[New Republic] Martin Peretz - The fact is that the other Arabs do not care a fig for Palestine. Even with their lush surplus of petroleum cash, the oil Arabs do not pay their self-assessed tax for Palestine. The Emirates, perhaps the greatest employment agency for foreign labor anywhere, hire relatively few Palestinians, preferring Malaysians and Pakistanis and, if Arabs, Yemenis and Egyptians. The sultans are not dumb: They saw how the Palestinians behaved when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Palestine national movement is a fraud. Internecine killing has taken far more Arab lives than armed encounters with the Israelis. How can the Arabs feign such great agitation about the Palestinians when they maintain such composure about the truly bitter fate of the Darfuris? It is the blood of their blood who are committing the genocide. It is their diplomats who protect the murderers. Whatever standing the African Muslims of Darfur command as pious supplicants before Allah, they have none before his Arab servants. Apparently, this does not trouble the conscience of Islam. They are otherwise engaged in the hyper-drama of Palestine.
2008-08-15 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive