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> But you are doing whataboutism. I'm not, because the debate is on the comparative feelings towards Israel vs. other countries, so actually comparing to other
by edanm 2y ago
> But you are doing whataboutism.
I'm not, because the debate is on the comparative feelings towards Israel vs. other countries, so actually comparing to other actions is specifically what is necessary.
> [...] Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale.
I'll give a more detailed answer, but this is the most important point - you're wrong. I'm not even sure why you think this, since I gave specific numbers for those atrocities.
In what way is the scale of the civilians killed in the Syrian civil war smaller than that of Gaza? It is literally an order of magnitude more civilians killed, as I mentioned. That's 10x more.
In what way is the scale of what's happening to the Uyghurs smaller? An estimated 1 million have been arbitrarily arrested and put into forced labor, per Wikipedia.
However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote. What am I misunderstanding in your view here?
Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too.
> Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.
I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war. Unless you think war itself is a crime and never justified, in which case that's an entirely separate discussion (I wish I could agree).
In any case, yes, some leaders are standing up for Israel, because unlike many people, they are aware that this is a valid war that needs fighting, if not always agreeing with everything Israel does. I don't think whether the leaders of the US back Israel or not is very strong evidence of morality, but I definitely don't think it's evidence against the morality of the war, as you imply.
> Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population.
Oh, I totally agree. People aren't reacting to reality - since these are not even close to "the worst crimes of the century". You could fill 10x the airtime given to what is happening to Gaza with similarly horrible things that have happened in other places (civilians killed in the Iraq war alone - ~120k).
But that's the thing. The news doesn't show anywhere near as much coverage of other "atrocities", which is why people have a skewed perspective of this. It's literally availability bias, and is caused for many reasons. But it simply doesn't reflect reality if you look at the actual numbers.
> Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.
Yes, my point exactly.
> Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel.
I mean, yeah that's one explanation, though I don't think it's particularly correct. Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
But let's leave that aside and look again at what I think is more correct.
The UN is not a democracy - votes are by country. The Arab states, which have historically been anti Israel (including trying to wipe Israel out, multiple times) - number 22. They also hold a population of 220 million consumers, and vast oil wealth.
So Democracy-wise - they have far more "votes" and "voters". Capitalism-wise - they have far more consumers than Israel. Geo-politics-wise - they have far more importance than Israel because of that oil wealth and for other reasons.
Those are all very good reasons to explain why Israel, which makes up 0.1% of the middle east, is like the 150th country in size and population in the world, and by any objective standards does not commit "atrocities" on anywhere near the scale of other countries, even if you think it does commit atrocities - those are all very good reasons for Israel to have more resolutions against it than all other countries combined.
Plus, it's a convenient scapegoat for lots of countries.
Plus, I didn't even mention the rest of the majority Muslim countries, who tend to also be anti-Israel.
I mean, the effects of "democracy", capitalism and geo-politics certainly seem more relevant in my eyes to explain the UN, rather than some idealistic story about colonialism which doesn't even make sense.
> I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.
Just to be clear, I'm not making any racial statements here, unless you consider statements like "the Arab countries are historically against Israel". If you don't accept even statements like that - I don't really think you can analyze any history of politics, at all. (And you'll note I didn't even mention anything about antisemitism, which most people certainly think is at least part of the story here, but we can leave that aside.)
- runarberg 2y ago> However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote. Every single Palestinian in Gaza has lost their home, a family member, or a limb. This is not the case in the Syrian civil war (as horrible as that was) nor among Uyghurs in East Turkistan. As horrible as those atrocities are (particularly the Syrian Civil war) it is still dwarfed by the atrocity which Israel is inflecting on Gaza. Bashar al-Assad never committed a genocide (ISIS tried but were beaten). Israel has been committing a genocide for over a year now, with no end in sight. And we are talking about the Syrian civil war here. One of the worst wars in this century, if this is our baseline of what is acceptable, something horrible is wrong. But even in the Syrian Civil War, which caused millions to flee their homes (by some very plausible estimates half the country), most Syrians kept their homes, family members, and limbs. Like I said, the only comparable scenario is in Darfur, where mass hunger against civilians is used as a weapon and where most people have lost somebody they know in the ongoing genocide. > Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too. This was also true of South Africa and Rhodesia (the latter of which was met with so much anti-Rhodesian bias that it no longer exists) despite neither of which going on a full on genocidal rampage against their victims of apartheid. Israel has been committing similar crimes against Palestinians for decades now, and sympathy has increased as more and more people are made aware of their crimes. The ongoing genocide only furthers this anti-Israel bias past the scale we ever saw against Rhodesia or Apartheid South Africa. The world’s reaction against Israel is consistent with previous cases of apartheid (outside of superpowers like the USA). > Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel. What are you saying here? It sounds like you are saying that the nation or territory of Palestine does not exist, and that Israel’s (unambiguously) illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not just justified, but also complete and absolute. I hope that is me misunderstanding, because if that is what you mean, than you are advocating for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and on the West Bank. > "the Arab countries are historically against Israel". This is factually incorrect. Most Arab countries (as do most countries in the UN, and the UN it self) favor a 2-state solution with an independent Palestine along the 1967 line and a capital in East Jerusalem. There was a short period where this was not true, that most Arab countries wanted a single Palestinian state without the mass-immigration of European Jewish settlers. However that hasn’t been true for a long time and is largely irrelevant to any current discussions. The three or four of decades where this was true have no relevance over the 80 years of the existence of independent Israel. Throughout majority of the existence of Israel, most Arab countries are against the illegal occupation of Israel, and are fine with the existence of Israel. Today, and for all of this century, and a significant part of the end of the last century Arab countries stance on Israel mirrors what most countries today say. That Israel should end its illegal occupation, and grant Palestine independence with a capital in East Jerusalem. EDIT: Just to ring the point home about the scale of the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza. I just saw these numbers on Al Jazeera https://aje.io/18noxx?update=3278807 https://aje.io/18noxx?update=3278807 : - 87% of all housing units in Gaza are damaged or destroyed. - 80% of all commercial facilities are damaged - 68% of all cropland is damaged - 17/36 hospitals in Gaza are only partially functioning, the rest are shut down. - 68% of all the road network is damaged - 87% of the schools in Gaza are damaged. Even if we zoom in the worst affected city of the Syrian Civil war like Aleppo, or Raqqa, you don’t get anywhere near this level of destruction. EDIT 2: Compare this to Aleppo, which has been (IMO accurately [until Gaza]) described as the worst urban warfare of our century. Aleppo was under siege for four years, with mass atrocities committed on a weekly bases, including bombings of residential neighborhoods, hospital and mosques. This should absolutely not be a benchmark for what is acceptable in warfare. But even still, a staggering 33,500 of the cities housing units were damaged or destroyed. This was unprecedented before the Gaza genocide. In Gaza we have 87% of the housing units damaged or destroyed. The battle of Aleppo killed at least 30,000 people, including over 20,000 civilians. Such high civilian casualty numbers were also unprecedented in modern warfare, until the Gaza genocide where over a much shorter period we have at least 42,000 confirmed deaths (most likely a significant undercount), most of whom women or children. So even if we go only by confirmed deaths, and only count women and children as civilians, the civilian deaths after a year of genocide is still greater than the 4 years of the worst urban fighting of our century until Gaza. https://web.archive.org/web/20161224165001/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/aleppo-confronts-vast-destruction-left-by-4-years-of-war/2016/12/23/e20e8670-c8da-11e6-acda-59924caa2450_story.html?utm_term=.46665b49fa38 https://web.archive.org/web/20161224165001/https://www.washi...