A morgue assistant pulling out drawers holding the mutilated corpses of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israelis. Doctors pummeling the chest of a dead Palestinian in a desperate attempt to revive him. The body of a tiny infant, swathed in bloodied blankets, held up by a grieving parent.
These raw images -- aired almost daily on Arab television since the Palestinian-Israeli clashes erupted a year ago -- haven't lost the power to touch the hearts of Arab viewers.
Indeed, they have fed a great buildup of Arab anger -- not only against Israel but also against the US, its chief ally, already resented throughout the Middle East for imposing 11 years of sanctions and launching repeated airstrikes on Iraq.
Many also see the invasion of American culture as an assault on the Arab way of life, from Hollywood movies sneaking in by satellite to women demanding greater rights.
That anger has left many Arabs grappling with conflicting emotions over the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On the one hand, they denounce the attacks as a massacre that Islam shuns. But on the other hand, many wonder whether the US deserves sympathy when, they argue, it has alternated between playing the role of supporter of Israel and of mere spectator in the yearlong Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"We feel outraged by what happened in the United States, but we want the world to feel the same for the daily Israeli killings of Palestinians, the demolishing of houses and the humiliation of the people," said Wafa Mohammed, a shop owner in Jordan.
"If the United States had sympathized with the Arabs, the destruction that took place in the United States wouldn't have happened," said Mohammed Tohami, a 22-year-old Egyptian frame maker.
"There's a feeling among Arabs that the United States is totally responsible for what's happening in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," said Imad Shueibi, a Syrian political analyst.
Taking such resentment into account, most Arab governments, including key US allies, have been careful about giving the US the Arab and Islamic cover it needs for its war against terrorism.
US President George W. Bush, who has threatened to punish Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia for harboring Osama bin Laden, is assembling US forces in the Gulf region for a retaliatory strike.
Arab leaders urged the US -- which so far has offered little public proof of bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks -- against hasty military action before the culprits are identified without a shred of doubt.
"What I don't stop telling the United States is: don't rush into it. Wait until your investigation is completed," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview published Saturday.
Mubarak offered Egypt's cooperation in hunting down the assassins, calling for an anti-terrorism coalition under UN auspices. But he warned that any US retaliation resulting in the deaths of innocent people would fuel greater hatred of the US and any allies who participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.
CROSS-STRAIT COLLABORATION: The new KMT chairwoman expressed interest in meeting the Chinese president from the start, but she’ll have to pay to get in Beijing allegedly agreed to let Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) around the Lunar New Year holiday next year on three conditions, including that the KMT block Taiwan’s arms purchases, a source said yesterday. Cheng has expressed interest in meeting Xi since she won the KMT’s chairmanship election in October. A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consensus on a meeting was allegedly reached after two KMT vice chairmen visited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤) in China last month. Beijing allegedly gave the KMT three conditions it had to
STAYING ALERT: China this week deployed its largest maritime show of force to date in the region, prompting concern in Taipei and Tokyo, which Beijing has brushed off Deterring conflict over Taiwan is a priority, the White House said in its National Security Strategy published yesterday, which also called on Japan and South Korea to increase their defense spending to help protect the first island chain. Taiwan is strategically positioned between Northeast and Southeast Asia, and provides direct access to the second island chain, with one-third of global shipping passing through the South China Sea, the report said. Given the implications for the US economy, along with Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors, “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” it said. However, the strategy also reiterated
‘BALANCE OF POWER’: Hegseth said that the US did not want to ‘strangle’ China, but to ensure that none of Washington’s allies would be vulnerable to military aggression Washington has no intention of changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, adding that one of the US military’s main priorities is to deter China “through strength, not through confrontation.” Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Hegseth outlined the US Department of Defense’s priorities under US President Donald Trump. “First, defending the US homeland and our hemisphere. Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for us, allies and partners. And fourth, supercharging the US defense industrial base,” he said. US-China relations under
FRAUD ISSUES: The app meets none of Taiwan’s 15 cybersecurity standards, and in the past year, about 1,706 fraud cases have been identified on it The Ministry of the Interior yesterday ordered Taiwanese Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu (小紅書, also known as RedNote in English) for a year, after detecting hundreds of instances of fraud on the platform. The ISPs have been instructed to block access to the app to its more than 3 million users in Taiwan, effective immediately, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan (馬士元) told a news conference at the National Police Agency’s Fraud Prevention Center. The order is being implemented via protocols governing domain name system (DNS) response policy zones, he said. Xiaohongshu meets none
RSS