This weekend a church in New Jersey will celebrate its 40th annual Lebanese festival, where they will celebrate Lebanese culture. The fair will include "traditional Lebanese foods such as falafel, shawarma (gyro), hummus, spinach pies, tabouhli, stuffed grape leaves and pastries."
Now, every time there is a Jewish or Israeli centered event, it requires lots of extra security, and protesters are pretty much guaranteed to be there to try to ruin the experience. The ostensible reason? Because the protesters are "pro-Palestinian."
But no one will protest this festival.
Palestinians are discriminated against, by law, in Lebanon. They cannot build or expand their houses, they are not allowed to live outside the overcrowded camps, they are restricted from many jobs and higher education, and of course they can never become citizens even if they want to and even after five generations of living there.
Anti-Palestinian bigotry is rife in Lebanon, as the Lebanese still resent the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s that the Palestinians were a major part of. Comment sections of Lebanese newspapers show lots of hate for Palestinians.
Palestinians protest when Israelis and Jews serve falafel, hummus and shawarma, claiming that they are guilty of cultural appropriation of Palestinian foods. But those same foods will be served here, and no one bats an eye.
By every reasonable metric, Palestinians are treated worse in Lebanon than under Israeli rule. Any one of them would prefer to live under "oppressive Israeli occupation" than as "guests" under a supposedly benevolent Lebanese government.
So why aren't there any protests? Why are Lebanese families not nervous to go out in public for fear of harassment or terrorist attacks against them in New Jersey? Why is there no organization, no campus encampments, and virtually no op-eds about Palestinian human rights in Lebanon they way there is such obsessive hate towards anything Israeli? What is the secret difference between how "pro-Palestinian" activists view Lebanon and how they view Israel?
Do you really have to ask?
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