...This time around, the extreme wing of the left divorced itself from, rather than led, the overall left, leaving the distinct impression that they long ago began dealing only with guilt and conscience rather than realistic political proposals.

They have become our ongoing psychoanalysis. There might be a demand for this when we've got the luxury of sitting back and thinking about our feelings, not when we are forced to get up and think about what to do now.

Israelis paid no attention this time to "stop shooting, start talking," because there was no plan behind the slogan, no debate about now-existential problems.

What kind of Middle East will we have after the Hezbollah War? How do we respond to the threat of missile fire at our civilians, weapons that could contain biological or chemical weapons the next time around? What will this war do to Syria's and Iran's standing in the region?

Anyone failing to have constructive proposals for these questions is simply irrelevant...

...The Other has disappeared completely, and (on the basis of sweeping and rather shaky philosophical claims about the all-encompassing nature of the representation), we are now instructed to deal only with ourselves, our forms of representation, our discourse and our sins. Clifford Geertz once called this "epistemological hypochondria."

But, believe it or not, the Other actually exists apart from our own discourse. This may be a real philosophical shock to these new academics, and I don't want to upset anyone, but it now seems that there among those many others out there, some have built missile bases, or so rumor has it, and apparently these missiles have been outragously, outside the boundaries of our Israel-Occidental discourse.

So perhaps it really is a good idea to listen to the other side. And to remember that others are not just representations, nor are they submerged behind our own representations. Not all of these others are oppressed angels. They are human beings, there's good and bad in them, and some of them want peace while others can act with astonishing barbarity.

In the current situation we're facing we would do well to concern ourselves with the barbarians among them, because they pose a very real and non-discursive danger at the moment. And Because a new world has been created around us, a world where the idea that only the West is oppressive looks a little pale in light of the rising wave of Muslim fascism.

Hello? Does anyone on the "radical" discourse-oriented naval gazer left remember that there are actual other people in the world?