I'm quoting the following from an article By M. Shahid Alam, titled: America, Imagine This!
What brought this to my mind was the creative imagination of Roy from Haifa, so I'm inviting everyone to play the game of imagination, but this time with this piece:
Let America now imagine this. Imagine waking up tomorrow in an upside-down world, one in which the history of America's relations with the Arabs is inverted. Iraq is now the global hegemon, the world's richest democracy, a beacon of freedom; Iraq and the Arab democracies dominate the world and what was once the USA. Imagine that the Arabs have used their power to replace a United States of America with forty-four nominally independent states--with states for native Americans, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Italian Americans, German Americans, Anglo-Americans, Jews, Mormons, Sikhs, the Amish, etc--with most of these states run by despotic Iraqi surrogates.
Iraq, after colonizing New England and ethnically cleansing its native inhabitants, has converted it into an exclusive, racist, colonial-settler state for Arabs brought in from Sudan who were dying from a severe drought, the worst in a thousand years. This state, Arabistan, is by far the most powerful of the states on the American continent. It is Iraq's strategic asset in the Americas, periodically mounting incursions against the neighboring states from where the New Englander refugees wage occasional guerilla attacks on Arabistan.
Starting in March 2003, the Iraqi marines, supported by two divisions from Palestine, had invaded and occupied Texas. The Iraqi administration argued that this was a preemptive invasion to prevent the fanatical Texans from developing biological weapons. However, some Arab publications on the Left have argued that the Texan oilfields were Iraq's real target. It is well known that production from the Arab oil fields has been declining since 1997.
What would the Americans, now split, divided, corralled into forty-six racial, ethnic and sectarian states do if they found themselves in such a world? Would they resent the surrogate despotisms that ruled over them with Iraqi arms and money? Would some of their young men, faced with overwhelming Iraqi power, resort to suicidal attacks within Iraq itself? Would they too hate the Iraqis and Arabs and attack them because they are free, prosperous and democratic?
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What would the New Englanders do, now scattered in refugee encampments in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio? Would they dream of returning to their country? Would they demand the right to return to their homes in New England? Would they demand compensation for the homes they had lost? Would they hate the Sudanese settlers who now lived in their homes, their towns and cities?
What would all the other Americans do if the New Englanders began to wage a campaign of terror against Iraqi interests in the former USA? What would they do if Arabistan--the Iraqi surrogate--then retaliated by bombing New York, Detroit, Washington and Albany? What would they do if the Iraqi media accused them ad nauseum of hating Iraq's free, open, democratic society?
If only Americans could imagine all this--imagine all this for even a few seconds--how would this change the way they think about what their country, the United States, together with its democratic ally, Israel, have been doing to the Arabs? Can Americans imagine this? What would it do if they could imagine this--even for a few seconds? Would they recognize in their imagined pain, in their imagined humiliation, in the imagined wars and destruction imposed upon them, the real wars, occupations, massacres, ethnic cleansings, tortures, bombings, sanctions and assassinations endured by Palestinians and Iraqis for more than eight decades?
Would they?
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Great comparison of the problems affecting the Middle East.
Just one problem. Most Americans won’t understand it. They are right and you are wrong!
Try to imagine that you are a Jew and for 3,000 years, your people have been persecuted and slaughtered, driven out of your own homeland that your ancestors have lived in since circa 1800 BCE.
Imagine that you are a Jew and trace your family tree back to some guy named Abraham who had 2 sons named Isaac and Jacob and that they and their wives are buried in ancient Ma’arat HaMachpela ‘Tomb of the Patriarchs’ in Hebron.
Do onto them, lest they do onto you.
Everybody who opposes the imperialism is a terrorist. They are fighting to free their lands. History is our evidence indeed as somebody stated. The laws are created to impose sanctions against those who oppose these imperialistic states. We need to realise, that the white man only speaks the language of the gun. And states that he is on the top of food chain. Law of the Jungle. We better understand who we are dealing with.
