Thursday, May 17, 2007
Elder of ZiyonGaza – Ma'an – Unidentified gunmen opened fire on Thursday towards a rally organized in Gaza City by the leftist PFLP and DFLP movements. The Popular Front and the Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine were protesting the ongoing confrontations between Hamas and Fatah.
The two groups called on the rivals to respect the Mecca agreement, and to remove gunmen from the streets. Before the rally, several leaders of both factions gathered in the Unknown Soldier square in Gaza City.
They held President Abbas and Prime Minister Haniyeh responsible for the latest deterioration.
A leader in the PFLP, Kayid Al-Ghoul warned in a statement of new rounds of confrontations. He described the insistence of the rivals in continuing to fight each other as "shameful and harmful to the Palestinian image".
Palestinian Arabs are killing each other, an anti-war rally gets shot at, and the worst thing that the critic can say is that it is "harmful to the Palestinian image"?
It actually makes sense.
In a society where honor is prized above all and disgrace is worse than death, it follows naturally that real people dying is not an issue - but the shame that accompanies the fact that they are killed by their own people is a big deal.
Westerners need to have this hammered into our heads - we are talking about a culture that is utterly different from the one we are used to. If death at the hands of the West is honorable, then the way to dissuade them from acting like animals is not to kill them but to shame them. And the best way to shame them is to publicize the depraved acts that they do and try to cover up.
Organizations like MEMRI and PMW , by accurately publicizing the worst parts of Arab society, shame those societies. Being honest about calling them terrorists and not "freedom fighters" or "gunmen" shames them. Telling the world about honor killings and terror worship and anti-semitism and historical revisionism that is practiced by the Arab world is what the West needs to do, in plain language. The entire reason that the Palestinian Arabs keep using euphemisms in English for terror and depravity is to pre-empt the shame that they know themselves would accompany the publicizing of what they are doing, day in and day out.
The way to win the war against Islamic terror is to force them to play on the playing field of real morality and shining the light of truth on their sick and twisted priorities. And if they are so convinced that their morality is superior to ours, that suicide bombings and honor killings and targeting civilians is noble, force them to say it proudly in English.
They won't - because deep down they know that their actions are shameful and they need to desperately hide and obfuscate this fact.
