Jon Stewart Takes No Notice of the UN’s Double Standard and Anti-Israel Bias

Christiane Amanpour and Jon Stewart want to make sure you understand how terrible Israel really is: “Jon Stewart & Christiane Amanpour Use Daily Show Interview to Muddle Image of Israel,” by Chaim Lax, HonestReporting, April 11, 2024:

• Near the end of the interview, Stewart questions why the war between Israel and Hamas is “not the top priority” and “not the only session that’s going on at the UN.”  In his formulation of the question, Stewart is exaggerating the import of the war in Gaza, making it out to be a unique conflict deserving of excess attention rather than one of many conflicts currently plaguing the world.

Why does Stewart think the war between Israel and Hamas is “not the top priority” of the UN? In the General Assembly, in the UN Security Council, at the offices of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Israel’s conduct of its war in Gaza is the subject of investigations, reports, denunciations, and lopsided votes to condemn. Far more attention is given to Israel and its misdeeds than to all the other crises in the world today. Think only of the 15 million — out of 45 million — people in southern Sudan, and of the ten million in Yemen, both now facing starvation far worse than what the Gazans are enduring. Think of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, that has gone on for more than two years. Think of the deliberate starvation by the Ethiopian government of the inhabitants of Tigré. Think of the persecution by the Chinese Communist government of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, who are forced to endure mass “re-education camps,” where the government is tries to de-islamize ten million people through a host of regulations. These include replacing the Qur’an that is read in Xinjiang with one that has been bowdlerized by the Chinese authorities, so as to remove all of the violent passages directed at non-Muslims. Religious beards are outlawed. So are Muslim names given to babies. The Chinese monitor every mosque to make sure there is nothing deemed subversive in the khutbas (sermons) that accompany Friday Prayers. Nothing must be said that might threaten the safety of the Han Chinese. Uighurs in Xinjiang have had many of their mosques destroyed, and the government in Beijing does not allow the building of any new mosques. Some mosques still standing have been retrofitted with pagoda rooftops, in order to sinicize the mosque architecture. Yet how little attention is given at the UN to China’s mistreatment of the Uighurs. There has been no UN condemnation of China, for its treatment of Uighurs, in all of this time. And while the UN keeps claiming that Gaza is “on the brink of famine,” in fact it always remains just on the brink, but never tips over into real famine. There is “food insecurity” — a different thing — in Gaza, a result of Hamas operatives stealing much of the food for themselves, their extended families, and their tribes. In South Sudan and Yemen, the conditions are much worse than in Gaza, but spoken of much less. Apparently, when Jews are not involved, and can’t be condemned, the world loses interest.

• Soon after, Stewart claims that the figure of children killed in Gaza (“over 10,000”) is unprecedented and that he has never “heard of anything like that.” Not only is Stewart ignoring the fact that Hamas’ listing of children casualties is highly contested, he is once again making the war in Gaza into a unique phenomenon that deserves special attention and ignoring the high number of children killed in other conflicts, such as the Syrian civil war (30,000 children killed) and the Yemen civil war (at least 11,000 children killed or injured)….

The figure of 10,000 children having been killed in Gaza comes from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, and cannot be verified. Hamas does have a long record of exaggerating civilian deaths, and such exaggeration about children’s deaths in Gaza would not surprise anyone. Stewart, however, unquestioningly accepts the number put out by Hamas, and says that the number (10,000) is “unprecedented” and that he has never “heard of anything like that.” Really? Has he forgotten the Holocaust, in which one and a half million Jewish children were murdered? Does he not know that during Partition in India in 1947 two million Hindus and Muslims died, and about half a million were reported to be children? Does Stewart not know about the killings of between one and two hundred thousand children during the Rwanda massacre in 1994? Does he not know of the deaths of many tens of thousands of Christian Igbo children in the Biafra War between 1967 and 1969, strafed and bombed by Egyptian pilots flying MIGs? Has he not been following the report from Save the Children International on the war in South Sudan, where “230,000 children and new mothers are likely to die from hunger without critical action”? No, Stewart knows nothing of these things. That ignorance explains his absurd claim about “10,000 children killed in Gaza” being “without precedent” and claiming that he “never heard of anything like that.” “Without precedent”? What can he be thinking?