Sunday, February 19, 2012

Naked hypocrisy



Emily Amrousi

Naked hypocrisy

So this is what it’s come to. Count to 540. According to a website affiliated with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the amount of time it will take to destroy Israel is just nine minutes. In seconds, that’s a lot. Nine minutes is enough time to give charity, take a shower, pack your bags, back up files, send a text message saying “goodbye,” pray, water your plants, hug and kiss your loved ones, answer outstanding emails or wash dishes in the sink, ask for forgiveness, liquidate a savings fund, or maybe take a broom and sweep the floors of a few rooms.

A study of national resilience presented at the last Herzliya Conference showed that the fear level in Israeli society has declined. Researchers were surprised: With Iranian nukes looming in every headline, they expected the opposite. But the vagaries of the human heart have once again confounded science. We fear the parking meter will run out, but not the Iranian bomb. We spend more time talking about National Insurance benefits than the threat from the east. We think about redecorating our living rooms, but not about how everything around us could evaporate and vanish in just nine minutes. That’s how the world works. The bigger something is, the harder it is to wrap your head around.

Remember the rabbis who promised the disengagement from Gush Katif couldn’t possibly happen? It’s the same here. It couldn’t happen. After all, there’s human brotherhood, the fellowship of man, the kind you hear about in those beautiful songs: It traverses religion, race and creed. They’ll look out for us. It couldn’t be otherwise. After all, we saw the entire world mobilize when Israeli soldiers killed demonstrators on board the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara. There were protests, condemnations, speeches, demonstrations. We saw the entire world cry out over little Mohammed al-Dura, as the earth nearly shook in outrage.

All right. I think we can admit that the universe will rise up against the injustice of it all, unless Jews are involved. Where Jews are concerned, everyone else will hum a happy tune and find themselves coincidentally very busy with some kind of academic conference. Gas chambers in Europe, refugee ships with nowhere to go, suicide bombers, Iranian nuclear armament: The world remains silent. As long as someone does their dirty work for them -- thinning the ranks of Jews is the new ecology, after all -- then they could not care less about fellowship of humankind.

Nine more minutes and another realization hits: The exception to global solidarity is not directed at Jews but Palestinians. It’s not that the world’s citizens rush to address every injustice and remain silent only where Jews are concerned. Rather, they are always silent, and only spring into action for the Palestinians. In the enlightened world, “Israeli apartheid” is worse than systematic human rights violations in North Korea. “Free Palestine” graffiti can be found on every Irish street, but nary a word is heard about genocide in Darfur.

That’s the world, in all its naked hypocrisy. As we speak, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is slaughtering his subjects, and all those heroes who hold vigils for oppressed Palestinians do nothing. Where are the thousand shahids pledging to march on Jerusalem? Why don’t they march on Homs?

When Syrians cut the border fence and infiltrated Israel several months ago, the world applauded this symbolic act against the “occupation.” There is no one cutting fences in Syria today. If thousands of slaughtered Syrians don’t move the world to action, we’re in serious trouble. To hell with it. If you’ve only got nine minutes, don’t waste them asking the world for help.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1395

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