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Equivalence in the Hands of Men
12/19/2003

Joseph D'Hippolito writes forcefully about the West's reaction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

The Palestinian Authority's education ministry pollutes innocent minds through its textbooks, as a 2001 report by the Committee for Monitoring the Impact of Peace noted. One fifth-grade language text builds a lesson around this sentence: "The jihad against the Jew is the religious duty of every man and woman."

Suicide bombing, therefore, is not just genocide against Israelis. It's genocide against an entire generation of Palestinians who unquestioningly accept a cynical government's manipulation of Islam. However, the West chooses to ignore these facts.

In April, the World Council of Churches published a letter sent by an ecumenical group to the United Nations' Security Council. That letter about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not only downplayed suicide bombing but also blamed Israel for it: "Such violence directed against Israeli citizens, while abhorrent, does not justify the occupation which gives rise to such acts, nor the misguided incursions and assaults now under way in response to them."

Well, Israel does have checkpoints. And now there's the dreaded Fence of Inconvenience! Surely, such measures justify this response:

Though the Palestinians take a low-tech approach, their sadism surpasses even the Nazi assembly line of death. Suicide bombers routinely stuff such anti-coagulants as rat poison into their explosive vests - so that those who aren't killed immediately bleed to death slowly - and nails, bolts, screws and ball bearings as shrapnel to maximize their victims' injuries.

I wrote, a couple of years ago, that one coming upon the conflict with no understanding of the disputed versions of history would be easily able to assess the situation as it now stands. Israel sets up physical obstacles and attempts to limit the extent of its response, with continual overtures toward peace, while the Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews and to sacramentize the murder of them. Are there ranges on either side? Of course there are, but those among the Palestinians who lead their people and prepare them for the future are plainly not preparing them for a limited resistance.

I honestly can't think of a more clear example of people looking at a straightforward conflict and pretending that it's too complicated to resolve. What that means is that it's too complicated to resolve it in such a way as to maintain the illusions that the entire world has appallingly insisted on promoting as truth. Sometimes I think that people of goodwill who stand somewhere in the middle on this battle take that position out of an inability to believe that so many would react to something so clear with such obfuscation.

And so it goes on, with Ariel Sharon promising, "We will not wait for them forever."

No, Mr. Sharon, you will not be able to do so. Perhaps the only hope is that the U.S. war on terrorism will truly transform the Middle East from the center out. That scenario conflicts with the popular delusion that this flash-point conflict is the actual cause of every problem in that area of the world. But we all know that's inverted nonsense, don't we? Deep down.

ADDENDUM:
My goodness, Mark Shea! Get a grip. If the fact that you have gone out of your way to hunt down mentions of an article and, through ad hominem, to attack its author and those who mention him doesn't illustrate to you (and to your readers) that you really, really need to take a step back from yourself, I don't know what would. It is duly noted, I'm sure, how much you follow your own preaching about revenge and forgiveness.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:19 PM EST

6 comments

Justin wrote:

"too complicated to resolve it in such a way as to maintain the illusions that the entire world has appallingly insisted on promoting as truth."

and to cite Joseph's column:

"Perhaps humanity doesn't want to be roused from fashionable illusions about its innate goodness."

Preach it brothers.

I think those two thoughts combined account for the "even-handedness" approaches that are now conventional wisdom in America and relative-Likudism in Europe. Human beings simply flinch from seeing radical evil in the same contemporary world they inhabit. And drawing the unpleasant consequences -- namely that this is an existential war with no end other than obliteration, either physical or spiritual, for one side or the other. And that's just unfair. Oh, it's OK to talk about Hitler or Genghis Khan that way, but people who breathe our air and trod our earth? No way. So we get in discussions of the Middle East every imaginable manner of contextualization, moral equivalence, double standard, excuse-making and intellectualizations, up to (and not excluding) outright anti-Semitism. Anything rather than face an ugly reality. It's political correctness as foreign policy. Anything rather than "demonize" anyone.

Victor Morton @ 12/19/2003 03:40 PM EST

I didn't "hunt" anything down. I noticed the thing on Pat's side and then, in the course, of my daily blogsurfing saw it again on yours. I was amazed that neither of you bothered to mention Joe's loony extremist statements. That's not ad hominem. It's fact (unless you want to say that urging the annihilation of millions of non-combatants is *not* loony and extremist). I expect Joe to say loony things. What I don't expect is that sane people will plug his political views without mentioning that, by the way, no normal person would touch some of his other ideas with a barge pole. It's like a Lefty quoting Noam Chomsky on some point of political theory and saying only "he's a respected linguist" without mentioning the rest of Chomsky's insane political views. If you want to chum up to Joe's lunatic political ideology, that's up to you. But don't feel bad when somebody says, "Joe has insane political views."

