Saturday, April 09, 2011

Greens: do-gooders or antisemites?

Very vocal support from Greens for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has drawn allegations of antisemitism, critics arguing that singling out Israel for alleged rights violations is more than odd considering that any number of countries might more appropriately be targeted by a BDS campaign. In short, of all the nations of the world, why is Israel singled out?

Jeremy Sear reckons it is absurd to claim Greens target Israel when they loudly criticise many countries, China, for example. This ignores that even though Greens might be critical of many countries, Israel is the only country against which they support a formal action campaign.

Sear sidekick Dave Gaukroger agrees, arguing that it is unfair to compare Israel's action to third-world countries ruled by despots:
There is an expectation that first-world countries behave better than third-world hellholes.
Sear than goes off on a diversionary tangent arguing that it's pointless to boycott despots because only the people suffer, adding:
It's a pretty fatuous line that you can't crtiticise somebody unless you run a condemnathon of criticising every other equally bad or worse person in the world before you can criticise this person or country, whatever.
BDS is much more than criticism, however, it's an effort to force change through inflicted pain. Dave and Jeremy offer no satisfactory justification for singling out Israel.

6 Comments:

Anonymous PI said...

They actively try to put shops such as this one in London out of business:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/greens_policy_in_action

They actively harass and bully the owners and customers with the stated aim of driving them out.

How is that any different to the goals of these people?
http://able2know.org/topic/29197-1

6:44 PM  
Anonymous Gerry Gee said...

Any comment from the NSW Greens on the deliberate attack by Hamas on a bright yellow school bus carrying Israeli schoolchildren?

3:41 AM  
Anonymous Dan Lewis said...

Nobody says you have to criticise "every other" country.

However if you drew up a list of all the oppressive, discriminatory human-rights abusers in the world, Israel would feature a LONG way down that list. A very long way.

Even if you just focus on the Middle East, at a time when Libya is bombing it's own people, Iran is stoning rape victims to death and Saudi Arabia is judicially gouging people's eyes out, that they single out the World's only Jewish state says everything you need to know.

8:08 AM  
Blogger Minicapt said...

I see no problem with directing constructive criticism at Master Sear without a 'condemnathon'. This would be with the best of intentions, of course, with Jerry-Me's personal remediation the final goal.

Cheers

10:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wasn't Sear one of those anti-Iraq War idiots who criticised the coalition for going after Saddam on the fatuous basis that there were so many other despots in the world who were also worth going after?

12:05 PM  
Anonymous Winston Smith said...

Why are there so many things that the Greens do, that you would expect of Nazis?

12:23 PM  

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