A lethal double standard

dmgold

This double standard is a result of both anti semitism amongst the elites of the post christian secular western world and because Israel caves in to largely US pressure instead of offering up the more appropriate Stiff Little Finger.
Perhaps a little distance between the US and Israel would be a good thing for Israels security.

Vision Aforethought

@M: Indeed, but within a few days, your excellent piece will have slipped down the page to be forgotten. This needs to remain at the top of your blog for all to see - forever.
It should also be referenced in other postings as a prime example of how anti-semitism really is at the heart of most anti-Israel commentary.

Louise K

To cap it all, Toby Harnden in the Telegraph reports that Netanyahu intends to ask O'Teleprompter exactly which wheel of the Islamist bus BHO wants Israel to go under:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2009/05/18/benjamin_netanyahu_will_make_nice_with_barack_obama

phil

It is obvious why the HR take little notice of the Tamils -they would have few customers .the Tamils produce no oil nor do they provide finance for the west .the Hr industry needs its own victims to keep them employed and Israelis are a better group to attack .do these people care for the Arabs ,of course they do not ?they live off the fat of the land on the back of all those unfortunates that they can attack -I have never once seen one of these Hr,s complain about the lack of Hr for an Israeli.Shami and Gareth search your souls !! Meanwhile the innocent among the Tamils are living in hell .

Richard Pearce

I will watch with interest to see if the 265,000 displaced people will be allowed to return to their homes. If they are permitted to return, perhaps Israel might consider the moral double standard of it's actions and allow the return of the 4.6 million Arab refugees?

Original Tony

A very good post Mel; you have hit the nail on the head. In conflict after conflict the world over, the liberal western media say nothing but let Israel burp and they are all over her.

In my opinion, hypocrisy is the worst sin of all.

Brian

You couldn't care less about the Tamil people or this conflict, so before you rant about the rank hypocrisy of others, have a look in your own back garden first.

Pathetic. As usual.

Mailman

More importantly, how come we arent seeing mobs rampaging through London and attempting to demolish Sri Lankan businesses and kill Sri Lankans?

Whats even worse about the double standard that is so plainly visible is the double standard exhibited by our so called unbiased media (BBC).

While it was only too happy to run every blood libel it could get its hands on during Operation Cast Lead...not once did Al Beeb do anything resembling this during this conflict.

Why is this worse? Because people are conditioned by what the media reports.

Victor, NW Kent

Melanie

General Sir Gerald Templar proved this in Malaysia and then in Cyprus so Sri Lanka is not a first.

To succeed needs an iron will and an ability to ignore the liberal chatterati.

There are no good terrorists. Whether you call them freedom fighters or guerillas they all cause untold human suffering.

The settlement in South Africa came after the ANC abandoned PAC continuing purely for political kudos.

Xaxa

So I cannot complain about any abuse until I have investigated the whole world and worked my way down the list of seriousness complaining at each until (if I live long enough) I reach the one that I have knowledge of and wanted stopped sooner rather than later?

Louise K

No, Xaxa, you've just made that up.

All you have to do is show a little consistency.

Or perhaps you'll give us chapter and verse on why you single Israel out now.

Come on. Here's your moment.

Enlighten us all.

Augustus

What's been happening in Sri Lanka should serve as a further warning as to what happens when criminal terrorists get a foot in the door of someone else's
country. Instead of being originally sent back to where they came from, the Tamils, who came from Tamil Nadu in India, were first recruited to work on the tea plantations. Then when they were no longer needed the indigenous Sinhalese were stuck with them. The Tamils became more belligerent as time went on until they actually wanted to steal Sinhalese territory. This could happen anywhere where a clash of cultures turns nasty. Not all immigrants end up integrating peacefully, whether in the East or the West.

David Bouvier

Two questions spring to mind:

Since there is broad agreement that the LTTE were using the the Tamil population as human shields - then are 'excess' civilian deaths a war crime / atrocity of the LTTE? If not what is the legally OK military response to human shields the Sri Lankans should have employed?

Does a military solution even if bloody in the short term actually end an insurgency and save lives compared to a UN 'peace' that is really low level conflict without end?

