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August 01, 2006
A Powerful Litmus Test
Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey relates an interesting conversation he had with some work colleagues (hat tip: LGF):
I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a co-worker, on the concept of the disporportinate Israeli attacks on Lebanon compared to Hezbollah attacks. He pointed to me his dismay at Hezbollah's rockets ineffeciency at hitting targets. He said "If you noticed, they bomb each other almost equally in amounts of missiles shot, but 90% of Hezbollah's rockets miss or hit nothing, while all of Israel's rockets hit something. If Hezbollah had better rockets, the civillian death toll on the Israeli side would be huge, and they would be really hurting by now."Impressed by this point of view that I haven't considerd before, I asked him what he would've thought, if a Hezbollah rocket had attacked a building in Israel, killing 55 civillians, of which 30 were children. He responded immeidtely "I would've thought it was great! A7san!".
So I repeated the same question to 8 other co-workers, and the responses so far have been as follows: 7 said they would celebrate, and 2 said that such an attack would've been bad, but justified! Yeah! Not a single person said that the death of any civllian, on either side, is an equal tragedy. Civillians dead on our side is tragic, civillian deaths on their side cause for celebration.
This is reprehensible, of course, but not really too surprising to me. I don't think it would have been realistic to expect German citizens in Berlin to mourn British civilian deaths to the same extent that they mourned their neighbors down the street, even if they hated the war and had soured on Hitler.
But the relevant point for me, sitting here in Texas, is that there are millions of people in liberal Western democracies who would also jump for joy if the tables of military power were turned and Hizbollah had one of most powerful armed forces in the world.
The issue, of course, boils down to intent: does anyone really believe that the Israelis intentionally targeted a house full of children? The question is a powerful litmus test--it's understandable that an ill-educated, poorly informed rural Lebanese Arab might believe such a thing. But why is a western media--besotted with its narcissistic self-image as the conveyer of truth--enabling the propagation of these criminal untruths? And why is the western intelligentsia lapping it up?
A liberal friend of mine likes to cite the bombing of the King David hotel by Jewish militants in 1946 as a counter example of "Jewish terrorism", but the analogy only proves my point, not his: the hotel housed several agencies of the ruling British government, including the military command. It was as far from the typical jihadi bombing of a cafe or shopping mall as can be. And, just as in the case of the Qana air strike, the Israelis had issued a warning prior to striking.
The beady eye of judgment falls upon those who should know better.
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