Zuhdi Shubeitah
العربية

The White House Has Feathers on Its Head

The article criticizes the US administration’s support for Israel during its offensive in the Gaza Strip, argues that many Arab states have been complicit through silence, and contrasts American public protests with government policy.

العربيةRead the Arabic original

English translation, prepared and reviewed before publication. The Arabic text is authoritative.

Zuhdi ShubeitahBanking executive (former)
Published
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11 min read
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●      The Palestinians and the Arabs and the Muslims did not participate in persecuting the Jews, whether Babylonian or Roman, before or after the Common Era... nor did they participate in the massacre of the Jews carried out by the Nazis in the 1940s. Nor did they take part in the expulsions and chases that European countries carried out in the past. Rather, Jews of all denominations and sects lived among the Muslims and Arabs in Al-Andalus…and afterward, as equals as well… where the number of Jews in the Arab countries was at least more than one million people. They lived in peace, security and harmony with their Arab cousins… until the Zionist movement and the Balfour Promise arrived… and the Zionist movement began inciting Jews in Europe and the Arab countries to emigrate to Palestine to solidify the Balfour Promise by establishing a national homeland for them in Palestine. Jewish gangs committed massacres and slaughter against the Palestinians, the rightful owners of the land, and expelled them from it, and the Palestinians became refugees in tents when the State of Israel was declared in 1948… The war and Israel’s commission of massacres continued after that date from then until we reached the war of genocide against the Palestinian people after 7 October 2023, with American support and participation..! Yet feelings and convictions haunt me that I try to push away from my thinking… they say: that most Arab and Muslim countries are implicated to varying degrees in the slaughter and massacres against the Palestinians that the Israeli occupation is committing with American support and that of some Western countries, and their silence is suspicious and disgraceful...! There is no genuine intention by some Arab countries to stop the genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip… regardless of the lofty denunciatory speeches… they are lying....!! Peoples smell...and feel what is happening...and hold accountable when necessary!

●      I have respect for some segments of the American people… including American Jews…. I have many friends among the American people there… where I completed my graduate studies in the United States of America more than 45 years ago, and the Palestinian community and the Arab communities in the United States maintain growing relations with the other components of American society… Many sectors of the American people, including American Jews, have staged large demonstrations in American cities and towns to stop the recent destructive Israeli war on the Gaza Strip… and to pressure the American administration..to force it to stop the war on the Gaza Strip… just as demonstrations roam the cities and capitals of the world for the same purpose with all due respect..!

●      However, I do not have respect for the American administration. ....because it assaults the truth when it presents to the world that Israel is democratic and that its army is one of the most ethical armies in the world, at a time when Israel is exterminating Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and continues to do so now for more than 64 days... and prior to that a massacre more than 75 years ago... and insists on entrenching normalization between the Arab states and Israel!... What democracy and what ethics..!.... Does the world, I wonder, not know the full facts?

●      I do not have respect for the American administration. ....because it assaults the truth by denying that there is a Palestinian people who were expelled from their homes in Palestine more than 75 years ago... and it practices injustice, aggression and liquidation of the cause of this people, whose land was seized from them by military occupation after Palestine was granted as a national homeland to the Jews by the British minister Balfour in 1917..... and who remain refugees in the diaspora and in the camps, including the Gaza Strip… where the army of the occupation, with absolute American and Western support and supervision, insists on pursuing and exterminating this people in the Gaza Strip first… and the war of extermination has been raging there for the sixty-fourth day since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.... Where the United States of America stood… yesterday, December 8, 2023, in the Security Council… refusing a ceasefire, defying the world more than once..!

●      I do not have respect for this American administration.....because it assaults the truth by promoting and reinforcing the fabricated lies and narratives of the Israeli occupation…. which have been proven false by the reports of the occupier’s press… Moreover, this administration defames those who defend their occupied land, and it enacts laws and legislation to pursue those who do not submit to its will...

