Ahram Weekly: Who hates who?

Since the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington the Western media has constantly been asking why the Arab and Islamic world "hate us". The question is still being posited as the US wages its "war on terror" on several Middle Eastern fronts as well as in Afghanistan.

By contrast, the events which unfolded last week in Iraq and Palestine left an Arab public feeling that it is the West which hates it, not the opposite. Otherwise, why should there be almost total disregard by the Western media for the seriously deteriorating conditions in the Middle East? Why are catastrophes and their victims reduced to statistics, and bodies and devastated cities transformed to mundane images? Have Western audiences come to view such destruction like a movie they've seen before, tediously run over and over again?

If Arab citizens were to ask the questions, they would place the accusers -- the West -- in the seat of the accused. They would ask: what have we done to you so that you occupy our lands, kill our people and bleed our resources in flagrant violation of international legitimacy? What have we done to pay the price of what Osama Bin Laden and his followers did after he received training and arms -- far from the Middle East, in Afghanistan -- at the hands of Western intelligence?

They would ask why they are deprived of vitally needed technology and economic means by the West whose fundamental objective -- the answer would be -- is to maintain the disparity between the Arab countries and Israel.

Arab citizens would also ask why restrictions are being imposed upon their entry into Western countries and their dignity breached at airports and border checkpoints. They would ask why the West supports repressive Arab regimes, depriving their nations of the right to build democracies based on rule by the people for the people.

It is true that the Arab and Islamic peoples are primarily responsible for their conditions and their negativity. But the West, led by the US, has also consolidated such conditions, seeing as it does that their perpetuation is in its strategic interest.

The peoples of the Arab and Western worlds must engage in a real dialogue to attain an understanding of the human issues which are of mutual interest to both. Such a dialogue must transcend official government institutions like the UN and its Security Council which have consistently failed to attain any measure of international peace and security. The solution, then, must lie in the non-governmental sectors in both the Arab world and the West, guided as they are by other values and other traditions and driven by more humane considerations to say the least.

The world has suffered enough from stagnant thought and the lack of will resulting from the factional interests of the members of the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

All of this will not end unless more support is given to civil society groups like the anti-globalisation movement which, even if on a small scale, has confronted governmental schemes, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the American president on his international trips, to almost any capital he visits.

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