When I think about Radical Islam and the chopping off of Daniel Pearl's head and the taking down of the Twin Towers and the various Islamist attacks throughout Europe and India and Israel and throughout the Middle East, I realize that... oh... we have a little problem here.
And then when I think about American and western politics and the various approaches, from Right to Left, taken by westerners toward Radical Islam I realize that the problem becomes even more complex than the problem of Radical Islam, itself.
In a nutshell, both the Right and Left suck when it comes to Radical Islam.
Here's why:
The Right tends to think that the problem is not just Radical Islam, or Islamism, but Islam, if not Muslims, in general. Not everyone on the Right feels that way, but plenty of them do or use language that leans in that direction. For example, this is why Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the set of The View when conservative / libertarian political commentator, Bill O'Reilly, claimed that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."
On the one hand, of course, O'Reilly is correct. The people who attacked the World Trade Center were Muslims. Thus it is more or less correct to say that "Muslims killed us on 9/11." Or, really, Muslims attacked us on 9/11.
The problem, obviously, is that by saying "Muslims killed us on 9/11" O'Reilly makes it sound like it was Muslims, as a group, as a whole, who did the killing. As I often say, the vast majority of Muslims, here, there, and everywhere, are simply not in the Jihadi Business. Most Muslims are too busy putting bread on the table to bother themselves with hatin' on Jews and the West.
Therefore, to lay the blame for Islamist violence at the feet of Muslims, in general, or Islam, in its entirety, is not only false, and not only entirely unjust to both Muslims and Islam, but it sets up a situation in which America and the West must be in conflict with 1.5 billion Muslims. Those on the Right who finger Islam, rather than Radical Islam, drag us into a fight that we cannot possibly win and that we should not want to have to begin with.
We cannot fight 1.5 billion Muslims and we shouldn't want to, anyway. Would it be nice if more moderate Muslims came out against Radical Islam? Certainly. Radical Islam's foremost enemies are not westerners, but moderate Muslims. Radical Muslims think of regular Muslims as "hypocrites" or the "near enemy." And it is the near enemy that is the foremost foe of the Islamists.
So, this is primarily a fight within Islam, not between Islam and the West. The solution will come primarily from the Islamic world, because we cannot impose a solution on a problem as massive as this. Or, if we can, no one has yet put forward a practicable way of doing so.
In this way the Right tends to have their heads almost entirely up their asses when it comes to the problem of Radical Islam. The only people on the planet who are even more screwed up when it comes to Radical Islam than the political right-wing in the West is the political left-wing in the West.
If the Right often views the problem as a problem with Islam, the Left tends to go all Ostrich on us, sticking their heads in the sand. The Left sees no evil and it hears no evil. The Left is not whistling past the graveyard, it seems not even to realize that the graveyard actually exists. The Left is even more worthless than the Right when it comes to the problem of Radical Islam because they refuse to really acknowledge that Radical Islam is a genuine problem and then when people who do recognize this problem speak up, the Left starts screaming their heads off about "Racism!" and "Islamophobia!"
Taken as a whole, this is why we cannot even begin to reasonably approach the problem, because the Right tends to misdiagnose and the Left is in denial.
Thus to my friends on the Right, I say:
Calm down. The problem is emphatically NOT 1.5 billion Muslims.
And to my friends on the Left, I say:
Snap out of your coma, your vegetable torpor, and, yes, Wake the Fuck Up.
{That is all.}
The Day of the Dhimmi is Done - Michael Lumish, Proprietor
Monday, December 13, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Should Israel Take Out Iranian Nukes?
This is a question that I have gone and back and forth over during the last few years and I very definitely believe that it is a question that people of good will can disagree upon.
If you had asked me this question, say, a year and a half ago, I would have said "No, Israel should not attack the Iranian nuclear program." At the time I probably would have argued that the downside to an attack on Iran would exceed the downside of an Iran with nukes. After all, if Iran has nuclear weaponry there is no way that they would use those nukes any more than the Soviet Union was inclined to use its nukes.
The mullahs may be hard-line, right-wing theocrats but they are neither crazy, nor stupid. Any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or the West would mean that Tehran gets turned into a parking lot. Despite the horrendous Islamist rhetoric about "loving death" I do not believe for one minute that the mullahs are intent on suicide.
That privilege is strictly for others, not the people in power.
