Saturday, October 17, 2009
Recent condemnation of Israel
The recent condemnation of Israel is a fine example of the selective outrage that ensures that there will never be peace on Earth. “We rain rockets on the Israelis, on their farms, on their nurseries, their schools. We explode bombs in their restaurants, in their supermarkets – we are going to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth! But they are so evil, they want to live, they get angry, they hit back, they try to defend themselves! Condemn them!”
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5 comments:
There will certainly be no peace on earth until a lot more people have your kind of common sense —which is most uncommon.
Selective outrage has always been with us. It is the fortress of those who cannot live with ambiguity which comes with the willingness to look at issues from several perspectives and hence live with the discomfort and anxiety of not having a ready answer to complex situations and questions. And, those who cannot tolerate that ambiguity are ready to follow any person confidently spouting simplistic answers - usually laced with blame and hate.
Stephen,
I think you should come and visit Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. You should talk to both Israelis and Palestinians and you should see for yourself the conditions under which both sides live. There are injustices committed by Israel and we should be outraged. There are injustices committed by Palestinians and we should be outraged but the balance of power is so hopelessly stacked against one side. I've just finished reading your wonderful book 'In Praise of Older Women'.
Yeah George, but enough about Fox News...
And Juliette, An Innocent Millionaire next, please, if you haven't already. You're in for a treat.
So the Russians decide that their safety depends upon imprisoning Hungarians in their own land and it is of course just fine, even heroic, for the Hungarians to fight back against the Russians and their tanks. But when the Palestinians talk about this in their far, far worse conditions of captivity and in their utter incapacity to do anything remotely similar to what the Hungarians did, this is...what? An existential threat to the third or fourth nuclear power on earth? An impermissible insult to the jackboots? Yes, selective outrage is indeed at work here and it would shame anyone with surviving memories of '56.
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