PS - I understand that Mossad put some backbone into the Sri Lankan army - well done them.

Raymond Joseph Douglas

Yup,truely a double- standard as regards Israel. Yet, so blind in their hatred for the Jewish people, people and politicians just don't get it !

Sergey

It seems that Shri Lanka leadership came to the same conclusion as Russian government in the war with Chechen terrorists. This is another example of a successful military defeat of insurgent separatists. Israel should do the same in Gaza. Incompetent whining of liberals should be completely ignored.

Joshua

Once again, while Ms. Phillips fights on almost single-handed against the forces of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in Britain, that leading Jewish member of the left-wing blog I mentioned the other week has launched yet another vicious personal attack against Melanie. It just goes to show that when it comes to enemies of the Jewish people, the very worst of those enemies often come from within our own camp.

Manuel

Melanie, you make a glaringly obvious point and quite right to do so.
You forgot to mention we have had no ranting indignation from Paxman on Newsnight?
Why the silence?
You know as well as the rest of us why.
No Israel,noIsraelis and no Jews involved, therefore the usual haters of the above are simply not interested.
No Jews = no interest.
Their silence and disinterest shows and proves that the moving aspect is Jew-hatred, nothing more, nothing less.
Yesterday we had the spectre of the new US president, Obarmy, putting his tuppence worth of irrational logic into the Israel/Arab conflict; Israel nededs to allow the Gazans to build an viable economic infrastructure!!!Does he notw that when Israel pulled out of Gaza it left behind a substanial and highly profitable agri industry? This, as we all know, was totally destroyed by the Gazans within hours of the Israel exit.
Mr. Obarmy, it has been tried and they didn't want, so please try another line.

Jason from AZ

Melanie, you know the answer why the world only cares when it is Israel that is involved. Because the world cannot stomach Jews defending themselves successfully, especially when the poor, poor Islamic Palistinians are involved.

Mike Woodman

Walid Phares in "The War of Ideas" and Bat Y'eor in "Eurabia" both argue very convincingly that Arab sponsorship and infiltration of Middle East studies departments and other relevant areas of academia over the past 30 years have done a great deal to swing western opinion against Israel and towards the arab perspective on Israel. This is not so much a double standard as the muslim/arab standard bearing fruit from successful cultivation in the west for many years.

Stephen

Why are we only interested in violence in Sri Lanka when it can be linked to Israel and anti-Semitism?

It is interesting that Michael Clarke's claim that using force against terrorism may result not in the defeat of terrorism but in a hardening of attitudes that prolongs conflict is not rejected in this blog. Indeed because the possibility that violence will beget violence is accepted. If that is what 'we shall see' what will the lesson of the sadness that is Sri Lanka be then?

Zvi November

Well-known Stanford U. professor Thomas Sowell in a book that surveys affirmative action in several countries observed that during the British administration of Ceylon the Tamils were given preferential treatment over the majority Sinhalese population (now 73.9%). Consequently, when Sri Lanka became independent a program of preferential treatment was instituted to correct perceived unequal treatment under British rule. This, according to Sowell, is the root cause of the conflict which has been far more devastating than the Arab-Israeli clash. Both the Tamils and "Palestinian" Arabs have homelands (There are already 22 Arab states), both employ horrendous terror with no constraints whatsoever and these actions are based on enormous reserves of HATE that folks in London, N.Y. and Tel Aviv simply can't fathom.

Cam

Yeah, how many news stories have we heard about the Tamil hunger strikers in the street outstide Westminster? One of them--Prarameswaran Subramaniam--was at the point of death a few weeks ago. Anyone heard what's happened to him?

Jenny

Excuse me, Stephen, all sorts of terrorist movements are discussed on this blog.

Why should we stop at Sri Lanka?

Because it exposes the hypocrisy of people like you?

"Violence will beget violence" no - not necessarily. But certainly intractable ideas can lead to violence. Things like Article 7 of the Hamas charter (you know, another of those tiny things Guardian readers like to forget about): "O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP109206

Since you're such an expert, Stephen, you'll kindly explain to us all how an instruction like that will not lead to violence.

