Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

The Double Standard

For those who watched the "presidential" debates last week, we saw a young woman ask Kerry what he would do in light of a citizen that did not wish to have thier tax dollars spent on abortion. Many people consider abortion murder and they object to murder and don't want thier money used to support it. Or do they? It seems that many of these same '"anti-abortion" persons have no problems with the state executing prisoners even when those prisonors may well be innocent. Many of these "conservative" anti-abortion people also have no qualms with the mass murder of Iraqi's by the US military and paid for with, you guessed it, tax dollars. But even more so these same anti-abortion, anti-murder folks have no problem sending over $6 Billion annually to Israel who kills 1.3 palestinians a day while destroying thier homes not to mention the use of American military machinery developed by companies and paid by the DOD with, yet again, tax dollars.

Counterpunch has an excellent expose entitled Amnesty International: A False Beacon" on the two faced nature of many groups on the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Quote:
In May 2004 AI issued a press release headed "AI condemns murder of woman and her four daughters by Palestinian gunmen." The body of the text contains the following condemnation:

"Such deliberate attacks against civilians, which have been widespread, systematic and in furtherance of a stated policy to attack the civilian population, constitute crimes against humanity, as defined by Article 7 (1) and (2)(a) of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal."[4]

So, when Palestinians kill some civilians, then it constitutes a "crime against humanity" -- one of the most serious crimes under international law, and a precursor to genocide. But, when Israel kills far more civilians "in furtherance of a stated policy" (the phrasing AI used against Palestinians) to "exact a price" (to use the words of Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz [5]), all that AI can do is to wring its hands and worry about "the Israeli army's use of excessive force". Thus, we see that AI does not hesitate to use against Palestinians terms, such as "crime against humanity", which it has never unambiguously leveled against Israel.



Note that the Israeli woman killed by Palestinians in the above episode was a settler. Thus, AI was stretching a point a to call her a civilian -- settlers are armed and they consider themselves, when they feel like it, the shock troops of an expansionist zionism whose stated goal is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from, at least, all the land west of the River Jordan.

Regarding the Palestinian attack, AI also states: "deliberate attacks against civilians, which have been widespread, systematic and in furtherance of a stated policy to attack the civilian population." Whoa! It is astonishing that such a description was added to its accusation pertaining a Palestinian attack, but at the same time, it is not willing to classify any Israeli actions as "systematic, deliberate and widespread [etc.]". AI portrays Palestinian violence as worse than Israeli violence, and this amounts to a clear double standard.


So when self righteous and indignant folks come out their face about how they don't want thier tac dollars supporting X,y or Z then you make sure they account for the billions that get sent to Israel.

Links:
http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij10132004.html