Arab World Reacts to “Gaza Massacre”

People from across the Arab world are lamenting the fate of Gazans, after a wave of Israeli aerial attacks, which have killed more than 200 Palestinians and wounded more than 700.

The silence of Arab governments in particular is hitting a raw nerve.

Ayhamjzzan from Syria writes in Arabic:

نصف الشهداء ال200 نساء وأطفال

100 طن متفجرات من 100 طائرة أطلقت على غزة اليوم

أين العرب والشعب العربي هل هذه حرب ضد حماس أم إبادة لأهل غزة

أين الكرامة العربية ولماذا نقف متفرجين كما الأنظمة العربية البائسة تتفرج ولاتفلح إلا بالتنديد

Half the 200 martyrs are women and children. A 100 tonnes of explosives from a 100 air crafts was fired. Where are the Arabs? Is this a war against Hamas or the extermination of the people of Gaza? Where is the Arab dignity and why are we standing on the sideline watching like the futile Arab regimes which are only ready to condemn.

Still in Syria Qunfuz says that the massacre was easy to foresee. The blogger adds:

This is a deliberate, cruelly organised crime. And nobody notices.

This morning, with children in school, people on the streets and in offices, policemen at a graduation ceremony, the sky screamed and roared. There are reports of general panic, and of streets clogged with corpses.

I know the writing becomes a whine when these simple sentiments are expressed: but, again; imagine you are living, or dying, with your children, in such a place. And imagine that the world ignores you.

We are all Gaza

Jordanian Mohammed Badi posts this image and writes:

Gaza… Don't Cry, We Are With U

Label Ash [fr], a Moroccan from Barcelona, is swamped by a sense of doom:

La ligue arabe dit qu'elle va se réunir lundi pour contrer l'offensive israélienne. Ils arrivent à garder un sacré sens de l'humour.
La ligue va juste condamner avec des joutes verbales stériles.Y a-t-il quelque chose à faire? Non.

Pardon pour la froideur sentencieuse de la formule, mais cela ne sert plus à rien. La Palestine s'éteint, petit à petit, mais elle s'éteint.

“La Palestine appelle le monde, mais ça sonne occupé” (Amazigh Yacine)

The Arab League says a meeting will be held on Monday to counter the Israeli attacks.
They sure keep a sense of humor. The League will only condemn the attacks with sterile talks. Is there something we can do ? No.
Sorry for the coldness of this word. But it's of no use now. Palestine is dying, little by little.
“Palestine calls the world, but the line is busy” (Amazigh Yacine)

Jordanian SimSim is also appalled with Arab and international reactions to the suffering of Palestinians. The blogger says that every time such a tragedy strikes, history seems to repeat itself – with the same reactions and statements.

On Arab government reactions, SimSim notes:

الدول العربية تدعو الى عقد قمة عربية طارئة والتي من المعروف مسبقا ما سيتمخض عنها من قرارات حاسمة:
– طلب السماح والعفو من الصهاينة ورجائهم بوقف قتل المدنيين والا بنزعل منهم
Arab countries will call for an urgent Arab summit where the important decisions which would be made will be known in advance. They will ask for forgiveness from the Zionists and beg them to stop killing civilians or else we would all be unhappy with them.
طبعا لن يتم اتخاذ اي اجراءات و العياذ بالله الا بعد ان تنتهي الحملة العسكرية كاملة وذلك بسبب الاحتفالات و الأعياد الرسمية
And of course, they will not take any action until the military campaign ends because they are busy with celebrations and official holidays.

Turning his attention to the international arena the blogger says:

كل الدول الها نفس الاسطوانة ….. لو ما حماس القت باسلحتها لما هاجت اسرائيل

ليش اسرائيل متى هدت اللعب ؟ ولكن الآن تقتل بموافقة الأغبياء العرب … طبعا بحجة توحيد الصفوف وايجاد حكومة واحدة لفلسطين

احلى اشي البيت الاسود ….. تدعو اسرائيل الى تركيز ضرباتها بعيدا عن المدنيين ….. هاي الحنان ولا بلاش

All the countries playing the same record: If Hamas had surrendered its weapons, Israel would not have attacked.
When has Israel stopped? It is now attacking with the approval of the stupid Arabs, under the excuse, of course, of unifying our ranks and establishing a single government for Palestine.

The best thing is the Black House, which has called on Israel to focus its attacks far from civilians. This is what I would call compassion.

SimSim also describes Arab people as follows:

متعاطف … منكسر … لا حيلة له … سيحزن …. سيتابع قنوات التلفزة …. سيبكي …. ولكن !!! راس السنة قربت لذلك حفلات رأس السنة كفيلة بالتخفيف عنه و الحمد لله
Sympathetic..heart broken..can't do anything about the situation … will be sad .. will follow news channels .. will cry … and then!!! New Year's Eve is around the corner and this will be enough to lessen the strain on them.

A fitting finale to this round up can be found at On Olives and Sake, where Syrian blogger Yazan Badran posts a headline which reads:

Happy Bloody New Year.

For more reactions, stay tuned to Global Voices Online.

36 comments

  • civax

    Lets first get things straight. This attack wouldn’t had happened if Hamas and other terror groups hadn’t shoot more then 300 missiles the past 10 days on israeli cities and villages. I’m not only quoting the news, my family actually lives in Ashkelon, where rockets hit almost daily.

