The Double Standard Argument in Defending Israel

Israel’s defenders have always claimed that it is being singled out in a world full of injustice because of bigotry and bias. Presenting the world as naturally unjust and nature as oppressive has always been the first refuge for those who want to preserve their privileges. As a general ideological position, it has been an integral part of European fascism. In this case, liberation for Jews must mean oppression for others because this is nature’s way. This argument does not bestow any legitimacy except that of brute power and ruthless suppression.

Here is Martin Buber’s general comment on injustice, written in the 1940s and offered in the context of Zionism: “Life, in that it is life, necessarily involves injustice … We cannot refrain from doing injustice altogether, but we are given the grace of not having to do more injustice than absolutely necessary” (quoted in Moore, 1996, p. 208). The problem is deciding how much injustice is necessary and toward whom. Claiming that existence always involves injustice (how?) is a feeble moral argument to justify crimes.

“That’s the way the world operates. That’s how it has been everywhere.” This excuse has become increasingly popular in Israel. Dispossession and injustice are the way of the world. This is really a “Law of the Jungle” justification disguised as a historical observation. This Hobbesian view is a product of despair, the realization that there are no more excuses, no further justifications, and

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no moral claims in a world without morality in which the strong are just. The need to justify Zionism and the lack of other defenses has made it part of the Israeli worldview.

This is tied to the argument that the prevalence of injustice in this world implies that Israel is being singled out for scrutiny while other evils are ignored. The next step is that of detailing specific cases of victimization and showing that they were much worse than the case of victimizing the Palestinians. In some cases, Israel’s defenders claim that the Palestine case was much less severe than others. In others, there is simply a complaint about the minimal attention paid to similar cases.

Thus, Saul Bellow (1976) reminded us that “The Russians have expelled Chechens, Kalmyks, Volga Germans, and others en masse from their home territories. Their problems are not discussed at the U.N.” (p. 161). Bellow also approvingly quotes Marie Syrkin, who wrote about Palestinians who can observe their homes being occupied by others:

But the very proximity of the abandoned neighborhood, while tantalizing, is the true measure of how little national loss the Arab from Palestine suffered. Even for so slight a cause as a new subway or urban relocation people are shifted larger distances and to stranger surroundings than the changes endured by the majority of the Arab refugees. Nasser had no qualms about dislodging whole villages for his Aswan Dam, despite the objections of the inhabitants, and the impressive ease with which the Soviet Union repeatedly shifted huge numbers of its people to further some social or political purpose is a matter of record. Only in the case of the Arabs has village patriotism been raised to a sacred cause. (Bellow, 1976, pp. 158-159)

Simon Schama and Anthony Julius (2006) complained that the call to boycott Israel “says nothing about the egregious human rights abuses committed elsewhere in the world (Darfur, Chechnya, and many other places)” (para 9). This is true, of course. They seem to propose that to every protest against specific instances of injustice, a list of other injustices should be attached, with an indication of support for other protesters. Every condemnation should be balanced by mentioning all other reprehensible acts happening around the globe. Human rights violations and illegal occupations take place in innumerable countries such as China, Zimbabwe, Saudi

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Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chechnya, Tibet, Liberia, Corsica, Kashmir, Western Sahara, Cyprus, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, to name just a few. Should those protesting the acts of China in Tibet be criticized for ignoring other injustices?

Clearly, Israel is not being singled out. International public opinion was critical of apartheid in South Africa and supported the right to self-determination of indigenous populations in Vietnam, India, and Algeria. Was that because of bigotry?

Once you attempt to calibrate the levels of injustice, things can get tricky, as the literary critic Harold Bloom (2010) demonstrated when he wrote: “Of the nearly 200 recognized nation-states in the world today, something like at least half are more reprehensible than even the worst aspects of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians” (p. BR1). This implies that there are at least 100 countries that are less reprehensible than Israel, which, on the Bloom awfulness scale, is right in the middle.

The truth is that Israel does play a special role in any list of world nations. Only Israel is habitually presented as a model and defended by a group of global public intellectuals. When Saudi Arabia is criticized for its human rights record, no public intellectual rises to its defense with eloquent and moving arguments anchored in the philosophy of justice, as Michael Walzer does. Saudi Arabia has no Michael Walzer, and there is no real debate around its status as a model for humanity.

Even Israel’s defenders agree that speaking of other evils and the prevalence of injustice in the world is no excuse. As Chaim Gans (2008) states, the “everybody does it” argument is no justification (p. 73). Bellow (1976) openly admits: “It is manifestly true that others have displaced peasants from their lands. Nevertheless, the tu quoque [you too] argument is insufficient, and that there were injustices must be granted” (p. 54).

We should be grateful to Israel’s defenders for reminding us of other areas of the world where terrible things are going on. They want us to conclude that humanity still follows the Law of the Jungle, but we may conclude and act otherwise. In some of them, we may discover that, to our great surprise, Israel managed to be involved. Israel has been supplying arms to the military regime in Myanmar, just as Israel had historically supported a variety of unsavory allies, from the apartheid regime in South Africa to various

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