Is Mentioning Countries That Are Being Ignored Whataboutism?

Whataboutism is when someone deflects an accusation by blaming someone else for the same concern.

It is becoming a popular word to try to debunk our accusation of antisemitism. When most human rights crimes issues across the world are being ignored, and Israel is being scapegoated. Or the fact that the only Jewish state continuously gets more attention than all the other countries combined. How about the fact that Hamas, who truly oppresses the Palestinians, is ignored while Israel is being blamed for everything?

It also comes up when a 3rd generation Palestinian holds the key to his grandparents’ house in Palestine, and we call out marketing, considering that there have been about 150 million displaced people across the world since 1940, and no one is pulling the key schtick.

It is such an easy way to dispel solid arguments by shouting Whataboutism. It is an easy way to state that just because other countries have issues does not mean that Israel is not committing any crimes,

And this is what I respond:

“Whataboutism is when a teacher confronts little Johnny because he did something wrong, but he then complains about why he gets punished when little Bobby has done the same thing or worse. 

This is a common occurrence with kids. The only thing is that in history, every once in a while, we get introduced to little Johnnys that do get blamed and punished once too often, and the rest of the class gets away with the same actions. Then one day, little Johnny looks at his skin or the skullcap on his head and realizes that he is truly different and the rest of the class is really being treated differently. So you can say that the Israel activists are just deflecting their crimes by pointing at other topics across the world that are being ignored, which is what we call Whataboutism. But when the rest of the world is being completely ignored. When the refugee organization dedicated to “help” the Palestinians (UNRWA) has double the employees as UNHCR, the organization is dedicated to catering to the rest of the refugees in the world. Where UNHCR focuses on relocating any refugee across the world and UNRWA inventing a new law for the Palestinians so they can stay refugees for many generations. You need to ask a question, why is the rest of the world being ignored?

Look, it’s one thing when someone criticizes your group, and you deflect that criticism onto your opponents. It’s quite another when your group gets criticized more than all the groups in the world combined, something we see regarding Israel in the UN, the mainstream media, and even daily interactions with people in our social circles. Eventually, it stops being deflection and instead becomes systematic scapegoating and discrimination. If you or your influencers are so entirely blind to the world that all you can see is what Israel is doing wrong, eventually, you lose credibility. At that point, you become guilty of what’s called confirmation bias, which is when you take conversations out of context and cherry-pick any little point that confirms your argument while ignoring any points that say something different. So yes, if you ignore all the genocides, the slavery, the beheadings, and the discrimination going on in the world. If you ignore the crimes of the Palestinian leadership and only fixate on Israel, you prove that you no longer care about human rights or the rights of Palestinians specifically. You only care about what’s wrong with Israel, which means that you are approaching this topic with an agenda.

Coming soon…

Coming soon…