Palestine and moral priorities

Curiously enough, the tragic raw numbers of civilian deaths in Gaza are being met with skepticism in Malaysia.

This sets us apart in some ways, for the trend by and large everywhere else is showing that the deadly clumsiness of Operation Protective Edge is only promoting greater solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Instead, what we have here, even in supposedly “liberal”, "activist" circles, are calls to further “contextualise” the conflict, at the expense of an actual picture of what’s happening.

Such calls to be sure range in perspective and concern. Some point to context to place Israel's massacres in a more acceptable light. Others, to check what they believe is unnecessary over-enthusiasm towards the Palestinian cause. At times they converge.

Sensitive enough not to be Zionist, yet too nervous to support Palestine, their pretext is  some appeal to “neutrality”, “objectivity” or the “complexity” of the situation.

Mixed together at some point in their rhetoric are plattitudes about humanitarian values, whereby to be humanitarian according to them is to also direct our sympathies towards Israel's military excursions.

For brevity, let's call the people who have expressed that outlook "Palestine Skeptics" (PS). As an example, consider their frequent highlighting of how the very people who are most vocal about Palestine (calling for boycotts, protests and the like) don't seem to care about other issues, namely Syria where the death toll is far higher. A photo of this comparison has gone viral.

This then has become the basis to claim that there's something fishy about all the fuss, that pro-Palestine sentiments must be tampered for fear of (a) misunderstanding the supposed bigger picture (i.e., Israel's logic) and / or (b) putting emphasis on the wrong conflict in a world where many worse conflicts exist.

Suspicions

That skepticism, however, is suspect because it did not emerge on other occasions.

The same people nitpicking the support for Palestine today (while citing Syria) made no noise when Syria was the hot topic over the past two years. At that point, no one stopped the trend by asking why the same amount of attention was not dedicated to other conflicts.

Another reason to question the intention behind that impulse is that Palestine is already one of the most neglected humanitarian crises in the world.

Anyone who has been paying attention would see how a two state solution is no longer viable given that settlements have expanded significantly in the West Bank. Walls were built to protect those settlements, and military checkpoints installed to severely limit Palestinian mobility in the territories, thereby making life impossible.

This has gone on despite various UN resolutions condemning settlement expansion, which Israel has continued to ignore.

Indeed, Palestine only becomes a topic of media buzz when actual warfare erupts. Gaza in fact has not received this much attention since having to face Israel's last brutal incursion in 2008, way before the Syrian revolution broke.

The world media remained relatively silent between then and now, as Gaza remained ghettoised as the largest prison colony on earth, to which the same Palestine skeptics so insistent on moral consistency, said nothing. A longer view shows that these skeptics are not as inclusive in their empathy as they expect others to be.

Palestine

At any rate, there are actually far simpler reasons why Palestine continues to evoke strong emotions.

For one, it's always been a global conflict: it started from mass migration to the Middle East by a largely European Jewish population, at a time when the world was split by the Cold War, namely between Soviet and Western allies.

It began at a precarious time, touching on many fine lines at once, and from then the situation has retained its distinctness.

The land being disputed is small, but because the fight it is woven to a larger narrative of civilisations (“The West”, “the East”, “The Arab World”, “the Muslim world”, “Jewish history” are often evoked), the emotions it garners has travelled far and wide beyond its geographical confines.

The fact that Israel is a country erected out of guilt that emerged from a European conflict further compounded the complexity.

More recently, it has continued to touch a lot of nerves because of the severe desperation and helplessness of the Palestinian cause. What is happening in Gaza is not the first of its kind. There was the massacre of Jenin before this, to point just one example of Israel's many instances of violent "self-defence", backed by the West and its allies.

Think of Israel's impunity after Mavi Marmara and you will see just how different a problem Israel is.

For perspective consider what actually has happened elsewhere as Israel continued to build settlements: formal Apartheid South Africa has ended, Bosnia has become an independent state with Herzegovina, the Soviet Union has fallen, the Cultural Revolution ended as China went Capitalist and Mubarak and Ghaddafi were overthrown.

