No More Tears

Dear Americans,

I’ve written to you a published openletter a year after the criminal attacks of September 11th reiterating my heartfeltcondemnation of those attacks, while reminding you, despite your pain, to search deeper for the context, forthe root causes that made them possible. I still had not run out of sympathy for your victims then. AfterIraq, you can still count on my moral rejection of any similarly criminal attack against you in the future,but you can forget about my sympathy. I hope you realize what the difference means. ‘Who cares?’, you mayask. Well, although I obviously do not speak for the peoples of the south, the Arabs, or even my own people,the Palestinians, I suspect much of what I convey to you here is widely shared in all three domains. 

Despite the horrifying exposure of your military’s war crimes and systematic dehumanization of and terroragainst Arabs and Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, your elected representatives are feverishlyseeking a technical, bureaucratic explanation of what happened, and are trying -- to no avail, evidently -- toportray every incident of terror or abuse as a rare occasion committed by an isolated group of individualsagainst standing orders and in contravention of American ethical values and norms. Whom are they fooling? Isthere anyone left in Europe, not to mention the Arab world, who still believes your government’s policygives a damn about moral principles or international law? Hasn’t it become abundantly clear that yourcountry is increasingly being viewed by the rest of the world, especially the southern part of it, as alawless, immoral, bullying and murderous empire?

If all what has been revealed about the illegal, racist behaviour of your armed forces around the world hasfailed to convince you to democratically impeach, or at least withdraw your support for, the rulingneo-conservative regime in Washington, then you’re proving that far from being an isolated aberration, thisarrogant, fundamentalist, imperialist junta does in fact represent America today. Still, from my perspective,this can never justify a terrorist attack against civilians in your country or anywhere else, but it cansurely blunt any potential sympathy one would normally have -- and did indeed express after September 11th --in such circumstances.

The next time the US is afflicted by terrorism many of us who did in fact shed tears in 2001 will not do soagain. For one, I shall maintain my moral consistency and still condemn any comparable attack as criminal andimmoral, mainly out of principle; but, honestly, I doubt I shall re-experience the sincere dejection andsearing agony that I felt the first time.

Whatever you ask, please do not ask why we "hate" you. Putting aside the simplistic and dichotomicnature of such a question -- "you’re either with us or against us," your great leader says -- let megive you my straight answer: I don’t.

But, I hate what your government is doing in your name, with your tax money, and with solid support frommost of you. I despise the fact that your country is sponsoring Israeli colonial oppression against my people,shielding Israel from the world’s wrath and from the overdue prospect of sanctions for violating everyapplicable precept of international law in maintaining its military occupation and illegal colonies in theWest Bank and Gaza, its racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens and its obdurate rejectionof the internationally protected right of our refugees to return to the lands from which Israel had expelledthem, and on the ruins of which it had established itself.

I hate the way your mainstream media refers to our innocent victims, whether in Iraq or Palestine, asfaceless numbers, as relative humans, as dispensable objects in your empire’s crusade for world domination.

I hate the repugnant hubris of your "elected" lawmakers, who owe their seats and privileges to a fewvery powerful lobbies controlling your lives and minds, and forming the pillar of American flouting ofinternational law in every field imaginable. It is ironic that lawmakers anywhere can become such an infestedbreeding ground for lawlessness in international affairs.

I hate the fact that your military, oil and other sinister industries have flourished at the expense ofkilling, injuring or ruining the livelihood of millions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. And I stronglyresent the fact that in order to keep prices low at your gas pumps, Arabs have had to suffer under despoticrulers, hand-picked and buttressed by your consecutive governments for decades.

I hate the silence, the apathy -- and therefore the implicit approval -- that your majority espouses whenfaced with incriminating evidence of your government’s wrongdoing in our countries. After Falluja, you weresilent. After Rafah, you were apathetic. After Guantanamo’s horrors were revealed, you turned your eyes andears the other way.

Why do most of you hate us, we, people of the south, should ask? Why can’t you accept us as beings whoare equally human, who possess a similar sense of pride, who have similar dreams and aspirations, and whovalue peace and dignified living more than anything else? Why can’t you see that all we need is justice anda chance to develop on our own, without your government’s oppressive exploitation, patronizing intervention,or masterly dictates.

Your country is way too powerful now for anyone to have the guts to drag it to the internationalcriminal court, where most of your leaders ought to stand trial; but if Rome is any example, I would not takesolace in that transient strength. You have a clear moral, legal and political obligation to change yourcountry’s course. For the foreseeable future, it can afford to stay on its current path, crushing every headraised in resistance, and battering every soul that refuses to be enslaved, but this path has always led toone destination: utter defeat under the feat of the oppressed majority which will undoubtedly prevail, as italways has.

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political analyst.