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Doron Kescher , originally from Emek Hefer, is currently based in the Asia-Pacific region, working for a corporate advisory firm. A fluent English and French speaker, he has spent much of his time since September 2000 explaining the current conflict to non-Jewish work colleagues.
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By Doron Kescher
June 4, 2003
The international community, especially the Europeans, spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about "the occupation" and "the Palestinians."
Are they really that concerned with either?
My suspicions were first tweaked by the international community's complete apathy to the plight of Palestinians oppressed and denied even basic rights in neighboring Lebanon - ooh wait, Lebanon - now there's an illegal and brutal occupation!
If the Europeans were concerned about "occupation" and the rights of indigenous refugees, the Arab-Israeli conflict is hardly the first place to look.
Despite the myriad accusations leveled at Israel, dozens of international human rights organizations operate in Israel and will (grudgingly) attest to the fact that other than some routine inconveniences to the population, Israel's "occupation" of Judea, Samaria and Gaza has brought far more progress than hardship. Those hardships that the Palestinian Arabs do endure are largely the result security requirements in the wake of terrorism committed against Jews, and of the corruption and militarism of their own leaders.
In Tibet, Sudan and West Papua, the indigenous populations are under occupations which are guilty of mass human rights abuses, extra-judicial killings1, humiliation, oppression and genocide. And they are real.
In Tibet, Sudan and West Papua - unlike the Palestinian Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza - the "occupied" population is actually indigenous to the area in which they are being oppressed2.
Why then do the Europeans concern themselves with a dubious occupation and fabricated atrocities when they could be going after the real thing?
Surely it's not lack of an 'authentic occupation'. It cannot be a dearth of heinous atrocities. It cannot be that there are no indigenous peoples being oppressed.
No, there seems to be only one difference between the phoney occupation in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and the very real and very brutal occupations of Tibet, southern Sudan, West Papua and Lebanon: the occupiers.
In Tibet, the peaceful native population is being occupied by 1 billion Communist Han Chinese3.
In the Sudan, the native animists and Christians of the south are being ruthlessly enslaved and/or murdered by their Muslim neighbors.
In West Papua, 200 million Muslim Javanese rule the Papuan tribes in an occupation every bit as brutal China's occupation of Tibet.
Yet none of these occupations warrant the attention of the United Nations or the European Union. This despite the fact that in each of these cases the occupying power is guilty of almost every accusation falsely made against Israel.
If the Europeans were truly concerned for the human rights of the occupied, the Israeli "occupation" would hardly rate a mention. For this reason, and many others, it is evident that the Europeans' concern for the Palestinians amounts to little more than crocodile tears.
Perhaps the sophisticates of Europe believe their vitriol will gain them lucrative business in the Arab world. Perhaps their pandering to the Palestinian cause is meant to placate Europe's large, restless and increasingly militant Muslim population. Perhaps their concern for the Palestinians is a method of pursuing an anti-Semitic agenda under the guise of 'human rights.'
Perhaps, as I strongly suspect, there is an element of all of the above.
Unfortunately, this leaves the larger questions unanswered: why does Europe still hate Jews; why does Europe not care for the Tibetans, the Sudanese or the Papuans?
Notes:
1 By extra-judicial killings I do not mean elimination of persons actively engaged in the premeditated slaughter of non-combatant civilians, as in the case of Israel's "extra-judicial killings" of known Islamic terrorists.
2 The Palestinian Arabs are largely the descendants of 19th and 20th century Arab immigrants. It is the Jews, not the Arabs, who are indigenous to Judaea.
3 The Communists seem to have perfected the art, and are currently applying their 'skills' in occupation to neighboring East Turkestan, which the Chinese call Xinjiang.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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