We are All Lebanese Today

Following the September 11 attacks, the French press ran headlines like "We are all Americans." I was an American on that day as well. No matter how valid any of the reasons or causes for the attack may appear to some, nothing could have excused the massacre of 3,000 people.

All Americans, Bush in particular, immediately condemned anyone discussing possible reasons for the attack calling them "terrorists" or "terrorist accomplices." Yet, there was one striking detail: Americans had seriously started to talk on terrorism for the first time. Consequently, there was a global hope that the US would henceforth follow a more honest terror policy. When Israel began destroying an entire country as retribution for two of its kidnapped soldiers, hypothetically, the US was expected not to have found the explanations given for the attacks as "legitimate."

The death toll in Lebanon exceeded 750 by Monday morning, particularly after the Qana massacre, bringing the total death toll to one-fourth the number of all victims killed in the Twin Towers attack. There is one difference though; while virtually the entire world became "American" and condemned September 11, the US, itself a target of terrorist attacks, and Israel, created by the sons of victims of the most heinous genocide ever perpetrated and the European Union (EU), which unequivocally considers itself the spokesperson of human rights worldwide, could not become "Lebanese."

Certainly, you will ask what is the position of the Arab and Islamic world? As Fethullah Gülen explained in one of his interviews, "There is not an Islamic world; it is only possible to talk about an Islamic geography." Who will seriously consider the reactions from "a geography" of Muslims, who do not have a "world" of their own!

Israel says, "We warned the residents of Qana and asked them to leave the city." Then, who turned Lebanon into an open-air jail, just like Gaza by bombing roads, bridges, and airports? Where could these people possibly go? Just like the 2,000 massacred in Sabra and Shatilla in 1982, which had neither a shelter they could seek neither refuge nor a brother like the US that would punish those without any hesitation.

When Condoleezza Rice, who rushes around on a mission to facilitate Israel's attack on Lebanon, receives a response from Lebanon that says, "Don't attempt to come here without declaring a cease-fire," she brazenly declares that she herself canceled her trip. Holding Lebanon by her arms, the US is facilitating the rape of Lebanon by disregarding the EU and the United Nations' (UN) weak reactions. "Be patient, a ceasefire is imminent," they say to Lebanon. The Lebanese president is completely justified; the US, too, is responsible for this massacre!

As long as this graceless discrimination continues and this cheap hypocrisy produces reasons each more disgusting than the last, Palestine will be Hamas; Hamas will be Palestine; Lebanon will be Hezbollah and, Hezbollah will be Lebanon!

Just as of the murder of innocent people by terrorists in the US is worthy of condemnation, the same stands for the US, who uses Lebanon as an appetizer for its own aspirations against Iran and Syria. When events reach such a level, the US' "fight against terrorism" is no more than a disgrace. The "fight against terror" will only be successful when those who expected everyone to be American following September 11 attacks will learn to be Lebanese after the July 30 Qana massacre!

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fgulen.com is the offical source on the renowned Turkish scholar and intellectual Fethullah Gülen.