Jamaican Arabs and Jews generally agree that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is a dictator who deserved to be ousted, but remain as sharply divided over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as their counterparts in the Middle East.

At the same time, the United States drew scathing criticisms from some Arabs and Jews here for its unilaterally declared war on Iraq, with several describing the George W Bush-led administration as “hypocritical” for taking sides against the Arabs.

“The Americans are unfair because they provide Israel with $2.5 billion in aid annually and have not cut this despite Israel’s massacre of Palestinians,” says John Mahfood, a Lebanese descendant, in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

Mahfood, who is in charge of retail trading at Grace, Kennedy and Company, warns: “Because of this, terrorists will have a reason to bomb US cities and Americans may have suicide bombers in the future if they continue their hypocritical approach.”

Most of the local Arabs and Jews with whom the newspaper spoke also appear to agree that the war on Iraq has grabbed the spotlight from the broader Israeli/Palestinian issue, which they consider as the most crucial one affecting the region and its future.

But camps are solidly drawn on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, with the older representatives more vehemently segregated on the issue than their younger counterparts.

The Jamaicans of Arab origin, among them Lebanese, Jordanians, Sudanese, Syrians and Palestinians, for the most part identify with the Palestinians whilst the Jamaican Jews generally carry the Israeli line.

Aaron Matalon and Ainsley Henriques, patriarchal figures from the older generation of Jews, mostly blame the Palestinians for the course of events, which have pitted the descendants of Abraham against each other in internecine war down through the ages.

On the other hand, the younger Joseph M Matalon, also a Jew, believes that both Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Council and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister should be deposed and hopes that “a younger generation bent on burying the past and on rejuvenation will elicit change”.

Godfrey Kawass, describing himself as a second generation Jamaican Arab of Palestinian origin, agrees with Joe Matalon, that both leaders are ‘warmongers’.

“We should live as one because the Israelis and Palestinians are one people, only the language separates us,” Kawass argues.

Adds Matalon: “The only way to solve the Israeli/Palestinian problem is to separate the states, an idea that the Clinton administration implemented as a government policy and which the Bush administration adopted. But this has been railroaded and made very difficult by the hostility and hard position taken by the current Israeli government.”

Matalon accuses the US of “double standards”, saying it will feed resentment in the Middle East, because “they apparently have chosen to ‘free’ mainly Muslim countries from dictatorship”.

A prominent Jamaican of Lebanese origin who asked not to be identified, says that he was glad when Bush won the 2000 election but is now accusing the US and Israel of practising state terrorism.

“They have invaded Iraq under the pretence of protecting themselves,” the businessman and philanthropist adds.

He believes that President Bush’s pre-emptive attack was encouraged also by the influential American Jewish lobby, and shares Joe Matalon’s sentiment that the US is “hypocritical”.

“Eight hundred thousand people were killed in Rwanda but the US did nothing and they are doing nothing about Zimbabwe’s undemocratic rule.”

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe recently pulled his country out of the British Commonwealth, after being suspended for alleged election-rigging and oppressing the opposition. Aaron Matalon, who has been the Israeli representative in Jamaica for 20 years, insists that the Palestinians are trying to overrun Christianity and disagrees that the US activities represent double standards.

“There is no double standard because the US helps other countries, Afghanistan is an example.”

He is satisfied that Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gadhaffi recently admitted that Libya was involved in banned weapons programmes and had welcomed international inspectors to Libya.

“He turned around because of what happened to Saddam Hussein,” Matalon remarks.

The elder Matalon joins British and American officials who credit this mainly to the pre-emptive war on Iraq and Hussein’s capture. He describes Hussein as one who “murders his own nation, not only the Jews”.

Henriques, past president of the Jewish Congregation, labelled Hussein’s regime as anti-Semitic. “From a Jewish point of view, the overthrow of the regime is a relief. He was a financier of terror against Israel because the families of suicide bombers are rewarded with cash by Iraq.”

According to Henriques, hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to leave Iraq under Hussein’s rule and that there are more Jews in Arab countries who have been expelled than the number of Palestinians who were exiled in the 1967 six-day war, when Israel annexed the Gaza Strip and West Bank which were occupied by the Palestinians.

All sides, however, agree that Hussein should have been deposed. But that was where agreement stopped.

Joseph Handal, honorary consul of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, says that Amman’s position is that the United Nations should have decided whether or not an attack on Iraq was necessary, not the US, and that Hussein’s hearing should be done in an international court where he should be tried by the Iraqi people.

John Mahfood, Douglas Kawass and Robert Dabdoub agree that Hussein’s regime violated human rights and was criminal, but insist that the US is hypocritical because they side with Israel.

Mahfood says that the Jewish population in the US are powerful because of their large monetary donations.

Dabdoub who manages Budget Supplies, cites the contrast in the US approach to Israel’s 1967 annexation and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

“They say that Iraq has violated UN’s resolution, but Israel did the same in 1967 and they continue to build settlements daily in Palestinian territories and the world does not question Israel’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Dabdoub adds that the US media’s “over-exhuberance” in their presentation of the Iraq war and Bush’s policy concerning Iraq reflect “an unfortunately unbalanced phase in international history”.

Not disputing that Hussein committed atrocities in Iraq, Kawass says that Iraq’s sovereignty has been breached because of the pre-emptive attack by the US-led coalition in March.

Iraq was primarily attacked because it is the second largest oil reserve in the world, Kawass remarks, insisting that the war is detracting from the larger Palestinian/Israeli issue.

Kawass calls Sharon a murderer who, “as the minister of defence in 1982, invaded Lebanon and massacred civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut”. He says Sharon was found indirectly guilty of destroying these refugee camps, by his own Israelis.

Like Kawass, Joe Matalon does not see a relationship between the war raged on Iraq by the US under President George W Bush and the Iraqi/Palestinian issue.

“The US double standard policy will feed resentment in the Middle East,” he cautions.