Slowly, slowly, however, I am changing my mind on this matter. It was probably Daniel Gordis, more than anyone else, who gave me pause on the question.
{If you're not familiar with Gordis, you should definitely check him out. He has any number of lectures on Google Video, or his own site, that are very interesting.}
Heck, I'll just post one:
It's lengthy, but well worth it. Very inspiring.
{And for those of you who would dismiss Gordis as a "right-winger," he voted for Jesse Jackson. FYI.}
What Gordis argues, although not in the above video, is that if Israel means anything it means freedom from non-Jews deciding the fate of the Jewish people. No longer would Jews live or die according to the whims of non-Jews.
The problem with Iranian nukes, of course, is that it means that Jewish self-determination becomes moot. If Iran gets nuclear weaponry it means that Tehran can take out Israel at a moment's notice. Even if they did not do it, they would always have the option. And while it may be true that Tehran would never commit suicide by attacking Tel Aviv, we can never be fully sure of that. But even if they never used those weapons, the Ayatollahs would still hold the fate of Israel in their palms.
One might argue that other countries, including Pakistan, already have nuclear weaponry and so the fate of Israel is already in the hands of non-Jews. Pakistan, for example, could shoot a weapon at Israel at any time.
While this is true, the difference is that Pakistan is not threatening Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah are not the proxies of Pakistan, but of Iran. Furthermore, if the Jewish people have learned anything in the last half century it is that when the leaders of foreign capitals declare their genocidal animosity toward us, as Ahmadinejad has done, we must assume that they mean every word.
{Oh, and btw, Juan Cole does not get to credibly declare Ahmadinejad's benevolence even as Ahmadinejad, himself, declares his animosity. Cole can whisper all the sweet nothings that he wants, but no one with a level head is buying it.}
For these reasons, and others, I do not see where Israel is in any position to allow Iranian nukes. The American administration will likely do nothing under Obama to prevent those nukes, so Israel may very well have to do what is necessary.
Also understand, of course, that if Iran goes nuclear the entire balance of power in the Middle East will shift in their direction. The main tension in the Middle East, at least according to analysts such as Barry Rubin, is between nationalist governments and Islamist governments. Essentially, Cairo versus Tehran. If Iran goes nuclear, this will be a huge boon for the Islamist movement. It will mean a strengthened and emboldened Hamas and Hez and will bring Turkey further into the Iranian orbit.
This strengthening of the Islamist regime in Iran would also mean that the chances of the Iranian people overthrowing that regime, as they seem to want to do, would greatly diminish even as the regime's ability to direct terrorism toward the west without consequence would greatly increase. If Iran has nukes there will be no way of stopping them from directing terrorism in any direction that they wish.
Finally, if the Iranian regime goes nuclear this will touch off a Middle East arms race in which every country in the region will step up efforts to likewise go nuclear. In short order we will see Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh building arsenals, as well.
So, where does all this leave us?
Here:
Israel Should Take Out Iranian Nukes.
When Israel does so... if it does so... the Arab capitals will breathe a sigh of relief, as we've learned from Wikileaks, even as they condemn the Jewish state and further seek to delegitimize it. It's a grotesque scenario, but there it is. Just as the Palestinian Authority egged Israel on with Operation Cast Lead and then condemned the operation at the United Nations, so the Arab governments will egg on an attack against Iran's nuclear program and then turn around and condemn Israel for doing precisely what they asked the United States to do. The hypocrisy is rank, but this is nothing new.
The western left, of course, will also excoriate Israel, but the left always excoriates Israel. Whether on the blogs or within the NGOs or in the left press, they will scream to the heavens about Israeli militarism.
And I guess we'll just have to live with that.
{Oh, and for those of you who doubt that Iran will use its nuclear technology to create weaponry, what can I say? You are not living in anything that even remotely resembles a reality-based universe.}
If you had asked me this question, say, a year and a half ago, I would have said "No, Israel should not attack the Iranian nuclear program." At the time I probably would have argued that the downside to an attack on Iran would exceed the downside of an Iran with nukes. After all, if Iran has nuclear weaponry there is no way that they would use those nukes any more than the Soviet Union was inclined to use its nukes.
