The incident marks the quickest inducement of a yawn on the subject of Palestine since the Abraham Accords.
Riyadh, August 17 – A diplomatic official from one of several Persian Gulf countries to establish formal ties with Israel began to express lack of interest in the subject of Palestinian violence while you had only gotten halfway through your question this morning.
You, a journalist, were interviewing a representative of the United Arab Emirates – or maybe it was Oman, you can’t remember, the point is it was one of the countries that made peace with Israel a couple of years ago – and posed an inquiry to him about the situation in and around the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian terrorist groups have long prioritized their own armaments over Palestinian civilian welfare, and have weaponized Palestinian suffering in the propaganda war against Israel. However, before you got more than four words into the fifteen-word question, the representative let loose a yawn to indicate the profound irrelevance of the issue, as far as he and his country’s political leadership are concerned.
“Regarding Gaza, do you…” represented the limit of the official’s tolerance for the tired subject of a group that pursues its own victimhood as the chief vehicle for revenue, public works, education, and foreign policy, with tens of billions of dollars coming from Gulf countries over the last several decades, and those countries are fed up with the sinkhole that Palestine has become for donor dollars. His brain tuned out the remainder of your question, which witnesses report included the assumption that Israel targets children, that Palestinians have a right to destroy a country they don’t like, and that the world must continue to bankroll Palestinian refusal to take responsibility for the people’s future and invest in something other than incitement and corruption.
The incident marks the quickest inducement of a yawn on the subject of Palestine since the Abraham Accords went into effect at the end of President Donald Trump’s term. Prior to that occasion, erstwhile donors to the Palestinian cause from the Arab world typically managed to listen to questions on the Palestine issue all the way through without betraying the slightest hint of irritation or boredom. In March, a Saudi official yawned seven words into an interviewer’s question about Palestine, tying a record from the previous December. In June, the same Saudi official yawned only six words into a related question. That record stood until today’s interview.
Experts believe the four-word record will hold up for some time, primarily because sooner or later even journalists will realize Palestine carries far less importance than they assume.
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