That's not because we don't want to judge Africans, it's because we just don't give a damn what goes on down there.
You would think some of the "human rights activists" would care about it, wouldn't you? Has HRW been big on slavery in the Sudan lately?
Examples, please. Specific ones.
An easy, obvious, ongoing one: the immense double standard applied to the Israeli-Pal conflict. The Israelis continually get more grief for holding up an ambulance at a checkpoint than the Pals get for stuffing one with explosives and using it as a bomb. The Israelis get more grief for accidently killing a civilain (or somebody that the Palestinians said was a civilian) than the Palestinians do for blowing up a bus full of civilians. The Israelis get more grief for building a fence to stop suicide bombers than the Pals do for sending them - and for inculcating their young with a death cult so that according to polls, 70 - 80% of Palestinian children now aspire to shahada (martyrdom).
There's a key distinction in this question that's often overlooked. It's the difference between behaviour we are willing to tolerate and behaviour we are willing to subsidize
We subsidize lots of this behavior, Steven. This pretence that Israel alone gets subsidized is really tiresome. Jordan and Egypt together get more than Israel; has anybody looked at their human rights abuses lately? You really think any objective report would say that Israel is worse on human rights than Egypt, or treats its minorities worse than the Egyptians do the Coptic Christians? Has anybody in the "human rights" communities even checked it out lately?
Of course, to be objective, any report would need access to Egypt, and press access is rather limited in those quarters, opposed to Jerusalem, which if you'll notice is where every world news organization keeps its Mideast headquarters.
When Arabs kill each other, there's no story. Why may be a matter for speculation. But that there's no story is simply a matter of observation. Cf. the amount of ink spilled over Israeli-Pal (order of 5000 casualties) compared to Algeria (order of 100,000 casulaties) in the last ten years. |
