There are things that no one dares to reveal to the Palestinians. Perhaps certain truths are better left unspoken. So many Palestinians walk around believing that "if only the world knew ......". Well, I hate to deliver this message to a people I have long admired for their resilience and their courage. The world knows everything about you. They know you are being treated like caged animals. They have seen the picture of Mohammed El Durah and a hundred others. Forget about convincing Powell, he already knows your situation. Even the doorman at the State Department knows of your plight. Millions of average Americans have witnessed your children being slaughtered by Israeli snipers. They are more concerned with the decline in the Nasdaq. Unfortunately, dealing with the rest of the world is something they leave to folks like Powell and Albright.

What every Palestinian must realize is that the American government has a policy of tormenting and humiliating Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. They do it for reasons of oil pricing, campaign financing and boot licking to a very influential Jewish Lobby. Whatever their reasons, they have nothing to do with ignorance. Indeed, they have information in the archives of the State Department that would astound even the most well informed Arab. Experts with doctorates in the most arcane of Middle East trivia roam the halls of the CIA and a dozen other agencies of the federal government. They have whole brigades of "terrorist" specialists to study the "Arab" mind. If you ever get a chance to roam through their declassified public archives, you will come to realize that the political elite in Washington knows of every act of criminality that has ever been inflicted against the Arabs by Israel and at the hands of their own leaders. In their secret archives, the government of the United States has meticulously documented every Palestinian grievance. They have files on every grain of evil that has been inflicted on the hapless people of the Middle East.

For instance, our government is fully aware of the war crimes of Ariel Sharon. For all the talk about inefficient bureaucracies, this is a government that has documented every last detail about Sharon and Qibya and Sabra and Shatila. They know Sharon compares unfavorably with Waldhiem, Haider and Pinochet. It matters little, because America's elite has never valued Palestinian lives. The media elite, especially the New York Times, actually markets Sharon as a war hero and condones every ounce of Israeli violence inflicted against the natives of Palestine. Some American journalists do it as an act of faith; others do it for personal career reasons. Neither should one be surprised by the indifferent behavior of Colin Powell, a machiavellian who has already been rewarded in advance with millions of dollars in proceeds from the American media industry. In the last seven years he has come to realize the value of compliant brown nosing to America's men of influence. He has unusually cozy relationships with the men who make a business of demonizing everything Arab and Palestinian. Powell has accumulated a multi-million dollar fortune on the strength of gloating about his Arab kill count.

Colin Powell is the same man who early in the Clinton Administration advised against American intervention in the Balkans. Much of the slaughter in Bosnia, Croatia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Chechnya is a result of his indifference to anything that would disrupt his personal career path. To get a grip on this man's lack of character, one needs to be aware that this son of Jamaican-American distances himself from African-Americans. He dwells incessantly on his roots as the son of ambitious immigrants to differentiate himself from the descendants of America's African slaves. Colin and Bush and 'Bush Daddy' know everything there is to know about the Palestinians. They know the exact number of Palestinians who have spent five decades in wretched exile and the many others who have tasted the bitter daily indignities of a vicious land grabbing foreign military occupation subsidized by billions of American tax dollars. Yet there continues to be this unbelievable denial among Palestinians and Arabs, including millions of Arab-Americans, about America's intent.

America's intent is always on the auction block. If you think America is a free country, you are deeply mistaken. It is a very expensive place where there is nothing more over-priced than an American politician. Clinton and his senatorial bigot of a spousal unit have amply demonstrated the cost of access to the very political heart of this nation. The domestic and foreign policies of the federal government can always be tailor made to align to the interests of individuals with deep pockets. When it comes to Middle Eastern policy, it is difficult to bid against the Jewish Lobby. Their pockets are very deep and they can throw darts the size of a CNN sound bite or a New York Times editorial. This is an ethnic lobby that is willing to contribute immense efforts to further pollute and poison the process of electing America's law makers, all for the sake of Israel's ambitious appetite for Palestinian real-estate.

Humiliating the Arabs and crucifying the Palestinians is a one-way ticket to political paradise for the low breed of moral morons that aspire to public office in these United States of America. Which brings me to the leaders of the Arabs who were taken for a seven-year ride by an Israeli-American confidence game called Oslo. In any other part of the planet, such a monumental strategic failure would doom its architects to permanent retirement or permanent exile. Instead, the Arab leaders are apparently willing to make a show of participating in a new American scam to reach 'interim' accords with a notorious war criminal like Sharon. And while the absolute monarchs and dictators of the Arabs are having their garden tea parties for Madeline Albright's clone, the Israelis are busy squeezing the Palestinians into barbed wire ghettos. While Powell markets a policy of pitting every Arab against Iraq, Arafat is so busy securing funds to secure his continued "authority" over the Palestinians that he is willing to comply with American dictates to bow to Sharon, the butcher of Qibya and Sabra and Shatilla.

What every Palestinian needs to know is that their current line-up of political leaders is constitutionally incapable of confronting Israel's territorial ambitions and America's political corruption. These Kings and Emirs, for all their wealth, are the lamest Arabs on the planet. They have the spines of worms. I would not leave my dog in their care. But make no mistake, Saddam is an even more seriously flawed creature who is cynical enough to kill the father of his grandkids, to use chemical weapons against the Kurds and to manipulate the Palestinian cause for his own political survival. America, at the behest of Israel, has used Saddam as an excuse to starve half a million Iraqis to death and to pulverize Iraqi military and economic strength. The economic siege against Iraq must be lifted immediately, but we owe it to the long-suffering Iraqis to despise Saddam. I would not feed Saddam to my dog. No one is entitled to preach to a Palestinian about the Israelis and their government. You know the racist garbage ideology that motivates them to rally around mass murderers like Sharon and Barak. As might be expected, America's self-appointed Jewish leaders, including the publishers of the New York Times, are willing accomplices to every Israeli crime. It would be suicidal to hold your breath for "liberal" Jews to defend even the most minimal of Palestinian rights. They are "liberals" only in matters that infringe on Jewish rights, including a Brooklyn Jew's "ancestral" rights to Palestinian real estate in Nablus and East Jerusalem.

America and Arafat sold you on the promise of Oslo. Wait seven years a,nd you will get your state. As Israeli snipers were slaughtering your children, you were asked to wait for the results of the American elections. Then there was the wait for the Israelis to elect Sharon. You expected the Europeans and Americans to react to his election. They did not and they will not. War crimes against Palestinians don't count, especially if Arafat is willing to give Sharon a pardon.

What every Palestinian must know is that before you win your independence, you must first lose Arafat. What every Arab must know is that to assist the Palestinian uprising, you must first have an uprising of your own.

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Ahmed Amr is journalist living in Seattle, Washington and editor of nileMedia.com.