Understood. It’s just that I’ve been getting really pissed lately at some things that seem to me instances of mods crossing the line – or, in some respects, at the lines themselves. Not about to shut up, either.
!!! That’s news to me. Says something disturbing about some of our fellow Dopers – but I shan’t ask for names.
I find it most peculiar, the Israelis stick to Western standards, yet the ‘Palestinians’ seem to have been granted a dispensation to use rhetoric reminiscent of Mein Kampf.
Cite?
Generally when I hear them on the Radio or Television.
Part of it is the usual seeming double standard: as an American, I expect my country to be a force for good in the world (an expectation that’s been pretty much trashed, these past four years); I don’t expect that out of my enemies. During the Cold War, I expected Russia to be bad; they were the Bad Guys, that was why we were opposing them. But we were the Good Guys; that gave us the moral right to oppose them. To the extent that we regularly didn’t behave like the Good Guys, it called the whole thing into question. I expect my country to be the Good Guys, dammit, because if we aren’t, then what’s the point? But I have no similar expectations for France or Lithuania or Argentina or China or Belarus. They’re just there; they do what they do.
Same with Israel. As a half-Jewish sort of person, I used to identify with Israel. Shuddered at Nasser’s rhetoric, then cheered them on (from a safe distance across the oceans, of course) as they raced across the Sinai and scaled the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War. Agonized over the toll of the sneak attack on Yom Kippur six days later, and sighed with relief when the attacks were ultimately repulsed. Hoped against hope that Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem would be the first step towards a lasting peace between Jew and Arab.
Even further back, of course, lies the legacy of the Holocaust, which underlies the Israeli state: a piece of land through which the Jewish people hope to guarantee that they’re never again at the mercy of the majority of whatever country they happen to live in. Israel is not just a country; it is to some extent an ethical construct.
So on both grounds - identification and special nature - I have expectations for Israel. I have no similar expectations for any other entity in the region. They’re just there; they do what they do.
Sure, that’s a double standard. But it’s the same double standard that causes me to have expectations of me, but not of you. That’s life.
Thank you for that explanation RTF. It is an impressive bit of self-awareness.
It is also true that Israel has brought some of the double standard on itself by declaring itself a secular democracy. It is them held to standards of a secular democracy.
I have no problem with that.
I do have a problem when Israel is held to standards significantly more strict than those that other secular democracies are held to. And I do see that the lack of expectation for basic standards from various Arab players is something that diminishes progress to peaceful solutions. It is, in a way, as unfair to Arabs as it is to Israelis to expect less of the Arab side.
At some point Israel has to cease being the subject of over-identification and to longer be an ethical construct. And we have to, in a way, “grow up”. By this I mean how the concept of Israel that you espouse reminds me somewhat of how many of us have viewed our parents through the years. When we were small they were greater than life and could do no wrong. We became teens and we realized they were falliable humans and many of us held them in contempt for having disappointed us. Only when we became adults ourselves were we able to accept our parents as real people with real strengths and real flaws. So too Israel is a real country with real flaws.
And back to Finn’s comment
I must disagree. Before this Summer’s events Israel had world opinion firmly in her court for the first time in many years. The election of Hamas and both her continued rejection of Israel’s right to exist and her continued embrace of violence had turned a tide. European nations were on board with trying to bear pressure upon Hamas to turn away from violence. A modest reaction to obvious provocation would have been met with support from most of the pundits. Destroy the tunnels in Gaza and pinpoint rocket launchers there. A limited foray into the border of Lebanon but holding fire once the Lebanese President
“promised” to bring the South more under central control (even knowing that he really couldn’t) would have had Israel delivering the message that there are lines that cannot be crossed and that those in power had better police their own, without squandering the nascent more favorable world opinion as she ended up doing. The early days of the operation showed how much Israel wasted: even many Arab leaders were condemning the actions of Hamas and Hizbollah and were not condemning Israel’s initial forays. That emerging spine was pithed rapidly by a reaction that failed to balance the realistic benefit vs. the human cost (and from an Israeli POV, no less important, public relations cost as well.)
My apologies for this post being off-topic of “apartheid”. But then again we may have beat that into the ground and then some.