The chart shown above summarizing sentiments in USA does, I think, highlight a crucial feature of how “ordinary people” are seeing the present horrors – and not only ordinary people in USA
That feature is: a large number see both a “right” and a “wrong” for Israel – but also see a “right” and a “wrong” for Palestine. This is true for both dates of polling.
The Israel critics (or at least those who have any knowledge of history) may well focus on the territorial expansionism, itself a predictable outcome of how the English (later backed by the Americans) from the beginning placed both Israel and Palestine in impossible situations. The implicit “Anti Arab” bias of English/American policy meant that, in practice, when explosions occurred – as they have on several occasions from 1948 onwards – the Anglo Saxons would in fact give the benefit of any doubt to Israel. Put differently : the Anglo Saxons (supported by most groups of Europeans) have harboured massive prejudices against both Jewish and Arab peoples for millenia. But there is a huge difference between those prejudices.
Anti Semitism is to no small degree driven by jealousy. Nobody can seriously question the enormous contributions, in every field of human endeavour, which have been made by Jewish people. When the phrase “western civilization” is used the adjective is a geographical one, seeming to imply that there is a chunk of the world where “progress” was made.
But if “western” were replaced by “Jewish”, the phrase would not be too distorted. Even when Queen Isabela took her history defining measures in the fatal year 1492, she too saw the anti Jewish step as one which would hurt the interests of Castilla, whereas the anti Arab step did not seem for her to come with much “collateral damage”. The incredible richness of civilizations in the Arabic speaking worlds was pretty much ignored (that remarkable writer Salman Rushdie – whom very few indeed can match when it comes to straddling civilizations – did not ignore that richness in his superb novel “The Moor’s Last Sigh”).
The shift of sentiment away from Israel registered in the past weeks is almost certainly linked with the large scale slaughter within Gaza. Leaving aside (although we definitely should not) the extreme hypocrisy involved in that attitude in Western countries (especially the USA, UK and France) which have spent the last decades/centuries carrying out the same slaughter (on a much larger scale) across the globe, there has been only grudging recognition of the terrible truth that human life has never been something on which great value has been placed. Hamas has explicitly stated and restated that the loss of life of the “fideli” is perfectly fine as long as it contributes to weakening the “infideli”. Hamas has no qualms about killing Palestinians, or putting them into situations where they are virtually certain to be at extreme risk.
The shedding of crocodile tears has long been held to be a particularly moist form of hypocrisy. We are now witnessing another lacrymose orgy from places where tear shedding has reached the status of a well paid profession. The bitter truth is that in reality we are witnessing the nth episode (where “n” is very large) in the immense saga in which colonized peoples, with or withour their own nation States, are paying the price of having been colonized and trying to escape from it. In such circumstances it is perhaps outrageous to try and find any consolation. If consolation exists, then it may be that I don’t think “n” will become much larger. The present series is reaching its finite point. Alas the new one, run by people who seem to dream of new colonies and carry crates full of prejudice with them, scarcely looks more reasonable.
Peter O’Brien, Italy, 14 November, 2023
