(Daily Beast) Maajid Nawaz - Israel is not the biggest problem in the Middle East, by a long shot. But you wouldn't know that from the disproportionate way in which the UN has treated the country. To this day, 47 resolutions concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been adopted by the UN Security Council. In 2016 alone, 18 resolutions against Israel were adopted at the UN General Assembly in September, and 12 resolutions were adopted in the Human Rights Council. Opposing Israel is the sacred god that must not be questioned. So deep runs this bias against Israeli transgressions, that to call it out is to arouse immediately incredulity. There is nothing unique about the Israel conflict deserving such disproportionate attention. Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Cyprus, Kashmir, and Taiwan are but a few other disputed territories not fetishized like Palestine is at the UN and in our media. All of these disputes involve deep religious, historic, and political meaning for their respective parties. Why is it that Israel is expected to integrate - and does a reasonable job of including - the 20% of its population that is Arab, yet a Jewish presence of 500,000 settlers in any future Palestinian state is deemed "an obstacle" to the two-state solution? Are Palestinians assumed to be ethno-fascists? Are they not capable of building a multiethnic state just like Israelis? Is this how low the standard is to which the West holds Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims? In reality, Israel has been the perennial excuse used by Arab despots seeking to silence their domestic opponents or the foreign critics of their ferocious repression of dissent. To call for greater freedoms in these countries where there was little or none was to be accused of "Zionist collusion." And as often as not, the UN played along. Only by releasing the "exceptional status" pressure from this conflict, by removing it from the spotlight, by simply placing it on a par with every and any other conflict in the world - tragic but not unique - do we stand a better chance of solving it, because the stakes are lowered and the frothing prophets of doom are taken out of the equation. The writer, a British Muslim, is the founding chairman of Quilliam, a London-based think tank that works to counter Islamist extremism.
2017-01-03 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive