Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Elder of ZiyonIt has been 144 days.
Not one human rights organization, not one major media outlet, not one world government, not one UN agency has publicly called on Arab countries to open their borders for Gazans in a war zone to flee.
This is unlike every other war in modern history. Millions of Ukrainians, Syrians, Somalians, Sudanese and other refugees flee war zones all the time and the world's human rights organizations and editorialists relentlessly call for borders to be opened and for refugees to be treated humanely.
Except for Gaza.
And as far as I can tell, not one reporter - not one! - has bothered asking HRW and Amnesty and Gisha and UNRWA - or even the State Department or white House - what their official position is on Egypt's and Jordan's refusal to allow any Gazans to seek safety within their borders.
It is astonishing. Not a single major group, organization, pundit or nation who claim to care about the welfare of the civilians of Gaza is willing to even express a passing public criticism of Egypt's and Jordan's quite public proclamations that they will not allow a single Palestinian to flee to safety.
There are two overlapping sets of double standards for Gaza.
One is discussed quite a bit: antisemitism. The very charge of "genocide" that is only hurled at Israel and no other nation at war can only be explained by hatred of Jews. The demands that Israel behave in ways that no one else is expected to are antisemitic. The suspicion that Israel's statements are suspect, that their claims and evidence must be corroborated before they can be believed no matter how much evidence is produced, is classic antisemitism where Jews are considered shifty and always scheming.
No one wants to admit it aloud, but there is a great fear in the West of upsetting Muslims, who are regarded as irrational creatures who might just decide to attack you if you make them angry. And many Muslims take full advantage of this fear, threatening violence or terrorism that could somehow result if they don't get their way.
If anyone would publicly call on Egypt to open its borders to Gazans, the Egyptian government would react with great anger - it would suspend relations with any country, it would expel or imprison any human rights workers, it would embark on a smear campaign against any pundits, it would self-righteously say that its policy is the most humane policy possible for Palestinians and no one would dare contradict them.
And Islam-phobia ensures that no one wants to shame Egypt or prompt such reactions. "Speaking truth to power" only applies to power that doesn't act irrationally or violently. It directly leads to the deaths of thousands of civilians.
The violence we are now seeing in Western cities and campuses, ostensibly in defense of Palestinians, is partly a result of Western reluctance to appear "Islamophobic" in acting against the lesser offenses of "only" blocking major transportation routes.
No one wants to criticize Palestinians for overwhelmingly supporting the mass murder of Jewish civilians. Calls for a "ceasefire" begin and end with Israel. Calls for Hamas to release hostages are pro forma and forced, while calls for Israel to stop fighting and allow Hamas to win are strident and angry.
This overlapping of Islam-phobia and antisemitism has some surprising commonalities. In both cases, context is anathema.
No one wants to compare how Egypt is expected to act with Gazans with how they are expected to act with other people seeking refuge from war.
No one wants to compare Israeli actions with the behavior of the US and Britain and Germany in various Muslim theatres of war.
Almost no one wants to seriously publish the IDF's extensive controls in place to minimize civilian harm and how difficult that is in an urban war with Hamas hiding beneath civilians. Very few seriously compare Israel's actions with real international law, instead creating new rules for Israel that have never been applied anywhere else.
Gaza is where the double standards for Jews and the double standards for Muslims intersect.
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