This is going to be an ugly Fray, I'm afraid.
I haven't read that book yet. It's becoming increasingly clear that I need to, given the frothing I see on both sides of the issue, just so I can properly choose which side I'm on. Which I haven't, yet. No matter what it sounds like in the rest of this post.
...honestly, there are lots of grounds for discrediting that book which I've heard addressed so far, and the argument made here is the least convincing of them.
Yes. A "Second Holocaust" would be a bad thing. I won't even quibble much about the term, though I'm uneasy about the assumed equivalency of the historical event and the prospective one - a full nuclear attack (why *just* do Tel Aviv) could well be worse, and the ability of Israel to retaliate does put a different spin on things despite this author's insistence otherwise. I suspect, if it happens, there will be a more appropriate name coined.
A bad thing for the participants, no doubt, but also a complete disaster for the US and the rest of the non-Muslim world. If Islam can be interpreted as dictating nuking your religious enemies, can any Muslim civilization more advanced than 19th century technology be tolerated? Not saying that war to the knife would necessarily follow, but the precedent would be set, and the policies which would follow would be catastrophic.
Here's the thing - not wanting a "Second Holocaust" does not mean that I have to agree with anything that the State of Israel does. Nor does it mean that whatever Israel's lobbyists work for must also be in the interests of the US, just like I do not believe that, say, Saudi or Chinese or Iraqi lobbyists (they've started to show up - even had their own talking heads showing up for the Petreaus hoopla last week) have America's interests at heart.
And yes, I do think that Israel's internal organization and policies are morally repugnant. Personally, I find Jimmy Carter's analysis most accurate, that Israel has evolved its own "apartheid" state. Driven to it by historical happenstance to some great degree, but it is what it is. South Africa was a "democracy" too... but we arranged sanctions for them, not billions of dollars of aid.
Just being a possible target does not give one the right to do anything at all. Being a victim of some previous injustice does not sanction doing injustice, even of a much lesser sort.
This article would have it that this is a double standard in this case, that somehow we can not legitimately be morally repulsed by the actions which the Israeli government and particularly some of its leaders have taken. These are apparently just "choices" forced on them, and we only condemn them because they are Jews. If, say, a bunch of northern European Christians with funny accents were doing the same things, we wouldn't mind.
Get a clue. We condemn everybody in the Middle East who is trying to solve problems through violence and repression and intimidation. Is Hamas worse than Israel? Probably. Is Iran? Certain leaders, sure, its system... ask me again in five years. Staking out your territory as victim does not incur special privileges.
If you want to destroy that book, bring me some factual criticism. (One of those links at the beginning of the article goes to such discussion. Not all of them.) But this... this article is almost as slimy as it claims that book is.
Gawd, I'm gonna get flamed.
Well, while I'm making enemies, I might as well toss one more off - the ethanol lobby is just as corrosive to US interests as foreign lobbyist groups. But that's another mess entirely.
-Ked
