Gross Ignorance at Guardian Australia

Mehdi Hasan may have gone to Oxford, read Philosophy, Politics and Economics there, and played the pundit at, variously, the BBC, the New Statesman, the Huffington Post, Al-Jazeera, and the Guardian, but he clearly knows SFA about the Palestine problem:

"[The] plight [of the Palestinians still left in Damascus' Yarmouk refugee camp] should matter to us all - regardless of whether their persecutors happen to be Israelis, Syrians, Egyptians or, for that matter, fellow Palestinians..." (The refugees of Yarmouk deserve better than silence, Guardian Australia, 13/4/15)

OK...

"This is far from a cynical exercise in pro-Israel whataboutery. There are very good reasons that Israel attracts such widespread criticism and condemnation in the West. Israel is our ally and claims to be a liberal democracy, unlike both Assad and ISIS. Israel is also armed, funded and protected from UN censure by the US government; again, unlike both Assad and ISIS."

OK...

"Those who try to use the tragedy of Yarmouk to excuse or downplay Israel's 48-year occupation of Palestine should be ashamed of themselves."

Excuse me, Mehdi? Shouldn't that be Israel's 66-year occupation of Palestine (1948-2015)?

"But what of the rest of us? Can we afford to stay in our deep slumber, occasionally awakening to lavishly condemn only Israel? Let's be honest: how different, how vocal and passionate, would our reaction be if the people besieging Yarmouk were wearing the uniforms of the IDF?"

Hello? How the fuck do you think they ended up in Yarmouk REFUGEE camp in the first place?

Do the words 'historical context', 'root cause', and 'primary responsibility' mean anything to you?

"Our selective outrage is morally unsustainable. Many of us who have raised our voices in support of the Palestinian cause have inexcusably turned a blind eye to the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by fellow Arabs in recent decades: by the Jordanian military in the Black September conflicts of the early 1970s; by Lebanese militias in the civil war of the mid-1980s; by Kuwaiti vigilantes after the first Gulf war, in the early 90s."

Again, did it ever occur to you to ponder how these Palestinians ended up in Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait in the first place?

Furthermore, would you mind documenting that alleged blind eye to the fate of Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait? Baseless assertions just don't cut it, I'm afraid.

And is it too much to get the date(s) right for the Lebanese bit?

So what's the take-home message of your piece on Yarmouk?

Basically, that the Palestinians have been everyone's punching bag at some stage, so why pick on Israel?

Bloody hell, Mehdi, who do you think it was who created that punching bag in the first place?

Of course the refugees of Yarmouk deserve better than silence, but they also need better advocacy than this!