|
Trending Topics
|
I'm Arab and I Don't Understand Why the World Can't Acknowledge Jewish Pain
(Newsweek) Hussain Abdul-Hussain - Many years ago, I learned Hebrew in a bid to penetrate into a world that I once thought was evil and conspiring against the Arabs and Muslims. Once in, I was surprised how wrong I was, how wrong almost every Arab and Muslim around me was. Israel was not on a mission to kill us all. Israel wanted to live and let live. In the Middle East, it's we, the Arabs, who never seem to let live. These days, Israelis are suffering immense pain over the 1,200 people who Hamas killed in cold blood on Oct. 7. Survivors are struggling with PTSD. All of Israel is living in anxiety over the fate of the 240 hostages Hamas took. Tears for the victims of Oct. 7 are now mixed with tears over fallen soldiers fighting in Gaza. The world does not feel Israeli pain. It only sees and hears Palestinian pain. The world likes to take the side of the underdog, even when the underdog is guilty. One billion Muslims have a much louder voice than 16 million Jews. So the world blames Israel, even when Palestinians started the carnage. The Jews understood a long time ago that the world is not a fair place. This is exactly why the Jews went out of their way to create Jewish sovereignty, to establish a state that can protect Jews. Many Jews died to earn that Israeli sovereignty, and they continue to die for it even now. The writer is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.