The world's hypocrisy

On 6 May 2010 - just three weeks before Israel's storming of the Turkish boat that had been, effectively, hijacked by IHH terrorists, Russian special forces stormed a ship that had been hijacked by a group of about 15 Somali pirates. The Russians rounded up the pirates, confiscated their weapons, and put them back in the boat they had come on. They then simply blew up the boat killing every one of the Somalis. The full video of this incident can be seen here.

The only matter of dispute about the incident is whether or not the Russians shot and killed all the pirates before blowing up the boat (the Somalis seem to be claiming they were all shot first).

Did you hear any fanatical public outrcy about this incident? No. You almost certainly never even heard of it, despite the existence of the very graphic video. A bit of a contrast to Israel's action.

As far as I can tell, with the exception of the Somalis (who don't constitute a functioning government anyway) not one single country condemned this action. As justified as it might have been to people like me (I wish every country dealt with Somali pirates like the Russians do - I bet they won't be hijacking many Russian ships again) the Russian action is - on a scale of callousness - an order of magnitude greater than what Israel did. Unlike the Israelis the Russian soldiers were never in any danger when they killed their victims, and unlike the Turks against the Israelis, the Somalis were not attempting in any way to destabilise Russia and/or support terrorist movements fighting Russia. In the 'Guardian' sense of the word this really was a cold-blooded massacre. But I could not find a single mention of this incident in the UK media or TV. On the contrary, the only reference I could find was a brief story - in the Guardian on the 7 May that was actually headlined "Russia frees captured Somali pirates" (despite the subsequent video evidence I could find no later correction to the Guardian story).

This type of hypocrisy is addressed in a great (but sobering) article by Sultan Knish that explains the futility of Israel continually offering concessions to an enemy dedicated to its annihilation. The article highlights the world's hypocrisy in singling out Israel for hysterical condemnation for behaviour that is far less offensive and aggressive than a large number of other countries in the world (including most of those shouting loudest against Israel). His article highlights some of the actions of Iran, China, North Korea, Turkey, Dubai, and Venzuela.

In addition to Knish's example and the especially relevant Russian example above he could have added the following:

• Syria for its renewed rape of Lebanon and brutal suppression of dissent
• Morocco for its continued occupation of Western Sahara and brutal violations of human rights there
• Saudi Arabia for its invasion of northern Yemen and the resulting massacre of Houthi rebels
• Egypt for the suppression and massacres against the Coptic minority
• Pakistan whose state-sponsored persecution of the Ahmadiyya minority led directly to a number of massacres notably the coordinated attacks on their mosques earlier this month. Also whose security service the ISI is both funding and advising the Taleban.
• Indonesia for the continued state sponsored persecution of Christians and Bhuddhists leading to frequent massacres.
• Malaysia for its official state policy of suppression and persecution of Christians leading, for example, to coordinated attacks on 9 churches in Jan 2010
• Iraq for its brutal oppression of Christians and murder of political opponents
• Yemen for forcing out the last handful of Jews who were in the country after a Rabbi was murdered by a Jihadist (who has not even been charged).
  

...basically you can add just about every Muslim country.

But, and this is the really interesting point, a number of Western countries have committed 'crimes against Muslims' that far exceed anything that Israel has done, but receive barely a murmour of criticism:

• US and its allies in Afghanistan have killed many times more civilians from bombing and drone attacks than were killed in Gaza in 2009. Although this occasionally raises the concerns of Muslim and leftist protesters the scale of fury is a tiny fraction of that directed at Israel for lesser "offences".
• Switzerland's ban on Mosque minarets brought minor condemnation from Muslims and some leftists but if Israel had brought in a similar law then we would certainly have seen mass worldwide hysteria and UN resolutions against its 'apartheid'.
• In many Western countries (notably Holland and Austria) elections have brought stunning advances by political parties fighting almost exlusively on an anti-Islamism agenda. Again, similar gains by such a party in Israel would have seen mass worldwide hyteria and UN resolutions against its 'apartheid'.