By Azz-eddine Diaouni - Driouch city, Morocco
As is customary with my fellow Moroccans, whenever Israel attacks Gaza, Moroccans take to the streets, protesting against Israeli crimes in Gaza. However, despite our religious similarities, I believe these demonstrations are not in the name of God, but rather ideologically-based.
I firmly believe that the Palestinian question is not our primary national issue since our country faces its own challenges. Our education is at infancy, Moroccan external debt has breached the limits of the imagination and corruption haunts the country. Despite all this, we are unable to overlook Palestinian issue which makes me wonder, are we born with Palestinian issue fixed in our minds?
Let’s be democratic in our thinking, if we are to support Palestine, the obvious step to take is to strongly condemn Israeli crimes against Palestinians; in other words, donating 5 million dollars to Gaza doesn't cut it. What I mean by this is that we don’t need to donate grand sums of money to Palestine at a time when we have dire improvements to address at home. Furthermore, I fail to understand why the Moroccan government ‘challenges’ Gulf countries to donate 5 million dollars to Palestinians. While I am not against these donations, I am against the two-faced pan-Arabists whose sympathy is selective.
These donations are ideologically-based. After all, pan-Arabists, turn a blind eye to Algerian crimes against their Amazigh citizens in Ghardaia. Is it not hypocritical then, to organize ‘mass demonstrations’ in favor of Palestinians, while we ignore (on purpose) the atrocities taking place in Algeria? Are these not ideologically based demonstrations? Why do we not express solidarity with Gardaya whose Amazigh citizens having been subject to all forms of ethnic cleansing?
Ghardaia has been under siege for months; a siege led not by Israel, but by the pro-Arabist government under the supervision of police forces. For months now, a number of citizens have been killed and others injured. Is it not human to condemn these racist practices? Why have pan-Arabists not spoken out against these crimes? But now that Israel has been attacking Gaza pan-Arabists, dressed in humanitarian clothing, have been rallying against Israel since the attack.
The truth is that the Pan-Arabists' rhetoric toys with people's emotions and is not based on humanitarian intentions as they claim. They focus on getting like-minded on the streets, serving their sacred ideology and causing Moroccans to forget about their own issues at home. I would say that the pan-Arabist discourse has lost its brightness and that there is no harm in helping human beings based on humanitarianism, but it is a grave error to help Palestinians only because they are Arabs.
Edited By Sahar KianThe views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
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