The mullahs may be hard-line, right-wing theocrats but they are neither crazy, nor stupid. Any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or the West would mean that Tehran gets turned into a parking lot. Despite the horrendous Islamist rhetoric about "loving death" I do not believe for one minute that the mullahs are intent on suicide.
That privilege is strictly for others, not the people in power.
Slowly, slowly, however, I am changing my mind on this matter. It was probably Daniel Gordis, more than anyone else, who gave me pause on the question.
{If you're not familiar with Gordis, you should definitely check him out. He has any number of lectures on Google Video, or his own site, that are very interesting.}
Heck, I'll just post one:
It's lengthy, but well worth it. Very inspiring.
{And for those of you who would dismiss Gordis as a "right-winger," he voted for Jesse Jackson. FYI.}
What Gordis argues, although not in the above video, is that if Israel means anything it means freedom from non-Jews deciding the fate of the Jewish people. No longer would Jews live or die according to the whims of non-Jews.
The problem with Iranian nukes, of course, is that it means that Jewish self-determination becomes moot. If Iran gets nuclear weaponry it means that Tehran can take out Israel at a moment's notice. Even if they did not do it, they would always have the option. And while it may be true that Tehran would never commit suicide by attacking Tel Aviv, we can never be fully sure of that. But even if they never used those weapons, the Ayatollahs would still hold the fate of Israel in their palms.
One might argue that other countries, including Pakistan, already have nuclear weaponry and so the fate of Israel is already in the hands of non-Jews. Pakistan, for example, could shoot a weapon at Israel at any time.
While this is true, the difference is that Pakistan is not threatening Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah are not the proxies of Pakistan, but of Iran. Furthermore, if the Jewish people have learned anything in the last half century it is that when the leaders of foreign capitals declare their genocidal animosity toward us, as Ahmadinejad has done, we must assume that they mean every word.
{Oh, and btw, Juan Cole does not get to credibly declare Ahmadinejad's benevolence even as Ahmadinejad, himself, declares his animosity. Cole can whisper all the sweet nothings that he wants, but no one with a level head is buying it.}
For these reasons, and others, I do not see where Israel is in any position to allow Iranian nukes. The American administration will likely do nothing under Obama to prevent those nukes, so Israel may very well have to do what is necessary.
Also understand, of course, that if Iran goes nuclear the entire balance of power in the Middle East will shift in their direction. The main tension in the Middle East, at least according to analysts such as Barry Rubin, is between nationalist governments and Islamist governments. Essentially, Cairo versus Tehran. If Iran goes nuclear, this will be a huge boon for the Islamist movement. It will mean a strengthened and emboldened Hamas and Hez and will bring Turkey further into the Iranian orbit.
This strengthening of the Islamist regime in Iran would also mean that the chances of the Iranian people overthrowing that regime, as they seem to want to do, would greatly diminish even as the regime's ability to direct terrorism toward the west without consequence would greatly increase. If Iran has nukes there will be no way of stopping them from directing terrorism in any direction that they wish.
Finally, if the Iranian regime goes nuclear this will touch off a Middle East arms race in which every country in the region will step up efforts to likewise go nuclear. In short order we will see Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh building arsenals, as well.
So, where does all this leave us?
Here:
Israel Should Take Out Iranian Nukes.
When Israel does so... if it does so... the Arab capitals will breathe a sigh of relief, as we've learned from Wikileaks, even as they condemn the Jewish state and further seek to delegitimize it. It's a grotesque scenario, but there it is. Just as the Palestinian Authority egged Israel on with Operation Cast Lead and then condemned the operation at the United Nations, so the Arab governments will egg on an attack against Iran's nuclear program and then turn around and condemn Israel for doing precisely what they asked the United States to do. The hypocrisy is rank, but this is nothing new.
The western left, of course, will also excoriate Israel, but the left always excoriates Israel. Whether on the blogs or within the NGOs or in the left press, they will scream to the heavens about Israeli militarism.
And I guess we'll just have to live with that.
{Oh, and for those of you who doubt that Iran will use its nuclear technology to create weaponry, what can I say? You are not living in anything that even remotely resembles a reality-based universe.}
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Back to the 'Ol Drawing Board
Washington looks for new direction in peace process - Jerusalem Post
Apparently this means that Barack Obama may stop harassing the Jews about where some of us live. I, for one, want to thank Barack for the truly bang-up job he's been doing on the Arab-Israel conflict. Tossing up a roadblock to any possible negotiated settlement by demanding that Jews stop building swimming pools and community centers and day care centers and, yes, second bathrooms in the West Bank was shear brilliance.
