More one-sided anger

Editorial

Israel's reaction to incessant rocket attacks against its citizens has resulted in a crisis in Gaza. Alleviated on Tuesday by a loosening of the grip Israel has held around Gaza in recent days, it nonetheless remains a point of deep contention in the world community that Israel is practising what has been called "group punishment" in retaliation for the rockets that originate from Gaza and slam into residential neighborhoods across the line in Israel.

The concept of group punishment is illustrative, because what is 60 years of attacks against Israeli civilians, if not a form of group punishment? Still, sovereign states, especially ones that attempt to live up to high ideals, are rightly held to a standard different from those who slaughter civilians.

Still, the world's outrage at what amounts to a temporary economic embargo against the terrorist regime in Gaza is a form of selective discrimination. The world's outrage at the discomfort caused by Israel's attempt to force the government of Gaza to take responsibility for the anarchic violence taking place within – and beyond – its borders is in sharp contrast to the near-silence that has greeted the repeated rocket attacks on Israeli neighborhoods.

We would be able to take more seriously the world's concerns about the impact of Israeli actions on Palestinian civilians if the world had expressed anything close to the same concern for Israeli civilians living under life-and-death threat from Palestinian rockets.

^TOP