●      I do not have respect for the White House administration, which exploits such a conflict to deploy its positions biased toward Israel in order to capture Jewish electoral votes in every electoral period and indeed every year..... Both parties—the Democratic Party currently in power, and the opposing Republican Party—employ their positions to mobilize the active Jewish vote and Jewish money in the United States in favor of their parties… just as the Prime Minister of Israel does in his determination to prolong the period of destructive war on the Gaza Strip for the purpose of sustaining his rule in Israel and avoiding appearing before the judiciary..! The positions of the American administration, toward Israel’s persisting in killing and exterminating the people of the Gaza Strip and its refusal to stop the ceasefire altogether until Israel can achieve its goals are something far from civilization for those who boast of it, and far from the ethics of wise states!

●      I do not have respect for this American administration because I am astonished by the repetition by the president of the undisputed most powerful country in the world of all the Israeli occupation’s false narratives and the adoption of them....! How we wished of the American administration..... that it would comment on the statements of the extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich when he said that there is no Palestinian people,.. Did the American administration not listen to Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Minister of Security, who said that Israeli settlers should burn Palestinian towns, including Hawara… and who actually burned houses, shops and institutions of the town of Hawara, under the sight, hearing and assistance of the Israeli occupation army after Ben-Gvir officially armed the settlers!.... Did the American administration not listen to that minister in the occupation government when he demanded that a nuclear bomb be dropped on the Gaza Strip so that Israel could be rid of it once and for all and quickly achieve its goals!, as America did in the past against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last century...! Why did the American administration not comment on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s lecture before the General Assembly. which revolved around the prospects and effects of normalization and peace with the Arab states, and his role in changing the Middle East... when he presented to the participating members of the General Assembly, in its 78th session in September 2023, a map of the new Middle East that makes no mention of Palestine. On it Netanyahu included only what he called the countries of the “new Middle East,” namely Egypt, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan.!

●      I do not have respect for this American administration because it plugs its ears to the truthful narrative of the Palestinian people... For example, the American administration scarcely mentions the name of this people or its leadership… except when it demands and insists that the Palestinian Authority… must condemn Hamas for what it did on 7 October… and consider it a terrorist organization… due to its attack on Israel on that day… How can this be?.... At a time when the American Congress classifies the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole representative of the Palestinian people that brought the Palestinian National Authority to Palestine, as a terrorist organization!!...... It is a ridiculous path.... but a weeping one for what our condition has come to of weakness and abasement... and a silence like the silence of tombs..! Our Palestinian people are being annihilated… in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank… where the Israeli occupation army commits war crimes that are, from the American perspective, legitimate because Israel is defending itself, despite being the occupying power.!… While the Gaza Strip, besieged for more than sixteen years and now being exterminated without pause, is classified as terrorism when it defends itself!.. Despite the condition of the Gaza Strip, which has become, as a foreign newspaper wrote, similar to a “lunar surface”– uninhabitable… and despite the bloodbaths committed by the army of the occupation, the Palestinians cling to their land…. despite the mass massacres… and before the world… and despite the betrayal of kin and the ugly official Arab silence! 

●       I do not have respect for this American administration, because the American administration is the one that has the decision to stop the ceasefire and end the war, yet it does the opposite: it supports it with all its might, fuels it with all kinds of weapons it possesses, and can end everything with a phone call. "Israel and America do not care about international public opinion or the international community, nor about any appeals or international efforts to stop this war, and, if you will, the genocide." !

-        I do not respect this American administration because the American administration...which holds the keys, belittles the Palestinian people, including its leadership..Palestinians were promised, by the White House administration from the Democratic Party..to strengthen relations with the Palestinians when the Democratic Party assumed the White House....to reopen the U.S. consulate building in East Jerusalem..to reopen the Palestine Liberation Organization representative office in the United States..and to achieve a two-state solution..and the Democratic Party assumed power after succeeding in the 2020 election, but which of these promises was fulfilled!.

