The Anti-Israel Double Standard Watch

[Ian David]

Yet another example of the double standard directed against the Middle East's only democracy--Israel.

Every time Israel kills a terrorist who has murdered Israeli civilians the international community and America's hard left goes crazy, condemning, boycotting, and divesting from the Jewish state. But it totally ignores the indistinguishable actions of other nations.
Yesterday, Russia targeted and killed Shamil Basayev, a Chechnyan terrorist who was also "Vice-President" of Chechnya's separatist movement. The international community applauded the killing of this terrorist, who Russia's President Putin said "deserved retribution". The international community also applauded the targeted killing by American and Allied forces of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi earlier last month.

I join the applause for the targeted killings of these two mass-murdering terrorist leaders. But I also applaud the targeted killing of anti-Israel terrorists who are engaged in ongoing attacks against Israeli women and children. I regret when innocent people are killed in the process of targeting terrorists, but the fault for that lies entirely with the terrorists who hide behind innocent women and children in order to induce Israel to kill civilians. Yes, Palestinian terrorists want Israel to kill Palestinian women and children. That is part of their strategy. "As one diplomat told the New York Times, "Palestinians have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain...Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israel casualties play in their favor. Non-violence doesn't pay." (See my June 25, 2006 Jerusalem Post article "Palestinian terrorists want Israel to kill Palestinian civilians".)

<snip>

Again I know that any post relating to Israel will provoke some of the worst anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bigots to crawl out from under their rocks. It will also provoke other bigots to accuse me of supporting torture--something I adamantly oppose and am seeking to prevent as seen here. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5512634

But I will not remain silent in the face of this anticipated bigotry.

Alan Dershowitz

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/the-antiisrael-double-st_b_24811.html

[Waya]

1. Dershowitz........

...no surprise there....:puke:

[H2O Man]

3. Even when I disagree

with Dershowitz, I find him a voice worth listening to.

[G_j]

2. regret when innocent people are killed ...BUT.....

where I have heard that before? ..from every warmonger and war criminal that ever lived?
I feel sick..

I wish one could vote negative, Alan sounds like the "bigot" in this piece

[Ian David]

5. I have some problems with his piece, too, but agree with much of it

[patdem]

4. If Israel is the ONLY democracy, why do they keep refering to Lebanon

as a democracy? Democratically elected government if not a democracy...DEFINE democracy...whomever Israel and US SAYS is a democracy?

[Norquist Nemesis]

13. Let's not forget Iraq, too! n/t

[MrPrax]

6. Like this bigot?

"...Whatever the precision of its rockets (and Nazareth’s residents are certainly worried enough about that), Hizbullah struck not at Nazareth but at a site some distance from Nazareth -- a site of strategic significance to Israel, though I cannot say more than that as we are now officially under martial law in the country’s north.

Matthew Price was also wrong about Nazareth being a “mostly Christian town”. During the 1948 war in which Israel’s army ethnically cleansed much of the surrounding area of Palestinians, Muslim villagers fled to Nazareth in search of sanctuary. Today, two-thirds of the city’s 75,000 inhabitants are Muslim -- or at least they are by the religious classification system imposed on all citizens by the Israeli authorities.
...
Several Israeli armaments factories and storage depots have been built close by Arab communities in the north of Israel, possibly in the hope that by locating them there Arab regimes will be deterred from attacking Israel’s enormous armory. In other words, the inhabitants of several of Israel’s Arab towns and villages have been turned into collective human shields -- protection for Israel’s war machine.

Before the strike close to Nazareth late on Sunday night, several Arab villages in the north had been hit by Hizbullah rockets trying to reach these factories. No one at the BBC saw the need to mention these attacks nor the fact that “mostly Muslim” villages had been hit. So why did the strike against Nazareth -- and its mistaken Christian status -- became part of the story for the BBC?"

CP

Israeli Censor Wielding Great Power

Here's some news you may never hear about Israel's war against Hezbollah: a missile falls into the sea, a strategic military installation is hit, a Cabinet minister plans to visit the front lines.

Journalists are also not allowed to give details about senior Israeli officials going to the north, where Hezbollah's rockets are falling, until the officials have left the area. They also cannot report places where there aren't enough shelters or where public defense is weak.

So far in this conflict, about one rocket in 100 fired by Hezbollah has killed an Israeli. The rest usually explode in empty fields, tear concrete from abandoned streets or plunk into the Mediterranean. Fired blind, Hezbollah's thousands of mostly short-range, inaccurate munitions simply pose a random peril to Israeli citizens.
Star Tribune

Allan Dershowitz loves racist propaganda apparantly

[BillZBubb]

7. "The terrorists made me do it!" Yeah, that's the ticket.

Israel only kills civilians because the terrorist make them! Wow, what power they have over the hapless Israelies. Even Dershowitz can't believe this bullshit.

[Mandate My Ass]

9. in order to be an attorney

particularly a successful one, you have to be able to bald-facedly say the most outrageous things with utter conviction.

