WHY ARE PALESTINIANS POOR?

PREVAILING NARRATIVE GETS IT ALL BACKWARD — AGAIN.

What’s wrong with this picture?

There is an overriding perception that Israel is a rich country and Palestinians are poor. This is a profoundly racist and dangerous trope.

It is also true.

How can it be both true and racist?

Through the magic of antisemitism.

I’ll explain, of course.

The cartoon accompanying this post encapsulates what probably amounts to the world’s general perception of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples: Israelis living in opulent luxury, Palestinians in shantytowns staring longingly at the good life on the other side of the border.

There is something right in this, but there is a great deal wrong.

Overall, Palestinians are poorer than Israelis. That’s true. There are, of course, poor Israelis and rich Palestinians, and so silly generalizations like the impression left by this extreme cartoon are based on stereotypes or worse. Don’t forget: For decades, Palestinians have received more humanitarian aid per capita than any other people on the planet. If they are so poor (and they are) where the hell is all that money going? (See “rich Palestinians,” above.)

Of course, statistics tell a very clear story. Israel’s gross domestic product per capita is about US$42,674. The GDP per capita of Palestinians is about US$2,860.

So yeah.

But here’s why it’s racist to depict this disparity the way this cartoon (and much of the dialogue) does.

Among the core tropes that animate antisemitism are the ideas that Jews are rich, that they hoard their wealth, that they are “clannish” and don’t care about any but their own kind.

The very act of debunking racist stereotypes tends to legitimize them, in a way. By rationally countering racist ideas, we tacitly accept that there must be a rational foundation for them in the first place. That’s a problem. On the one hand, we need to debunk the very idea that irrational hatreds can be countered by rational engagement. On the other hand, we need to debunk the ideas that come from that hatred. But anyways.

The cartoon above, and the widespread ideas it represents, are absolutely saturated in antisemitic tropes. And yet most people could look at this image and think, Yeah, that seems about right. This is why antisemitism is so successful and so difficult to defeat — people can be swimming in it and not even know it.

Here is what this cartoon is trying to say: Israelis are rich. Palestinians, right next door, are poor.

As we see from GDP per capita, on an averaged basis, there is no denying this.

Despite this being true, here is how this entire approach rests on atrocious antisemitic premises …

First of all, the underlying message is one of blaming. It blames Israelis for being rich. It blames Israelis for Palestinians being poor. That is the gist of the cartoon.

And that is precisely wrong. Not only is it wrong in fact. It is wrong morally, because the only way one could come to this conclusion is if we are steeped in antisemitic ideas.

Palestinians are poor not because Israelis are rich but in spite of that fact. Palestinians live cheek-by-jowl with the most successful country and the most powerful economic engine in the region. Had Palestinian leaders and Arab countries, beginning in 1948, cooperated with Israel, Palestinians would probably today be as wealthy as Israelis are, or at least have had every opportunity to become so.

Instead, Palestinian and other Arab leaders chose to cut off their noses to spite their faces (or, more accurately cut off their people’s opportunities to spite the Jews). They have boycotted, isolated and vilified the Jewish state and done everything in their power to prevent Israel from succeeding.

Like almost everything else they have undertaken, the Palestinian leaders failed spectacularly at this. Israel is an economic miracle.

Had Palestinian and other Arab societies engaged with Israel, they would share in this wealth.

This is yet another example of racist hatreds harming the perpetrators more than the intended targets.

Palestinians are not mired in poverty because Israel is rich. They are mired in poverty because their leaders have ensured that Palestinian people cannot benefit from proximity to the most successful economy in the region.

Let’s go back to how this is antisemitic.

Since we know that Palestinians are poor because of their leaders’ insistence that poverty is a small price to pay for the ideological purity of their anti-Zionism, the blame lies with them.

But when most of the world looks at the scenario, they see precisely what the Palestinian leaders and other propagandists want them to see. The fact that it takes precisely no convincing to sway Western activists, diplomats and commentators to draw the conclusion that Palestinians are poor because Israelis are rich is proof of rampant antisemitism.

If you have not yet read David Nirenberg’s book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, run — don’t walk — to your bookstore. (Or, more realistically, click on the Amazon link and devour this book ASAP). To sum up a complex and brilliant thesis, Nirenberg posits that Western civilization does not merely have depraved ideas about Jews as an unfortunate character trait, he argues that our entire civilization is founded on these horrible antisemitic ideas. Antisemitism, in other words, is not a bug or Western civilization, but a feature.