It meant that Abbas couldn't negotiate even if he wanted to and there is precious little to suggest that he did, in fact, want to. What Obama basically did was throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the process and then blamed the Israelis for his own unconscionably stupid screw-up.
And so now where are we?
The goal is two-states for two peoples. One people, the Jews, have a thriving country along the Mediterranean. Good for them. The other people, the Palestinians, have no state for themselves and live under a combination of Israeli military rule and non-democratic Hamas / Fatah control.
The only way to actually resolve this miserable situation is for the Palestinians to at-long-last... dear God... accept a state for themselves.
Yet, for some reason they just cannot bring themselves to do so.
According to some of my friends on the left, in fact, peace-loving Jihadis are fully justified in their never ending quest to slaughter the Jews. They were right to try to kill Jews in the 1920s and they were right to try to kill Jews now. {Heck, they were probably right to try to kill the Jews in the early 7th century when Muhammad was so pissed off.}
This is because those Jews are perpetually doing bad things to the indigenous population.
See, it's like this. The racist Jewish imperialists marched out of Eastern Europe en masse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the sole purpose of stealing land... the Land of the Sacred Olive Groves, no less... from the innocent Palestinian people and brutalized them strictly for the fun of it.
This is why there were suicide bombings during the second intifada, of course.
This is why there were anti-Jewish riots in Palestine throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Because the Jews were mean. That's always the reason. Decade after decade. Generation after generation. Century upon century.
Millenia upon millenia.
The Jews are, in fact, still very mean. They are collectively punishing the good people of Gaza merely because Gazans shot a few rockets at them. They weren't even very big rockets. They were "bottle rockets" according to some of the more compassionate humanists on Daily Kos. Why those Jews should get so persnickity merely because Gazans were trying to kill them is anyone's guess.
Same thing on the West Bank. That's where we have all those check points that so inconvenience people. The check points and the security fence... or, really, Apartheid Wall.
{Or why not, say, Racist Apartheid ZioNaziWall?}
And, yet, despite the enormous suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the vicious Jews, they simply cannot accept a state for themselves.
They never have, now have they?
And they still don't.
{And who gets the blame?}
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Jewish Blood and the Palestinian Narrative
I want to thank an anonymous poster, perhaps a Daily Kos person, for putting forth an excellent example of what we call, 'round these parts, "the Palestinian Narrative." It's pretty fascinating, actually, because it has implications not only for Jews and Palestinians, but for anyone interested in history.
When we talk about the "Palestinian narrative" we mean any discussion of I-P which is framed as a manichean struggle between Good and Evil, in which the Israelis are Evil and the Palestinians are Good.
That's the essence of the narrative. Israeli, if not Jewish, detestation is almost always the tone.
It's a classic morality play of the Righteous overcoming the Insidious... the Weak overcoming the Strong... the Red Sox overcoming the Yankees... the proletariat overcoming the bourgeoisie... the Palestinians overcoming the Israels.
The Good Guys overcoming Bad Guys.
And the Left thus roots for the Good Guys. The good Palestinians in opposition to the insidious Zionists.
And my people, the Jews, are (ta-da!) the Bad Guys in this fictional-religious narrative that gets repeated again and again and again.
The notion of narrative, in the sense that we are discussing it, derives from academic post-structuralism. It comes from people like Foucault and Derrida and, naturally, Edward Said, who view knowledge as not having inherent structure, but as a function of power politics. For the field of history, this means that there is no such thing as historical truth, merely political narratives in competition with one another.
All history, in this way of thinking, is reduced to a political power struggle and truth becomes irrelevant, because it is seen as impossible.
Thus there are no historical truths, only plot lines... only competing narratives... only stories that we tell one another in a rhetorical competition.
{But it still results in real blood.}
Ilan Pappé, one of the central figures within anti-Zionist / anti-Israel historiography, wrote The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
A central work within anti-Zionism.
The problem is that Pappé simply does not care about the truth.
He writes:
Truth is bullshit, in other words. It's power and politics that count according to people like Pappé and people like Edward Said.
So, in a recent post I asked the following question:
Seems like a pretty straight-forward question to me.
