Israel is “not held up to a higher standard among nations, just an impossible one”

“The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews,” said Hoffer, the prophet-philosopher. There is painful injustice in the double standard. In our grander moments, we tell ourselves that we are judged harshly by the world because “we answer to a Higher Authority.” This is too kind. If we are alone, we are not held up to a higher standard among nations, just an impossible one.

How else should we view the appointment of anti-Israel William Schabas to head the UN commission investigating alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the biased reporting of papers we trusted, the damning placards of British protestors calling Israelis child murderers when Hamas uses children as human shields and executes people without due process. Israel makes moral errors. But Israel’s Supreme Court punishes its own citizens as part of the fiber of a democratic society. Vigilante justice does not go unchallenged. But roiling, irrational hatred of Israel and our people does go unchallenged. Still.

Erica Brown, “Alone Again”, The Jewish Week (5 September 2014), 58.