Double Standards

You might recall that when Israel bombed Hamas a couple of years ago and inadvertently killed civilians, many of whom were being used as human shields by Hamas, the world rose up in high moral dudgeon to condemn Israeli "savagery." Israel almost became an international pariah for, in the course of trying to preserve its existence, killing Palestinian Arabs who were trying, and in many cases succeeding, to kill them. Well, Arabs are presently being killed in quantity all across the Middle East today, but the world doesn't seem to be much interested. When Arabs kill Arabs the world yawns. It's only when Israelis kills Arabs that the juices of moral indignation get to flowing.

Consider, for example some facts revealed in this article at Strategy Page and ask yourself how many editorials you've seen at the New York Times about them. Then ask yourself how many editorials you would've read had the death dealers been Israelis:

Saudi Arabia has its lobbyists in the West working overtime to deal with accusations that the Saudi led Arab coalition air attacks in Yemen have killed more civilians (more than 2,000) this year than Israel did during their 2014 war in Gaza with Hamas. That conflict saw 2,100 Palestinians killed and about two-thirds of them were civilians. The Palestinians, and their Arab allies in the UN, want Israel prosecuted for war crimes because of this. There is no such clamor for the Saudis to be similarly prosecuted.

The reality is that the situation is much worse than that. Far more Palestinians are killed by other Palestinians (and other Arabs) than by Israelis. For example nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Syrian Civil War since 2011. Hundreds were tortured to death and more than that were executed, often in gruesome ways, for being on the wrong side or for “blasphemy”. In Gaza hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in factional fighting or executed by Hamas for various offenses (like disagreeing with Hamas rule.) In the last half century far more Palestinians have been killed by Arabs than by Israelis.

The current situation becomes more embarrassing when you look at the reaction of Arabs and their supporters in the West to all this. The Palestinian accusations, and willful ignorance of Palestinians killed by Arabs has been increasingly supported in the West, especially among leftist political groups, who automatically agree with the Palestinians.

This justifies accusations that Israel must be doing something wrong. Israel points out that their Arab and Western critics would, and do, respond as Israel does when attacked by nearby terrorists, but that fact is ignored. Well, not completely. Many Arabs, especially Arab diplomats who know a lot about Israel and the Palestinians privately agree with the Israelis. But to openly point out the reality of the situation in the Moslem world will get you death threats, or worse. In the West it’s safer to point out the obvious although in leftist political circles the pro-Palestinian supporters can be loud and even a little violent at times. In Europe this has led to more tolerance of anti-Semitic violence and more European Jews moving to Israel (and elsewhere).

This situation can only get worse as Europe (and the U.S.) absorbs more and more Syrian refugees. Eventually a point is going to be reached where these immigrant Muslim populations have the political clout to affect the policy of their governments toward Israel and Israel will then find itself increasingly isolated in the world. Add to the mix a nuclear Iran and the current administration's surly antagonisms toward Israel, and the future of this tiny outpost of freedom and democracy in the midst of millions of hostile people ruled by tyrants and autocrats looks very bleak.