israel stole uranium from an American lab to make its nuclear bomb, killed 34 sailors aboard the USS Liberty, and murdered other U.S. nationals such as Rachel Corrie in Gaza. Israel even meddles in U.S. internal affairs, so much so that the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in ads in Florida promoting the Republican nominee Mitt Romney. So what is the evil gang doing to divert attention away from a country led by a criminal gang? Recall that each single prime minister in Israel was put on trial, and some were even convicted, such as Moshe Katsav, who was convicted of rape. They invent and exaggerate an inexistent Islamic threat to Western civilization, and promote claims that Muslims persecute Christian minorities in their countries. I do not claim to say that these allegations are completely false, as most of them are based on facts, but these incidents are grossly exaggerated, and overlook all positive manifestations of coexistence among religious communities in the Arab and Muslim countries. One of such exaggerations I read was a warning that Marseille, the second largest city in France, will soon become a Muslim-majority city, with a huge mosque being built with funding from Saudi Arabia casting a shadow on the city’s architecture. The editorial that carried these claims also reminded the French that an Islamist group in the city had hijacked a French airplane in 1994, in an attempt to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. Another editorial warned that the Arab Spring was a misnomer for the Arab revolutions, because it would lead instead to the rise of Islamism in all Arab countries, from Morocco and Tunisia, to Egypt and Syria, which will all become hostile to the West. If Islamization of Muslim countries is not enough to intimidate Westerners, then there is the looming “Islamization of Europe: The Numbers Don’t Lie”, as yet another article claimed. The article mentioned high birth rates among Muslim immigrants compared to natives, and after crunching the numbers and figures, the advocates of Israel managed to ‘prove’ that Muslims will overwhelm or control Europe soon. I have kept the original texts for the above articles. Yet the ideal way for that gang to divert attention away from Israeli crimes and assaults by settlers against churches and monasteries in occupied Palestine, is to spread claims about persecution of Christians in Arab and Muslim countries. There is special emphasis on Egypt in this campaign, given Egypt’s size and influence in the Arab bloc. I read that Congress has issued two reports about the persecution of Copts in Egypt, where women and girls are allegedly forced to marry Muslims and change their religion. I also read claims that jihadist groups had distributed flyers calling for the killing of Christians wherever they were, and that there were calls in the Egyptian People’s Assembly for the funds of the Coptic Church to be seized. There were also reports that said that Iraqi Christians received threats calling on them to leave the country or be killed, and others that claimed the situation was even worse for Christians in Iran, with similar reports coming from a number of African countries. As though all the above is not enough, these people also repeatedly invoke Nazism and the Holocaust in which six million Jews perished. Recently, there was a campaign by young Israelis, who took to imprinting their bodies with the number tags that the Nazis used on the Jews as they took them to their deaths. This happened 70 years ago, and Israel is killing, occupying and destroying today, yet they want the world to focus its attention on the bygone past. Once again, I say that Israel is hated. Its crimes provoke Christians in the West just like they provoke Muslims if not more. Therefore, an alliance must be established against the gang of organized crime that some like to mistakenly call the state of Israel.  -- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.