Pat Condell: "Patronising the Palestinians"

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Well, a Happy New Year to everyone. I hope we all get what we want this year.

For my part, I'd like to see a change in our racist attitude in the West towards the situation in the Middle East, if that wouldn't be too much trouble, because right now we patronise the Palestinians by holding them to a lower standard of behaviour - as we do with all Arabs - because we're racists. We would never admit this, of course. We wouldn't want our racism to be perceived as racist, because then we'd have to own up to it, and that might short circuit our poor deluded hypocritical racist brains.

Because we're racists, we choose to ignore the fact that they deliberately target women and children while hiding behind their own women and children, which is a war crime, and they do it all the time, yet we know there isn't a hope in hell that any of them will ever be tried in the Hague because we've given them a free pass on indiscriminate barbarism. We don't believe they're capable of civilised behaviour because we're racists.

Being racists, we choose to ignore the thousands of Iranian rockets that come out of Gaza every month until Israel finally retaliates to protect its people, and only then do we start huffing and puffing and calling in ambassadors. Israelis get no credit at all for carefully avoiding civilian casualties, even though it isn't in dispute that that's what they do. We just ignore it, when, if the Palestinians behaved like that, we would trumpet their virtues from the rooftops and shower them with Nobel Prizes.

But they don't behave like that because we don't expect them to, and they know that. They know they can blow up Israeli civilians all day long and the free world's racist double standards will never hold them to account. On the contrary, we'll actively encourage their delinquent culture to become even more delinquent by consistently indulging and rewarding its delinquent behaviour with political support and billions of dollars, and then we'll wring our hands and wonder why nothing changes.

The Palestinians are victims, yes, but of their own insane and bloodthirsty leadership, and of a religion that has such an iron grip on its population that a mother will actually celebrate the death of her child in its cause, and dissent from it can literally cost you your life. Yet we pretend that this religion's influence is absolutely zero, and that this is actually a political situation - we maintain the ludicrous fiction that the Arabs are fighting for justice and civil rights, when we can see the kind of justice and civil rights that have been delivered to the people of Gaza under the religious jackboot of Hamas. We choose to ignore the fact that Arabs in Israel have more rights than they do in any Arab country, and that there are Arab Israelis in government and in the army, because these facts are inconvenient to our liberal racist prejudice, and they shatter the carefully nurtured propaganda myth of the apartheid state.

Being racists, we choose to ignore the history of the region and the fact that every time the Arabs feel strong enough they attack Israel unprovoked with the intention of committing religious genocide, and they make no secret of it. We know the refugee situation only exists because the last time they did this they told Arabs living in the West Bank to move out and promised them they could return when all the Jews had been killed. They're still waiting, and the agenda hasn't changed. And the agenda is not territory or justice, as we so dishonestly like to pretend. The agenda is religious blood vengeance, fulfilling Islamic scripture and wiping out the Jews - all of them. Islamic Jew-hatred as mandated by the Koran (which was around long before the state of Israel), as drummed into the children, and as broadcast every day in the Arab media, is the root cause of this problem, and for us in the West to pretend otherwise is as irresponsible as treating a bullet wound without removing the slug. We're just messing around with the symptoms and making things worse.

Nothing is going to change in the Middle East until we pay the Arabs the compliment of holding them to the same standard as everyone else, and that means cutting off the money supply and telling them bluntly that it's time to drop this infantile Bronze Age blood vengeance crap and move into the 21st century, because we are all waiting for them. If we don't do this, if we carry on indulging their primitive caveman hatred by treating this as a political problem and not a religious one, then we are effectively underwriting permanent war in the Middle East, because, whether we like it or not, Israel is, certainly now, the front line between Islam and civilisation, and we should know by now that there is no compromise with Islam. You either win or you lose, and if you lose, you lose everything, especially if you're Jewish. And the Palestinian leadership have made it crystal clear that as long as there is any level of Jewish autonomy in the Middle East, nothing that Israel concedes will ever be enough to satisfy them. They don't want peace at any price. They want to drive the Jews, all of them, into the sea, and they never stop telling us that. We have no excuse for pretending not to hear. It's written right into the Hamas Charter, it runs through every speech they make, and, according to the leader of Hezbollah, quote: "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth." Unquote. How many times do they have to say it before we finally snap out of our patronising liberal racist stupor and start listening?

So a bunch of foreigners from another continent show up to set up an "outpost of the West" on their land and they're supposed to just accept it? That's what is being asked of Palestinians. This was an act of war done against them, and they were targeted by that war, and they remain targeted by that war. Palestine was 5% Jewish in 1920. Never forget that. Moreover, almost none of those were Ashkanazis from Europe. The Jewish population of Palestine at the time in fact opposed Zionism, all except for the recent arrivals at that time. They too saw these invaders for what they were and had more in common with their Christian and Muslim neighbours.

So a bunch of foreigners from another continent show up to set up an "outpost of the West" on their land

and they're supposed to just accept it?

That's what is being asked of Palestinians.

This was an act of war done against them

and they were targeted by that war

and they remain targeted by that war.

Moreover, almost none of those were Ashkanazis from Europe.

The Jewish population of Palestine at the time in fact opposed Zionism, all except for the recent arrivals at that time. They too saw these invaders for what they were and had more in common with their Christian and Muslim neighbours.

This isn't 1920.

Tarring all Palestinians with the offenses of Hamas is equally wrong.

I'd actually agree with you, but most Palestinians themselves don't recognise the right of Israel to exist..

Lets be fair, Israel hasn't done an awfully good job at selling them the Israel 'project'. It wasnt as if the jewish settlers approached the Palestinians diplomatically with pie charts and graphs saying, hey we want to bulldoze your homes, curtail your access to utilities and arable land and set up our own country here, are you in?

Understatement of the decade but i can't be arsed with this pandora's box anymore.

They were there to form the Jewish national home, from which the Jewish population had been expelled from for 2,000 years or more.

Actually, I just thought of something funny.

Suppose the Jews are allowed to reclaim their land after 2000 years, by taking it from people who weren't the ones who drove them out.

Then surely the Palestinians are allowed to reclaim their land after 50 years (i.e. right now), by taking it from the people who drove them out.

I mean, who has the stronger claim here?

Let's face it... life sucks for whoever is losing. Righteousness means almost nothing.