How we view international news; double standards

Purple

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We in this country are rightly critical of Israel and how it behaves in Gaza and the West Bank but are we fair?
A little over a week ago Israeli security forces killed 62 people on its border with Gaza after days of protests stemming from the USA moving its embassy to Jerusalem. It was widely reported and widely condemned by news outlets across Europe and Ireland with lots of noise from the UN.

Then, a few days later a HAMAS representative admitted that 50 of the 62 killed were HAMAS operatives with only 12 being "civilians". That gave credence to the Israeli position that what happened was an attack, not a protest. While the it is still appropriate to condemn the excesses of the IDF I find it very incredible that this revelation was not widely reported in the Irish media.

At the same time the widespread oppression of the Kurds in Turkey [broken link removed] here. What they are doing now far exceeds the excesses of the Israelis and the history of oppression of the Kurds within Turkey dates back to the founding of the state of modern Turkey.

Why do we get so exorcised about what Israel does while we ignore what Turkey does?

Why is Israel held to higher standards that its neighbours?


Why are we not all calling for a boycott on Saudi Arabia for it's support of terrorism and the horrific war it has wages in Yemen? In that war Saudi (and the USA, France and the UK, along with other Sunni Arab countries) is backing a government which is supported by the local al-Qaeda faction, a group regarded as one of the most dangerous in the region.

Where's the politicians and musicians protesting about that or the more than 100 people executed in Saudi each year for crimes including attending public protests and adultery, after which their severed heads can be left on public display?

Where are the same mob protesting about the oppression of the Kurds?

I just can't shake the idea that the fact that Israel is Jewish has something to do with it.
 
I broadly agree in relation to other unreported war crimes, re Saudi its oil - pure & simple - if there ever a reason to be an environmentalist and move beyond oil.....

My reluctance to say its anti-semitism is due to the Israeli position of producing that card at ever opportunity as the shield for any criticism. Israel is a modern state and we expect a bit more, is part of it. The relentlessness of their campaign is another aspect - for decades they have laid seige to a people. You can get into chicken & egg type arguments over who started it, but Israel seems determined to finish it a la the Kinahans. If you were stuck in the Gaza strip I'm sure you'd be willing to protest. From the pictures we've seen it was people throwing stones from half a mile away, who were picked off by snipers - it was totally disproportionate response to any perceived threat.

Why would Irish people hate the Jews?, do we hate the Mormons or the Quakers or whoever else? If it wasn't for Israels actions we'd barely have cause to think of them at all [other than remembering the holocaust], much less hate them.

I think the Kurds are one of the most hard done by peoples ever, they fought ISIS in the front lines, but yet they can't be given a homeland in the mountains. So Turkey are another nation who can FRO.
 
Israel is a modern state and we expect a bit more, is part of it.
Yes, that's certainly a factor.

The relentlessness of their campaign is another aspect - for decades they have laid seige to a people.
Yes and no; the culpability of other players in the region is willfully ignored by our media. Why do they do that?

If you were stuck in the Gaza strip I'm sure you'd be willing to protest.
I would indeed. I'm not sure that's I'd only be protesting against the Israelis though.

From the pictures we've seen it was people throwing stones from half a mile away, who were picked off by snipers - it was totally disproportionate response to any perceived threat.
Agreed.
 
Why do we get so exorcised about what Israel does while we ignore what Turkey does?

Why is Israel held to higher standards that its neighbours?

Because the State of Israel was created by a decision of The UN. It is "our" responsibility.

The UN, (at the time "we" the west, had most influence) brought Israel into existence, with the express purpose of Jews from around the world coming to live there. This was done to assuage European guilt after the Holocaust.

Now we feel guilty about the adverse effects our decision had on the people who lived there at the time.
 
Then, a few days later a HAMAS representative admitted that 50 of the 62 killed were HAMAS operatives with only 12 being "civilians".

With respect, within the artice itself from "Israel Times", it is somewhat disputed as to how many of the victims were Hamas.
Also, being a member of Hamas is quite common in Gaza, and when the organisation called Hamas openly calls for Palestinians to partake in a march it is not surprising to me to see that large numbers of Hamas members would partake in the protest.
Finally, the only evidence of an 'attack' from Hamas, that I have seen, are petrol bombs, stone-throwing and wire-cutting the fence.
The Israeli response was wholly disproportionate, quite often indiscrimanate and rightly condemned for its barbaric murders of children.
 
