Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy:
For instance, one might think that only Israelis are sane, basically rights-respecting, and receptive to basic Western values — so that one can appeal to Israelis' basic principles in arguing that they're acting wrongly. Or one could believe that only Israel — and not Sudan or China — has a healthy enough democratic culture that this sort of treatment will change its policies. In other words, far from being an anti-Semitic policy, the boycott could be an act of deep respect for Israel, essentially saying: "Only you guys aren't savages; we think you might actually listen."
But I am skeptical that this distinction really does account for the vastly disproportionate focus on real and imagined Israeli offenses in many left-wing quarters. The problem is that even other liberal democracies don't get even a fraction of the criticism that Israel gets when they enact comparable policies.
Consider the case of France, which doesn't get so much as a tiny fraction of the hostility directed at Israel, even though most of the accusations typically made against Israel could just as easily be leveled at the French government. The French comparison is far from the only example of anti-Israel double standards. But it has the virtue of highlighting that double standard with unusual clarity because the main arguments used to defend the double standard in other cases simply don't apply to France. The French surely accept "basic Western values," and have a "healthy democratic culture" at least as much as the Israelis do. Let's consider the bill of indictment that left-wingers could make against France were they so inclined:...
He goes on to detail them. Well done.
Of course criticism of Israel, even unfair criticism, isn't necessarily anti-Semitic. What the "pure logic" examination offered by Somin and Volokh misses is that people's reaction to ideas is not solely in the real of pure logic and courtroom argumentation. People read more into it...they sense the sub-text.
There is a reason that so many leftists encounter such a robust and, to them, baffling, reaction to what they may, in many cases, perceive as run of the mill criticism. Well, several reasons, but I'll pick one. It is that many of us see standing next to them (in some cases quite literally), or behind them and their ideas, real anti-Semites, or those who would prefer to see the Israeli state dissolved -- otherwise known as genocide. That's what we read into it quite clearly, and that they can't see that -- either because they're naive, or willfully blind, or using evil people for what they perceive to be a virtuous purpose -- drives us to distraction.
This is one of the reasons that we so often hear the complaint that "the debate" is so much more vigorous inside Israel than outside it, where criticism is more often taken as something wicked, with wicked motives. That's because it is more often so. Israelis arguing with Israelis are far less likely to have genocide or racial hate as a motive. It can be (they isn't always, surely) a "cleaner" debate. Not so outside. One's a family argument within the family. The implications are far different when one or both participants aren't blood.
