I read through an interesting interview between conservative radio guy Hugh Hewitt (whose parents apparently lacked a certain felicity in choosing names) and Glenn Greenwald, whose column on Salon is linked to the right. I admire Mr. Greenwald a lot; his analyses of media complacency in the face of the lawlessness of the Bush Administration are non pareil and frequently hilarious. It's hard to top his irony. I assume that Mr. Greenwald is of Jewish lineage, though I don't want to jump to ethnic conclusions. It's not essential anyway; Mr. Greenwald is a liberal and a civil libertarian (labels which can be applied to me as well, faut de mieux), and his attitudes about Israel represent the mainstream of the liberal position these days. I'm not exactly sure what that position is, but it's definitely anti-Israel.
Mr. Greenwald begins the interview by affirming Israel's right to exist. In my opinion, that would have been a good place to quit as well, because it's the essential question. Mr. Greenwald, whose expertise is law and the Constitution, does not really need to join the cadres of Israel bashers with his own second-hand analysis of news reports from the battle zone. But he can't help himself, because he's a Liberal and this is what Liberals do now, have opinions about Israel. Negative opinions. So he gives us this:
HH: So what do you want, what do you think Israel ought to do?
GG: Well, I think that, for one thing, I think that real negotiations need to ensue, and I think those can only happen with a powerful and devoted mediator, which probably is a role that only the United States can play. So I think the Israelis need to be a lot more willing to make concessions than they’ve been in the past, and I also think that doing things like expanding settlements in the West Bank and blockading the Gazans to the point where they can’t even get nutrition and medical needs for their children are things that clearly harm their own interests, and make the conflict worse. I think stopping settlements, making concessions in the West Bank, and giving the Gazans more of a decent life so they don’t think it’s worthwhile to blow themselves up and shoot rockets at their oppressors is a really good first step.
I have to admit this sounds very nice: let's talk. And what shall we talk about? Well, one item that might be on the agenda would concern the 7,200 rockets that Hamas has fired at Ashkelon, Sderot and other southern Israeli cities during the last 5 years. These rockets were fired at Israel with the intention of killing anyone near their point of landing; this sort of attack represents the most indiscriminate form of civilian targeting you can imagine. That's inconvenient for Mr. Greenwald, and for the liberal view generally, but they have comebacks. What about those illegal settlements in the West Bank? Well, Hamas is not in power in the West Bank; they were elected in Gaza, and it is from Gaza that the rockets are launched. So can we focus on that? And why does Hamas fire rockets at Israel? Because it denies Israel's right to exist. This is another inconvenient truth for the modern American liberal view of Israel. One nasty habit of conservatives, including even the much-maligned Ann Coulter, is that they tend to read source documents. This causes all kinds of havoc for the feel-good bromides of the liberal position. The Hamas Charter of 1988, after menacingly warning the Freemasons, Lions Club and Rotary Club that they're on to their role as Zionist espionage agencies (some stuff you just can't make up), lays it out:
[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: “Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.” From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem. Some accept the idea, others reject it, for one reason or another, demanding the implementation of this or that condition, as a prerequisite for agreeing to convene the Conference or for participating in it. But the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is aware of the [prospective] parties to this conference, and of their past and present positions towards the problems of the Muslims, does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed. Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the nonbelievers as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. Since when did the Unbelievers do justice to the Believers? “And the Jews will not be pleased with thee, nor will the Christians, till thou follow their creed. Say: Lo! the guidance of Allah [himself] is the Guidance. And if you should follow their desires after the knowledge which has come unto thee, then you would have from Allah no protecting friend nor helper.” Sura 2 (the Cow), verse 120 There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.
This is flowery, of course, but I don't think there's any great mystery about what Hamas is saying. For one thing, Hamas uses an extremely broad definition of "Palestine," including such areas as Tel Aviv, Haifa and all of Jerusalem, which we might otherwise think of as Israel. They don't want "conferences," (none of that Camp David stuff) and they don't want to talk. It's odd that liberals have such a hard time taking them at their word; they certainly demonstrate their disinterest in talking by firing 7,200 rockets at Israeli towns over the last five years. The provocation of Israel is part of a plan for destroying Israel, not "retaliation" designed to bring Israel to the bargaining table.
One problem that Americans have in understanding Israel's response is that it's difficult for us to relate to a country that gives a damn about its own national security. If you rain rockets down on Sderot and Ashkelon, then you're going to deal with the IDF. It's really that simple. The United States was attacked on 9/11, and the most famous, the signature, response to that outrage was to use it as a propaganda tool for invading Iraq, which played no role in the terrorist strike. When New Orleans drowned, most Americans saw the tragedy as a TV show; President Bush didn't even bother to watch it on TV. He was playing air guitar in San Diego.
These are important cultural differences. Thinkers like Mr. Greenwald, so accomplished and effective in other areas, project American attitudes about crisis onto Israel and arrive at the dubious conclusion that Israel ought to be as sloppy, incoherent and soft about its safety as the United States is. The point is that Israel can't. Israel wants to get rid of Hamas because Hamas wants to get rid of Israel. If the liberal position is to favor Hamas, then stop the parsing of Israeli "tactics," stop the enumeration of schools hit by tank fire and the scenes of hospital corridors and the rest of it, and go to the jugular: simply state your concluding premise. You agree with Hamas; Israel should not exist. Then the liberal criticism of Israel has integrity and internal coherence. It's intellectually honest. If you are driven by anti-Semitism, that also has the ring of authenticity, because it's difficult to believe your real motivation is compassion for Arabs you've never visited and know nothing about. You have become a Hamas jihadist yourself, arriving at that position from whatever point on the compass brought you here. You would like to see a "solution," as the Hamas Charter declares, take the form of a Second Holocaust.
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