Can’t We All Do Something for Gaza?

OPINION
Can’t We All Do Something for Gaza?
Maryam Ismail (First Person)6 January 2009
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2009/January/opinion_January22.xml&section=opinion&col=

In Chapter Takweer in the Holy Quran, infant girls ask, “For what reason was I killed?” This verse is directed to those parents who as a custom killed their daughters during the days of jahaliya, the days of ignorance in pre-Islamic Arabia.
If you know the details of this tragic custom, you would be horrified. Sometimes they would wait until the child was five years old. Then they would dress her up as if she was going to a party and even pretend that she was going somewhere special. Then they would take her to the desert and bury her alive. As she would push away the sand from her face, her father or mother would pile it on again and again.
With the advent of Islam, this tragedy ended. But with the bombing by Israel, it has started again. Tonight I saw five sisters killed as their homes fell on them. Can you imagine losing five children in one instant?
The oldest looked about 17 years old, their spiritless bodies, showed a mix of anguish with the final emergence of peace. Who would wish this for their children?
Living in the Middle East, it creeps into your mind, when will we be next? It doesn’t matter if you dot your I’s and cross your T’s perfectly, that is not enough. The most recent examples are still fresh, remember Eid Al Adha 1427?
I was reading the UAE community blog. There was some news about a protest against the massacre in Palestine at the Palestinian Consulate in Dubai. Protests in UAE are rare but, this one seemed to get bloggers all stirred up. One anonymous commenter queried, “How can you have a consulate when there is no (Palestine) county?” You see, this is the point. For Israel, the Palestinians DO NOT exist, they have no right to exist. And their mere existence is like a fly on your hamburger; you want it dead now.
I would expose the anonymous commentator, yes, I know who it is. One of the Israeli guests who have been trickling into UAE, to work, make money, and torture all of those around them with the greatness of Zionism speeches on the left side of their mouths, while they criticise Muslims and their shortcomings on the right side of their mouths. Of course, you can’t love a person like that but still, you have to ask, do we Muslims really care about Palestine? Protests aside, where is the political power? There are many Muslim countries, not just one. Many of their leaders are smart, educated men and some of them have the experience of hundred people to help them. I am sure that if they put their heads together, they could do something for the Palestinians. It could be a non-violent approach such as revoking the licence of the franchises of foreign companies.
In the case of the UAE, where there are so many entrepreneurs waiting in the wings, let them take over and create a new lovable brand. Why not create a new brand that they in the West would die for, like we are dying for Coke and Pepsi or a cheap 3-dirham burger at McDonald’s? I know the kinds of cows they use, I am sure somebody could do a burger better.
Right now, there is such an identity crisis amongst Muslims. This is mostly due to fear and more debilitating, laziness. Instead of making the effort, to do something, as one person said to me, we’ll hire somebody to do it.
Well, you will get what you pay for. You can’t purchase another life, not even your own. And while the bling-bling effect has given the UAE much dazzle, in the US especially, like the anonymous commentator, they love to find everything that is awry.
Earlier this month, Newsweek, in a report about Dubai, stated bluntly: The Party is Over! It talked of job cuts, and people throwing in extras and trying to make deals just to make ends meet. Of course, people will talk. Let them talk. But as I watch the injured and bleeding children arrive in hospitals that didn’t even have sheets for their gurneys, I know I would hate to face those children in the next world when they would ask: Can you please tell me what did I die for? Or like why didn’t you come 
to my rescue? I think that the Newsweek article was right, with the coming of the third Intifada, the party is over.
Maryam Ismail is an American sociologist who divides her time between the UAE
and US
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