Wizblog

Absence of Nuance

Incitement To Genocide, Act Two. By Steven Plaut at FPM. Read it all.

On CNN, Arafat was described as a "revolutionary romantic figure comparable to Ho Chi Minh and Nelson Mandela." For USA Today, he "embraced sorrow and hope." South Africa's City Press described him as a leader who "marshaled freedom fighters." And in the Toronto Sun we were told he was "murdered" (!) by Israel. Many were comparing him to the Biblical Moses.1 One of the only dissident voices was Kuwait, which had been brutalized by Saddam's Iraq as Arafat led Saddam's cheerleader squads. A Kuwaiti minister, Muhammad Abul-Hassan, was threatened with impeachment by the Kuwaiti parliament for having allowed a television broadcast last week in which Arafat was described as a hero, a combatant for faith, and a martyr. Abul-Hassan elected to hand in his resignation over the matter.

And all this maudlin mourning for a mass murderer of children and other civilians, for a plane hijacker who paved the way for 9/11, for an Islamofascist who organized terrorist movements, whose raison d'etre was a Second Holocaust of Jews. Or perhaps that was precisely the point?

The media circus and the proclamations of Arafat's "greatness" did serve one useful function. And that is that they illustrated as well as anything what the true nature is of worldwide "solidarity with Palestinians" and support for Palestinian "national goals.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no such thing on the planet as sympathy for and identification with Palestinians. There is no such thing as pro-Palestinianism. Period. When Palestinians, or when Arabs in general, are mistreated, repressed, and tormented by any Arab regime, no one cares. When Palestinians were mass murdered by Syria and Jordan, no one cared. When more than 100,000 Arab civilians are massacred in Algeria, it does not even make the evening news. When Asad or Saddam Hussein carry out mass murders of Arabs, the "Human Rights" lobby never looks up from its cinnamon latté.

The pro-Palestinian movement is nothing more than the 21st century's reincarnation of medieval anti-Semitism, complete with medieval anti-Jewish blood libels. People who claim to feel empathy for Palestinians are typically motivated by hatred of Jews. The reason the pro-Palestinian movement wants the Palestinians to have a state is because it understands that such a state will operate as an instrument to attack Israel, murder Jews, and seek the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Once one understands this fundamental fact of life about the Middle East and about world political motivations, everything else makes sense. The mind-numbing stupidity of the world media mourning Arafat in great cries of anguish, the fawning toadying of political leaders, the maudlin outpouring of love for the cause of the fallen terrorist nazi, are all understandable. There is nothing at all confusing about it. These people are not broadcasting their undying love of Palestinians, but rather their undying hatred of Jews.

I don't equate the vague man-on-the-street support for "Palestinian statehood" with anti-Semitism like Plaut seems to. But I do agree that to make a hero of Arafat, to name streets after him and praise his name is by definition to sympathise, in some way at least, with his lifelong cause of death to Israel and to Jews. It's all he ever really stood for. The Europeans and Americans who take part in his canonization also know full well what his life was all about. Plaut just calls it by its name.