Why should Americans care?

I was watching a report on the CNN about the situation in the Middle East when the presentor pointed to Lebanon and Israel saying ,"This area in the northern Africa has been unstable for a long time". I was shocked to hear that given that the CNN is the "most trusted" in news. I switched to another news channel (I believe it was NBC or CNN-headlnes) and watched someone talking about the history of the region , started with "Palestenians are basically Syrians".

Americans know very few about the Middle East. Very few know that many of its coutnries are part ofAsia, very few can identify correctly the countries in the region. Very few know about the history of the region or recognize what are Reolsutions 242 or 338 or what the six-day war was or how the Jewish groups murdered the UN envoys to the region in 1948.

Very few know that thanks to Harry Truman's blind support to Israel and his fear from losing the Jewish vote in the US, Israel could have not been founded given the huge opposition to its independence in 1948. Very few Americans recognize that no country has refused is still refusing to comply with UN resolutions more than Israel did. Very few know what Sabra and Shatilla was and that Ariel Sharon was convicted by an Israeli court to be responsible for the slaughter of Palestenians only to become the Israeli prime minister 20 years later and be called "man of peace" several times by W Bush.

Very few Americans can identify Iraq on the map. Very few know that Saddam became Iraq's president in the 1970s and was supported by the US that time until 1990. Very few know that the Arabic radical Islamic groups had extremely low popularity among Arabs until the US started funding them heavily in the 1970s. Very few American know that Arab Christians exist. Very few know that Syria's al-Asad and Iraq's Saddam regimes were the most anti-Islamic regimes in the Arab world, even collecting Islamists in hundreds and killing them brutally during their regimes. All of the above are facts and not a personal opinion.

I love Americans and I find them very friendly, tolerant and kind-hearted. A lot of the most prominent figures in the world were Americans and they have made a positive change in the world. When it comes to politics and knowledge of the outside world, their lack of knowledge is awefully sad, mainly because the rest of the world pays for it.


Why should an average American bother to know all this about the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict? The answer is that the US has been paying billions of dollars every year to Israel. That's all taxpayers money. The US has struck Iraq based on a lie that Saddam Hussain had connections with al Qaeda and any Arab with mediocre intelligence would know this is so untrue.

Basically hundreds of billions of dollars of people's money have been spent on wars and operations that benefit less than 1% of Americans while the 99% are paying the price of detoriorating quality of their own life, increasing hatred towards America and Americans and continuous bloodshed committed in the name of fighting terrorism. In a democratic country like the US, people can make a change and we've seen this before in America. I hope that people will become more interested in the conflict there and try to learn more about the history of the region.