Solving The Israel-Palestine Is Everything--To The West; To The Arabs--Not So Much

Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked Online, notes that the West makes a bigger deal of the Israel-Palestine crisis than the Arab street:

"UNTIL the Palestinians are given back their rights we're going to have instability throughout the Middle East," declared John Pilger on ABC1's Q & A last night. "That is central to everything."

Yet, one of the most striking things about the uprising in Egypt was the lack of pro-Palestine placards. As Egypt-watcher Amr Hamzawy put it, in Tahrir Square and elsewhere there were no signs saying "death to Israel, America and global imperialism" or "together to free Palestine". Instead, this revolt was about Egyptian people's own freedom and living conditions.


Yet on the pro-Egypt demonstration in London on Saturday, there was a sea of Palestine placards. "Free Palestine", they said, and "End the Israeli occupation". The speakers had trouble getting the audience excited about events in Egypt, having to say on more than one occasion: "Come on London, you can shout louder than that!" Yet every mention of the word Palestine induced a kind of Pavlovian excitability among the attendees. They cheered when the P-word was uttered, chanting: "Free, free Palestine!"

This reveals something important about the Palestine issue. In recent years it has moved from the realm of Arab radicalism, where Egyptians and other peoples frequently demanded the creation of a Palestinian state, and has instead become almost the exclusive property of Western middle-class radicals, such as Pilger. [emphasis added]

Just consider the fact that there is no other issue--not the Sudan, not the Muslim persecution of Christians and not even the situation Palestinians in Lebanon--that excites these people like Israel does.

Perhaps it is the total disinterest in the situation of Palestinian Arabs anywhere else that is a clue. As O'Neill writes about this Palestinian obsession:

It is not driven by future-oriented demands for economic development in a Palestinian homeland in the West Bank or Gaza. Instead it is driven by a view of Palestinians as the ultimate victims, the hapless and pathetic children of the new world order, who need kindly, wizened Westerners to protect them from Big Bad Israel.

...Of course, Westerners have often gone on moral adventures overseas, whether as missionaries or revolutionaries. What's different about Palestinian pity tourism is that these Westerners seek neither to convert Palestinians to a religion nor to take up arms with them, but simply to empathise with them, to immerse themselves in what they consider to be the ultimate victimhood experience.

Not surprisingly, the self-absorption of these self-proclaimed defenders of Palestinians in general--and Gazans in particular--ignores facts that get in the way, like Hamas:

Palestinian pitiers have no time to think about the inconvenient fact that Hamas is an intolerant political entity that has no time for gay rights or women's equality. Instead, everything gets reduced to a Narnia-style story of wicked witches v happy fauns, because this is ultimately about providing vacuous-feeling Westerners with some much-needed momentum in their lives, not about untangling a messy political reality.

Read the whole thing.

Ultimately, this self-serving pity tour is not only misguided--it will also fail to help exactly those whom they claim they are so eager to help.

Hat tip: Shrinkwrapped

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.