Today’s musing minute. Longer than usual.
What about the application of double standards when judging
Israel?
I have generally shied away from arguments that rely on the
responds, “yes, but what about X” where X is as guilty, or more guilty than Y,
the target of the argument. “What aboutism” is correctly, in my view, thought
to be a weak and ineffective, illegitimate, evasive form of argument.
However, when it comes to current criticisms of Israel,
Israeli policy, I find myself unable to avoid the impression that Israel is
being singled out for criticism in a biased indefensible way. And this,
unavoidably, pushes one to think, “what about X?”, where X is often the
antagonist against whom Israel is acting, or, at least, some other party in a
similar situation. In short, blatant double standards.
I need to be clear that Israel’s actions should never be
excused solely for the fact that it is being judged more severely than even
worse actors. Valid criticisms should stand, but it is also appropriate to call
the critic to account for leveling criticisms in a selectively biased way. And
I am speaking not of a hypothetical or rare instance of this. In fact,
instances of this double standard are all to common, coupled with deliberate or
irresponsible distortion or fabrications of information, ubiquitous across
social media. So, let me be more specific.
The application in the public discourse of double standards
to Israeli matters was already very common, a standard among the woke,
anti-western social-justice warriors, for whom economic success means
exploitation and its absence means the victim of that exploitation. These are
the voluble useful idiots serving every antagonistic culture, most notably,
radical Islam. For them the world is divided into exploiters and victims, and
Capitalism is by definition an exploiter, a manifestation of colonialist imperialism.
Victims can never be condemned for violence and brutality because they are,
after all, the hapless desperate products of historical exploitation simply
reacting to decades of trauma. What else can you expect?
So, this was already common prior to October 7, 2023, the
day Hamas launched a well-funded, coordinated attack on southern Israel, the
single most deadly attack on Israel ever, and the single most one-day massacre
of Jews since the Holocaust. It was more than a massacre, it was a frenzy of
rape, butchery, infanticide, and unspeakable brutality, that was celebrated by
the assailants wearing bodycams to record and transmit their “achievements”. To
imagine anything more diabolical is impossible. The Nazis set the standard for
depravity, and since then I have always thought it inappropriate to evoke the
term “Nazi” for egregious, but lesser horrors. But, October 7 actually revealed
monsters even worse than the Nazis. As has been much noted in this connection, the
Nazis tried to hide their sins, and Germans have tried hard to atone for the
sins of their countrymen. But, these Hamas barbarians are exceedingly proud of
what they did, as are their many supporters. They are worse than Nazis.
So, one might have expected, as I and everyone I know did,
to witness a wave of sympathy and severe condemnation on behalf of the victims.
Shock!! In fact, while some did indeed react immediately and without
equivocation, very many did not (surprisingly, one exception was the squad
member Illan Omar, who seemed immediately to realize, whatever reprehensible
views she might have in general, there was no alternative for anyone seeking
moral credibility but to unambiguously go on record as soundly condemning this.
Of course, it has not changed her general outlook on Israel and the west in
general.) But, for the rest, the pattern was one of complete silence or muted
delayed response, and, even the odd excuse and justification. I need not quote
chapter and verse. It has been widely documented just how many so-called
“liberal” people and organizations remain silent to this day, how many have
dragged their feet to produce pathetic half-hearted expressions of sympathy and
muted condemnation. So much is well known.
In the time since Oct. 7, however, matters have become much
worse. Astoundingly, Oct. 7 has been used as permission for the greatest proliferation
of Jew-hatred (piled on top of generalized anti-Israel sentiment) since before
WWII – manifesting not only in the rise in the number of events, but also their
severity, all over the world, and notably in America. And, it seems clear that
this has fed into the palpable media bias to which I referred earlier. This is
easier said than proven. I will, however, offer a few suggestions for
evaluating criticisms of Israel.
Immediately after Oct. 7, I set for myself a litmus test for
evaluating any analysis or argument about the situation. When talking to
someone about it, I first want to establish their unequivocal condemnation of
Oct. 7. I want to hear that, regardless of any views as to the merits of each
side of the argument about Israeli exploitation, occupation, etc. NOTHING can
excuse Hamas’s actions of Oct. 7. If someone cannot admit that much, I pretty
much have nothing to say to them. So, on occasion, when I have seen
self-righteous complaining about Israeli aggression, specific acts of
aggression, I have asked them if they were equally outraged about Oct. 7 and,
if so, did they take to social media to say so, or about any other aggression
against Israel. Perhaps not surprisingly, I have encountered indignant outrage
that I should even bring this up. When I push they tell me of course they
condemn Oct. 7. And then I ask, where and when did you condemn it? No reply.
Another suggestion is the critic using polemic indefensible
language. Whatever Israel did in retaliation to Oct. 7, or, for that matter, is
doing now in Lebanon to try to neutralize a massive military force put there
for the single goal of destroying Israel and killing as many jews as possible,
it is not “genocide”. The word has a very specific meaning, one that originates
with the Holocaust whose aim was the obliteration of the Jewish people.
Intention matters. If Israel intended a genocide against the people of Gaza and
Southern Lebanon it would flatten them in a matter of days. Was the bombing of
Dresden in WWII a genocide? Whatever one thinks about it as an action of
horrifically immoral proportions, it was not a genocide. It was not aimed at
obliterating the German population. And the casualties were a huge order of
magnitude greater than those in Gaza and Lebanon. In fact the casualties in
Gaza and Lebanon pale in comparison to ongoing events in the Sudan, in Nigeria,
and other places. And, incidentally, it is undeniable that Israeli armed forces
go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, while Hamas goes to equal
lengths to use civilians as human shields. There is plenty of independent
evidence attesting to this. How should one then interpret the lie that Israel
deliberately targets civilians?
The use of the word “genocide” is a dead giveaway. It is not
only a grossly inaccurate use of the word, in a context that is fraught with
deliberate misinformation, it is actually a perverse attempt to minimize the
Holocaust. Anytime anyone uses the terms Nazi or genocide in connection
with Israeli action, make no mistake, this is a not-so-subtle attempt to taint
the very victims of a real Holocaust with the guilt born by those who
perpetrated the Holocaust. “You Jews, are such self-righteous victims, but now
look you are acting like Nazi genociders”. So, hearing anti-Israel criticism I
would look for those clues.
Finally, I am surprised to hear seemingly fair-minded people
strike a sort of moral-equivalence pose, as if what we have here, are two
equally guilty or innocent parties at loggerheads over legitimate issues. This
is ridiculous and it is very disturbing. It indicates an abysmal ignorance of
the history, the 78 years of Israeli history and all the history leading up to
1948, and/or a deliberate bias against Israel because it is in its character
part of the west, while its Muslim antagonists are not – a clear case of
exploiter and victims by nature of their identities regardless of their
actions. Israel is an imperfect society, an imperfect state. But, it has
adopted and mostly upholds the rule of law for all its citizens regardless of
race or religion. It also has a free and critical press and an armed force that
is frequently held to account. There is quite simply no single state in the
middle east that is even close to resembling that. It is quite obvious that
when comparing news items originating from Israel on the one hand and from
Hamas, Al Jazeera, Iran, … on the other, one is not dealing with sources that
are equally likely to be true, that are equally trustworthy. I have heard it
suggested that both sides have an incentive to distort the news to the same
extent. But this is not true. Israel has checks and balances that the others do
not. One should apply much greater skepticism to those.
It behooves any fair-minded thinker to know all this, even
while justifiably criticizing Israel, and to strive to counter the insidious
influences that pervade this discourse.
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