If Israel was not a US ally, who would left-wing demonstrators in Greece have as a target for their protests? What statues would they knock down in an expression of their rage? Or if Israel’s military operations were interpreted as an attempt to overturn the «New World Order,» would there be any…
If Israel was not a US ally, who would left-wing demonstrators in Greece have as a target for their protests? What statues would they knock down in an expression of their rage? Or if Israel’s military operations were interpreted as an attempt to overturn the “New World Order,” would there be any protests at all?
These questions are justifiable, as there were no protests when Serbia – the Israel of Yugoslavia – set the Balkans alight. There were no protests when the Serbian army bombed Mostar.
On the other hand, the rage provoked by the slaughter of some 450 civilians by Israeli bombing is entirely justifiable. But this rage would be more convincing if the Communist party and Synaspismos Left Coalition had protested outside the Serbian Embassy when Bosnian Serbs slaughtered 7,500 men, women and children in Srebrenica. And, of course, the Israeli generals who kill civilians (albeit unwillingly, as they maintain) will be obliged to justify their actions in court at some point. But this also applies to Hassan Nasrallah. And nobody talks about the latter, nor about war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
In any case, the rage provoked by their victims is entirely selective. This is not a matter of anti-Semitism. The Left in this country has always been anti-racist. It has actively opposed racist rallies and has succeeded in incriminating racial discrimination. But the Left’s stance is undermined by its latent rage against the USA and the West in general. Indeed, it is tragic and comic to see protests outside the US Embassy when a US ally kills civilians as “collateral damage” while there are no protests outside the Syrian or Iranian embassies when one of our allies targets civilians on purpose.
KATHIMERINI English Edition,01/08/2006