I’m fed up with all the talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I’m fed up with all the talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I’m fed up with so much talk about this conflict when there are so many other conflicts, wars and violence against minorities or between states.
The problem is multi-layered, involving the general public, the media, international policy specialists and politicians. I’d just like to focus here on the role of the so-called scientific and academic experts – of which I am one.
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I’m tired of seeing this constant appeal to feelings, emotions and spontaneous reactions (which aren’t always the most intelligent) on social networks. The problem lies in the lack of moderation on social networks, which allow far too much false, insulting and misleading content to pass through. I’m even surprised to see sometimes well-known people insulting, scorning, or launching such violent attacks with their real names. Among them, surprisingly, are many teachers and researchers, who are responsible for our children, and the media, whose ignorance is often shocking.
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I’m also amazed at the sheer nonsense of so much pseudo-analysis. I’d just like to take a few examples: we constantly hear talk of « genocide », « ethnic cleansing », « racism », « colonization », « apartheid », etc. even though the term « terrorism » is rejected by the media and by specialists for specious reasons. How many people who these concepts could really define them? And what do they know about the genocides of the 20th century? Even “professional” journalists and NGOs use these concepts without a clear definition of them. But first of all, we need to define these terms with precision, distinguishing their use by jurists, by international organizations, by philosophers, by historians etc. In addition, the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have to be seriously compared with these concepts, which are used indiscriminately, including by international organizations. When you do this, you’ll be astonished to discover that even the concept of colonization hardly applies to Israel.
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We also need to question the very fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been at the center of the UN’s attention for decades. There’s a real obsession with Israel, whose ideology, “Zionism”, has been described as “racism”, whereas UN texts against Hamas, against the Muslim Brotherhood, against the Arab states’ desire to destroy Israel in 1948, in 1967, have never been a central preoccupation of the UN. We could also mention the numerous wars in sub-Saharan Africa, and conflicts in the Muslim world (Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran) which have claimed at least a million lives in 40 years – by way of comparison, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed a maximum of 100,000 Palestinian and Israeli lives in 70 years.
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Furthermore, the role of history is totally forgotten, which feeds this emotional vision of current events even more. We could and should recall that the first immigrants to Israel were not brutal, violent “settlers”, but political refugees, overwhelmingly left-wing, fleeing the anti-Semitism of the Russian Czars and the Nazis. We could also point out that Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip and the Transjordan between 1948 and 1967… which prevented the creation of a Palestinian state in… 1948.
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I’m tired of the prevailing moralism. We suffer for all the peoples of the world because all human beings are brothers and sisters. All human life is precious.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Baudry Pierre (December 1, 2023). I’m fed up with all the talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Deciphering international politics - religion, economics and international affairs. Retrieved March 17, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ve0d