Protests and double standards: Global leaders urge arms embargo on Israel - opinion

Dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors were arrested during a recent violent mass demonstration in New York, chanting the familiar brutal incitement slogans that we have heard for decades and which have increased since October 7.

While Israel commemorated the victims and hostages of that black day in October last year when Jews and Israelis were murdered and kidnapped, and major newspapers dedicated front pages to marking October 7, leaders of friendly nations continued to attempt to tie the hands of the Jewish state – imposing restrictions on the export to Israel of weapons and military components needed to defeat our enemies.

In an interview on the French radio station, France Inter, French President Emmanuel Macron called to halt arms shipments to Israel intended for the war in Gaza. He clarified that from France’s perspective, such an arms embargo was already underway.

“France does not supply such weapons,” he emphasized.

Let us not forget the Holocaust of French Jews during the Vichy regime when France’s puppet government supported the Nazis during World War II – or French president Charles de Gaulle’s arms embargo on Israel during the Six-Day War.

International double standard

Today, while Iran threatens genocide and Israeli children run to shelters in terror, children in France carry on their lives as usual.

Last month, it was reported that the German government was rejecting Israeli requests to purchase various weapons, effectively implementing their own arms embargo. Last year, Israel submitted a request for the purchase of thousands of shells for tanks, along with other munitions, but Berlin has yet to approve the sale.

Two thousand eight hundred Americans were killed in the murderous Al-Qaeda attack on September 11. In response, the US killed 400,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet no one accused them of genocide, as they accuse Israel in relation to Gaza. At Pearl Harbor, 2,200 American soldiers were killed; in response, the US killed over three million Japanese, including over 100,000 in a single day.

If terrorists from Mexico were to invade Texas, killing, raping, and burning civilians and then continuing the violence by kidnapping others and taking them to Mexico to hide them in tunnels, the US would turn the neighboring state of Sonora (in Mexico) into a parking lot.

BUT JEWS are not “allowed” to defend their homeland, even while waging a much more humane war than any that the United States has carried out. The ratio of civilians to combatants is much lower than in the wars waged by the US in Iraq or in the bombing of German civilians during WWII, according to the comments of Prof. Scott Galloway, from New York University, in an interview on SNBC.

At the same time, biased interviewers in the Western media express their concern for Palestinians who supported the Nukhba Force killers and Hezbollah terrorists. There is one moral standard for the Jews and Israel and another for everyone else. This disgrace and double standard is particularly exhibited by journalists and interviewers on networks such as the BBC.

Once respected journalists such as CNN’s Christine Amanpour consistently exhibit empathy and sympathy when discussing the suffering of Palestinians and yet have only blame for Israel. These interviewers search for Israelis who speak their language such as former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Ami Ayalon, who brazenly and falsely accuses Israel of being an apartheid state, saying that if he were Palestinian, he would join their “struggle.” He makes these shameful comments with the blood of those brutally massacred by Palestinian terrorists cries out from the ground; and the kidnapped, brought into Gaza to the sound of cheers from Palestinian civilians, are tortured in the dark.

A study analyzing 100 million social media posts titled “Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and The Polarization Pendulum” was commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation and presented in the Knesset by the caucus for Israel-US Jewish relations. The study, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute, revealed a double standard, especially when it comes to human rights issues.

On social media, antisemitism is rampant, and Israel is blamed in nearly every global crisis, notably during the COVID-19 pandemic. Antisemitism is fueled and supported by radical Islamist elements, as well as by countries such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, South Africa, and other Arab nations – even among those that have peace treaties with Israel. The study found a direct link between antisemitic and anti-Zionist expressions, indicating a connection between the two phenomena.

It’s worth paying attention to the words of Felix Klein, Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Antisemitism, who, in an interview with the French news agency claimed: “We have been witnessing a tsunami of antisemitism in Germany since October 7. There is open and aggressive hatred toward Jews in every possible form.”

Klein warned that the October 7 massacre had further shattered the already fragile barriers in German society against antisemitism, supporting his statements with reports of 5,000 antisemitic crimes in Germany in 2023, more than half occurring after October 7.

“Hamas murdered more Jews than any event since the Holocaust,” Klein said, “and yet the German public did not show the solidarity with Jews that I would have expected. We are now witnessing antisemitism in Germany in its harshest form since 1945.”

The writer is CEO of Radios 100FM, honorary consul general of Nauru, vice dean of the Consular Corps, president of the Israeli Radio Broadcasting Association, chairman of the Association of Regional Radio Stations, and vice president of the Ambassadors Club.