Israel's double standards

The European Union and the United Nations have routinely condemned Israel for her response to Hamas rocket fire over the last several years. The criticism reached a fever pitch after Israel's Gaza incursion in December and January 2008. According to the BBC, of the 8,600 rockets launched by Hamas against Israel since 2001, nearly 6,000 (70%) have been launched since Israel withdrew from Gaza in August 2005. Following Hamas terrorist attacks, Israel is usually advised by the European Union and the United Nations to restrain herself, but if they must, they have the right to retaliate proportionately. They never quite identify what a proportional response would be. Would a proportional Israeli response be to launch 6,000 rockets into the Gaza strip? Hardly. Thomas Aquinas' Just War discussed the issue of proportionality and explained that the anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to the expected evils or harms of the enemy's actions. Suicide bombers and rockets aimed at school children and hospitals should rank high on the list of anticipated evil. Unfortunately, one must conclude that it seems the United Nations and the European Union prefer to determine proportionality by counting dead bodies, rather than by assessing the goals that terrorist attacks are designed to accomplish and the means they employ to that end.

The criticism directed toward Israel can only be described as a double standard. The term "double standard" describes an ethically indefensible condition, when a certain behavior is judged acceptable for one group, but as a failing for another. Such double standards are unjust and hypocritical because they violate modern legal jurisprudence where all parties should stand equal before the law, regardless of social class, religious beliefs, wealth, rank, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other distinctions.

The repeated condemnations directed against the Israeli government for defending its citizens, coupled with the refusal to confront Hamas terrorist attacks, amounts to a tacit approval of terrorism by the EU and the UN. Such a response is shocking, especially in Europe's case. The British and Spanish governments both harshly condemned terrorism after attacks by Islamic fundamentalists within their own borders in July 2005, and March 2004 respectively. This begs the question, why is the double standard applied to Israel? Has the EU developed a pro-radical Islamic agenda? Unlikely. Are seeds of historical anti-Semitism in Europe still pertinent today? Unfortunately, this seems to be the most likely explanation.

Before declaring Europe a bastion for anti-Semitic Israel-bashers, it is first necessary to clarify the oft-blurred line between legitimate and fair criticism of Israel, as a member state of the United Nations, and the unjust criticism of a Jewish state. Lets be clear, Israel's government like any other government, must be responsible for her decisions and their outcomes. For example, it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the Israeli government if Israeli-Arab cities do not receive the same municipal funding as Jewish-Israeli cities. The government might be criticized when it is unable to conclude labor negotiations with its public school professors: it could fairly be condemned if it intentionally injures or kills civilians instead of, or in addition to, enemy combatants in armed conflict. But it is intellectually and morally indefensible to refuse to apply those same standards to the other parties in this conflict. This double standard is in fact a form of colonialism, because it is based on the implicit assumption that one cannot expect a high level of moral (Western) behavior from the other countries and polities that confront Israel because of their inherent inferiority.

The efforts of politicians and political commentators to uphold the Geneva Convention must be respected, but if one country must defend itself by a set of international laws, then all must be held to the same standard. Unfortunately, the double standard has routinely been applied to the Israeli military alone. For example, the Sri Lankan government's recent actions against the Tamil Tigers resulted in the death of close to three thousand innocent civilians, and over 100,000 civilians were left trapped in Tamil strongholds. These losses are on an order of magnitude greater than the civilian casualties in Gaza, but where is the global outcry? The world also remained silent when Russia brutally demonstrated its military ruthlessness in Chechnya and again in the Georgia/South Ossetian region. That conflict was raw aggression by a military titan directed at a dramatically weaker autonomous state. When Lebanon brought a terrorist regime (Hizbullah, the same group that massacred United States Marines in 1983) into its government and even allowed them veto power over the parliament, the world was curiously and pathetically silent once again. Possibly, the most telling example of the double standard, is that a Spanish court is considering prosecuting Israeli leaders for war crimes. Meanwhile, with the sole exception of Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir, not a single major Islamic political figure responsible for promoting or committing terrorist provocations, is under legal threat in the EU. For instance, terror-sponsoring and genocidal advocate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travels freely.

No government should be free of criticism, but all governments must stand equal in the eye of the law and the critic. The fact that Israel is routinely criticized for defending her citizens, and other governments are not, is not due to a lack of transgressions by other countries, but must be attributed to the increasingly un-veiled anti-Semitism that infects many of today's foremost political institutions.