Pictures Of The Gaza 'Intrafada' Are Popular

So, what does the average Palestinian Arab do for fun?

A popular pastime in Gaza is swapping gruesome footage of dead or dying victims of the Strip's incessant violence.

The images used to be almost exclusive legacies of clashes with Israeli forces but last year that changed. Now being far more keenly traded are snapshots of Palestinian fratricide, gruesome images taken by "militia-cams' that record scenes for posterity.

Spend any time near the emergency ward of Gaza's Shifa Hospital and security staff or ward workers will offer a look at their mobile phones, which they'll quickly switch to video mode to show images of victims of intra-Palestinian clashes being wheeled in agony from ambulances.

Sit in a town square for more than five minutes and you'll be quickly encircled by youths clamouring to outdo each other with images of death and mayhem.

A veritable library of the "intrafada" now exists in Gaza among militias and clans. Most were added during 2007, when the numbers of intra-Palestinian deaths jumped by 800 per cent - from 55 to 439 - almost all of the deaths in Gaza.

But the Palestinians themselves do not see the fault in themselves or in the Hamas-sponsored media that encourages hate among their children--not when there is someone easier to blame:

"Subject, oppressed, or embattled peoples throughout history have commonly turned on themselves," wrote [Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group member, Bassam] Eid.

"Because Palestinians are accustomed to seeing weapons and are also exposed to verbal and physical abuse of the military occupation, verbal disagreements easily turn into fist fights and sometimes even escalate into gang or family feuds. Growing up in a spiral of violence means that individuals find it harder to determine the limits of aggression.

But it is the leadership that determines how people respond to adversity. Hamas--and Arafat before them--encouraged hatred and violence, and Abbas is no less responsible.

But Eid is being far too modest: the history of Arabs killing Arabs long predates the reestablishment of the State of Israel. In The Arabs In History, Bernard Lewis provides a time line at the end of the book (p. 179). Here are some early events in the history of Islam:

632. Death of Muhammad
656. Murder of 'Uthman--beginning of first civil war in Islam.
657-59. Battle of Siffin
661. Murder of 'Ali--beginning of Umayyad dynasty.
680. Massacre of Husain and 'Alids at Karbala.
683-90. Second civil war
685-87. Revolt of Mukhtar in Iraq--beginning of extremist Shi'a.

Historically, Arabs have not needed Israel as an excuse to go around killing people--least of all each other.

How about more recently? Raphael Patai, in an updated chapter in his book The Arab Mind has a list of Arab conflicts--not including Israel--taking into account just the 13 years from 1970 to 1983:

1. Intermittent disputes involving border warfare and assassinations between South Yemen on the one hand, and North Yemen and Saudi Arabia, on the other since the early 1970's. A brief but fierce border war between the two Yemens took place as recently as March, 1979.

2. A major and bloody, albeit brief, conflict between Jordan and Palestinian guerrillas in 1970, complicated by Syrian intervention.

3. Fighting between the Kurds and the Iraqis, which lasted several years.

4. A bloody conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan, 1956-1972.

5. Clashes between South Yemen and Oman, linked to the Dhofar rebellion, 1972-1976.

6. A tripartite conflict between Algeria on the one hand and Morocco and Mauritania, on the other, over the control of the former Spanish Sahara, beginning in 1976 and subsequently transformed into guerrilla warfare against Morocco by the Polisario, the freedom fighters of the Western Sahara, supported by Algeria and Libya, which was still in progress in 1982.

7. Intermittent hostility, and actual border fighting, including air attacks, between Egypt and Libya in 1977.

8. The Lebanese civil war, which began in 1975, involving two outside parties, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, still unresolved in early 1982.

9. The invasion of Chad by Libya in 1980.

10. The war between Iraq and Iran, which began in the fall of 1980, in which Iraq is supported by Jordan and Iran by Syria, making it in effect, an inter-Arab conflict. It was still in progress in early 1982.

11. In February, 1982, a conflict flared up between the Syrian government and Muslim fundamentalists in the Syrian city of Hama, in which several thousands were killed and major parts of Hama were destroyed. [p.357-358]

Want more? Go to TheReligionOfPeace.com, which is keeping a list (scroll to bottom of their page)--currently at 11,111--of Islamist attacks around the world since 9/11: attacks thus far this year in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Thailand, Somalia, German, India, Algeria, The Philippines, Sudan, Chechnya, Yemen, and Indonesia.

Bassam Eid should know that historically--and currently--Islamists do not need Israel in order go around killing Jews, Arabs, Muslims and any non-Muslim.

Forget about cellphones--there's enough to fill an awful lot of scrapbooks.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Islamists and Palestinians.