In Middle East politics and diplomacy, the ability of the human mind to bend the truth and rationalize almost any behavior is stretched to the limit.
How else to explain a fanaticism that won’t die? How else to account for the world’s obsessive focus on Israel as the international sinner of all sinners while ignoring truly reprehensible abuses elsewhere?
As Israel and the Palestinians move toward what could be a breakthrough, here are a few examples of the hypocrisy that continues to defy the peacemakers.
Who cares about Lebanon?
Arab and European countries say it’s their loathing of the idea of foreign occupation that drives their criticism of Israel. So why don’t these countries give a fig about Lebanon, the victim of a brutal, corruption-driven and economy-draining occupation since 1976?
This is breathtaking hypocrisy that reveals all their tender concerns about the Palestinians to be a flimsy disguise for anti-Israel animus in the case of the Europeans, for distraction of oppressed masses in the case of Arab countries.
Suddenly, after the recent assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, there’s a genuine Lebanese movement to throw off Syrian oppression. But the response from European and Arab capitals has been tepid.
Could it be that it’s not just the idea of occupation that offends them so much, after all?
Divestment disaster
Last week, it was reported that the United Church of Christ, like the Presbyterian Church (USA), is moving toward selective economic sanctions on Israel in what supporters say is an effort to boost the peace process.
In the past, they might have been able to support that argument. Today, with Israel and the Palestinians talking seriously about a better future, the effort looks like either outright bias against Israel or blinding naiveté.
Those who play the divestment game are sending a bitter and overwhelmingly unfair message — that in a world where genocide is an almost everyday reality and vast populations are denied the most basic human rights, only Israel deserves to be treated like the odious former rulers of apartheid South Africa.
A survey conducted by the Presbyterian Church this month indicated that only 28 percent of members support the move toward “phased, selective divestment.”
So why the big push for something that can only complicate peace efforts? Could it be the blatant anti-Israel bias of some church leaders?
Talking peace with enemies?
Somewhere along the line, some American Jewish groups have gotten confused about what it means to make peace.
Their idea is this: We can’t make peace with the Palestinians because they hate us. Until they stop and recant everything negative they’ve said about Israel and the Jews, there’s no point in even talking to them.
Recently, encouraged by Minister for Jerusalem Natan Sharansky, they’ve added another demand: a full embrace of democracy.
But demanding the Palestinians become Zionists or Jeffersonian democrats as a prerequisite for serious negotiations is a prescription for continuing stalemate and occupation — which may be exactly what these groups have in mind.
Generations of conflict and years of incitement have created animosities that won’t disappear until long after Israel and the Palestinians have negotiated a peace agreement. You make peace with your enemies, not your friends.
Groups that say the Palestinians still aren’t doing enough will never be satisfied until Mahmoud Abbas joins the Zionist Organization of America — and maybe not even then.
Democracy for some
The Bush administration has made Middle East democracy the centerpiece of its policy in the region, but undercut it by largely ignoring the undemocratic character of some of its best friends there.
If we have one standard for the Palestinians and another for the Saudis and Egyptians, our democratization efforts will look to the rest of the world like a self-serving political maneuver, not a genuine effort to better the lot of people throughout the region.
These nations don’t have to become democratic overnight. Our own democracy, more than 200 years old, is still struggling to fulfill the hopes of its founders.
But if their buddies in Washington give the Saudis, Egyptians, Kuwaitis and Jordanians, among others, a get-out-of-jail-free card on democracy while pushing democracy elsewhere, they will just add to the woes of U.S. policy in the region, not give it a new cohesion and power.
Former Madisonian James Besser has been Washington correspondent for the New York Jewish Week, the Baltimore Jewish Times and other leading Anglo-Jewish newspapers for more than 15 years.
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