It's the Arab intolerance of minorities, stupid!

Judge Richard Goldstone... has 'admitted' he got it wrong

Judge Goldstone has sort-of admitted getting his report on Israel's 'war crimes' in Gaza wrong, but where is the apology of the media and academic 'experts', with their obsessive focus on the Jewish state as the source of all the Middle East's ills? Rampant intolerance of Jews and other minorities in Arab societies, not Israel, is a key problem, David Harris argues in the Huffington Post:

Their single-minded obsession has been Israel and all its alleged transgressions. They've woven a tale that attributes all the region's woes to the Jewish state. Were it not for Israel, they've suggested, paradise lost would have become paradise found. But those Israelis and their purported militarism, colonialism, expansionism, and whatever other "ism" could be concocted were the one-size-fits-all explanation for every problem in the Middle East. Nothing else really mattered. Nothing else even counted.

So, those of us who dared to suggest there were other ways of looking at the region were simply dismissed as pro-Israel stooges and apologists. That we might have done so out of a genuine belief that only a hard-headed assessment could help move things in the right direction -- i.e., lifting the Middle East out of its stasis and into a new era of peace and prosperity -- was viewed as nothing more than a diversionary ruse by that, you know, "lobby."

Look at the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Over a span of two decades, hundreds of thousands of Jews were compelled to leave their ancestral lands because of violence and discrimination, yet there was hardly a peep from the international community.

The UN kept silent. Most governments looked the other way. Editorial writers and news reporters wasted little time on the subject. And few scholars rushed to their usual intellectual outlets to speak out.

But it should have been clear that this mass exodus was not just about the Jews. In fact, it was about the intolerance of societies that rejected basic notions of pluralism and respect for minorities.

Well, no one said anything and then what happened? Without Jews to target, those very same societies began to focus on other communities, especially Christians, but also minority Muslim sects.

But again, the very same universe that looked the other way when it came to the Jews didn't acquit itself any better when it came to Copts in Egypt or Chaldeans in Iraq.

After all, if it couldn't be pinned on Israel, why bother?

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