What if Hamas doesn't stop fighting Israel, why should we care? After 9/11 are we now obliged to step into every fight when one side calls itself Muslim?
No, we are not the cause, but we are definitely enablers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have chosen Israel's side, and we must suffer the consequences of that choice, although... Hamas has never attacked America, nor has it threatened to (that I know of), so you have to ask yourself why we've chosen to take sides in their war. What's it getting us?
You also have to ask yourself how we will react if and when Hamas changes tactics and decides to go after Israel's supporter and ally, the United States. (After all, if Hamas employed the same logic that America did -- that you can't just look at who's attacking you, but also at who's funding, supporting, and training those attackers -- then Hamas would be completely "within its rights" to attack America.) Of course, if Hamas murdered innocent U.S. civilians, the media and politicians would call it "unprovoked" and a "cowardly terrorist act," and then U.S. support for Israel would re-double after a sustained media propaganda campaign, and then we'd be up to our necks in another war in the Mideast to achieve no apparent objective other than killing Muslim people who don't like us, while imploring them to like us more, pretty please.
(If you want to dig deeper, ask yourself why Hamas hasn't attacked us, when they clearly identify us as enablers of Israel and biased against them. Because they're not suicidal. Not yet anyway. They don't want to risk the all-out wrath of the U.S. military.)
As for talk-radio clone Austin Hill's unoriginal comments, which are aimed at quashing our natural human emotions like empathy and pity... they illustrate how the fix is in. The Palestinians are not a state, (because Israel won't let them be), therefore they cannot assemble an official army; and even if they could muster one, Israel would immediately destroy it. Therefore, the Palestinians have no "legitimate" means of armed self-defense or offense. Terrorism, or simply rolling over to die in their ghettos while Israel takes all their land, steals their water, destroys their olive trees, and ethnically cleanses them, are their only two options. The latter -- doing their best Ghandi impression on the way to their own funeral -- is their only "moral" option, in our eyes.
So, put yourself in their shoes for a minute and ask what you would do. In fact, most Palestinians choose the latter: struggling to survive, waiting to die, while begging the U.S., the EU, the UN, and anybody else who will listen to help ease their plight. A small minority choose armed resistance to Israeli occupation and annexation of their land, using the only means at their disposal: terrorism, quote-unquote. For it is terrorism when Hamas lobs unguided missiles into Israeli civilian territory and kills 10 Israelis; but it is "military operations" or "self-defense" when Israel attacks with all the precision of a high-tech, mechanized army, killing over 300 civilians. I'm being sarcastic.
Only for people sitting cosily in their suburban homes, embassies, or Washington think tanks are these two things morally different. As "kooks" like Noam Chomsky have said for years, Israeli tactics, (including blockades of food and medicine), are little more than state terror aimed at cowing and collectively punishing the innocent civilians in Palestinian territories. In fact, you could argue that as a democratic country with all benefit of an Enlightenment heritage and Jewish moral values, that Israel is even more culpable, more morally repugnant because of its choice to exercise violence and collective punishment. Hamas are minority thugs; but Israel has voted and collectively chosen to sink to their level, again and again.
(And for comparison's sake, let's keep in mind our own bloody war for independence, which was started by an extremist minority of British colonists over tea and stamps. George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Patrick Henry endured nothing close to the hardships and outrages of the Palestinians. And yet look at how they "overreacted!")
But let's say you don't care about any of that wishy-washy morality stuff. Let's say you don't care if faraway Muslims are murdered or oppressed. Let's say you're a hard-boiled realist. Then you still must justify why we choose to give $3 billion in military aid a year to Israel, and play the phony role of "honest broker" to mediate their conflict, thereby inviting the wrath of the world's radical Muslims who identify with the Palestinians' plight. What's it getting us? How's it making us safer? If you can't answer that, then all you've got is, "Because it's the right thing to do." But if that is your final answer, then based on the above, I seriously doubt your moral reasoning.
So, from both a cynical real politik perspective (i.e. doing what's best for America, no matter what) our support of Israel is wrong; and, conversely from a moral, universal perspective it is wrong. That doesn't happen very often in international affairs!
I challenge you, Austin, Limbaugh, or anybody else to tell me how it is right.
Actually, I would love for Dick Cheney or someone of his ilk who pulls the strings of U.S. foreign policy to explain to me how our support of Israel is in America's interest. The illuminati-literati at SAIS, Georgetown, Fletcher, Brookings, Carnegie, and Heritage aren't Mormon missionaries, after all. They've got to believe there's something in it for us.
J
Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 7:12 PM:
Do you "hope" that Hamas will stop killing if the USA stops supporting Israel? Do you believe we are the cause of the Middle East Wars? - M
Obama On Hamas: "Hope" That Murderous Behavior Will "Change?"
By Austin Hill
January 11, 2008 | Townhall.com
No comments:
Post a Comment