Tuesday, June 05, 2007

What if...

...the kidnappers of Alan Johnston had been Israeli? Would the world have reacted differently? If so, would this indicate a double standard being applied to Israel?

These questions were explored by Charles Moore in a recent article in the Telegraph. Here is an excerpt:
But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?

There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down.

Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.
It seems to me that very little overt action has been taken to secure the release of Alan Johnston. The story has received significant media coverage, but certainly not as overwhelmingly so as the case of Ken Bigley, who was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq in 2004. This surprises me, because Mr. Bigley was an engineer -- one of many -- working in Iraq, some of whom had been kidnapped before Mr. Bigley, only to be released after a short time and, probably, a ransom payment; whereas Alan Johnston is a very highly-respected journalist, both in Britain and in the Middle East, who has now been captive for several months. His kidnap has provoked mass protests in Gaza, where he lived and worked, but there doesn't seem to be much fuss about the situation back in Britain. This strikes me as very odd.

Now, if Alan Johnston had been kidnapped by Israelis (by which I mean an extremist Israeli group of some description) all hell would have broken loose across the world, as Charles Moore says. Arab countries, in particular, would relish in the opportunity to attack Israel for not doing enough to secure his release. (This would happen whatever Israel decided to do because, as I have seen over the years, each and every action of the Israeli Government is criticised by someone. If they try a multilateral approach, they are criticised by the Israeli Right for appeasing terrorists; if they act unilaterally, as with the Gaza withdrawal, they are criticised by others for allowing the Strip to descend into chaos.)

However, perhaps this is not entirely a double standard. If someone is kidnapped in a lawless, albeit democratic place like Gaza, where kidnapping is a fact of life, it is perhaps not so newsworthy as when someone is kidnapped (for political reasons, anyway) in, for example, London, where such things simply don't happen. (Having said that, the Madeleine McCann case is attracting rather a lot of attention...)

On balance I think that, while Charles Moore does have a point, it is rather unfair to judge the international community on their reaction to an event that did not (and will not, in the foreseeable future) occur. In the meantime, all we can hope is that Alan Johnston is released, unharmed, as soon as possible.

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