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Selective Racism

(Times of Israel) Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig - The vast majority of contemporary Westerners protesting against Israel today are selective racists. "Racist" in that skin color does count for them (big time!). "Selective" because they ignore the number of victims. Sudan is undergoing a humanitarian crisis of monumental proportions, starting a year ago. Airstrikes have hit civilian centers on an ongoing basis. In many regions, hospitals and health services hardly function. Thousands of civilians have been killed, including massacres that are clear war crimes. The UN reports that 3,000,000 Sudanese children are malnourished. World Food Program trucks have been blocked, hijacked, attacked, and looted. Yet not a peep is heard from Westerners. In Myanmar, an estimated 50,000 have been killed since the military coup in 2021, and over two million displaced. Most of this is due to the military junta's blanket use of air strikes and shelling of mostly civilian targets. Here, too, one would be hard pressed to find any protests. Since 2000, the Ethiopian conflict has led to 350,000 civilian fatalities. According to the UN, close to 30,000,000 people now require emergency food aid. Have you seen any protests at Harvard or Columbia regarding such mind-boggling suffering? When one realizes the disparity between the number of Gazan fatalities (a bit over 30,000 if the Hamas-based numbers can be believed - not to mention that at least 10,000 of these are terrorists) and the humongous numbers around the globe, it becomes clear that selective racism is certainly a factor in singling out Israel when the devastation and humanitarian crises are far worse elsewhere. Israelis are racist? The protesters should look in the mirror. Their avoidance of the greatest political-human tragedies in the world today constitutes the real racism. The writer, Academic Head of the Communications Department at the Peres Academic Center (Rehovot), is former Chairman of the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University.
2024-04-28 00:00:00
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