Israel, and circular logic

I just spotted this comment from a user on the Sky website -

"Surely the world can only recognise a sovereign Palestinian state when they and the rest of the Arab world recognise Israel."

Leaving aside the minor quibble that the Palestinian president and much of the rest of the Arab world do indeed recognise Israel, I'm guessing the vast majority of American politicians would regard that statement as plain common sense. But what if it were to be reversed, and precisely the same standards applied to Israel and the US that are applied to the Palestinians and the Arabs...

"Surely the world can only recognise Israel's right to exist when they and their American allies recognise Palestinian statehood."

Now that would be considered utterly outrageous. But what exactly is the difference? Unless of course Palestinians are considered to be of intrinsically less worth than Israelis.

On a vaguely similar theme, I also spotted this at AmericaBlog -

"Bachmann and her ilk are pretty disgusting people. But her latest argument is truly revolting. Bachmann thinks that Obama did too little to save the dictatorship of Mubarak. According to the National Review:

In a speech to about 400 Republicans gathered for the state party’s fall convention here, the three-term Minnesota congresswoman blamed President Obama for “the hostilities of the Arab spring” and expressed regret that “we saw (Egyptian) President (Hosni) Mubarak fall while President Obama sat on his hands.”

Just what is so special about Israel that the populations of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, a total of over 100 million people should have to live under brutal dictatorships just in case democracy might be a threat? Margaret Thatcher believed the opposite, pointing out to Gorbachev that two democracies had never gone to war against each other."

What's so special about Israel? Well, one thing that always used to be cited (I remember Melanie Phillips fuming when the Question Time audience spontaneously laughed after she brought the subject up) is the very fact that it was "the only democracy in the Middle East". But that claim became somewhat more problematical when you remembered that Israel and its allies have for decades been moving heaven and earth to keep the situation that way, against the wishes of the people in neighbouring countries.

UPDATE : And another pearl of wisdom from a Yahoo user -

"Can you imagine the Palestinians running the country on their own? No!"

Dear heavens, the Palestinians sound almost as useless as the Scots.