Going after the wrong rat by Nassib Bulos

  On Sept. 21, the International  Herald Tribune printed a story about rats that are infesting Beverley Hills. They are everywhere, in the gardens, in swimming pools and on the porches of every house in the  area, and the problem is spreading throughout the whole west coast. The statistics are  terrifying. It seems that a male rat produces in one year of its lifetime 15,000  descendants.

 The White House has, however, been silent over this national calamity, and of course the  reason is Iraq. President George W. Bush and the White House are simply obsessed with Iraq  to the point that nothing else matters or exists. Israeli tanks can at will destroy every  building in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters, short of his own  room.

 Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has nothing better to do than to come out  with an asinine statement that Israel is entitled to defend itself against the perils that  beset it, namely a misguided kamikaze who succeeds in snuffing out the lives of a few  innocent Israeli civilians but who provides at the same time an alibi for Israeli Premier  Ariel Sharon and his goons to destroy and raze a whole nation.

 Does the term “innocent” apply only to Israeli and not to Palestinian civilians,  whose death rate at the hands of the Israelis is five to one? Bush has on his desk several  military options in dealing with Iraq, including a massive air strike. Many Iraqi  civilians will suffer and die. Are we to assume that the term “innocent” does  not apply to them as well?

 Arab armies went into Palestine in 1948 to prevent partition, causing a war that resulted  in the creation of a larger Israel. Former Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser ,the idol  of the Arab world, allowed himself to be drawn into a catastrophic war in 1967, and it  will be many years before we finish suffering the horrendous consequences of his lack of  foresight.

 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, possibly with good reason, but he did not  have the elementary good sense to withdraw before the American military machine hit him,  and to this very day Iraq and its people continue to pay the overwhelming price of his  arrogance and lack of common sense.

 Is it any wonder therefore that he took his time over accepting the return of the UN  inspection team, when he should have begged for their return in the first place? Instead  of saying, “what fools these mortals be,” we should say “what fools those  Palestinians and Arabs in general are.”

 Rather than concentrating on the eradication of millions upon millions of rats that are  eating their way through Beverley Hills, Bush prefers to eradicate millions of  “innocent” Iraqi civilians on the pretext of getting rid of one rat, Iraqi  President Saddam Hussein, on the pretext (which has so far lacked any valid proof) that  Saddam has built an arsenal of weapons, and that he has the means of delivering such  weapons.

 The United States and Britain are too far away to fear a ballistic missile attack from  Iraq but not Israel. Israel, on the other hand, does not seem to be overly concerned over  the its fate. If in fact Saddam represented a serious menace to his neighbors, Israel  would have been the first to cry wolf.

 When we talk today of racism, Israel has been the prime example of a racist nation from  the very day the Jewish people imposed upon God the burden of being his chosen people.

 Unfortunately, evangelists in the US like Bush and his ilk actually believe that the Jews  are the chosen people and that everything they do in the name of a misguided God is  permissible; hence the destruction of the Palestinian nation can be accomplished with  impunity.

 But who are we, poor, ignorant Arabs, to offer a word of advice to intellectual luminaries  such as Bush, that he would do more good to the US, in getting rid of the rats of Beverley  Hills, than of Saddam Hussein.