Think of this the way we have come to view racism. We live in a society in which white privilege and white supremacy are baked in. Whether we as individuals are racist or antiracist, we exist in a society where we are part of this reality.

To top it all off, Western civilization’s history with antisemitism has a couple of millennia head-start on the other types of racism we are slowly coming to deal with.

Therefore, when you see a cartoon that depicts poor Palestinians and rich Israelis, something deep in our DNA says, Right, we know that those people are rich, that they hoard their wealth, are “clannish” and don’t care about any but their own kind.

Again, debunking racist ideas can legitimize them. But we need to take a sec here.

In ways I will address in upcoming posts, Israel has bent over backward to help the people of Palestine, the larger region and the entire world.

When Palestinian terrorists weren’t blowing up Israeli civilians, both sides were engaged in joint economic and industrial projects, environmental and water resource initiatives and a massive range of undertakings that advanced the well-being of Palestinians. The Second Intifada largely kiboshed those cooperative ventures.

Israeli hospitals, for that matter, are filled with Palestinians who, despite billions of foreign aid, do not have the medical facilities necessary for complicated procedures.

Thanks to Palestinian terrorists, Israeli first responders are the world’s leaders in responding to mass casualty events. Therefore, Israeli helpers are almost always first on the scene and last to leave when a disaster strikes anywhere in the world. This is one of the most obvious examples.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Israel shared its profound successes with other emerging countries that, like Israel, were products of postwar decolonization. Israeli agricultural techniques, medical know-how and training boosted the capacity of new independent nations across Africa and Asia.

After 1967, when the Arab boycott of Israel expanded across the broader Muslim and “non-aligned” world, there was impossible pressure put on those developing countries to drop ties with Israel.

Did the oil-rich Arab states or any other Muslim countries pick up the slack? Hardly. That’s not their thing.

That’s Israel’s thing.

Far from being a clannish, wealth-hoarding, rich country, Israel routinely reaches out to help countries that refuse to even recognize its existence.

But there is a larger flaw in the narrative of rich Israelis/poor Palestinians. It is the idea that economic advancement is a driver for Palestinian society.

Look at the Palestinians in the cartoon. They are looking yearningly at the wealth next door. The assumption is that the swimming pools and comfortable homes they see are something they want.

It is not racist to say that we need to stop putting our cultural expectations on other peoples. In fact, it is racist to pretend that Palestinians share our assumptions that economic well-being trumps ideology.

Palestinians live under tyrannical rulers, so it is difficult to say what they would want if they were free to express themselves. But their leaders decided (on their behalf) that grinding poverty (not for the leaders, mind you, who are the dictionary definition of kleptocrats) is a small price to pay for continuing the fruitless and racist isolation of the Jewish state. But three or four generations of indoctrination seem to have convinced a goodly number of Palestinians that continuing this ludicrous antisemitic crusade is more important than peace or prosperity for their kids.

The upshot is simply this: Palestinians are poor because their leaders have ensured, for almost eight decades, that they are mostly sequestered from Israel’s economic miracle.

That’s not Israel’s fault.

So if you look at the cartoon above, and conclude that Israelis are rich, greedy, clannish and don’t care about their neighbours, you need to do more than take a deeper look at the cartoon.

You need to take a deeper look at your own ideas and unlearn some of the racism that has come down to you through our civilizational DNA.

A personal note …

I started this Substack because I thought my perspective as a progressive, gay, non-Jewish, Zionist Canadian offered something different to the dialogue about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinians and peace. It actually never crossed my mind that people might give me money for it. When people started generously subscribing and donating, I threw myself into this project more, partly because I am a writer by trade and I am still building my RSPs for some distant retirement. Based on online advice (!) I started making my Saturday posts for “Paid Subscribers Only.” But, I modestly acknowledge, each one is too delicious to paywall. So I am going to assume that, if you like my stuff and want more of it, you’ll give if you can. If not, please share. (Please share regardless!) No more paywalls. But there may be other incentives I could offer. Not sure what. Got any ideas? Do folks want to get together for online discussions or see me compile some of these posts as a book? Let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy! (If that is the right word for these sometimes dark musings.)