A recent Counterpunch column by Alam is devoted to ad hominem smears against Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Wiesel survived the Holocaust and became a writer of philosophy and fiction. Wiesel is the regular target for smears by neonazis and Holocaust Deniers like DePaul’s Norman Finkelstein, so it only makes sense that a magazine that gives them so much space would be interested in this attack by Alam.
Alam is upset because Wiesel expressed empathy for the Jewish settlers of Gaza who were evicted with no quid pro quo, indeed with no logic at all, by Ariel Sharon’s government to appease the PLO. Alam is upset that Wiesel is unwilling to join the axis of anti-American leftists and "anti-Zionist" rightists who wail that the real "victims" in need of sympathy are the Palestinians. In fact, the Palestinians are the victims of their own mismanagement of the territories in Gaza and the West Bank which they have mismanaged since the Oslo Accords of 1993. In fact, they have turned them into a terrorist base camp.
Why exactly are the Palestinians supposed to be entitled to sympathy? For rejecting the original partition of Western Palestine? For participating in the 1947-49 Arab war of aggression in which the Arab ditctatorships attempted to annihlate the Jews of Israel? For collaborating with Hitler in World War II? The Communist bloc in the Cold War? And why should Palestinians, who already have 22 Arab states to which they may move (if their Arab brothers would let them) including Jordan which is 70% Palestinian complain? The Arab world drenched in oil, controlling a land mass nearly twice the size of the United States could lift the Palestinians (not to mention their own people) into the 20th Century if they had the will to devote themselves positive agendas, instead of to a genocidal war against Israel. Why should THEY deserve any sympathy for a plight that is entirely caused by their own persistent barbarism?
Not a word from Alam by the way on the million and a half Jewish refugees evicted at bayonet point by Arab states conducting ethnic cleansing of Jews after 1948. Since Arabs living under Israeli rule are treated a thousand times better than are Arabs living under Arab rule, what exactly is Alam’s problem and agenda? It couldn't be cleansing the Jews and Christians from the Middle East to establish an Islamic empire from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean?
Alam sniffs that Israel is offering the Palestinians nothing better than a "Bantustan?" A state of their own, the 23rd Arab state, is a Bantustan? And how badly do the Palestinians really want a state? They could have one in Jordan but they don't want it. They were offered in Gaza and the West Bank in 1948 and 2000 and rejected it. By the way, do the Arabs of Detroit and Marseilles have their own Bantustans? Are they entitled to one? Did the Arabs ever offer Copts or Kurds or Berbers their own Bantustans? And what about the Jews? Will Alam come out and even acknowledge a Jewish right at least to their own Bantustan in the historic lands of Israel?
Not likely. From his academic podium, Alam looks forward to a new Holocaust of Jews, perpetrated by the terrorists he endorses, something over which Elie Wiesel can again express his sympathy and be savaged for his concern.
Alam is not the only jihadist writing for Counterpunch by the way. Indicted terror professor Sami al-Arian used to publish screeds for the Cockburnites before getting arrested for his role in murdering more than 100 innocents in the Middle East.