When confronted with things like the 9/11 conspiracy theories frequently floated in Palestinian media, State Department officials are apt to respond with condescending remarks like “that’s just how Palestinians talk,” writes Stephen Flatow. The same attitude is on display in a particularly bizarre and incendiary email, mainly proposing U.S. encouragement of anti-Israel incitement, that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received from Thomas Pickering, a retired senior State Department official who was serving as her quasi-official adviser:
[Pickering] proposed that the U.S. should persuade NGOs to stir up Palestinian demonstrations against Israel, in order to pressure the Israelis to make more concessions. . . .
The racism part comes in with Pickering’s explanation as to why he prefers that the protesters be women. If Palestinian men take part, he explained, they might turn violent, . . . which would spoil Pickering’s whole plan of garnering world sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
Why was he so sure that Palestinian men would use violence? “On the Palestinian side, the male culture is to use force,” he wrote. . . .
Imagine if an Israeli official or an American Jewish leader asserted that Palestinian culture is inherently violent. Surely he would be denounced as a racist, ostracized from polite society, and forced to apologize publicly.
Read more on Algemeiner: http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/01/27/the-state-departments-anti-palestinian-racism/