Reading an opinion piece in Wednesday’s WSJ: Our Selective Moral Outrage - Why does Israel face more opprobrium than Russia?‘. I am continually disappointed with Israel’s wartime violence and lack of cultural nous, (displayed in the UN report reporting on Israeli solders making Palestinian children before them as human shields Haaretz: IDF troops used 11-year-old boy as human shield in Gaza), that I tend to react negatively when those in the US based media try to explain away or shame away critics. I’d be very interested to hear from those who think I’m wrong.
Why greater censure; because Israel has higher relative wealth than Russia and in other contexts acts in an intelligent and rational way. How can we explain away Israel’s bad behaviour as though it doesn’t have other options? Melanie Phillips in The Spectator writes today of the west’s ‘pathological obsession’ with Israel, ‘Selective Moral Outrage‘. The thing is, when we discussing a state that is financially propped up by the US, one should hold them to a higher standard. It’s delusional and insulting to claim that all opposition to the actions Israel takes militarily is anti-semitic, as Bret Stephens implies: ‘As for the Chechens, too bad for their cause that no Jew will ever likely become president of Russia’. Russia is no Israel and visa versa. This but what about argument just doesn’t hold water. As Johann Hari recently wrote in his article in The Independent – ‘How to spot a lame, lame argument‘: There is one particular type of bad argument that has always existed, but it has now spread like tar over the world-wide web, and is seeping into the pubs, coffee shops and opinion columns everywhere. It is known as ‘what-aboutery’ – and there was a particularly ripe example of it in response to one of my articles last week.
As a rhetorical trick, it is simple. Anyone can do it, and we are all tempted sometimes. When you have lost an argument – when you can’t justify your case, and it is crumbling in your hands – you snap back: “But what about x?” You then raise a totally different subject, and try to get everybody to focus on it – hoping it will distract attention from your own deflated case.
Can we back away from the distraction of comparing Israel/Palestine to everywhere else in the world and concentrate on fixing what is clearly going wrong with that conflict itself. Middle-Eastern peace won’t come because one day everyone realises what Russia does in Chechnya is worse, but rather when all sides are honest about they can, could and should do to end conflict and bring about a harmonious life for all. I still think this is possible, though the mindset and honesty from all parties required is some ways off.
Plus, basing an article on numbers of hits from a Google search is elementary-school level journalism.
Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal – Our Selective Moral Outrage – Why does Israel face more opprobrium than Russia?
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