Quote:
Originally posted by Kevin Andrew Murphy:
Roger,
Where the hell is Darfur? Can you point to it on a map? What language do they speak there? Is there any important bit of literature set there that everybody's read, seen on film, or even heard vaguely about? No? Then why in the hell would anyone care, except in the vague "It's not nice that people somewhere we've never heard of are killing each other" sense?
Israel could be the land of candy and lollipops and people would still be talking about the place. There were two Crusades and I don't know how many Cecil B. DeMille epics about that swatch of land, and every winter, the entire western economy and social calendar revolves around a story set in somebody's barn in Jerusalem. If you want to be inobtrusive and left alone, the very last thing you should do is latch onto the world's largest and most stationary McGuffin.
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As I understand it, the reason to examine Israel's behavior differently from that of other nations, and to magnify Israel's "misdeeds," real, imagined, or badly reported is:
Israel exists on land featured prominently in Christian religion, and is peopled by the group featured in the Christian narrative.
You aren't the first to use this thought process.
As for Darfur:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict
A partial quote:
"Estimates of deaths in the conflict have ranged from 50,000 (World Health Organization, September 2004) to 450,000 (Dr. Eric Reeves, 28 April 2006). Most NGOs use 400,000, a figure from the Coalition for International Justice. The conflict has been described by mass media as "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide"; the Bush Administration of the United States and the U.S. Congress have declared it to be genocide, though the United Nations has declined to do so."
To help the uninitiated with the math: 50,000 (the low estimate) is 100 times the 500 so far noted as killed in Lebanon. The 400,000 "most NGOs are using" is 800 times the number killed in Lebanon.
Obviously, it was used as an example. Many others exist -- most prominently (since the home nations of many members here are deeply involved,) Iraq.
Dan
[This message has been edited by Dan Halberstein (edited August 01, 2006).]