Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Dehumanizing settlers – and Palestinians

L'autore e' uno psichiatra irlandese, che è stato testimone del
periodo del terrorismo
Dehumanizing settlers – and Palestinians
By JOHN LALOR
I ask the same question Bret Stephens asked in The Wall Street Journal
on Tuesday: “Are Israeli settlers human?” Why was the savage attack in
Itamar, in which five member of a family were murdered, couched in
terms like “settlers” and “occupied territories”? Do these (albeit
inaccurate) epithets directed toward this group in the hills of
Samaria somehow lessen the severity of the killings?
How is the murder of a three-month-old baby girl, along with her four-
year-old and 11-year-old brothers and her parents, any different from
one in Dublin or London? Would the Irish have slept any easier knowing
that an IRA man had slashed the throat of a Protestant baby in
Belfast, rather than shooting a soldier? I ask this as an Irishman,
with childhood memories of daily news reports of murders and bombings.
A Palestinian man interviewed in Rafah stated that this massacre was a
“natural response” to the actions of Israel. Now, my compatriots –
ever-sympathetic of the Palestinian “cause” – need to place themselves
in that situation: How would they have felt if their neighbor said
such a thing, following such an act by a coreligionist or compatriot.
The man had it completely upside down. There was nothing “natural”
about this. And that’s what civilized society should always maintain.
Nothing excused the Omagh bombing in 1998 to the vast majority of
Irish. Nothing.
Likewise, there is nothing “natural” about naming summer camps, soccer
tournaments and a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi.
While some mourn the death of IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands in prison
in 1981, his actions were relatively benign by comparison to
Mughrabi’s.
What we – and most in the West – are doing, in the midst of our latest
whitewash of terrorism, is refusing to look evil straight in the face.
As American columnist Dennis Prager said, it is just too bright. It is
easier to look at the less severe forms. So, we pander to the
propaganda and convince ourselves that Israel’s security barrier is in
some bizarre way the worse manifestation of evil in that region. It’s
just easier that way.
Example: The same news agencies who reported on the Itamar massacre
whitewash reports about car-torching “youths” in French suburbs, or
“honor killings” in Burnley and Eindhoven. You have to decode these
news items yourself to uncover the specifics of the crimes.
By performing this whitewash, however, we in the West not only
dehumanize the “settlers”; we dehumanize the Palestinians. We do this
by implicitly expecting a lower standard of behavior than that of the
Israelis – and, indeed, ourselves. Whereas one solitary act of
terrorism that Israel has suffered – one rocket attack, one stabbing,
one suicide bombing – would have Ireland in a state of national
emergency, we shrug our shoulders when it happens east of Europe’s
Asian borders.
PART OF why the Northern Irish Troubles went away was that Ireland had
its own “Not in Our Name” movement, much like the anti-Iraq war
movement in the US today. But where are such movements in Gaza or
Hebron or Nablus? No, they’re more likely to be the ones passing out
sweets in Gaza, as pictured last Sunday.
Again, bring the issue closer to home: Can my fellow Irish imagine if,
after a similarly horrific killing in Belfast, some gleeful, wide-eyed
youth gave them a sweet? Would you be, to quote Ireland’s independence
leader Eamonn de Valera, dancing at the crossroads in celebration of
another strike toward national liberation? And the problem is, there
is no “national” in the Palestinian question. What could at least have
been said about the IRA is that it wanted a united Ireland and the
British to quit Ireland’s shores. There is simply no question that
bombings in London or Manchester or Birmingham would have ceased.
But, to draw comparisons about Northern Ireland’s Troubles with those
of Israel and the Palestinians is specious and misleading. While there
are some groups of genuine peace-loving nation-builders among the
Palestinians, for the most part the “nationalism” is based on one
issue: destroying Israel.
To return to Ireland, it is as if, once we got the 1921- 22 civil war
out of the way, we’d spent the subsequent nine decades continuing to
attack – militarily and politically – Britain. It would be as if we
developed no national, civil institutions, and spent all our financial
and moral means on the destruction of our neighbors.
Say what you want about the Celtic tiger, and subsequent crash, it
never would have happened had our nationalism reflected that of the
Palestinians.
The Palestinians are kept in a perpetual welfare state – each bombing
and rocket attack funded, largely, by the EU. This has enabled the
most vile indoctrination of anti-Semitism, through their state-run
media and state-run school curriculum, to fester unchecked. (I wonder
how many Irish have looked up “Palestinian indoctrination” on YouTube
to see what education means to Hamas and Fatah.) And what have the
Palestinians’ donors gotten in return? A mentality that not simply
enabled the Itamar massacre to occur. Worse. It allowed people to view
it as “natural.”
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=212475

 By JOHN LALOR
Un bell'articolo. Potrebbe essere il punto di partenza per una riflessione 
sul ruolo Europeo e pi� in generale occidentale nella formazione di 
scompensi politici e sociali come quello palestinese.
Un bagno di umilt� quando interveniamo in aree che non comprendiamo 
completamente ci farebbe bene.
--
IMe 

 attack – militarily and politically – Britain.
bullshit. L'Iralnda nel '19 era un paese indipendente, dov'è lo stato
palestinese? Il confronto corretto è Ulster-Palestina, e infatti in
entrambi hanno continuato a combattere le rispettive potenze occupanti.

  Infatti non si muove un dito contro
falso allarme. Continui a intenderti di nulla.