- A lawyer gave a brief opinion piece on Canada's public
radio, the CBC, in which he flatly said that criticism of Israel is a form
of anti-Semitism.
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- I guess we should be grateful that people in Canada are
much less violent in their opinions than people in the U.S. where one lawyer
wrote an essay, published on the Internet, seriously advocating the execution
of the families of those who commit terrorist acts in Israel. Another American
lawyer, a very prominent one, has advocated protocols governing the legal
use of torture in the United States.
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- I can't blame the CBC for once broadcasting what is essentially
political smut because, on the whole, the network is fair, enlightened,
and far freer of nasty political pressure than public radio in the United
States. Everyone who makes an honest effort is entitled to make an honest
mistake now and then.
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- Calling people names because you dislike their views
is not logic and is not any form of argument. It is not even decent. I
can't see how this lawyer's words differ from American Senator McCarthy
using the dangerously-loaded slur, Communist, applied to anyone he didn't
want working in the State Department or in Hollywood.
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- If I indulge this lawyer's name-calling, saying it resembles
logic, what comes to mind is another lawyer's argument at the trial many
years ago of a man who had slashed a woman's throat and then tried to strangle
her with a lamp cord. That lawyer claimed his client had only been applying
a tourniquet to a wound he accidentally inflicted.
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- This lawyer's fantasy argument is that the very selectivity
of Israel's critics ipso facto proves their anti-Semitism. Why aren't these
same people out criticizing China about Tibet he demanded? Apart from the
fact that many of them do criticize other injustices in the world - a fact
which makes the lawyer's words into the cheap trick of a straw-man argument
- one has to ask just whom he includes in his indictment?
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- Does he include decent, honorable people like Uri Avnery,
former member of the Knesset, a citizen of Israel who writes regularly
of the injustices committed by the country he loves? Does he include the
great pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim who grew up partly in Israel
and has many times criticized its policies? Does he include the chief rabbi
of the United Kingdom who expressed his rejection of Sharon's brutality?
Does he include Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela who both have described
what they see in Israel as the apartheid with which they are intimately
familiar?
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- All people supporting any cause must be selective. You
can't focus on the facts if your attention is distributed among fifty causes,
and advocacy or criticism without facts is vacuous. Ghandi had a focus
as did Martin Luther King as did Tutu as did all the early Zionist leaders
as did Arafat. Taking on every injustice in the world plainly makes it
impossible to say much to the point about any of them.
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- So why does anyone focus on Israel? In part, for the
simple reason that we are overwhelmed with awareness of Israel in our press.
A day almost cannot pass that we do not have a news story about Israel.
The slightest statement of Ariel Sharon is reported with about the same
weight as the words of major world statesmen. We hear of every change in
his cabinet. We hear of every change in his plans. We hear of every meeting
he has with other leaders. When was the last time you read or heard a story
about Tibet?
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- As a quick check of the intuitive truth of this claim,
do a Google search of leaders' names. At this writing, a search of Sharon
turned up 24,700,000 references. A search for Blair turned up 24,400,000.
Bush, which includes two presidents of the United States plus governors
and cabinet posts, nets us 88,700,000 references. China's leader, Hu Jintao
had 770,000 references. All of these searches, of course, include people
other than the individual in question, but the world's population of Sharons
is not large.
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- The population of Israel is a fraction of the size of
cities like Shanghai or Mexico City. Its population is roughly the size
of Guatemala's or Ecuador's or that of Ivory Coast. How many stories do
you read or hear about these places? Can you name the Mayor of Shanghai
or the President of Ecuador? The mayor of Shanghai, one of the world's
largest cities, is a man by the name of Han Zheng. That name rang up 304,000
references, but with China's huge population sharing something on the order
of only about a hundred traditional family names, those references include
many people who are not even distantly related to the mayor.
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- Why would it surprise any thoughtful person that Israel
is far more on people's minds than Tibet? But the question of focus on
Israel involves far more than constant repetition, important as that fact
is.
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- A good deal of the mess that we find ourselves in today,
the so-called War on Terror and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent
people, largely pivots on Israel's policy and behavior towards the Palestinians
and on America's policy towards Israel. The problem of Israel versus the
Palestinians has become a kind of geopolitical black hole which threatens
to consume much of the energy and substance of Western society. Surely,
we all have a right, and even a moral obligation, to address such a threatening
situation without being called names.
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- Why doesn't Israel just make peace? Israel holds virtually
all the cards. The weapons. The intelligence information. The economic
advantages. The immensely powerful ally. At least certainly compared to
the pathetic group of people, the Palestinians, it calls its enemy.
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- The pointless destruction of Iraq, with at least a 100,000
civilians killed, a reign of terror unleashed, and the loss of some of
civilization's greatest ancient artifacts was never about oil. It was intended
to sweep Israel's most formidable, traditional opponent from the map. Never
mind that Hussein no longer had any threatening weapons (a fact confirmed
by experts several times over), and never mind that Iraqis suffered horribly
under American-imposed sanctions for a decade.
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- Hussein was nasty but no nastier than dozens of thugs
with whom the U.S. has comfortably done business since World War II. Power
is what always takes precedence over principles in these matters, and Hussein
opposed some American policies. Israel's policy has followed the same path.
For instance, Israel worked closely with the apartheid government of South
Africa, heavily engaging in trade and military assistance. The South African
atomic bomb, which quietly and quickly vanished with the changeover in
government, unquestionably was the fruit of Israeli cooperation. Israel
received its early assistance in creating atomic weapons from France in
exchange for important support around France's battles in its (now former)
North African colonies.
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- So what do we hear from Sharon, as American Marines turn
the once-thriving city of Fallujah into a rubbish pile, as horrific resistance
bombs keep ripping apart Baghdad? Sharon, time after time, tells us the
United States also should invade Syria and Iran. To intimidate Syria, he
has Israeli Air Force planes buzzing the presidential palace in Damascus,
the only reason Syria is buying short-range anti-aircraft missiles from
Russia, missiles to which Israel strenuously objects. What would the news
stories here be were Syrian planes capable of doing the same thing in Tel
Aviv?
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- Is Israel the only country somehow magically immune to
Lord Acton's dictum about power? I think not, but in saying that I risk
being classified an anti-Semite.
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