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Even Handed

step 1: disregard equally all news from A) Israeli government and free press B) Hamas

thinking those are equally unreliable is biased.

step 2: dismiss sites that say positive things about Israel as biased. Insist sites that persuaded you that Israel is evil are neutral.

this is very common. how can it be neutral if it persuaded you that israel is evil? sigh.

step 3: declare the UN to be fair and neutral and unbiased even though it has declared israel is evil several million times

the UN is fair, therefore israel must have deserved those condemnations, therefore condemnations of israel are evidence of its lack of bias.

step 4: analyze things in terms of accusing various parties of bias instead of thinking about what explanations of events are plausible.

example: israel attacks hamas fighters who are firing from a school. so take whatever the israeli govt says happened and call that biased. say its doubtful. but don't think about questions like, "why would israel fire on a school where hamas wasn't?" because then you'd get into the uncomfortable realm of blood libels.

Elliot Temple on January 16, 2009

Messages (3)

Just imagine

if the same standards are applied to all parties. So the folk in the streets last week protesting the Israeli action would have been out months ago protesting the Hamas rockets.

They probably would have protested the Hamas attack on Fatah as well. And a few other things...


Anonymous at 3:01 PM on January 17, 2009 | #1721 | reply | quote

PS

Looks like Fatah did not recruit well enough!

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/844302.html


Anonymous at 3:02 PM on January 17, 2009 | #1722 | reply | quote

asymmetry explains it

Israel reliably receives an ever increasing amount of premium military (more, better -'top drawer' assets unavailable to any other "ally" -and with fewer restrictions than any other nation on Earth) as well as purely economic aid from the U.S.

Hamas receives nothing.

So if the standard of the U.S. protester is to protest the use of U.S. arms paid for by citizen taxes, then there is no double standard vis-a-vis a failure to protest the occasional hamas rockets (however objectionable) or, indeed, the much more usual pre-teenage rock throwers.

A better way to test for the double standard of the U.S. anti-war protester is to ask why they do not protest the nasty military actions of other nations also supplied by our treasure/arsenal..

like the Egyptian military, Iraqis ...oh wait a second, Bush 'protested' them pretty well all on his own...


moosh at 1:59 AM on April 26, 2014 | #2290 | reply | quote

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