Another "expert" article on the Arabs

“When you grow up in a place like Iraq, you understand maybe a little bit about how Arabs think, and also what they are capable of.” A girl with an agenda, misguided and angry, given a speaking platform in a subtle, but racist article typical of those spewing out of conservative America. It exudes an undeserved and false authority on the subject, and is worded in such a style as to depict all Arabs as bloodthirsty Jew haters.

What makes me angry about an article like this is that this self styled "expert" on the Arabs is given an article which legitimises her vigilante lifestyle and thoughts. Rightly the girl is angry for the hanging of her father, but rather than blame Saddam's thuggish regime, looking for scapegoats to divert attention from his tyranny, embarks on a mission to protect the "civilized West" from these Oriental hordes of fanatics. For a bizarre reason, the article never actually says that she is an Iraqi Jew, rather, it expects that the reader would eventually deduce that, as if perhaps, saying who she is at the outset would somehow damage the credibility of this article and what she does for a living. Which it would not, but begs the question, why is it omitted?

Most importantly, it never for once doubts that it is American and Zionist imperialist interests in the region which have radicalised it in this way. If 9 Iraqi Jews were wrongfully hung in 1969 it is an act that was perpetrated simply out of some inherent anti-semitism in the Arabs (themselves Semites), or so the writer wishes us to believe. Israel just happens to be there for them to emigrate to, by then barely two decades old. The suicide bombers in Iraq are not given a motive, they are just driven by hatred (they mostly are, but the writer conveniently doesn't include the illegitimate invasion of Iraq by the United States and it's allies, not because of what Saddam was, but for realpolitik.). Finally, the government that Rita Katz most fervently believes in and supports in her self proclaimed crusade funded, armed and was allied with Saddam Hussein in the years following the hanging, but she doesn't seem to see the hypocrisy of her position or ideology.

Her stint in the IOF I imagine would have helped justify and solidify her resolve for a self proclaimed crusade against the entire Arab and Muslim world. In the eyes of a five year old, what she saw would have been traumatic, but instead of reaching out to find the truth of what happened, she nurtured a hatred that, lacking any focus, eventually covered an entire nation. The saddest part of all this, apart from her ignorance not only of the history and the region, is the willingness of others to shape and encourage that hatred to support their interests.