'Boycott of Jewish or American products?' Doesn't make sense!


I feel unable to understand all those posts on social media, sharing extremely graphic pictures of Palestinian killings in Gaza, and compelling people to boycott products of multinationals whose owners happen to be either a Jew or American. Somebody, ask them for my sake, what’s the damn link?

Israel is a territory and Judaism is a religion. If a member of a particular religion commits an offence, should all men of that religion bear the consequences? If your answer is yes, then you should not outrage at fanatics across the world labelling all Muslims as terrorists – belonging to Al-Qaeeda and Taliban.

Don’t get me wrong, my heart bleeds too at the atrocities committed at Palestine, specifically with civilians, innocent kids and women. But the turmoil and rampant bloodshed right at my home doesn’t let conflicts far off occupy me.

49,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives in the terrorists’ attacks by Islamic militants since 9/11 - as opposed to 24,000 Palestinian casualties in various conflicts with Israel since First Intifada of 1987. Most of these people killed in my country were innocent civilians – scores of women and children as well. The saddest part is that I never see such an overwhelming response on social media on any of these killings. No appeals are made to people to eradicate the menace of terrorism from our own country.

Last year, in the deadly terrorist attack on All Saint Church, Peshawar, 127 people were killed, and 250 were injured. Thank God Christians all around the world showed tolerance instead of boycotting all Muslims businesses and products.

The multinationals, most of these campaigns sought to boycott, must be owned by some Jew, but they are also source of income for millions of people across the world, including Muslims and Pakistanis.

The most ridiculous of all these social media appeals are the ones made to Pakistan Army and General Raheel Sharif for sending Pakistani troops to combat Israel. The appeals say that an ‘honorable man like General Sharif and an honourable institution like Pakistan Army should jump in to save Muslim Ummah.’

Given Pakistan’s jurisdiction and its status at international level, the simple minded people behind such a comical appeal clearly didn’t understand that never in history, Pakistan Army or any of Pakistan’s governments, stood only for causes that concerned ‘Muslim Ummah’ - unless of course our vested interests also coincided with a given cause.

Such appealers should also know Pakistan Army itself has been involved in killing of 25,000 civilian Palestinian in the Jordanian army attacks in September 1970 – commonly referred in history as Black September. Writer Tariq Ali in his book ‘The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity’ describes how Pakistan’s own ‘Mard-e-Mujahid’ General Zia-ul-Haq, then Brigadier and head of a Pakistani training mission to Jordan, played a key role in planning the offensives. The attacks were thoroughly supported by Pakistan Army.

So, my appeal to all these social media campaigners,

 'Please stop this nonsense!'

Bushra
0240 hours
Thursday 24 July

No comments: