PC Morality: Blame the Government, Not the People, Unless It’s Israel
The Gaza flotilla incident was a horrid PR nightmare for the state of Israel, despite the released evidence of the “peace activists’” true intentions. The international community has in large part ignored all of it: videos of the fight on the Mavi Marmara, the cache of weapons on board, and the undisputed ties between the IHH, Hamas, and other Islamic terror organizations.
International reaction has been heated, hypocritical, and disproportionate. Bands like Gorillaz and the Pixies canceled their scheduled concerts in Israel following the events (Shuki Weiss, the concert’s production manager, had been trying for over 10 years to bring the Pixies to Israel). The organizers of the gay pride parade in Madrid banned its Tel Aviv delegation in direct response to the flotilla raid, stating it would be “barbaric” to allow Israelis to participate; the Israelis in question responded that Islamists would be happy to “cure” them all. One of the largest unofficial Bob Dylan fansites has banned Israeli IP addresses from visiting the website. The Utopia chain of theaters in France canceled all screenings of the Israeli comedy Five Hours from Paris … replacing them with a French documentary about Rachel Corrie.
How can so many people justify such bigotry?
That’s precisely what it is. The Madrid parade organizers, the Utopia chain, and dylanchords are collectively punishing the Israeli people or Israeli NGOs for the actions of their government — the morality of such actions being irrelevant in this matter.
The Israeli people are not the ones calling the shots in the IDF or making the decisions in the Knesset. It’s the same in every democratic country around the world — the people may elect their leaders, but only someone grossly misinformed about the world of politics would believe they directly control their leaders’ actions as well. The political statement of the Pixies and Gorillaz is cultural carpet bombing. For the love of Shin Bet: don’t the gays in Madrid understand that Israel is the one and only Middle Eastern country where you can be gay in public without losing your life?
The irony of this explodes tenfold when compared to the world’s current relationship with Iran. Here we have a theocracy — a theocracy! — controlled by one of the most disliked governments in the modern world. Its constant sword-rattling has grown both comical and tired. The Iranian regime treats its citizens like cockroaches. The Iranian president himself acts as Rumpelstiltskin’s Middle Eastern cousin: “Don’t get in the way of what I want or I’ll steal your firstborn.” Or, to be more apt: “I’ll build a nuclear research facility under the pretext of peace and then nuke your firstborn.”
But much of the West stands with the Iranian people, as they should, because they are under vicious and widespread oppression by their own government. There is little to no wiggle-room for moral bickering here — the anti-democratic Khomeini regime represents the Western world’s antithesis, the Iranian people its own manifestation. It makes perfect sense that the West supports the Iranian population in the face of its anti-Western government.
Why, then, do the physics of the Western world-Iran relationship undergo sudden reversal when applied to the Western world-Israel relationship?
We see no music bands, no parades, no film theaters, and no websites boycotting the Iranian people for their government’s nuclear research program or its months-long quarantining of foreigners (see Roxana Saberi and the current crisis with the three wayward U.S. hikers).
However, we do see them boycotting the Israelis almost every time their government takes action to defend itself, actions like the flotilla raid that are arguable at worst, morally imperative at best.
Where has the world been every time a Palestinian extremist bombed an Israeli nightclub or café? Where were they in March 2008 when a Palestinian shot his way into the Mercaz Yeshiva and slaughtered eight students and a security guard?
Nowhere. They were and still are nowhere to be found whenever the state of Israel or her people are under attack. The Mercaz shooting was in no way political or ambiguous, and yet it barely got any press coverage outside the global Jewish community. The IDF kills nine people with terrorist ties pretending to be peace activists in a struggle aboard a boat laden with swords, clubs, and slingshots, and the world screams its bloody head off.
Where is the balance here?
Where is the world whenever Hamas or the Arab world subjugates or wages war on the Palestinians (i.e., Black September) or when Hamas steals foreign aid to sell it to their Palestinian underlings at high prices? Why all this hypocrisy?
The answer: Terrorism is boring. It’s old news.
The Mavi Marmara fiasco garnered so much international attention because of the sheer uniqueness of the situation: a military organization boarding a boat full of people who call themselves humanitarian activists who only want to help a poor, impoverished people. It’s sensationalist. It’s new. It hasn’t been seen before. The IDF is not just impeding the actions of Palestinians, they’re now impeding the actions of other nationalities. Forget suicide bombings and mortar attacks on suburban homes. No one wants to see that any more. But a military blocking people of all nationalities from reaching an area steeped in poverty and in need of help? Now that is what sells!
