Proportional Outrage?
Nov. 25th, 2023 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI Should Probably Insert Some Sort of Trigger Warning: I’ve been trying to write something about Israel for a while and can’t quite find the words I want. So this is a bit of a brain dump.
Where’s the Outrage: My main thought has to do with something I once read about news coverage. The thing I am thinking of was an analysis somebody did of the New York Times which had the claim that the number of column inches a story gets is roughly proportional to the distance of the event in question from Times Square. This correlation is surprisingly accurate as long as you assume the distance between 42nd Street and Jerusalem is approximately the same as the distance between 42nd Street and New Jersey.
The reason that came to mind is that I very very very briefly saw a couple of news stories about the most recent conflict between the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan and the population of West Darfur. The RSF (who are ethnically Arabic) appears to be determined to commit genocide against the Massalit people (who are non-Arabic, which I believe means they are of African ancestry). There have been reports about massacres and extensive use of rape as a weapon of war. This is something of a follow-up to the ethnic cleansing attempted by the Janjaweed militias in 2003. It appears to have heated up in April 2023, but you wouldn’t know that from the Western press.
My question is where is the outrage? Have you seen anybody marching in the streets about this? Why do I see a story that stays on the news for 5 minutes about these slaughters when there are stories in every newspaper every time somebody in Gaza gets a hangnail?
(I am not intending to dismiss the tragedy of civilians dying in Gaza, but I do blame Hamas for most of them. My point is about what does and doesn’t get reported. And I don’t see a lot of news coverage of the barrages of missiles Hamas fires at Israel.)
Numbers: As for the UN, look at the number of resolutions against Israel vs. the number against other countries. Here’s a quick hint - from 2006 through 2022, the UN adopted 99 resolutions against Israel, 41 against Syria, 13 against Iran, 4 against Russia, and 3 against Venezuela. Where are the UN resolutions condemning China’s ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs? I’d characterize holding Israel to a different standard than the rest of the world as inherently antisemitic.
Here are some more numbers. The number of Palestinian Arabs displaced by the Naqba was 700,000 - most (but not all of whom) were told to abandon their houses by other Arabs, being convinced that they’d recapture them when Israel lost its War of Independence. At the same time, the number of Jews expelled from Arabic countries was 900,000.
Population growth in Gaza is 1.99% a year, which is the 39th highest in the world. For what it’s worth, most of the countries with higher rates of population growth are in Africa, e.g. 3.34% in Angola. 3.31% in Benin, 3.56% in Burundi, 3.66% in Niger, 4.78% in South Sudan. The point is that the population of the Palestinian territories is approximately 6 times what it was in 1948. That’s pretty much the opposite of a genocide. (The number of Jews in the world peaked at 16.7 million in 1939. It has only recovered to 15.3 million as of 2022.)
Incidentally, it has nothing to do with anything else here, but I was mildly surprised to learn that the country outside the Middle East with the largest Palestinian population is Chile. (The country overall with the largest Palestinian population is, of course, Jordan. This should not surprise anyone who has looked at old maps.)
Cease Fire: Let's just say that I'm skeptical.
Where’s the Outrage: My main thought has to do with something I once read about news coverage. The thing I am thinking of was an analysis somebody did of the New York Times which had the claim that the number of column inches a story gets is roughly proportional to the distance of the event in question from Times Square. This correlation is surprisingly accurate as long as you assume the distance between 42nd Street and Jerusalem is approximately the same as the distance between 42nd Street and New Jersey.
The reason that came to mind is that I very very very briefly saw a couple of news stories about the most recent conflict between the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan and the population of West Darfur. The RSF (who are ethnically Arabic) appears to be determined to commit genocide against the Massalit people (who are non-Arabic, which I believe means they are of African ancestry). There have been reports about massacres and extensive use of rape as a weapon of war. This is something of a follow-up to the ethnic cleansing attempted by the Janjaweed militias in 2003. It appears to have heated up in April 2023, but you wouldn’t know that from the Western press.
My question is where is the outrage? Have you seen anybody marching in the streets about this? Why do I see a story that stays on the news for 5 minutes about these slaughters when there are stories in every newspaper every time somebody in Gaza gets a hangnail?
(I am not intending to dismiss the tragedy of civilians dying in Gaza, but I do blame Hamas for most of them. My point is about what does and doesn’t get reported. And I don’t see a lot of news coverage of the barrages of missiles Hamas fires at Israel.)
Numbers: As for the UN, look at the number of resolutions against Israel vs. the number against other countries. Here’s a quick hint - from 2006 through 2022, the UN adopted 99 resolutions against Israel, 41 against Syria, 13 against Iran, 4 against Russia, and 3 against Venezuela. Where are the UN resolutions condemning China’s ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs? I’d characterize holding Israel to a different standard than the rest of the world as inherently antisemitic.
Here are some more numbers. The number of Palestinian Arabs displaced by the Naqba was 700,000 - most (but not all of whom) were told to abandon their houses by other Arabs, being convinced that they’d recapture them when Israel lost its War of Independence. At the same time, the number of Jews expelled from Arabic countries was 900,000.
Population growth in Gaza is 1.99% a year, which is the 39th highest in the world. For what it’s worth, most of the countries with higher rates of population growth are in Africa, e.g. 3.34% in Angola. 3.31% in Benin, 3.56% in Burundi, 3.66% in Niger, 4.78% in South Sudan. The point is that the population of the Palestinian territories is approximately 6 times what it was in 1948. That’s pretty much the opposite of a genocide. (The number of Jews in the world peaked at 16.7 million in 1939. It has only recovered to 15.3 million as of 2022.)
Incidentally, it has nothing to do with anything else here, but I was mildly surprised to learn that the country outside the Middle East with the largest Palestinian population is Chile. (The country overall with the largest Palestinian population is, of course, Jordan. This should not surprise anyone who has looked at old maps.)
Cease Fire: Let's just say that I'm skeptical.
