The Big Lie

In an insightful Sunday morning column, David Warren discusses the escalating violence between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank. In a delusional world of those who embrace moral relativism, Israel is responsible for all of this.

After all, were the Palestinians not “oppressed” in such a profound manner, there would be no violence, right? If only the “mistake” that is called Israel would just cease to exist. The Middle East (all of it, mind you) would be the land of milk and honey. Schools in Egypt with 70 students per classroom would instantly modernize; Sunni and Shia in Iraq would smile, join hands and live together in peace and harmony; Moslem Arabs who commit genocidal murder in Sudan would immediately stop their violence; Madrasses from Saudi Arabia to Yemen would stop teaching 7th century precepts, stop their calls to Jihad, and would instead lead their Arab brethren into the light of the 21st century; economies throughout the Arab world would … you get the picture. It’s all a matter of getting Israel to disappear and until it does, Islamofasicts throughout the ME get a pass.

Warren comments:

To the Western, "liberal" mindset, Israel must be responsible for this, just as President Bush is responsible for the teething problems of democracy in Iraq. For the West is always responsible for everything. If, as President Ahmadinejad of Iran has argued, both Israel and America were wiped from the face of this earth -- as he promises both soon will be -- then our problems are over, and we'll be one big happy Muslim family (presumably Shia, if Ahmadinejad prevails).

Distorted in the official Iranian view, and scarcely hidden beneath the "liberal" one -- as I discovered repeatedly when I was myself among the media in Israel and the West Bank -- is the profound racism of diminished expectation. They do not hold Palestinians to the same standards, to which Israelis are held without further thought. Specifically, they will not hold Palestinians responsible for behaviour that would be spontaneously condemned, with unconcealed outrage, only a few miles away across the Green Line.

This is systematic, and goes beyond condemnations of violence. No Jew is allowed to live in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority; nor could a Jew expect to live out the day were he left unguarded there. Well over a million Muslims enjoy full citizenship in Israel, and the robust protection of law, even as they grow more radical. Yet Israel is uniquely condemned for denying the Palestinian "right of return", to Israeli territory.

I could go on almost indefinitely juxtaposing such things -- none of the points being subtle; each as obvious as the couple I have made.

But it's not that people don't know. It's that they will not acknowledge what they know, lest the rest of their worldview come tumbling down with the big lie, of moral relativism.

But the moral relativist mindset is certain about one thing: "the West is always responsible for everything." It follows, therefore, that Islam—its leaders and the "moderates" who we so fervently hope will "reform" their world—are responsible for nothing.