Soccer Dad

Worrying about the soul of the palestinian state

Forget for a moment that the party involved is the "moderate" Fatah faction. (via memeorandum) Forget for a moment that the case violates the Oslo Accords.

The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday that a Palestinian man was sentenced to death for selling land to a Jew.

In the first case of its kind, a Palestinian Authority "military court" on Tuesday sentenced a Palestinian man to death by hanging after finding him guilty of selling land to Jews.

As I mentioned before, this isn't really that new. In 1997 the Palestinian justice minister, Freih Abu Medein declared that selling land to a Jew was a capital crime and in the next month three Palestinian land dealers were murdered. And in 1998 the Palestinian Legislative Council passed a law, declaring that selling land to an Israeli constituted "high treason."

When it comes to Israel, Israel is judged by seemingly impossible standards. How many times do we read something like "Before Jews are a minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and Israel will have to make peace with the Palestinian or become an apartheid-like state" or "Israel will have to choose between being a Jewish state and a democracy?" (And forget for a moment how uncertain those demographic projections are.)

The NYT columnist Anthony Lewis used to worry about Israel's "soul," who now worries about Palestine's "soul?"

Now of course, the short answer is "We hold Israel to a higher standard."

Think back a few months. The municipality of Jerusalem planned to destroy a few illegally build homes in a Arab section of the city. Secretary of State Clinton declared that the plan was unhelpful.

Although only a couple of homes in the area currently face imminent demolition, according to official city documentation, fallacious reports came out after the recent municipal committee ruling, claiming that Israel was on the verge of razing dozens of the homes. This set off US criticism and a virtual public relations fiasco for Barkat during the Clinton visit.

Clinton called Israel's demolition of the illegally built Palestinian homes unhelpful, and in violation of the US-backed peace plan.

Barkat called the top US diplomat misinformed.

"The international and Arabic press were not interested in the facts," Barkat said. "The Palestinians successfully spun the story in this round, but the facts are stronger than spin."

And yet the news that a man was condemned for selling land has not elicited a single critical comment from Secretary Clinton.

Israel's not held to a higher standard. Israel's held to arbitrary standards and the Palestinians are held to none.

Given that the Palestinians - the moderate faction of Palestinians - have passed and implemented an apartheid-like law shouldn't it result in some sort of diplomatic opprobrium or perhaps the loss of funding? Is there any outrage that the Palestinians could commit that would disqualify them from being "peace partners?"

In 2005 Israel evacuated 8000 of its citizens from Gaza. To this day many of them are still unemployed and living in temporary homes, but that doesn't seem to bother too many people in diplomatic or political circles. But imagine if Israel had forced 8000 Palestinians from their homes. There'd have been cries of "ethnic cleansing" and the matter would be before the UN Security Council in an instant.

The fact that Palestinians won't countenance any Jews in their midst doesn't render their nationalism illegitimate. The highly selective use of "occupation" has rendered the forcible removal of Israelis from their homes acceptable.

In different ways Israel's critics use concepts like peace, demographics and occupation to denounce Israel. When Israel is found wanting due to any of these considerations, it is not just criticized, but condemned; its worthiness questioned. The critics of course defend their righteousness. They criticize Israel for its own good, to save its soul.

But their sincerity is dubious. Israel's critics excuse the Palestinians for doing worse than what they condemn Israel for. But they expect nothing from the Palestinians. Will they ever start worrying about the soul of the Palestinian state?

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 30, 2009 11:32 PM