David Schraub has posted a "WTF" and I think that he is right. I was going to post an "explanation" but the rant left me...
David, it is a question, not of what is being said, but of what is not being said.
In the editorial you posted (and supported) the "anti-semitism" of a series of gruesome murders was emphasised and repeated. I do not belittle the inhumanity of those killings. The rationale behind the op-ed seemed to be two-fold. First to castigate the current fav. whipping boy - France. Second to post up yet another gruesome, full technicolour, anti-muslim propaganda piece.
And this was the little bit that got me going...
Murder of Jews isn't a political tool you get to trot out to show just how really bad the Islamists are. It's bad because killing Jews is bad, period. And not covering the murder of Jews as Jews is a form of anti-Semitism, irrespective of how it plays into our global conception of what the war on radical Islamism is.
Your words, David. I was trying to paint the other side of the truth.
Perhaps then, this might help...
In the course of digging around the Sun-Times commentators I came across this...
Religious tradition, however, does not deter Israeli policy. The new barrier will confiscate 39 percent of the village's olive fields and take over the aquifer that supplies one-fifth of the West Bank's total water supply. In October, construction uprooted 500 grapevines in Aboud. Twelve kilometers of the barrier will be built on Aboud's land, and the villages of Al-Lubban and Rantis also will lose more territory.
All this is justified as protection against terrorists, but the Holy Land Christian Society rejects that. ''It is clear that the security barrier is not about security but the annexation of land for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Israeli control over the water supply,'' argues a society paper. Israeli settlements Beit Arye and Ofarim were built on land taken from residents of Aboud.
The problems of the Catholic and Orthodox Christians of Aboud do not resonate in American politics. The evangelicals have signed a blank check to Israel in the interests of security in the Middle East. Of the many Roman Catholic members of Congress, only the venerable Rep. Henry Hyde (in the last year of his long career) has shown much interest in the subject.
That is why Cardinal McCarrick's involvement is encouraging for the champions of Holy Land Christians. He will visit the West Bank next month and may meet with Karen Hughes, under secretary of state for Public Diplomacy, for the sake of a few Christians in an ancient city.
Any paper publishing this kind of "news" in the US is likely to be branded anti-semitic - with no appeal... for the sake of a few Christians in an ancient city.
Is there the same concern and publicity given to the thousands of Palestinians affected in the same way? Does anyone speak out about what is, has always been, MSOI's version of ethnic cleansing?
Of course not - they are the "terrorists". They have no right to defend themselves. They only have their bodies to defend themselves with - against helicopters, aircraft, tanks and men.
That is why I have no bother with people calling me "anti-semitic".
And, David, that is why I reacted in the manner I did.
1 comment:
That's all well and lovely--but it misses my real "WTF" problem. That post may be a sensible (if, in my view, overstated and misguided) response to a post on the I/P conflict. If I had issued a condemnation of a suicide bombing attack, for example. But my post never once mentioned the I/P conflict, and in the Sun-Times it was referred to tangentially, at best. That's why I remain confused--the link between what you want me to say, and the topic area I wrote on, isn't all that solid. Why should I just have to append a condemnation of the Security Fence (not that I'd want to--but again, that's a subject for a separate post) to a wholly unrelated article? Why not ask me to do it on a tax policy post?
I think it's quite fair for me to focus on European anti-Semitism (again, citing their "special" obligation in this respect). It's not anti-France, I said in post I reject using anti-Semitic violence as a tool for ulterior political causes (and I don't dislike France anyway). It's about having any country in which anti-Semitism violence is occurring to take a strong stand against it--a stance France currently isn't taking. I remain confused about how this links back to foreign media coverage of some Palestinian Christians who think the Security Fence is a land grab. Certainly an important issue (and one that I do think has gotten coverage in the American press without the "anti-Semitism" card being played)--but really a completely separate one.
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