Why do so many people in Western democracies rush to take part in demonstrations supporting murderous barbarians against a democratic Israel that clearly seeks to defend itself against unending showers of rocket-rain?
Why do they turn out in such numbers in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Stockholm, Athens, Antwerp, and elsewhere to show support for Hamas, which runs a medieval oppression in Gaza that just approved crucifixion for Christian wrong-doers; wrong-doers, that is, in the eyes of Islamic judges?
For decades I wondered.
Just last night the answer hit me.
They buy the excuse.
For many people their prize possession is their excuse for failure. It's their psychological crown jewel that allows them to think well of themselves. Women having mediocre luck in singing and acting, for example, will often blame their failure on their marriage; sometimes even starting a marriage in order to have one to blame. They'll tell whoever will listen later in life that they "sacrificed their career for their husband."
Those who hear that dreary tale fall into several categories. Friends smart enough to hear through the fraud on contact and call them on it, suggesting they quit kidding themselves and get a life, are suddenly no longer friends. Those who decide to cluck sympathetically may, if they cluck sincerely enough, remain in the woman's rolodex.
There are, interestingly enough, those who actively support that woman's illusion even before she puts it into words. They're the ones who voluntarily go forth and tell the world, "She gave up everything for him, and look what she got for it!" They may even say, "She could have been a contender!" Those are the ones who make up the shouting crowds in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Stockholm, etc. They buy the excuse.
"I would have made the NFL draft if I hadn't injured my knee in my last year of college football." "I would have turned that company around if it hadn't been for that jealous SOB in accounting whose father-in-law was the major stockholder." "She outright stole all those designs from me and I can prove it." "Everybody at the station knows the woman they replaced me with as anchor was sleeping with the owner."
The world bristles with excuses for sale. Many are totally or partially plausible real-life scenarios. Many are rejected. And some are bought.
The Palestinian people, short of those exterminated in genocides like Rwanda, are the most pitiable people in the world. In 1967 there were no Palestinians. The Arabs living in Gaza were Egyptians and those in the West Bank were Jordanians. The Six-Day War threw all of them into Israeli hands. The galaxy of 20-plus Arab nations, rather than absorbing them as refugees or adding to Israel's efforts to offer aid and uplift, preferred to utilize their misery as an anti-Israel propaganda theme. The more miserable Arabs visible to the outside world and the more miserable those visible Arabs were, the more the world would hate the Israelis; right?
That strategy worked supremely well for a long time. It's now superseded by the Arab leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia coming down openly against Hamas and blaming Hamas for the present plight of the civilians of Gaza. Which leaves all those tens of thousands of free people in free countries standing out in stark contrast as they demonstrate for a thug-entity that's too radical for even the major Arab governments to touch.
I impute sincerity to those Israel-hating mobs in London, Paris, etc. But sincerity is no excuse for stupidity. They simply buy the excuse. They honestly believe that if only Israel would get out of the way, either disappear or at least quit complaining and reacting to Hamas rocket attacks, the Palestine people would straighten out and shape up and magically become a little Denmark in the Middle East.
Somebody real smart once described a communist as someone who cannot see a fat man standing beside a thin man without concluding that the fat man got that way at the expense of the thin man. Likewise, those throaty pro-Palestine throngs of people from well-functioning democracies cannot see a prosperous democracy like Israel beside a dysfunctional Gaza without coming to the conclusion that Israel's well-being comes somehow at the expense of the masses of Gaza.
Don't risk terminal frustration trying to tell those determined anti-Israel marchers in Madrid and Berlin and elsewhere about, for example, the consortium of wealthy, liberal Jews who tossed millions of dollars into a kitty to buy the big money-making greenhouses from the Jewish settlers as they were leaving Gaza in 2005 and give them as a good-will offering to the Palestinian people. Those well-intentioned Jews fantasized Palestinians continuing the profitable sale of really superior vegetables and flowers in the markets of Europe.
Instead, Palestinian mobs smashed and ransacked the greenhouses stealing the copper and aluminum tubing and leaving worthless wreckage where a successful native industry had so recently flourished.
Clichés are too often swinging rope bridges too feeble to support a mouse-worth of truth in wartime. Here's one that could support an elephant.
If the Arabs were to lay down their arms there would be no war.
If the Israelis were to lay down their arms there would be no Israel.
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