[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It is remarkable how much more the death of some Muslims arouses sympathy in the West and elsewhere in the Muslim world than others. I don’t buy that it’s because “we’re arming Israel.” We’re also arming Saudi Arabia.

Selling arms isn't the same as giving them. And the US clearly plays a far bigger role in what Israel does than it does with a place like Saudi Arabia.

And Israel is perfectly capable of defending itself -and take actions against Gaza - without Western military support.

Sort of. Underscoring their entire operation is the fact that the US is there to back them up if the conflict widens. If that didn't exist, they would obviously have to tread more carefully. Like, if Biden came out tomorrow demanding a ceasefire, you don't think that would influence Israel's operations?

No, it’s clear that who is killing the Muslims of Gaza seems to matters a lot more than the identity of who’s being killed.

Most other examples are civil wars, which are often beyond the power of the west to really influence without getting directly involved. Like how would an outside party like the US realistically stop what has happened in Syria or Myanmar without killing far more people? Yemen is a bit better example, but again, it's a civil war where the US only has relatively marginal influence. They could pressure Saudi Arabia to some extent, but it's really not analogous to what's going on in Israel.

And that doesn't even get into the 75-year history of the Israel-Palestine conflict being the single biggest hotpoint of the region, which is going to obviously lead to more attention being paid to it.

I don't know, I've never understood why people are confused by the fact that things that the US and US allies do tend to garner more protests than other conflicts do, even if the latter cause more deaths. Obviously countries and entities whose policy can be influenced by public opinion are going to have more visible opposition than ones who don't care about it at all.