Israel Matzav

Why the double standard

David Hornik tries to explain the World's double standard when it comes to how it reacts to perceived missteps by Israel and the 'Palestinians.'

In all this period there was — as usual — a total absence of public criticism of the Palestinian Authority from these same sources. Why? Was it because, in contrast to Israel’s constant alleged breaches of propriety, the PA’s behavior was without blemish?

Not exactly. In December an Israeli father of seven was murdered in a drive-by shooting by terrorists belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, part of PA president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement. After Israeli forces found and killed three of the terrorists, Abbas called them shahids (martyrs) and sent his personal emissary to visit their families. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad went further, visiting the families himself and “condemn[ing] the Israeli military operation” — not the terrorists, whom the Fatah movement called “brave heroes and fighters.”

In February an EU-trained Palestinian policeman stabbed an Israeli soldier to death at a checkpoint. Hardly an isolated incident, it was part of a “trend” of fatal terror attacks by American- and European-trained Palestinian security personnel. Condemnations? A rethink of the policy of training and empowering Palestinian security forces for the future Palestinian state that would nestle right up against Israel’s population centers? Of course not.

In January the PA announced that it was naming a square in Ramallah after Dalal al-Mughrabi, the female Palestinian terrorist who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, the worse terror attack in Israeli history. Israel registered official complaints with the U.S. The formal dedication of the square is set to occur on Thursday — on the 32^nd anniversary of the attack [It was postponed. CiJ]. The Israeli Foreign Ministry states: “There has been no public comment from the Obama administration about the PA’s honoring of the terrorist.”

This picture is skewed — badly. Are Israeli actions like building homes for Jews in Jerusalem, or refurbishing shrines for the good of both Jews and Muslims who pray in them, really objectionable in themselves? Of course not. They’re “objectionable” because they make Palestinians angry — as a vanguard of the Arab/Muslim world, which is much larger and wields much more economic power than Israel.

That's what the line was in the '70's. "They have oil, we don't and therefore...." I don't buy it anymore. The economic power and technology coming out of this country are as important as the oil coming out of the Arab world. It's not too far off on the horizon that the World will no longer be dependent upon Arab oil at all. And then what? Do you really think that the double standard will change? Of course it won't. Because it has nothing to do with economics. The fact that Israel is subjected to a different standard than the rest of the world in which approving construction of homes is equated with murdering motorists is anti-Semitism. Nothing more and nothing less.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:37 PM