An Appeal to All Arab and Muslim Leaders

130

Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? You allow children to die in the streets of Palestine and you leave the defense of your sacred places in their tiny hands, hardly big enough to hold the stone they so bravely hurl at an armed ruthless militia. You leave the defense of the third most holy place in Islam to children while you have the money and the means to halt the barbaric and atheist aggression against Jerusalem and Al Haram Al Sherif.
 
You each surround yourselves with plush palaces, hundreds of servants, an army of bodyguards that you raise and support not for the defense of your country or people against foreign invading armies, but for your own personal protection.
 
You pamper your children, bring for them the best of tutors, send them to the best of schools, provide for them the best doctors while the children of Palestinian parents are denied their right to survive, have no schools, and are either shot dead or permanently injured defending the holy places of all Muslims.
 
You bear the legacy of foreign empires which swept through your countries and continents and tried to destroy your identity and pure way of life. You are still under the yoke of occupation and the Ottoman and British colonial systems have only given sway to the new and more evil American Imperialism which you have allowed to invade the sanctity of your culture. You yourselves are fattened by this American Imperialism which fills your coffers to overflowing while you turn a blind eye to other people’s children dying in the streets because those children are not your own.
 
You complacently dress yourselves in the finest silks and linens, comfortably sleep all night without fear of being bombed or killed, eat the finest food shipped to you from all corners of the globe, feed your children with gold and diamond spoons while the children of Palestine eat dirt and are constantly fed by Israeli bullets that kill them or take away an eye or a limb, maiming them for life.
 
You bring songs of joy and happiness on your TV and radio stations sung by half-naked women while Palestinian children dressed in rags chant songs of Islam and freedom as their perforated bodies leak red blood on the streets you pretend not to see.
 
Your wives adorn themselves with emerald necklaces, rubies rings and crown themselves falsely. They partake in nonchalant tea and coffee parties and host luncheons where food of every imaginable kind spreads across your banqueted tables. Your children play games at your feasts and you look benevolently over all your vast expenditures saying proudly, “all is well and good.” But Palestinian mothers drink bitter polluted water in circles where they cry and mourn for their dead husbands and children. There are no banquets here, only eloquent deaths and elegant martyrs carried on stretchers and buried in endless rows of graves watered by the tears of their loved ones.
 
Have you no conscience? Do you think you won’t be punished for turning your eyes away from those little children dying in the streets? United, you have all the power to stop what is happening. Divided, you can continue to satiate your desires pretending not to hear the Israeli bullets cutting down the innocents.
 
You are too blind to see the truth and your corruption fills your heads with sawdust. But you cannot wash the blood of the innocents off your hands. As long as you remain silent, you are responsible for every child who dies in the streets of Palestine.
 
When pressured slightly by the cries of your people to defend and protect the Palestinians and holy places in Palestine, you rush to congregate yourselves in lush air-conditioned surroundings and give lengthy teary speeches in your own tongues which most of you have not yet mastered, yet you change nothing. You are impotent. What really concerns you is not the mounting death toll of Palestinians, but the thought that your own thrones could be destabilized.
 
You decorate your walls with Rembrandt, Picasso and Michelangelo and tune your senses to melodies of Mozart, Strauss and Beethoven. You think Palestinians have no culture at all, yet yours is borrowed from foreign sources. Your sons lose millions of dollars at one go in far away casinos but you hear not, see not that Palestinian walls are covered with pictures of fallen martyrs and Al-Aqsa mosque and the only tunes that Palestinian mothers hear is their own wails for their dead. Their sons gamble for their lives as they throw stones at the invincible enemy and they do not even have a few pennies for pocket money.

You allow the world to ridicule you and stereotype your people. As long as your bellies are full and hang over your belts and your families are safe, you pay no attention to what is really important., to what really matters. You can shut your eyes to what is happening all around you, you can close your ears and you can pretend that it is all right for little children to die in your defense and in the defense of all that is right and holy. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? All your wealth is worth nothing if you do not put it to good use. And in the end, all your money and power will be turned against you and when you face God, you will be asked what you did with all your resources. What are you going to say, that you allowed children to die on your behalf? Wake up before it is too late. Wake up before all is lost. Wake up before all of Palestine is taken by those who have no right at all to it. Wake up and stop being impotent. Wake up and do something useful. Do not just drop a few of your Durhams in donations on the behalf of those who are dying. Do something concrete, useful and sincere. Stop hiding behind the skirts of Palestinian mothers and stop letting babies die for you, your holy places, the holy places of all Muslims.
 
From a mother of Palestinian children