The UN and its officials tears would be better placed if they cry over what is happening in Iraq than Israel.
The relative silence of the Muslim people over Iraq vis-a-vis the cacophony over Israel is damning and telling.
People are generally fatigued over Iraq and Syria. Not that it is not bloody or any less unfortunate. Its that the nature of conflict is different. Plus its coverage is different. Gaza is the latest battle in a very very long war that stretches back to the first half of last century.
No matter which side one takes in a conflict, one is bound to come up against contradictions. In case of Syria, one gets genuinely confused because there is hardly any clear moral distinction between both sides apart from a sense that people ought to have the right to choose their leaders in a fair election. For reasons of patronage, obvious sectarian and religious differences are given more exposure and have come to define that conflict. One thus recognizes that it is difficult to condemn one side of the other over any standard. I, for one have kept myself to myself and not commented much on the situation there. It is driven by geopolitics and Sectarianism, not a notion of right or wrong - excepting the principle of the right of self-determination.
But Gaza is very different. One clearly sees that both sides are claiming moral high-ground, which in case of Israel simply does not exist. We can see with our eyes what is happening. No responsible state can keep doing what Israelis are doing. Anyone who cares can see how Israelis have taken calculated action and provocation behind the screen of three dead Israeli teen-agers, that were NOT killed by Hamas, but by some lone wolf cell.
The political situation of Palestinians that had been weakened since Hamas had won elections was strengthened by Hamas and Fatah (PLO) deciding to make amends between themselves. This is the basic reason why Israel has taken such a strong action. But now Israelis are either trapped in their own rhetoric, or over-confident in their tunnel vision. I have a few American Jewish friends and they are ALL very upset and distressed at the Gazan situation. American press, long under-pressure for staying partisan has shown definite signs of shrugging off this pressure and striving to bring some sort of balance. It seems that AIPAC is open to criticism now. I have never seen that happening in any meaningful way.
A while back I opened a thread and shared thoughts of one of my American Jewish friends whose humanity, knowledge, and empathy I value very much. Since his thoughts are not typical material for feeding trolls, that thread garnered only a few posts. He has this to say about Israel in the back-drop of the current turmoil:
"As the state of Israel shows the worst face of the Jewish tradition, and anti-Semitism peaks its head from the dark crevices of the European collective unconscious, the time is right to set the best parts of Judaism against the worst and to celebrate the Jewish embrace of justice and diversity.
Perhaps the worst anti-Semites of today are the Israeli leaders who justify their abuse of Palestinians in the name of the Jewish people. The failure of some Jews to support the state can result in severe ostracism. My own otherwise kind and loving father recently condemned me as an anti-Semite for what I have been writing here in a strong message to family. In times of war you are either in or out. And if challenging Israel is equated with being anti-Semitic, and the phrase is repeated like a scratched record skipping, the enemies of Israel may find themselves unconsciously slipping into thinking of themselves as the enemies of the Jews. This is a categorical confusion whose results might be devastating.
The frustrations can get mixed in with an older and deeper tradition of anti-Semitism. The Jews have long been an ethnically exclusive yet cosmopolitan minority, simultaneously mercantile and socialistic, rigidly learned and eccentrically brilliant. And many have responded to these ambiguities with a queasy sort of repulsion. All peoples are diverse, but Jews may be most unique in their ability be so many things at once. Jews can be a colorful bunch, falling into no easy categories: Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein, Karl Marx and George Soros, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. The slide toward militaristic fascism in Israel not only threatens the ambiguity that has so long been a trademark of Jewish identity. It strains at the tolerance of others for a minority that refuses to be one thing."
The above is an excerpt from a long FB post that is read by many people including myself and most readers (often Jewish) support his views that are borne out of learning, empathy, observation, and travels to Palestine & Israel. I am not at liberty to disclose my friend's identity since, many Hasbara people come to PDF and I do not want them to troll him.
You can see the turmoil that has been caused by Israeli actions within wider Jewish community. It is not that a few people on PDF or only some Muslims from around the world are upset. The reality is very different, that gets totally lost amid all the trolling that goes on at PDF.