The world has become lazy in its morality. It wants miniature moral sound bites for entertainment, which they will then find a way to justify. In this case, the world wanted to believe the IDF stormed the Mavi Marmara and shot nine peace activists without first trying a peaceful alternative. That narrative is entertaining because not only is it so easy to identify who is acting without morality (which means the common news watcher doesn’t need to do any further research), but it’s sensational!
A military that boarded a vessel from another nation and killed its aid-bearing passengers! Wow, is that horrifying … and easy to process! They must be really, really evil, giving us a sole entity that we can identify as pure evil in a world of moral ambiguity and political correctness, right?
We have become a people concerned only with entertainment. And in the news, shocking, unique, unambiguous stories grab the most attention.
It doesn’t matter that the IDF found tons and tons of weapons on the Mavi Marmara. It doesn’t matter that they have a video of their commandos being torn apart. It doesn’t matter that nearly everyone on that boat was discovered to have terrorist ties, that they recorded themselves shouting “Death to Jews” before the raid to psych themselves up, or that they brought babies and children on board.
None of that matters because it would just complicate the entertainment. Better to stick to the original perception — that the IDF acted way out of line — than muddy up the morality of each side with pesky details.
Aaron. Maybe we should allow them some lax. Israel is a democracy, therefore we choose our leaders, therefore it makes sense to pressure the population to vote correctly, by denying it the Pixies or whatever. Such gestures are meaningless when used against our sundry neighbors.
You are correct in your material points but who is listening?
One thing though. You write “the IDF found tons and tons of weapons on the Mavi Marmara”. Not really, most of the “weapons” were the ship’s sawn-off railings. W
hat they didn’t find was any humanitarian aid
Denying the Pixies? Some punishment. Have you heard them? They are horrible!
Heard them? I’ve never even heard OF them.
Why all this hypocrisy?
The answer: JOO HATRED (FIFY)
This is a pity. Elias strikes gold, and then goes “Hurray, look what a great hole I dug”. What he does discover is that antisemitism is masquerading as anti zionisme. Good work.
The real question is how could the Israeli PR / Intelligence machine make such a mistake as board the ship. Shoot at it, blow it up, whatever. But board the ship with paintball guns?…whoever made that decision is out of IDF today, that is certain. Handled terribly and amateurish.
As far as threats, both Iran and Israel are making threats of blowing up the world, so no real difference any longer. When the masses cannot distinguish between sides, that is bad news for Israel, if it cannot present its case to the world, then the sabres will turn to rockets.
Maybe it is time to wipe the slate clean in the ME, let them go at each other, wipe up the mess when its over.
That decision rolls right up to Ehud Barak. And he is secure in his Defence Minister post.
no offense, but what an idiotic thing to say. Israel is not “making threats of blowing up the world”–they just want to be able to live in peace without terrorists blowing up their citizens.
this moral equivalency thing you are exhibiting is wrong, and dangerous.
“The answer: Terrorism is boring. It’s old news.”
I respectfully have to disagree with your conclusion.
The real answer is: antisemitism is “in” and people are looking for excuses to hate the Jews. therefore anything Israel does that can be presented in negative light will be presented as such so that the lynching mob can say – here, you see, this is why we hate the Jews.
This is not new, nor is it surprising as through the history of the Jewish people the enemy always looked for a reason to hate them through blood libels, disinformation and revisionism.
I think iti is more that the anti-semites know that there are a lot of people who still recoil at blatant anti-semitism. So they pretend that their problem is not with the Jews themselves, but rather with it’s govt. Therefore they can claim they are not anti-semites, rather just critics of the govt of Israel.
When you point out that they are ignoring much worse crimes by other govts, they usually start whining about how nobody is allowed to criticize Israel.
Case in point, miriam @13.
Phyllis,
Well-done post about the state of affairs regarding “Israel double-standard time,” as blogger Meryl Yourish once cleverly coined it.
A few points re the Mavi Marmara: I recently held an exclusive, fascinating, one-on-one audio podcast interview with a maritime security expert here in Jerusalem about the tactical efforts of the IDF SEAL commandos in coping with the on-deck situation. I welcome your comments on it, here: http://www.davebrianbender.com.
