How many media outlets bothered to tell us that the injured French policeman executed by terrorists on the pavement was a Muslim French policeman by the name of Ahmed Merabet. These terrorists seemed like professionally trained maybe by a state intelligence service and yet “conveniently” forgot an identity card in the get-away car and are killed not apprehended.
The timing of this incident was suspicious. First it came a week after France voted in the UN Security Council to end the Israeli occupation that started in 1967 (i.e. with a sub-minimal demand supported by International law). Second, the terror attack happened just after the Israeli government said their largest number of immigrants in 2014 came from France and they want more colonial settlers.
What came to mind is the bombing of Jewish community centers in Baghdad in the 1950s that helped recruit needed Jews for Israeli colonial activities. In that case it was exposed to be a Mossad operation. We also recall the Lavon affair (Israeli bombings of American and British interests in Cairo blaming it on Egyptian nationals). Whether this was yet another false flag operation or by rogue terrorists not left alive to be questioned, Zionists are milking it to the best of their (very large) media abilities and they talk endlessly about Muslims and Islam. When Jewish terrorists like Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon committed crimes, they was merely “deluded renegades” (but who became prime ministers of Israel).
Why not call those in Paris also “deluded renegades”? But more importantly what are lessons to draw from all this?
I and many people around the globe work daily to challenge fundamentalism/ extremism (be it cloaked in Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or other cloak). We try to bring these deluded racist humans into reality. The best way is via positive action with insistence on human rights and international law EVERYWHERE. Freedom of speech is critical. The biggest enemy for all of us is fear (the opposite of love) that suppresses freedom of speech and makes for compliant “customers” rather than involved citizens.
Our biggest ally is hope which springs from being at peace in our own hearts. It allows us to transform the world (not fight it). In the words of a wise friend (Chris R): “If evil is explained as anything other than the fruit of a distracted mind, distracted by its own choice, you divide the human race into the good and evil, and politics is impossible…..We cannot give up on anybody … The alternative–giving up on someone–that’s racism, for one thing, and it’s never justified.” [And I might add is a dead end road for humanity].
Our thoughts are with the victims’ families including the family of Ahmed Merabet. Let us plant hope, love, and kindness in our hearts.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He is director of the main clinical cytogenetics laboratory and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Institute for Biodiversity Research.