(Copyright (c) 2008. The Jerusalem Report)

Note: Dr. Sami Alrabaa, a sociology professor in Germany, is a commentator on Arab affairs.

Arab propaganda has it that we Arabs are the victims of international conspiracy and that Israel is the "vicious devil." But two pieces of news, circulated by the international media two weeks ago, illustrate the reality.

One item informed us that of the $717 million promised by Arab League members in aid for the Palestinians, only $153 million have been delivered, all from three countries: the UAE, Qatar and Algeria. Representatives of the U.N., the U.S., the EU, and Russia - the Quartet - mediating in the Middle East peace process met on May 2 in London and called on Arab states to honor their pledges, the report stated.

The other news item said that 7,000 Palestinians were treated in Israeli hospitals between 2006 and April 2008, according to the World Health Organization. On Apri 17, 2008, Dr. Ron Lobel, deputy director of Barzilai Hospital near Gaza, was quoted by der Spiegel on-line as saying, "We treat hundreds of Gazans here each year. Most of them are extremely ill, many of them have bullet wounds. But we never ask them how they were injured or if they belong to Hamas. Even if they're terrorists, they're treated like any other personE. They're treated by Israel for free. We make no distinction between Israelis and Palestinians."

Dr. Lobel also said, "It is paradoxical. While we are treating Gazans, we come very often under fire from their own backyards." Last February, a rocket landed near the hospital's emergency room on the same day a Gazan man was being operated on for bullet injuries. Later, it emerged that the man was a terrorist.

It's not only a question of aid from the outside. Hamas has hijacked the Gazans, causing them untold misery, to further its own political-theological aims. Arabs and their affiliate stooges worldwide beat the "victim" drum and blame Israel for the Gazans' suffering. But it's clear that if the Gazans were to stop dropping their primitive missiles on innocent Israelis and to turn to building their country, Israel would help and the suffering will stop. But as usual, we Arabs are not interested in pragmatic, realistic solutions. We love empty rhetoric. Under the headline, "Slow Death Everywhere," Saleh Al-Naami wrote in Al-Ahram Weekly on May 5, 2008 that "Israel's continued siege is taking Gaza back to the Stone Ages." Buthaina Shaaban, the Syrian Minister of Migration, wrote in A Sharq Al-Aswat on May 9, 2008 that "Israel is committing unprecedented genocide and the whole world is just watching. Israel, backed by the U.S., is obliterating the Gazans so that it can go back to occupying an empty land to fill in with murderous Zionists."

While focusing on Israel's perceived misdeeds, the Arab media ignore the sins of their own rulers. They gloat about reports of venal Israeli politicians and feel vindicated in their belief that Israeli society is corrupt from top to bottom. But how about Arab politicians, especially those in power? They are surely more corrupt, but nobody dares to expose them. Members of the Saudi royal family, for instance, have lavish palaces all over the world and keep thousands of prostitutes in their harems. According to the BBC, der Spiegel and National Public Radio (NPR), Prince Bandar, the son of the Crown Prince Sultan, is reported to haven taken millions from the British arms industry to facilitate a $20 billion arms deal (Forbes February 10, 2008). U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer has frozen Bandar's funds in the U.S., according to a report by NPR on February 16, 2008. Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, generously distributed billions among influential American politicians and media people to keep quiet about the despotic Saudi regime.

Sometimes, serious Western media fall into the Arab trap. ARTE, a French-German TV channel, recently aired a program about Jordan. It focused on how "human" and "modest" King Abdullah and his family are. "The man works for 20 hours a day," it reported. "He is doing everything humanly possible to help his people." It did not mention that Abdullah and his clan are plundering the country. Much of the billions of dollars in financial aid he gets from the U.S. and the EU he spends on maintaining his lavish lifestyle. Meanwhile, Jordanian prisons are full of political dissidents, among them many Palestinians. When Abdullah meets the media he sheds crocodile tears on the "suffering" of the Gazans.

Jordan isn't the only Arab police state. Why does Egypt use Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman to negotiate an Israel-Hamas truce and not a politician? Says Basam Tibi, an Arab sociologist teaching in Germany and the United States,"The only department in the Arab states that works effectively is the intelligence department. Almost every citizen is under surveillance by these departments. Egyptian intelligence watches every radical Arab, especially Palestinians and Gazans. Suleiman can tell the Israelis: 'Look, I know our radical Arab fellows very well and we know how to handle them.'"

But at the same time, Tibi adds, "Sending the head of the intelligence service to Tel Aviv implies a political message to Arab radicals that Egypt is not dealing politically with Israel. It is simply negotiating a security situation."

Illegitimate regimes across the globe, in the past as well as in the present, need an external enemy to survive, and Israel is just the right one for the Arab regimes. Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and the Gazans have "liberated" their land. Yet all three regimes still regard Israel as the "source of all evil."

As Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote, "It is easier to live with the no-truth or half-truth, but it is tedious to live with the whole truth." The mill of no- truth and void rhetoric is active day and night in the Arab world, and it will remain active until all the Arab dictators are removed - peacefully or otherwise.

Credit: Sami Alrabaa