I am not accustomed to praising rulers and political leaders. I always thought that doing this would be demeaning to the dignity and integrity of true journalists who should be true and loyal to their conscience and moral rectitude first and foremost.
However sometimes one feels prompted to stand for truth and honesty even if doing so might be interpreted as taking the side of a specific ruler.
Last week a number of Palestinian students burned the effigy of Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa al Thani at the Khaduri Institute in the northern West Bank generating a lot of consternation among Palestinians and others.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) denounced the provocative feat calling it irresponsible and saying it didn’t represent the Palestinian people.
However many people had expected the PA reactions to be much stronger.
Sheikh Hamad is not Omar ibn al-Khattab or even Khalid ibn al-Waleed or Salahuddin. However he is certainly not Bashar el-Assad or Husni Mubarak.
Hence to caricature the Emir of Qatar as the worst Arab leader and number-one enemy of the Palestinian people is nothing less than a malicious lie on the part of these misguided and brainwashed youngsters who embarked on this stupid act.
As far as this writer knows Sheikh Hamad never killed or ordered the killing of any Palestinian. On the contrary he always hastened to help the Palestinian people in time of need when nearly everyone else watched us passively languish in pain whether under Israeli bombardment or under hermetic siege designed to bring us to our knees.
Sheikh Hamad visited Gaza when no other Arab ruler dared to set foot on the soil of the coastal enclave which proved itself a perpetual thorn in Israel’s side.
He paid hundreds of millions of dollars for rebuilding Gaza utterly destroyed by Zio-Nazism eager to repeat the genocidal heroism of Old Testament savagery against the thoroughly tormented and thoroughly starved people of Gaza.
Qatar has also been a constant donor for the PA government in Ramallah despite the latter’s ingratitude and repeated castigations of the Qatari leadership.
In our Islamic culture we say “he that doesn’t thank people doesn’t thank God.”
In fact those who behaved offensively toward Qatar and its gallant emir proved themselves not only ungrateful and ignorant but truly disoriented not being able to distinguish their friends from their enemies.
Their stupid behavior is tantamount to biting the hand that feeds them.
In comparison to the emir of Qatar the Hitler of Syria Bashar el Assad has been indulging in a genocidal war of extermination and ethnic cleansing against both the Syrian and Palestinian peoples. In addition to the estimated 80000 Syrians murdered on the hands of his sectarian thugs hundreds or perhaps thousands of innocent Palestinians have been murdered by the criminal forces of Assad.
The Palestinians are not really involved in the Syrian quagmire. Nor are they eager to. However because Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslims and because the Assad regime has been blinded by the sectarian plague the Assad forces don’t flinch from killing innocent Palestinians in droves or bombing Palestinian refugee camps in order to satiate their hatred with Sunni Muslim blood.
Which brings us to the real question: Why do these ignorant Palestinian students refrain from burning or hanging the effigy of Bashar el-Assad?
Or is el-Assad being more humane and more patriotic than all other Arab rulers? Are you that much stupid disoriented and ignorant?
The great Arab poet Abu Attayeb al Mutanabi described those who are themselves’ enemies saying:
“The tears of the eye betray a man when they hanker after his enemies”
On behalf of Palestinians who understand the meaning of gratitude and who don’t betray their friends I apologize to Sheikh Hamad for the ignorance and recklessness displayed by these kids.
I hope he will accept the apology.
