Kristof makes sense! And, no, my brain was not stolen by space aliens in some dusty Kansas field on the drive home yesterday.
Read:
This frenzy in the Arab world is fascinating, because while the Israeli brutality in the occupied territories is real, it is small potatoes by Arab standards.
That’s not an original point, not by a longshot. Anyone who reads Sullivan, or the Prof, or even this site has seen the same thing said many times. But by Kristof? Cool.
Some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the latest round of violence erupted in the fall of 2000. In contrast, two million Sudanese have died in the ongoing civil war here, with barely anyone noticing.
And numbers to back it up. I’m . . . I don’t honestly know what to say. Will I have to discontinue VodkaPundit’s popular Tuesday & Friday diss-eratations on Nicky?
First, there is a double standard; the Arab world is outraged in large part because it is Israel that is killing Arabs this time. Second, despite the double standard, the outrage is still sincere and deeply threatening to pro-American Arab governments; there is a tendency among Israel’s supporters to assume that the rage must be feigned, but that’s a fantasy.
Oooooh, I figured there was a catch. See, the Arabs are really, really, very quite angry. So I suppose all those murder bombings are just a natural reaction, right, Nicky?
Israelis should not feel reassured just because Arab protests reflect a double standard. In the mid-1980’s I covered South African business leaders for a time, and anguished whites there constantly pointed out the double standard of the scrutiny and moral expectations on them. They had a point, but the world did not stop to listen and in the end it didn’t matter that there were many far worse sinners.
I take back the snide comment above. Kristof came through to a reasonable conclusion, in favor of the reasonable side.
Hell’s bells. Now what’ll I do with the rest of the morning?
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