Gerald Horne has indicated that he has been canvassing Palestinians to seek to attend an AU summit Sept 25. ( see timestamp 31ms of .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56hRbUdUQs ).
This is an excellent move in principle. However, there is a major issue: Arabs in general, Egypt specifically, have engaged in ethnic cleansing of Africans, and Islamic militants have shown no regard for African life. Afro-Palestinians have been subject to deep racism1. This is racism by Arabs against Africans, even those who fought with them against Israel2. Behind it all is also a deep cultural genocide.
Islamic militants attack Africans
In 1998 Islamic militants attacked the US embassy in Nairobi. In order to kill 12 Americans, the militants killed 206 Africans.
As the US officially reported:
‘At mid-morning on Friday, Aug. 7, 1998, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida operatives detonated a thousand pounds of explosives in the rear parking lot of one such embassy, this one in Nairobi, Kenya. Minutes later another truck bomb exploded outside the gate of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
In Nairobi, 218 people were instantly killed: One hundred and seventy-two were neighbours or passersby. In the embassy, the dead included 46 colleagues: 34 Kenyans and 12 Americans.
The blast injured more than 4,000 people: 400 were severely disabled; 164 endured acute bone and muscle injuries; 38 adults and children were blinded; 15 were totally deafened; 75 suffered severely impaired vision; 49 were left with hearing disabilities. Hundreds of businesses were destroyed or damaged, many of them mom-and-pop stores with little or no insurance.’ 3
This was not merely a terrorist attack on the US; it was also a racist attack on Africans, as it revealed that to the Islamic militants, Africans were not humans.
Ethnic cleansing in Egypt
If you visit Cairo today it is largely a very white-ish Arabic society. Seldom do you see a Black skinned person of African origin. However, any record of Cairo in 1880 shows a population predominantly Black African4. These populations have been uprooted, oppressed and settled out of sight. In 1880 the population of Egypt wa approximately 7m, while 2024 it is 116m. Most of the growth was from 1951 where it was 20m to 2020 where it became 102m.9 This suggests a period of flooding the country with Arabs on a massive scale and moving the Black population out of sight. Other than the recent period of mass bombings, this is entirely comparable with the aims and actions of Israel in Palestine.
This is the same society that expelled numerous African American entertainers5 . US comedian Kevin Hart was bundled out of the country for discussing ancient Egyptian history and highlighting the oppression of Africans in Egypt6.
Cultural genocide
Arab cultural genocide can be traced to the attempt by the Islamic Egyptian ruler, Al Aziz Uthman, to destroy the Great Pyramids. It followed their destruction of the legacy of ancient Egypt by cultural and political means. Ancient Egyptian as a language did not ‘die out’. It was killed as an act of cultural genocide by the Arab militants. Coptic, the descendant language of late ancient Egypt, was banned from being taught at schools, and many of the usual tools of cultural genocide were exercised on the Coptic populations. This oppression continues to this day as exhibited in the bombings of Coptic Churches in 2016 and 20177. This has not stopped.8
Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general must recant their racism.
It is unacceptable that we should invite any Palestinian organisation to attend African Union events unless they condemn and disavow the Islamic bombings in East Africa, dissociate themselves from the progroms on Coptics, the cultural genocide in Egypt and Palestine of their African populations, and their practice of ethnic cleansing.
To understand that this kind of Arab racism is not a ‘historic’ phenomenon, I have to report that I was discussing with an Arab scholar my displeasure with the Arab treatment of Africans and that unless he would condemn it I would recommend that Africans should stop supporting Palestinians. He responded that he did not care if Africans supported Palestine or not, and he would never publicly condemn the Arab treatment of Africans.
Gerald Horne is following in the footsteps of Angela Davis in seeking cheap popularity. Virtue signalling by waving the flag of ‘pro-Palestine’ while ignoring the ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide and general oppression committed by Arabs and Palestinians against Africans. Shame on you both!
NOTES
- https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/world-news/2024/04/15/afro-palestinians-the-untold-story-of-a-community-caught-in-gazas-crossfire/.
- https://boybrotherfriend.com/the-afro-palestinian-narrative-resisting-occupation-in-palestine/
- https://afsa.org/east-africa-embassy-bombings-25-years-later-reflections-ambassadors-prudence-bushnell-and-john-e
- https://monovisions.com/cairo-egypt-in-the-19th-century-1860s-1880s-vintage-everyday-life/
- https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/rude-beyonce-banned-from-pyramids-by-egypt-s-indiana-jones-8957818.html
- https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kevin-harts-debut-egypt-show-canceled-amid-controversy
- https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/04/12/egypt-horrific-palm-sunday-bombings
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/03/egypt-attack-gunmen-kill-coptic-christians-bus-ambush
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066887/total-population-egypt-historical/