When will the Palestinians be acknowledged as a people again? How can we accept such a total inversion of the anti-semitism that plagued earlier centuries to dehumanize both Jew and Arab in Palestine today — By dehumanize, I mean perceiving others as either somehow purer and more deserving than the rest of us, or worse than the rest of us.
Mary Robinson has visited Gaza and speaks from first hand observation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7708670.stm
“Their whole civilisation has been destroyed, I’m not exaggerating,” said Mrs Robinson.
“It’s almost unbelievable that the world doesn’t care while this is happening.”
Why it’s important to take on board what Mary Robinson says, and to explore it further:
” . . . ordinary Israelis did not understand the situation as they “couldn’t possibly support it if they really did”.
Of course the news is quick to broadcast Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel — http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/05/content_10312060.htm [link now dead: neil godfrey, 21st July 2019]
And so the black and white perceptions are reinforced.
Compare, for example, the less publicized Palestinian news story that started the recent attacks:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9937.shtml
If what has been happening to the Palestinians since the 1940’s is not just another form of anti-semitism against the other branch of semites, or is not ethnic cleansing pure and simple, even genocide on a par with the generational genocide of American and Australian aboriginal populations, I don’t know what is.