The World's Deadly Israel Obsession
The real reason the country receives so much attention--and condemnation.

by Daniel Freedman
Forbes
June 24, 2010

http://www.dfreedman.org/7643/the-worlds-deadly-israel-obsession

Excerpt:

The simple solution for peace in the Middle East may be for Israel to change its name to Norway. Israel's diplomats discovered this trick in 1952, when an Israeli initiative at the U.N. for a cease-fire in Korea--put forward by representative Abba Eban--encountered serious opposition, only to pass easily once Norway replaced Israel as the sponsor. (These experiences led Eban to later quip: "If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.")

Israel is treated differently than other nations. If any other country had acted in the same way as it did with the recent Gaza aid flotilla--for example, Britain in stopping an IRA-supporting convoy from reaching Northern Ireland--the condemnation and attention would not be at the same level.

We saw this in 2006 as well, when Israel was warned that its response to Hezbollah's repeated firing of rockets into Israel had to be "proportionate." Did a chorus of foreign ministries warn Turkey to be proportionate in 2008 when it sent 10,000 troops into Iraq to attack PKK fighters? Or the U.S. in 2001 when it invaded Afghanistan to go after al Qaeda? Of course not. But with Israel it's different, both in the condemnation and the coverage of its actions.

A common justification given by Israel's critics for their obsession is the supposed David vs. Goliath nature of the conflict. Beyond the obvious flaws in the analogy--Hamas is no David, it's a terrorist group supported by big states like Syria and Iran, and people don't side with the Taliban because the U.S. is the Goliath--a look at history shows the weakness of this claim.

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