Across at Engage, David Hirsh takes issue with a piece by Richard Kuper which argues that it's justifiable to single Israel out for specially hostile treatment. (There are various highly cogent remarks on both pieces on the Engage comments thread.) I'd like to draw attention to some more general features of Kuper's arguments that seem to me to undermine the plausibility of his position.
Kuper's first and principal justification for singling out Israel for hostile attention is that it singles itself out by claiming the high moral ground of commitment to the values of liberty, justice and peace. It invites evaluation in terms of Western values, since it claims to be committed to them. But it does seem to follow from Kuper's criticism that if Israel dropped that claim, then for him there would be much less reason to single it out for further attention, and he would be able, no doubt with a sigh of relief, to turn his hostile attentions elsewhere. It looks as if an implication of his view is that we should cut much more slack to countries which are unashamedly oppressive and tyrannical, and be far harsher to countries which explicitly endorse liberal values. (And indeed quite a few of those who think it's OK to single out Israel for criticism do appear to be acting on that principle.) This is a quite astonishing prioritization of the vice of hypocrisy (which Israel is supposed to possess above all others - itself a highly dubious claim which Kuper makes no attempt to support) at the expense of ignoring the rather more terrible vices of tyranny and mass murder. It may be that Kuper is appealing to an unspoken assumption that we should only judge polities by the standards which they themselves respect. But this is an even more unattractive view: it would sink any hope of appealing to human rights in the face of killing and torture.
Another of Kuper's arguments is that what justifies singling Israel out for punitive criticism is that it's supported by America. So here the principle seems to be that a country which is a friend of America's should be judged by a much harsher standard than countries which do much worse things, just so long as they aren't supported by America. It's hard to see how this differs from the familiar view that we should leave people alone even if they're bastards, provided that they're our bastards - hardly an admirable, or noticeably left-wing, moral principle. In fact both of these arguments are ones with which sections of the far right could comfortably feel at home. (Eve Garrard)