Why do we care about Gaza but not our Tuba victims?

It's been almost a week since the Tuba garments workers have gone on an indefinite hunger strike but it doesn't seem to have bothered us at all. We are not silent about global events and legitimate concern about Gaza is high but while we express outrage at such events we seem to be silent about matters happening to our own people.

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There are literally hundreds of appeals sent to all of us via Facebook by people insisting that we express support for the Palestinians and those in Gaza. But I have not a single appeal in my inbox for the Tuba garments strike where our own citizens are on a strike without any headway in sight.  I would have been happy with just one appeal or maybe a few posts on the issue but while our media world explodes with anger at what is happening in distant Palestine, we are quite silent at what is happening in our own backyard. All injustices are not the same and some are more significant than others. Is that it? Gaza protest yes but why nothing on what happens on our soil ?

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The horror of Gaza is open for the world to see and condemnation is universal except by the West. The only people not actively protesting are the Arabs although it's happening in their own backyard. What is it that makes Arabs our brothers is our ability to ignore what is happening next to us while getting disturbed by events that don't really affect us. We can be outraged but only when it's not of our own making and we are not responsible for it. The Arab world has basically abandoned the Palestinians and that is why they don't want to think about them while we have done the same with the RMG workers and don't want to know what is happening to them. In our denial, the Arabs and the Bangladeshis have become brothers.

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Palestine is a product of global injustice that was supported by the superpowers. After a long period of refuge-hood, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in the mid 60s. They caught global attention through a series of spectacular acts which the West dubbed "terrorist' and the PLO supporters didn't. Subsequently, in 1967, the Arab countries jointly attacked Israel in which they were completely routed.  Gamal Abdul Naser, the pan-Arab nationalist leader never recovered from the humiliation and soon died. His lieutenant Anwar Sadat took over and in 1973 again launched another war and was humiliated again. It was obvious that the entire Arab military was unable to fight Israel. So Sadat saw this and entered a US sponsored "peace deal' which recognised Israel and ended support to the Palestinian cause. After two defeats, the Arabs were convinced that Israel was beyond their ability to defeat and once their collective ego was deflated they let the Palestinians be their punching bag. It's the Arabs who have let down the Palestinian status.

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The Jordanians first attacked the Palestinians who not only expelled them from their territory but killed many of them. After that, many of them took refuge in Lebanon but they were expelled from there as well. So in a sequence Israel, Jordan and Lebanon have all expelled Palestinians. They don't have an ally and if Israel is an enemy the Arabs are no less an enemy for  them.

But if Palestinians have to face the brunt of Israeli brutality, the Arab courage is deeply suspect and has become the most glorified spent force in the world in refusing to face Israel. The PLO, undermined by factionalism, extremism and lack of vision, have also failed to deliver the goods allowing a situation to grow which causes constant sapping of their cause. Although they once had a chance to get a much better deal on the two state formula, they ignored that, as stated by the Palestinian scholar Edward Said. So in the end, defeat after defeat has whittled away at their movement till they have no one to turn to and are objects of global pity and rage. PLO lost so much credibility that they were replaced in Gaza by Hamas, and the Islamist force created by Israel to counter the PLO in which they were successful. It's a sad story of incompetent leadership, betrayal by their allies and the impossibility today of finding a meaningful solution when Israel knows it's unstoppable. No number of Facebook posts and appeals can make a difference.

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But what stops us from caring about the hunger striking Tuba garments workers and displaying a show of solidarity and putting pressure on the authorities? While Dhaka was crazy this Eid with Pakhi dress and other forms of absurd spending, people had not been paid for months at Tuba garments. Hardly anyone bothered about them except the Communist Party of Bangladesh but then they don't matter. So essentially, we chose to ignore them and focus on a distant conflict which makes our life safe for us and makes us feel good.

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Equally absurd has been the fact that we don't ever show our outrage when it comes to attacks on our own people. We are silent when Hindu, Buddhist, Bihari  and Adivasi homes and temples are attacked. Nobody takes to making mass appeals and nobody takes to the streets. As if our conscience is moved only by foreign conflicts and injustice but when it comes to our own, we have no way of saying we need to protest. Perhaps we don't because we know in some ways for many, there is complicity to the atrocities that happen in our own land.

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Killings in Gaza must stop. While everyone protests what is happening there, our blindness to the events that happen amidst us and often is caused by us should also get attention. By refusing to accept what we do is wrong,  or by ignoring  them, we became a party to the crime of selective conscience.

That makes our Gaza protests far less legitimate too.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist, activist and writer.