Sunday, December 23, 2012
Selective Morality and Hypocrisy in
the Middle East
By Ken Spiro
Anyone with
a modicum of objectivity can’t help but be dumbfounded by the level of hypocrisy
and total lack of even-handedness in the international community’s treatment of
Israel. On November 29th,
2012 (exactly 65 after the Arab world rejected the original U.N. partition
vote), the Palestinian Authority asked the UN General Assembly to vote to
upgrade its status to a non-member observer state. This event constituted a gross violation of
the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords which prohibit either side from taking unilateral
action. Simply put, the PLA chose to
reject one of the most fundamental elements of the agreement that is the
backbone of any future peace negotiations.
One would
expect that such a blatant violation of the agreement and such an open provocation
against Israel would be met with anger and disdain from the international
community, yet the resolution to upgrade the status of the PLA received
overwhelming support from the General Assembly with only 7 countries opposing
it!
The
government of Israel decided that such a provocation could not be ignored. A few days later Prime Minister Netanyahu
announced the beginning of the planning process to build an additional 3,000
housing units over the Green Line (the 1948 armistices line dividing Israel
from what was until the Six Day War Jordanian-occupied territory in Judea and
Samaria also commonly referred to as “The West Bank.”). Keep
in mind that all Netanyahu did was announce that Israel would now begin the
process of planning to possibly build these apartments-primarily in communities that already existed. The actual
construction, if it ever happens at all, could be years away.
The
international community’s reaction in this case was immediate and very different,
bordering on near hysteria. Israeli ambassadors
in several European countries were summoned and chastised. Western governments voiced their opposition
in the strongest possible language stating that such unilateral actions on the part
of Israel were not only a serious violation of international law, but that they
threatened the whole future of the peace process with the Palestinians and the
entire region! If not for a U.S. veto,
the U.N. Security Council would have voted unanimously to condemn Israeli
actions.
Anyone with
a modicum of objectivity should be asking themselves why the U.N. so whole heartily supported PLA’s blatant violation of the Oslo Accords while so strenuously condemning
Israeli actions or why the Security Council had no problem immediately creating
the unanimity necessary to condemn Israel while not being able (after more than
a year) to do so in order to condemn Assad’s slaughter of over 40,000 of his
own people in Syria. How is it that the
West, and especially Western Europe, so easily overlooks the constant, human rights violations and atrocities that take place daily in the Third World yet seems to have a
microscope trained on every Israeli action. Why is there such a double standard
when it comes to judging Israel-a country that despite being the only democracy
in the Middle East-can do no right?
Maybe it has
something to do with residual guilt felt by the West for the damage that its
colonial policies caused to the third world. Israel is often labeled both by
the Arab world and Western liberals as the one of the last vestiges of
colonialism in the world; foreign white occupiers imposing their oppressive
colonialism on the natives (This explains the constant use of the word settler
to describe an Israeli living in the territories –even though those territories
are actually the original and most ancient area of in-habitation of the Jewish
people: Hebron, Schem (Nablus) etc). The world seems to have forgotten that the
Jewish people entered the land of Israel, led by Joshua, nearly 2,000 years
before the birth of Islam. The world
seems to have forgotten that Israelis ARE the indigenous people of the region
and even though they were exiled from their l multiple times by foreign
invaders, they never gave up hope of returning.
Or maybe it
has something to do with antisemistism.
While criticism of Israeli policies can sometimes be legitimate, the
demonization, double standard and delegitimization that Israel constantly faces
goes far beyond any rational or realistic critique of Israeli policies or
action. But then again accusations against Jews of well poisoning, ritual
murder, and control of the world’s economy have never been rational or realistic,
so why should this new strain of Jew hate known as Israel- bashing be any
different?
Throughout
history evil has always seem to hyper-focus on and target the Jewish people and
maybe that’s why the most dangerous rogues states like Iran, North Korea and
Chavez’s Venezuela are particularly antagonistic to Israel-the Jewish State. If this is the case, than maybe anyone with a
modicum of objectivity, who recognized what is truly behind Israel-bashing
would think twice before casting stones at tiny Israel, recognizing that those
stones may well bounce back and hit him in the face.
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