Monday, January 12, 2009

Red Sea Pedestrians

To defend his tendentiously unconditional defense of Israel's actions in Gaza (or really, wherever) Kunstler theorizes that the most ardent declamations of the disproportionality of Israel's responses are actually financially motivated, since everyone blames the Jews that run Goldman Sachs or whatever for ruining the economy. (Yeah, I couldn't quite follow that one either.)

Here's the thing that neither the Zionists nor the Jew-baiters seem to get: the interest that the average politically-aware American has in Israel's periodic travails is generally humanitarian rather than partisan. And proportionality, contra the hawks, does count for something, especially when there's no formal declaration of war. But "rooting" for "peace" does not mean siding with one side over the other, because the current and past actions by both sides indicate deep patterns of bad-faith negotiations and deliberately unworkable compromises, which are not the same thing as peace. Both the jihadis and the Lubavitchers need to be repudiated and marginalized in that debate, otherwise the situation will never get resolved -- which, considering the nihilist, apocalyptic bent of both those groups, may be the point.

Either way, most non-Jewish Americans do not really have much skin in this game, aside from the Left Behind crowd. Israel is indeed the most humane and secular government in the region, but its settlement and security policies, aside from being unnecessarily punitive and brutal, are simply untenable in the long term. You can only herd people into ghettos and poach their land and water for so long, without smallpox blankets or something. Really, it is possible to look dispassionately at this intractable situation, one that has needlessly, habitually been ramped up by both sides, and simply come away with no real dog in the fight, except to desire that fewer children be smithereened, whether accidentally or deliberately. This is not that complicated.

Cherry-picking a bunch of nasty e-mails and crafting a broader scope of opinion out of them is about as disingenuous as saying that action figure/brain surgeon "Joe" the "Plumber" is an actual journamalist:

"I'll be honest with you. I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I-I think it's asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for'em. Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer--and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers. I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you're gonna sit there and say, 'Well look at this atrocity,' well you don't know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it."


It's like he broke into Sarah Palin's stash of stupid pills, begging to be fisked. Starting with, oh I dunno, that the guy who reported "where our troops are at" was Geraldo Rivera at Faux News, that motion pictures were not nearly well developed enough during World War I to be an effective propaganda system, that Sam Shit-for-Brains himself is in Israel pretending to be a member of the media that he claims to despise.

Sounds like this clown is about as good a reporter as he is a plumber.

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