Anonymous, in an amazingly self-righteous way, says this:
The reason that I like this comment is that it is a pristine example of "the narrative." It has virtually no truth to it whatsoever, yet I am certain that the writer believes every word.
Let's take it piece by piece.
It is true that the West Bank was acquired when Jordan attacked Israel in June of 1967. Is it really necessary for me to link? This is not disputed history. This is fact. Israel begged Jordan not to get into the fight, but they did, anyway.
They attacked the tiny Jewish nation because they were afraid that Egypt would gobble it right up.
{Look it up.}
But they got beat and the Jews took back the West Bank, what religious Jews call Judea and Samaria, as well as the heart of Jerusalem... after 2,000 years. This can hardly be considered theft unless you believe that Israel's neighbors should be allowed to attack that country at will without fear of reprisal.
Took the land in contravention of international law. Really? What law? UN 242? That was precisely what the Arab League gave its famous 3 Noes to.
And:
So, anonymous is implying that European Jews are not real Jews and therefore do not belong in Israel. Is that it? Aside from the fact that recent genetic studies have demonstrated that, yes, Ashkenazi Jews are, well, Jews, I am simply dumbfounded that "liberals" feel so free to tell Jews where they may or may not live. Furthermore, anonymous's comment ignores the fact that many, many Israeli Jews are not European Ashkenazi Jews, but native Middle Easterners.
This is just sad.
There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for... what?... 3,500 years?
We only represent .02 percent of the world population, about 13 million people.
We are a tiny minority and yet this westerner, who knows virtually nothing of our history, wants to deny the Jewish people self-determination and self-defense in our historic homeland.
I honestly believe that this kind of sentiment reflects terribly on the progressive-left.
{We will fight back, dontcha know.}
Jews may be small, but we're wiry!
And we've also been around for a very long time.
When we talk about the "Palestinian narrative" we mean any discussion of I-P which is framed as a manichean struggle between Good and Evil, in which the Israelis are Evil and the Palestinians are Good.
That's the essence of the narrative. Israeli, if not Jewish, detestation is almost always the tone.
It's a classic morality play of the Righteous overcoming the Insidious... the Weak overcoming the Strong... the Red Sox overcoming the Yankees... the proletariat overcoming the bourgeoisie... the Palestinians overcoming the Israels.
The Good Guys overcoming Bad Guys.
And the Left thus roots for the Good Guys. The good Palestinians in opposition to the insidious Zionists.
And my people, the Jews, are (ta-da!) the Bad Guys in this fictional-religious narrative that gets repeated again and again and again.
The notion of narrative, in the sense that we are discussing it, derives from academic post-structuralism. It comes from people like Foucault and Derrida and, naturally, Edward Said, who view knowledge as not having inherent structure, but as a function of power politics. For the field of history, this means that there is no such thing as historical truth, merely political narratives in competition with one another.
All history, in this way of thinking, is reduced to a political power struggle and truth becomes irrelevant, because it is seen as impossible.
Thus there are no historical truths, only plot lines... only competing narratives... only stories that we tell one another in a rhetorical competition.
{But it still results in real blood.}
Ilan Pappé, one of the central figures within anti-Zionist / anti-Israel historiography, wrote The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
A central work within anti-Zionism.
The problem is that Pappé simply does not care about the truth.
He writes:
Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers.
Truth is bullshit, in other words. It's power and politics that count according to people like Pappé and people like Edward Said.
So, in a recent post I asked the following question:
Why is it OK for Muslims to live in Israel, but not OK for Jews to live in a future Palestinian state?
Seems like a pretty straight-forward question to me.
Anonymous, in an amazingly self-righteous way, says this:
Because most of the settlements are built on stolen land acquired through military conflict, in contravention of international law.
It's very easy mr. Karmadipshit. Those settlers are not from the West Bank. They really aren't. They are from Europe. Nobody cares that 2000 years ago they think they may have been there.
"Muslims" in Israel live there because they are Palestinians indigenous to the land. Not just any Muslims live in Israel, Palestinian Muslims and Christians do, because unlike most Jewish israelis, they can actually trace their families being on the land for centuries.
Get it yet?
November 30, 2010 6:31 PM
The reason that I like this comment is that it is a pristine example of "the narrative." It has virtually no truth to it whatsoever, yet I am certain that the writer believes every word.
