When the coronavirus restrictions prevented Middle East Studies academics from getting together in groups, they took their support for Palestine online. BDS organizations have been sucking up bandwidth for many months, pursuing their academic boycotts of Israel etc…
Source: Cancelled Palestine Conference Promised Violent, Anti-Israel PropagandaMiddle
The above is one reason why I have found the entire Palestinian issue boring. Most Middle East scholars seem obsessed with it but I have always avoided it because there is no neutral ground among the Middle East Gurus. It is why I have little interest in the Abraham Accords. I’m a skeptic on any and all Middle East accords, especially the uniquely stupid one manufactured by the Obama administration with Iran, (JCPOA). European treaties have not fared any better. Read the story of the pre WW II accords. Hopefully the Abraham Accords with Israel, the UAE and Bahrain will be more enduring.
It seems in order to be seen as someone knowledgeable in Middle East scholarship you have to prove your bona fides by pontificating ad nauseam on the problem of Palestine, accompanied by a suitable amount of angst, cries of social injustice , but all the while ensuring that you as an intellectual carefully delineate between Zionism (evil) and Judaism ( tolerated as within the Jewish Millet). But lately even that delicate line is not negotiated. The Protocols of Zion have become more popular with the Left than the Right. But of course to an extent that has always been true. Read Paul Johnson Intellectuals. Perhaps it should be no surprise that Karl Marx was viciously anti Semitic. His entire theory of class warfare is rooted in anti -semitism; A fact which should be part of the BLM analysis of today.
The Middle East is the breeding and battle ground of almost every evil of injustice, religious, ethnic, political, and ideological. Palestine is only one example among many more. The important point to me is that the Palestinian issue, a catastrophe for the Palestinian Arabs, is a self inflicted one. Their leadership, from Haj Husseini to Arafat and now the President for life, Mahmoud Abbas has been corrupt and used the Palestinian people as a pawn in power struggles. Almost every mistake a people could make can be applied to the Palestinian communities. As the saying goes, Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. One can sympathize with a people, such as the Palestinians, who lose their ancient homelands, as have the Greeks, the Armenians, the Assyrians, Kurds and yes the Jews of the Islamic world. The Palestinians have been used by their fellow Arabs, and in turn have used them. The Europeans have also used them as a cover for the endemic anti-semitism which has always been part of the fabric of old Europe. Perhaps the only cautiously optimistic note of the Abraham Accords is that, increasingly, some Arab states are no longer afraid of the rabidly Anti- semitic states like Baa’thist Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
