Gustavo Faverón Patriau is a Peruvian academic and literary critic who teaches in the United States. His blog mainly focuses on literature and culture. We’ve commented on it here once before.

His latest post concerns itself with Egypt’s role on Gaza and I translate almost all of it below.

Among the pile of falsehoods doing the rounds with regard to the conflict in Gaza, one that particularly interests me is the notion that Israel is maintaining a blockade that has doomed the Palestinians to absolute misery, overcrowding and desperation.

As if Gaza only had a border with Israel or as if Israel was threatening to implement economic sanctions against anyone who wanted to trade with the Palestinians. As if Gaza had no frontier with Egypt, an Arab nation that nobody accuses of being involved in any kind of blockade.

It’s true that Israel has closed its borders with Gaza, a decision that shouldn’t cause any surprise when one considers the 3200 missiles fired from it in 2008, as well as the suicide attacks. This closing of borders is described as a blockade in spite of the fact that Israel has continued to allow humanitarian aid into the territory […]

What’s seldom mentioned though, is that Egypt - an Arab country which has fought many wars against Israel - has also closed its borders to Palestinians and refuses to permit them entry into its territory, not even in cases of humanitarian or political necessity, not even in times of war, not even during the last three weeks.

Egypt has also permitted the construction of hundreds of tunnels leading into its territory from Gaza, tunnels which have been used for the smuggling of the weapons and explosives which Hamas uses for its terrorist attacks. What that means is that Egypt collaborates with the violent Palestinians and contributes to those who want to escape from the conflict being locked up in Gaza.

Where are the protests against Egypt? Or is the humanitarian impulse reserved exclusively (let’s not ask ourselves why) for use in protests against Israel?

The answer to Faverón Patriau’s question centers on the fact that the sufferings of the Palestinians are only interesting to a great many people if they happen to be inflicted by Israelis. Sufferings inflicted by their Arab brethren simply don’t get bien pensant opinion excited.

In the specific case of Egypt, the answer is a little more complex. Applying pressure to Egypt to make it behave better towards the Palestinians might be seen as an admission that parties other than Israel had some responsibilities towards them and, as we all know, the point of the game is not to help Palestinians, it’s to attack Israel.