Ammon News - By George S. Hishmeh

For many Christians and Muslims, whether American or Arab but particularly Palestinian, the month of September brings back depressing memories of events that affected their lives and regrettably shaped their attitudes towards each other drastically and often negatively.　Israelis or Jews, if not their government, were equally marred by those actions.

Twenty-eight years ago this week (September 18) Lebanese Christian militiamen, with the assistance and protection of Israeli armed forces who had occupied southern Lebanon, under the leadership of then defence minister Ariel Sharon, overran two Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut to allegedly avenge the assassination of their leader Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s president-elect. (Lebanon has yet to identify who assassinated Gemayel).

As a result, hundreds of innocent civilians were murdered in the three-day “orgy of rape and slaughter, which is considered the bloodiest single incident of the Arab-Israeli conflict”.

Robert Fisk, a much-respected British journalist who visited the site of the massacre the following day, wrote: “There were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish h?aps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey.”

Nine years ago, on September 11, four civilian planes were hijacked by several Islamic extremists who, in suicidal crashes, destroyed the Twin Towers where the World Trade Centre was located in New York City and one wing of the Pentagon, the US military headquarters in a Washington suburb. The fourth plane crash landed in the countryside of the state of Pennsylvania, killing all its passengers. Altogether about 3,000 persons perished, mostly in New York, in the most shocking and bloodiest event in recent U? history. Among the fatalities were people of all faiths and nationalities (including a relative and the son of a Palestinian-American friend).

This year’s September 11 anniversary of the terrorist attacks touched off an unprecedented and misguided fury in the US against Muslims and vehement reactions elsewhere in the Muslim world due to the wild machinations of a little-known, publicity-seeking, half-crazed Florida pastor, the Rev. Terry Jones, whose congregation hardly numbers five dozen members, given the limelight by the gullible US media. His threat to burn copies of the Holy Koran in protest over the September 11 terrorist attacks and the re?ently unveiled plans for an Islamic community centre and mosque two blocks from the location of the Twin Towers was publicly condemned by top US officials. President Barack Obama urged tolerance and pledged that “Americans we are not - and never will be - at war with Islam”.

Several Christian and Jewish leaders, as well some relatives of the September 11 victims, also denounced the raging anti-Muslim bigotry.　But sticking out like a sore thumb was the absence of any significant congressional reaction, probably because of the upcoming mid-term elections.

All, however, failed to realise that there has been a mosque in the same neighbourhood - Lower Manhattan - since 1970, and, in fact, there is another inside the Pentagon,one of the September 11 targets.

The frenzied bigotry was topped by the claim that the site of the projected centre and mosque will be established on “hallowed ground”. All overlooked the fact that many Jewish synagogues tend to post large size placards on their grounds saying, “We Support Israel”. Arab-American churches or mosques have refrained from adopting similar antics.

Another historic event at this time that is bound to galvanise all involved in this debacle is the start of face-to-face negotiations between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the participation of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell.　Whether this meeting will yield any significant results that will pave the way for a Middle East settlement remains to be seen. But since it seems to be still going?on, it raises some hope.

In the meantime, it would be indeed helpful if the Arab and Muslim worlds pulled their act together and started investing in a well-financed public relations campaign to win the hearts and minds of Westerners, especially in the US, which holds several trump cards. Egypt, in the past few years, has spent as much as $4 million in a lobbying campaign to win American favours.

It would be equally wise for the Obama administration to encourage all school curricula to prepare the new American generation on how to integrate in the outside world to avoid popular misconceptions as evidenced here this September.

* The Jordan Times