"We often read about how Arabs are the victims of “double standards”. The term is often used in relation to the Palestinian cause and Israel, while the guilty party is the “West.” However, most of those expressing these grievances see the West as an enemy, and there is no need to blame or expose him, as he is exposed de facto by the mere fact that he is an enemy.
Here is a counterexample of how to understand of “double standards:”
When Milan Kundera died a few days ago, the Axis of Resistance shared their schadenfreude at the Czech writer’s passing. Of course, those who spoke of adoring his literature, for literary reasons, were far more numerous. This is cause for optimism about the increasing prevalence, in the Arab world, of interest in literature for its own sake and of the willingness to separate aesthetic works from political (which had not generally been prevalent).
Nonetheless, the Axis of Resistance’s polemicists, who only sparingly showed any interest in literature, directed their ire at Kundera for having received an Israeli award and speaking favorably about the Jewish state.
This is a genuine failing on the part of the late author. It is one that many Western artists and creators (although they have become fewer in number) who were not concerned by Israel’s occupation and settlements, nor the consequent suffering
inflicted on the Palestinians, can also be legitimately criticized for.
Nevertheless, basing one’s view of Kundera on his stance on Israel (albeit with one or two sentences admitting that his literature was alright) is not something to envy. Israel, Palestine, and their issues were a footnote in the Czech writer’s life and cultural experience. As for overblowing the significance of this marginal aspect, it narrows, once again, the angle from which we see the world and engage with it and its output, be it artistic or not. This applies to an infinite number of fields, from the natural sciences to the social sciences, and from sports to music and singing... It is a brilliant recipe for self-isolation.
In addition, this approach presents another example of pathologically pervasive politicization crushing societies that compensate for their unfamiliarity with politics with excessive politicization. Thus, great creative efforts are reduced to a minor political stance that amounts to one or two statements.
More significant, however, is the question of the effectiveness of this political critique of Kundera, or anyone else for that matter. Indeed, this condemnation would have received more attention and drawn more sympathy if it had been made by individuals and groups who had stood in solidarity with Kundera’s political cause. If this had been the case, there would have been an extremely sharp contrast between Arab support for Czechoslovakia as it was being crushed by Russian tanks in 1968 and Kundera’s repudiation of the Palestinian cause.
However, we all know that broad cultural currents in the Arab world voiced the opposite position, and the loudest among them were skeptical of opposition and opponents to communist regimes.
Turning to the cultural elites in particular, the Czechoslovak elite was perhaps one of the elites in Europe most vulnerable to suppression after World War II, exceeded in this suffering only by the Soviet elite.
Thousands of writers, artists, and filmmakers were dismissed and left without work. Forty thousand journalists were purged, and four hundred thousand members of the intelligentsia joined the manual labor force. Universities and theaters were suffocated. All of this precipitated a massive wave of migration to Western Europe and the United States. As is well known, 550 thousand people (3.5 percent of the population at that time) left Czechoslovakia between the establishment of the communist regime in 1948 and its fall in 1989, and just under half of them emigrated between 1968 and 1989.
In the summer of 1969, so-called “legal measures” aimed at “ensuring and safeguarding public order” were issued. In the fourth paragraph, the law asserts that: “Anyone actively obstructing the socialist regime can immediately be removed or dismissed from their position... Under such circumstances, students can be prohibited from completing their studies (...) and, with regard to professors at institutions of higher education and others, ministers with the authority to do so can dismiss them from their positions, or order their immediate expulsion, if they, contradicting their duties, teach youths anything that opposes the principles of the socialist society and its construction.”
With that, our opinion in the Arab world of Czechoslovakian intellectuals was no better than our opinion of the Czechoslovakian people.
Dissidents, be they in Czechoslovakia or other countries of the Soviet bloc, were portrayed as traitors, spies, and agents of imperialism. This meant that the overall Arab stance was even worse than that of most communist parties in Western Europe and their intellectuals, many of whom condemned the 1968 invasion, and how the communist regime dealt with the opposition.
In other words: there is nothing wrong with exempting ourselves from the obligation to show solidarity with the oppressed, but the Czechoslovakians should not be granted this privilege. Not applying the same high standards we expect of others to ourselves is a plain and simple example of double standards. We see ourselves as victims and monopolize victimhood, just like the Israelis who permit themselves to do anything and everything while depriving others of all their rights.
The reality is that the other side of this demand for receiving exceptional treatment is a plea for pity that those who monopolize victimhood sometimes receive.
