I served 20 years as a US diplomat in the Middle East, starting in 2006. During that time, at least two million people died in a series of conflicts across the region, from Iraq and Iran to Syria and Sudan.
Very few Americans cared about the bloodletting in the Middle East… until the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. All of a sudden, students, politicians, and media outlets were seized by the conflict in Gaza – and Israel was at the receiving end of unprecedented and pervasive opprobrium and animosity.
Why didn’t students at Columbia and UCLA or Democratic Party and DSA politicians or many media outlets care about millions of dead and displaced Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Sudanese, Iraqis, and Yemenis in the years leading up to October 2023?
Why don’t students and activists take to the streets or wage political campaigns about the hundreds of thousands of people massacred in Sudan’s ongoing civil war? Or the thousands of dead Iranian youth gunned down by their own government little more than six months ago?What is it about Israel that triggers this stunningly selective outrage and manifest double standard?
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