You would think some of the "human rights activists" would care about it, wouldn't you?
If you look at the reports filed by AI, Freedom House, etc., you'll see plenty of criticism directed at the nastier African regimes. The problem, of course, is what to do about it: we have little or no leverage in many of these places, and military intervention is not realistically going to be considered unless some vital American interest is at stake, or, according to the new rules, unless our leaders think it politically advantageous to beat on someone in public to show how tough they are.
My post was not about the Israel/Palestine conflict, though you seem to have construed it that way. In any event, though, the myth of the poor abused Israelis standing alone against a world with an abysmal double standard is such utter bullshit that it scarcely deserves a response.
Look at the very existence of Israel. What other group could have persuaded the greatest power of the day to support the forced resurrection of a political entity that hadn't existed for close to 2000 years? What other group could have persuaded the rest of the world to accept such an astonishing and unprecedented act of favoritism? If it were not for the privileged position the Jews occupy in Christian mythology, the entire project would not have received the slightest attention. For any other dispossessed group, this sort of effort would have about as much chance of success as an attempt to reunite Gondwanaland. Ask the Kurds, or the native Americans.
Since Israel came into existence, it has received more external assistance, per capita, than any other nation on the face of the earth. (If you want to compare aid figures, remember that you have to include private assistance, and calculate on a per capita basis.) The Israeli "economic miracle" is a farce: that pseudo-socialist economy would have collapsed decades ago without external assistance. Israel's military superiority is largely provided at the expense of the US taxpayer.
What other nation could get away with attacking a US Navy vessel (killing 34 and wounding 172) without any significant repercussions? Compare the response to that attack with the response to the Tonkin Gulf incident, and tell me about double standards. Or you might compare the world's response to Israel's well-known nuke arsenal with the response to Saddam's entirely hypothetical one. Proliferation is ok for Israelis. They're special.
The criticism of Israel comes from a noisy but impotent fringe element. There has never been a serious attempt to cut the Israeli aid budget, let alone bring any meaningful sanction against the country. Support for Israel is simply a given in the US, and when you look at deeds instead of words, the pro-Palestinian sentiment elsewhere is really not very meaningful Israel remains one of the world's most privileged nations.
The Israelis get a bit of grief for being perfect assholes - perhaps not quite as perfect as their enemies, but that's a hard standard to live up to - but when the rubber hits the road and you count the dollars, they have unqualified support of the US and guaranteed access to the world's deepest pocketbook. That means a lot more than a bunch of yapping. Is there really a difference between blowing people up with a bomb in a car and blowing them up with a bomb dropped from an airplane? All I see over there is terrorists fighting terrorists. If you judge the double standard by actions, not words, the Israelis come out on the winning side by a long shot.
This pretence that Israel alone gets subsidized is really tiresome.
I didn't say any such thing. I simply drew a general line of distinction between the type of behaviour we are willing to tolerate - meaning the type that would justify military intervention - and the type that we are willing to subsidize. I was not addressing the Israel/Palestine situation, I was addressing your contention that there is some widespread tendency to judge the West by a harsher standard than that applied to the rest of the world, a contention that you have failed to demonstrate.
Think for a minute: if India decided to invade Pakistan on grounds as scanty as those we used to justify war on Iraq, would we support them? Of course we wouldn't. Preemptive war, like WMD, is a right we reserve only for ourselves and for other members of our club.
That's a double standard. |
