(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - Palestinian Arabs believe they are entitled to our sympathy and can never quite comprehend why they don't get more of it. At the heart of every Palestinian manifesto is a sense of astonishment that anyone would question their intrinsic status as victims. The same goes for the idea that anyone demand that they disavow those who, with good reason, claim to speak for them while committing unspeakable crimes and rejecting peace. That toxic mixture of grievance and entitlement is equally responsible for the sense of glee and release that so many Palestinians and their supporters felt upon hearing the news of the Oct. 7 attacks, coupled with the toll of Jewish dead and suffering exacted during the pogroms. It is also present in those videos depicting real suffering in Gaza as the Israel Defense Forces strike back at Hamas targets inside the area from which the Palestinians have launched rocket attacks aimed at killing Israeli civilians and terrorist infiltrations like that of Oct. 7. They take it as an intolerable insult when questioners ask them to disavow crimes committed in their name or about the choices they've made, or whether their leaders or the cause they've embraced bears even a tiny fraction of responsibility for the position they're now in. To the astonishment of Jews and Israelis, the unspeakable crimes committed against Jewish men, women and children on Oct. 7 has actually given the Palestinian cause the boost the Hamas terrorists hoped it would. That's particularly true in the Arab world, where, as the New York Times reports, the violence has "reignited" the "passion for the Palestinian cause." Responsibility for the Palestinian casualties in Gaza belongs to the people who started this war, not those seeking to punish the criminals. Yet the Palestinians are being held exempt from the consequences of their decisions. How else can one explain the widespread sympathy for people who start a war by crossing borders and murdering young and old, but then cry foul when the nation they assault seeks to stop them from repeating such crimes?
2023-10-30 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive