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Is Gaza Really the Biggest Case of Arab Suffering?
FILE PHOTO: Sudanese refugees who fled the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and newly arrived ride their donkeys looking for space to temporarily settle, near the border between Sudan and Chad in Goungour, Chad May 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo
What would a Sudanese person watching that country’s renewed civil war — which has killed 14,000, displaced eight million, and threatens 17 million with famine in less than a year — think when they this CBS headline: “Gaza faces unprecedented desperation.”
Sudan has a population of 46 million, Gaza only has two million.
Between 2004 and 2009, the Sudanese regime killed 400,000 people in Sudan. Millions were displaced and still live today in camps suffering acute hunger and the spread of cholera. Since then, the Sudanese regime has disintegrated into its components: its the army and its militias. Since April, the two sides have been engaged in a civil war, causing even more Sudanese deaths, displacement, and agony.
A child in Sudan is dying every hour, according to Medecins Sans Frontier. The International Rescue Committee lists the war in Sudan as the top concern of its 2024 Emergency Watchlist.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that 25 million Sudanese are in need of assistance. Close to 18 million of them face acute hunger, 4.9 million on emergency levels. Of the $2.7 billion needed for Sudan in 2024, UN agencies have received $96.7 million, amounting to only four percent.
Yet, the Sudanese tragedy never seems to attract as much attention as the newer and much smaller conflict in Gaza. UN Secretary General Secretary General António Guterres said about Gaza: “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary-General.”
But Guterres is wrong.
When the number of deaths in Gaza stood at a reported 29,000 — if we were to believe local Gazan sources — Hamas claimed that it had lost 6,000 of its fighters. Israel alleged that Hamas had lost double that number. Even assuming nearly 30,000 people have died (something we have no way to verify), if we split the difference, the ratio of combatants to non-combatants killed in war in Gaza would be roughly 1:2, lower than the 1:3 (or 1:4) ratio of a similar Middle Eastern asymmetric war when US forces eradicated ISIS in Mosul.
While the death of a single civilian in war is regrettable, it is unlikely that Guterres will ever walk back his claim and admit that the number of non-combatants killed in Gaza is below war average. Guterres’ statement will linger for a long time, and feed the misinformation mill of anti-Israel hatred.
Similarly, a World Health Organization’s spokesperson said that the “war in Gaza has resulted in unprecedented levels of destruction.” Notwithstanding that almost any war in the Middle East — including in Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon — has caused comparable destruction, the WHO will unlikely qualify its statement or correct itself.
In fact, even when proven false, the global media has rarely retracted erroneous reporting. On October 17, the world media claimed that Israel had committed an “unprecedented” attack on a Gaza hospital that killed 500 Palestinians. It turned out that errant Palestinian fire had killed tens of Palestinians who were camped in the yard of that hospital. Yet the original report is still available today on Reuters‘ website, without any update or errata notice.
For non-Palestinian Arabs who have been suffering from war, there is a sense of unfairness that Palestinians have been monopolizing global headlines for the past century.
Palestinians even get their own UN agencies, such as UNRWA, dedicated exclusively to the affairs of 5.9 million Palestinian “refugees” — when 12 million displaced Syrians, 8.1 million Sudanese, 4.5 million Yemenis, and 1.1 million Iraqis are all tucked under UNHCR and receive a fraction of the global resources and attention.
In fact, the majority of Palestinian refugees today were not themselves displaced, but are the descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israelis wars. Millions of displaced Palestinians from these wars resettled and were naturalized in countries around the world, yet are still registered as UNRWA “refugees.”
Even claims that the rate and scale of Israel’s fighting in Gaza “is unlike any war in recent memory” are false.
Unless humanity has the memory of a goldfish, most of us remember (and this writer witnessed) Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to eject Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization militias. In 12 weeks, Lebanon estimated its losses at 18,000, with many more thousands of Palestinians fighters unaccounted for. Even Israel suffered heavier losses in 1982 Lebanon, 350 troops in 88 days, compared to 230 in 140 days in 2024 Gaza.
Until 2003, Iraqis suffered 24 years of brutal Saddam Hussein tyranny, including his usage of sarin gas on his own people. Kuwaitis suffered Saddam’s invasion and burning of their oilfields. Similarly, Syria’s Assad used chemical weapons in crushing a revolution, between 2011 and 2018, killing along the way at least 300,000 and displacing 12 million.
In Lebanon, a UN Tribunal found that Hezbollah assassinated Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and a dozen other politicians, journalists, and activists after him. The World Food Program (WFP) has been working to prevent a famine by feeding 400,000 “vulnerable Lebanese families.”
And yet, in their rallies and in the statements of their leadership — whether the Palestinian Authority or Hamas — Palestinians have praised Hussein, Assad and Nasrallah, and have shown disinterest in the tragedy of other Arabs, claiming exclusive victimhood.
Despite their agony, ongoing displacement and hunger, the Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, and Sudanese people are expected to focus on Gaza as their “central cause.” In fact, the UNRWA’s budget per capita is multi-folds that of non-Palestinian Arabs. These Arab people would raise their voice, but social shaming and physical harassment that threatens them — both at home and in their Western diaspora — keeps them silently weeping and prevents the world from understanding these tragedies that are happening in the Arab world.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow Hussain on X @hahussain
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Treasure Trove spotlights a menorah designed in the early years of the State of Israel
This laurel branch Hanukkah menorah, designed by artist Maurice Ascalon (1913-2003), won first prize at the 1950 Tel Aviv Design Competition. Between 2,000 and 4,000 of these were made by the Pal-Bell factory in Israel, and they were sold not only in Israel but in select department stores around the world, including Macy’s in New York and Harrods in London.
The shape of the oil containers resembles ancient Roman lamps, while the large pitcher is a reference to the single jug of oil that lasted for eight days that is at the heart of the Hanukkah story.
These hanukkiyot were manufactured out of cast bronze with a green patina that was created using reactive chemicals, a process developed by Ascalon, resulting in an antique verdigris look.
Ascalon, who was born in Hungary and originally named Moshe Klein, immigrated to Palestine in 1934 after training in Brussels and Milan. He started the Pal-Bell Company in the late 1930s for the production of ritual and secular decorative items. “Pal” is short for Palestine and “Bell” is short for bellezza, Italian for beauty and an allusion to his time in Milan where the artist learned and perfected his sculpting skills. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Ascalon designed munitions for the Israeli army and, at the request of the Israeli government, retrofitted his factory to produce arms for the war effort.
Ascalon closed Pal-Bell and moved to the United States in 1956, where he taught sculpture at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and opened Ascalon Studios, which produces large-scale sculptures for public spaces and houses of worship.
The studio, which is now run by Ascalon’s son David and his grandson Eric, was retooled during the COVID pandemic to manufacture safety boxes that allowed health-care workers to assist a patient on a ventilator while minimizing exposure.
Treasure Trove wishes you a happy Hanukkah , which starts on Dec. 25. This year, as Peter, Paul and Mary sang, “Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice, justice and freedom demand. Don’t let the light go out!”
The post Treasure Trove spotlights a menorah designed in the early years of the State of Israel appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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