{"id":6742,"date":"2009-02-19T11:55:17","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T19:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6742"},"modified":"2009-02-19T11:55:17","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T19:15:05","slug":"breaking-the-seals-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6742","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Seals, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eamonn McDonaugh<\/a> responds to my post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

….I find it hard to understand why he might take seriously the weird notion that any but the most mealy-mouthed critique of Israel risks being tarred with the brush of antisemitism. No one who thinks seriously about the issues involved can possibly believe this. Some criticisms of Israel are indeed antisemitic in nature and some aren\u2019t; each instance has to be judged on its merits and, sometimes, reasonable people can come to different conclusions.<\/p>\n

Not only is it not all criticism of Israel antisemitic, sharp and searching criticism of its policies and actions is essential….<\/p>\n

This being the case, I\u2019d even argue that the recent waves of anti-Israel protests arising from events in Gaza, deeply stained and profoundly distorted by antisemitism though they were, served some good purpose in that they placed the actions of Israel under such a level of scrutiny that it had to take great care about how it used its military power.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t really that people take to the streets of London, Paris and Barcelona in a bid to place limits on the exercise of military power by Israel; it\u2019s that they generally fail to do so when other states behave in comparable ways. It\u2019s not that every single alleged violation of human rights ought to get everyone equally worked up all the time. That would, obviously, be impossible; no one could keep up with all the horrors being committed throughout the world on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, if those who recently made the effort to protest about Israel\u2019s attack on Hamas in Gaza were primarily motivated by an interest in human rights, that is to say, the rights of all human beings to live free from oppression, violence and the like, then we would expect to see a very great deal more of protests about the deaths of civilians in armed conflicts in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, one sees no remotely comparable level of concern for humans whose rights are being violated by people who are not Israeli Jews. It\u2019s therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that many of the anti-Israel protestors of recent weeks may have been motivated by less noble sentiments than a desire to defend human rights.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ll have more to say on this later, but I thought it was worth flagging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eamonn McDonaugh responds to my post: ….I find it hard to understand why he might take seriously the weird notion that any but the most mealy-mouthed critique of Israel risks being tarred with the brush of antisemitism. No one who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}