Sunday, January 11, 2009

When does Israeli victimhood expire?

Robert Fisk, in The Independent: It took Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times's resident philosopher-in-chief, to speak the unspeakable. 'When does the mandate of victimhood expire?' he asked. 'At what point does the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews cease to excuse the state of Israel from the demands of international law and of common humanity?'...

I pointed out that journalists should be on the side of those who suffer. If we were reporting the 18th-century slave trade, I said, we wouldn't give equal time to the slave ship captain in our dispatches. If we were reporting the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp, we wouldn't give equal time to the SS spokesman. At which point a journalist from the Jewish Telegraph in Prague responded that 'the IDF are not Hitler.' Of course not. But who said they were?