War, Fear, and Prejudice
How They Intersect and Shape Societal Attitudes
Flashback to 2017. The world awakens to the reality that Donald J Trump has defeated Hillary R Clinton in a presidential election that polarized a nation. Many were disappointed by the election and its outcome, their depression showed, and the liberal mind felt demoralized. Meanwhile, the election had captivated a new opposition. A rejuvenated GOP marched to the tunes of those who wanted to make America great again. Unfiltered thinking took center stage. Friends became foes. Families fought over politics. Facebook was on fire. The main stream media summed it all up in one word: Unprecedented.
Trump stepped into office on 20th January 2017 and his first 100 days as Commander-in-Chief were tumultuous to say the least. There was confusion in the White House. The National Security Advisor was fired on a whim, and experienced elected officials were replaced by right-wing bureaucrats belonging to Trump’s band of advisors. Federal investigations were meddled with. Facts were challenged. News branded as fake. Tweets socialized as truth. Presidential rants broadcasted in 160 characters or less reshaped how the world viewed America.
Trump’s rise to power, well, that’s beside the point.
Just seven days after taking the Presidential oath, Trump delivered a campaign promise. He signed an executive order that restricted entry of Muslim citizens from entering the US for up to 3 months, specifically barring those who hailed from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
It was a promise that Trump had made to his MAGA followers on the campaign trail in December 2015. “Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
The crowd went wild and applauded their brave new leader. “We have no choice.”, he said, “We HAVE no choice.” At the time, 36% percent of Americans polled favored the ban.
The world reacted. The courts pushed back. We were shocked.
Then we forgot about it until another executive order revoked the travel ban in 2021, but irreparable damage was already done. Families were separated. Opportunities were lost.
A HuffPost reporter, Rowaida Abdelaziz, collected micro-data throughout 2021 documenting 874 cases of Muslims impacted by the ban, most of them a case of parent-child separation. Take a look here.
An all-too-familiar rhetoric is emerging yet again from a similar campaign trail, from the same camp.
On 10th October 2023, Trump, who is the GOP front-runner for the 2024 presidential elections, spoke to his supporters during a campaign rally in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. “As president, I will once again stand strongly with the state of Israel, and we will cut off the money to the terrorists on day one, and reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries”
The crowd applauded and whistled. Trump went on to tout his horn and rambled on about the success of his travel ban during his 4 years of presidency, how he protected America and the world from terrorism.
Despite Trump’s false narrative, the travel ban targeted Muslims, not terrorists. Terrorism continued to prevail globally, as did the divisive politics that fuels every terrorist cause.
Two years ago, in May 2021, Israel responded to a Hamas terrorist offensive and retaliated causing millions of dollars in damage, which resulted in 256 Palestinians killed, nearly 2000 injured and 72,000 displaced. The crisis lasted 11 days before a cease fire was brokered. Israel suffered minimal losses.
This month, Iranian-funded Hamas terrorists surprised Israel by firing a barrage of rockets into Israeli airspace before breaching Israel’s Iron Wall and bulldozing their way through the Gaza-Israel border. There was a massacre at an Israeli music festival. Hamas took hundreds of hostages. The Israeli military responded by obliterating the Gaza Strip with relentless air strikes, resulting in thousands of Palestinian lives lost, many of them children buried deep in the rubbles of concrete. While an all-out armed battle with no end in sight continues to rage on, we struggle to cope with a war within.
If the 2021 event was triggered by Israel’s settlement advancements towards the eviction of Palestinians, this time around it was the Hamas’s unprovoked terrorist intentions. Throughout the 75 years of conflict since the official formation of Israel and the partition of the holy land, we can attribute the blame to both sides for causing unrest in the region.
If history is too convoluted, then there is the simpler emotional perspective of sympathizing with the underdog – the Palestinians. Israel is strong and mighty, and their big brothers in the West support them with even more show of might. Palestinians are weak, displaced and homeless, a dwindling population in constant need of aid, forgotten by the Arab world for selfish economic needs.
Who we support depends on which truth we align ourselves to. Then again, it was Aeschylus, the Ancient Greek father of tragedy, who said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.”
The truth is that no civilized, sane person would support terrorism. We always stand with justice, and we always sympathize with the oppressed. Still, anti-semitic rallies are on the rise around the world. Children are being murdered in the name of religion. So when truth itself is compromised, only consequences remain.
One such consequence is unfolding before our eyes. Millions of displaced Gazans are trying to exit the Gaza Strip. They have the only escape route through the Raffa crossing into neighboring Egypt, one of the first countries to support the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988. But Egypt denies entry until they have a guarantee that Israel will allow them to go back to Gaza.
The Arab world has always been reluctant to allow refuge to Palestinians. Qatar openly harbors Hamas terrorist elites but seems to have no solution to provide a safe haven for Gazans. Saudi Arabia is spending millions of dollars developing areas previously uncharted, to expand tourism, but they will never share a strip of land for housing the homeless Palestinians.
This indifference may be due to the Middle East’s own history with civil wars, when Palestinian refugees turned freedom fighters, the fedayeen, caused unrest in the region and tried to topple governments. So Arab nations will sympathize and mediate, but that’s where they draw the line.
Meanwhile, the likes of Trump will exploit this volatile situation for their own political advantage. Fear is a powerful tool, and history has proven that those who know how to wield that power will benefit in the end.