Let's take it piece by piece.
the settlements are built on stolen land acquired through military conflict
It is true that the West Bank was acquired when Jordan attacked Israel in June of 1967. Is it really necessary for me to link? This is not disputed history. This is fact. Israel begged Jordan not to get into the fight, but they did, anyway.
They attacked the tiny Jewish nation because they were afraid that Egypt would gobble it right up.
{Look it up.}
But they got beat and the Jews took back the West Bank, what religious Jews call Judea and Samaria, as well as the heart of Jerusalem... after 2,000 years. This can hardly be considered theft unless you believe that Israel's neighbors should be allowed to attack that country at will without fear of reprisal.
in contravention of international law.
Took the land in contravention of international law. Really? What law? UN 242? That was precisely what the Arab League gave its famous 3 Noes to.
No negotiation.
No recognition.
No peace.
And:
Those settlers are not from the West Bank. They really aren't. They are from Europe.
So, anonymous is implying that European Jews are not real Jews and therefore do not belong in Israel. Is that it? Aside from the fact that recent genetic studies have demonstrated that, yes, Ashkenazi Jews are, well, Jews, I am simply dumbfounded that "liberals" feel so free to tell Jews where they may or may not live. Furthermore, anonymous's comment ignores the fact that many, many Israeli Jews are not European Ashkenazi Jews, but native Middle Easterners.
unlike most Jewish israelis, they can actually trace their families being on the land for centuries.
This is just sad.
There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for... what?... 3,500 years?
We only represent .02 percent of the world population, about 13 million people.
We are a tiny minority and yet this westerner, who knows virtually nothing of our history, wants to deny the Jewish people self-determination and self-defense in our historic homeland.
I honestly believe that this kind of sentiment reflects terribly on the progressive-left.
{We will fight back, dontcha know.}
Jews may be small, but we're wiry!
And we've also been around for a very long time.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The Left Doesn't Care About Palestinians
{Cross-Posted at My Left Wing.}
A casual reader of the left political blogs, such as Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, might get the idea that the progressive-left cares about the Palestinian people. Such a reader would be wholly mistaken. The last thing in this world that the western progressive-left cares about are universal human rights and that definitely goes for the human rights of the Palestinians.
The western left has no interest in human rights and it certainly has no interest in the human rights of the Palestinian people. This is one of those obvious truths that we are supposed to ignore. I keep stumbling upon more and more of these... more and more obvious truths that the ideologically blinded will not allow themselves to consider.
My assertion is easily demonstrated. It has two parts. The first is that the left cares not about universal human rights. The second assertion, which follows from the first, is that the left does not care about the universal human rights of the Palestinian people. Let's take the first part, my claim that the left doesn't care about universal human rights.
I would suggest that if the left did care about universal human rights than we would see activist members of the progressive-left promoting the human rights of Tibetans and Darfurans and Congolese on the major left-wing political blogs... but we do not. On websites such as Daily Kos and the Huffington Post there is virtual silence on the Chinese occupation of Tibet or the truly brutal genocides in Darfur and the Congo. {The Congo, in particular, is horrifying with some 5.5 million dead over the last decade. 5.5 million.}
That the left is virtually silent on these matters demonstrates their lack of interest in human rights. This should be obvious to anyone who doesn't view politics as a team sport. This should be obvious to anyone who is not blinded by partisanship. And it most certainly should be obvious to anyone who cares about the Jewish people, given the fact that Israel is constantly (and hypocritically) hounded on the left over matters of human rights.
That the western progressive-left cares not a whit about the Palestinians is demonstrated from the fact that they only speak up on behalf of Palestinians when Palestinians are in conflict with Jews, but never when they are in conflict with non-Jews. One would think that among the self-proclaimed western defenders of the Palestinian people, that violations of Palestinian human rights, or civil liberties, would be of interest no matter who is doing that violating. One would be wrong, however. They only speak up when they can paint Jews as the villain. They are almost entirely silent otherwise.
Here is a specific example currently in the press. Some young Palestinian Muslim in the West Bank spoofed the Koran on Facebook and is now very deep in the doo-doo among his fellow Palestinians. They've got him locked up for this heinous crime.