We certainly know what happens when we don't fight Islamic terror the world over. We'll have a Caliphate, as Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astral keeps telling you - or do you just shove him in the same drawer that you do Sri Lanka because it exposes your folly?:

"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion, so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security, and consolidation of power, and even to conquests thorough da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world.

"Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesised by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe.

"I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them. Today, we instil these good tidings in their souls, and by means of the mosques and The Koran books, and the history of our prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire on the brink of which they stand."

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x_qbKrOF64w

Kepha

Melanie, you dropped the ball, as we say on the western side of the pond. The double standard the liberals use with Israel is just good old-fashioned racism. You see, these folks who scream "racist" at anyone who who disagrees with them expect nothing else but massacre and mayhem out of non-white people; hence the acceptance of Sinhala Buddhist treatment of Tamli Eelam. However, the only Israelis the Western Left sees are Ashkenazim, who are white (never mind the 50%-plus of the Israeli population that is Mizrahi)--hence Western Leftists are appalled that good, white Israelis don't embrace national suicide.

Sergey

Hunger strike? Such measures work only against wishy-washy persons. When IRA terrorists tried this tactic against Margret Thatcher, she simply let them die.

Sam Armstrong

As usual Melanie, perfection.

YA

"academics, trade unions, archbishops".. priceless.. but.. Melanie don't you feel a bit awkward interfering these nobilities' proud march into Islamic slavery? Let them go. This is question of free will, in the end.

gary ashton

anti semitism
its time to face the truth
age old and alive and kicking and behind the facade of all political systems.
who dares voice this, only a few brave souls like melanie.
thank you mel, you represent an enlightened few who are aware of what is going down.

Fellow traveller

What's the argument?

Is it "This is an example of how to win a war against terrorists"? And it's justifiable that:

"Hospitals have been repeatedly shelled. Thousands of civilians have been trapped and unknown numbers have died. The BBC says more than 70,000 people have been killed in this conflict, while the United Nations says it thinks 265,000 people have been displaced."

You add the not-surprising conclusion from one expert that the government hasn't won hearts and minds, but to support your argument this either:

isn't true or

is less important than the result.

In which case draw that conclusion. If you don't, then the tactics were not justified.

Instead the classic columnist cop-out: "we shall see". You're not normally slow to pass an opinion, so why leave this one hanging?

The second point, that the liberal media are looking the other way when it comes to the suffering of the Tamils because they think the Gazans had it tougher, is not supported by the article you quote from The Guardian - which argues exactly the point that you say it is ignoring.

If you found lots of articles that say "This is bad but the Gazans had it worse", you've got a point. Happy to concede that. If anyone can find this article let's see it, because I looked and so far I can't find it.

Imagine a liberal consensus that strong military action like this was on occasion reasonable. We'd get a week in the news where sympathy for dead and displaced Tamil civilians was balanced with an acceptance that tough action was necessary to win the war. Plus we'd get media reports of the US/Israel dialogue that didn't constantly rake up the "shelling schools and hospitals" line, but moved on and concentrated on diplomacy. Which seems to be what we actually got from most of the media?

Ros Morris

I wrote comment after comment to all newspapers regarding the total hypocrisy of the mainstream media about the tragedy in Sri Lanka.

I made the point, as you do above, that far more people were being killed in Sri Lanka than Gaza; real massacres were taking place; civilians were targeted deliberately and the government was effectively stopping all journalists from reporting on what was happening to the Tamil Tigers.

I also made the point that as no UN structures were hit because hospitals, schools and mosques were used to launch missiles, neither the UN nor any other international body was taking an interest in real war crimes. Therefore, the corollory is that buildings are far more important than human life. You see, the Jews weren't involved.

Apart from one or two comments that made it onto Sky, none was published including The Daily Mail, your erstwhile employer.

Obviously as Jews/Israel were not involved, disinterest prevails.

This is what we have to counter. What instructions are moderators given vis a vis publishing comments that do not fit into the 'ethos' of the media outfits? Free speech? Not, it would appear in the UK, nor anywhere else it would seem.

