It’s not hard to understand why, especially for the educated regular readers of this blog. It’s due to the humanitarian racist (thank Dr.Gerstenfeld for that term) lowering of expectations for those who traditionally hail outside the modern liberal, democratic West. The non-white, according to Dr.Gerstenfeld’s review of the mindset of the humanitarian racist:
The humanitarian racist’s conclusion differs, however, from that of the ugly racist. He or she considers that as the non-white or weak cannot be held responsible for their acts, one should look away as often as possible even if they commit major crimes. Ugly racists fortunately can no longer get articles published in mainstream media, but humanitarian racists unfortunately are welcomed by them.
It’s why for an example, notoriously anti-Israel academics (and I use the term academic loosely where they are concerned) like Avi Shlaim, heap scorn upon the Jewish state, while giving the Palestinians a free pass. This is exactly what the former Isaeli ambassador to Finland, Avi Granot (whose parents were one of Oscar Schndler’s Jews) zeroed in on during a seminar at Helsinki University in 2009, where Avi Shlaim was speaking.
Shlaim’s dissertation exemplifies the humanitarian racism by many who refuse to hold those who are deemed a minority (and especially those who reside within the so called developing world), to the very same standards that they hold themselves to. But Avi Shlaim’s case is somewhat different, he has an ideological axe to grind as well, and is more than likely cognizant of his actions but doesn’t care, because his main aim is to delegitimize the Jewish state.
H/T DM
The Neurotic Middle East
The world tacitly exempts the Middle East from the rules of civilized behavior.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Let us confess it: Many of the things that are bothersome in the world today originate in the Middle East. Billions of air passengers each year take off their belts and shoes at the airport, not because of fears of terrorism from the slums of Johannesburg or because the grandsons of displaced East Prussians are blowing up Polish diplomats. We put up with such burdens because a Saudi multimillionaire, Osama bin Laden, and his unhinged band of Arab religious extremists began ramming airliners into buildings and murdering thousands.
The Olympics have become an armed camp, not because the Cold War Soviets once stormed Montreal or the Chinese have threatened Australia, but largely because Palestinian terrorists butchered Israelis in Munich 40 years ago and established the precedent that international arenas were ideal occasions for political mass murder.
There is no corn or wheat cartel. There are no cell-phone monopolies. Coal prices are not controlled by global price-fixers. Yet OPEC adjusts the supply of oil in the Middle East to ensure high prices, mostly for the benefit of Gulf sheikhdoms and assorted other authoritarian governments.
Catholics don’t assassinate movie directors or artists who treat Jesus Christ with contempt. Jewish mobs will not murder cartoonists should they ridicule the Torah. Buddhists are not calling for global blasphemy laws. But radical Muslims, mostly in the Middle East, have warned the world that Islam alone is not to be caricatured — or else. Right-wing fascists and red Communists have not done as much damage to the First Amendment as have the threats from the Arab Street.
The world obsesses over Israel and the Palestinians because of the neurotic Middle East. The issue is not really the principle of a divided capital — or Nicosia would be daily news. Nor is the concern over refugees per se, since well over 500,000 Jews were religiously cleansed from the major Arab capitals following the 1948 and 1967 wars. No one cares where they went or how they have fared in the decades since. Is the global worry really over occupied territories?
Hardly. Lately it seems that every desolate island between China and Japan is equally contested. Are there special envoys to the Falklands, and do the islanders receive international aid? Will there be a U.N. session devoted to the Kuril Islands? Does Gdansk/Danzig merit summits? We are told ad nauseam that the Arab minority in Israel suffers — would that the ignored Coptic minority in Egypt had similar protections and freedoms.
