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April 30, 2007 - 10:48pm — Andrew Belmont
It's always surprising to me when I hear people speak emphatically about Israel as a genocidal country while there is so much silence about Darfur, where real genocide, to the tune of tens to hundreds of thousands, is now being propagated by Muslims against black Africans. I don't see the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in such black and white terms as some of the posts in this article imply. But unfortunately, genocide in Darfur is black and white- both figuratively and literatlly.
That is why many people equate unbalanced diatribes against Israel with anti-Semitism. When so much attention is placed on Israel's actions when outright rape, mayhem, and murder go on elsewhere in the world, while attracting correspondingly little atttention let alone sense of outrage, many Jews and others legitimately wonder about motivation. Not the motivation of those that question or even are shocked by some of actions of the Israeli government- after all much of this is actively raised by the Israeli and Jewish press. But they do question the motivation of the anti Israeli movement that doesn't appear to acknowledge that any of Israel's actions- right or wrong- are reactions to violence directed against civilians from the other side.
Apathy unfortunately is a natural response to human disasters elsewhere in the world. But the tremendous contradictions between the attention and outrage over Israel's actions, combined with apathy over the Bosnias and Darfurs of the world, are surprising. This is the primary argument for anti-Semitism being involved in some of the more extreme anti-Israel rhetroric.


