DO PALESTINIANS DESERVE LESS THAN TIBETANS?

Following on from yesterday, Haaretz also has a piece by its senior writer, and noted anti-occupation columnist, Gideon Levy, in which he makes a rather obvious yet under-reported point: why is it that the Tibetans are feted as freedom fighters by the West, lionised and eulogised, and China is condemned for its barbaric, repressive and colonial activities in Tibet, when the Palestinians are offered no such support or solidarity and Israel’s own China-like crimes of repression and occupation are ignored and overlooked?

The usual (depressing) two words: double standards.

From the Haaretz article:

“Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet….No small number of…good Israelis have recently joined the wave of global protest that broke out over the Olympics, set to take place in Beijing this summer. It is easy; it engenders no controversy - who would not be in favor of liberating Tibet? But that is not the fight that Israeli human rights supporters should be waging.

“To fight for Tibet, Israel needs no courage, because there is no price to pay. On the contrary, this is part of a fashionable global trend, almost as much as the fight against global warming or the poaching of sea lions.

“These fights are just, and must be undertaken. But in Israel they are deluxe fights, which are unthinkable. When one comes to the fight with hands that are collectively, and sometimes individually, so unclean, it is impossible to protest a Chinese occupation.

“Citizens of a country that maintains a military subjugation in its backyard that is no less cruel than that of the Chinese, and by some parameters even more so, and against which there is practically no more protest here, have no justification in denouncing another occupation. Citizens of a country that is entirely tainted by the occupation - a national, ongoing project that involves all sectors of the population to some extent, directly or indirectly - cannot wash their hands and fight another occupation, when a half-hour from their homes, horrors no less terrible are taking place for which they have much greater responsibility.

“The world has fallen in love with Tibet. How easy it is to do so….

“The Palestinians are not as nice as the Tibetans in the eyes of the world. But the Palestinian people deserve exactly the same rights as the occupied Tibetan people, even if their leaders are less enchanting, they have no scarlet robes and their fight is more violent. There is absolutely no connection between rights and the means of protest, and from that perspective, there is no difference between a Tibetan and a Palestinian - they both deserve the exact same freedom."

Hear, hear!