[n2doc]

8. Is being a "democracy" some kind of "do what you want" card?

I sure get tired of the crap about how we have to support Israel no matter what because they are a "democracy". So are we, and the US leadership has committed war crimes. As a poster above aptly noted, we were hailing Lebanon as a democracy just a few months ago. They vote in Iran too.

And Alan, many will not sit silent in the face of arocities committed by the IDF.. or anybody else in the region. If that makes me an "antisemite" then I accept the label proudly.

[warrens]

10. There's one big difference, Alan

"Yesterday, Russia targeted and killed Shamil Basayev, a Chechnyan terrorist who was also "Vice-President" of Chechnya's separatist movement."

Did the Russkies take out half the town to get him? Or lob missiles at a beach miles away from his house? Or tear down his families houses?

[Scurrilous]

11. Or kill Canadians...

...and shell American citizens.

[TahitiNut]

12. Hypocrisy.

There's not a stance taken in that screed that can't be reversed in an equally (or more) valid way.

From the time the British claimed that colonists shooting from behind trees were "terrorists," the massively greater force has hurled such bullshit propaganda at their opponents in assymetrical conflicts. When you don't have bomber aircraft, fighter aircraft, tanks, nuclear weapons, and millions and millions of dollars in equipment with many divisions of well-equipped 'stand-off' military personnel, you have to adopt tactics that favor the weaker force. This is an unavoidable result of many, many years of dismissing the dissent and petitions of oppressed people. When the powerful ignore the injustices done to the weak, bloodshed is inevitable.

I'm particularly taken aback at the frequent lament regarding "innocent civilians." "Innocent"?? This is war, not some 'due process' in something approaching a justice system. Civilians (Lebanese, in this case) are EXACTLY what Israel targets. It's specious bullshit to try and split hairs and say civilian causalties are "unavoidable" when dropping bombs from 10,00 feet. They're making the chocie to trade off the weapons carrier's life against "innocent" civilian lives - and it's morally arguable whether the choice is more valid than that of a suicide bomber.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. During the first Gulf War

U.S. planes scored a direct missile hit on an air raid shelter near the center of Baghdad.

Hundreds of civilians were killed, mostly burned alive.

Remember the U.S. military reaction? "It was the Iraqis' fault for putting the shelter so close to government buildings."

It was a lame excuse then, and it's a lame excuse now.

Proportionality is the key.

There is no proportionality in this attack.

This isn't a case where, say, Nazi Germany ran massive air raids over Britain and the British bombed them back.

This is a case where relatively minor provocations by SMALL groups of individuals are being met by terrorizing and inflicting unnecessary suffering on entire populations. Two entire populations. Not a couple dozen people on a bus or in a cafe. Thousands of people in entire communities.

I am rapidly losing respect for anyone who can't see that Israel is overreacting big time.

It learned the lessons of 1967 and 1973 TOO well. But those were different situations in which it faced national armies, not small bands of guerillas.

I imagine that the current Israeli government would react to the Entebbe hijacking by bombing Uganda to smithereens.

It makes about as much sense as what's happening now.

I respect the right of the state of Israel to exist. I object to the policies of the past 25 years because they only involve Israel and the Arabs in an increasingly senseless revenge cycle that is ultimately bad for Israel.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

15. "an increasingly senseless revenge cycle that is ultimately bad for Israel

I agree.

I think there's some truth in what Alan Dershowitz says. I have no doubt that part of the agenda of those committing acts of violence against Israel is to earn the Arab population's support when Israel overreacts and kills innocents.

But Dershowitz' argument is based on an axiom that one must first accept as a leap of faith: that Israel never commits the initiating act but only reacts.

On its face, that's a ridiculous notion precisely because of the "senseless revenge cycle" that you mention in your post. It assumes that the act of violence to which Israel responds is itself an initiating act and not a reaction to a previous act by Israel. Ask the Palestinians or Lebanese and some will justify that rocket they launched or that fire fight they engaged in because their child was killed last year when it wandered into one of the free fire zones in Gaza where Israeli snipers are instructed to shoot anything that moves, or because their family pic-nicked on a beach that was shelled at random, or because their mother last year stepped on one of the 15,000 mines in southern Lebanon left over from the Israeli occupation that Israel has refused to identify.

There's some truth in Dershowitz' point. But the leap of faith that is necessary in buying the premise that Israel is always moral and only reacts and never initiates aggression is a completely one-sided view of the situation. Both sides are carrying on a blood feud and the "senseless revenge cycle" continues.

[TahitiNut]

16. Provoking an over-reaction of the major force in assymetrical conflict

... is but one of the necessary strategies of the lesser (populist?) force. It's something made VERY clear in the movie "The Battle of Algiers" - a movie made over 30 years ago.

Far from being reprehensible, it's part of what the weaker force must do when the failures of diplomacy, dissent, and petition of grievances hasn't resulted in something close to justice.

The piper is still being paid for the wretched abuses of the colonialist/imperialist days of not so long ago. The "countries" of the Middle East were never in conformance to the "nations" of the Middle East ... particularly the 'partition' of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, and also the so-called country if Iraq with three warring factions. Those chickens are coming home to roost.