Siding with Israel against Hamas doesn't seem to be a particularly hard judgment call to make. Israel is a liberal democracy, Hamas is an extremist group of genocidal terrorists. Israel has endured rocket fire for months before finally responding; Hamas consistently locates weapons in such a way as to maximize civilian casualties. Israel has repeatedly agreed to concessions for promises of peace; Hamas has repeatedly stated that its irrevocable goal is total genocide. Israel guarantees the liberty of all kinds of minority citizens: gays, atheists, Muslims; Hamas has no similar proclivities.

If the Israeli government could do anything they wanted to me (or most of you), they'd probably want me to start a business in Israel or work for one. If Hamas could do anything they wanted with me (or most of you), we'd probably be videotaped in fairly convincing imitation of Daniel Pearl.

As I said, this doesn't seem a very hard choice.

(But, then again, I didn't think the USSR was a particularly wonderful nation either, back when most the Western elite seemed to side with them, too.)

Google, on the other hand, apparently sees things rather differently:

... the Israeli Defense Forces launched its own channel on YouTube to display their view of events on the ground. Aping the Americans and British in Iraq and Afghanistan, we had missile and gun views of the targets they were going after. Several sites, when they discovered this, went off the handle and declared it too “disgusting,” amongst other things.

YouTube, to their shame, has limited the viewing of the site. You have to confirm your age to view the site and the videos thereon. This is most interesting, as I have never had to enter my age to watch a jihad video of coalition troops being killed or some imam spewing hate against Jews. But we expect this sort of double standard from many of the giants of the computer age.

Do we really "expect this sort of double standard" -- where special treatment and deference is given to the intolerant, while the tolerant are censored and demonized? Is that really the new norm?

I suppose it just illustrates, again, that a philosophy as shallow as "don't be evil" pretty much guarantees one will actually be rather evil -- or at least rather helpful and objectively sympathetic to evil, which is nearly the same thing, as far as I can see.