    The past year, 6 months of were under the ‘truce’ agreement, saw more then 3000 rockets from Gaza, hitting anywhere around!

    This attack is LONG over due!

    Also, regarding the false ‘massacre’ claim, Palestinians themselves report that out of the 230 dead only 15 are civilians. Of course, every dead is bad for it self, but this proves Israel was very much aiming at Hamas targets – buildings, training camps, police stations, hidden missiles storage etc. It’s actually quite amazing the managed to avoid hitting more civilians with Gaza being as crowded as it is.

    (230 vs 15 reference: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-12-27-israel-palestine_N.htm )

  • civax

    And about ‘propositional response’:

    Since the “truce” (which was violated by Hamas constantly) ended last week, we had about 300 missiles falling on cities and villages in south Israel.

    I guess a true ‘propositional response’, then, would have been if the Israeli army had fired 300 missiles randomly into civilian areas in Gaza.

    Yep, I guess the Europeans would have been fine with that, then.

  • kaka_kaja

    The Palestine charter calls for “the destruction of Israel by any means & the annihilation of all Jews in Palestine.”

    So Hamas plays war.
    So Israel plays war.
    So Hamas die.
    So arabs now whine like little girls while the brave among them continue to honor kill defenseless Muslim women.

    Israel must be succeeding. Hamas leaders are again hiding under beds while their 5th columnists spread their now stale propoganda and hatred and the usual lies.
    BTW It was mostly hamas terrorists who were killed; but y confuse propaganda w/ facts

  • Robby

    History shows us how Arab leaders deal with this type of problem, just look at what happened in Hama Syria in 1982, or Jordan during Black September. Just last summer when Palestinian violence flared up in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp the Lebanese army evacuated as many as they could and pretty much killed what was left.

    Maybe the Arab world does nothing because they understand their reaction to the missile situation would be similar to Israel’s? Maybe they understand that Israel did not really order this attack, HAMAS did?

  • المهم أن لانسكت , ولايدفعنا العجز إلى اليأس
    كل منا يستطيع فعل شئ حتى و لو بالدعاء

  • Yes, if you invade someone’s home and chain them up in their backyard you have the perfect right to beat them near death when they try and fight back.
    The police come and you defend your action: “Look! He always scratches me when I come to the back yard. Yesterday I loosened his chains a bit and he kicked me! So I think I have the right to beat him.”
    And the police admonish the chained man: “If you didn’t always try and fight, he wouldn’t beat you! it’s what you deserve!”
    I guess no one sees the chains anymore and has forgotten about the home invasion… that is everyone except the chained man

  • they are 275 martyrs now . It is not about the missiles shot by Hamas because israeli officials said that this war was prepared to hit from months , and it is not false massacre , see the news and watch the bodys of women and children all over the streets , count them and tell us if it is a massacre or not

  • civax :
    1- it’s really funny to call these things as “rockets” . i belive a car accident would cause more damage.
    2- why are these – so – called “rockets” are being “fired”??
    did you notice that your government has been making a seige over a one and a half million perons?
    do u know how long it has been and what it is causing?
    you want these people starve – die in silent and not even bother you while diying?? at least give them the right to send you these “rockets’ as a MESSAGE telling you
    ” WE ARE DYING ”
    ” WE ARE DYING ”
    ” WE ARE DYING ”
    ” WE ARE DYING ”
    ” WE ARE DYING ”

    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    hopefully you got the message

  • Ahalan أمنية,

    1. These rockets KILL. Luckily we have sirens and every house has a secured room made of shelters’ concrete. So most of us are able to hide in time. But people died, injured, disabled from these rockets. These are not toys.

    All the rockets reaching my town Ashkelon are NOT home-made Quassams, they are Russian GRAD missiles. With proper explosives. They are the REAL THING. Just yesterday such a missile landed inside a house while the family was sitting to have lunch, killed one and injured the rest.

    2. The Palestinians starve out of their oen hand doing. When we left Gaza stip we left there greenhouses with full equipment as a token of peace. These greenhouses produced tons of food -for export-. It was a multi-million dollar business. There were many Gazans that worked in those greenhouses and knew how to operate them.

    Instead of keep producing the food, for themselves and for export, the palestinians, lead by Hamas, DESTROYED the greenhouses and looted the pipes and equipment.

    The Gazans had a wonderful opportunity to construct a new, FREE, country. Instead if that they mad Gaza a source of terror and training camps. They made missiles and started shooting them into Israel. That was 7-8 years ago.

    Later, Hamas overthrown Fatah in a bloodbath revold and took over Gaza. Fatah people were slaughtered on the street or been thrown of the roofs of high buildings. Google it up, don’t take my word for it.

    Once Hamas took over the hostile actions against Israel escalated. Even during the Regi’a (Thadia/Truce) they shot thousands of missiles on my city and around.

    A siege was the LEAST Israel could have done. Remember we still supply them petrol and some electricity, even though they keep shooting at the power plant in ashkelon that provides them with that electricity.

    So don’t give me any bullshit about starving people and “we are dieing”. If they were peaceful people they already had grown all the food they need themselves from our greenhouses. And if they are so starving, let them stop the attacks completely and we’ll let in all the aid in the world.

    have no one to blame but themselves. Let’s go back a few years. Regardless of all the

  • […] take a comment I got as an example. أمنية wrote this comment on a GlobalVoices post: civax : 1- it’s really funny to call these things as “rockets” . i belive a car accident […]

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