A part of me was tempted to write 'so what' here but I think that would be indulgent. I'm really not sure what point you are making. Scale may matter but there are small countries in the 'West', and large countries with huge interests outside of it. So I'm missing what point you are trying to make.
There's an idea generally that the 'West', a simplistic treatment of things beyond a classification are somehow worse because of hypocrisy, and yet that's the issue why singling out the 'West' is problematic because hypocrisy is the rule.
It might be that there's an idea that somehow those outside are less hypocritical, which is a bit like less pregnant, a bit like Kelin, the Russian ambassador here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8dxkz6yl2o
Bur oddly, that's very like Netanyahu's approach and I doubt you would approve of that.
I'm bemused at what point you are trying to make. If we agree that countries put forward their interests before international law, what difference is made by size or situation?
That's an odd question. This thread was started presumably because scale mattered - otherwise who cares if Hamas killed 1,200 Israeli civilians or 2 Israeli civilians?
Similarly, by "scale" I was referring to the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians that Israel is ethnically cleansing through bombing and starvation. Most of these bombs have been supplied by 'the West'. More bombs have been dropped on Gaza than during WWII on Hamburg, Dresden and London combined. Hiroshima faced the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT from the Atomic bombing. while it is estimated that Israel has dropped over 70,000 tons of explosives on Gaza.
Levy was referring to 'the West' and international law in the context of Western countries involved in current armed conflict of this scale while accusing other countries of war crimes or genocide. So I think it minimises the scale of the killing in Gaza caused by 'the West' flouting international law, and therefore the scale of the hypocrisy, if you try to compare it to other countries flouting international law on a smaller scale. Hence, I asked you which countries you were referring to.
'The West's' outrage by the number of civilians killed in the Hamas terrorist attack is problematic because 'the West' backs Israel's right to commit terrorism by killing far larger numbers of Palestinians.
It sends the message that scale only matters in relation to Israeli deaths but not Palestinian deaths. That has been a recurring theme in 'the West' since it began its imperial adventures - significant numbers of dead Western people i.e. those of a white hue in Western Europe, North America and Australasia = tragedy and moral outrage; significant numbers of dead non-Western people = very sad, but it's in our national interests to keep killing them. It is also a feature that 'the West' seems to consider other countries to be lacking compassion/ moral values.
The Israeli lobby is also running a campaign to accuse people of antisemitism if they compare the 7th October 2023 Hamas terrorist attack to the tens of thousands of Palestinians that Israel has killed, kidnapped, assaulted, or deprived of their land/ homes/ livelihood/ food/ water etc especially since the blockade of Gaza's land, airspace and territorial waters from 2007.
And presumably there is a reason why it matters to governments whether people are killed by a terrorist organisation or a nation state - what is that reason? Terrorists kill people but 'The West' and especially the USA and UK make a lot of money selling large numbers of arms to governments and groups to kill thousands more civilians than terrorists kill.
'The West' cares if a group is a terrorist group or not because 'The West' can impose sanctions, blockades and freeze assets of those groups they decide to deem terrorists, based on whether those groups benefit the national interests of 'the West'.
Presumably the point of this forum is to have a discussion about the effects and impact of these kinds of policies, which is a discussion of size and situation.
