<What is "objectively"?> Objectivity would require stepping back from the intense hatred -- and that cuts both ways
You are dodging the question. My post to you wasn't about the difficulties of the Israeli/Arab situation - but about the radically different scales of judgement the whole world uses when it comes to Israel. It's not what you do, but who you are in the world's eyes. The different handling of the very similar events at Jenin vs Nahr el Bared makes an illustrative point. It would be useful if you could acknowledge it.
When it comes to judging Israeli actions, the world is not objective.
There are so many things about Israel's case that are unique to the situation, found nowhere else. A country that is 60 years old, prospering and succesful, that its neighbors simply refuse to acknowledge, or put such a high price on simple acknowlegement that it might be national suicide to take them.
Can you think of another example anywhere? Think of absolute basketcase countries - Congo, Zimbabwe. Who refuses to acknowledge them? Who puts down huge prices to simply recognize they exist? Isn't recognition a given for everybody else?
Ditto for a refugee population that has its own special UN agency whose mission is not to repatriate or resettle like all the other refugees in the world, but to feed and support generation after generation, keeping in "camps" refugees who never saw the place they are supposed to be refugees from, whose parents and grandparents never saw those places either. Can you think of another such example?
Yet with Israel everybody accepts this condition is normal, and if blame is to go around, Israel must take its share, "intense hatred" being what it is, yada yada. Well only one side's "intense hatred" created this situation, and it was set up not in hot blood but with cold calculation.
If your next reply is consistent with previous posts, you might say that Israel is relatively innocent and simply defending itself against an adversary that is incapable of a civilized relationship.
Didn't the Oslo Accords offer just that - the chance of a civilized relationship? How did Arafat respond to this chance, this rescue effort in effect (remember what the state of the PLO was in 1991)? Did he act like a statesman, or like Al Capone? You tell me. The only times when Israel got a reward for taking risks for peace was in the treaties with Egypt in 1979 (Egypt refused to take Gaza back at that point, btw) and with Jordan in 1994. The other attempts have been costly failures. Just compare the Israeli death rate in the decade after Oslo vs. the decade before - it was hugely higher after Oslo. Peace processes don't come free, especially when they don't result in peace. I can certainly agree that there are many times that Israel has been an obnoxious neighbor, but they have been given a whole lot to be obnoxious about.
I am glad to hear that you don't always blame Israel. But I think you think about things the way people on the left commonly do - they want to be fair-minded, and to them that means being indiscrimating. Because discrimination is bad, right? But discrimination, in its original sense of distinguishing one thing from another, is an essential part of judgement.
Discrimination means looking closely, examining the details, taking things into account, making judgements. Judgments that can potentially come to the conclusion that a bad situation is not always equally caused by both sides, or (what's even worse imo) to be blamed on the side that is considered "more powerful" or "more European" because only that side can be understood enough to be judged. And to make judgements about other non-European cultures is discrimination, which must be avoided.
This kind of thinking makes a mockery of the very notion of judgement. |
