Orwell on Gaza

Over at TPMCafe, Israel Policy Forum’s M.J. Rosenberg spotlights a telling quotation from George Orwell that is directly relevant to the current furor over the attack on Gaza. Money sentence:  Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind ...

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Stephen M. Walt
By , a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

Over at TPMCafe, Israel Policy Forum's M.J. Rosenberg spotlights a telling quotation from George Orwell that is directly relevant to the current furor over the attack on Gaza. Money sentence: 

Over at TPMCafe, Israel Policy Forum’s M.J. Rosenberg spotlights a telling quotation from George Orwell that is directly relevant to the current furor over the attack on Gaza. Money sentence: 

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side."

Orwell also said "In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Kudos to M.J.: a truth-teller, and quiet revolutionary.

Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Twitter: @stephenwalt

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