IT'S NOT A DOUBLE STANDARD, BUT TWO STANDARDS

There is a double standard - why? (Ryan Jones, May 22, 2003, Jerusalem Newswire)

Recent events have rekindled simmering feelings in Israel that its chief ally and supporter - America - actively applies a glaring double standard when it comes to how to deal with the terrorist threat facing the citizens of both nations.

This issue was thrust back into the limelight last week after tens of people were slaughtered in Riyadh in a well-executed Al Qaida homicide bomb attack. Following that atrocity, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell intimated that while the Riyadh bloodbath was clearly terrorism, no such component existed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I don't attribute [the attack] to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I attribute it to terrorism," Powell said during a press conference in Amman, Jordan.

A short time later, President George W. Bush vowed that the killers involved in the attack would "come to know the meaning of American justice." His meaning was clear.

Statements such as these have left people in Israel wondering if Washington views American lives as more valuable and more worthy of justice than the lives of Israeli Jews.

It has also called into question with the average Israeli the veracity of Washington's proclaimed friendship, as similar attacks against the region's Jews are met, not with calls for justice, but with demands on Jerusalem to show restraint and practice appeasement.

By its behavior, Washington has displayed a certain degree of acceptance for the Palestinian assertion that terror against Israel, even if it is the wrong way to go, is justified political opposition to "Israeli occupation."

Meanwhile, Washington openly rejects Al Qaida's political reasoning that its terror campaign is aimed at ending U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, particularly its large military presence in Saudi Arabia.

Palestinian violence towards Israel is, it would seem obvious, justified--what kind of people would not fight to take back their lands and achieve self-governance? This is precisely what the Israelis did themselves. States are carved with violence. The problem is that the Palestinian terrorists, rather than restrict themselves to legitimate military and political targets, kill indiscriminately, intentionally targeting the innocent. This is unacceptable.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda has no similarly legitimate grievance against America and it kills indiscriminately. Thus we treat it differently.

Why the confusion? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 22, 2003 10:47 AM