Israel Wants to be Western

Israel commonly complains that protest against it should be directed toward worse human rights offenders, and because worse offenders are not protested, the anti-Israel protests are anti-Semitic.

The first thing to note that that by pointing to worse offenders, Israel is tacitly admitting that it too offends.

There are clearly worse offenders of human rights than Israel.  Besides non-state actors like the Islamic State, Taliban, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haran, all states violate human rights to some extent.  Among the worst (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2014#.VKoyJivF-u8) are Saudi Arabia and Syria in the Middle East, Somalia, Eritrea, and others in Africa, and Turkmenistan and others in Asia. 

But there is an important difference between Israel and the other human rights offenders – Israel pretends to be a Western state.  And even if the right-wing Israeli government does not necessarily want to be considered Western, the Israeli people do.  None of the other human rights offenders have any hope of being considered Western.

What that means is that Israel essentially demands to be judged by a different standard.  Central to these enhanced standards is to honor human rights.  And that is exactly what Israel did not do in the Nakba, and does not do in the 47-year occupation that systematically dispossesses and oppresses Palestinians in the occupied territories and even in Israel within the Green Line. 

The flip side of Israel pretending to be Western is that is something that ultimately controls and limits Israeli actions.  Israel knows that if it offends too much, it loses its Western status. 

An example is the number of Palestinians Israel killed.  Israel killed almost 2,400 Palestinians during Protective Edge.  That is 2,400 too many deaths that are unforgivable.  But consider how many of the 1.8 million Palestinian trapped in the 139 square miles of the Gaza Strip Israel with its massive, modern weapons could have killed if it was unencumbered by a desire to be Western.  Easily 10 or even 100 times as many.

In fact, Israel stands out by the relitevely few Palestinians it killed in a violent conflict that has gone on for almost 50 years.  Israel killed less than 0.2% of the Gaza population in the three recent bombardments (2008-09. 2012, and 2014).  In contrast, 1% of the Israeli population was killed in the 1948 war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_casualties_of_war ).  Other episodes with a high fractions of victims include 5% of the Chechnya population killed in each of the First and Second Chechen war (1994-96 & 1999-2009; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War ), 20% of the population was killed during the 1994 Rwanda genocide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide ), 25% of the Cambodia population killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1975 “killing fields,” and 30-35% of the population killed in the 1937-8 Nanking Massacre (Rape of Nanking; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre ).

We might speculate how it was that Israel killed less than 0.2% of the Gaza population considering the people were trapped in a small area and the Israeli soldiers were propagandized that the ‘Arabs” were evil and wanted nothing but to kill Israelis, the Israeli religious authorities ruled that killing Palestinians was righteous, the Israelis had effectively infinite firepower, and much of the Israeli population wanted the army to kill more Palestinians.  I suggest that the Israeli rules of engagement, established to keep Israel Western, limited the Killing.

This analysis does not excuse any of the 4 thousand Palestinian deaths in the three bombardments.  Nevertheless, Israel’s desire to be considered Western is the ultimate power that limits Palestinian deaths.