Who cares about the 'Palestinians'?
Guy Bechor argues that the Arab spring has laid bare a basic truth about our region: That the 'Palestinians' are the least of the problems. Over the years, Arab rulers who knew that the ethnic, religious, tribal and regional problems in their own countries were terrible and irresolvable (and this is the reason for the awful slaughter in Syria,) always diverted attention to Israel. And so, the Arab masses ignored their actual distress and instead were preoccupied with the usual anti-Israel incitement.Truth be told, for some time now the Europeans have been much bigger supporters of the 'Palestinians' than the Arab countries. The Arab countries know the truth. The Europeans are clueless.
The Jewish State imagined by the Arab world, the Israel no Arab was actually familiar with, had turned involuntarily into a means for washing away Mideastern sins. Many people made a living and gained fame through this beneficial conflict: It became a career for them.
Why should Saddam Hussein reveal to the world the terrible hatred between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq? Why should Assad expose his bloody Alawite rule in Syria? Why should the Egyptians share the terrible economic distress faced by their country? Why should Gaddafi reveal the complex tribal split in his state? And why should Lebanon expose its messy mixture of ethnicities and religions? It’s always better to hide one’s dirty laundry while focusing on Israel: Condemn it, criticize it and disparage it.
...
Yet then came the Arab Spring, the Arab public was given a way to express itself for the first time in its history, and suddenly it turned out that Israel is far away and not too relevant. Besides, what does the real Arab distress have to do with Israel at all? The Arabs realized that in many ways their tyrannical rulers deceived them via an imaginary Israel.
If a Palestinian state is established, for example, will Assad embrace his domestic foes? Will Ahmadinejad reconcile with his enemies? Will Libya’s militias make up? Will Yemen regain even a hint of stability? And what does one have to do with the other at all?
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Arab spring, Palestinians
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:31 PM
1 Comments:
The Arabs are lucky to have the Jews and the Jewish State nearby to blame. Otherwise, they'd have no subject on which to exercise the socio-psychological coping and denial mechanisms of Projection and Transference. They'd have to first accept and then deal with the fact that they themselves are their own worst enemies, the cause of their own societal dysfunction and backwardness.
It really struck me today when I read an article at the JPost, "Blind doctor can see again". In tiny Israel, a Western democratic country barely the size of New Jersey, with a few million people, Israeli doctors have yet again pushed back the frontiers of medicine, developing a technique to cure a whole category of blindness. All humanity thereby gains. By contrast, I can't think of a single Arab scientific, medical or technological achievement. Not one.
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