Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
Baby McNown wrote:
Saying that murdering Arabs is...ya know... murder is anti-Semitic. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
You know what's anti-Semitic? Looking at all the bad actors in the world and never saying shit about them but seizing upon Israel like a rabid dog at every turn. Or maybe it's something else. Who knows?
It's because the all the bad actors in the world don't have a readymade legion of English-speaking apologists ready to justify absolutely everything they do. As Daniel Davies put it:
Quote:
Consider, reader, a person who is a bit of a nut. His very favourite thing in the world is to have arguments on the internet about the politics and government systems countries he will never visit. There are two issues in the world which he regards as massive injustices which cry out to heaven for redress – the Russian occupation of Chechnya, and the military junta in Burma/Myanmar. He also, broadly, supports the cause of the Palestinians, but this really isn’t much of an issue for him; he’s much better informed and much more concerned about Chechnya and Burma.
So why, when the NSA takes a snoop over this fellow’s online output, does he seem to spend all of his time arguing about Israel and Palestine?
Basically it is for the same reason that this guy plays a lot of poker even though his favourite card game is bezique – because you can always get a game. If you don’t speak Russian or Burmese, then you can condemn the actions of the government of both countries, but it is going to be a short conversation, because very few people are going to argue the other side. If you have an opinion about the government of Yemen, you can excoriate them in the strongest possible terms and still be at the betting shop by the time it opens, but if you get into an argument about Israel/Palestine, you can say goodbye to the morning.
Furthermore, not only can you always “get a game” in the Israel/Palestine conflict, it’s a team sport. There any many injustices and abuses in this horrible old world, but not many of them will provide you with a social life. The political argument over the Middle East, however, will give you an entire set of friends, activities, topics of conversation – nearly all the services which an American college fraternity provides for its members. So you can see why this issue is particularly salient with college students. In my hazy memory of how things went in the 90s, the Israeli side had the better food while the BDS side had the better bands, and both sides were pretty welcoming to freeloaders. Things might have changed but I doubt they have.
So this is my answer to the vexed question of why it is that the State of Israel finds itself singled out for disproportionate criticism compared to all the other unjust governments in the world. The online supporters of the State of Israel don’t understand why their conflict attracts so much attention because they can’t understand, because the reason is, basically, them. There are loads and loads of governments which carry out human rights abuses in the world, but there are really rather few governments who make apologetics for crimes against humanity clearly, in English and conveniently online. Neither are there many organisations in the world who fire rockets at nurseries, but who have a large, well-educated and English-speaking community across the world who are prepared to repeat their propaganda material. The Israel-Palestine conflict is the English Premier League of human rights debates – it might not be the best one, it might be legitimately criticised as predictable and dominated by big money, but it’s the one which has captured the imagination of the world, and if you want to see the best players in action, week in and week out, nowhere else comes close.
I'd add to that the amount of money we send their way in the US probably has a good deal to do with the attention they get as well. This should apply to the Saudis as well, which never really had nearly as many kneejerk apologists in the first place. It seems the prince's PR tour and totally empty symbolic "progressive" gestures have won over a fair amount of the gullible, foreign policy consensus loving media recently so that may be changing.
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