Jewish deaths ignored

Editorial

Inconvenience to Palestinians is more offensive to the world community than dead Jews. This is the argument that critics of Israel's security barrier have been making since construction of the fence first began. Now, the International Court of Justice has codified this principle in a sort of quasi-international law. And Canada, brave purveyor of international human rights that we are, abstained last week in a vote on that subject at the United Nations.

This stark quid pro quo between inconvenienced Palestinians and dead Jews is not how Israel's critics would position the argument, of course. They've become far too media savvy for such a crass equation. Opponents of the security barrier justly point out that it causes serious and genuine hardships for Palestinian people who are, in some cases, separated from their agricultural land, their places of employment, their freedom to move.

But, at its root, the argument is the same. Never mind that Israelis have suffered genuine hardships, having been separated – permanently – from their loved ones, their eyes, their arms, their livelihoods, their sense of security. Never mind that every Israeli citizen – not just a few who live along the border – have had their lives turned upside-down by decades of terror. Nobody, not the UN, not the International Court at the Hague, nobody but Jews and a few scant allies seem concerned about the inconveniences and hardships (namely, death) caused to Israelis. Because the world community has already decided, en masse and based mostly on prejudice, that Israel is the sole perpetrator and aggressor in this conflict, Palestinian terror is merely the unavoidable result of Zionist imperialism. After nearly six decades of being punched in the face, Israel finally stopped taking it and opted for a barrier to shield against the blows. The world community was outraged that Israel refused to withstand the blows and demanded that Israel's hands be cuffed and that it take the licks it deserves. History has shown that the world likes Jews best when they are downtrodden.

Of course, the Israeli high court has ordered the government to alter the course of the barrier, in order to ameliorate some of the difficulties it creates for Palestinians. The world community refuses to see this judicial compromise for what it is: the triumph of due process and civil justice in the face of the most sustained onslaught against a democratic state in the history of humankind.

Not enough, say the critics. The entire fence is a land grab, they cry.

Israel's response, rightly, is that when the Palestinian side is prepared to stop killing Israeli civilians, Israel will negotiate the potential future borders of a Palestinian state. A fence can be taken down. Human lives can never be revived.

It's an "apartheid fence," critics declare. The biggest flaw in this analogy, its perpetrators fail to note, is not that Israel can in no way be said to resemble South Africa's apartheid regime. It's that the Palestinian nationalist movement can in no way be compared to the ANC. The African National Congress, for whatever tactics it may have used, was at its heart, a movement for democracy, racial equality and freedom.

The Palestinian nationalist movement is tangentially supportive of democracy only when pressed to give lip-service to assuage international opinion, but democracy is anathema to the autocratic Palestinian leadership, which is nearly as quick to kill Palestinian "collaborators" and "traitors" as it is "Zionists." The ANC was a movement to give blacks, whites and "coloreds" equal rights under the law. The Palestinian nationalist movement calls for the extradition of Jews living within the boundaries of their prospective state.

Still, there is a never-ending supply of goodwill toward the Palestinian cause, with activists ready to defend the most barbaric atrocities perpetrated in the name of Palestinian independence based on a variety of justifications. The Palestinians are desperate to end their statelessness; economic conditions lead to hopelessness, which leads to terrorism; the humiliations of the proud Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli soldiers makes anything justifiable and legitimate.

It is the increasingly popular and narrow view in which external forces are to blame for one's personal misfortunes, which are miraculously divorced from one's own actions and judgments. Conveniently, this perspective meshes with a preconceived idea held throughout the Arab world and, increasingly, in Europe and North America, that Israel deserves everything it gets and has no right to defend itself.

Canada's refusal, last week at the United Nations, to stand up against this attitude suggests we as a society pretty much accept the view that inconvenienced Palestinians present a greater tragedy than dead Jews. If you disagree with this position, you might want to call your member of Parliament.

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