-        I do not respect this American administration because the American administration...does not truly care about the massacres committed against Palestinian civilians, and about what is occurring in the Gaza Strip, a war of annihilation against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the destruction and terrible suffering..and it stands as an impenetrable barrier against requests for a ceasefire...after more than 64 days of the annihilation war that Israel is carrying out with American support and participation, since October 7...and up to now..and the American administration is extending time for Israel to finish its mission..when it announced the day before yesterday that "Israel must end its ground operations within weeks".....not months...like that!!...and with complete cold blood...and the killing and slaughter and annihilation continue...and will continue for additional weeks..indeed the United States used its veto power yesterday...in the Security Council to foil a request for a humanitarian ceasefire that the world agreed on yesterday, Friday 8-12-2023.!

-        And the newspaper "Politico" reported the day before yesterday.., on several reasons that make the United States "unwilling to push Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza", which means that "stopping the war on Gaza is not on the list!"

●      And these days...the American administration presented to us a distracting and diverting operation..for what is happening in the Gaza Strip of a genocide..by saying that it has worked on a plan to govern the Gaza Strip after the end of the war...and it has drawn the outlines of the plan...and is exploring its options and the distribution of roles...with its regional partners, Arab and non-Arab!.....and thus..in the coming weeks the world will turn away from following the annihilation war taking place in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the Israeli occupation army..and be preoccupied with the contentious discussion over the clauses of its cunning plan that smells only of sowing division among the Arab, Palestinian, and global ranks....between opponents and supporters of its plan....so they forget the catastrophe of the slaughter of their Arab Palestinian people at the hands of the killers of children and women...what an insult and belittling of Arab and Palestinian consciousness and even the consciousness of the free world..!? and to distract pressure and attention and global support for the cause of the Palestinian people!

-        The magazine quoted a U.S. State Department official as saying that what it described as a "strong political preference for the Palestinian National Authority to govern Gaza" faces major challenges in terms of legitimacy and capacity, according to what "World Arab News Agency" reported.!

-        Politico added that the conception that emerged from interagency consultations is "to begin a multi-stage reconstruction process in Gaza immediately after the end of the war between Israel and Hamas."

●      She continued that there is a need for an international force to achieve stability in Gaza, after the end of the fighting, followed by a renewed Palestinian authority that would assume long-term rule.!.. Exactly as The Washington Post said, dated 4-12-2023, that the administration of U.S. President JoeBiden, wants the the AuthorityNationalPalestinian "after its activation" to govern the StripGaza, after the end of the war, and the Biden administration is pressing for "installing" the Palestinian Authority "after activating" its role to administer Gaza, yet such an idea does not enjoy popularity with the Israeli government, nor even among many Palestinians.!

●      And we do not know what is meant by the phrase "a renewed Palestinian authority"? Or "revitalizing the Palestinian National Authority"...they want to sow discord among Palestinians...and distract the world from following the occupation's massacres, and try to succeed in reaching a ceasefire.!..

●      I say here to the American administration....that no new generation of Palestinians..or political class will be produced according to your algorithms......or according to your specifications and trainings! And the world fully understands how the next generations of Palestinians will emerge in light of the massacres committed, war crimes against their sons, relatives, friends, and neighbors....and their people....the American administration will not succeed in implementing its plan to draw lines of Palestinian fighting over the seat of authority!....The Palestinians have a single compass toward the Israeli occupation..no two Palestinians disagree on it, and whoever deviates from this compass....will certainly be completely ostracized....just as the French people ostracized the Vichy government in the last century when that government collaborated...with the Nazi occupation in 1944..

●      We remind the United States of the words of the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Guterres) before the Security Council in the early discussion of Hamas's attack on October 7 and Israel's unjust war on the Gaza Strip, and after he condemned Hamas..he added saying.."The Hamas attack on October 7 was not out of nowhere..!!...: There is the story of a people expelled from their land and suffering refuge and misery and deprivation of their rights ...for more than 56 years (he means the 1967 war)....!"

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Zuhdi Shubeitah, “The White House Has Feathers on Its Head” (English translation of «البيت الأبيض على رأسه ريشه!!», originally published 9 December 2023), https://www.zuhdish.co/en/articles/the-white-house-has-feathers-on-its-head

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