Bitte Hammargren kommer undan

Bitte Hammargren skriver i SvD:

Den israelisk-arabiska konflikten är kärnan till många problem i denna farliga men viktiga region. Grupper som Hizbollah och Hamas föddes under israelisk ockupation. Terrorister – från Bombay till Casablanca – hämtar näring och hat ur den israelisk-palestinska konflikt som har blött i 60 år.

Hammargren tycks alltså mena att "kärnan" i konflikter mellan muslimer och hinduer och mellan aktörer i regionen Indien-Pakistan-Kashmir trots allt ändå är "den israelisk-palestinska konflikt som har blött i 60 år." Liknande idéer har uttryckts och bemötts i Storbritannien. Exempelvis det brittiska gröna partiets Caroline Lucas driver en linje liknande Hammargrens i ett inslag i BBC:

I think what we should be doing is looking at some of the root causes of some of the terrorist acts we see - not to condone it but I do think that we have to try to understand it, and I think that the situation in Palestine for example, with the ongoing Israeli occupation with the absolute strangulation of Gaza with this siege on Gaza - essentially this economic blockade - is really feeding so much anger right across the world and it means that there is more of a fertile breeding ground then for extremists to flourish. So I think that if we are to defeat extremism then we have to go to the root causes of it - we have to look in particular at how marginalised communities are being treated, we have to look in particular about countries like Palestine.

Observera att Lucas är politiker och därmed åsiktsmaskin, medan Hammargren är en utrikeskorrespondent. David Hirsh på Engage bemöter Lucas hållning såhär:

Caroline Lucas says we need to "understand" but she doesn't, herself, show any evidence of understanding. In the past, Lucas has claimed that Israel hides behind a bad faith accusation of antisemitism which it throws at "all who criticise its policies". Now, Lucas is responding to a number of terrorist murders which include the antisemitic murder of Jews, targetted as Jews, with reference to what she calls the "strangulation of Gaza".

This is a serious misrepresentation. Not primarily because "strangulation" is an inadequate description of what is going on in Gaza. But because even if it wasn't, it would not explain why anger at Israeli policy was mystified into a racist anger against Jews.

Usually we hold racists and other bigots responsible for their hateful propaganda and their hateful actions. We understand racism as being a grossly unfair and unreasonable response to things that happen in the real world.

We don't "understand" a woman wearing a short skirt as being one of the causes of her rape.

We don't "understand" black kids' involvement in street crime as being one of the causes of racism against black people.

And we don't "understand" Israeli policy as being one of the causes of racism against Jews.

Caroline Lucas is right to want to try to "understand". But she isn't going to understand racism so long as she believes that racism against Jews is a trick, played by Israel against the world with the intention of covering their evil Jewish crimes.

Usually antiracists have little difficulty in condemning racism as being wholly wrong-headed and morally vile. Usually we don't accept the reasons given by the racists for their hatred as being worthy of much serious consideration or "understanding". Antisemitism should be no different. So why is it different for some antiracists?

Även Howard Jacobson bemöter Lucas i en kolumn i The Independent:

We are not unsubtle in this column. We understand that a simmering resentment will not always express itself rationally or fairly. In frustration, the angry often kill the wrong people in the wrong places. But to argue that Palestine fuelled the massacre at Mumbai, that the Hindu waiter shot in the forehead after serving water to a terrorist was paying for the inequities of Gaza, that he wasn't already, in the eyes of that terrorist, expendable enough as an unbeliever, as one who had stolen Kashmir, or simply as a spot of target practice en route to a mad and misguided martyrdom, is not only preposterous, it is irresponsible.

//

Frankly, my dear, they don't give a damn. The Chabad Centre in Mumbai was a Jewish organisation, not an Israeli one. Its occupants were tortured and killed for being Jews, not for being complicit in the "strangulation" of Gaza, unless all Jews are held to be complicit in the strangulation of Gaza, in which case Caroline Lucas must be very careful where and in what language she lays blame. If she is right that the perception of a great wrong in Palestine motivates such murders as those in Mumbai, then it behoves her, as one who influences perception, to be scrupulous in her observations.

I andra länder bemöts dessa idéer av flera. Märkligt nog inte i Sverige.

Fler texter om ämnet:

Inconvenient Truths: The media's disingenuous failure to state the obvious av Christoper Hitchens i Slate

They Hate Us — and India Is Us av Patrik French i NY Times

Terror Attacks Traced to Two From Pakistan av Jane perlez och Robert F. Worth I NY Times

Läs även den här texten av David Aaronovitch