The left only care about the Palestinians when they can blame Israel

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When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, I met a young Palestinian woman whose analysis has touched me ever since. “We aspire to self-determination and freedom. Instead, Gaza experiences terror and Islamism, and we in the West Bank have corruption and autocracy, ”she told me.

The situation in Gaza has only deteriorated since Hamas violently overthrew the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza in 2007 and installed an Islamist regime that not only terrorizes Israeli civilians but also oppresses the Palestinians it does. governs.

As for President Abbas, he did not prove to be the champion of freedom and democracy that some had hoped for. While refusing to resume peace talks with Israel, hundreds of payments to families of terrorists were made, and EU-funded textbooks taught Palestinian children about hatred and violence. The corruption is also deep; Abbas recently entered the 16th year of his four-year presidency. He again canceled the 2021 elections, preventing any democratic transition from taking place.

The Palestinians are frustrated and angry. In recent weeks, thousands of men and women have demonstrated in the streets of Ramallah and elsewhere in the West Bank, especially after the death of one of Abbas’s biggest critics, Nizar Banat, while in detention. by Palestinian Authority security forces. Many Palestinian civil society activists and journalists have been intimidated and arrested, prompting some of them to publicly call on Europe to protect themselves.

But despite this reality, the West Bank protests and the ensuing crackdown have been almost entirely ignored by Western media, politicians and civil society.

Traditional champions of the Palestinian cause, those on the left who vehemently protested Israel’s actions in Gaza during the latest conflict with Hamas, have remained silent. For Palestinians who publicly oppose their own government, there have been no “Palestine will be free” slogans or T-shirts. There have been no condemnations by progressive politicians or model posts on Instagram.

Why do individuals who identify as supporters of the Palestinian people, as bearers of the human rights torch, have this incredible blind spot?

Members of the Palestinian Authority security forces block a road as protesters gather in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on July 3, 2021, for a protest denouncing the Palestinian Authority over the death of the Palestinian Authority. activist Nizar Banat while in police custody. . AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP via Getty Images

How to explain the total apathy in the face of these recent manifestations? How do you explain the silence on what happened to Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk, Syria over the past decade in which the Assad regime and allied militias killed, arrested and displaced thousands of Palestinians? Who in the West can honestly say they’ve even heard of it?

How to explain the lack of interest of the same actors for human rights when Israel is not involved? Why don’t we hear them talk about the Uyghurs cleansed by the Chinese dictatorship, the Rohingyas displaced by the Burmese junta, the Kurds and Yazidis raped and tortured in Syria and Iraq, the Iranian athletes killed and the women activists imprisoned, on the massacre of Nigerian Christians by Boko Haram and Fulani Islamists?

I fear there is no explanation, other than the lack of interest of so-called pro-Palestinian activists in the real Palestinians. What they only seem to care about is a “romantic” version of the Palestinians, a David and Goliath tale, some sort of twisted reincarnation of colonial or racial resistance. It says more about themselves than it does about the Palestinians.

In order for the left’s ideological obsession to ‘work’, for it to feel empathetic towards the Palestinians, it needs the imaginary ‘evil’, ‘racist’, ‘colonizer’ of Israel to be part of the equation. .

Israel is not immune from criticism. But this unhealthy obsession with an imaginary Israel is not really about the conflict.

This is a rather successful propaganda campaign by the Palestinian leadership, their allies and multilateral institutions around the world. This is an ideological shift of the political left in the West, in which race and other demographic categories have replaced class as the crucial axis.

And this has catastrophic consequences for Jews around the world who have become legitimate targets. They are the victims of what can only be called an anti-Zionist obsession, which demands Israel’s total rejection of every Jew, lest they be seen as complicit in Israel’s “bad attempts”.

This “ziocentric” approach is one of the reasons why former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labor Party had become riddled with anti-Semitism, why we have seen this “new form” of anti-Semitism in Europe over the past 20 years. years, and why we recently saw anti-Semitic bombings in the streets of London, New York and Los Angeles.

But it also has dire consequences for the Palestinians, whose supporters choose to ignore the terrorism and tyranny that destroyed Palestinian politics and provided cover for a political structure in Palestine that they would never accept for them- same.

Finally, it has negative consequences for human rights in the world in general. Since its inception in 2006, the UN Human Rights Council has had only one separate and standing agenda item, and that is the one dedicated to Israel – not Korea. from the North, not to Iran, not to China, not to Venezuela. Of the 24 sessions that criticize countries, more than 35% targeted Israel. This one-country obsession is not only unfair to Israel, but also means that the United Nations Human Rights Council continues to ignore numerous human rights violations around the world.

The saying “No Jews, no news” unfortunately describes this worldview too well. What is at stake has less to do with the world of politics than with the world of psychology, and less with Israel than with Israel’s obsessives.

Only if we understand how this logic works and the consequences it has for Israelis and Palestinians, for Jews in the Diaspora and for the conflicts forgotten in the world, can we respond effectively. . The earliest would be best.

Simone Rodan-Benzaquen is Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Europe.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

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