© Majdi Mohammed/APIsraeli troops fire teargas at protesters during a clashes following a protest to mark the Land Day, in the village of Qusra, near the West Bank City of Nablus, Friday, March 30, 2018.
"If the concept of intervention is driven by universal human rights, why is it - from the people who identify themselves as liberal interventionists - why do we never hear a peep, a word, about intervening to protect the Palestinians?"
That was the question I put to the French philosopher, author, and champion of
liberal (or humanitarian) interventionism, Bernard-Henri Lévy, on my
Al Jazeera English interview show "Head to Head" in 2013.
The usually silver-tongued Levy struggled to answer the question. The situation in Palestine is "not the same" as in Syria and "you have not all the good on one side and all the bad on the other side," said Levy, who once
remarked in reference to the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, that he had "never seen such a democratic army, which asks itself so many moral questions."
I couldn't help but be reminded of my exchange with the man known as "
BHL" this past weekend, as I watched
horrific images of
unarmed Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border being shot in the back by the "democratic army" of Israel. How many "moral questions" did those Israeli snipers ask themselves, I wondered, before they
gunned down Gazan refugees for daring to
demand a return to their homes inside the Green Line?
Comment: Mainstream media gets slammed for not reporting pro-gov't rallies in Syria's East Ghouta