End the Occupation!

The indigenous population is killed or chased away. New settlers of a different ethnic background are brought in to replace the indigenous population. They are given financial inducements to settle the stolen land and are protected by military forces.

No, I'm not talking about Israel and the Palestinians. I am talking about Darfur where a dictatorial Arab regime, supported by other Arab governments, is committing a brutal genocide against Black African Muslims in Darfur. This genocide includes not only mass murder and systematic rape, but also a policy of replacing the murdered black Africans with ethnic Arabs. This is how Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times describes the situation:

"One of the most troubling signs is that Sudan has been encouraging Arabs from Chad, Niger and other countries to settle in Darfur. More than 30,000 of them have moved into areas depopulated after African tribes were driven out. In the last few months, Sudan's government has given these new arrivals citizenship papers and weapons, cementing in place the demographic consequences of its genocide...

Then there's rape. Ever since Sudan began the genocide, it has been using rape to terrorize populations of Africans - and then periodically punishing women who seek treatment on charges of adultery or fornication....As Refugees International puts it in a new report: 'The government is more likely to take action against those who report and document rape than those who commit it."

Arab governments actively support the genocidal Sudanese regime, which thus far has murdered 400,000 civilians and displaced 2.5 million. Jimmy Carter, who has mendaciously said that what Israel is doing is even worse than genocidal Rwanda and Apartheid South Africa, has said little about Darfur in comparison to his daily tirades against Israel. Carter, the Neville Chamberlain of today's war between tyrannical, terrorist regimes and democracies, calls for "balance" in our approach to genocidal regimes and their victims. The United Nations does little about real genocides because it is preoccupied with Israel's imperfections.

The real victims of this obsessive focus on Israel to the exclusion of major human rights violators are neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians. The real victims are Black Africans and others whose dreadful plights are being ignored or downplayed in the name of some bizarre notion of political correctness.

By any standard of justice, human rights, international law and basic common sense, what the Sudanese government is doing in Darfur is incomparably worse than anything the Israelis have ever been accused of. Indeed, there is absolutely no comparison. Even to mention them in the same condemnatory breath is an obscenity. The relatively small number of Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli Army have been the accidental victims of self-defense action, whereas the Darfur genocide has been deliberate and unprovoked. Arabs have killed more Palestinians than Israel has, despite the terrorism directed at Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists. More Muslims have killed Muslims in Darfur than Israel has killed Muslims in all the wars and battles in the Mideast. Yet those who complain most loudly about the Israeli occupation of parts of the West Bank are actively supporting - or at least not actively opposing -- the Sudanese genocide and occupation in Darfur.

It's perfectly reasonable, indeed desirable, to criticize Israel and other democracies for their imperfections or excesses, so long as the criticism is proportional to their faults and does not deflect attention away from far more serious offenders. But the disproportionate degree of condemnation being heaped on Israel today - by British unions, American academics, human rights organizations and others - is, in fact, deflecting needed attention away from ongoing genocides.

As hypocrisy reigns supreme, innocent victims continue to be murdered, raped and displaced. It's about time the international community, and those who claim to speak for the victims of human right violations, got their priorities straight.