The Invisible Hand

Palestinians Manage to Fall Short of Our Lowest Expectations

Over the weekend, a U.N.-sponsored elementary school in Gaza held a gymnastics show that included a parade with boys and girls. This was clearly against God’s will so a crowd of Islamists did what any concerned group of parents would do . . . they attacked the school with grenades.

In response, Palestinian “security personnel” opened fire on the crowd and managed to kill one of their own guys and wound two schoolchildren and a teacher.

The chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, John Ging, was attending the show despite death threats trumpeted over loudspeakers the “parents” had set up outside the school. Asked why he ignored the warnings, Ging diplomatically replied, “We have warnings about anything and everything, and people here demonstrate against anything and everything,”

All jolly good fun, wot?

What he means to say is, “these people are fanatic death cultists who will lob grenades about anything and everything.”

Here is a typical Palestinian “policeman:”




Why are they fighting? The rote response is because they are oppressed by Zionist occupiers and their American sponsors. But wait a second, Israel no longer occupies Gaza. They withdrew in 2005.

And what have the Palestinians managed to create in the past two years? A stable and efficient government would be far too much to ask. Even a government that can protect an elementary school from attack seems a bit too ambitious. How about a government that can train security personnel not to shoot each other and whatever children happen to be standing nearby?

The problem with the Palestinians is not Israel. It’s other Palestinians. But most of the world – as typified by the U.N. rep quoted above – would rather pretend that barbaric violence is just some local custom, part of the colorful mosaic of traditions in the Arab world, and not symptomatic of some larger pathology.

It’s the “soft bigotry of low expectations” writ globally. And as usual, this bigotry threatens the very people the bigots are supposed to be concerned about.