Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Charles Crawford on the Delegitimization of Israel

From CharlesCrawford.Biz:
The main point for me is that the intellectual and political onslaught against Israel is so stunningly dishonest as to reveal that a much deeper Negotiation is going on.

Basically, almost all parts of the planet and indeed much of the chattering classes' space in the democratic West are directly or by implication supporting policies of a new Strident Irrationalism, aimed at delegitimizing not only Israel but Truth itself.

Facts in this drama count for nothing. Not the fact that if we are looking for brutal violence at sea and horrible oppression at home, North Korea leaves Israel and everywhere else on Earth far behind.

Not the fact that when Muslims are massacred almost every day they are massacred not by Israelis but by crazed Muslims.

Nor the fact that if we want to rail against crimes against humanity in the Middle East, the biggest and worst have been committed by Arab leaders against their own people.

And certainly not the fact that whereas Israel obviously operates some sort of pluralist political system, much of the Arab world is still rotten with the legacy of oppressive lumpen national socialist extremism dating back to WW2. Had the Arab world opted for pluralism and progress after the Cold War ended, the whole context for dealing with the Palestine problem would have been far easier.

Behind these malodorous hypocrisies lurks a darker force, hoping to deligitimise not only Israel but also the Holocaust and Nazi/Soviet crimes and the whole moral force of 'the West' and the Enlightenment.

This is the Negotiation of our age. Between Hope and Nihilism. Israel and the Palestinians are merely collateral damage.