Mark Shea @ 12/19/2003 06:10 PM EST

But Mark, you've already characterized me as insane and as an obsessive geek. The heart of the matter is that you continue to misunderstand the positions that other people are taking, largely as a function of your missing those pesky nuances. You then proceed to collect a quote here, a statement there (whether or not that statement had been previously or subsequently modified or specified), and cast those up as indisputable, incontrovertible proof of "loony extremism."

To take a quick example: in your proof of this lunacy, you bold a sentence that I think you've mistaken as saying more than it does: "that means killing those who build and maintain those structures, though they might not wear uniforms." The fact of the matter is that terrorists, by definition, do not wear uniforms. They aren't governments; they're NGOs.

Now it's possible that Joseph went too far in some comment box at some point, but I don't trust you to convey the exchange accurately, and frankly, a comment box statement made in the heat of argument does not strike me as a perennially damning offense. Joseph presents arguments that go further than I would, but they are arguments, and they are made in the course of discussion, and not with a lunatic immediacy (e.g., "we must do this tomorrow").

I've not once seen you seek to clarify the exact circumstances under which Joseph would think his policy suggestion necessary, what the specifics of the plan would be, nor how it would be implemented. If your take is (as I think it is) that large, broad attacks (as with a nuclear weapon) could never become justified under any circumstances, then I think you're an extremist in that direction. But note that I say that in a general way to coincide with your general statement. I certainly wouldn't make appearances all over the Internet responding to every word you say by pointing out that you'd prefer genocide of Americans to genocide of Arabs, if the choice came to that.

At any rate, Joseph's nuclear policy, whatever it is in its specifics, did not make an appearance in the column that I note here. I don't have a personal vendetta against Joseph, as you apparently do.

You'll note that your comment added "he's a respected linguist" to the Chomsky example. I made no such claims about Joseph, merely saying that I agreed with a particular piece that he wrote. I apologize if I missed the memo that Joseph must henceforth be clearly identified, in all cases, with the most extreme statement he has ever made.

Justin Katz @ 12/19/2003 07:12 PM EST

Justin:

When have I ever said you were insane? Come on.

And as to the amazingly disingenuous statement, "I apologize if I missed the memo that Joseph must henceforth be clearly identified, in all cases, with the most extreme statement he has ever made." Heh!

You might have a point if Joe had made a slip of the tongue once o twice. But we both know that the *vast majority* of Joe's statements are extremist. To simply turn a blind eye to the endless stream of rants, not only about the splendors of nuking civilian populations, but about "Poop John Baal" and Cdl Ratzinger's alleged S&M fetishes, and the endless torrent of hatred for the Holy Father that pours from him, and to then recommend that article without any sort of caveat emptor is as absurd as Bob Sungenis' little campaign against the Jews last year wherein he quoted the "highly prestigious" Journal for Historical Review without noting that, oh, by the way, their main mission is to deny the Holocaust ever happened.

Give thou me a break. Is it really that hard to acknowledge that recommending D'Hippolito on the subject of the Holy Father and the War on Terror without some pretty major caveats is to invite catcalls?

Mark Shea @ 12/19/2003 07:30 PM EST

Mark,

Joseph goes further than I would with a number of his opinions, and he doesn't always relate them prudently (sound familiar?). However, whether it makes me nutty or disingenuous, seen within their place — as comment box rhetoric — I haven't seen anything that crosses the line from too-strong conclusions to "loony" suppositions. Most of the instances you cite are without context, and I simply don't trust you to characterize them accurately. (Frankly, my guess is that some portion of the outrageousness was meant specifically to poke you.)

And once again: in citing this article, I didn't rely on his "prestige." I did not cite the article as an inside view or reportage or insights from an expert. I merely noted an argument with which I have not a little agreement. Perhaps having done so, Joseph will find me more persuasive in my response should he begin advocating immediate annihilation of the Palestinians. But so far, he's made an assessment that I find generally correct, and he's made some previous statements about how far we should be willing to go in defense of ourselves, which is theoretical and requires examination of particulars. When and if our opinions diverge, I will say so, but that is not the same thing as insisting that all of his writing be prefaced with an expectation of inevitable disagreement.

Justin Katz @ 12/20/2003 08:50 AM EST

Justin, a thousand thank yous!

Mark, why don't you just go to Confession, tell the priest about your personal vendetta against me (and against anybody who dares to disagree with you, along with your bullying, vindictive nature), and forget abouit this, OK? You're beginning to make Captain Queeg's opinion about strawberries look like Einstein's about the relativity of time and space.

Besides, *you're* the one who takes comments like "Poop John Baal" and references to Ratzinger and S&M more seriously than they deserve. And you say *I'm* the loony one?

Joseph D'Hippolito @ 12/20/2003 06:55 PM EST