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Demonizing Palestinians
By Neil Richardson, Rutland Herald 8/22/2006
When the Israeli attack on Gaza was first initiated, the news report on CNN included an interview with an Israeli man in Israel. His comment was that the life of one Israeli was worth that of any number of Palestinians. Since CNN was presenting this interview as a representative reaction of the average Israeli, one can assume that this man’s feelings reflect the feelings of the majority of Israelis, one of intense racism.This racism manifests itself by demonizing the Palestinians as a group, denying that they have a legitimate complaint or that they have a right to be heard. We in the United States have also accepted this racist anti-Arab sentiment. We seem unable to view the situation in terms of “what if they were us, how would we feel and react”. I believe that it is this feeling that they are a “less important people” that enables us to readily accept Israel’s policy of shooting them and destroying their lives rather than talk with their leaders.Gaza is a tiny piece of land, approximately ten miles by twenty miles. Yet there are a million and a half people stuck there. They have no economy, and no way of building one. It is not a country so they have no citizenship (although they do possess a very strong sense of national identity). This is certainly a recipe for unrest and has created a breeding ground for violent reaction.The so-called Road Map for Peace included four parties, the quartet, as the negotiating team. We could not even have enough respect for the Palestinians to include them, the people who are most affected, as equal partners in that team.How will we ever have peace and fairness in the interactions of Israel and the Palestinians with this prevailing attitude towards Muslims being at the center of our foreign policy?
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