Malik Ali Keeps the Palestinian Struggle Never-Ending
This article was published in UC Irvine’s New University two weeks ago.
With a smile of praise on his face, Malik Ali recounted the story of a Hamas militant from the Gaza offensive. “There was a story of one brother brought into a Gaza hospital who said ‘Patch me up, I have to go back out,’ ” Malik shouted to the crowd at the flagpoles on January 29th, “and he had a smile on his face. Someone asked him, ‘How can you be smiling? Look at all the suffering that’s going on, look at what the people are going through.’ [The brother responded], ‘If they have people that died in their families, they’re martyrs, and they should be happy. I want to die the death of a martyr.’” While Malik rambled on, I was wondering if he would still be so jubilant about Gazans being ‘martyred’ if it was his mother or father who died in the recent Gaza offensive.
Amir-Abdel Malik Ali is a radical Muslim imam who has expressed his belief that the “Zionist Jew” controls the media and was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The Muslim Student Union invites him to our campus every year to spew the usual anti-Israel half-truths I’ve learned to expect from them as a group.
Two Thursdays ago, Malik opened his speech at the flagpoles talking about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza prior to the Israeli Operation Cast Lead.
“…the people of Gaza were being starved and economically strangled…,” Malik insisted. “They had very little heating oil, no water… Although it was a manmade humanitarian disaster… where children were suffering from malnutrition, the world was not looking.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Malik’s choice of words: “manmade humanitarian disaster”. But like the majority of Malik’s speeches, he only touched on half of the story; he conveniently forgot to cover how Israel left everything standing in Gaza when it evicted its own residents from Gaza in 2005. Agricultural, educational, medical, urban facilities and miles and miles of some of the world’s best greenhouses. Then the Palestinians moved in, destroyed everything, and began launching rockets at Israel. Malik forgot to mention that Hamas, Gaza’s terrorist sham of a government, has been seizing donations and aid meant for the Palestinians in order to sell them to their reightful recipients at higher prices. In fact, just last week a group of Hamas militants stole 4,000 food parcels and blankets from a UN storehouse in Gaza because the UN workers were distributing it to Gaza residents, not to Hamas itself. Malik also left out that Hamas has a habit of attempting to blow up the bridges Israel uses to send in humanitarian aid to the very people trying to destroy Israel. So yes, it is a “manmade humanitarian crisis”. I wish the Palestinians could have a better way of life. It’s just too bad the crisis was and still is primarily caused by the Palestinians’ own corrupt government.
“Those Qassams,” Malik began to shout in reference to the rockets Hamas launches at Israeli civilian neighborhoods, “the only reason [Hamas] stopped them… was because the Israelis stopped their attack.” Malik neglected to bring up the past eight years of unprovoked Hamas rocket fire (and eight years of Israeli complicity until recently) on southern Israeli towns such as Sderot, where civilian life has been smeared with daily rocket attacks. Over 1/3 of Sderot’s children suffer from PTSD as a result. But you won’t hear any of that from Mr. Ali.
Playing the ‘Israel used a disproportionate response’ card, Malik said, “All you have to do is count how many quote-unquote casualties occurred when those rockets went into Israel… and the number caused by Israeli weaponry.” Again, I wholly agree with Malik that Israel’s response was disproportionate. If Israel had acted proportionately, it would have pointed more than 8,000 rockets in the direction of Gaza, closed its eyes, and fired them in the hopes of hitting anything that looked Palestinian. But for a second, let’s pretend Hamas doesn’t attack strategically worthless targets like preschools and apartment buildings, that they launch their rockets from civilian-crowded mosques and schools, or that they hide behind Palestinian civilians when attacking Israeli civilians or engaging IDF soldiers. Let’s pretend they don’t dress up as civilians during firefights and when they launch rockets. Hell, let’s pretend they don’t even kill their own citizens for singing and dancing at weddings. Ignoring all of that, and ignoring what logically follows when you knowingly attack a technologically superior nation, it sounds like what Malik is trying to say is that he’d be happier if there were more Israeli casualties to even out the body count. If more people died. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this argument, but it still disgusts me.
Malik’s sideshow was also perforated by his call to the Muslim world to boycott “American products… anything associated with America. Watch how it hits them”, a ten-minute praise of president Obama, and a warning that “We will soon have to engage in civil disobedience… to heighten this issue in Palestine”. He also likened the pro-Palestine movement to that of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Black rights movement (I wonder if Malik knows MLK Jr. was a Zionist). When speaking about Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Fatah (the relatively moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank) and Abbas’s call to make peace with Israel, Malik stressed with visible disgust, “Do not be fooled by Mahmoud Abbas. He is a poop-butt Uncle Tom sell-out.” Malik also referred to Venezuala’s democratic socialist president Hugo Chavez as “our homie”.
He ended his rant with the phrase, “Peace be upon you”. At least he was self-conscious enough to throw in an ironic joke.
After enjoying Malik Ali’s many visits to our campus, I’ve come to realize that the man is head-over-heels in love with the image of the rebel. He thrives off the idea of “the struggle” so much that he’ll contort the facts enough to keep that struggle going and spread his propaganda. He condemns Israeli violence while simultaneously praising Palestinian violence. In this, he can’t be taken seriously on the conflict at all. As his grown-up insult of Mahmoud Abbas shows us, he even despises the idea of a peaceful end to the conflict. No, as far as Malik is concerned, there will be no peace in the Middle East.
And that the MSU invites him back, year after year, only shows us that they share his bloodthirsty views to a disturbing point.
What Malik Ali, like so many of the MSU’s suspiciously bigoted guests, presents at the flagpoles each year is not a speech. It’s not a sharing of facts. It’s a circus show of half-truths and propaganda, of religious and racial hatred and extremism. The current Palestinian situation is awful, nobody denies that. But it’s not going to end by supporting corrupt terrorist groups like Hamas, who abuse their own people and times of peace to prepare to launch more violence. Hatemongering clowns like Malik Ali represent the hateful and violent population that does not consider peace as an option; they see it as a weakness. It’s a struggle to the bitter end for people like him, and his 2006 statement, “We will fight you. We will fight you until we are martyred or until we are victorious” leaves little room for argument. If you have even the slightest opinion that peaceful resolution is a viable option– for any conflict– find somewhere else to get your facts. But not from Malik Ali.
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Very well written article, thanks from an Australian.
To Steve the Jew, it’s a pity I don’t know where you are boy, I’d love to teach you the difference between right and wrong.
It’s alright, JJ. Half-brained bigots like Steve here are a dime a dozen. I’m actually thankful we have mental slugs like him slithering around so the rest of the community can see just how morally and mentally degenerate the hateful faction of the world is.
How these fascinating creatures manage to walk upright and communicate, let alone operate a computer, is beyond my knowledge. I always enjoy the fact that they are only capable of communicating purely in bland, prejudiced insults, however, and never in facts.
@Steve, wow I’ve never heard a less intellectual response than yours, congratulations. You must be a self-loving brit who is jealous of americans and therefore talks trash to them to deal with your gloomy, expensive little island.
You should register and write an article of your own, if you know how to compose a written argument with clarity instead of bitter ramblings…
yet again another article produced by the very biased and racist collegetimes writers of the US, just further reinforcing how much you love Jews, and how your life is just ruled by them.
Seriously, stop sucking up to them, get your head out of the a*****e of Israel and just go eat cyanide.