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by rgejman
1386 days ago
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The problem from the perspective of many Jews (including myself) is that these kinds of protests and protestors tend to focus on Israel to the exclusion of any other state. Where is the protest of Google's relationships with dozens of other countries accused of major human rights violations? The double standard when it comes to Israel calls into question the motivation behind the protest and makes many Jews reasonably wonder if it is actually anti-semitic (even when coming from fellow Jews). |
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Of course, "evil states" like Russia or China are not expected to behave well. And anyway, we (western countries and western companies) don't have much influence on them. So it's easy to abundantly criticize them.
Some "friend states" are clearly dictatorial and commit mass crimes, but we (western government and western opinions) don't expect much of them on human rights. Saudi Arabia started the Yemen war which killed 380,000 people (according to UNO), mostly Yemeni civilians, but who cares? Slaughtering a journalist in Turkey got more attention, because it was more spectacular.
Other "friend states" are less openly dictatorial (they have polls, even if often rigged) and only slaughter their political opponents. Then it's easy to just look elsewhere. Most African countries are in this category, from Egypt to Gabon, etc.
But Israel? Is it a democracy when its blocus of Gaza puts millions of people in a sort of giant jail? When hundreds of civilians are killed every year? When people can be thrown in jail by the administration for no public reason, and kept in for years without seeing a judge? In the same way, in 1945 there were far worse violations of the human rights outside of India than inside India, so why would anyone care for the way UK was ruling over India? And was France a democracy in 1960, when it ruled over Algeria with millions of second-class citizens and with a systemic use of torture?