Btw – as it turns out, out of the some 600 passengers a board the Mavi Marmara, the Turks that were actually attacking the soldiers numbered about 40, and many had direct terror ties, according to later IDF investigations.
“It doesn’t matter that the IDF found tons and tons of weapons on the Mavi Marmara…”
Although many so-called “cold weapons” in IDF parlance were found, and even videoed by the attackers themselves – pre-battle, I think you may be referring to a French-language video of IDF naval troops examining shipboard war materiel’, that was hidden on a sea craft.
Trouble is that video blew all around the blogosphere, until it turned out that the video in question was NOT from the Mavi Marmara, but from another Hizbullah-bound smuggling craft, that the IDF commandeered and brought to port some time back.
Thanks, and keep up the good work,
Dave
http://www.davebrianbender.com
Why do you bother to seperate out the Israeli government from her people? To do this implies that what Jerusalem is doing to defnd her citizens is wrong. While things can always be handled in a better manner than it is, the reason that the people of Israel are targeted is pure unadultered anti-semitism masquerading as some type of moral authority. Sharansky’s 3 Ds are sufficient enough to underline that reality. I really wish people would stop trying to explain the irrational and stop whinning how life is unfair. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get into the fight, but whatever you do stop apologizing for having a government that allows your soldiers to put bullets in their guns. Wish they let the US soldiers in Afghanistan do that…
“…The answer: Terrorism is boring. It’s old news…”
Nonsense. The answer is that anti-Semitism is never boring and never old news. And slander against the Jews is always projection. The Christianized Goth who calls Jews barbarians is merely projecting his own grisly character on the Jews. No one who reads Spanish history could miss it.
Recall that Jews were burned alive in auto de fe’s a thousand at a time. Auto de fe means ‘act of faith’ in Spanish. Jew-hatred is an essential of Spanish Catholicism.
The irony is that Jews were key to the reconcista and the creation of modern Spain. Jewish ministers introduced Phillip and Isabella and supplied the huge guns that brought down the walls of Muslim stronghods. Absent Jews there would be no nation called Spain.
After 1492 the Rabbis declared Spain excommunicate and off limits to Jews for five hundred years. The ban recently expired. It needs to be renewed. Goths are pigs.
It’s easy because hating Jews is a GLOBAL pastime historically shared by all!
can any one who speaks the truth from ones heart say that organisations like Hamas are or will help the peopleor has no dealing with arms.the picture painted by them abuot carrying aids for the needy is all crap i will nor anybody with brains will believe their cock and bull story and as for the world hating the jews the world hated them from the beginingso it nothing new but they the ones who will be having the last laugh so till then you the people of israel just bear .
“But much of the West stands with the Iranian people…”
Speak for yourself, pal.
The only thing I’ve ever heard from the Iranian people is Marg Bar Amrika.
The Iranian people can take a flying leap, as far as I’m concerned.
You’ve got to be kidding!
Of course the Jews are to blame, we are always to blame, even if not a single Jew is involved.
About the only thing Jews are allowed to do is be murdered, then the rest of the world can express it’s deep and abiding sympathy.
But God Forbid a Jew should defend himself and by chance win, then the Jews have committed an unforgiveable crime against humanity.
And as far as Israel is concerned, well Israel is held to a standard of perfection, a standard no other people or country is expected to meet.
Let Israel make just one small mistake, and that is all that the world media will discuss and criticize.
Well frankly I would rather be a live Jew and hated by the rest of humanity than a dead Jew they all love!
Aaron: the Iranian people are suffering as well, with all the sanctions.
No one here hates the Israelis. as you can see the murderous actions of the Iranian goverment is hurting the Iranian people beyond imagination.
the reason the Isareli people are suffering as you indicat here is beacuse
of their government actions.. they shoot people point blank, then the
concerts get canceled, the gay pride disinvites the Israleis and so on…
How many times are you going to repeat that lie? The only one here buying it is you.
“they shoot people point blank”…. Really?
Show us the evidence, Miriam.
Don’t forget Arizona.
It’s also OK to blame the people and businesses of Arizona for the recent immigratino law.
“they shoot people point blank, then the concerts get canceled”
That’s easy to fix.
Shoot them from further away.