How did Western leftists wind up in bed with Arab dictators?

Yesterday's Washington Post editorial "Managing the Blockade" recommended some sensible, politically centrist reforms of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

It garnered the usual raft of responses: Israeliphiles denouncing it for not supporting anything Israel's government chooses to do 100%; Israeliphobes denouncing it for not calling Israel the reincarnation of the Third Reich (the accompanying image conveys their attitude, not mine); Tea Party types denouncing Obama; and a few who, like me, endorsed the editorial.

Here's my comment:

Pretty ironic to see all these American leftists shilling for Islamist dictatorships--especially considering what thsoe dictatorships would do to these leftists if they moved to, say, Gaza and denounced the local government as freely as they speak here.

--while if they did likewise in Israel, nothing would happen to them.

I'm not saying this as a way of defending anything Israel does. In particular I regard the attack on the USS Liberty as a war crime, whose perpetrators we should be trying to extradite today.

And the WaPo recommendations made here seem eminently sensible to me--while I'm sure Israel's ruling party would object strenuously.

That said, no patriotic American will forget the Palestinian response to 9/11. These are not our friends. Israel is the closest thing to a friendly state that we've got there. Why should we help countries that loathe us against one that like us?

Especially when the arguments in favor of doing so describe Israel in a manner most Americans would find both ridiculous and despicable.

The blacks of Darfur would think they'd died and gone to heaven if they could be treated like the Israelis do the Gazans and West Bankers. Ditto the ethnic minorities of Burma. And the Tibetans, whom the Han Chinese are slowly erasing.

I could go on. The point is that there are dozens of situations around the world where governments treat their minorities or occupy-ees vastly worse than the Israelis treat the Palestinians.

But I never read dozens of frenzied denunciations of Burma, Sudan, China, and others. Not to mention how the dictators of Iran, Egypt etc. treat their majorities, much less their minorities.

So--why does Israel, a minor player in the mistreatment-of-peoples roster, get the star treatment?

I have never heard a Western leftist explain that satisfactorily.

Feel free to try. Absent that, it just looks like y'all act one way when a Jew does X than when a Muslim does X.

There's a name for that, isn't there?

BTW, note to leftists: when you equate Israel with Nazi Germany--as you do constantly--you're just pleasuring yourselves, because that's when everyone who doesn't already agree with you stops listening to you.

Though to be fair most Americans react the same way to the Tea Party wing nuts who fill newspaper comment threads with frenzied denunciations of Obama and the the Democratic Congress, regardless of the topic of article they're supposedly commenting on.

Just goes to show--wingnuts of the left and right are identical on the process level: Manichean* worldview, inability to communicate with anyone outside their tribe.

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* Named after a 3rd century Persian sect preaching black & white religious dualism--i.e. there's only good and evil--nothing in between.

I know, I could have just said "black & white worldview."

But it's such a cool word...

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And speaking of cool words, guess where "Palestine" comes from?

The name dates from before the 5th century BC, and means "Land of the Philistines." The Philistines were neither Jews nor Arabs, as it happens. A variety of peoples lived there. The Arabs conquered the land by force of arms in 638AD, becoming an occupier with the Jews and Christians and others there living as subject peoples under a different set of laws than the Arabs.