The only difference between the Darfur massacre and previous Arab massacres is the image. What happened inside Arab prisons in the past happened far from the cameras, international observers and the reports of international human rights organizations.
If the International Criminal Court (ICC) had existed five decades ago and the Arab regimes genocidal crimes since the 1950s through the late 1980s had been documented, many Arab leaders would have faced what the Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir is now facing.
For example, there is no significant difference between what President Omar Al-Bashir has done with the people of Darfur, who have been killed, rendered homeless and displaced, and the repression, torture, abuse and murder perpetrated by late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser against his opponents, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. The same goes for the actions of late Syrian President Hafez Assad, also against the Muslim Brotherhood, in what is known as the Hamah Massacre, when hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members were arrested, killed and displaced for allegedly spreading chaos; or the actions of late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who ordered several massacres, foremost among them the Halabjah massacre, where chemical weapons were used, claiming the lives of nearly 10,000 Iraqis.
All the above is true. But it is also true that many crimes and massacres were committed over the past two decades at the time when these crimes were broadcast on air, without Western society and human rights organizations lifting a finger. The siege, starvation, the killing of thousands and displacement of thousands of other in Iraq over the past two decades by the United States and the sanctions imposed by the international community is also genocide, even though what the former US President has done in Iraq may not be equivalent in horror or criminality to what Saddam Hussein did against his opponents over the past three decades.
Thus Bush too must be tried as a war criminal for what he did in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as what he did against the Palestinians through his absolute support for Israeli extremists. What the Israelis have been doing for decades against the Palestinians is more heinous than what the Hutu and the Tutsi did against each other in the mid 1990s. Who is responsible now for the displacement of nearly 5 million Palestinians?
If we only look at what happened recently in Gaza as an example it is enough to prosecute all Israeli officials as war criminals on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity with their use of white phosphorus and DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosives). The DIME bombs are like small nuclear bombs, which Israel imports from the United States.
Strangely, during a visit I made to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, I saw nothing that would convince me of the truth about what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. What I did find, however, was a dark room with illuminated pictures of displaced children, men and women and a large banner reading: Victims of Darfur.
I see this as a malicious attempt to convince the visitors to the museum that what is happening now in Darfur is no less reprehensible than what happened to the Jews in the 1940s. These pictures have led to strong pressure by human rights organizations on the US Congress to adopt the issue of Darfur and push the White House to take strong action against the Sudanese regime. And this is what has actually happened during the Bush administration.
But the question is: Why have our human rights organizations and Arab civil society organizations failed to adopt the issue of denouncing the American and Israeli massacres against Arab peoples? Why have we not seen an Arab media campaign to expose the Israeli racist behavior towards the Palestinians? Why do our politicians not speak the same language of humanity adopted by Western officials when they speak about their issues?
Trying to answer this question has helped me realize the big difference between our massacres and theirs .
Khalil Al-Anani is an Egyptian expert on political Islam and democratization in the Middle East and is a senior fellow at Al-Ahram Foundation. E-mail: [email protected].
