Its interesting when you look at the facts.

In 1975 Morocco invaded Western Sahara in an aggressive war of conquest, but failed to crush the leftist resisters. It was only with American arms that it managed to crush them and invade it. Morocco has settled I think I read something like 300,000 Moroccans in Western Sahara and refuses to ever remove them. The UN had brokered a referendum on independence (in which Moroccan settlers would take part) but the Moroccan government has delayed and it seems like its not going to be held. So Morocco has illegally occupied it for 29 years.

Israel took the West Bank and Gaza in a defensive war. I believe there are something like 150,000 Jewish settlers? And Israel has, in theory at least, agreed to the removal of most of them. And since the mid-1990s the major Palestinian popn centres have been governed by the PA, not Israel, and the vast majority of Palestinians have not been ruled by Israel since then. So thats 1967 to say 1996, which is 26 years occupation.

And the US is continually negotiating a solution to Israel-Palestine on the basis of land for peace, whereas it supported Morocco's blatant and illegal land grab.

And which of the two is constantly denounced? The Jewish state or the Arab one? And in Western Sahara the resisters are even leftists, whereas the "resisters" in Palestine are Islamists!

So I won't bother with yet another long, pointless flame war about Israel & Palestine here. :)

But please understand that Indymedia is the sum of what its readers post up, and that's it. If you aren't seeing enough news articles about Morocco and the Sahrawis on this newswire, it's because you're not writing them. Get to it! I'd be glad to read more about it.

It's DIY culture here: don't wait for someone else to do it.

cheers

Typical IndyMedia, campaigning against the occupation of Western Sahara and thereby denying Zionists the possibility of accusing you of double standards is SO anti-semitic...

The issue raised by the first poster is about motivation rather than justification. We do see posts coming up objecting to what people consider occupations and injustice and tribal conflcts in places other than Israel-Palestine. The problkem is frequency.

If the motivations of those of us posting these articles were simply our objections to injustice, we would expect to see our objections raised randomly with regard to places. We would expect, for example, to see as many postings related to Western Sahara, Sudan, India, Haiti, etc. etc. as we do about Israel, yes? We would NOT expect to see the number of postings about Israel-Palestine more than equal the total of all the other places combined.

So we have to conclude that there is a difference in MOTIVATION. That the concern of the posters is not motivated by what's going on in these places. Certainly not motivated by what's going on in Israel-Paletsine by the numbers killed and the destruction (rather modest compared to most of the other places).

THAT is where the charge of "antisemitism" comes from. WHY people choose to object to one thing they consider evil rather than another could be explained by their perception of greater harm being done here than elsewhere, but that does not seem to be the case with regard to Israel-Plaestine (and would be a silly claim to make since so clearly contrary to fact).

We frequently see a defense raised against the charge "antisemitism" that there are good reasons to condemn the "Zionists". But having sufficient reasons does not explain selectivity of concern, does not explain MOTIVATION of selection of whihc injustices we consider important.

Mike wrote:
"But having sufficient reasons does not explain selectivity of concern, does not explain MOTIVATION of selection of whihc injustices we consider important."

When you say "we", are you talking about "we readers and writers on Indymedia"? Or "we the left"? Or something else? And what do you think the "motivation of selection" is?

You betray your own "selectivity of concern" when you say things like "...what's going on in Israel-Palestine by the numbers killed and the destruction (rather modest compared to most of the other places)..."

Modest? What is your threshold then, for what we should be concerned with? Fewer people died in the Sept 11 attacks than in violence in Morocco, Israel or Palestine since 2001, and only a few buildings were destroyed. These are now being rebuilt. Were these attacks also "modest"? Of course not.

More civilians have died in Iraq since the start of the recent war than any of the above:
 http://www.iraqbodycount.net
And far more destruction has been conducted there than in any of the above.
Should Morocco and Sept 11 be written about less than Iraq then? Should the nazi Holocaust be written about less than Stalin's massacres? Of course not.

Out of interest: have you ever posted a single article to Indymedia UK? I can't find one from google site search, just lots of comments tearing down other people's stuff:
 http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.indymedia.org.uk+stepbystepfarm

It's no good you complaining that there are too many people posting about Israel/Palestine here, if you're not prepared to post anything yourself.

Maybe the reason there are more posts on Palestine than Western Sahara is that the situation in Palestine is our direct responsibility - it's our government that created most of the fucked-up-ness in the Middle East (both Palestine and Iraq were screwed up by the British Government). Morocco was a French colonial territory.

Some activists seem to feel that you can be involved in everything, everywhere; I think that doesn't work. You end up spread too thinly, and you also get labelled as rent-a-mob.

But it's true that there are some close analogies between Western Sahara and Palestine. Morrocco was for a couple of hundred years the home-country of the Caliph, and controlled all of North Africa. Recent kings of Morrocco have tried to make themselves popular by indulging in territorial nationalism, laying claim to territories that were Morroccan a long time ago. This is analogous to Israeli territorial claims that are based on historical possession and that appeal to nationalism.

It's not correct, by the way, that Morrocco has successfully invaded and occupied Western Sahara. The occupation is unsuccessful, and there is a very long militarised front in the desert, between territory controlled by Morrocco and territory controlled by the insurgents. Morrocco spends a large proportion of its national resources defending this front; and unlike Israel, Morrocco can't call on US government subsidies to pay for this war - it's paid for by the already-impoverished Morroccan people.

Morrocco is a lovely country, Morroccans are very friendly - it's a real tragedy that they have been led into this foolishness.