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We do not even have to go back to Lincoln's Civil War suspension of habeas corpus, let alone Sherman's march through Georgia. Consider that during the last Palestinian intifadeh, the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, the British were in charge of Palestine. They put down the revolt "without mercy, without qualms," writes Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. Entire villages were razed. More than 3,000 Palestinians were killed. In 1939 alone, the British hanged 109. (Israel has no death penalty.)
French conduct during the Algerian war was noted for its indiscriminate violence and systematic use of torture. In comparison, Israeli behavior has been positively restrained. And yet Israel faces a far greater threat. All the Algerians wanted, after all, was independence. They were not threatening the extinction of France. If Israel had the same assurance as France that its existence was in no way threatened by its enemies, the whole Arab-Israeli conflict could have been resolved decades ago.
Or consider more contemporary democracies. A year ago, when rioting broke ) out in Venezuela over government-imposed price increases, more than 300 were killed in less than one week. In 1984 the army of democratic India attacked rebellious Sikhs in the Golden Temple, killing 300 in one day. And yet these democracies were not remotely as threatened as Israel. Venezuela was threatened with disorder; India, at worst, with secession. The Sikhs have never pledged themselves to throw India into the sea.
"Israel," opined the Economist, "cannot in fairness test itself against a standard set by China and Algeria while still claiming to be part of the West." This argument, heard all the time, is a phony. Israel asks to be judged by the standard not of China and Algeria but of Britain and France, of Venezuela and India. By that standard, the standard of democracies facing similar disorders, Israel's behavior has been measured and restrained.
Yet Israel has been treated as if this were not true. The thrust of the reporting and, in particular, the commentary is that Israel has failed dismally to meet Western standards, that it has been particularly barbaric in its treatment of the Palestinian uprising. No other country is repeatedly subjected to Nazi analogies. In no other country is the death or deportation of a single rioter the subject (as it was for the first year of the intifadeh, before it became a media bore) of front-page news, of emergency Security Council meetings, of full-page ads in the New York Times, of pained editorials about Israel's lost soul, etc., etc.
Why is that so? Why is it that of Israel a standard of behavior is demanded that is not just higher than its neighbors', not just equal to that of the West, but in fact far higher than that of any Western country in similar circumstances? Why the double standard?
For most, the double standard is unconscious. Critics simply assume it appropriate to compare Israel with a secure and peaceful America. They ignore the fact that there are two kinds of Western standards, and that fairness dictates subjecting Israel to the standard of a Western country at war.