Humanitarian Racism Israeli/Palestinian Conflict US politics

Western Humanitarian Racism Vis-a-vis The Palestinians…….

A working definition of humanitarian racism:A bigoted, patronising attitude exhibited by well meaning humanitarians that assumes certain non-western recipients of aid cannot be expected to live up to western ethical or moral standards.”

This same kind of bigoted attitude is also very similar to how African Americans were treated in a segregated south by a patronising white majority. Many southerners honestly believed African Americans to be as children, being totally incapable of functioning without the help of “their white folks”.

It’s a highly patronised, bigoted way of viewing anyone. Now keep that definition in mind when reading David Hornik’s description of how the US State Department dismisses the words of Mahmoud Abbas as “probably an example of some overheated political rhetoric“.

Our people in Jerusalem are under an ethnic cleansing campaign. They are suffering from a series of decisions like tax hikes and construction prohibitions. [Palestinians] are facing a campaign of annihilation [by Israel].”

Those were the words of Mahmoud Abbas last week to the summit of Islamic countries in Dakar, Senegal. And what a crew it was; Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chimed in, using rhetoric about the same as that of Abbas, with “[Israel] just kills innocent women and children, but the UN Security Council stays silent.” Sudanese genocide president Omar al-Bashir was there, too, among the roster of heavies.

For Abbas—given tremendous credit by the U.S. and Israeli governments as a man of peace—vilifying Israel before this crowd was like pouring oil on flames as he confirmed the world’s darkest fantasies and designs about Israel. Nor is he on record as saying a single more conciliatory word about Israel, the “conflict,” or resolving it.

Yet, asked about Abbas’s reference to “annihilation,” all State Department spokesman Sean McCormack could come out with was “we would not use that term to describe the situation. I think it’s probably an example of some overheated political rhetoric.”

Meaning that Abbas was once again protected, whitewashed, and coddled—this time by taking the specificity out of his act of deadly incitement and putting it in a broad category of “overheated rhetoric” that, by clear implication, is supposed to be bilateral. McCormack could not, of course, have pointed to remotely comparable statements by Israeli leaders like Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, and Shimon Peres as they traipse through the world heaping praise on Abbas’s “moderation” and “pragmatism.”

But the US State Department (and the Europeans) hold a different moral standard to the “moderates” it chooses to engage with. While the West trumpets Mahmoud Abbas as a moderate -a euphemism for “no one else available”- it refuses to admit the obvious, that in reality, Israel is the only moderate party in the conflict.

In truth, the West patronises the Palestinians by treating them as mere children, being unable to reach that very high bar of western morality and common decency that is expected of Israel. When diplomatic pressure is considered, it’s always Israel that is expected to bend, but for the PA government, they’re hopeless children, incapable of logic and reason.

Just listen to the UN heads of the various humanitarian branches that refuse to admit that the Palestinians themselves are responsible for the predicament that they are currently living in. The Palestinians opted years ago for violence in place of diplomacy in ending the conflict with Israel, as well as opting for a violent and very genocidal military organization (Hamas) to lead them in Gaza, with many in the West still pleading that the Palestinians not to be held responsible for their adult choices.

This kind of rationale is highly ludicrous as it is racist. Again, it is highly ironic that the only nation that has consistently treated the Palestinians/Arabs as equals, has been Israel, in their demands that the Arabs adhere to the very same kind of high moral standards as the Jewish state. Humanitarian racists be damned. More here. *L* KGS

UPDATE: David Hornik alerts the TT to a blog post by David Horowitz on the same theme, this time about US senator Barak O’bama and his misguided notions about his own Black community.
UDATE: Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, from the Jerúsalem Center for Public Affairs provides the Tundra Tabliods with a more precise definition of Humanitarian Racism:
“A humanitarian racist is someone who attributes intrinsically reduced responsibility for their acts to people of certain ethnic or national groups.”

2 Responses

  1. Excellent post! The west suffers greatly from humanitarian racism. I like to think of it as simple racism with additional hypocrisy.

    Jespersen and Pittelkow discuss it extensively in their book, Islamists and Naivists, calling it the ‘little nigger’ syndrome.

  2. Thanks Esther!

    It’s amazing that the apologists for undiciplined behaviour cannot see the racism inbedded in their words and actions. Very ironic!

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