Friday, August 20, 2010
UNICORNS and RAINBOWS
One of my law partners sent a link to a George Will piece to an email group of ancient maritime lawyers that I now qualify to be part of, in an attempt to find common ground between me and one of our number -- a retired government lawyer who happens to be (very) Jewish and (very) typically left-leaning:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/18/AR2010081804691.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
I wrote a response to the group this morning:
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Will's closing paragraphs, which set out simple facts that the anti-Israel left simply ignores:
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The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.
In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.
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The fantasy that there is some magical diplomatic formula of concessions that will "bring peace to the Middle East" will never die, so long as those in power in the civilized world ignore simple facts like this and the reality that there is a fundamntal cultural divide between the civilized world and those who cannot help but wish to destroy it.
I recently came across a brief little article written by an American living in Turkey about some of the elements of the culture she's observed there. I HIGHLY commend it to those who continue to indulge in the comforting delusion that "we're all basically the same, and everyone really wants the same things:"
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2010-JulyAugust/full-Berlinski-JA-2010.html
Unfortunately, we have performed a cultural lobotmoy on oursleves that makes it impossible for us as a society and a polity to come to grips with the implications of the reality described in Ms. Berlinki's essay. This makes it inevitable that we will postpone the day of reckoning, but with the only result that it will be even more bloody ... and destructive to us.
As for the looming elephant in the room that we are attempting to wish away with sanctions, I note that the official organ of the peace-loving left, the NYT, has this morning published an article describing how our keen intelligence services (you know, the ones who thought Iran wasn't working on a bomb just three years ago) are now telling the Israelis to calm down because the Iranians are much further from "breakout" to nuclear capability than the nasty hawks like me have been saying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/middleeast/20policy.html?_r=1&hp
I find it comical that this item is premised on the conceit that we could have the kind of certainty that Israelis must bet their lives on in the face of Iran's stated official policy of destroying Israel and committing genocide against Jews. If I were an Israeli policy maker, my response would be to make a noise to the effect of "That's nice" -- and reach for my gun.
While its flaws as a source of intentional disinformation and agitprop planted by the Mossad and IDF are well known, the well-informed might want to check out what the notorious Debka has to say about this:
http://www.debka.com/article/8983/
The truth probably lies somewhere between the rainbows-and-unicorns view of the NYT and the apocalyptic image one gets from Debka ... but who knows -- maybe for once the unicorns will make an appearance. We can always Hope for Change.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:57 AM
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