By Ameer Ali –

Dr. Ameer Ali

The heading above were the words of a desperate and angered Palestinian mother after losing one of her babies to Netanyahu’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza in 2023. Today that same villain who is a convicted war criminal and his psychotic ally President Donald Trump who is reported to be “not worried” about committing war crimes and ending a civilization, are repeating the same carnage and devastation over Iran and its 93 million people. When Gaza was pulverized by the IDF, when Gazans were killed and mutilated in their thousands and when millions of Palestinians were forced out of their homes as continuation of the 1948 Nakba, the cowardly silence of the Arab rulers spoke volumes about their complicity in Israel’s pogrom and their continuing betrayal of the Palestinian cause. In contrast, these same rulers are not remaining silent on the US-Israel war with Iran, but they are collectively and shamelessly encouraging and even demanding the aggressor duo to punish Iran for its attack on their countries. When supporting Hamas in Gaza, Iran neither directly nor indirectly attacked any of the Arab countries, but in this war, it is targeting the American bases and other US facilities in that region because those bases and facilities have become launching pads for Trump and Netanyahu to bomb Iran. Doesn’t Iran have the right to defend itself?

Even without the Iranian counterattack US bases in that region provide no safety and protection to the Arab nations, all of which are caught between US’ drive for global domination and Israel’s resolve to rule over the Middle East. In short, Trump is destroying Iran not to remove any threat to US but to protect and enhance the power of Israel.  What began as a limited mission to disable Iran’s nuclear arsenal, which was investigated years before by experts and found to be non-existent, has turned out to be a war of attrition to destroy anything and everything in that country as Israel did it in Gaza and doing now in Southern Lebanon. Just as Trump’s ceasefire in Gaza failed to stop Israel killing Gazans so seems to be the Pakistan mediated ceasefire to stop Israel bombing Lebanon.

Be that as it may, the words of that angry and frustrated mother cited above were addressed less to draw the attention of Arab rulers who she must have known already were in bed with US and Israel, but more to rouse the sleeping Arab masses whose indifference to what was happening in Gaza for more than one half of a century was shocking to say the least. Even when hundreds of thousand demonstrators all over the non-Arab world were daringly expressing their disgust at and condemnation of Israeli carnage and were demanding meaningful action from the world community there was hardly any protest from the Arab masses. That silence appears to continue even today while Iran is being bombed and pulverized by the US-Israel duo perhaps to the satisfaction of Arab rulers. That is understandable given the abject dependence of these puppets to survive as heads of states. But how does one account for the silence and indifference of Arab masses to what is happening at their doorstep?

Hardly any news about mass reaction come out of this region partly because of strict control over the media by governments. Even Aljazeera has become a mouthpiece of Western propaganda. In general, however, two observations could be advanced to explain this silence and indifference. In the affluent half of that world its rulers may have bought that silence in return for sharing a part of the oil wealth by creating a cradle to grave welfare state in which employment is assured for the young and educated in the public sector. In almost all these oil rich countries the public sector is overstaffed and underperforming.  But that is a small price to pay by governments in return for political calm and subservience of their subjects. In contrast and in the poorer half of the region that calm and subservience is invariably forced out by the barrel of the gun. The Arab Spring of 2011 which sprang with high hopes in Egypt and threatened to engulf the whole region ended unsurprisingly in a winter of despair because of armed interference led by the current president with support from the White House. Dictators and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East always carry the support of US so long as they do not challenge US supremacy and disturb the US-Israel designed Middle East order. It is within this framework that one should understand the silence or indifference of the Arab masses towards the US-Israel war with Iran.

There is also another factor that contributes to this situation i.e., the historic Shia-Sunni sectarian split kept alive by the mullahs. It was this split that was exploited to the maximum in 1979 by US and its Western allies to discourage the Sunni masses from following the footsteps of the Iranian revolutionaries. That same campaign is now heard in the Arab world to discourage mass participation in support of Iran.        

However, this does not mean that there is absence of any resistance against the prevailing Zionist designed US-Israel Middle East order. There are several non-state armed groups such as Al-Qaida, Taliban, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Mahdi Army of Iraq and several more which want a change and prevent Arab Middle East from remaining a theatre for US-Israel conspiracies and powerplay. But none of them carry the mass backing and therefore they are being identified and condemned as terrorist outfits intending to create their own model of an Islamic state. But if those terrorists turn out to be supporters of the prevailing order as is the case in Syria, then they are welcomed at the White House. This in short is the prevailing tragedy in the Arab world.

Historically and since the time of the Prophet of Islam Arab rulers found their natural allies in Global South and not in Global North. From the Battle of Poitiers or Tours in 732 through to the Hundred Years War followed by the era of colonial conquests and economic exploitation of Arab lands and right down to the current war with Iran Global North’s relations with the Muslim world had been marked more by religious hatred, economic greed and social injustice than by mutual respect and shared development. It is time Muslim Middle East turn its geopolitical kiblah from the North to South or from West to East. But that will not happen unless the Arab masses wake up and throw out the current regimes headed by US puppets. The only country that is trying to get rid of the prevailing Middle East Order is Iran and the Arab masses should rally behind it.