This may be a new Arab era. The distance between rulers and public has never been wider. The Arab people, under strict conditions of repression, took to social media and the streets to make their rage known to the world.
At the foot of Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square during a Palestine solidarity march against Israel’s assault on Gaza, Oct. 21. (Alisdare Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
By As`ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News
It’s too early to know exactly what the future of Arab politics and Arab-Western relations will be after Gaza. But it’s not difficult to assume, based on the contemporary history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, that there’ll be epoch-making repercussions to Israeli war crimes.
A new era is marked by the extent of Israeli brutality on live-TV. Looking back to the months preceding the operation against Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon had been subjected to merciless bombardment from Israeli fighter jets. Homes were destroyed and people were burnt alive.
Fatah leader Abu Dawud tells the story in his memoirs (he was the chief of the Munich operation — not Abu Hasan Salameh, as faulty Israeli intelligence would have it). Dawud’s memoirs were supposed to be translated by St. Martin’s Press in New York years ago,