Syria and Israel: All the Same For Fisk

In his latest commentary in The Independent, Robert Fisk is keen to lecture the West that not all Middle East revolutions or uprisings are the same:

The old saw has to be repeated and repeated: Egypt was not Tunisia; Bahrain was not Egypt; Yemen was not Bahrain; Libya was not Yemen. And Syria is very definitely not Libya.

But when it comes to Israel, Fisk is morally blinded to the difference between the brutal actions of Mideast regimes such as Syria, massacring its own civilians with lethal intent, and Israel, targeting terrorists and making every effort to avoid civilian casualties.

It’s not difficult to see how the opposite plays in the West. The barrage of horrifying Facebook images from Homs, and statements from the “Free Syrian Army”, and the huffing of La Clinton and the amazement that Russia can be so blind to the suffering of Syrians – as if America was anything but blind to the suffering of Palestinians when, say, more than 1,300 were killed in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza – doesn’t gel with reality on the ground.

So far, the immoral equivalence between Syrian brutality and Israeli self-defense hasn’t manifested itself in the media. That Robert Fisk should be one of the first to promote it, even in a throwaway comment, shouldn’t come as a surprise.