Sure. He could be Mossad. Why the hell not? But for those of us who live in the reality-based world, we might wonder why it is that the left remains silent on this case and the multitudes of ones like it. Why is that when Iran hangs gay people from cranes the left is almost always silent? Why is it that when Saudi Arabia arrests women for the crime of getting raped, western feminists mainly keep a sock in it? And how is it that western-left advocates for the Palestinian people only care about those people when Jews are involved?
How is that?
I submit that it is because the western progressive-left does not really care about either universal human rights, nor the well-being of the Palestinian people.
And I say this as someone who comes out of the progressive-left.
{Sad, but true.}
The New York Times article notes:
Of course they are silent. There's nothing here to pin on Israel.
A casual reader of the left political blogs, such as Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, might get the idea that the progressive-left cares about the Palestinian people. Such a reader would be wholly mistaken. The last thing in this world that the western progressive-left cares about are universal human rights and that definitely goes for the human rights of the Palestinians.
The western left has no interest in human rights and it certainly has no interest in the human rights of the Palestinian people. This is one of those obvious truths that we are supposed to ignore. I keep stumbling upon more and more of these... more and more obvious truths that the ideologically blinded will not allow themselves to consider.
My assertion is easily demonstrated. It has two parts. The first is that the left cares not about universal human rights. The second assertion, which follows from the first, is that the left does not care about the universal human rights of the Palestinian people. Let's take the first part, my claim that the left doesn't care about universal human rights.
I would suggest that if the left did care about universal human rights than we would see activist members of the progressive-left promoting the human rights of Tibetans and Darfurans and Congolese on the major left-wing political blogs... but we do not. On websites such as Daily Kos and the Huffington Post there is virtual silence on the Chinese occupation of Tibet or the truly brutal genocides in Darfur and the Congo. {The Congo, in particular, is horrifying with some 5.5 million dead over the last decade. 5.5 million.}
That the left is virtually silent on these matters demonstrates their lack of interest in human rights. This should be obvious to anyone who doesn't view politics as a team sport. This should be obvious to anyone who is not blinded by partisanship. And it most certainly should be obvious to anyone who cares about the Jewish people, given the fact that Israel is constantly (and hypocritically) hounded on the left over matters of human rights.
That the western progressive-left cares not a whit about the Palestinians is demonstrated from the fact that they only speak up on behalf of Palestinians when Palestinians are in conflict with Jews, but never when they are in conflict with non-Jews. One would think that among the self-proclaimed western defenders of the Palestinian people, that violations of Palestinian human rights, or civil liberties, would be of interest no matter who is doing that violating. One would be wrong, however. They only speak up when they can paint Jews as the villain. They are almost entirely silent otherwise.
Here is a specific example currently in the press. Some young Palestinian Muslim in the West Bank spoofed the Koran on Facebook and is now very deep in the doo-doo among his fellow Palestinians. They've got him locked up for this heinous crime.
In his hometown, the reaction seems to be one of uniform fury. Many here say that if he does not repent, he should spend the rest of his life in jail.
“Everyone is a Muslim here, so everyone is against what he did,” said Alaa Jarar, 20, who described himself as not particularly pious. “People are mad at him and will not respect the Palestinian Authority if he is released. Maybe he is a Mossad agent working for Israel.”
Sure. He could be Mossad. Why the hell not? But for those of us who live in the reality-based world, we might wonder why it is that the left remains silent on this case and the multitudes of ones like it. Why is that when Iran hangs gay people from cranes the left is almost always silent? Why is it that when Saudi Arabia arrests women for the crime of getting raped, western feminists mainly keep a sock in it? And how is it that western-left advocates for the Palestinian people only care about those people when Jews are involved?
How is that?
I submit that it is because the western progressive-left does not really care about either universal human rights, nor the well-being of the Palestinian people.
And I say this as someone who comes out of the progressive-left.
{Sad, but true.}
The New York Times article notes:
Palestinian human rights groups in the West Bank have so far remained silent about Mr. Hasayin’s arrest.
Of course they are silent. There's nothing here to pin on Israel.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Landmarks
As my positions on Israel continue to evolve "landmarks" frequently present themselves. One such landmark, for me personally, anyway, was the Mavi Marmara incident. What most caught my attention about the flotilla-thing was that it was clearly a case in which western leftists literally, physically, and economically, joined with actual Jihadis in attacking Jews. That is what we saw. The Mavi Marmara was a Turkish vessel carrying people, as we saw on video, who wished for martyrdom in a violent confrontation with Jews and they were aided and abetted by western secular leftists. It was the first time that I really came to understand there is, in fact, a Left-Jihadi alliance at work. This is not to say that all leftists are part of that alliance, but that there is a segment of the western progressive left that supports Jihadis over Jews.
