re: #146 Charles Johnson

Seeing all these horrified tweets from people who heard that an Israeli crowd applauded at bombings. Did it really happen? Who knows? It may have.

But these people seem to have completely missed the HUGE celebrations in places like Gaza after Palestinian suicide bombers blew up school buses and restaurants.

It’s never a good thing to celebrate war. But I’m sorry — these people complaining about a random group of Israelis applauding are being fucking hypocrites.

Rightly or wrongly (I think rightly), people hold Israel and Israelis to a much higher standard. That’s the entire public relations framework of the conflict that makes the hugely disparate body count ostensibly justifiable, that Israel holds itself more accountable. That it is the first world democracy locked in conflict with mostly irrational and barbaric foes.

The downside to occupying the moral high ground is that the position is easier to undermine.