With respect, within the artice itself from "Israel Times", it is somewhat disputed as to how many of the victims were Hamas.
Also, being a member of Hamas is quite common in Gaza, and when the organisation called Hamas openly calls for Palestinians to partake in a march it is not surprising to me to see that large numbers of Hamas members would partake in the protest.
Finally, the only evidence of an 'attack' from Hamas, that I have seen, are petrol bombs, stone-throwing and wire-cutting the fence.
The Israeli response was wholly disproportionate, quite often indiscrimanate and rightly condemned for its barbaric murders of children.
With respect, are you certain that you are getting the full story?
CNN covered the same story and they are hardly pro-Israeli.
That doesn't excuse Israeli excesses but it is not balanced reporting when we only hear about the excesses of one side.

I think back to the morons from the Labour party's LGBT group marching in Dublin with Hamas flags even though if Hamas got their hands on them they'd throw them off the roof of a high building for being LGB or T.
 
With respect, are you certain that you are getting the full story?

Probably rarely ever get the full story. So in between the propaganda from all sides I try to gauge matters with what is put in front of me.
My understanding is that no Israeli soliders were injured in the protests?
Video footage of shootings show clearly indiscriminate fire, including attacking people at prayer, and teenagers running away from the border fence.
The article you linked automatically labels all Hamas members as terrorists, therefore Israel was 'under attack' - not so, it is quite plausible to be a Hamas member and not be engaged in terrorist activity.

So in the end 60+ Palestinians dead, several hundred injured, no Israelis injured - it was a slaughter.
 
Why do we get so exorcised about what Israel does while we ignore what Turkey does?

I agree, I reckon it is because Turkey is a NATO member.
Although we are not in NATO we know how to toe the line.

Why are we not all calling for a boycott on Saudi Arabia for it's support of terrorism and the horrific war it has wages in Yemen?

Again, all to do with national interests and very rarely to with innocent civilians.

Where's the politicians and musicians protesting about that or the more than 100 people executed in Saudi each year for crimes including attending public protests and adultery, after which their severed heads can be left on public display?

There are quite a few, but I suspect if they ever got into power they would become rudderless in all this.
Its why we are 'nuetral' but allow US warplanes to land at Shannon. Its why we expel Russian diplomats at the behest of dubious British claims but only summon Israeli diplomats despite slaughter.

I just can't shake the idea that the fact that Israel is Jewish has something to do with it

I disagree. Despite all the condemnation, we dont actually do anything. The reason I think Israel gets a hard time over their blatant atrocities over say, Saudi Arabia, is because it relies heavily on Western support to survive.
The West doesnt like being put into the position of having to justify bare-faced Israeli atrocities.
Israels biggest threat is not the Palestinians, Hamas or Arabs, it is the populations of Europe and US turning against their political establishments in their support for Israel.
 
True but an examination of the population of the area at the time, and in the 50-100 or so years leading up to then shows that it's not that simple.

It really is that simple, as the source you quote quite clearly shows.

In 1922, when political Zionism was already active, the Jewish population of Palestine was 11%. Today it is 74.7%.
 
It really is that simple, as the source you quote quite clearly shows.

In 1922, when political Zionism was already active, the Jewish population of Palestine was 11%. Today it is 74.7%.
At that time there were restrictions on Jews emigrating to the area, restrictions which became far stricter under the British Mandate. At the same time there was a massive influx of Arabs, mainly to work for Jewish Zionist settlers who were investing large amounts of money in agricultural infrastructure.
The reason that the Jewish population of the area was so low was because they had been driven out of the area under force of arms in previous generations. When you look at the Stat's the majority of Palestinians are there the same amount of time as the Jews.
The correlation between the Jews and the Nationalists in Northern Ireland is striking; both dispossessed with their land planted by outsiders, both willing to fight to get it back. That's why I don't understand why the Shinners/Nationalists/IRA heads are pro-Palestinian as in the Irish context the Palestinians are the planters.

Of course none of that excuses Israeli excesses now or Palestinian terrorism now or in the past.
 
I disagree. Despite all the condemnation, we dont actually do anything. The reason I think Israel gets a hard time over their blatant atrocities over say, Saudi Arabia, is because it relies heavily on Western support to survive.
We can't do anything that means anything but we don't make noise about Saudi or Turkey like we do about Israel. Irish people won't buy Israeli oranges but we'll happily go on holidays to Turkey (unless we fear a terrorist attack).
 
Its why we are 'nuetral' but allow US warplanes to land at Shannon. Its why we expel Russian diplomats at the behest of dubious British claims but only summon Israeli diplomats despite slaughter.
We are not Neutral, we are unaligned. If we were neutral we'd be capable of defending ourselves but we are not. Austria and Switzerland are neutral and have large armies.
 
I'm not suggesting that the Israelis are justified in killing so many people or that they behave well. I am suggesting that our childish framing of those who oppose Israel as the good guys or somehow noble is totally inaccurate.

In my view it's a hangover from the days when we supported the IRA and the PLO seemed like their counterparts in the Middle East but at a distance in our eyes they were free from the same grime that tarnished the IRA.

