Posted on 04/24/2009 4:29:50 PM PDT by rmlew
Few places on earth have been as systematically brutalized over the past decade as Chechnya. So you might have thought that the Russian government's decision last week to declare an end to its "counterterrorism" operations in the territory would have been an occasion for somber reflection in the Western media. Forget it. It's a 600-word news item at best.
Here's a contrast to ponder. Since the beginning of the second intifada in the autumn of 2000, roughly 6,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. That figure includes combatants, as well as those killed in January's fighting in Gaza.
As for Chechnya, there are no solid figures for the number of civilians killed since the second war began in late 1999; estimates range anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000. Chechnya's population, at a little over one million, is about one-third or one-fourth that of the Palestinians. That works out to between 25 to 200 Chechen deaths per 1,000, as against 1.5 to 2 Palestinian deaths per 1,000.
Now type the words "Palestine" and "genocide" into Google. When I did so Monday, I got 1,630,000 results. Next, substitute "Chechnya" for "Palestine." The number is 245,000. Taking the Google results as a crude measure of global outrage, that means the outrage over the Palestinian situation was 6.6 times greater than over the Chechen one. Yet Chechen fatalities were anywhere between 13 to 133 times greater.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I have a hypothesis. Maybe the world attends to Palestinian grievances but not Chechen ones for the sole reason that Palestinians are, uniquely, the perceived victims of the Jewish state. That is, when they are not being victimized by other Palestinians. Or being expelled en masse from Kuwait. Or being excluded from the labor force in Lebanon. Things you probably didn't know about, either. As for the Chechens, too bad for their cause that no Jew will ever likely become president of Russia.
Of course, I have no love of either the Chechens and Ingushetians or the PLOstinians. If it is a fight between KGB Russia and its demestic Islamic insurgents, I say "more please".
However, the truth is that the international left hates all separatists from the USSR, and the Islamic Countries see Russia as a useful idiot agains the west. So the death of Chechens is a fair trade, when Russia is helping the Iranian nuclear program, kicking the US out of Central Asia, and trying to break up NATO.
ping
ping
If what you say is true, then muslims would be very stupid to let capitalism die in america.
Think about that for a second or two.
In short, the Palestinian conflict can be viewed as beginning as far back as 1948 whereas the conflict in Chechnya began essentially in late 1999.
Thus, I would expect more Google hits on the topic of Palestine.
Chechnya has been under the Russian heal for 150 years.
When the Chechens become as useful to the broader Islamic world as the “Palestinians” are, maybe they’ll get a little love too.
More specifically, the author is using artificial "cut-off" points such as:
Since the beginning of the second intifada in the autumn of 2000...
and
As for Chechnya, there are no solid figures for the number of civilians killed since the second war began in late 1999...
In other words, what the author is leading the reader to do is equate the two situations in a similar time frame.
The author subsequently does a Google search and counts the number of hits as if it going to be limited between (approximately) the year 1999 to the present.
This is silly.
great article for the moral clarity file
Get to the point. Are you seriously sayiing that the world focuses even a fraction of the attention on Chechnyans that it focuses on Palestinians? Use any measure you like.
A writer for the Wall Street Journal should do a better job. And, that's a major point!
Because people dislike Jews a lot more than they dislike Russians.
Because Russia is feared & respected & Israel is neither.
Because Russia knows what it wants & Israel can’t even decide on our own borders.
Because Chechens are less interesting than Arabs.
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