Terry

The Sri Lankan conflict has brought the massively biased pressure on Israel into sharp perspective. And it offers a useful analogy indeed. However, we may also ask where all the self righteous Israel bashers are in relation to Zimbabwe, Darfur, Congo, Pakistan, and dozens of other conflicts which have mainly been started by islamofascist genocides.

It is no coincidence that the very worst atrocities are ignored whilst made up crimes are paraded across front pages around the world.

I think it's called antisemitism, although anti westernism would probably be as apt. The very foundations of western culture are being eroded by those who hate it from without, and, more seriously, those who hate it from within.

Graeme from Canterbury

Well said Melanie. If the sinhalise majority had been White Westerners like Israelis, you would not have heard the end of it. If two Non-western, Non-White people have a dispute, then it does not reasonate amongst the interlectual Middle Classes. Only when White Westerners drop bombs on Non-White Westerners, I.E Israel verses Arabs, does it seem to make the headlines.

Miranda Rose Smith

The double standard against Israel is one of the things that has convinced me that a lot of people are faking when they pretend to be moved by Anne Frank, may the al-mighty avenge her blood. People don't mind if Sri Lankans stay alive; they do mind if Jews stay alive. Incidentally, I don't see anyone calling for an academic boycott of China or Russia.

Fellow traveller

But hang on Graeme

"If two Non-western, Non-White people have a dispute, then it does not reasonate amongst the interlectual Middle Classes."

But Melanie's argument is that

"In particular, they ensured that the media was excluded from the theatre of war so that what they were doing was not fully exposed to scrutiny."

So the reporting's bound to be restricted. So I think you're saying this is a bad thing.

If there is reporting, do you want more papers to condemn the government of Sri Lanka for a war "as notable for its ruthlessness as for its strategic and tactical skill", do you want the press to approve of the lack of indulgence towards terrorists, or even report more fully the death and displacement of ordinary citizens and the international community's indifference?

The whole argument of this blog and the comments seem to be inconsistent. They don't seem to me to offer a useful parallel with Gaza other than giving commenters the chance to air the opinion that Israel's conduct was reported inaccurately. That may be true. But it's a completely different argument!

I think the innocent dead and suffering people in all of this might offer the opinion that not everything is about Israel.

Original Tony

Joshua 4:06 pm..."Melanie is fighting almost single-handedly against anti-zionism in Britain"

Really? What stone have you been living under? By far the majority of the people who post on this blog are in the fight against anti-zionism and some, including myself, actively so.

I think you would be surprised at the support Israel has in the UK, at grass-roots level.

Henry Sidgwick

Okay, so the technology is not so antediluvian that the posts that do not get published are entirely random. What principles are combined with the randomness in this selection?

David Lindsay

The Tamil Tigers may be a nasty lot. And the tactics used by the other side against the civilian Tamil population may also be repellent.

But the real story from Sri Lanka is just how far you can go if you have, as the Sri Lankan government has, the political, economic, diplomatic and military support of the hyperpower.

That hyperpower is not America, which can no longer provide quite this sort of cover.

That hyperpower is China.

Hanoi Paris Hilton

Augustus, better get your Lankan history straight before offering us such high moral and philosophical pronunciamentos:

The dominant Sinhalese --who actually arrived about 2,000 years ago, legendarily from somewhere in N. India (maybe what's now Bihar), are certainly not the Island's aboriginal population, which latter --as a debased and demonized (literally, as their common perjoritive name "Yakshi" mean demon) minority finally died out/ terminally assimilated just in the last century.

The "Ceylon Tamils" of the north and the east, themselves first emigrated from S. India within several centuries of the first arrival on the island of the Sinhalese, i.e., also nearly two millennia B.P.

The "Plantation Tamils", who were indeed brought in as indentured laborers for the tea (originally coffee) estates in the uplands around Kandy in the 19th century, have not thrown in their lot with the LTTE, a creature solely of the Ceylon Tamils. They have long had a political power base of their own within the Sri Lankan polity; have never represented any kind of "existential threat" to the country as a whole; and to my knowledge, have never elicited any "nativist" political agenda to send them back to where they came from.

Laura

Fellow Traveller says: ‘If you found lots of articles that say "This is bad but the Gazans had it worse", you've got a point. Happy to concede that. If anyone can find this article let's see it, because I looked and so far I can't find it.’

