Where Is The Rage? - By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

Where is the rage? Where is the Arab chivalry (nakhwa)? Where is the Islamic passion (Rahmah)? Where are the Arab human rights organizations? Where are Abu Mazin and the rest of the Palestinian leadership? The UN refugee agency says there are about 2,500 Palestinians mostly widows and orphans, victims of the violence in Iraq, languishing for the past two years under canvas tents in the Iraqi desert at the Syrian border. These refugee camps lack basic services or medical facilities and the temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in summer and dips below zero degrees in winter. Syria and Jordan have accepted more than two million refugees from Iraq but they have denied entry for Palestinian refugees who have been trying to escape the attacks and persecution in Iraq. There is no room for these most vulnerable Palestinians in the Arab countries that stretch from the Atlantic Ocean in the west along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Persia in the east, and the Arabian Peninsula. What would happen if these refugees were Jews or French or Japanese?

Arabs have developed a theory that the only way Palestinian refugees can return to their homes is if they are kept poor, unemployed, illiterate and sick. It never occurred to Arab policy makers that it is the Palestinians, who escaped the poverty and misery traps and invested in their own personal economic and educational potential, keep the Palestinian issue alive and defend the causes of the Arabs who betrayed them. It never occurred to Arab policy makers that the Zionists have used all their human and material resources to shape the policies of the Western powers and triumph over all the Arabs combined. [for more click on the heading]