Political responses to crises are often tardy and embarrassingly fad-driven, as with the current global outcry over the image of a three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on the Turkish shore. He was hardly the first innocent victim of this century's most brutal war. Where has the world been for the past 54 months? Indeed, the unfolding humanitarian crisis was an entirely foreseeable consequence of President Barack Obama's spineless Syria policy, and the Western European leaders who followed it. So, despite Obama's efforts to anesthetize the public, it is understandable if some collective shame for Western failures - driven by tragic images that went viral - has prompted Europe suddenly to announce that it will accept more refugees from the war-torn Middle East.
But how did the West become more responsible for the Middle East refugee crisis than the wealthiest Middle East states (whose funding of Islamist rebels helped to create that crisis)? According to news reports and think tanks, Arab Gulf donors have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Syria in recent years, including to Islamic State and other groups.
Even if Gulf states weren't at all responsible for aggravating the Syrian refugee crisis by strengthening IS, their wealth, proximity and cultural/religious affinities with the refugees should still make these countries far more responsible than Europe is for their welfare. The vast majority of refugees are Muslim Arabs. They therefore share a common language, religion, culture and ethnicity with the wealthy Gulf countries that have shunned them for reasons of national security (as if the West didn't have such concerns). Any dialect or denominational differences Middle East refugees may have with Gulf states are nothing compared to the cultural, linguistic, ethnic and religious differences between most Middle East refugees and the European countries they hope to enter.
Even more absurd, Gulf countries are bringing in foreign laborers to build up their vast, oil-rich territories. Putting aside their horrific exploitation of those workers (which is a scandal all of its own, even if campus protests, international boycotts and UN resolutions never mention it), why aren't they instead accepting Middle East refugees who would happily accept the work that imported labor is now doing? Similarly, why have no Gulf countries granted Palestinian refugees citizenship if they so readily advocate for them at the UN out of purported concern for their welfare? The cynical hypocrisy is staggering.
By contrast, tiny Israel absorbed nearly a million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa who were similarly made homeless when, in the 1940s and 1950s, their survival meant fleeing the Muslim- majority states where they had lived for millennia.
Israel has also accepted plenty of non-Jewish refugees, from the Vietnamese "boat people" in the late 1970s to African refugees and migrants in recent years. Israel has provided humanitarian medical assistance to countless Syrians and now Israel's deputy minister of regional affairs Israel (an Arab Druse), has joined the leader of the political opposition in urging Israel to accept Syrian refugees, despite the demographic and strategic risks of doing so.
Yet Europe now tries to hurt Israel's economy by stigmatizing goods from the West Bank, with no similar economic campaigns against any of the Gulf countries, whose human rights records are exponentially worse on every issue (freedom of speech, women's rights, religious freedom, minority rights, gay rights, treatment of guest workers, helping refugees, etc.).
Such double standards will undoubtedly worsen as Europe becomes increasingly Muslim - a trend that will only intensify with the current refugee crisis. But appeasement hasn't kept Europe safe from Islamist attacks, as evidenced by the 2004 Madrid bombings, the 2005 London attacks, the 2014 Belgium attack and this year's attacks in Paris (to name just a few).
