Date: Dec 22, 2007 1:32 PM
Subject: Kosovo vs Palestine
Let's take just a moment, OK, to see if we all have this straight.
Listen up.
The US is strongly behind a UN effort to let the Balkan province of
Kosovo become an independent county. According to a very supportive
editorial in the December 17th /Washington Post/, Kosovo "formed a part
of Serbia until a 1999 NATO military intervention aimed at stopping the
brutalization of its ethnic Albanian population by the Serbian army".
The idea is to let Kosovo declare its independence, a move opposed by
Serbia, which insists that a "territory populated by 100,000 Serbs and 2
million Albanians remain part of Serbia". The EU would send a mission
to "help police Kosovo and oversee its government. This followed an
agreement by NATO last month that its 16,500 troops would remain", to
protect Serbs remaining in the new country plus those who fled during
the conflict and choose to return.
Right, got it now? It's not at all difficult to see how this
interesting approach could not possibly be applied to Occupied
Palestine. The situation is completely, entirely different:
1. Palestine was never a part of Israel, so that issue doesn't fit.
2. Kosovo's Albanians are no longer being brutalized, illegally occupied
and colonized.
2. The statistics on ethnic disparity are not precisely the same, so
they can't be used.
3. No one is going to be allowed in to police the new arrangement, so
forget that.
4. The US is not going to allow the subject to come up. In any form.
Or forum. Anywhere. Period.
The editorial mentions two other interesting points, which further
underline and emphasize the vast gulf separating Palestine's situation
from that of Kosovo. The "increasingly belligerent Russians" have
refused to accept the plan, and blocked it in the Security Council last
summer. The Serbs "could try to destabilize the new state by cutting
off power sources and encouraging rebellion by Serbs living in the
northern part of Kosovo".
America's position on these two regions elevates our well-know global
hypocrisy program to a new world-class level. Let's call it Dynamic
Hypocrisy, and claim it for our own.