Re: David Miller's Decaptitation Strike

Dear Editor,

For the past few years, David Miller has consistently and persistently displayed a remarkable ignorance of Middle Eastern issues, instead relying on "modus populous" - what is popular in Western media. I would urge him to quit barking up the wrong tree.

He incorrectly compares bin Laden to Sheikh Yassin. The former is the product of a pampered lifestyle, delusions of grandeur and perhaps a few too many shell-shock incidents fighting the Soviets. Sheikh Yassin, on the other hand, is a product of ethnic cleansing and occupation. When he was 10 he was forced off his land, which was duly appropriated to European Jews. In 1988, he formed Hamas after spending much time in jail. And he was jailed again and again.

Hamas and Al Qaeda are also at polar ends. Hamas is a socio-political entity with a military wing. It builds social programs, sees to people's education when Israeli forces cordon off schools, distributes clothing and food in times of siege.

Al Qaeda, on the other hand, is comprised of disgruntled and disenfranchised political aspirations. Members of Al Qaeda have abandoned their countries to wreak havoc elsewhere. They have not lifted a finger to alleviate the plight of any peoples.

Hamas is fighting for a country, for nationhood.

The Palestinian people have the enshrined right to resistance of an occupier who has defied more than 140 UN resolutions and agreements. In February alone, some 87 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli incursions into Gaza and the West Bank. True, suicide bombings are deplorable, abhorrent, and contrary to the laws of nature. But so is the forcible occupation of a people for more than 55 years. So is the humiliation that Palestinians must endure at checkpoints. The unemployment, the killings. Does Miller know that some 47,000 Palestinians have been maimed and wounded since 2000?

Miller is the type of person who believes there is a lull in violence when no Israelis are killed, but scores of Palestinians lose their lives.

The only real terrorism here is Miller's diatribe - the much-repeated jingoism of imperialism and the White Man's Supremacy.

To deny the Palestinians their rights and merely paint them with the brush of terrorism is racist, bigoted, arrogant, and prejudiced.

Miller would do well to either travel to the Mideast or take a few courses on the subject.

- Firas Al-Atraqchi

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