Monday, June 7, 2010

On the Israel backlash

A few interesting reads on Israel and Turkey:
 
and by the way, because everyone is bending over backwards to try and avoid saying this, there IS something deceptively anti-Semitic in Israel's criticism. Why is Israel the target of everyone's opprobrium when by any reasonable metric, they are significantly better than a) any of their neighbors and b) most of the world from a humanitarian perspective? Is this a "departure from expectations" thing - where you only criticize people when they act worse than you expect, and because Israel is a democracy and everywhere else there is a theocracy we ignore the ridiculous humanitarian problems elsewhere? Seriously, let's not forget that the only two countries in history to ever notify residents before attacks are Israel and the US, because they don't want to kill civilians. Helen Thomas' recent remarks are a decent highlight - perhaps people oppose Israel, but most of their solutions involve Jews as well as Israelis, because the media of that entire region equates the two and thus any coexistence necessarily involves Judaism. The UN hasn't listed Israel as the only state of nuclear concern - instead of North Korea or Iran - for reasons that are "opposed to Israel's actions but not to Judaism at all!".
 

No comments:

Post a Comment