RE: OT Terrorists

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

But Palestinians celebrate in the streets. NABLUS, West Bank Thousands of
Palestinians celebrated Tuesday's terror attacks in the United States,
chanting "God is Great" and distributing candy to passers-by, even as their
leader, Yasser Arafat, said he was horrified.

The U.S. government has become increasingly unpopular in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip in the past year of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, with many
Palestinians accusing Washington of siding with Israel.

In the West Bank town of Nablus, about 3,000 people poured into the street
shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and
government targets in Washington.

Demonstrators distributed candy in a traditional gesture of celebration.
Several Palestinian gunmen shot in the air, while other marchers carried
Palestinian flags."


While no one here in Egypt is celebrating, people in the US really have no
idea of how horrible life has been for the Palestinians since 1948. No one
in the US, believing as they do in human rights, would feel comfortable
supporting many of Israel's actions if they really knew what life has been
like there. When you subject people to inhumane conditions, they become
inhuman. One would have thought that the experience of the Holocaust would
have made the Israelis MORE sympathetic to the suffering of others, but this
has not always proved the case. Although Palestinians have been living in
that area for centuries, they are not permitted citizenship in the land of
their birth, they can sell their homes but cannot buy new ones....the list
goes on and on. And please don't accuse me of anti-semitism...one of my
daughter's best friends who spent most of his spare time at our house was
the son of an Israeli diplomat who was miserable at the thought of having to
return to spend time in the army with the possibility of having to stand
armed to face people with whom he sympathises. People who harm innocent
people are wrong....but somehow it happens all the time, and the
Palestinians have buried a lot of children lately. They feel that if the US
government really put its foot down this would stop. No other country in the
world gets more foreign aid than Israel...purse-strings could easily be
pulled.

Maryanne
Cairo