By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, January 05, 2017
Secretary of State John Kerry, echoing other policymakers
in the Obama administration, blasted Israel last week in a 70-minute rant about
its supposedly self-destructive policies.
Why does the world — including now the U.S. — single out
liberal and lawful Israel but refrain from chastising truly illiberal
countries?
Kerry has never sermonized for so long about his plan to
solve the Syrian crisis that has led to some 500,000 deaths or the vast migrant
crisis that has nearly wrecked the European Union.
No one in this administration has shown as much anger
about the many thousands who have been killed and jailed in the Castro
brothers’ Cuba, much less about the current Stone Age conditions in Venezuela
or the nightmarish government of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines,
an ally nation.
President Obama did not champion the cause of the
oppressed during the Green Revolution of 2009 in Iran. Did Kerry and Obama
become so outraged after Russia occupied South Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern
Ukraine?
Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was never
so impassioned over the borders of Chinese-occupied Tibet, or over
Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.
In terms of harkening back to the Palestinian “refugee”
crisis that started in the late 1940s, no one talks today in similar fashion
about the Jews who survived the Holocaust and walked home, only to find that
their houses in Eastern Europe were gone or occupied by others. Much less do we
recall the 11 million German civilians who were ethnically cleansed from
Eastern Europe in 1945 by the Soviets and their imposed Communist governments.
Certainly, there are not still “refugee” camps outside Dresden for those
persons displaced from East Prussia 70 years ago.
More recently, few nations at the U.N. faulted the
Kuwaiti government for the expulsion of 200,000 Palestinians after the
liberation of Kuwait by coalition forces in 1991.
Yet on nearly every issue — from “settlements” to human
rights to the status of women — U.N. members that routinely violate human
rights target a liberal Israel.
When President Obama entered office, among his first acts
were to give an interview with the Saudi-owned news outlet Al Arabiya
championing his outreach to the mostly non-democratic Islamic world and to
blast democratic Israel on “settlements.”
Partly, the reason for such inordinate criticism of
Israel is sheer cowardice. If Israel had 100 million people and was
geographically large, the world would not so readily play the bully.
Instead, the United Nations and Europe would likely leave
it alone — just as they give a pass to human-rights offenders such as Pakistan
and Indonesia. If Israel were as big as Iran, and Iran as small as Israel, then
the Obama administration would have not reached out to Iran, and would have
left Israel alone.
Israel’s supposed Western friends sort out Israel’s
enemies by their relative natural resources, geography, and population — and
conclude that supporting Israel is a bad deal in cost/benefit terms.
Partly, the criticism of Israel is explained by oil — an
issue that is changing daily as both the U.S. and Israel cease to be oil
importers.
Still, about 40 percent of the world’s oil is sold by
Persian Gulf nations. Influential nations in Europe and China continue to count
on oil imports from the Middle East — and make political adjustments
accordingly.
Partly, anti-Israel rhetoric is due to herd politics.
The Palestinians — illiberal and reactionary on cherished
Western issues like gender equality, homosexuality, religious tolerance, and
diversity — have grafted their cause to the popular campus agendas of
race/class/gender victimization.
Western nations in general do not worry much about
assorted non-Western crimes such as genocides, mass cleansings, or politically
induced famines. Instead, they prefer sermons to other Westerners as a sort of
virtue-signaling, without any worries over offending politically correct
groups.
Partly, the piling on Israel is due to American leverage
over Israel as a recipient of U.S. aid. As a benefactor, the Obama
administration expects that Israel must match U.S. generosity with obeisance.
Yet the U.S. rarely gives similar “how dare you” lectures to less liberal
recipients of American aid, such as the Palestinians for their lack of free
elections.
Partly, the cause of global hostility toward Israel is
jealousy. If Israel were mired in Venezuela-like chaos, few nations would care.
Instead, the image of a proud, successful, Westernized nation as an atoll in a
sea of self-inflicted misery is grating to many. And the astounding success of
Israel bothers so many failed states that the entire world takes notice.
But partly, the source of anti-Israelism is ancient
anti-Semitism.
If Israelis were Egyptians administering Gaza or
Jordanians running the West Bank (as during the 1960s), no one would care. The
world’s problem is that Israelis are Jews. Thus, Israel earns negative scrutiny
that is never extended commensurately to others.
Obama and his diplomatic team should have known all this.
Perhaps they do, but they simply do not care.
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