Soccer Dad

Letting good deeds go unmentioned

Recently Yaacov Lozowick wrote about people who can't seem to give Israel any credit.

I once asked Richard Silverstein why he only ever had bad things to say about Israel, and what that told us about him, but he rejected my insinuation: there's precious little about Israel that's positive, but in the rare cases there is, he's glad to report it. OK, fair enough (just barely). A team of Israelis saving lives at the other end of the world: moderately positive, don't you think? Not if you're Richard Silverstein.

In a similar vein Anshel Pfeffer wrote (via anti-Israel blogger Rabbi Brant Rosen)

But that is just a technical reason. The fundamental reason that Israel is routinely treated much more harshly than its adversaries, despite the fact that they very often carry out far worse atrocities, is that Israel puts itself out to be so much better than them. If in almost 62 years of existence, Israel had succeeded in evolving into a tinpot dictatorship, like most of its neighbors and many of the countries that achieved independence during that period, no-one would be holding it to such high standards, sometimes perhaps, unfairly. Israel is not condemned regularly in the media just because it keeps millions of Palestinians under occupation and embarks on a another mini war every other year, but because it is a country aspiring to be a western democracy while doing so.

Various pro-Israel advocacy groups publish glossy pamphlets detailing the
manifold benefits Israeli technology has brought the entire world. Every word there is true and in the next editions, there will be an extensive chapter on the IDF's international humanitarian missions, complete with photographs of the field hospital in Port-au-Prince. But that won't improve Israel's international image one iota. Quite the opposite.

We are a disproportionate country, and the difficulty is to reconcile a tiny brave democracy capable of such acts of greatness with an occupying regime constantly at war with its neighbors will continue to bring us bad headlines. Once the delegation comes back from Haiti.

I'm not sure if Pfeffer agrees with that last paragraph or if he's just explaining what is. The problem though isn't that Israel's held to a higher standard, it's that it's held to an impossible standard. Read through a typical anti-Israel these days and it's like nothing's changed since 1993. You wouldn't know that Israel has not only totally withdrawn from Gaza but from most major population centers in Judea and Samaria, so now over 90% of Palestinians no longer live under occupation. You also wouldn't know that each time Israel withdrew from or ceded territory whether in 1995 from Judea and Samaria, or 2000 from southern Lebanon or 2005 from Gaza, its material concessions were followed by increased belligerency forcing Israel to fight a "mini-war" to afford its citizens the security no country could fail to provide for its citizens. You wouldn't know that despite the territory, money and arms that Israel has provided to the PA, the PA hasn't effectively moderated its aims since 1993.

Too many analysts parse PM Netanyahu's statements about a two state solution and ignore that he concretely contributed to such a solution (as defined by them) by withdrawing from Hebron in 1997. Israel's contributions to peace are ignored and instead Israel is judged by whether or not it meets the Palestinian definitions and demands. This perverse situation gives veto power to entities (the PA, Hamas) that prefer to declare Israel in violation of international law in order to justify their own violations and refusals to do anything concrete for peace.

Finally, Martin Peretz notes:

I've just read the transcript of the president's remarks about Haiti, the ones he made on January 15. He noted that, in addition to assistance from the United States, significant aid had also come from "Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others." Am I missing another country that truly weighed in with truly consequential assistance? Ah, yes. There it is. Right there "among others." Yes, the country to which I refer is "among others," that one.

The fact is that, next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel. The Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery, which it did literally hundreds of times, while delivering--as of last week--at least 16 babies, including one premature infant and three caesarians. The first 250-odd Israelis were real professionals, and they were supplemented by others, also professionals. And to these can be added the many organized Jews from the Diaspora who, in solidarity with Israel, also went on a work pilgrimage, an aliyah, in solidarity with Haiti.

Israel Matzav (via memeorandum) doesn't think the omission was accidental either.

It's disappointing that much of the world can't give Israel the credit it deserves in its humanitarian efforts or even its efforts to make peace. It's a huge deal that the President of the United States can't acknowledge those efforts. To reframe a question that often gets asked the other way: How can he be considered an honest broker?