Whoosh!
No. Don’t expect any better from shit-hole dictatorships propped up by the US.
I do expect better of Israel.
Tu quoque is not one of my favorite debate tactics, though it’s difficult to resist in terms of the outrage expressed over the Gaza blockade-running mess.
If you’re going to criticize Egypt it’s probably more relevant to take on that nation for joining Israel in the blockade.
And I had to resist an involuntary morning coffee spew upon reading an op-ed diatribe from an official of the United Arab Emirates, which has condemned the “criminal and inhumane” Israeli action against the blockade-runners. The article fulminated about Israel’s singling out a particular group (i.e. the Palestinians) for maltreatment. True, the UAE can pat itself on the back for having a broad-spectrum program for denying human rights to its citizens, but it does have a particularly nasty record for mistreating foreign workers, notably southeast Asians and Indians.
*According to the U.S. Department of State annual report on human rights practices, the UAE is violating a number of fundamental practices. Specifically, the UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens do not have the right to change their government or to form political parties. In certain instances, the government of the UAE has abused people in custody, denied their citizens the right to a speedy trial and access to counsel during official investigations.
The government restricts freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the local media practises self-censorship by avoiding directly criticizing the government. Freedom of association is also curtailed.
The UAE has not signed most international human rights and labor rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and the Convention against Torture."*
All this from a nation regarded as one of the most liberal and advanced in the Arab world.
This doesn’t excuse Israeli actions, but man, what a bunch of hypocritical human rights violators (the Turks included) have jumped on the condemnation bandwagon.
Someone important once said: “An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind”
The last thing we need is for everyone to seek justice in that part of the world, noone has clean hands there, not the Palestinians, not the arab states, not Israel, noone. These days its not even eye for an eye its retribution sevenfold.
By that rationale, you’d think that murdering 9 humanitarian aid workers and virtually imprisoning an entire population in Gaza would be enough. See how this gets circular and starts to feed on itself? You are punishing Palestinians for the acts of the Hamas government in Gaza and Egypt is punishing Israelis for the acts of the Israeli government. It just gets silly and defending that particular Israeli law is very difficult to do without admitting that you think that all Palestinians are security threats.
If it bothers you to hear it then don’t do it. It is very hard to defend this law without admitting that you think all Palestinians are terrorists. BTW in order to be a terrorist apologist I think I have to be defending terrorists (its kind of like calling someone a terrorist sympathiser for criticizing the bush administration for Abu Gharaib and torture).
I don’t have a cite but I have read it in several places. Its a law that was passed because Israel is facing a slow motion demographic crisis. The Palestinians are outbreeding the Jews and soon the Palestinians will outnumber the Jews. If you allow Israeli Palestinians to marry Palestinians from the refugee camps, the shift occurs faster and pretty soon the whole of Gaza and the West Bank has Israeli citizenship through family exemptions then you don’t even need a two state solution, you have a single Israeli state with a large Jewish minority.
The jews don’t trust a democracy where they are not in the majority (see Gaza and Hamas for jsutification of those fears). If the Jews want it I would be happy to give them the state of Wyoming (its a beautiful state that is underpopulated for no good reason) the same was the Mormons have the state of Utah.
The Israeli action had nothing to do with revenge or punitive justice, so you can drop the “eye for an eye” bullshit.