Visiting the Dalai Lama for her latest documentary, “Buddha’s Warriors,” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour casually compares Tibetan and Palestinian efforts for statehood:
Our visit coincided with the events that commemorate each March 10, the date the Dalai Lama fled Tibet on horseback in 1959. He managed to evade the Chinese Communist forces, disguised as a soldier and escaping at night. The somber remembrance is a little like what the Palestinians do every year. They call it al-Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which marks 1948 when they lost much of their land as the state of Israel was founded.
Does Amanpour’s statement suggest an equivalence between the Tibetan and Palestinian movements? Here are four reasons such a comparison breaks down.
1) Tibetans don’t seek China’s destruction, or threaten Western interests.
2) Tibetans haven’t launched a campaign of suicide bombings, rockets, or kidnappings.
3) The Tibetan independence movement is neither allied nor co-opted by foreign outsiders like Iran, Al-Qaida, Syria, Hezbollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood.
4) Thanks to China’s press restrictions, Tibet doesn’t even get a fraction of the media coverage the Palestinians get.
