A blind spot can be learned. For example, medical science has long ignored all kinds of symptoms in female patients, and in yet another area the West has long been blind to the beauty of the black body. A blind spot to injustice, even if it has been going on for decades and unadulterated in our sight, is possible if we wait long enough whitewash. Just look, for example, at the injustice against the Palestinians.
With the current political turmoil in Israel, with Netanyahu spearheading a chilling new breed of right-wing extremism, the focus is on the ways democracy is at stake. In between, there is also a little reflection on the injustice that is still, and increasingly, being done to the Palestinians. I read Carolien Roelants’ excellent column and had to swallow when she wrote about the persistent indifference with which the West approaches human rights violations in Palestine. Indifferent, I thought, doesn’t even cover the load. It even goes so far that we seem to be bogged down in a cynical paradox in how we think about Israel. On the one hand, there is indeed that stubborn indifference to the fact that this is the only place in the world where apartheid still exists. On the other hand, I often hear enough people say that they like to go on holiday to Israel. Because it is such a special environment. Because it carries so much history. Because it is gay friendly and the food is so diverse.
How do you go on a carefree holiday, I ask, to a place where you know that the original inhabitants are kept behind walls a little further away, and that they have been stripped of more and more rights in recent decades? What about concepts such as human rights, and diversity, and historical awareness, if you take institutionalized apartheid into account?
The answer is always the same: ‘It’s complicated.’
The youngest Palestinian generation sees no other way out than armed resistance
It is an answer I now realize I heard in my youth whenever the subject came up. So many times have I heard, all of us heard, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very complex, that we have all come to believe that indeed it may have been too difficult for us to understand. That we shouldn’t worry too much about it. What helped to look away and not have an opinion about it was that overly critical questions were often seen as an anti-Semitic attitude.
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Meanwhile, the situation in the area has only worsened, especially for the Palestinians. The youngest generation – children not older than 18 or 19 – sees no other way out than armed resistance. They know that the world is not listening, and that they are left to their own devices if they want to stand a chance at change.
They are right; the world is not listening. All attempts to put the Palestinian cause on the map have failed, let’s face it. And that has everything to do with the way our thinking on the issue is laundered. The Arafat scarf, which once started as a political statement, quickly became a toothless fashion phenomenon, available at every market stall. Recently opened Soho House, the international one member club for people in the creative industries, a branch in Tel Aviv. They recommend a weekend here as ‘the Ibiza of the Middle East’. Just like in all other Soho Houses in the world, you can retreat to a five-star environment and surround yourself with beautiful people by the pool. It’s the next step in maintaining that collective blind spot: drinking cocktails in a state of apartheid.
Karin Amatmukrim is a writer and man of letters. She writes a column here every other week.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 4, 2023