Those who have been consciously following the issue can't help but to be severely frustrated.

Syria

Compare all that with the relatively new conflict in Syria whereby the world has acted rapidly to do something about it, however much we can debate about the wisdom or effectiveness of what has transpired.

What the very people who are suddenly demanding more attention on Syria forget, is that the same organisations who are mobilising and have spoken for Palestine also spoke against the Assad regime at the height of the conflict, especially before the Free Syrian Army was usurped by Isis.

The Syrian conflict has been worsening since 2011, and since then there has been not only worldwide condemnation towards Assad but also sanctions imposed on his government, in addition to various forms of diplomatic isolation, notably even by the Arab League.

If we are to really bring Syria into comparison, we should also note how quickly the West and its allies had sought to dismantle the Assad regime (a relatively recent conflict) in comparison to their decades of tolerance towards Israel's military brutality.

Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the US are all funding the anti-Assad opposition. One can argue on the geopolitics motivating recent developments, especially with Isis in the picture, but it's inaccurate to say there has been worldwide neglect because of Gaza.

Strategy

It is obvious that Palestine by far commands greater Malay-Muslim attention than any other local or global humanitarian issue. Probed further, there are valid reasons to question the potential problems therein.

The boycotts are bumbling. It also overlaps with conservative Islamist sentiments that are not at all about fact checking or understanding marginalisation. Often there’s anti-semitism in the air.

But as I've shown, the question to ask in response to all this is not “why don’t you also care about [insert other conflict here]?”.

The better strategy would be to engage the rich history of Palestinian support itself. It is to show that it has always been a universal cause.

This is why it has compelled strong reactions from other civil rights icons such as Gandhi, Malcolm X and Bertrand Russell. Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt both signed an open letter condemning the Deir Yessin massacre, likening it to something Nazis would do.

Today the courage of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe (among others) in speaking against Zionism further highlights the potential depths of solidarity across cultural boundaries.

In other words, a meaningful meditation on the suffering in Palestine could enlarge our compassion, opening spaces for sensitivity beyond the confines of the issue.

It is a lens with which we can explore how we are all more fundamentally connected through the universality of our pain, rather than the rarity of our privileges. It is a lesson on how the human spirit is corrupted once deep suffering mutates into an enclosed ethnic ego of absolute self-righteousness.

But this is not the discussion that's happening among Palestine skeptics. They sustain, not human insights from the conflict (beyond the usual cliches about neutrality), but are instead incessant to point out that the zeal towards Palestine is ill-informed.

Thus, at most, the shallowness of their critique only adds to any existing myopia, rather than ushering progress in the discourse.

An appeal to the humanitarian dimension of Palestinian resistance addresses its blindspots on its own terms. This would be a more productive basis to invite those who see Palestine as an exclusively Muslim issue, while neglecting others, to extend their compassion to oppression beyond their familiarity.  

Neutrality is not always moral

The moral high ground is high because of complexity, not despite of it.

History shows this as the lesson of any iconic struggle against imperialism: murky and ambiguous moral territories were confronted to be treaded delicately, wherein every step is a risk and lesson learned.

This to be sure, is different than to sit back and criticise everybody for not meeting some standard of moral perfection.

Neutrality may protect that visceral desire we all have to be on the side of the so-called Truth with a capital T, for it protects us from the precariousness of solidarity.

But the posession of that feeling should not be confused as a moral stand. For all the things that make our appreciation of right and wrong worthwhile – emotional investment, sacrifice, sensitivity, passion, compassion – are the very things that demand we choose, and that we do so even at the price of discomfort.

Any myopia in the pro-Palestinian position among Malaysians, if that's really the skeptics' concern (and I wonder sometimes), is best dealt with by being one with the discourse, with patience to steer its growing pains to the right direction.

Being a voice of conscience from inside that experience will not be easy, but it is far richer than basking in fantasies of being a judge, towering virtually above the horror of an unfolding tragedy. – August 8, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.