I’ve been wrestling with a post I made yesterday through several replies and updates. I think Jeff Goldberg (via Glenn) in the Atlantic expressed what I’ve been thinking much better than me:
Okay, yesterday I was depressed. Today, I’m just pissed off. It’s absolutely astonishing to me how interested the world is in Israel’s failings. This is the source of a bitter but hilarious observation I once heard a Kurdish leader make: He was complaining to me that his people were cursed, and I asked him what he meant: Cursed by geography, cursed by their proximity to Kurd-hating Arabs, what? He said the Kurds were cursed because they didn’t have Jewish enemies. Only with Jewish enemies would the world pay attention to their plight.
…
we’ve all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It’s a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn’t matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I’ll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve seen in my life. And it’s typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they’d learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.
The question is why are Palestinian moral failings not of great interest to people, why are the Kurds cursed to not have Jewish foes?
Can someone on the left explain this to me? I really need an answer to this that leads me to different conclusions.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 
In your attempt to sound as if you cared, you failed.
By accident or by mistake? You mean the Israeli Occupation forces had nothing to do with this? Do you know what’s happening on the ground? Israel is telling the Palestinian masses – through dropped leaflets- that it’s their fault for the death they suffer because they “allowed” Hamas to exist!
Secondly, the biggest lie in the century – and Zionist propaganda – is that Hamas prevents burials. Tell me please, if this was the case, why were Hamas “saved” while the civilians were killed? Hamas is nowhere to be found around these civilians and that fact you do know. But of course, Israelis spin everything to show how wonderful they are and how horrible everyone is.
What you describe as “typical” is absurd and Hamas, being devout Muslims, will not desecrate a body for show. Besides, all the pictures we’re seeing show death as it had just happened: not after it was prepared for burial. That is, people are rushing the dead to either a hospital or a morgue or the pictures are of those in a rubble.
The question then is why are YOUR morals failing to understand simple stuff instead of accepting anything you read that is seemingly against Palestinians? Are you to embarrassed to accept the fact that your own are capable of atrocities? They’ve been doing so since 1937!
Two days ago a family of a friend was annihilated by Israeli war planes while they hid in their house fearing death! The whole family was killed: mothe, father and the children! Mistake? I beg to differ. It’s the Ethnic Cleansing the Jewish state has learned from Hitler, and now applying on Palestinians.
ATW
P.S. don’t get excited thinking that I am on the left just because I commented.
May I ask why you refer to the Israeli’s as occupation forces? As I recall there was a large brohaha concerning the removal of Jews from Gaza so that it like Lebanon can be Judenrein?
When you say your own what do you mean? I am not Jewish I am not Arab.
I am trying to figure out why the world didn’t care when Hamas choose to send rocket after rocket at Israel, I am trying to understand why in my previous examples where mass slaughter actually happened to civilians the world didn’t care. This makes no sense to me.
Considering that the population of Gaza has increased 10 times since the creation of Israel that makes the suggestion that this is ethnic cleansing rather unlikely. Since the majority of middle east countries are practically Judenrein that would seem a hollow charge.
If Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Arabs they could have with very little effort slaughtered every Arab in the west bank and Gaza. They have had the means for decades, yet it hasn’t happened. Why not?
War is a horrible thing, I have nothing but the greatest sympathy for the friend’s loss, but there are worse things than war. Like the South during the civil war an elected government decided when given an existing infrastructure and millions of dollars of foreign aid choose instead to make war. Israel waited and waited and waited. How many rockets would need to hit before they would have been justified in striking back, and if Hamas is in fact at war with Israel and proudly so, then why do they object when Israel treats it as a war?
Why is Israel still allowing trucks full of aid into Gaza? Why does Israel supply electrical power to Gaza? Why is a closed border with Israel strangulation while a closed border with Egypt not?
If you are at war with Israel, well then your opposition to Israel can be explained in that context. My main concern is with the left, particularly the academic left that for whatever reason sees Israel as the main force of evil in the world. A left that excuses or ignores violence and oppression in other contexts but screams bloody murder at Jews. A left that was willing to provide human shields in Iraq knowing that US soldiers would do their best not to kill them. That same left never bothered with human shields to protect Iraqi civilians when their fellow Muslims were blowing them up or never provided such shields to the towns being shelled in Israel.
These are reasonable questions. Reasonable answers would be welcome.
“Hamas, being devout Muslims, will not desecrate a body for show”
Devout Muslims have taped themselves desecrating bodies for show, and from their expressions, pleasure.
datechguy, the term “Zionist propaganda” is only used by anti-Jewish bigots.
Since ATW’s friend seems to be a member of a Hamas family I suspect that he is too.
“Are you to embarrassed to accept the fact that your own are capable of atrocities? They’ve been doing so since 1937!”
Apparently he thinks you are a Muslim since they eagerly helped the Nazis kill Jews and continue to do so at every opportunity.
It doesn’t seem to be much of an answer by him, that’s true. He also makes the assumption that the Hamas fighters are devout for example.
I can certainly understand anger when friends and/or family are killed in a war. That those deaths might be the natural result of Hamas’ actions and tactics wouldn’t remove the anger.
Unfortunately that doesn’t answer the question I’m still searching for: Why many on the left seem to only see atrocity if it can be traced to a Jewish or an American act? What is the source of this myopia?