Genocide and "Genocide"

Daphne Anson
15 June '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/06/genocide-and-genocide.html

It's a wearyingly and worryingly familiar story, the tunnel-visioned fixation on Israel that characterises so much of the Western media, and not only the political Left.

Israel, to an extent unique among the world's nations, is scrutinised, maligned, excoriated, its defensive military and security measures misrepresented and misreported, its actions demonised to the point where in the view of some rascals its very right to existence is contingent on its behaviour.

This hypocritical, obnoxious, and totally unjustified nature of the current obsession with the policies and actions of a tiny country that remains the sole democracy in the Middle East is, of course, in stark contrast to the near-indifference of the Israel-bashers to the genocide and human rights abuses taking place in real rogue regimes, even in countries where genocide occurs.

One of the most grotesque and shameful of the charges against Israel hurled by Israel-bashers on the Left - but not only on the Left - is that it is committing "genocide" against the Palestinian Arabs. It's grotesque and shameful not only because it is analogous to a "blood libel" of old, it's grotesque and shameful because it trivialises the very meaning of "genocide" itself and therefore diminishes genocide's victims.

In a characteristically insightful new post, blogger Ray Cook brings into sharp focus the double standards that apply to Israel in the world arena. He does this by comparing world apathy to the genuine genocide carried out by the Sri Lankan government against tens of thousands of Tamils with world condemnation of the State of Israel over the casualties incurred among Gazans as a result of the counter-terrorism action that was known as Operation Cast Lead .

He observes, inter alia, that in Sri Lanka:

"At least 40,000 civilians were killed and relatively few combatants. The actual figure may be much, much higher. It could be more than 100,000.

There was torture, rape, clearly deliberate targetting of hospitals and civilians.
What happened in the UN? There was a very low-key call for an investigation which the Sri Lankan government rejected.

The whole thing was buried and soon forgotten.

There was no worldwide condemnation.

Sri Lankans were still safe to walk the streets of Europe and play Test Match cricket.

There were no flotillas, no high-profile demonstrations in the world’s capitals (there were some by the desperate relatives of Tamils abroad).

In short no-one really gave a damn. Not the UN, not the EU, not Sri Lanka’s neighbours...."

Read all of Ray Cook's post here: http://www.raymondcook.net/blog/index.php/2011/06/15/sri-lankas-killing-fields-what-genocide-really-looks-like/

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