Boycotting Jews yet again

Then came the 1967 War. Soon after, in 1973, the third major war between the Arabs and Israel broke out. Thirty-nine years on, many Arabs are finally beginning to ask many questions about the past, present and the future with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The questions are threefold: What was the real cost of these wars to the Arab world and its people? A harder question that no Arab national wants to ask is: What was the real cost for not recognizing Israel in 1948 – and still refusing to recognise it - and why didn't the Arab states spend their billions on education, health care and the infrastructures instead of wars? And the hardest question that no Arab national wants to utter is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people?

All good questions.

Al-Mulhim penned his views after witnessing devastating photos and reports about a starving child in Yemen, a burned souk in Aleppo, Syria, the woefully under developed Sinai in Egypt, car bombs in Iraq and the decimated infrastructure in Libya. He saw the photos and the reports on the Al-Arabiya network, the most watched and respected news outlet in the Arab Middle East.

He asserts that an outside enemy was not responsible for the destruction and the atrocities he observed. The same people that were supposed to protect Arabs annihilated Arabs. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries were all committed by the same hands.

Arab hands. Muslim hands.

He laments over the atrocities in Syria, describing them as "beyond anybody's imagination". Saddened too by Iraqis hell bent on destroying their own country: "a country that makes $110 billion dollars from oil exports", but its best and brightest cannot leave quickly enough for commercial opportunities abroad. He notes that Tunisia's dictator stole $13 billion dollars from the poor Tunisians and Yemeni Arabs starve their own citizens.

The message is crystal clear, if perhaps unpalatable to Arabs and their Western collaborators: these are all crimes against the Arab people. Unspeakable crimes that must be addressed. And the common denominator in these crimes is that all were committed by Arabs on Arabs.

Israel is not involved in any of these Arab engineered tragedies and no improvement in the lot of any Arab will come out of accusing anyone other than the true perpetrators of these crimes against the Arab people. And then hauling those responsible to account.

The real enemies of the Arab people are the Arab states' corruption, absence of political freedom, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of respect for life and finally, Arab dictators who used (and continue to use) the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.

To that list Al-Mulhim could have added the useful Western idiots (and their non Western puppeteers) marching this Thursday in Parramatta. A menagerie feigning sincere interest in the welfare of Arabs will instead once again be absorbed with the oldest hatred the world has ever seen: inciting animus towards Jews, for no reason other than they are Jews.

And what better day to bait Jews and ignore the real problems of the Muslim world than this Thursday? As luck would have it, it's the 24^th anniversary of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Council's statement of 15 November 1988 that proclaimed the independence of the Arab State of Palestine.

The 23^rd Arab and the 58^th Islamic state to join the community of nations.

Imagine that: 58 states and not a single fully fledged liberal, pluralistic democracy amongst them. Not a single one.

Now that's an issue worth protesting about.