Such generosity! Such hypocrisy!
The sentimental hypocrisy over the toddlers’ death is matched in its repulsiveness only by the refusal of the western media in its coverage to accept responsibility for the West’s role in bringing about the immense tragedy.
The kindness of Europeans knows no limits. After the publication of the heart-rending pictures of the bodies of two Syrian toddlers washed upon on the beach at Bodrum in Turkey last week, the outpouring of compassion has been torrential and the tone of public debate on the migrant crisis has changed from protecting the continent against the ‘hordes’ to enfolding refugees in a warm embrace.
Ordinary people in Britain have taken to organizing their own aid efforts. Businessmen offered their storage depots to house migrant families. Lorry drivers collected tents and clothes to take to Calais and other detention centres. Bob Geldof offered to house a few families in his own homes. Villages and town councils launched campaigns to collect aid and find space for families. In Paris, thousands demonstrated on the streets, demanding that more refugees be taken in.
So heart-warming. Such good people. But it took the picture of the dead brothers to ignite normal feelings of compassion for human suffering. Stalin’s maxim that a million dead is a mere statistic while one death is a tragedy was never truer. Where were all these people when thousands of toddlers were dying in Syria? When homes, schools, streets, cities and a whole culture dating back to antiquity were being smashed by the rebel groups sponsored by their very own governments to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?
The sentimental hypocrisy over the toddlers’ death is matched in its repulsiveness only by the refusal of the western media, in its coverage of what is being called the largest movement of people since the Second World War, to accept responsibility for the west’s role in bringing about the immense tragedy.
The cause of the thousands of families fleeing to Europe by risking their lives is the hubris of the US and its western allies in toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq, invading Afghanistan, trying to toppling President Assad in Syria and overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.
The Syrian civil war can only be understood in the context of the US-led invasion of Iraq which destabilized the entire region. The anti-Assad rebels who were so generously supported by the west mutated quickly into Islamic State. The largest number of refugees coming to Europe is, therefore, from Syria.
The second largest is from Afghanistan which was also invaded and occupied by western forces. Here too, the attempt to take democracy and human rights to Afghanistan has led to instability and a humanitarian crisis.
As to Libya, the arrogant decision by western governments to remove Gaddafi created a power vacuum in Libya where warlords and gangs now fight for supremacy, turning Libya into the perfect launching paid for refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean.
Western actions have created the migrant problem which has thrown Europe into convulsions but you wouldn’t think so from reading the press in Britain. The narrative in some sections of the press has been (till the toddlers died) that the wretched refugees should stay at home and not threaten the lifestyles of affluent Europeans.
Having destroyed their homes and made them refugees through their stupid interventionist policies, western governments wilfully and brazenly refuse to accept that the migrant crisis is the consequence of their own actions.
No one makes this link between cause and effect. Debates in the papers and TV studios fail to mention it in all the voluble talk about possible solutions to the crisis. After the abominable way in which the western and American media handled the Iraq invasion, letting the Bush administration get away with systematic mendacity, nothing seems to have changed.
Outside the west, the truth is sometimes seen more clearly, even in places very remote from the conflict. To give just one example, Linton P. Gordon, a columnist, wrote in the Jamaica Observer of August 8: ‘Over the past year, a little under half a million migrants have made the trip, landing mainly in Greece and Italy. These migrants are from several countries in the Middle East and Africa. It is significant to note that nearly all the countries the migrants are from are countries whose governments have been invaded by western powers or countries whose governments have been undermined or destroyed by western powers’.
Where in the western media do you get such plain speaking about the causes and effects of the refugee crisis?
It is this refusal to take the blame that makes the recent spate of gestures of generosity from the public in Europe so irksome. You let your government make families homeless and then feel good about yourself when you offer them a blanket.
Sensing the change in public mood after the toddlers’ death, British prime minister David Cameron also changed his tone and offered to take in more Syrians. But he still refused to acknowledge that his government was responsible for their displacement. On the contrary, speaking in Parliament after the toddler pictures appeared, Mr Cameron said:
‘I would say the people responsible for these terrible scenes we see, the people most responsible are President Assad in Syria and the butchers of ISIL and the criminal gangs that are running this terrible trade in people.’
Everyone and their dog are responsible, only not him.
But why have European governments been so petty and shabby in the first place? They behave as though they are being hugely magnanimous by taking in a few hundred Syrian refugees when poor countries like Lebanon (a country of only about 5 million) have taken in 1.8 million Syrian refugees, Jordan is hosting more than half a million and Iraq has taken in nearly a quarter of a million, without any of the handwringing that has marked the European reaction. Moreover, compare these figures with the paltry 300 Syrian families that Britain has taken in since 2014.
Europe is in a paroxysm over the migrants landing on its shores as though its core identity is about to be destroyed by the Muslim hordes (though political correctness prevents most newspapers or TV channels from term it this way). Refugees are ‘swarming’ (Cameron himself used the phrase as though they were insects) into Britain or ‘marauding’ into Europe and threatening British living standards (UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on August 8).
But how earth-shattering is this influx? Canada’s Globe and Mail on September 2 quietly pointed out in an article on how Europe was mishandling the problem that Europe needed to put the problem in perspective.
‘In the first half of 2015, more than 300,000 migrants arrived in Europe. But that’s only about 0.1 per cent of the EU’s population. Canada takes in close to 1 per cent of its population each and every year, in the form of immigrants and refugees. Canada is not in crisis as a result. Quite the opposite’.
Fathoming the mysterious workings of the European mind is not easy. It knew that Islamic State was crucifying people, teaching children how to behead, pushing homosexuals off buildings, reducing cities to rubble and killing thousands of toddlers in bombed out homes in places like Homs but it was not until the picture of the toddlers’ bodies on the Turkish beach were published that compassion was triggered? As human motivation goes, it is bewildering.
Equally surprising is the change in public debate from mealy-mouthed proposals to tackle the crisis to the post-toddler explosion of generosity. France has announced it will take 24,000 new migrants. Its local councils are cheerfully planning welcome centres. In Rome, the Pope has urged Europe to welcome refugees. In Germany, local people have greeted trucks bringing refugees with cheers and clapping. In the Guardian (September 4), Giles Fraser invoked biblical injections, writing that the best answer to the question ‘how many can we take?’ was ‘every single last one’:
‘Let’s dig up the greenbelt, create new cities, turn our Downton Abbeys into flats and church halls into temporary dormitories, and reclaim all those empty penthouses being used as nothing more than investment vehicles’, he wrote, waxing lyrical.
Nice sentiment. A bit late. But nice. However, generosity is galling when it fails to acknowledge why the giver is being generous in the first place. Without accepting their governments’ disgraceful role in destroying countries and families, offers of help from people in Britain and the rest of Europe fall into the category of charity.
If they accepted responsibility (and guilt) for causing the misery of millions, then their help would fall into the category of justice. The least that refugees arriving in Europe with a plastic bag deserve is justice. Judging by the western media’s coverage of the crisis, though, it is charity they are going to get because that allows Europeans to feel good about themselves.