A recent stabbing attack in Israel. Photo: Screenshot.

In 2011, the popular fashion magazine Vogue dubbed Asma Assad, wife of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” But that happened long before the Syrian spring, and then the long, dark Syrian winter, claimed hundreds of thousands of Syrian lives.

After living under occupation their whole lives, and with no prospect of political resolution on the horizon, Palestinian youth have taken to the streets this month in protest. (“I’m longing for Palestine while living the American dream“)

The attack on New York was not surprising, after the policy that has led the West in recent decades. I am upset over the terrorist attack, but am equally upset over the suffering which the United States has created. It is in this context that the 5000 dead people must be seen. If the US government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, then there is also a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.

This is the country [the United States] that looked the other way when Israel sentenced my Palestinian cousin to nine years in prison for his role in a protest after the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir. They came to his house in the middle of the night and took him away based on an anonymous tip. At age 22, he will spend the rest of his youth in a cell.

Without details like a name and a date, it’s impossible to determine why exactly her cousin was sentenced to nine years in prison. She says it was merely for “his role in a protest,” as if he were guilty of nothing more than marching and waving protest signs, but then again, she also obscures the stabbings, shootings, and rammings as “protest[s].”

If her cousin were actually sentenced to multiple years for his involvement in a terror organization, or for his role in carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers, it wouldn’t be the first time that a media outlet would gullibly swallow claims that Palestinians were imprisoned for nothing more than participating in a protest.

As The New York Times infamously reported in 2011, Izzedine Abu Sneineh was arrested three years earlier at the age of 15 supposedly for “throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.” But, as The Times itself was compelled to note in a Dec. 21 print edition correction:

…the article misstated Israeli charges against one of the freed prisoners, Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who had been arrested three years ago at age 15. Israel had accused him of weapons training, attempted murder and possession of explosives — not throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.

Elmusa’s lyrical voice does not conceal her loose and free treatment of the facts.

And we brace ourselves for the status quo: American politicians will dismiss dead Palestinians as “terrorists,” while respectfully mourning each lost Israeli life. We live with the guilt that we are here, not there. The guilt that we can come and go as we please, while Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are barricaded into their homes, neighborhoods, or cities. Israel is flanked by water, but many Palestinians will never see the sea.

The implication that American politicians at large dismiss innocent Palestinian victims, fatalities or otherwise, as “terrorists” is utter nonsense.

 

the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) is an independent non-profit organization that provides journalists with quick access to information about Palestine and the Palestinians, as well as expert sources, both in the United States and in the Middle East. Both through its website and its staff, the IMEU works with journalists to increase the public’s understanding about the socio-economic, political, and cultural aspects of Palestine, Palestinians, and Palestinian Americans.