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Palestinian Activism Demands Checking Your Liberalism at the Door

(CAMERA-UK) Adam Levick - Can you be truly committed to liberal values and be a full-throated supporter of the Palestinian cause? The recent racist vitriol by the "moderate" Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas needs to be seen in the broader context of the fact that Palestinians, based on polling, are the most antisemitic people on the globe, and that antisemitism - including the glorification of violence against Jews - is peddled continually by PA officials, the Palestinian media, popular Palestinian cultural figures, influential religious leaders, and in Palestinian textbooks. Being a putatively liberal Western pro-Palestinian activist (or journalist) demands that one ignore or even excuse the endemic anti-Jewish racism within Palestinian society and the role this irrational hatred plays in perpetuating the conflict and in perpetuating the Palestinians' own misery. Their racism is often framed as a legitimate grievance, rather than as the pathology it is. How can it be that though we live in a civilization where the most loathsome quality is racism, many Western progressives enthusiastically makes common cause with a uniquely antisemitic Palestinian society - without experiencing even a momentary bout of cognitive dissonance? Liberalism demands that you take Palestinians seriously as moral actors, as agents of their own fate, and that you judge their behavior as you'd judge anyone else's.
2023-09-14 00:00:00
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