Thursday, May 17, 2018

Extremist vs. Pragmatists

Sar Shalom

If there is anyone with any degree of competence in illustration, I'd love to see a visualization of what I describe. In the meantime, consider this textual description.

Extremist:
A Palestinian fantasizing about slicing a stereotypical Jew in two with a sword.

Pragmatist:
A Palestinian fantasizing about a UN official approach him to present him with the head of a stereotypical Jew on a silver platter.

From before the birth of the modern State of Israel, the Arab world has dreamed of eliminating it. Until sometime after the Yom Kippur War, the method of doing so was to do so with their own power. Between then and now, they have transitioned in their thinking about the most effective method of accomplishing the original aim of Israel's destruction. Now the issue is how do the Palestinians, or more specifically the Palestinian national movement (PNM), enlist the international community in the cause of destroying Israel or, as I would describe, presenting Israel's head to them on a silver platter?

Contrary to what many supporters of Israel might believe, the answer is not that the international community shares the PNM's belief that the Jews are untermenschen and are thus unworthy of having their own state. If that was the case, the PNM would not have to engage in what it does do in order to enlist their support. Rather, the PNM hopes to enlist international support by convincing the world that Israel is a class A evil matched only by Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa and on account of that merits destruction as those two regimes were destroyed. Their current tactic in doing so is to produce as many Palestinian deaths that can be attributed to Israel as possible and press upon the world media to portray those deaths as Israel's responsibility.

There are two takeaways. One, if an extremists adopts less overtly violent tactics as part of change in strategy while keeping the same objective, he remains an extremist. Two, those who play a part in that strategy must be called out.

7 comments:

  1. Before there was a modern Israel these forces opposed to it in the west never saw the Zionist project as apartheid or Nazi. Even in the early days of say, 1945-60 western opposition to Israel had nothing to do with apartheid or Nazism or post colonialism or third-world-ism. It didn't even have much to do with communism or Marxism. It had to do with two things: Western interests in oil and antisemitism. As Golda Meir once quipped "God made us wander in the wilderness for 40 years, only to land on the one place with no oil." The two have always gone hand in hand in the west. Europe and the US wanted the oil and they didn't like Jews and those things collided in a perfect accident of geopolitics. The narrative of apartheid never existed before 2001 with the Durban conference. Oh there had been murmurings of it before what with murky relations between pre 1991 ZA and Israel but no one made much of a fuss about it. The ANC did at the time, but the ANC was a puppet of the KGB so it made sense.

    No, the PNM as you call it, found fertile ground in the west from which to grow antisemitism because it's antisemitism. And the Nazi rhetoric, that's just meant to mean and insulting and cruel. That's its only purpose. After all the people making these claims are themselves closer to actual Nazis than anyone so they can't make a rational case that it's a bad thing. You can't be a neo Nazi holocaust denier like most of the Labour party in the UK and then whine that Jews are Nazis. Wouldn't Holocaust Denial make the Nazis out to be pikers and losers?

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  2. They actually are being called out, and it will take more before the ruse becomes apparent. Sadly, the Palestinian people will suffer at the hands of these actual war criminals.

    There is another group of Palestinians that is probably willing and able to live in peace with Israel, and prosper, but they are too repressed to come forth.

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    1. "There is another group of Palestinians that is probably willing and able to live in peace with Israel, and prosper, but they are too repressed to come forth."

      Not only that, but the media refuse to acknowledge them. It is because of such Palestinians that I distinguish between "the Palestinians" and "the PNM." If the West would accord international esteem on such Palestinian dissidents from the PNM, it might be possible to dislodge the PNM from power. However, as long as elite discussion insists that the only legitimate expression of Palestinian interest is the demands of the PNM, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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    2. Then they might as well not exist. Certainly, I have never seen evidence of them there or abroad. Abroad, they would not be repressed yet there is no peace camp I have ever heard of. I have my doubts.

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    3. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Bassam+Tawil
      https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Khaled+Abu+Toameh
      https://www.timesofisrael.com/dozens-of-palestinians-visit-efrat-mayors-sukkah-in-reconciliation-event/

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  3. Let's not forget the roles played by Hamas Rights Watch and Amnesty Intersectional et al.

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  4. OT
    Trudy mentioned this issue recently.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270158/if-you-cant-disavow-anti-israel-hate-groups-youre-daniel-greenfield

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