As I sat quietly watching the unfolding of events in Gaza over the past few weeks, I found myself bothered by the way Israel was being depicted in the secular press. These feelings were only further exacerbated every time I opened my social media and was confronted by all the commentaries and stories being shared online. I found myself searching the internet to find articles and videos to post that spoke about why the situation is the way that it is. Unfortunately, none of the material I have discovered thus far has sufficed so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I would like to preface this article by stating that I do not believe that the disapproval rate of an immoral action should be directly proportional to the resulting death toll. I am equally as troubled by the death of 10 innocent civilians as I am 100. However, I do believe that if someone is trying to make an argument based on moral premises, then the arguing party must be morally consistent in all cases if they wish to truly substantiate their claim. It is in this regard that I question the impetus behind the public outrage in the Islamic world over the recent casualties in Gaza. I sincerely wonder if Muslim activists are protesting the deaths of their religious brethren or simply protesting the deaths of their religious brethren at the hands of Jews?

Over the past three years some 120,000 Muslims, women and children included, have been murdered in Syria at the hands of other Muslims. Few public demonstrations and little global outcry ensued. In Pakistan, almost 600,000 Muslims have been displaced under the guise of operation Zarb-e-Azb. Where was the international disdain and public condemnation? In Iran over 4,000 men and women have been executed by their own government simply for having a sexual orientation that contradicts Sharia law. In Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, hundreds if not thousands of women have been stoned and tortured by way of cleric issued Fatwas. Right now as we speak, Sunnis are pillaging and beheading Shias and I have yet to see a single organized march by any Muslim group to garner support for some form of public action.

Now consider that in the past few weeks about 900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and suddenly there are mass protests taking place in every corner of the world. Do you see the irony here? Just to be clear, my point is not to marginalize the death toll. All the examples above are equally tragic. I have included the numbers simply to illustrate the grossly disproportional response by the Islamic community and to highlight the obvious moral inconsistencies taking place. For starters, this whole notion whereby it is acceptable for Muslims to renounce international law and convention in daily practise but then globally appeal to it whenever it becomes convenient to do so is the epitome of hypocrisy. It’s like a community of car thiefs filing a police report when one of their stolen cars goes missing. In my opinion, if Muslims wish to make justifiable accusations about the character of Israel that appeal to the sympathy of human conscience, then they must first demonstrate that they find all murder and violence reprehensible; not just some. I doubt any reasonable person would argue that killing is permissible only when the killer and victim share a similar religious ideology. So what’s really going on here? Why is there so much fuel being poured on this fire while other, arguably more important fires are not even being lit?

As everyone already knows; Israelis, Palestinians, and world leaders have been trying to quell the tensions in the Middle East for over half a century all to no avail. The hostilities stem from the disagreement of geographic entitlement, the practice of dichotomous religious philosophies, a yearning for autonomy, a sense of ethnic pride, and the persistent reverberations of historical dissensions. Still, land rights have been exchanged, autonomy has been granted and peace has yet to be realized. Why? For the same reason Muslims vehemently and violently protest the civil rights violations of Israel but remain silent on the mass murder of their people by their own representative governments: Because nothing raises the ears of the Muslim world like the sound of a good old fashioned Jew fight. It is like a global call to action for all Islamic radicals and closet anti-Semites.

Like most others, a more ingenuous version of my current self used to wonder why the Israelis and Palestinians just couldn’t get along. Today, the answer seems apparent. I believe it is because of the constant indoctrination of hatred towards Jews upon successive generations of Palestinian youth. Despite the sanctimonious views to the contrary, hate is not something that can be reasoned with or debated about because it is a deep-seated emotional response that will never be extinguished by political concessions. Rather, hatred entrenched with this sort of passion manifests itself into a reality distorting lens through which the object of hate becomes the scapegoat for all prevailing troubles and afflictions.

Now just to be clear, citing the Palestinian abhorrence of Jews as the captain of this conflict ship is not meant to imply that Israel is impervious to fault and immune from blame. Indeed, it takes more than just the captain to run a ship. What I am saying is that the true source of the problem here is not political, geographic, economic, or even religious – it is emotional!

If the tensions in the region were solely the result of clashing politics or something tangible like land rights, do you really think we wouldn’t have arrived at a solution after trying for 65+ years? Human intellect has mapped the genomes of entire species, discovered the chemical composition of galaxies millions of light-years away, and harnessed the power of the strong nuclear force. It’s highly unlikely that thousands of brains working continuously for over a half a century couldn’t solve the problem in the Middle East if it were truly a problem based on logic.

You see, the very trouble with emotions is that they lack the governance of our evolved faculties and therefore elude all rational evaluation. They operate in a primordial area of the brain which is what allows them to spread indiscriminately from one person to the next like a wildfire through dry brush. Up until about a month ago, the global embers of hate inspired anti-Semitism were smouldering quietly in the background. Today, the emotional flames of hatred are alive and well as evidenced by the alarming proliferation of violent protests against Israel. Any fire marshals so inclined to investigate will discover that while Gaza was certainly the ignition source, Judaism is the fuel.

As history has repeatedly shown, there is nothing reasonable that Israel can do to end the constant cycle of violence. In fact on that front, I am open to hearing suggestions because Israel as a nation is there to stay and that is not up for negotiation. My advice to all the third-party demonstrators and First World internet trolls is to stop contributing to the hateful activism. I can empathize with your objective criticism of Israel but please make sure you are being consistent across the board. In other words, if you’re protesting what you believe to be war crimes and human rights violations, I hope to see you at the anti-Syria, anti-Iran, and anti-Lebanon rallies as well. If you’re protesting the ‘Israeli annexation’ then I suggest you take a long, hard look in the mirror first. At one time or another, the very land that your home was built on belonged to someone else. If the idea that a group of people can move into a region and self-progress to the point where they become the dominant culture and power seems unfathomable to you, I suggest you get off your high horse and move to ‘Palestine’ because in case you were unaware; your ancestors were once ‘occupiers’ of indigenous land too. You are only here today because when the war over that land was fought, it was your forefathers who won. I’m not going to comment on whether that is right or wrong – it simply is what it is. All I will say is that your self-righteousness is disturbing and your ignorance is a slippery slope.

Believe me when I tell you that Israel is not the dominant power in the region by chance. The Arabs that were living there before Israel was declared a nation obviously had more time than the immigrating diaspora to develop their infrastructure and artillery. Unfortunately for them, while they were busy reading religious texts and plotting the destruction of the incoming Jewish settlers, Israel was busy establishing its government, constructing its schools, building its hospitals, solidifying its diplomacy and contributing to the advancement of mankind through innovations in technology, medicine, and science.

There are two reasons why Israel is the dominant nation in the region today. The first is because it wanted to be, the second is because it had to be. The sad reality that most people fail to realize is that if the power roles were reversed, we would not be arguing over civil rights violations and war casualties, we would be mourning the deaths of another 6 million Jews and wondering why the rest of the world only decided to intervene once it was already too late.

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