Perhaps the day will come when Palestinians realize that 70 years of fantasizing about a lost homeland that never existed has brought them nothing but misery, but I’m not holding my breath.
A friend told me the other day that he was disappointed by my lack of empathy for the plight of Palestinians as evidenced by the invariably cold-hearted tone of my comments about Palestinians in my blogs.
Essentially, what he said is that Palestinians live in wretched conditions and have limited resources or opportunities to improve their situation and that I should acknowledge that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances.
Furthermore, my friend believes that as Jews who have also suffered greatly at the hands of more powerful entities, we need to be more sympathetic to their situation.
I guessed that some introspection was called for here, so I re-read my blogs that were particularly critical of Palestinians to see if I was unnecessarily cruel or one-sided, and I’m happy to report that I judged myself to be innocent of all charges.
When I wrote about deep-rooted Palestinian anti-Semitism, historical revisionism, the use of terrorist tactics, the denial of Israel’s legitimacy, the unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, prioritizing the purchase of weapons over goods that would benefit their people and financially rewarding murderers (there’s more but my space is limited), I was not talking about Palestinian civilians. I was talking about their leadership,which has managed to squander or misappropriate billions of dollars donated to the Palestinian cause by Arab oil-states and gullible Western nations (that’s right, Germany, I’m talking about you).
Most Self-Serving, Destructive Regime
Sadly for the Palestinian people, they have the misfortune to be burdened with perhaps the most misguided, most self-serving and most self-destructive governing cabal on the face of this planet
If even a fraction of the money that goes to building tunnels or acquiring rockets were redirected to Palestinian health and education, their standard of living would be on a par with any of their Arab neighbours. If they were to sit down with Israel and negotiate a fair and balanced peace agreement and treat Israel with respect and cooperation, I dare say their standard of living within a generation would be competitive with Israel’s.
But the problem for the Palestinians is not just their political leadership. One must also recognize the role played by the Islamist culture in creating the hot mess that is the current Palestinian reality. Their Imams have been telling them for the past 70 years that Jews stole their land, that Jews are pigs and apes, that martyrdom leads to 72 virgins in the hereafter, etc., etc.
Those lessons resonate with a people who have been conditioned since birth to regard the Koran as the inarguable word of G-d and who have been told by their political and religious leaders that they are victims of the all-powerful Jews. This religious doctrine compounded by criminally-inept governance renders any reconciliation with their Jewish neighbors a very remote possibility.
Only So Much Sympathy to Go Around
I do feel sympathy for the sorry state in which Palestinians find themselves. The problem is that I have only so much sympathy to go around, and I choose to concern myself firstly with the Israelis, who are the victims of Palestinian dysfunction and terror.
Perhaps the day will come when Palestinians realize that 70 years of fantasizing about a lost homeland that never existed has brought them nothing but misery, but I’m not holding my breath.
