14 July 2006
Imagining No Israel--The Daily Kos
Ace is discussing a Daily Kos diarist's post imaging no Israel. To be fair, some of the dKos crowd are replying how wrong that is. One of Ace's commenters, caspera, has a great response that needs to be seen. Sure, Ace has way more readers than I, but it is buried in the comments. I don't know if caspera blogs, but I thought this needs to get out.
Technorati tags: Israel, Gaza, Religion of Peace, RoP, Daily Kos
"The world let the Jews down and the Arab States have let the Palestinians down."
A pretty reasonable sentiment for Daily Kos, but it is still pretty wrongheaded, I think.
Here is the crux of the problem as I see it: Islam's notion that once land is Islamic, a good Muslim must wage war to regain it for the Caliphate. The logic of this philosophy leads ineluctably to perpetual war against Israel. The Arabs consider Israel to be Muslim land and want to regain it, but every time they have tried to do so openly, they get their asses kicked. Solution: fight a proxy war and radicalize your proxies to carry on the fight indefinitely. The Palestinians are a 190 proof distillation of the Islamist desire to get that land back. If the other Arab States weren't there, it would merely be 120 proof. It is because Israel is the only non Muslim country in the Middle East, that it is like a bone in their throat.
The Palestinians have been given one of the most badass patches of real estate on planet Earth. If the Palestinians were not radical Muslims, say they were Sicilian-American mobsters to take a classier more high-minded caste of people, Gaza would have casinos and bikini-clad hotties drinking umbrella drinks on their beautiful beaches and would be doing booming business with Israel and they wouldn't be worrying about the Arab States "letting them down." It would be a Middle Eastern Monaco. Instead, since Islam preaches no bikinis, no drinks, no fun, but please do kill the Jews, and wage perpetual war against the infidel, and reclaim that land for Dar Al Islam, Gaza is doomed regardless of what the other Arab States do.
Egyptians can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they don't have to join the jihad since they are already in Dar Al Islam. Palestinians don't have that luxury. They must wage jihad. Islam itself, not the Arab States, really, let the Palestinians down.
We can't really admit that this is what's going on in "Palestine" because that admission leads us ineluctably to the unpleasant discussions in the other threads below. Caliphate and Ummah are some of the scariest words in the English language, or whatever language they come from. They're like Borg, but worse because it's real.
A few lefties try to imagine a world without Israel because that fantasy relieves the pressure on their brains like a shunt. I think lefties are unwilling to face the following unpleasant fact: rich white people are gonna have to put the smack down on some poor brown people, and the poor brown people are the ones who are actually causing all the trouble for a change. Liberals and lefties with great justification fought White racism in the US, but they seem to be unprepared to accurately identify friend and foe outside the US Civil Rights paradigm. Seriously. I think when lefties imagine no Israel, they are actually saying, "I am so morally vain that I would prefer that all the Jews in Israel be transported elsewhere so that I don't have to rethink my worldview. It's more convenient for me." I might be wrong on this, but that's the sense I get.
Technorati tags: Israel, Gaza, Religion of Peace, RoP, Daily Kos