Saturday, July 22, 2006

The Mideast. Or WWIII. Or Something.

I was listening to On The Media today, and there was a guest on, I think the editor of a Jewish newspaper published here in the US, who said that there has been a noticeable lack of commentary coming from the left-wing blogs concerning the current unpleasantness in Israel and Lebanon.

Which made me think: Dude, all I can say to you is that we don't have any answers. And, for once, we really don't have any opinions that we want to put forth. The Billy Kristols of the world want to start shooting, like yesterday. Apart from being sane enough to point out the idiocy of that stance . . . we got nothing.

We, I think, might be ducking the issue because we have typically liberal on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other conundrums swirling in our brains: We like Jews. We remember the Holocaust, even if we were born after it happened. We acknowledge that there is some basis for viewing the creation of the modern state of Israel as somewhat of an invasion. We think the Jews have more than every right to defend themselves from a bunch of Middle Agers who are bent on destroying them. We don't like Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. We have a grudging respect for Israel's ferocity in defending what they perceive as theirs. Ditto, the displaced Palestinians. We wish the extremists and the fanatics weren't so much in power, on either side. We wish we, the United States, weren't so beholden to the Arabs on oil, so that our government could have a smidgen of credibility when it tries to get involved in this mess.

There's nothing that's easy to say on this matter.

Speaking as a godless America-hater secularist, I fantasize about offering either side a chunk of the US to have as their own country (Wyoming is not so crowded, right?), but I realize that both sides have this irrational religious attachment to their "holy land."

So, I think I proved my point. Which is: Who wants to read crap like this?

Nobody.

That's at least part of why the lefty blogosphere hasn't said so much.


Notes:

I wish I could say "Billy Kristol" was mine. It isn't. I forget where I first heard that. Slate or Salon, I think. Do a Google "site:" search, if you're curious.

It's not "condundra." I thought it was. But check out this page. Absolutely wonderful! No one, but no one, brings the snark like the Brits.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The one thing I take from the blog is that you're smoking good weed.

- self-loathing Jew

bjkeefe said...

Mang, I wish I still knew peeps who did.

And don't try to play the self-loathing card. We Irish got you beat. See the pic in my profile, or click on that murky thing there in the upper right corner, just for starters.

It's hard not to be ironic about this Israel/Lebanon situation, isn't it? It feels to me like irony is the only sane self-defense mechanism in our post- post- whatever world.

The especially scary thing to me is the sober attitude most of the responsible media seems to be displaying. Never mind the blogosphere. No one, outside of the usual neocon wingnuts trying to hustle their magazines, wants to make any pronouncements. Even Thomas Friedman, aka The Moustache That Explained, has been remarkably low-key.

No, wait. There's something even more scary about this.

Elections looming here in the US.

"We Report, You Decide."

"I'm The Decider."



Dude, you holdin' or what?

Anonymous said...

Well said in the original post, Brendan. I can't speak for leftist bloggers, but speaking for myself, somehow supporting Israel feels like supporting the Shah of Iran or Bastista in Cuba. As FDR said about Mayor Daley of Chicago, "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of a bitch."

Israel may be a fascist state (or at least a quasi-fascist state), but it's OUR fascist state. Adrea Mitchell said on one of the political talk shows last week that Israel has been wanting to go to war with Arab extremists for about the last 5 years and this capture of the Israeli soldiers gave them the perfect excuse to launch what they've been planning and desiring for a long time.

I think both sides in the Middle East would like to have another go at a war. Each side thinks they've gotten strong enough now to beat the opposition. And it's been 10 or 15 years since the last war so the young are ready to fight it out again and the oldsters have forgotten or died off.

We've got the choice of backing Hitler or Stalin and it's hard to get excited about the choice. So we're trying to come up with a non-aggression pact while both sides try to position themselves during the pause for an advantage in the coming war.

