Back in the 80s I’d have to try to talk down some seriously self-righteous European lefty types who’d adopted such an absurdly high and mighty position on the situation in Ulster that they seemed in danger of getting a nosebleed.
These same individuals tended to have a perspective on Palestine casted from the same mold. (Jeremy Corbyn’s career has taken in both forms of partisan jaundice, and the Labour leader apparently remains committed to the second it would seem.)
No matter that more people were displaced — and indeed brutally murdered — amidst the formation of nations such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, Israel is invariably regarded as ground zero for historic injustice by a certain kind of self-consciously progressive person.
If one steps back however, taking a broader view of the last century and those moments when new states were formed or borders shifted, the fate of the Palestinians — which fell short of an actual genocide (of which there were many in the period) — is not what one might refer to as an outlier.
So there is a unmistakeable bias — a disproportionate concern for one set of unfortunate circumstances — that any historian would surely want to explain.
And in my view it will be hard to provide such an explanation for this without addressing the likelihood of anti-semitic prejudice.
No comments:
Post a Comment