Indonesia and the Palestine vs the USA and the Israel

Indonesia has always been a strong supporter of the Palestinians’ independence. Indonesian people even feel more strongly and passionately against the Israeli’s occupation of the Palestine.

If the American politicians feel no need to hide their undying love and loyalty toward their most beloved ally regardless of any breach of agreements which has been made by it and none seems to dare to criticize the Israeli, the Indonesians feel quite the same about the Palestinians.

No government in Indonesia will ever dare sounding or showing a support for the Israeli. As long as there is no peace between the Palestinians and the Israeli, as long as there is occupation and oppression there will never be acknowledgment of the Israeli existence from Indonesia.

I don’t know why the American politicians and people love the Israeli to that extent (although some say it’s because of the power of the Israeli’s lobbyists) but I know why the Indonesians feel so strongly about the Palestinians causes. The emotions run deep when you talk to Indonesians about the Palestine and of course Iraq. The USA and Israel are not looked favourably by the Indonesians. Some even really hate these two countries with a passion. Particularly the USA, which many blame for the continuation of the conflicts between Palestine and Israel.

Indonesians are never in favour of any country which makes it their business to occupying other sovereign country. Being occupied once ourselves and having had to struggle hard to reach our independence have enabled us to be very sensitive to and empathised with the plights of other occupied nations such as Iraq and the Palestine. And there is also a religion factor. Although personally I don’t care whether the Palestinians and the Iraqis are Muslims or Christians or what ever. We all deserve to have and want the same thing.

Spending last week with the Palestinians and hearing firsthand about the experiences and hardships which they have to face on daily basis because of the occupation made me realize that all the things that I’ve seen on the news pale to comparison.

I was also aghast at finding out that the foreign donors apparently have completely different tenets when they are dealing with the Palestinians. The number one jargon in the development world today ‘the sustainability’ has a completely different meaning there.

I don’t know why nobody realize that the chaos and destructions we are witnessing in our world come from the practice of double standards which are perpetuated by selective implementations of justice. We use different set of rules and principles when we are dealing with different group of people/nations/organizations, depending on their races, religions, political orientations, etc.

Prophet Muhammad once got angry and chastised one of his beloved companions for his suggestion to be lenient and forgiving the mistake made by one of the members of the ruling class and the strongest ally they had. He said that one of the reasons why the past great nations came to destruction and crumbled to pieces was that their rulers applied a different standard of justice for their own class. When one of their own made mistake they looked the other way.

Why don’t we learn from the past and take their lessons to heart?

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