It's hard for me to see that either side really wants a negotiated peace where everybody lives side by side in harmony. Israel justifiably doesn't trust the Arabs to let them have a state there and feels that it needs overwhelming military superiority to protect itself and they can only negotiatiate from a position of power. The Muslims don't want a Jewish state in the Middle East period -- or a Christian one for that matter. Only Arabs in Arabia. Aryans only in Germany, and whites only in America. We're only protecting ourselves from a foreign, godless invasion.

As long as people identify themselves as a certain religion or a certain nation rather than citizens of the world or the human race, this will go on. As long as you continue to do what you've always done, you'll get the same result that you've always got.

Sam Harris' book "The End of Faith" is petty good on we can never resolve this until we get rid of religion.

Anonymous said...

Why do we have to support either side? We should just talk a lot with them while they are killing each other so we can get US citizens emotionally involved and squeeze a Hollywood motion picture out of this thing every 5 to 10 years.

What would the world be like without the mideast crises? I keep picturing turban-bearing mobs careening against equally aggressive outfitted soldiers on a barren desert with sticks and rocks, when suddenly they get so thirsty that they agree to stop fighting and drink Coke. Much crying and laughter ensues. Everything is a commercial if you think of it the right way. RIGHT.

But still it's true, we are so on the edge of global disaster. Everybody should buy a nice watch while there's still time.

- Unfortunately not holding.

Anonymous said...

And no, I didn't realize my "time" pun until AFTER I wrote it.

This comment widget de-capitalizes all characters in the poster's name. It's a bug!

bjkeefe said...

LOL @ {J|j}oshu{E| E|e}. It's good to remember the American take on weighty matters.

Administrivia: Note that the capitalization appears to be preserved when viewing the individual post (which also displays the comments). I agree that the forced lowercasing displayed on the post-a-comment page looks like a bug. But it could be a design decision; e.g., perhaps the names are converted so that the underlying software can convert those with Blogspot accounts to hyperlinks.

Good comments, TC. I don't agree with characterizing Israel as a fascist state, however. They're probably more terrible to the Palestinians than I know, but the government at least allows its citizenry to mouth off at will.

I do agree with your ultimate point, about religious beliefs controlling too much of the mindset of those in charge, on both sides. There may never be an answer to this. It seems the best the world can do is try to keep the situation at a simmer. If it gets to the boiling point, it could easily fulfill the eschatological fantasies of a frighteningly large chunk of the US government. In a sick sense, one can almost be glad about the quagmire in Iraq -- at least W doesn't have the whole army at his disposal.

Finally, here's an excerpt from an email that I received about this topic:


I heard that broadcast too. My impression was that the thrust of the piece was that the US media's coverage was so "PC balanced" that they in effect were overbalancing favoring Israel. At the same time, the European media were overtly favoring the Arabs, possibly reflecting the large, relatively recent, middle eastern immigration populations of, say, France, Germany, Holland, et al.

Last Tuesday night I was staying at Danny's house, taking care of some grandchildren. Owen, age 11, a fan of Fox News' 10 PM broadcast, forced me to watch it (The things we do for our grandchildren. Grandchildren are the best revenge). Here the US, the world, is virtually/possibly on the brink of WWIII. Guess what the lead story was? About some marital problems of someone named Christy Brinkley (Sp?), whoever that is. Interviews with the 19 yr old alleged adulteress. About 20 -25 minutes devoted to it. Second story: a cruise ship turned around and returned to port (why? what was the problem? what port? No answers on those). This took maybe 15 minutes. Then weather. Maybe a minute on weather. The rest of the broadcast? Ads. NOTHING about Lebanon, NOTHING about Iraq, NOTHING about Iran, NOTHING about North Korea.

I'd heard about Fox News, had never seen it. Now I know. God bless America? No, God protect America.

Anonymous said...

I thought that might get a rise out of you and that's why I attenuated it to say quasi-fascist. A friend of mine lived and worked on a Kibbutz back in the 70's. She said the Israeli soldiers at that time would stop a bus, drag some Palestinian off the bus and beat the crap out of him. No trial, no list of charges, no defense attorney. It's something you'd expect being done to Jews in Nazi Germany. If that's not quasi- fascism call it super-nationalism or whatever term softens it for you.

