Arraya, I don’t think it (any other conflict) justifies and I don’t think Israel is ethnic cleansing. I wanted to call attention to something I see as salient, the fact that this one conflict draws so much more attention than others, conflicts much bloodier. I wasn’t excusing the violence, but I was contextualizing it.
I have a good friend, she too thinks that Israel is conducting genocide. I don’t agree with her, not even close. Problem is I do think the Israelis have ignored their problem, in much the way you say the strong ignoring the weak.
The fact that you talk about the existence of Israel as an anachronism, that we rock, they suck. I like it, it’s simple, it’s got a certain Fox news truthiness to it. Ultimately it ignores why Israel came into existence in the first place. The cold hard fact that the Arabs didn’t want the Jews there. The fact that Jews never felt accepted in Europe. Those facts plus American and European money to back it.
You can dislike those reasons, I won’t disagree. The world has only pretended to move on. However those other ethnic conflicts you dismiss so out of hand give clear indications that the world hasn’t moved on. People still kill each other for being the wrong skin color or tribe. The Arabs have never given any indication that Jews would be safe, so the ugly cycle continues and ugly it is.
How about we all talk about putting massive foreign policy pressure on the Israel to integrate the Palestinians at the same time we put the exact same pressure on the Saudi’s, Syrians, Jordanians and Lebanese to make real peace with Israel? You can defang the Violence of the Israeli’s faster by guaranteeing their safety than by condemning them. That would however take real work. The Arab world is large and it’s grievance about Israel’s existence seems intractable.
Josh
