To my recollection, most mainstream Jewish editorials assume so.
An example: Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein wondering why anti-annexationists when it comes to Israel ignore Hong Kong sovereignty’s Chinese encroachment.
He starts off with a bang:
Annexation is about to wreak havoc with the lives of millions of people. It will deprive them of personal liberties, and subject them to arbitrary prosecution at the whim of a powerful oppressor. It will end rightful dreams of autonomy and self-determination. World pressure could make a difference, but it is not happening. Boycotts of the perpetrators should be widespread.
Have I gone mad? Sorry. I should have been more clear. I am not, G-d forbid, speaking about Israel’s possible moves in the next days or weeks to extend Israeli civil law to 30% of Yehuda and Shomron. We’re seeing lots of global rage about that! We don’t have to get into whether that annexation is welcome or not. Arguably, it is tepid in scope and in depth relative to the ongoing annexation of Hong Kong by China.
Given the guarantees that China gave to the former British colony which are now being unilaterally broken, it is nothing less than an annexation. It will bring far greater hardship and sorrow than the one in the Middle East, to a population three times the size of the West Bank. We’re not talking checkpoints and denied access to olive trees here. We are talking about the overnight end to effective civil liberties for everyone in Hong Kong, and the real prospect of prosecution and incarceration by a government that has shown itself willing and able to keep hundreds of millions under its thumb.
So, why no outcry?
Rabbi Adlerstein offers two reasons:
- “[T]he morality of these churches and of the university campus ends when it butts heads with providers of cheap tchotchkes. Hard to beat that for hypocrisy.
- The Chinese aren’t Jewish. Israelis are. It is as simple as that. The double-standard is not always – not even usually! – conscious. But it is there. Jews have always been treated more harshly and severely, and that is not going to change until the arrival of mashiach.
I see things otherwise from most all Jewish editorials.
As I wrote once before, we ought to be held to a higher standard than non-Jews. We are capable of more and are therefore to be held culpable for slighter infractions (not that this has discernible salutary effects on us!).
Also, what is antisemitism exactly? Can’t be pinned down. That’s why academics move from “classical” Jew-hatred to New antisemitism to the 3D test of antisemitism to the Working Definition of Antisemitism to… Antisemitism is a (limited) counterfactual taught by Chazal. You know Goyim hate Jews. I know Goyim hate Jews. Even Goyim know Goyim hate Jews. But one can almost never manage to point to a specific person or action and apply the antisemitism label.
And can’t people specialize in criticizing one country or state? Israel is not always guiltless.
See the rest of Rabbi Adlerstein’s piece here…