Where is the Anger Over Sri Lanka (and Somalia, and Kashmir)?

International anger is rising over claims that Israel engineered the killing of a Hamas official in Dubai. Australian and European officials have expressed outrage at the forgery of passports for use by the hit squad. And public fury is evident, as seen in the shocking treatment received by Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, during a recent lecture at UC-Irvine. There are legitimate concerns surrounding assassination, and long-standing issues with Israeli policy, but I would call on these critics to think through their anger.
While I am tempted to provoke hundreds of angry comments that will raise my web profile, this is not a defense of Israeli policy. Any intentional use of force against civilians is wrong. But that is my point. The immense anger at Israel is not matched by equivalent anger at other states that commit aggression against civilians. And sympathy for the Palestinians is not accompanied by similar concern for other victims of conflict.
Numerous objectionable political leaders have been tolerated, or even championed, by some on the left. Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader accused of committing atrocities in the 1990s, was defended by individuals such as Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark, while Clark also expressed support for Saddam Hussein. And when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University in 2007 he was met with some challenges, but nothing near the vitriol directed towards Oren.
Beyond the treatment of leaders, dozens of conflicts rage throughout the world, and are for the most part ignored by American and European publics. According to the Uppsala Conflict Database Program, of the top 15 conflicts in 2007 in terms of battle deaths, Israel-Palestine ranked 12th with 272 deaths. This list of course included Iraq and Afghanistan, but also lesser-known conflicts such as that in Sri Lanka (with 1887 deaths) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (516 deaths). Any death is of course a tragedy, but it is difficult to understand why so many horrendous conflicts go unnoticed.
Moreover, these are not short-lived isolated issues. The conflict in Sri Lanka — between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations — has been raging for decades, causing over 70,000 deaths. This conflict was effectively ended through the aggressive tactics of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, albeit at great cost to civilians. And as I have written before, despite the valiant efforts of the Tamil diaspora and some humanitarian organizations, it has failed to generate much interest among Western audiences.
Why do some on the left excoriate Israel but let other state actions slide? Why is a disproportionate amount of attention paid to this conflict, apparently at the expense of others? I am not building up to a shrewd sociological insight or biting rhetorical trap. I would, however, like to hazard a guess.
Psychological studies show that the human need for cognitive consistency is such that a strong opinion on one matter will color all other issues. That is, a deeply-held conviction will bring our perceptions of other possibly unrelated issues into line with the initial belief. In this case, it means that for vociferous critics of Israel the supposed crimes of other states and all other conflicts can be reduced to the root causes of their anger: Israeli actions and Western intervention in other countries’ affairs. One can claim that public anger at Israel lets tyrants get away with repression, and US and Western meddling is the source of both Palestinian suffering and most other conflicts around the world. The extreme certainty driving the actions of those shouting down Michael Oren draws all the rest of the world along in its wake.
This is the problem. The certainty that lets political leaders justify violence against civilians is the same certainty that lets a suicide bomber destroy a bus full of women and children: the certainty that one’s convictions are so right, and so true, that there is no need to consider the possibility one is in error. Those fortunate enough to be safe from these conflicts should be careful lest this destructive sense of certainty corrupts their otherwise virtuous desire to aid the world’s oppressed.
In 1650, Oliver Cromwell wrote a letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in which he said “I beseech you…think it possible you may be mistaken.” Some who read what I have written will interpret it merely as a justification of Israeli aggression, or an apology for US power. All I ask, though, is that the passion driving those students to shout at a distinguished academic-turned-diplomat be accompanied by a bit of uncertainty, just enough to force a questioning of their stances and an awareness of all the suffering in the world that does not provoke such rage.
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Source: huffingtonpost