It's been a great mystery for decades. Given the obvious differences in world-view between first-world intellectuals who classify themselves as the intellectual elite, and the third-world despots who rule the Arab world, where does the bias and animosity toward Israel that they have in common have its foundation. Israel is a democracy, with many shared values in step with Europe, while the "Arab street" is a narrow-minded, rigid and uncompromising autocracy clearly dedicated to imposing its own (or its leaders') outlook on the rest of the world. How did we get to this situation, where the whole gamut of "advanced" organizations, from the World Council of Churches to the BBC to the range of European and American university faculties, which have completely different agendas and world views, come together on the single subject of evil Israel.
I have an idea about this that I haven't seen enunciated anywhere else, and for that reason alone, it's worth considering, since nothing else has accounted for this mystery (maybe I've been watching to many episodes of House MD, which follows this story line in all episodes).
Think back to the last time these various groups came to share an outlook so forcefully. Or rather, think first of the numerous instances where situations that clearly required a meaningful response from the "left-wing intellectuals" evoked nothing but a yawn. Chechnya, Bosnia, Rwanda, Tibet, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, North Korea, Eritrea, Congo, almost all the West African countries, Zimbabwe. The list is long, but not one of them, despite their death-tolls in the tens and hundreds of thousands, ever extracted more than a mild level of interest or rebuke. Just to put it in perspective, in the last 6 years of "savage fighting" between Israel and the Palestinians, about 3o00 people have died. In Chechnya in the same time, 20,000 out of a population on barely one million have died.
So, what's the difference between Israel vs the Palestinians and all these other conflicts. In one word, it is Race. All of the other wars are perceived to be between people of the same race. Whether it's "white" Serbians slaughtering "white" Bosnians, or "black" Ethiopians slaughtering "black" Eritreans, or "brown" Sri Lankans slaughtering "brown" Tamils, there's considered to be no racial element in the fighting. But Israel is (or rather, is perceived to be) a "white" country, while the Palestinians are "coloured". Now the massive chip on the shoulders of the European intellectual kicks in.
Europe has, deservedly, a conscience born from the centuries of racial subjugation and discrimination that they collectively perpetuated on the rest of the "undeveloped" world until the middle of the last century. Anything that today even slightly smells of racism ignites a flame in the guts of the left-wing that overwhelms any rational argument. Having a background of unmitigated cruelty and selfishness, which has never been completely expunged, they have lost all capability of examining this subject impartially. Thus, Israel is in the wrong no matter what we do, and the Palestinians and the Arab “brothers” are in the right, despite the manifest contradiction between this approach and the “facts on the ground”.
I have more to say on this subject, on how the chip on their shoulder got to be so big, but that's for later.
