What a tragedy. I recommend a book titled "God Is Not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything" by Christopher Hitchins.

What an excellent article.

The UN's inaction on Darfur is disgusting, as is the media's 'hush hush' approach to the situation.

Interestingly enough one of the main distractions is the Iraq war. The US wanted to act unilaterally against Iraq. We were told human rights issues was a big part of the justification and the UN was failing to act. Why won't the US act unilaterally in Darfur?? Or any number of other areas across the globe where blatant genocide is occurring?

That aside, this issue needs to be taken up by the media and trumpeted loudly. They alone have the power to mobilise nations.

Darfur is indeed an enormous tragedy. The international community's inaction is also disgraceful. However, if we use this as an excuse to whitewash each and every atrocity committed against Palestinians, we will effectively be behaving like double hypocrites.

It's a bit like the WWII Japanese government lecturing the Brits about human rights atrocities in colonial India whilst committing their own atrocities in SE Asia.

Alleged advocates of human rights need to be careful that they are only seen to be selective about which violations they condemn. They need to be even more careful that they not be seen to be justifying and defending violations on their "own" side. Palestinian blood is just as precious as Sudanese blood.

"The international community's inaction is also disgraceful. "

Nowhere near as disgraceful as that of Arab governments who have washed their hands of the situation, despite the genocide being perpetrated by Arab Muslims, backed by a Muslim Sudanese government.

Face facts: Arab nations (their governments and individuals) are blinding hypocrites. Ready to take loud offence at the tiniest slight to them but completely disinterested when it's their own doing the killing.

The author is partly right. If our criticism of human rights abuses should be:

- proportional: the worst human rights abusers attract the strongest condemnation; and
- impartial: all regimes with similarly bad human rights records attract similar levels of condemnation

Then the international community’s indifference to Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka etc is shocking and wrong. Relatively speaking, Israel does attract more than a “fair” share of criticism, by these criteria.

This in no way means that criticism of Israel is unfair, however, but rather that other regimes deserve even stronger condemnation. Nor does it justify or diminish Israel’s human rights abuses

Very true grn,

Arab governments could have solved much of the problems faced by the Palestinian people years ago if they had allowed them to settle as refugees in their countries. Instead they confined them to the squalor of the camps, which in turn bred more hatred against Israel. Maybe they meant it...

StabInTheDark,

The short answer to your question, "why doesn't the US act unilaterally in Sudan?" is that it has its army tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interestingly, it has tried a number of times to get the issue addressed in the UN Security Council. However, Sudan is becoming an increasingly important source of oil, and China, with UNSC veto power, is its biggest customer. Thus, China has vetoed or threatened to veto UN action in Sudan to protect its oil interests.

It is a situation which closely resembles that of the Iraq issue in 2003- France wanted to protect huge oil contracts held by French companies with the Baath Party, and thus was not only vetoing action in Iraq to protect its own oil interests, but was also actively trying to get the sanctions lifted.

The irony would be hilarious if it weren't so devastating- countless people I have met, and whose arguments I have seen on onlineopinion, oppose the invasion of one oil-rich Arab-run country in the Middle East, an invasion carried out against the wishes of the UNSC, while supporting the invasion of another oil-rich Arab-run country in the Middle East, which, if it goes ahead, will almost certainly have to be done without the express support of the UNSC.