Global double standards, callousness and hypocrisy regarding Israel were on full display this week.
By DAVID M. WEINBERGUS President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Five minutes is all it took for the world to issue the strongest of condemnations following the murder on Wednesday of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy from eastern Jerusalem. Five minutes. Then the fiercest of denunciations swiftly poured in.US Secretary of State John Kerry rushed to “condemn in the strongest possible terms the despicable and senseless abduction and murder” of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir. “It is sickening to think of an innocent 17-year-old boy snatched off the streets and his life stolen from him and his family. There are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people.”“Despicable” and “sickening.” “Snatched off the streets.” “There are no words.”Then Kerry rushed to a telephone to call Prime Minister Netanyahu and make sure that he was taking the “heinous” murder seriously.British Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague were quick out the gate as well. They called the murder of the Palestinian teenager from “occupied east Jerusalem” – “appalling.” They importantly added that it was “vital” that the people responsible for the crime were held “accountable.”“Appalling.” “Held accountable.” “Occupied east Jerusalem.”Similarly, Quartet envoy Tony Blair called the murder “horrendous” and said that “the perpetrators must be found swiftly and brought to justice.” Blair is so “very worried” about “the unrest in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including assaults on Palestinians, “price tag” attacks and settler violence that cannot be tolerated.”“Horrendous.” “Very worried.” “Cannot be tolerated.”The UN’s Mideast envoy, Robert Serry, whose animosity toward Israel is known, also chimed in with spitting-fire censure of Israel.For Serry, and most of the world, Israel’s guilty verdict had already come in. Guilty until proven innocent.Trigger-happy to convict Israel. All within five minutes.Even if the Israel Police investigation were soon to determine that the Palestinian boy was killed by Arabs for reasons of “honor” or criminality, no one would believe it at this point. The fix is in. Israel is engaging in revenge killing.Needless to say, the murder is terrible, and is even graver if it was carried out by vigilante Israelis. Prime Minister Netanyahu didn’t need any prodding to term it a “reprehensible crime” or to comprehend the severity of the situation, and to insist that the police make investigation of the murder the highest priority.But no such swift damnations were forthcoming for three long weeks during the abduction ordeal of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah, and certainly not with the hyperbolic and demanding language cited above. The kidnapping saga hardly made the front pages in the world’s leading newspapers; it was overshadowed by the ISIS surge in Iraq and other more compelling stories.Even when the bodies of the three Israeli boys were found, few of these “very worried” global actors got worked up enough to use terms like appalling, despicable, heinous and sickening.Instead, they issued the de rigeur condemnations of the killings, alongside expressions sympathy for the families, and softball calls on “both sides” to find the perpetrators and exercise “restraint.” Nor did the Western world’s exalted and stately spokespeople forget to praise the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas for distancing himself from the Hamas-inspired kidnapping.(Gee, thank you.) US President Obama couldn’t find the moral conviction and outrage necessary to comment on and condemn the kidnapping, in his own voice, even once throughout our long 18-day nightmare. Even with President Shimon Peres standing beside him in Washington, Obama couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t do it.Even when Peres asked him to do so. Not a peep from Obama.He didn’t have the time. Five minutes, perhaps? Until the boys were discovered dead. Then Obama mustered the courage to extend deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families, to comment “as a father” on their “indescribable pain,” to “condemn this senseless act of terror against innocent youth in the strongest possible terms” – and, of course, “to urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”Johnny come lately, methinks. Worse still: Obama’s comments are simply too aloof, too bland, too cerebral, too un-accusing, too evenhanded.What is missing from the comments of Obama and his international colleagues is any true anger about the murders of the three Israeli boys and any reference to the political and moral implications of the terrorist act.Nobody has the guts to remark upon the death-glorifying political culture of the Palestinians that repeatedly chooses violence over negotiations.Nobody is prepared to recognize the distinction between singing Palestinian kid-killing terrorists, and Israeli soldiers conducting anti-terrorist operations in the West Bank who have to kill combatants and occasionally hit a bystander too.Nobody has the guts to acknowledge that Palestinian society celebrates the kidnapping-murder of Israeli children, while the IDF does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and Israeli society recoils with horror at the notion of revenge killings.Why should Obama and company be willing to appreciate this? It’s so much simpler (diplomatically) and easier (amorally) to demand “restraint from both sides.”The New York Times provided us this week with a classic example of such (im)moral obtuseness. It ran an ugly front-page article comparing Israeli kids victimized for being Israelis with Palestinian kids hurt while menacing soldiers. It profiled the noble Racheli Fraenkel, mother of the murdered Naftali, alongside Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen, mother of a teenage boy, Muhammad, who was killed while confronting soldiers in Hebron who were searching for Naftali.The Times can deny all it wants that it intended moral equivalence, but any half-intelligent reader knows better. Of course the paper was plugging symmetry, and in doing so it presented readers with a distorted snapshot of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.HAD THE PAPER wanted to draw an accurate picture of the two societies, it could and should have profiled Racheli Fraenkel alongside the mother of suspected kidnapper Amar Abu-Eisha, who told Israel TV 10 this week that “if [my son] truly did it, I’ll be proud of him till my final day. I raised my children on the knees of the [Muslim] religion, and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam.”But that would suggest a moral distinction in Israel’s favor, and doing so is not politically correct. Instead, the media seem hell-bent on presenting Israel as an unforgiving and violent society, not-all-that different from its Arab neighbors. They are thrilled to slavishly cover the Abu Khdeir story. It gets the story line back into the comfort zone, a zone where Jewish radicals (settlers) and the “occupation” are the root cause of conflict in the region.I experienced this myself in recent days. On behalf of my hometown of Nof Ayalon (where the Fraenkels and I live), I gave half a dozen interviews to foreign networks.But the network correspondents showed zero interest in the soft messages I offered of solidarity, faith and perseverance. What they wanted to hear was calls for revenge. Over and over again I was prodded to demand fierce Israeli military action against the Palestinians.That would have fit the pat prism on the conflict these journalists purvey.To us Israelis, the moral standards of our society are clear: We value life, not death, and seek conflict resolution, not annihilation of the enemy. Moreover, we acknowledge and seek to correct our imperfections.The contrasting viciousness of much of Palestinian society is also clear to us, laid bare once again these past few weeks.And the world? Alas, the gap is growing between Israelis and the world. Behind the hypocrisy and double standards, we can feel the chill. It doesn’t have five minutes to truly empathize with Israel, and can’t wait five minutes before pushing the “Condemn Israel” button.www.davidmweinberg.com
