From Phil Weiss: Last night I posted a comment by my new friend Mohammad on Gaza in which he called it "genocide." I felt somewhat uncomfortable with the word, but I am trying to get this blog open to Muslim/Arab voices, people I have little familiarity with, and that means allowing people to say what they think.
One of my character flaws/advantages is that I get crushes on other people and trust them. Some times this leads to insight. The reasons I have been making room for Mohammad here are that at 41, he has an open heart, rich experience and analytic capacity. He served in the Iranian army during the Iran-Iraq war. He is now a grad student in Canada and an artist and gallery curator.
This morning I sent Mohammad a note challenging him about "genocide." Why did you use that word? How does what has happened in Gaza compare to all the blood Muslims have drenched the sands of the Middle East with? What about what you guys did in the Iran-Iraq war? Here's his response, dashed off in a few minutes before he ran to class:
I am like you interested in introspective
discourse rather than propaganda. I think the whole 60 year process has
been a genocide. But you are right, this 22 day war in isolation and
looked at on its own does not qualify as genocide. Now having said
that, we should not allow semantics to take away from the depth of the
tragedy called the Gaza
war. When IDF soldiers gather 100 members of an extended family and
shove them in a building and "bulldoze" the building over their head
killing most of them, what should we call that?
About the Iran Iraq war,
as someone who was there for 2 years and saw things with my own eyes, I
testify to the humanity of the Iranian side. Saddam, a secular military
dictator surely will qualify as someone 100 times worse than IDF. My
cousin (from my father's side) who joined the Islamic resistance to the
Iranian invasion on the first day of Iran Iraq war was captured and apparently (eye
witness) died under torture in POW camps. Saddam would separate the
captives based on being from the conscripted army or volunteer force. If they found out you are from the volunteer force, you would be treated like Nazi Germany treated the French or Jewish resistance forces. The conscripted army was treated based on some form of Geneva Convention POW rules.
I don't wanna sound pro Iran,
but Iran fought that war mostly by being mean to their own side,
organizing young volunteers to walk over minefields to open up a front,
allowing 14 year olds to join the volunteer Islamic militia (called
Basij). We would cringe at the idea that these fuckers are taking
thousands of young people to a war in which most of them would never
come back. But our treatment of Iraqis wasn't as bad as you may have heard.
Fighting
the anti Iran propaganda needs another whole person. I have decided
that helping Palestine is more important than fighting the unfair
propaganda about Iran, its revolution and its regime. If Palestine
wasn't such an urgent call, I would totally dedicate my life to
rewriting the history of the Iranian revolution.
Please
edit the word genocide out of my text if this is creating tension or
doubt about your objectives–even though I may think in quality what Israel did in Gaza (first siege, then total war) may qualify as such. Another thing to remember is pro Israeli guys love the language game. The strategy is to exhaust us in a game about words. I would like to know what do you think.
respect and peace, Mo
