I am that Iraqi prisoner, I am the mother of the eight year old, and I too share the pain of the living dead. As I type this article, I am consumed with fear over the well being of my family in Gaza who are being shelled right now. This very minute I could lose someone else I love. How does it feel to be in Canada? Great! Safe! Distant! The truth is it feels as if I belong to the devil's clan. I am a mother of three - I often insist on saying that. It is as if I want to remind others around me that despite being an Arab, a Muslim and a Palestinian, I share the most common thread of humanity there is. I am a mother. I am loved and honored by my husband and family, I go out on the town with my girlfriends, I take my son for his weekly piano lessons, my daughter to the mall, my toddler to the park, and I even wear jeans. Surely this qualifies me as normal. But if one were to believe CanWest Global’s portrayal of a Palestinian Muslim woman, here is what I would be: an oppressed woman, draped in black, with extreme militant views and so consumed with hate that I am capable of offering my own children as sacrifices to the cause - that being the death and destruction of the Western World and the death of all Jews. Well, this mother of three has been demoralized by this grossly unfair portrayal. I am proud of my Arab heritage and I am disgusted by the daily dose of anti-Arab hate that fills my TV screen, the newspapers and the air waves that surround me. I am astonished that there are still people who believe that the war on Iraq was justified, that the deaths of over 13,000 Arab civilians are no big deal, that the torture of Iraqi prisoners is a necessary evil, that 36 years of Israeli occupation was the only way to curb "Arab violence", that the Arab race is an evil culture and Palestinians are a suicidal cult. If you think I am exaggerating, here are excerpts from CanWest’s Montreal Gazette describing Palestinian society: "This is a sick society, so fed on rage and so tightly manipulated the pressure is vented by using its own young as suicide murderers." Friday, March 26, 2004. If this is not enough, here is another quote from CanWest's National Post: "The Palestinians are one of the few "societies" in the world encouraging their young to choose death as a cultural imperative." Barbara Kay, Wednesday, March 10, 2004. In fact, you can be sure that on any given day, the National Post will have something blatantly racist to say about Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims. Here is what you will not learn, however, from the CanWest media outlets:
As repulsed by this as I am, I have no right to judge, since I am not the mother of a Palestinian prisoner being tortured in some Israeli jail. Then again, neither am I the grieving mother of a young Serbian-Israeli soldier whose remains are scattered in a land where he didn’t belong. So how do we absorb these ugly events without being moved? The answer is simple: we turn away and pretend nothing is going on. We allow the Aspers to give us the simple false truths: there are good guys - Israelis and Americans - and there are bad guys who are always Arabs and Muslims. This simple racist approach exonerates the majority of people from having to implement change. Just ask any unfortunate peace activist and they will tell you that knowing the truth is a heavy load – it is a life changing experience. A Canadian broadcaster had a valid question at a noon hour talk show. He asked why Canadians seemed more concerned with the Iraqi prisoner scandal than they were with the civilian death toll. He wondered what was worse, total humiliation or total annihilation. The truth is that Canadians are oblivious to the annihilation factor in Iraq. They are not exposed to photos of dead, injured and maimed Arabs, any more than they are to the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. They are only exposed to pictures of radicals, extremists and “terrorists”. So when once in a while they are confronted by an image of a naked Prisoner of War who looks every bit as human as they do, they feel outraged at his abasement, because they can see his obvious humanity through the labels and stereotypes. When I came to Canada - no, when I chose to live in Canada - and it was a choice - I did so because I searched the world over for the best place to raise my children. I wanted them to be raised Canadian. I didn't expect that the Canadian media would mirror the Jerusalem Post. I didn't expect my Arab heritage to be vilified and my religion to be smeared. I didn't expect to be the hated minority. I didn't expect to be made to feel as vulnerable and as humiliated as a naked Iraqi POW on a leash. Samah Sabawi, from Gaza and now living in Ottawa, is a writer and activist with Canadian Friends of Sabeel. Her work also appears in several other electronic media. Other articles by Samah Sabawi on this site: |
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