By Jafar M Ramini


I believe that for us Arabs to survive and progress we must have in common more than religion, language or rhetoric. We need unity, transparency and honesty.

We are teetering on the edge of a precipice. Every Arab leader, politician, cleric and pundit given half a chance will mount the pulpit and raise the Palestinian flag promising to do what is necessary to liberate the land and restore what is rightfully ours.

This is the kind of rhetoric that is used to the maximum by Israel and the western Zionist media to garner support for Israel and draw a picture of the little humble lamb (Israel) surrounded by a sea of voracious and ravenous wolves (the Arabs). To say the contrary is true in this context would be the understatement of the century. The Israeli aggression and devastation, colonization, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, plus theft of land and resources continues aided and abetted, if not encouraged, by the international community, particularly the United States of America.

Meanwhile the Arab League and Arab leaders offer words and promises of support but never deliver on those promises. Can I please beg of you all to stop the rhetoric if you are not really intending to do what is obviously needed? You are causing more harm than good.

Now, to the core subject of this article. The circus at the UN has commenced again. The horse-trading, arm-twisting, bribery, coercion, intimidation and outright threats are going on in abundance while I am writing this.

What is the occasion? The occasion my friends and compatriots is the feeble, inadvisable, utterly futile and dangerous move by the Palestinian Authority to make Palestine a non-member, observer state at the UN General Assembly. A tine that is confined to the 1967 borders ‘with swaps’ may I add. No mention of the right of return, compensations or the fate of what is referred to as The 1948 Arabs in Israel.

For those of you who are shouting, “hey, it’s a good idea. It will Palestine the status required to be independent, to have a voice in the international arena, the ability to sue Israel for war crimes in The Hague and so on and so on.”

Sorry to disappoint you all. It won’t.

Not while America has ‘Israel’s back’ as President Obama put it.

Not while the Arab/Muslim Ummah is languishing in a self-induced coma. Not while we are at each other’s throats, killing and destroying each other.

Not while the Palestinian Authority and even Hamas are willing to sacrifice everything we fought for over the last century in the name of political expediency and hollow proclamations of victory.

Israel has already dispatched all its big guns to Washington demanding that the Palestinian Authority water down the application. They insist it removes any mention of sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. They also demand that the Palestinian Authority denounces any desire to go to the international criminal courts to sue Israel for war crimes against the Palestinians.

Since the inception of the Zionist movement the Zionists have been trying very hard to fulfill, by all means at their disposal, what they see as a promise from God that Palestine is theirs. And theirs alone. It is written in the bible.

“ When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to possess and cast out the many peoples, living there, you shall then slaughter them all and utterly destroy them…you shall make no agreements with them nor them any mercy. You shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people unto the Lord thy God and he has chosen you to be a special people above all others upon the face of the earth.”

Book of Deuteronomy 7: 1 – 8.

It makes you wonder what excuses they would have come up with if the original Zionist plan of making a homeland for the Jews in Uganda or Argentina had been followed through. Would the Holy Book have been invoked then as well?

That was more than a hundred years ago. Now cast your thoughts to just two weeks ago when this very doctrine was applied over Gaza. With Venom.

And please, take a minute to examine what our Arab leaders called for and what was actually done. Yes, they sent delegations from all over the Arab world to solidarity with Gaza. But what did they do?

As for the Palestinian Authority, it is as if the fate of Gaza is no
concern of theirs.

The Palestinian Authority was born out of a treacherous act called ‘The Oslo Accord’. I don’t need to go into details to illustrate how damaging that discredited accord is and how complicit the Palestinian Authority has been in our division and the continuation of the status quo in Palestine.

Israel, the United States and most western powers do not seek real, true, viable and lasting peace in Palestine or anywhere else in the Middle East.

It doesn’t serve their purpose. What serves their purpose are the many upheavals that are currently going in the Middle East and the strengthening of the brutal arm of the west’s colonization in our midst, Israel.

Have a listen to this:



After you have seen this short clip ask yourself these few simple questions: Where are the Arabs? Where are the Palestinians? Why are we silent?

And finally, I as a Palestinian Arab decry and reject any move by the discredited, unelected and unmandated Palestinian Authority to speak in my name or to seek any treaties on my behalf. Stop this farce. Go home.

Unite with your brothers in Gaza. Dissolve the Palestinian Authority and put the burden of the occupation on the occupiers, not the occupied.

Abu Mazen, if my words are not enough to convince you to retract from this disastrous course that you are embarking upon, please listen to what President Carter has to say.

“Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law. The United States is squandering international prestige and good-will and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.”

Is there any sign of Israel complying with any law? Or UN resolutions?