Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 20, 2020

There is a saying, that when Washington sneezes the whole world will catch a cold. Ironically, it was China that sneezed first - in the form of the outbreak on January 23 2020that led to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a year of near-darurat (emergency), where the Malaysian economy contracted in the second quarter of 2020 by 17.1 per cent - the highest since 1998 - with Indonesia, doing no better given the growing proliferation of the epidemic of fear among Indonesian producers and consumers, leading to private sector investment and corruption being jammed up.

Thus, it is the wrong time to work with Israel let alone to acknowledge it as a state when Israel has continued to betray and violate with intent and intensity all its human rights commitments towards the Palestinians.

As things are, it is not merely Malaysia that is against the deal to establish a diplomatic relationship with Tel Aviv but Nadhalatul Ulama (NU) in Indonesia, which is perhaps the world's biggest Muslim NGO holding a moderate view on the need to keep politics and religion perpetually separate.

NU knows that the circumstances and the timing, even the most basic conditions are currently inappropriate when it comes to granting Israel any diplomatic recognition.

Turkey and Iran are outraged as well. The recognition of Israel does not attach any conditions on the lifting of the siege of West Bank or Gaza by Israel. Nor does it stop Washington DC from moving its embassy back to Tel Aviv, instead of Jerusalem.

Assuming more Muslims are outraged, as more and more Muslim countries object to what has been done by the UAE, surely there will be more rallies all across the Muslim world from Marakesh in Morrocco to Mindanao in the Philippines. What then?

Firstly, the physical distancing that has been enforced by the likes of Malaysia to keep the Malaysian and Muslim population from being sickened by Covid-19 will break down. The Muslim world risks further exposure to the pandemic as the rallies will be physical, not virtual and looking at the cases in India, Latin America and North America, we can see how infectious Covid-19 is. It is making a return in Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Hong Kong and Japan; all these countries were once safe but are now vulnerable once more.

Even New Zealand has begun to witness the return of Covid-19 cases after five weeks, a fact that Prime Minister Jacinda Adern had to admit on August 13 2020, after declaring two months ago that New Zealand was free of the dreaded disease.

The United Arab Emirates may have their own strategic calculations to work with Washington DC and Israel, indeed both countries may have made some breakthrough in finding a Covid-19 vaccine and the United Arab Emirates may have decided to lower their risk barrier against Israel in order to gain the advantage of the best sciences of the US and Israel.

If such is their calculations, the United Arab Emirates could work with Germany, France, Russia, Japan, indeed some 300 companies that are accelerating their efforts to find the cure, difficult as this endeavour may be.

Indeed, as recent medical literature research suggests that most if not all vaccines will have a 90% failure rate and if 10% happen to be successful, the vaccine may only be effective for a short duration of one to two years or less before the whole world needs to be vaccinated with a second booster shot again.

This is the precise reason why the Bill Gates Foundation is sponsoring seven research trials, knowing that 90% of them may fail anyway. Be that as it may, if the United Arab Emirates wants sustainable access to any potential vaccines from the US and Israel, not all seven are necessarily beholden to Washington DC or Israel.

They are under no obligation not to assist (emphasis of the author) the United Arab Emirates, let alone the whole of the Muslim world. All said, the anger and emotions of the Muslim world right now - which is formed of some 57 countries - must not be further inflamed. They must remain calm, and focus on a two-state solution, with Palestine and Israel existing side by side, not Palestine as a proverbial Baluchistan that is broken up into sheer ramparts.

Why is calmness more important than ever, though ? For what it is worth, the World Health Organization has postulated that the pandemic could be a gigantic global wave that cannot be flattened in the near future. The United Nations itself has issued a warning that more states may go to war due to their adverse conditions battling all the attendant ramifications of Covid-19, potentially to avoid a direct handling of the public health crisis that has become more entrenched. Wars would be used as an excuse to avert the direct handling of Covid-19.

Thus, the Muslim world and those supportive of the causes of the Palestinians should not gather in mass rallies. If they do, they must do so with the necessary precautions on social distancing and they must wear the proper masks. For what it is worth, even Israel and the United States have both been hammered heavily by Covid-19.

These are two examples of why one should not be hasty in making any diplomatic moves in a perilous time, especially to recognise the weak government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which may collapse due to personal allegations of corruption which he has vehemently denied. More importantly, Palestinians themselves should not gather in large numbers.

Rather, they should urge their supporters across the world to stand in solidarity with them instead of physically demonstrating without any precautions.

They should understand that in such a time of emergency, as is the pandemic, the Islamic jurisprudence of Islamic schools of thought do oblige all Muslims to protect their lives first, and that of others, based on the first priority of the Maqasid Al Shariah. As the Quran said,"To kill one is to kill the entire humanity, to save one is to save the whole of humanity too."

Dr Rais Hussin

Read more from the original source:
A rational response to the UAE recognising apartheid Zionists Israel - The Star Online

Category: Zionism
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