| But you are doing whataboutism. But even if we give you that, Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale. If you want to find any population that has suffered as many atrocities as Palestinians in Gaza, you would have to go to Darfur. But the impunity in which Israel commits these crimes is not comparable to any other oppressor. People’s reactions are not based on the criminal act void of any context, they look at the past, they look at consequences, etc. 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. 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. Every day there is another bomb that wipes out a whole family, including children, in Gaza. 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. > If you think the UN putting out more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined makes sense by the numbers - then you are just ignorant of what is happening all over the world. I don’t think that, but it is worth noting the history here. In a nibling thread you wanted to go into the history to (seemingly) justify apartheid policies. I want to do the same except to justify the UN behavior here. 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. It is not helped by the fact that on UN security council member keeps vetoing any potential progress for furthering more decolonization efforts. Resulting in many half measures which ultimately don’t deliver any results towards Palestinian liberation. 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. |
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.)