What a cruel world: Three yeshiva
students were kidnapped, and the world isn’t interested; three mothers
are crying out, and the world doesn’t answer. It’s all because the
entire world is against us; it’s anti-Semitic and hates Israel. The
Anti-Defamation League is already preparing a report. But the truth is,
that’s just the way things are: When you openly thumb your nose at the
world for years on end, eventually, it thumbs its nose back.
The three mothers went all the way to
Geneva. One of them went abroad for the first time in her life to go to
the United Nations Human Rights Council. But the world, and the council,
went on their merry ways. It’s the irony of fate: About two years ago,
Israel officially suspended cooperation with that council; together with
the Marshall Islands, Palau and the U.S., it opposed the council’s very
establishment. But now, in its distress and the mothers’ distress, it
has turned to the council, which is indeed hostile to Israel and spends
more time on it than on any other country. Suddenly, Israel needs the
world. It even needs the UN, which all of a sudden isn’t the worthless
body Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once termed it.
It takes considerable effrontery to demand
that the world interests itself in the fate of three abducted Israelis,
and considerable chutzpah to be disappointed by the fact that it has
kept silent. Granted, Israel tried to move heaven and earth, and its
ambassador/propagandist at the UN gave a moving speech in an effort to
scrape up a few more public diplomacy points against Hamas. But once it
was paying attention already, that bizarre world was more interested in
the campaign of collective punishment imposed on thousands of West Bank
residents after the kidnapping.
That’s the way things are with the
world-that’s-entirely-against-us: It’s more interested in the
half-century-old occupation; it’s more upset over the fate of three
million Palestinians than the fate of three Israelis. The world has no
lack of kidnapping victims, but none of them ever got the attention
received by kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. With the three current
kidnap victims, however, Israel no longer had a chance. Over the last
two weeks, which I spent in Sweden, I didn’t run across a single mention
of the abduction in the media. Not one.
That’s what rotten fruit looks like. The
world has no reason be more interested in the fate of Naftali Fraenkel,
Eyal Yifrah and Gilad Shaar than it is in the fate of their age mate
Mohammed Dudin, a boy of 15 who was killed by live fire from Israeli
soldiers in Dura last Friday.
It has no reason to be especially moved by
the haunting words of Rachel Fraenkel, who related that her Naftali is a
good boy who loves to play guitar and soccer, when Mohammed was also a
good boy, who helped his father build their house during his school
vacations and sold sweets to help support his family. Rachel wants to
hug Naftali? Jihad, Mohammed’s bereaved father, also wants to hug his
son. Incidentally, nobody brought him to Geneva. He remained alone with
his mourning, at the wretched house whose construction hasn’t yet been
finished, and perhaps never will be.
The world is a mess, as they say. In Iraq,
Nigeria, Syria and even Ukraine, the situation is far crueler. Yet the
complete lack of interest in the kidnapped Israelis doesn’t stem from
that alone. It’s impossible to demand sympathy from the world when
Israel ignores the world’s decisions; it’s impossible to demand action
when Israel is perpetuating the occupation; and it’s impossible to
demand solidarity with the fate of Israeli victims when that same
victimized Israel continues to kill, wound and arrest innocents as a
matter of routine.
Now Israel is discovering that it’s no
longer the center of attention as it always was before, and that the
fate of its kidnapping victims no longer stops the world in its tracks,
not even in the United States. The world is sick of Israel and its
insanities. Unfortunately, the world has also lost interest in what
happens here. When Israel was a more just country, the world identified
with its victims. It continued to do so even when Israel became less
just. But now, when Israeli rejectionism is hitting new heights and its
oppression of the Palestinians is returning to what it was during the
very worst periods, the world has started getting tired of it all. Even
the kidnapped Nigerian girls interest it more.
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