Jan 9th Rally

We wish to make a clarification about the rally protesting the Israeli aggression in Gaza on Friday afternoon 9/01/09 outside the US embassy. The event which culminated with the handing in of a memorandum to the US goverment was organized by COMPLETE, acronym for “Coalition of Malaysian NGOs Against Persecution of Palestinians.”

COMPLETE is a broad coalition of NGOs of various background of orientation, drawing affliation from civil society groups that have long established reputation in championing human rights & supporting the Palestinian cause as well as religious groups that represent the major faiths in Malaysia, all sharing the horror and disgust at the recent Isreaeli airstrikes on Gaza and the subsequent ground invasion with the tacit approval of its western allies especially the US.

We made it explicitly clear from the start that COMPLETE is not a Muslim coalition although the Palestinian cause is close to the hearts of Muslims, given that the majority of Palestinians are Muslims and East Jerusalem, where Islam’s third holiest mosque is located, has been under occupation since 1967.

However, we have long been awake that the gross oversimplification, if not misrepresentation of the conflict as purely of Muslims against Jews, has allowed Israel to continue its military expansionism and carry out the longest and must brutal occupation in modern history by portraying itself as the “Victim”, cleverly manipulating Jewish history in Europe and exploiting the widespread ignorance and prejudice towards Arabs and Muslims as purveyors of terrorism.

In our effort to create awareness of the time nature of the conflict and dispel this long standing myth,the organizers of the rally had requested participants to refrain from the usual crass anti-Semitic invectives & rhetorics that have been the feature of such rallies in the past.

However we knew full well that in an open demonstration which had been well publicized in advance such as last Friday’s, such things were beyond our control.

We realize that in the future if such rallies were to truly represent Malaysians of all faiths to express disgust at the inhumanity of the Zionist state rather than towards Jews as a people of a particular faith, we would have to hold it not on a Friday.

We take this opportunity to invite all peace loving Malaysians to make the effort of an objective study of this conflict and reflect on this humanitarian tragedy.

Adnan Mohd Tahir

Chairman COMPLETE.