just a little something on andrew maccarthy's national review article, aka last post's pleasant surprise... i thought his commentary on the israeli-palestinian conflict was so laughably oversimplified and infantile that i couldnt resist ridiculing it.
"Petraeus is echoing the narrative peddled incessantly by leftists in the government he serves and by Islamists in the countries where he works. According to that narrative, Israel’s plight is not a struggle for survival against immovable foes spurred by an Islamist ideology that must be discredited and defeated."
did he just say islamists peddle the narrative that israel is not struggling for survival against them? oh well that's just awesome. has this guy heard of hamas? cuz i'm pretty sure thats their whole raison d'etre. im going to go ahead and assume that was just poor writing and he didn't actually mean to say that.
ok so let me just state that quote inversely to get at what hes saying... according to this guy, the correct narrative would be: israels plight is a struggle for survival against immovable foes spurred by an islamist ideology.
hm... if by "immovable foes" he means the 4+ million refugees under de facto israeli government control, ok i'll give it to him. short of genocide or mass expulsion, they are indeed immovable. (by the way, googling mass expulsion is entertainingly relevant.)
but he lost me on the islamist ideology part. sure, there are islamists like the misguided supporters of hamas, but if we could wave a wand and make all the islamists simply disappear tomorrow, israel's plight would remain, so obviously it can't be that simple.
there would still be millions of people, arabs, muslims, christians, and secularists alike that would be an anathema to a "jewish and democratic" state of israel. and how does his argument account for all the people that advocate a single secular democratic state in all the land controlled by israel? maybe he doesn't know islamists actually aren't israel's only detractors.
"To the contrary, this view holds, it is the result of a mere political conflict."
ok, inversely: israel's plight is not the result of a mere political conflict.
universal suffrage for everyone under israeli control would make israel's basic law, which states that israel is a "jewish and democratic state," a contradiction... jews would be outnumbered. israel's basic law theoretically necessitates unequal democratic rights... sure sounds like a political problem to me.
ok no more quotes. i can and actually did go on for a few more, but you get the picture.
i mean... simple hypotheticals (like the elimination of islamism) make it obvious andrew mccarthy's idea of israel's plight is absurd, so why is the national review going with this crap? it always seems weird to me how conservatives have the same recurring problem of reducing complex issues into binary.
the idea that islamism is the crux of israel's plight is wishful thinking. but it's so disconnected from reality that if you're going to pretend complete and utter defeat of islamism (which would be nice) will solve the israeli-palestinian conflict and bring peace in the middle east, you might as well also pretend santa claus is bringing peace in the middle east in a bag next christmas. or perhaps more fitting for the national review, that jesus is bringing peace as soon as israel conquers enough land.
painting the israeli-palestinian conflict as a simple good vs evil battle where either israel or the terrorists win makes it easier for an idiot to understand, so i guess i can see why an idiot would want to understand it in just that way... unfortunately for this guy and the national review, reality is sometimes just a tad more complex.
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