Strange, but true.
Another landmark has taken place just recently. With the current failure of the peace talks, a failure that anyone with a pulse saw coming many months ago, the left, including much of the Jewish left, blames Israel for that failure. This shows me that Jewish liberals are generally weak in their support for the Jewish state. There are things that Israel can be blamed for and things that Israel cannot be blamed for. One of the things that Israel cannot be blamed for is the failure of current negotiations. The reason that Israel cannot be blamed for the failure of negotiations is because it was not the Israelis who refused to negotiate, but the Palestinians who refused to do so.
When Netanyahu first came into office he called for negotiations without preconditions. The Palestinians refused. As a compromise in order to demonstrate good faith, Israel instituted a ten-month settlement freeze in the hopes of bringing the Palestinians to the table, but the Palestinians still refused to negotiate. Now that the settlement freeze is over they are demanding an extension of the freeze, despite the fact that they would neither negotiate throughout most of the period of the freeze, nor negotiate without the freeze. But the bottom line is that Israel called for negotiations while the Palestinians rejected negotiations.
And, yet, many Jewish "progressives" blame Israel for the failure of those negotiations. Does that make even the least little bit of sense? How can Israel be at fault when it was the Palestinians who refused to negotiate whether there was settlement-building or not?
To the extent that Jewish progressives blame Israel on this question is the extent to which those individuals suffer from what I call Jewish Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome, of course, means taking on the political outlooks of one's captors. Jewish Stockholm Syndrome is when Jewish people, whether supporters of Israel or not, ingest the so-called "Palestinian narrative" and view the I-P conflict, at least in some measure, through that narrative.
At the heart of the Palestinian narrative is perpetual Israeli guilt and perfect Palestinian innocence. When Jewish supporters of Israel blame the failure of negotiations on Israel they are expressing something that is not only irrational, but that fits the Palestinian narrative of never-ending Israeli guilt.
They thus suffer from Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.
As with so much else, it's obvious, but they'll never see it or acknowledge it.
Strange, but true.
Another landmark has taken place just recently. With the current failure of the peace talks, a failure that anyone with a pulse saw coming many months ago, the left, including much of the Jewish left, blames Israel for that failure. This shows me that Jewish liberals are generally weak in their support for the Jewish state. There are things that Israel can be blamed for and things that Israel cannot be blamed for. One of the things that Israel cannot be blamed for is the failure of current negotiations. The reason that Israel cannot be blamed for the failure of negotiations is because it was not the Israelis who refused to negotiate, but the Palestinians who refused to do so.
When Netanyahu first came into office he called for negotiations without preconditions. The Palestinians refused. As a compromise in order to demonstrate good faith, Israel instituted a ten-month settlement freeze in the hopes of bringing the Palestinians to the table, but the Palestinians still refused to negotiate. Now that the settlement freeze is over they are demanding an extension of the freeze, despite the fact that they would neither negotiate throughout most of the period of the freeze, nor negotiate without the freeze. But the bottom line is that Israel called for negotiations while the Palestinians rejected negotiations.
And, yet, many Jewish "progressives" blame Israel for the failure of those negotiations. Does that make even the least little bit of sense? How can Israel be at fault when it was the Palestinians who refused to negotiate whether there was settlement-building or not?
To the extent that Jewish progressives blame Israel on this question is the extent to which those individuals suffer from what I call Jewish Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome, of course, means taking on the political outlooks of one's captors. Jewish Stockholm Syndrome is when Jewish people, whether supporters of Israel or not, ingest the so-called "Palestinian narrative" and view the I-P conflict, at least in some measure, through that narrative.
At the heart of the Palestinian narrative is perpetual Israeli guilt and perfect Palestinian innocence. When Jewish supporters of Israel blame the failure of negotiations on Israel they are expressing something that is not only irrational, but that fits the Palestinian narrative of never-ending Israeli guilt.
They thus suffer from Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.
As with so much else, it's obvious, but they'll never see it or acknowledge it.
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