In the wake of 9/11 and The Second Intifada, neoconservatives and hard-right Zionists brainwashed the American people with dehumanizing stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims. Our unsuspecting, historically amnesiac, critically unaware public was led to believe garbage like “they hate us because they hate our freedom,” “all Muslims/Arabs are violent religious fanatic terrorists,” “all Palestinians are suicide bombers,” and so on. Note that “us” was collapsed with “Israelis” in this discourse.
I believe that long dark period is beginning to end. The Middle East/North Africa revolutions replace the old racist myth with a new frame: Arab and Muslim peoples, just like Europeans and others with whom we identify, demand freedom and are using largely nonviolent means to achieve it. For the average American (I hope!), Arabs and Muslims look a lot more like Filipinos from the People Power Movement — or any of the dozens of other nonviolent movements that have deposed dictatorial regimes in the past 30 years (Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia, and so on) — than irrational, bloodthirsty killers.
The NYT notes this trend with a front page story on Al Qaeda’s irrelevance in the revolutions, the same Al Qaeda that the American right has for so long used as a bogeyman to spread fear and hatred.
“Knocking off Mubarak has been [Al Qaeda leader] Zawahri’s goal for more than 20 years, and he was unable to achieve it,” said Brian Fishman, a terrorism expert at the New America Foundation. “Now a nonviolent, nonreligious, pro-democracy movement got rid of him in a matter of weeks.”
For a decade, the United States has been preoccupied with the Muslim world as a source of terrorist violence…
“All of the givens,” Mr. Boucek said, “are gone.”
Let’s hope that includes the given of unlimited military and diplomatic support for Israeli war crimes and land theft.
