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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (28202)	2/9/2004 2:55:34 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793667

We were talking about the entire West's reaction, meaning mostly Europe Why mostly Europe? I’ve been assessing the relative significance of various opinions according to the actual influence those opinions have on the real world, which seems to me to be the most logical approach to take. By that standard, the opinions of the European intelligentsia mean about as much as those of the city council of Ulan Bataar. You’re complaining about the opinions of the European intelligentsia toward Israel when Israel has the unqualified and unquestioning support of the entire US government. That’s like walking down the street with a pack of well-trained Rottweilers at your beck and call, then complaining that you feel threatened and discriminated against because of an aggressive yap from a toy poodle in a 4th floor window. Maybe because the US doesn't have as much guilt over the founding of Israel as Europe does. We didn't make it necessary as they did Are you saying that the treatment of Jews by Europeans made the founding of Israel “necessary”? By that standard, shouldn’t a homeland for Tutsis be equally necessary? There doesn’t seem to be any great rush to create a refuge for any of the other oppressed peoples of the world. Whether you want to believe it or not, Israel really is special. Its very existence is proof of that. The Jews of late 19th century Europe had no conceivable “right” to establish a State in Palestine, and no claim to that land that would have been anything but laughable for anyone else. They were granted the privilege of establishing a State, a privilege that had never been granted to anyone before under remotely similar circumstances, and has never been granted to anyone since under remotely similar circumstances. That’s special. The double standard you speak of emanates from a small number of angst-ridden intellectuals with no influence over anything. It is really a very minor phenomenon if you’re looking at the wider picture, and deserves very little notice; as far as I can see it only bothers you because you simply can’t bear any criticism of Israel (a difficult situation to be in with respect to any nation). To the minimal extent that the sentiment you speak of exists (and I think it exists to a far less influential extent than its opposite), it exists because Israel is a creation of the West, and the impotent fringe of Western intellectualism would like us to feel responsible for the behaviour of our offspring. Their case is generally wildly overstated and distorted by a partisanship almost as absolute as yours, but they do have some legitimate points that need to be considered. I can’t see them as any evidence that Israel is a victim a meaningful double standard. If you’d said that a double standard is applied against Israel in peripheral debate by European intellectuals and on the liberal fringe of Western academe in general, I suppose I’d have to agree. I’d take your word for it, at least. I wouldn’t know: I don’t pay any attention to European intellectuals and the liberal fringe of Western academe. As far as I can see, neither does anyone else. I see no return at all for the $2billion a year we pay to Egypt. Neither, as I said before, do I. If anyone does, I wish they’d explain it. I’m not quite sure what that has to do with the matter under discussion, though. our 'alliance' with Saudi Arabia is like hugging an adder. Very true, but if we stop hugging the adder it turns into a nest of bushmasters. Nasty problem, that, and I’ve seen no good solution proposed. One of these cases where you keep on doing what you’ve been doing because you have to do something and nobody can think of anything better to do.