October 6, 2015: Saudi Arabia has its lobbyists in the West working overtime to deal with accusations that the Saudi led Arab coalition air attacks in Yemen has killed more civilians (more than 2,000) this year than Israel did during their 2014 war in Gaza with Hamas. That conflict saw 2,100 Palestinians killed and about two-thirds of them were civilians. The Palestinians, and their Arab allies in the UN, want Israel prosecuted for war crimes because of this. There is no such clamor for the Saudis to be similarly prosecuted.

The reality is that the situation is much worse than that. Far more Palestinians are killed by other Palestinians (and other Arabs) than by Israelis. For example nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Syrian Civil War since 2011. Hundreds were tortured to death and more than that were executed, often in gruesome ways, for being on the wrong side or for “blasphemy”. In Gaza hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in factional fighting or executed by Hamas for various offenses (like disagreeing with Hamas rule.) In the last half century more far more Palestinians have been killed by Arabs than by Israelis.

The current situation becomes more embarrassing when you look at the reaction of Arabs and their supporters in the West to all this. The Palestinian accusations, and willful ignorance of Palestinians killed by Arabs has been increasingly supported in the West, especially among leftist political groups, who automatically agree with the Palestinians results in accusations that Israel must be doing something wrong. Israel points out that their Arab and Western critics would, and do, respond as Israel does when attacked by nearby terrorists but that fact is ignored. Well, not completely. Many Arabs, especially Arab diplomats who know a lot about Israel and the Palestinians, privately agree with the Israelis. But to openly point out the reality of the situation in the Moslem world will get you death threats, or worse. In the West it’s safer to point out the obvious although in leftist political circles the pro-Palestinian supporters can be loud and even a little violent at times. In Europe this has led to more tolerance of anti-Semitic violence and more European Jews moving to Israel (and elsewhere). The anti-Israel situation in Europe is largely the result of millions of Moslems moving to Europe (often as refugees) in the last few decades. The Moslems tend to cluster together and leftist politicians seek the support of Moslems by backing positions favored by Moslems (like the destruction of Israel). The leftist politicians are often placated by introducing, or just supporting anti-Israel proposals in the UN. These have little chance of passing, but show Moslem voters in Europe that they are being served. All this results in a double standard where Arabs killing Arabs for any reason is no big deal while Israelis killing Arabs in self-defense is a war crime.