Monday, July 23, 2007
...HOW DO I maintain a sense of justice for Palestinians whose freedoms have been compromised under Israel's 40-year occupation and continue to advocate for their human rights, when I know they are being swept up by a pan-Islamism characterized by Islamist extremism? No wonder the Israeli Left has gone underground. Many of our cherished values have gone up in smoke.
We hate the security barrier because it steals Palestinian lands, divides villages and separates families, but we sleep better knowing our children no longer play Russian roulette with their lives when they venture out in public. We deplore targeted assassinations, but when the IDF kills terrorists on their way to fire rockets into Sderot, we breathe a sigh of relief - even if innocent Palestinians are caught in the cross fire...
[h/t: Eric D.]
You see why I feel besieged - even my natural allies put me on the defensive.
Talk about blind and stupid!
The author is neither blind or stupid. He raises valid points, and I sympathize with his dilemma. The fact is that the world is not all black and white. The Palestinians are genuine victims...but they're predators too. They do suffer, but they dream not of justice but of dominance, and they won't take anything less. And they're willing to suffer until they get everything they want. In the meantime, the world cries for them. And the Israelis have to "oppress" them if only to protect themselves.
Due to the left having embraced a Bertrand Russell fallacy as its ethical core, that of "The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed", it finds itself in the strange position of having to defend terrorism and extremism against the principles that Israel represents: democracy, compromise, self-knowledge, critical thinking, pluralism.
It is my view that this Western coddling of Palestinian victimism has contributed a great deal to their own stagnation and self-imprisonment in untenable and immoral ideologies. There will come a time when the Ultra Left will have to face up to the fact that their soft racism of low expectations towards the Palestinians was a major factor in the Palestinian inability to mature to a more responsible level. Palestinians hug their victimhood, as though it were the greatest prize in this world.
Hannah Arendt has already answered the Liberal Israeli's Lament when she said that justice is deserved by those who live in palaces just as much as it is deserved by those who live under bridges.
"Progressive" people are pathetic. They cling to their delusions so tightly, despite what they see with their own eyes.
You can't reason with evil. No matter how many demands you agree to, evil will demands more consessions.