Only the one who are prepared have the oppurtunity. The blame doesnt solely go to the israel or the imperialistic nations. Our leaders have been so ignorant and are content that the oil would last for infinite time. The root cause is our older generations, inability to sacrifice and bring about change from within. There has to be sacrifices to be done for the greater good of our societies. Hezbollah, hamas and other palestinians have suffered and they are the most terrorised people in centuries. This has prompted them and alerted them of the consequences of the unpreparedness. Our leaders do not comply and havent foreseen and to be honest do not have the vision for counter measures and impose conditions that would safegaurd the civilians, but also their interests. In this age of negotiations (since the creation of white man’s bomb, the atom bomb). We are constantly being imparted a jungle hierarchy, that the imperialistic nations or the industrialised nations are at the top of the food chain.
I would also like to hail, our king abdullah, Saudi Arabian King and other monarch’s who are blindly in the belief that they are immune. Every generation has a war to fight and it is clearly seen the fall of the all these empires and western dominion is being imposed for centuries.
According to the Universal rights formulated and according to the freedom messiah “MR. BUSH & BLAIR” every nation and every individual has the right to defend its very existence. It is justified for all the nations to hold tools and technology to safegaurd their interests. Furthermore, if the nations and its leaders are not in a position to safegaurd the very interests of the civilians.
The bottom line it is your duty, to safe gaurd your people. The common man, should empower himself and shouldnt rely on the machinery that serves the interests of western nations.
Let me get this straight, the Palestinians and Iraqis have been murdered and tourtured for more than eight decades. If my history serves me correct the Isreals where given land around the end of World War Two, that would be about 1945. Doing the math that would be 2006 – 1945 = 61 years = 6.1 decades. So I have a question for you, If the Jews were doing the killing for 61 years then who was commiting all of these crimes the other 19 plus years?
Haitham, please correct me if I am wrong, but I think you know that the “creative imaginination” of some Israeli posters in this ‘blog, isn’t really “creative” at all;-) It’s an old technique I learned about many years ago, and it is used extensively by organisations such as “AIPAC”
It goes like this …
Get the argument away from the reality of the suffering,
Take the argument into a different “hypothetical” situation where there are “good guys” and “bad guys”, which are already designated by the person who is creating the “example” (eg “robber” = Palestinian, “decent, law abiding citizen” = Israeli).
Force you into making a decision in this hypothetical situation which plays entirely by their rules,
Say “AH! told you so! Now you know why we have to fight the “bad guys” if you answer “yes” to any of their questions!
In my humble opinion, the piece above is simply an attempt to play them at their own game. However, I feel that it won’t work as well in the US as the author intends it to, as the author is using his inverted logic to point his finger at the US (in it’s role reversal as “Iraq”), and many Americans prefer not to see their county’s behaviour mirrored in this way (whatever the truth is). Rather, they respond more to messages that point out some kind of “common cause” that they can indentify with, rather than having a finger pointed at them. Organisations like AIPAC understand this all too well. Personally, I do not believe that a constantly unfolding human tragedy should be reduced to silly hypothetical situations like this anyway!
frank en stein,
It actually started in 1880 if my facts are straight.
Mick Williams,
Try to imagine you are a handicapped, homosexual, Roma, practitioner of natural medicine,or a political dissident who have been publicly burnt, boiled, drowned, tortured, pursecuted, harassed, and alienated in your own society alongside Jews for centuries. Try to imagine that you have fought for tolerance and acceptance in order for all minorities to rightfully live in peace in the societies they are born.
Then try to imagine that 120 years ago a small group from one of the minorities who had suffered alongside you started a political organization which would marginalize your suffering as a means to promote their own political ends. Try also to imagine that this organization actively worked against you being tolerated and accepted in the society you were born simply because they saw themselves as so important that support for tolerance and acceptance of all minorities would be sacrifised -even sabotaged- for the purpose of promoting the political objectives of this organization which does not even represent everybody in their own group – your fellow minority!
That imagination idea is useless, it could and can never happen.
Somehow the people in that countries are getting slaved again and again by fanatic dictatorial authority and by fanatic relegion.
It has nothing to do with the west, it is a self-destruction tendency.
Try to imagine them getting out of that slavery first and then try to imagine other things.
John
thomas,
you said it best.
thank you
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