Is Israel completely wrong, not wrong at all, just a little wrong?
Is Hamas completely wrong, not wrong at all, just a little wrong?
We can discuss it until the next ice age.
facts
In this tragedy, two essential aspects are obscured.
The first is the exceptional hypocrisy of Arab regimes.
The second is the shifting engineering discontent of many Westerners.
In 1948, Ben-Gurion announced the birth of Israel. Seven Arab armies immediately attack the fledgling state.
Out of solidarity with the Palestinians, out of anti-Semitism, in order to prevent American influence, in order to rally their people around their regimes, and so on.
Israel won, and from then on, although many of these countries would attack it again, its priority was no longer – in fact, it never was – the fate of the Palestinians.
As the years pass, the only concern of these regimes, all of them authoritarian, becomes their survival and maintaining power.
One by one, many of them will normalize their relations with the United States and Israel, sometimes directly signing trade and political agreements.
It is difficult for the billions received to reach its miserable residents. They will be used to strengthen their repressive apparatuses in order to cling to power.
“Solidarity” with the Palestinians will be ritually evoked, like a cassette tape, but little more than that.
Some like to point out that Israel receives billions from the United States. TRUE.
Arab oil monarchies prefer to spend billions buying up soccer clubs in Europe or developing luxury cities in the desert.
Palestinians? From time to time we will send them some boxes of food, books or medicines.
We ask Europe to welcome all these immigrants fleeing the Middle East without batting an eyelid, but we hardly ask the Arab regimes to welcome their Palestinian “brothers.”
Today, when a Palestinian falls under an Israeli bullet, we are affected. With a reason.
But when the Palestinians fall under Arab bullets, or kill each other, where is the discontent of the good souls in the West?
Where was the anger when the Syrian butcher Assad cut off water, electricity and food for two years from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp?
Where was the discontent when the Lebanese army, angry at the destabilization caused by Islamists on its territory, demolished the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in 2007?
Also in 2005, there was almost no resentment or resentment when the Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas killed each other in pursuit of power after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza?
Is there also no anger at the proven fact that the Hamas leader lives comfortably in Qatar and has become a millionaire, like other leaders of the movement, by imposing a 20% tax on all goods entering Gaza?
- Listen to Richard Martino’s column via QUB Radio :
betrayal
Israel certainly has its faults. But is Israel solely responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians?
No, it’s more complicated. These people are also betrayed and manipulated by their leaders and by regimes in the region that claim to be united.
