Hinkle: Israel Committed the One Unforgivable Offense
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Hinkle: Israel Committed the One Unforgivable Offense
A. BARTON HINKLE TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Published: June 4, 2010
What’s the real problem with Israel’s assault on the Gaza flotilla? It’s not the loss of life. Almost nobody cares about that. It’s not the suffering of Palestinians. When Palestinians suffer, the world shrugs.
Remember the worldwide condemnations, the protests across Europe and Asia, the stern rebukes from the world’s high councils in January of last year — when Hamas militants executed 54 members of the Fatah party and tortured 175 more for (allegedly) collaborating with Israel? You don’t? That’s because the killing and torture went on with almost no notice or comment.
How about the world’s outrage in November 2007, when Hamas gunmen killed seven civilians and wounded 80 more during a rally memorializing Yasser Arafat in Gaza? If you don’t remember the outrage, the marches in the street, the scathing U.N. resolutions, that’s because there weren’t any.
Nor did the world weep when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) suspended operations in Gaza after two staff members were caught in a Hamas-Fatah crossfire and killed. When Palestinian factional violence impedes humanitarian aid, well, tsk-tsk.
Last February, Amnesty International reported that numerous prisoners injured by an Israeli bombing of a prison were “shot dead in the hospitals where they were receiving treatment.” But they weren’t shot by Israelis, so nobody objected.
According to a report by Reuters, “An estimated 616 Palestinians have been killed in factional fighting since Hamas defeated Fatah” in January 2006.
World reaction? Shrug.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, and none of the above is meant to excuse Israel’s clumsy, ill-orchestrated boarding of the Mavi Marmara. Nor is it meant to offer an unequivocal defense of the blockade, a legitimate point of contention. (Are cilantro, sage, chocolate, and notebooks really tools of terrorism? Really?)
The point is simply that those professing to be so broken up about the blockade and Israel’s enforcement of it have been remarkably subdued whenever suffering is inflicted by someone other than Jews. For further instance, according to Amnesty International’s 2010 report . . .
•Palestinians in Lebanon “continued living in overcrowded and often squalid conditions in 12 official refugee camps. Nearly 422,000 registered Palestinian refugees faced discriminatory laws and regulations, denying them the right to inherit property, work in around [sic] 20 professions, and other basic rights.”
•In Saudi Arabia, “The authorities used a wide range of repressive measures to suppress freedom of expression and other legitimate activities . . . .Shi’a Muslims and others were targeted for practising their faith . . . .Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees were systematic and carried out with impunity. Sentences of flogging were regularly imposed. The death penalty was used extensively. At least 69 people were executed, including two juvenile offenders.”
•In Yemen, “The long-running conflict in the northern Sa’da Governorate between government forces and armed supporters of the late Zaidi Shi’a cleric Hussain Badral-Din al-Huthi resumed with new intensity from August, when the government launched a military offensive codenamed Scorched Earth that included aerial bombing and deployment of ground troops. Over 190,000 people had been displaced by the fighting since 2004, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, in December, and an unknown number of civilians were killed in 2009. Both sides were believed to have committed serious human rights abuses . . . .”
Etc.
World reaction to all of this? Once again, a shrug.
Nor did the world object as more than 10,000 rockets rained down on Israeli civilians over the course of several years. It was not until Israel finally had had enough and began going after those firing the rockets in late 2008 that the world sat up and began to insist the fighting stop. On one side, anyway. Across Europe, protesters and vandals went after Jewish synagogues, neighborhoods, and congregations. Attacking Jews in the West, in other words. As if it were somehow their fault.
Nor have there been any marches in the street to protest the behavior of those who organized the flotilla and assaulted the Israeli commandos. There has been equally little objection to the footage from al-Jazeera of men on board the flotilla, the day before the fiasco, chanting “[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” Khaibar was the last Jewish village taken by the Prophet Muhammad in 628. These are peace activists?
So what’s the real problem with Israel’s assault on the flotilla? Not the loss of life. Not the suffering of Palestinians. The real problem is that Jews defended themselves. That is the one offense in the Middle East the world simply will not forgive.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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