Why Israel Supporters are Embracing Arab Autocrats
JVL Introduction
Peter Beinart writes perceptively as ever, focusing here on Israeli supporters’ embrace of some of the most vicious dictators in the Middle East, such as Mohamed Bin Zayed, Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates.
Furthermore, the Israeli government is recently reported to have urged the Biden administration to stop criticizing Saudi Arabia and Egypt for their human rights violations.
“What makes all this so ironic” writes Beinart (you can see they wry smile on his face as he does so!) is that, for as long as I can remember, defenders of the Israeli government have chastised Israel’s critics for their supposed ‘double standards’ when it comes to human rights. Why are they so focused on Israel when its neighbors are so much worse?”
And, to the riposte that they are champions of human rights in US adversaries like Iran and Syria., Beinart responds: “ But if you only support human rights in those dictatorships engaged in geopolitical feuds with the US and Israel, it’s a good indicator that your real concern isn’t actually human rights. It’s geopolitics.”
This article was originally published by The Beinart Notebook on Mon 20 Sep 2021. Read the original here.
Why Israel Supporters are Embracing Arab Autocrats
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What is incredible – and so sad – about this article is how rare it is for a commentator to make these blindingly obvious points.
Sadly most of our media peddle the “official” line: Iran, Syria etc are bad, Saudi Arabia, Israel etc are good. I don’t know if the journalists aren’t aware of the double standards they’re employing or if to contradict the official line is a “jobsworth”. What happened to people like John Pilger?