Of ferry ships and evil Israeli acts, oh my

I was just reading the lengthy comment thread for a NYTimes account of the Israeli boarding of a Turkish ferry ship and the ensuing hoo-rah. It included hundreds of fiery blanket denunciations of Israel. I said this:

For the sake of argument, assume that the most foaming-at-the-mouth accusations of the Israeli attack on the relief ship are true.

How does that compare to the routine, daily mass murders and rapes by the thousands going on in the eastern Congo and northern Uganda and all over the west and south of Sudan?

Or the war of oppression being carried out by the Burmese junta against its own citizens daily--especially against a number of ethnic minorities?

Or the mass murders by Iran's theocratic dictatorship against its own citizens who dared protest the recent rigged election?

Or China's progressive ethnicide being carried out against the Tibetan people as well as against China's non-Han Muslim minority in western China (the Uighurs)?

How about the ethnic cleansing of Christians from Iraq who have been there close to several thousand years, including murdering most of the men, with the tacit approval of Iraq's Islamist government?

These ongoing state-sponsored atrocities, taking place around the world, utterly dwarf what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians, even if you take the Hamas version of reality at face value. Yet none of these things inspire the outpouring of passionate denunciation that the letters in this comment thread exemplify.

Why?

How did Israel come to be treated by so many Americans and Europeans as the Worst Country on Earth? The responses I've read here are wildly, extravagantly disproportionate to the crimes alleged to have occurred, compared to what else is going on around the globe.

I'm not trying to exculpate Israel. I assume that most of the commentors on this thread were on board the Turkish ferry and personally witnessed what took place there--otherwise their total certainly about the events means they believe Hamas and its allies always tell the exact truth, and Israel and its allies always lie.

But since I wasn't on board and I'm not clairvoyant, it's going to take time for me to figure out what happened, so I'm at a disadvantage arguing the facts on the ship.

So since these other people had to have been on the ship to achieve such certainly, I'd like to know how they evaded Israeli custody. If not, then they are jumping to conclusions, which betrays an irrational hatred of Israel--regardless of what actually happened.

And if that's so, I'd love to have someone honestly tell me why they hate Israel so much--given that by any objective measure of state-sponsored oppression and murder, they're the smallest of small potatoes...especially compared to the Islamic dictatorships around them (has anyone looked at what Hamas did to all the Fatah supporters it could find when it took over Gaza, BTW?).

I don't want America to be Israel's sock puppet. I didn't like Bush II's automatic support for anything Israel did. But I don't want to be the Arab League's sock puppet either.

And if you think you know exactly what happened on that ship at this point, and that it means Israel=evil; Islamists=good...that's what you are.