Lots of people in the Western countries wonder with a mix of astonishment and incredulity, and not few times even with outrage, asking to themselves -and to others -, about the reason why people from the Islamic countries (and not only from these ones) seem to dislike them or even hate them or, if not them specifically, their countries. The question on itself is indicative of the level of ignorance or, to say the less, the very lack of information and knowledge coming from those inquirers; well, let’s see if we can provide any clues, not without saying before that probably the question could be extended in a way that it could include not only nations from the Islamic world but also others from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Hints are provided by history. Letting aside the colonial domination suffered by the above mentioned peoples, in more recent history there have been lots of episodes and facts that may serve us as an answer. Let’s take a glance at some of those facts.
IRAN.
During the 1980’s – not to mention the 1950’s coup d’état – the United States actively supported – should it be better to say it actively promoted? – Iraq’s war with Iran, supplying it with weaponry, money, diplomatic covering, PR and, guess of what kind was the firstly mentioned supply… yes, you are very well right: weapons of mass destruction (among many other kinds of). Here an exert of an interview to Mike Shuster, at that time correspondent to the region: “(…) it’s known that chemical precursors for chemical weapons and tubes for missiles and biological agents, including anthrax samples, were sent by American suppliers”, yet more, “(…) the United States prevented a move in the United Nations to impose economic sanctions against Iraq, saying that the sanctions would be useless or counterproductive.
So in effect, the U.S. defended Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons even as late as 1988, and this kind of a relationship continued through the Reagan administration and into the first president Bush administration until the very day that Iraq invaded Kuwait in early August 1990”[1]. And, by the way, these WMD were used not only against Iran, they were also used against the Kurds, yes, against those whom the United States and allies later claimed were some of the victims they were to defend.
[1] U.S. links to Saddam During Iran-Iraq War, Sept. 22, 2005, Alex Chadwick, Mike Shuster https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=4859238
IRAQ.
After the war with Iran in 1988 Iraq decided to invade Kuwait in 1990, it seems that he thought that the U.S. “would look the other way with regard to that as well”, maybe even helping him like it did with its war with Iran. And to helped him to believe so there is no doubt that the U.S. behavior contributed to it through some of its main officials like Donald Rumsfeld himself, besides others among whom there was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. “There was a famous meeting right before his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990” between Saddam Hussein and the latter, “which he believed signaled that the U.S. would look the other way”; the fact is that his action “in Kuwait followed this long relationship with the U.S. during war time in which they pretty much backed him at every turn”[1]. This, let’s call it miscalculation, caused the first war of the U.S. (of an international coalition leaded by the U.S.) with Iraq, also known as the first Gulf War. This invasion, launched on August 2nd 1990, marked another step of the disaster already being suffered by the Iraqi people as a consequence of the war with its neighbor, disaster which added upon the country by means of the war machine and the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., U.K. and other allies, wreaking havoc, impoverishment, death and destruction.
[1] Opere citato.
Later on, in 2003, as if the nightmare of the Iraqis had not been enough, the U.S. and its allies came again, bringing with them much more blood and destruction. The brutality and extreme cruelty performed is well known. The death toll is of “more than one million Iraqis” that died «as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups”. Death toll accompanied by torture (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo), forbidden weaponry (the use of white phosphorus in Mosul and in Fallujah), illegal detention and kidnapping, seizure of economic assets, destruction of civil infrastructure.
LIBYA.
Let me quote Mr. Moussa Ibrahim, a Libyan writer and activist who worked for the Muamar El Gadhafi government, now working with other African activists and institutions on the aim of uniting the continent for the achievement of its development and sovereignty: “NATO’s justification for the aggressive and bloody attack was the now infamous protection of civilians doctrine formalized under U.N. Security Council decree number 1973, the French Air Force however had already initiated a major raid on immobile Libyan army units (…) more than 400 resting Libyan officers, soldiers, medical and media personnel were massacred without the chance to fight back against an unjustified and undeclared foreign air attack; tens of thousands more Libyans would later perish under more than 26.000 air raids, 100 cruise missile attacks and a naval blockade conducted by NATO’s 30 members coalition among whose victims were a terrifying number of civilians from all walks of life; the number of women and children killed was especially high as they sought refuge in civilian buildings deliberately targeted by the mighty NATO, including houses, apartment blocks, schools and community centers”[1].
[1] Ibrahim, Moussa; interview on the Jimmy Dore Show, https://youtu.be/LcfOPyZf990?si=W1Gu-vjLDQeLLqLt
SUDAN.
Two missiles onto a pharmaceutical plant lab in Sudan. There was no doubt that Bill Clinton, who ordered the missile strikes, knew very well that it was by no means a military objective which, in any case, under international law would have not been allowed to be attacked as long as the U.S. was not at war with Sudan. According to Noam Chomsky, who cites the German ambassador and the regional director of Near East Foundation, “both of them estimated several thousands of deaths”[1]. Chomsky’s words: “Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows because the U.S. blocked an inquiry at the U.N. and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to my mind”[2]. It is so disheartening when it describes the appalling indifference of the collective West in the phrase no one cares to pursue it; a disheartening reality.
[1] Chomsky, N., On The Bombings; https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/chomskyon091101.html
[2] Chomsky, N.; The Crimes of U.S Presidents; www.youtube.com/@chomskyphilosophy
PALESTINE.
This needs no words. The atrocities being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people, with the shameful and miserable complicity of the U.S., the EU, the UK et alia, is a plain and undeniable case of genocide which, of course, did not began the 7th of October but at least in 1948 with the so called Nakba, the meaning of which is catastrophe in Arabic language, referring to the beginning of the destruction of their homeland and the mass displacement in 1948 of the majority of the Palestinian population.
Since the 15th of May of that year, over the course of the Palestine War, “which lasted until January 1949, Israeli forces destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages and carried out several massacres, killing some 15,000 people”, about 80% of Palestine’s historic territory was “captured and used to establish what is now Israel”, while “the remaining land was divided into today’s Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip”[1], yet the expansion has not stop, being perpetrated by the violent occupation of Jews (Zionist) settlers.
[1] https://islamic-relief.org/news/explainer-nakba-day-and-its-significance-to-palestinians/
According to the UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, on Anatomy of a Genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese (A/HRC/55/73) (Advance unedited version), by the month of March of this year:
After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. Thousands of families have lost loved ones or have been wiped out. Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble. Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.
By analyzing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people[1].
[1] https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/anatomy-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-situation-human-rights-palestinian-territories-occupied-1967-francesca-albanese-ahrc5573-advance-unedited-version
The above written should be more than enough to recognize and to accept that the violent resistance of the Palestinians against its occupiers is absolutely legitimate and, according to international law, utterly legal. I myself and many of you yourselves, would resist and fight violently – very violently – against those daring to come to expel us from our homes. In that sense, nothing less than admiration for the struggle of the Palestinian people, resisting and fighting since 1948 in front not only of the Israeli army, but to its powerful ally, the US.
Marco Rodríguez-Farge Ricetti