A Muslim faith leader calls for stronger moral leadership in the Middle East?

Shamelessly and I think unironically posted in the Economist (arch). It is the usual lazy unthinking tripe that such people can spew out by the yard, largely recycled from other people's tripe.

What is actually needed in the Middle East, and arguably lots of other places as well, is for most people to stop caring so much about other people's problems¹. I've kinda said this already so I suppose I should expand a little. Our Writer writes We need moral leadership from religious figures on all sides: a determination to condemn not just the violence against “our own”, but also by those who claim to act on our behalf and this isn't true; what instead all these people should do is Fuck Off and remove the beams from their own eyes. The Middle East is notable for dictatorships and corruption (errm, with at least one obvious exception), expecting it to provide moral leadership is absurd.

In particular the idea that <people of religion X> should care deeply about <other people of religion X> is stupid tribalism that the world would be better without. But alas that kind of idea is not one that a "faith leader" is going to put forward. Even phrasing it as "messages which explicitly seek to acknowledge the “other”" is wrong. He is in favour of "diplomacy of the heart" but this is dumb; it is what leads to the "ambassador recalls, trade suspensions" which he condems; what is actually needed is heads, not hearts.

The poster children for this nonsense are the Houthi clowns, who despite being dirt poor and indeed only propped up by aid, nonetheless use their valuable resources to fire missiles into the sea. The West is, tiredly, knocking them back a bit; eventually we will get bored and knock them back further.

Speaking of corruption, South Africa comes to mind, and the recent ICJ case; wherein I find "The Court considers that, with regard to the situation described above, Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular: (a) killing members of the group;...". This is obvious nonesense too; Isreal, as everyone agrees, will inevitably kill some civilians if operations continue; the only way to satisfy this would be to stop, which the court didn't order. If we read the judgement less literally to only mean "act in accordance with the convention" then that's just meaningless, because that obligation already exists.

Aid to Gaza and beyond at risk of collapse due to funding cuts, says UNRWA

Sez the Graun. And you'll find simimilar elsewhere no doubt. What's entirely missing is a thought that they are trying very hard to avoid thinking, and so blinkered are they that they have succeeded. The thought is "hmm, I wonder, just possibly, are there any other nations other than the West, just possibly some geographically close, who might have large amounts of dosh sloshing around that they could give? Nations that have, nominally at least, expressed great concern for the plight of the Palestinians". Another thought that is not being thought: though much of this goes to buy aid, much of it goes to salaries. But the Gazans receiving those salaries don't have a lot of other career options at the moment, so may as well continue working for nowt, or for promises - the Graun expresses concern about schoolteaching, for example.

Notes

1. You may perhaps think that I'm being hypocritical here. Not so! While I'm "happy" to spectate, I don't-if-I'm-honest really care much about these people's problems.

Refs

* Hamas attack: US pauses UNRWA funding over claims of staff involvement.

* "We could seat her on the block," I told the alcalde. I could not resist adding, "It's more suited to that anyway."