Our quote of the day comes from wounded idealist Benjamin Netanyahu:
That was not a love boat. That was a boat of hatred. It was not a peaceful flotilla. The soldiers who boarded the ships were attacked by clubs, batons and knives.
And if you can bear to look, here’s a link to the Israel Defense Force spokesperson’s blog, with chilling photos of the hardware-store holocaust the activists had in mind.
On his Twitter feed, Glenn Greenwald commends Rep. Barney Frank for these recent comments:
In an interview with the Boston Herald, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that that “‘as a Jew,’ Israeli treatment of Arabs around some of the West Bank settlements ‘makes me ashamed that there would be Jews that would engage in that kind of victimization of a minority.'”
I, too, thank Rep. Frank for his candor and his willingness to rise above tribalism. (Though I also agree with Jeremy that individuals have no reason to apologize for or feel ashamed of acts they oppose simply because those acts are committed under the auspices of a collective, whether legal, religious, or ethnic, that they “belong” to. As an official of the U.S. government, Rep. Frank has plenty to feel ashamed about; as a Jew, nothing.) Sadly, though, Frank turned right around the next moment with this:
In defense of Israel, Frank added there are people “howling for Israel to pay a price [for the Gaza aid ship attack] that don’t seem disturbed that North Koreans killed 46 South Koreans by torpedoing a South Korean boat. I think we have a right to ask for some consistency.”
Now lest it be said that my vicious, throbbing anti-Semitism has blinded me to the greater sins of Kim Jong-Il (and it will be said anyway), let me go on record as condemning the attack by a government that my tax dollars do not subsidize on a military vessel during what is technically still an ongoing war. Yes, Rep. Frank, it does appear to me that one of the two attacks is worse than the other, but I’ll let you guess which one.
I’ve heard a certain criticism countless times over the years, but after seeing it three times in two days on the same site, I decided to do a little research. From that vast repository of respectable opinion, The Atlantic, here are Jeffrey Goldberg, Andrew Sullivan, and Megan McArdle with the idea du jour:
Jeffrey Goldberg:
“I don’t know yet exactly what happened at sea when a group of Israeli commandos boarded a ship packed with not-exactly-Gandhi-like anti-Israel protesters.”
Andrew Sullivan:
“The violence by the activists is pretty abhorrent. These are not followers of Gandhi or MLK Jr.”
Megan McArdle:
“Very clearly, these guys were not the next incarnation of Gandhi; they were on that mission spoiling for a fight.”
Now, unlike these three worthies, I’m just a rube who majored in booze at Football Tech, so I didn’t know much about this Gandhi fella. I wondered, what exactly would Gandhi have the Palestinians and their supporters do? What would earn them a pat on the head from serious, right-thinking Americans?
Luckily, I didn’t have to look very far to find a possible answer:
As an inspiration and a symbol, Gandhi has no peer in the 20th century; as a practical politician, he was a despair to his colleagues in the Indian national movement. His insistence on non-violence grew more extreme as he aged: during the war, he recommended to the British that they should “invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions.†And in an interview given after the war, he went so far as to say that “the Jews [in Europe] should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.“
The things you learn on the intertubes! Well, there you go, Palestinians (and Turks, and Jewish Americans to the left of Jeffrey Goldberg): kill yourselves. When the last one of you is gone, The Atlantic will hold a special symposium on your righteousness.
From Big O’s speech:
[W]e have made progress on some important objectives. … In Afghanistan, we and our allies prevented the Taliban from stopping a presidential election and — although it was marred by fraud — that election produced a government that is consistent with Afghanistan’s laws and constitution.
Hurrah! Stolen elections for everyone! Try and stop us, baddies!
Well, the Swiss – or, more accurately, a majority of voters in democratic Switzerland – have gone and done something wrong and dumb, approving a referendum that bans the construction of minarets. Libertarian demerits are certainly in order. But one very wrong, very dumb thing the Swiss have not done is launch any wars of aggression against Muslim peoples, or anyone else, for that matter.
Which makes it all the more cringe-worthy to read this libel on Andrew Sullivan’s blog:
Good God. Why not synagogues? Or did a neighboring country try that already?
Wow. Straight to the Nazi jab, huh? Never let it be said that Harvard doesn’t make ’em like they used to.
For the record, this is the same Andrew Sullivan who penned this epochal gem eight years ago:
[B]in Laden proves that the best form of persuasion in that part of the world is not rhetorical but military. Pummel them and they will respect you. Talk to them nicely and you’ll end up like Robert Fisk. Best of all, pummel them and then talk. The most persuasive piece of rhetoric yet unleashed in this conflict has been the daisy cutter bomb. It’s the only argument that much of this clearly depraved culture actually respects.
Expect more Swiss-bashing from some of the very people who have cheered on the most egregious abuses of Muslims. They’re extremely alert to the dangers of isolationism, you know.
UPDATE: This is too rich. Jeffrey Goldberg, Sullivan’s colleague at The Atlantic, gets in on the anti-Swiss sanctimony. Hah! If the United States or Israel were to attack Tehran tomorrow – which just might halt the construction of a minaret or two – Goldberg would leap to his keyboard to defend the decision as regrettable but justifiable. Again, I’m not a fan of bans or bombs, but the former have the distinct advantage of being reversible.
If this isn’t the craziest thing you read today, then you must be scrubbing graffiti off the walls of a padded cell:
While the sixth season of the fashion reality show “Project Runway†is fast-approaching its climax, it’s become a running joke in my house that the show’s host, German supermodel Heidi Klum, would have made a good Nazi.
…
It’s an unfair comparison, to be sure, but the choice of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed German as host of this particular show was, for my sensibilities, an unfortunate one. It might not be so bad if Klum didn’t deliver these life-changing decisions with so much glee. Granted, no Nazi ever kissed a Jew on both cheeks after sending him or her to certain death, but most of the time Klum administers those kisses with as much feeling as a robot, and enunciates the words “you’re out†in tones that could send a frisson down the spine of even the most detached observer.
That’s from the Forward, one of the less berserk purveyors of reliably pro-Israel commentary in America. The author, Rebecca Honig Friedman, concludes the piece with a dash of ha ha, this mannequin’s probably not going to commit genocide, but I was stunned to find such weird prejudice and paranoia in a relatively vanilla venue. If the Forward‘s contributors and readers are this terrified of the “entertainment” industry, then what are we to make of their views on Iran, the Palestinians, and – brace yourselves for the frisson – Mearsheimer and Walt?
