Subject:
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Re: Babies who threaten to topple Israel?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:48:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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586 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Harro de Jong wrote:
> > > All of this seems to be par for the course for the region. If you're
> > > going to criticise the Israelis, why not apply the same standards to
> > > the entire Middle East?
> >
> > One reason is that the US provides massive funding and military support
> > for Israel but not for other Middle Eastern nations.
>
> So those other Middle Eastern nations can do whatever they want, because
> they're not on Uncle Sam's payroll?
That's not what I'm saying at all. In fact, in my post:
http://news.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=23112
I asserted quite the opposite:
> > To be sure, none of these reasons justifies bloodshed by either side, but
> > these and many other reasons may contribute to the sense that Israel is held
> > to a standard diffferent from that applied to its neighbors in the region.
But Israel, as the coddled foster child of the mighty US, enjoys a privilege of
protection that its neighbors do not enjoy. Therefore, Israel has demonstrated
that it, like its foster parent, has no qualms about unilateral action for its
own self-asserted self-protection.
> > Additionally,
> > Israel is after all, the only nation in the region confirmed to possess
> > nuclear weapons, but the US hasn't undertaken any pre-emptive invasions
> > of Israel.
>
> Israel is also the only democracy in the region...
Is it? Tell me about the equality of rights afforded to Palestinians living in
Israel, or to those Palestinians forced off of their land without compensation.
> > Another reason is that when the Israeli military kills
> > Palestinian civilians, it's considered acceptable casualties of
> > legitimate, self-protecting action, but when Palestinian bombers kill
> > Israeli civilians, it's called terrorism.
>
> Surely you see the difference between targeting criminals/terrorists, and
> random killings?
Well, let's break it down further. Suppose Israel launches rockets at a housing
complex to kill a member of Hamas and, incidentally, kills Palestinian civilians
in the process. Now suppose that a Palestinian wears a bomb to a cafe in an
effort to kill an Israeli soldier or soldiers dining there and, incidentally,
kills Israeli civilians in the process. How do these two situations differ,
really?
I decry the initiation of violence from either side in the conflict, and purely
retaliatory violence is morally indefensible, especially when that retaliation
is undertaken by the militarily stronger party.
> > A related reason is that,
> > when Israeli civilians are killed, it makes headlines in the US and UK,
> > but when Palestinian civilians are killed, they barely qualify for a
> > footnote.
>
> In the same way that citizens of the Arab nations getting killed by their
> own government (for crimes like voicing an opinion, or failing to comply to
> medieval Sharia laws, or being a member of the wrong tribe) hardly gets any
> attention, let alone results in that government being put under pressure by
> the rest of the world?
That's an exaggeration, of course. There are numerous individual cases of
extreme application of Sharia (such as the recent move to stone a woman to death
for adultery) that are well-known in the media and deplored by around the world.
Additionally, the culturally enshrined repression of certain states in the
region is condemned by human rights organizations worldwide, even if the morally
ambiguous United States chooses to trade with those states. Israel, while we're
at it, maintains tight oppression of Palestinians. Is some kind of intervention
warranted in that case?
> > To be sure, none of these reasons justifies bloodshed by either side,
> > but these and many other reasons may contribute to the sense that Israel
> > is held to a standard diffferent from that applied to its neighbors in
> > the region.
>
> I agree that there's a double standard. But in many respects, it's Israel
> that's being judged more harshly than the Arab nations.
Not in the US, and not really in the UK, as far as I'm aware. If Israel is
indeed held to a higher standard, it's largely because it enjoys the protection
of a much stronger nation.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Babies who threaten to topple Israel?
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| orrex@excite.com (Dave Schuler) wrote in <HrHx8H.1zHJ@lugnet.com>: (...) So those other Middle Eastern nations can do whatever they want, because they're not on Uncle Sam's payroll? (...) Israel is also the only democracy in the region... (...) (...) (20 years ago, 15-Jan-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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