My Word: The ‘I-P Test’ of hypocrisy - opinion

This week I took a deep breath, stepped out into the sunshine, and thought: “All’s well with the world.” Just kidding. Although life in Israel carries on – a mix of the ordinary and extraordinary – the world is up to its old tricks.

While most Israelis have been able to take a break from wartime mode and return to what is known as “Shigrat herum,” (routine emergency), residents of the North are still feeling the impact of missiles and drones. And even though there is a miraculously high level of interceptions, the resulting shrapnel also poses a threat.

A big “something” was the post on X (later deleted) by Pakistan’s defense minister Khawaja M. Asif, stating: “Israel is evil, and a curse for humanity, while peace talks are underway in Islamabad, genocide is being committed in Lebanon. Innocent citizens are being killed by Israel, first Gaza, then Iran, now Lebanon, bloodletting continues unabated. I hope and pray people who created this cancerous state on Palestinian land to get rid of European jews burn in hell.”

Despite the tortured English, the twisted thinking – evident in the genocide, colonialist, and blood libel tropes – was clear.

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry used more diplomatic language but declared Israel’s actions in Lebanon are “a blatant violation of international law and fundamental humanitarian principles.” Strangely, the attacks on Israel – the missiles and terrorist threats that the country is trying to prevent – are rarely mentioned. Dead and displaced Israelis don’t figure in the narrative.

Pakistan is not the only country guilty of hypocritically seeking a role in the Middle East. In Spain, last week a giant effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up in the town of El Burgo, near Malaga. That’s literally “blown up,” not “inflated.”

The seven-meter mannequin was packed with nearly 15 kilos of gunpowder and detonated. This was considered innocent fun at the local carnival. I suppose this is progress. During the Spanish Inquisition, people found the public burning of “apostate” Jews in town squares, the infamous autos-de-fe, an entertaining distraction from daily life.

Last week, Israel expelled Spain from the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat, which was established with the US to implement peace plans in Gaza, including disarming Hamas. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said the move was due to the Spanish government’s “obsessive anti-Israel bias.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has consistently condemned Israel, has barred the US from using its bases for military operations against Iran, and has closed Spanish airspace to aircraft involved in the war. Sanchez has even reopened the embassy in Tehran. He has clearly chosen a side; it is the side of the ayatollahs in the Islamic Republic and the terrorist organizations they fund and support.

Erdogan also criticized the passage of a law in Israel permitting the death penalty for terrorists. The law was promoted by MK Limor Son Har-Melech from Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party. In 2003, Har-Melech, who was seven months pregnant, was wounded and her husband was murdered in a terrorist ambush on their family’s car. The terrorist was released last year.

The new Israeli law might raise questions, but those condemning it should keep in mind that Palestinian Authority legislation permits the death penalty to anyone who sells land to Jews. The PA actually rewards convicted terrorists through its “pay for slay” policy. And the abduction of Israelis is aimed at gaining the release of terrorists. October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was among those released in October 2011, in exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office last Friday prepared an indictment against 35 “suspects,” including Netanyahu, for what it called an armed attack against the Global Sumud Flotilla, purportedly carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza last year. According to Turkish national broadcaster TRT World, the charges include “crimes against humanity,” “genocide,” and “torture.” The prosecutor “sought aggravated life sentences and prison terms of up to 4,596 years for each suspect.”

Netanyahu issued a response saying: “Israel, under my leadership, will continue to fight Iran’s terror regime and its proxies, unlike Erdogan, who accommodates them and massacred his own Kurdish citizens.”

Even in their worst nightmares, Netanyahu’s many enemies don’t really believe the prime minister will be around in 5,000 years, but the Turkish indictment makes a statement, however absurd.

One wonders about the fate of the Turkish Republic in five years, let alone five millennia. Erdogan is fully aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, fails to respond to rocket attacks by Iran on Turkish territory, continues to persecute the Kurdish population, and maintains the occupation of north Cyprus.

Erdogan and Sanchez have a partner in France’s wannabe peacemaker Emmanuel Macron. Israel nixed the French president as a negotiator in the direct talks between Israel and Lebanon. As Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein put it: “You cannot embargo a country’s weapons, block its arms flights, condemn its military operations as ‘indiscriminate,’ and then demand a seat at its negotiating table. That is not diplomacy. That is audacity… Israel did not disqualify France. France disqualified France.”

This brings me back to Pakistan.

I have frequently advocated for what I call the “I-P Test of World Hypocrisy.” Instead of “Israel” and the “Palestinians,” think of India and Pakistan.

The disputes in both regions began in similar circumstances following the end of British rule, in 1947 in the case of India and Pakistan, and 1948 for Israel. (At the time, not even the Arab countries that immediately attacked the nascent Jewish state referred to the Arab residents as “Palestinians.”) An estimated 15 million people were uprooted in Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Between one million and two million people died during the upheaval.

Close to 80 years later, India and Pakistan have an uneasy relationship that occasionally flares into conflict, particularly in disputed areas such as Kashmir. There is not, however, a “refugee problem.” That’s because the Hindus and Sikhs who fled Pakistan for India, and the Muslims who escaped in the other direction – whether from fear or violent coercion – have not spent the intervening decades being sold the illusion that they will move back and destroy their enemies.

Similarly, the approximately 850,000 Jews who left/fled Arab countries do not consider themselves “refugees” in Israel.

There is no separate UN body whose sole purpose is to keep Muslims who fled India as permanent refugees, while UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) has helped the initial figure of 700,000 Arab refugees balloon into some six million today, some five generations later.

The UN doesn’t fixate on finding fault with India in regular mandated reports and debates. Only Israel receives that treatment. Incidentally, an underreported news story in Pakistan is the court ruling that Maria Shahbaz, a Christian girl whose family says was abducted at age 12 or 13 and forcibly converted to Islam, should stay with the 30-year-old man who kidnapped and married her.

Peace talks should be aimed at, well, bringing peace. When you negotiate in bad faith – whatever that faith is – you’re not making the world a better place, but a more dangerous one. An agreement that leaves an armed jihadist regime or organization in power, be it in Tehran or among its proxies, is not a peace treaty.

You might die holding your breath waiting for the world to figure out that it’s not Israel that’s the problem.