• Michael Coren wonders about the the BDS movement’s deafening silence over Gaddafi’s butchery. Where’s the outrage?
Yet where are the massive street protests in Europe’s large cities? Where are the calls to boycott countries? Where are the labour unions demanding action? Where are the student groups using words like “apartheid” and “Nazi”? Where are the moralistic editorials condemning Arab intolerance, Islamic barbarism and the need for Arab countries to be banned from international sporting, cultural and literary events?
All of that is said about Israel, whether it engages in conflict or not. When it responds to the slaughter of its children, it is labelled a terrorist state, and when it allows its people to settle in lands that are historically Jewish, the religion of Judaism is spoken of as archaic. Retired Israeli generals travelling to London or Madrid to raise money for handicapped children are told they may be arrested on landing, Israeli athletes are promised death if they dare to appear alongside “civilized” rivals.
• While we were riveted by the Libyan uprising, AP raises not one, but two red flags from Hamastan:
Gaza’s Islamist Rulers Hounding Secular Community
Gaza Assailants Plant Bomb Under Christian Car
• Robin Shepherd points out that the Security Council’s vote on settlements may actually have an impact on international law:
To those who regard the Security Council as the supreme legislative arena for the formulation of international law, it must be questionable whether Israeli settlements can now be called “illegal”, since the proposition that they are has just failed to be affirmed.
This would suggest that the United Nations is unable to come to a clear decision on the matter, pushing it into a legal no-man’s land.
• Danny Ayalon buries “linkage,” the idea that Arab anger is connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then blames it for allowing the world to long overlook abuses in the Arab world:
Furthermore, the linkage argument has allowed a dereliction of responsibility for anything that happens outside of Israel’s few square kilometers, which is equivalent to less than one seven-hundredth of the Arab world. Even the term “Middle East conflict” is negligent in that it stresses the singularity and uniqueness of our conflict, perhaps even one of the least bloody and destructive, in a region that has seen dozens of recent and ongoing conflicts.
In fact, of the 11 million Muslims that have been killed in violent conflicts since the middle of the last century when the state of Israel was created, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of Muslims were killed in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Arab conflict. However, more than 90 percent of all Muslims killed during the same time period were killed by fellow Muslims.
• Walt and Mearsheimer may be gnashing their teeth over this poll (via Israel Matzav):
Most Americans Favor End To U.S. Foreign Aid To Middle East, Except Israel
I’m not surprised. The Arab uprising stands in stark contrast to the stability of Israeli democracy and the values it shares with the US.
