Sri Lanka, continued

The situation in Sri Lanka continues to occupy the news. As of today, it appears that the war between the Tamil Tigers and the central government has finally been concluded.

Before addressing why I believe the Israeli-Palestinian issue is treated so differently, I want to underscore this discrepancy by referring to a recent issue of The Economist.

In an editorial printed in the April 25th issue, the editors refer to the Tamil Tigers as "dreadful", "cruel and brutal" and call their leader "bloodthirsty". They note that the Tigers have "resorted to virtually every despicable technique in the terrorists' manual: suicide-bombing, assassination, extortion...". They are clearly pleased to see that the Tigers' violent rebellion is about to be ended by the Sri Lankan military, and go on to say that the government needs to bring about a "political settlement" of the Tamil issue.

In other words: get rid of the terrorists first, and then talk about political arrangements. It sounds good.

Would anyone imagine a mainstream Western paper daring to write this way about Fatah, or even Hamas? The writers would be immediately met with a crescendo of wrath from the usual sources. But here in the case of the Tigers, The Economist has got it exactly right. (And for further proof, see the language used in today’s New York Times article about the end of the war).

So, then, why the distinction? Why are the standards against which the Palestinians are measured differ from those applied to similar struggles?

I think that there are several issues at play.

1. Let's start with a simple reason: there are not that many Tamils in the world to raise cries of protest, or to make the Tamil issue a pressing one on the world stage. By contrast, the Palestinians have the vocal backing of millions of Arabs and billions of Muslims, who have made their cause a central element of their political identities. Of course, we know that there are many cases in which Arabs and/or Muslims suffer - usually at the hands of their own governments (see: Sudan) - and we do not hear anything from the same countries that routinely villify Israel.

2. Secondly, the land of Israel is loaded with cultural meaning and geopolitical significance, far more than Sri Lanka is. Everybody wants to claim it as their own.

3. And, just as the land of Israel carries strong associations, so too does the notion of 'Jews' and 'the Jewish people' evoke many associations (often negative). To many, therefore, the idea that the Jews should have their own state does not sit well. In the early days of the second intifada, Amos Oz - no hawk - said something like: 'In Europe, it used to be 'Jews to Palestine'. Now it's 'Jews out of Palestine'. The message is: don't be here and don't be there. In other words, don't be.'

This is crucial to understanding why the Palestinians are media darlings, their cause the cause of our day, support for their aspirations the litmus test for someone wishing to demonstrate his or her bona fides as a progressive. Israel is an unwanted, troublesome guest in the international community.

This argument was made, infamously, by Tony Judt in a 2003 article called "Israel: The Alternative". (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16671). In this piece, Judt (a professor at NYU) said that the nation-state is a thing of the past, and therefore Israel, with its stubborn insistence on a Jewish state, should give up that quaint identity and become, like all of the good citizens of the world, a state for all of its people. (For a superb response, see the always-wonderful Daniel Gordis, in his article, "My Anachronistic Home", available at http://www.ujc.org/page.aspx?id=49856). Thus, concern for the Palestinians becomes intertwined with the notion that Israel is per se an illegitimate country. Or, stated differently, if the Palestinians did not exist, the world would have to invent them.

I don't mean to say that the Palestinian conflict is not worthy of serious attention, or that Israel's behavior has always been appropriate. It is that the level of opprobrium reserved for Israel - alone among the world's countries - cannot be explained without its connection to the deep wells of Jew-hatred that have long been a part of both Western and Arab culture.

Thus, the issue is not that the Sri Lankan case is ignored; it is just that the Palestinian situation gains far more attention than any other conflict on Earth. But the strong parallels between the two conflicts have to make an observer why the Palestinians are so much more deserving than the Tamils (or, for that matter, the Kurds, or the Basques, or any number of other stateless groups).