With Parliament poised to have a special meeting on the Gaza situation next Monday, one can assume several members of parliament are probably already working on their plans for a grand-standing performance – and what surely will amount to be an orgy on Israel bashing.
Not that practically everything we’ve been viewing and reading since the breakout of the latest conflict between Hamas and Israel hasn’t been a full-fledged demonization of Israel, this will simply be another exercise – in this case by our politicians – to display their popular contempt for Israel and engage in an exercise in futility. This will be a display of paper tigers who will be hell bent on the kind of verbal and public posturing that will not only have no negligible benefit in advancing the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis, it will be a perfect opportunity – for politicians from all sides of the political spectrum – to try and out-do the other.
As a matter of fact, with the Kuala Terengganu by-election just around the corner, we’ve already seen this Palestinian-Israeli issue milked by both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat. Frankly, both sides come off looking rather pathetic – both in their outlandish and exaggerated analogies.
Of course most of us ought not to be surprised by the outpouring of sympathy for innocent Palestinians who have been killed in the conflict. Indeed, we ought to be feeling for the loss of all victims of the conflict – regardless of creed, nationality or religion. But such is reality that the way we view everything about the world is indeed coloured by our lenses we see it through, isn’t it?
That is why we will not see our politicians condemn all violence – irrespective of the source. But we will hear the tirade against one party and not the other. It will be something they will revel in, and not surprisingly, there is no political downside to doing so. We will see politicians condemning Israel, indulging in rhetoric that will be veiled, if not deeply laced, in anti-Semitism.
One might ask where was the special meeting of the parliament in the aftermath of the terrorism, which in the words of Salman Rushdie was "extraordinary barbarism," against the innocent in Mumbai? What became of our politicians posturing in parliament? Indeed, in that case, we even had Malaysians directly impacted by Mumbai terrorism. Where is the special meeting and urgency to deal with the apparent cases of torture being perpetrated against our fellow citizens by elements entrusted to protect the public? Where is the special meeting of the parliament to confront the embarrassing fact that in the last few years, hundreds of our fellow citizens have died in the hands of the police? Where was the special meeting of parliament….
My point here is not only to illuminate and acknowledge the problem with our selective perception, but also the opportunism our politicians indulge in. And sadly, we succumb to such opportunism and further enable such grand-standing.
So while our politicians will soon be using the august house to indulge in their exercise in moral self-righteousness, we the public have a choice – we can choose not to egg it on or we can – by voyeuristically revelling in more hate-mongering that will be impending.
G. Krishnan
Posts