Thomas Friedman said that no people should be treated the way the Israelis were treating the Palestinians. He was speaking economically but surely it extends beyond that. Lobbing missiles into the civilian population in general for something a faction in the country did (not supported by the government apparently) is kind of an over-reaction as everyone is now saying.

They have a right to defend themselves, but how far does "defense" extend? Presumably it includes preemtive strikes and disproportionate retaliation. It's somehow like bombing New York because the Mormans in Utah practice polygamy. What was the justification for bombing the Beirut airport again?

Basically I was agreeing with your original post that both sides make me a little squeamish in the M.E. I think the leftist bloggers haven't come down hard one way or the other because the issues are kind of gray and it isn't clear that right and truth and the American way are on one side or the other.

bjkeefe said...

First off, Dan K. is happy to be attributed for the email that I posted above. Now you know.

Response to TC:

I am sure that individual Palestinians have plenty to complain about, regarding their treatment by Israeli soldiers. The entire population doubtless also has a long list of legitimate grievances. I remember a while ago, when you recommended From Beirut to Jerusalem, in which the Palestinians' case was made quite clearly. Though dated, I'm sure things have not changed much since. They may well have gotten worse, or at least may be perceived that way.

I don't know whether the maltreatment of individuals falls into the "few bad apples" category, or is a policy implicitly or explicity handed down to the troops. I suspect, at best, it's quite a few apples.

Nonetheless, even "quasi-fascist" still seems a little harsh.

I remember back in college, talking to a friend who was from Greece. He was fretting about having to go home for the semester break, because if his grades didn't improve quick, he was going to lose his scholarship and have to go right into the army. I made some airheaded pacifist statement. As much as my friend did not want to be drafted, he recoiled. "You have no idea what it's like to live with the Turks breathing down your neck," he said.

I think life in Israel might feel somewhat similar. I don't think we, as Americans, have any grasp of the sensation of being surrounded by a larger crowd, many of whom are bent on our destruction. (Look at the overreaction to 9/11, to see what just a taste of being threatened did to the US.) Whatever the righteousness of the Palestinian point of view, there's no argument that the Israelis feel equally pure about their motivations. So, it's hard for me to equate Israel's aggressive behavior with the Axis Powers of World War II, irrespective of their poor choices and abuses.

Firing missles into residential neighborhoods and bombing buses carrying people trying to flee is another hard call. I have read that the line between "terrorists" and "civilians" is impossibly blurry. I have read that Hezbollah and Hamas specifically choose to launch from within crowded neighborhoods. Explanations for this choice range from their lower firepower -- they can't hope to win in an outright artillery duel -- to their hope that Israel will respond to the provocation and create "martyrs" who can quickly be exploited for PR value. Without claiming that Israel is "right" to do what it has been doing, the forces opposing Israel are equally responsible for the death of innocents in Lebanon, to my mind.

Leaving aside the moral considerations for a moment, let's look at the purely military aspect of the situation from Israel's point of view. Stipulating that a response to incoming rockets and missiles is merited, the choice seems to lie among bombing, invading with tanks and ground troops, or some combination of the two.

Israel probably does not have the troops to effectively pacify the population, and in any case, they would be practically globally condemned for such an occupation.

We already see the world reaction to the bombing, and we've seen the outrage that targeted assassinations provoke, as well.

So, even without the moral considerations, it's kind of hard not to feel like all responses are bad. The only thing worse, though, would be doing nothing at all.

I had hopes back in the days of the Oslo Accords, as did many. I don't understand why they ultimately failed, but at least part of the explanation is surely that there are too many people in power, on both sides, who would rather fight to the death than try to compromise.

This is an awfully long piece to conclude with handwringing and no proposed solutions. I wish I could believe that there were some smart and sane people in our government who could present some ideas. Might as well wish for the moon, these days.

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