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| A Palestinian environmentalist who loves his land |
The UK-based Al Araby, which publishes in English as "The New Arab," has an editorial whose headline declares that "The Zionist occupation is a threat to humanity."
Sounds ominous!
It starts off with the usual supposed crimes against Palestinians - "the ethnic liquidation of the people of Palestine," that somehow keeps growing; "destruction of the economy, cutting off livelihoods, and reducing job opportunities to a minimum" (even though record numbers of Palestinians have well-paying jobs in Israel,) "destroying the health sector and limiting the Palestinian’s access to appropriate and urgent medicine," even though it is the PA that no longer allows Palestinians to be treated in Israeli hospitals - except for their own VIPs.
But that's hardly enough for an op-ed. So the newspaper editors have to add that Israel is trying to eliminate Palestinians from existence by "destroying the Palestinian environment, by uprooting trees, confiscating lands, and polluting water and soil."
Given that Palestinians burn Israeli lands, burn tires in protests and ruin the groundwater, this is as absurd as the previous accusations. But here is where the editorial makes its leap:
It is clear that the disastrous repercussions of the Zionist project/occupation affect all human, animal, plant and environmental life, which represents a threat to all of humanity, which struggles to survive in light of other environmental threats. Therefore, it can be said that the liberation of Palestine from this cancerous project is a human necessity as much as it is a Palestinian necessity.
Whoa! So Israel's supposed crimes against the Palestinian environment is threatening to destroy the entire world! Therefore, this mainstream, moderate UK-based paper says, every country must work together to destroy Israel in order to save the world!
Now, that's a new take!
Every bizarre accusation against Israel starts off just as fringe and as untethered to truth as this one, but in a couple of decades, with enough Big Lie type repetition, it is entirely possible that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch will adopt this narrative as well.
It's happened before.
Of course, the English language edition did not publish this editorial. Arabs know when they are spewing nonsense that would make them lose their friends if they were reading themselves. It will take a couple of years of conditioning from SJP and JVP, and then the New York Times congratulating itself for publishing such a provocative op-ed. Only then will this new narrative of Jews trying to destroy the world be mainstream enough to spread it without fear of looking like idiots.
