June 10, 2003

Selective Outrage

Alan Dershowitz illustrates the often bizarre priorities of the academic left with this "What if?". An excerpt:

If a visitor from a far away galaxy were to land at an American or Canadian university and peruse some of the petitions that were circulating around the campus, he would probably come away with the conclusion that the Earth is a peaceful and fair planet with only one villainous nation determined to destroy the peace and to violate human rights.

That nation would not be Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Russia or Iran. It would be Israel.

There are no comparable petitions seeking any action against other countries that enslave minorities, imprison dissidents, murder political opponents and torture suspected terrorists. Nor are there any comparable efforts to silence speakers from other countries.

The intergalactic visitor would wonder what this pariah nation, Israel, must have done to deserve this unique form of economic capital punishment. If he then went to the library and began to read books and articles about this planet, he would discover that Israel was a vibrant democracy, with freedom of speech, press and religion, that was surrounded by a group of tyrannical and undemocratic regimes, many of which are actively seeking its destruction.

Dershowitz suggests we need to ask ourselves some tough questions, as he says, "lest we become the kind of world the visitor would have experienced had he arrived in Europe during the late 1930s and early 1940s."

Posted by dan at June 10, 2003 12:23 AM