WHEN ARAB SILENCE BECOMES COMPLICITY, PALESTINE BECOMES THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB

While peace activists around the world rally and march to pressure their complicit-by-silence governments into doubling down on diplomatic efforts to end the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Arab Middle East, except for Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, is as good as dead. Ironically, the region's loudest ‘stop-genocide’ cry comes not from Arabs, but from Israeli civil society activists.

- By Ameen Izzadeen

What has happened to the Arabs? When fellow Arab Palestinians are being annihilated in a live-streamed genocide, why is the Arab world silent? Silence is certainly not a virtue when it emboldens wrongdoers to continue injustice and oppression. When more than 62,000 people—including 19,000 children—have been killed in the past 22 months, and children are reduced to skeletons draped in fleshless skin, Arab leaders’ condemnations appear merely perfunctory, if not appallingly farcical—however well-meaning they claim to be.

Like bubbles from a straw, condemnations come a dime a dozen—but like bubbles, no sooner are they issued than they burst; they are not meant to make a difference.

Last Friday, peace activists and civil society members gathered by the thousands in Colombo to hold a peace march and rally in solidarity with Palestinians suffering in the Gaza Strip—echoing the spirit and resolve of similar rallies held across the globe. But was there a rally in the Middle Eastern countries that matter—Egypt, Jordan, and the Arab Gulf states?

True, it was touching to see kind Egyptians with aching hearts filling plastic bottles with flour and throwing them into the Mediterranean Sea, hoping they would reach the shores of Gaza. But why is such humanitarianism not reflected at the leadership level? Come what may, for the greater cause of humanity, Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, can use the country’s military power to break the siege on Gaza—so that the thousands of food-aid trucks stuck on the Egyptian side of the border can move in and save lives. Why is he not doing it? Why is he cracking down on global activists willing to brave death in their effort to take food to starving Gazans?