An Answer to the Question of "Vastly Different Approaches"

GI
CAMERA/Snapshots
11 March '10

As we noted in an early Snapshots blog post, Danny Seaman wonders "why ... the media adopt such vastly different approaches" when reporting on Israel, as compared to the rest of the conflict-filled world.

Walter Russell Mead has similar questions about the world's treatment of Israel. In his blog at The American Interest Online, Mead writes that he is "genuinely puzzled why people who in other contexts have quite interesting things to say manage to trip up in such foolish and self-defeating ways when the I-word comes up."

But he seems to have some theories.

I am always nervous around people who stridently insist that racism has disappeared in mainstream American life and only lingers on in weirdo subcultures; I feel the same way about people who say that anti-Semitism is no longer a significant feature of western culture. I am especially leery when people who loudly and implausibly assert that anti-Semitism isn’t a problem anymore make harsh and unbalanced criticisms about the world’s only Jewish state.

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