Of course you won't find lots of articles saying "this is bad but the Gazans had it worse" because that's not true, is it?

The point here is not what the news coverage was saying but the sheer volume of news coverage.

If you want lots of articles, Fellow Traveller, just go to your local library, ask for the newspaper archive and look at how many times Israel was put on the front of The Guardian, in particular, and many other newspapers around December 08/January 09.

Why have we not seen the same number of front pages and the same amount of air time on BBC TV News that was given to Israel earlier in the year now given to Sri Lanka in April and May?

Why has Sri Lanka not been top of the TV news bulletins day after day after day for almost a month?

Time and again in all those Guardian front pages and Jeremy Bowen reports the emphasis was placed on the civilian victims (although the emphasis was taken off the fact that this was only because Hamas used them as human shields) – the implication being ‘this is why this is being given such prominence and not all the other conflicts in the world’.

No matter how bogus it was, that implicit excuse as to why the mainstream media pays such an unusual amount of attention to the Israeli/Palestinian issue, is the only excuse anyone has been able to fathom.

Jonathan Steele reveals how hollow that excuse is when he says: "they have lived for four months in infinitely worse conditions than the people of Gaza during Israel's invasion in December".

All of which makes us wonder again why his newspaper along with many other maninstream news outlets consistently single out the Israeli/Paestinain conflict for so much more coverage than they do other conflicts.

Since, Fellow Traveller, you don't believe that the reason for this bias is because "this is bad but the Gazans had it worse", you'll be able to give us your explanation for it.

Won't you?

Deepan

What is this nonsense that Tamils are somehow immigrants to Sri Lanka? The majority of Tamils in Sri lanka have lived on the island for centuries upon centries. They have every right to be in Sri Lanka as the Singhalese who one could say are equally immigrants.

Whilst i dont support the tigers and am glad the civil war is finished, i would be hopeful that Tamils are now given equal rights to the majority Singhalese, which has been denied to them since post-colonial times.

My mother was indeed denied a place at medical school in Sri Lanka because she couldnt achieve the substantially higher marks (20%) than an equivalent Singhalese applicant in the entrance examinations, which was an official policy to make sure ethnic Singhalese were "proportionally represented" in the medical profession. My mother subsequently moved to Liverpool to train as a nurse.

Regarding Israel yes i do realise that there has been not been significant media attention given to the recent campaign in Sri Lanka compared to that of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for a variety of different reasons which may include bias. However i do think a two state solution is desperately needed to resolve the conflict in Israel/Palestine, and this should speedily be agreed on and implemented.

gareth

Awesome post - showed it to my Canadian colleagues at work along with the 'final solution' blog....the truth is stranger than fiction! A lot of people getting angry - CNN and the BBC are cowards.

Truthandjustice

Well of course, no Jews are involved in Sri Lanka, how could you expect the left to care? Where exactly is the 'UN Human Rights Council' on this?

Wagner

This post and comments are strange mixture of 'Good on the Sri Lankan army' and 'what about the poor Tamil civilians'. While I think the world's media and leaders have been shamefully silent on this, the protests that have occured have been by ethnic Tamils and you know who...the left. Well that's your term. I'd call them 'people interested in jusice'.

sandfly

Well said! It's tragically true that western hand-wringers and meddlers have prolonged and exacerbated many a conflict. Sadly it's part of the human condition that different groups disagree and fight. Historical experience in many conflicts suggest that a fight to the finish invariably proves to be the most conclusive and least bloody outcome.

Billy Hippo

Another difference between the conflicts is that in Sri Lanka it is one group of ethnics against another group of ethnics, a bit like the different castes in India. To outsiders they look similar to each other. But Israel is completely different, as one side is similar to the West, and the other is not. Whose side do you think the BBC will take?
The same scenario of one side being like the West and the other not so was also present in S Africa and N.Rhodesia. It is just that they used to be top of the list but now Israel is. And, of course, if you look a bit further down, Britain itself is also on the list of countries to be, let us say, 'changed'. In fact the change in Britain is progressing very nicely for the liberals. Look at the decline they have achieved in only a few decades.