We still think that Yasser Arafat was a hero even though he murdered children and embezzled at least $11.5 million of the $600 million missing from the funds of the Palestinian Authority. We ignored the Munich Olympic attacks or his funding and support of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
We know about the $11.5 million because French investigators traced it to a Swiss Bank Account in his wife's name.
The Guardian is hardly a supporter of Israel but they reported about Suha Arafat more than a decade ago, including the alleged $100,000 a month she received as a salary while living in luxury with her children in Paris, that on top of the theft allegations and all the time when the people her former husband was supposed to represent were hungry and dying.
 
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Imagine Richard Boyd Barrett and the others in Slogans before Reality if we'd sold a naval ship to the Israeli's instead of a Libyan Warlord.
What's gas is that we sold it for €100,000 to a middle-man who then flipped it for €685,000. Oh, and we forgot to mention that we'd left €16,000 worth of fuel in the tank!
 
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On the subject of ships, was there any justification for blocking the flotilla of medical aid that time? Should the LE Aisling have been kept and utilised for such humanitarian work - still under Irish Naval control - or does Israel think we'd be slipping them an odd AK-47???, or maybe they just don't like siege relief, you never know how dangerous food and bandages could be......
 
On the subject of ships, was there any justification for blocking the flotilla of medical aid that time? Should the LE Aisling have been kept and utilised for such humanitarian work - still under Irish Naval control - or does Israel think we'd be slipping them an odd AK-47???, or maybe they just don't like siege relief, you never know how dangerous food and bandages could be......
On that issue; why didn't our media report on the fact that Egypt had closed its border with Gaza and, as a fellow Arab nation, could easily have supplied all of the food and medical needs of the people there?
Where were the protests outside the Egyptian embassy? Where were the calls to boycott them?

Why does nobody like Hamas? Because most countries including the USA, Canada and the EU categorize them as a terrorist organisation.
Imagine how the British would have reacted if Sinn Fein had taken power in a quasi-independent Northern Ireland in the mid 1970's. That's what this is like for Israel.

The Palestinian question is as much to do with the inter-generational hot/cold/hot civil/regional war between Sunni and Shia Islam, between Egypt and Iran and their respective power groups, as it is to do with a conflict between Israel and the Arabs.

The people writing in the Irish Times know all this but they choose not to say it. Instead they choose to frame this as a conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as if the border around them was eternal and immutable instead of a 90 year old European creation. Why is that?
 
We can't do anything that means anything but we don't make noise about Saudi or Turkey like we do about Israel. Irish people won't buy Israeli oranges but we'll happily go on holidays to Turkey (unless we fear a terrorist attack).

We could do things like stop importing Israeli goods, but to do so would bring the wrath of the US Administration and before long we would feel the heat from Washington.

We are not Neutral, we are unaligned. If we were neutral we'd be capable of defending ourselves but we are not. Austria and Switzerland are neutral and have large armies.

Fair enough, we are 'unaligned'. That is why we allow US warplanes to land in Shannon on their way to a conflict that we have no direct part in - no doubt if, Russian or even Iranian warplanes requested landing here on their way we would tell them where to go. We may be 'unaligned' but we know which pot our gravy is in.

Imagine Richard Boyd Barrett and the others in Slogans before Reality if we'd sold a naval ship to the Israeli's instead of a Libyan Warlord.

Except we didn't sell it to a Libyan Warlord, according to the article we sold it to a Dutch business man who in turn sold it to a Libyan warlord - Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27492354

He is a complex character. My guess is if our navy ships were falling into the 'wrong hands' in Libya we would have got a wrap on the knuckles from the US, UK and France by now.

Imagine how the British would have reacted if Sinn Fein had taken power in a quasi-independent Northern Ireland in the mid 1970's. That's what this is like for Israel.

I don't think that is a useful analogy. Hamas have been democratically elected in the Gaza Strip have they not? The recent protests have as their basis, legitimate grievances of being driven out or having to flee their homelands.
 
I don't think that is a useful analogy. Hamas have been democratically elected in the Gaza Strip have they not? The recent protests have as their basis, legitimate grievances of being driven out or having to flee their homelands.
The IRA had legitimate grievances and had widespread support in NI. If there was a partitioned Catholic State-let they may well have won an election whilst still being terrorists.
As I pointed out already if you agree that Palestine is the homeland of the Arabs who identify as Palestinian then you have to agree that Northern Ireland is the homeland of the Unionists.
Personally I prefer to deal with the here and now and not get bogged down about what date you start counting from when assessing the legitimacy of peoples claim on "homelands". It's one of the reasons I don't like Nationalism.
 
Except we didn't sell it to a Libyan Warlord, according to the article we sold it to a Dutch business man who in turn sold it to a Libyan warlord - Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
Sure, and we couldn't have any control over who it was sold to next? Riiight.
 
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