March 06, 2002

Tiptoe through the Guardian I

Tiptoe through the Guardian

I believe this rumination on the inevitable outcome of displaying the Ten Commandments in public wins the prize for the most fully-realized example of Guardian rhetoric and sophisticated analysis:

The logical limit of the Supreme Court's cowardly evasiveness in the face of religion's attack on the US constitution is its own eventual replacement by a kind of Christian Shari'a, in which adulteresses will be stoned to death, and swivel-eyed Pat Robertson will have his finger on the nuclear button.

I wish I could come up with a witty parallel statement about the logical limit of what would occur if people continue to write this way, but I'm feeling lazy. The brilliant Moira Breen has some amusing commentary on the whole article, but really, that sentence is all I need to remain amused for the rest of the day.

Here's a less whimsical and far less amusing piece of, erm, Guardiana, from bred-in-the-bone socialist Paul Foot, who believes that the solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is really quite simple. All you have to do is to identify who is "the oppressor" and who is "the oppressed," side with the oppressed, and it all falls into place. Of course he sees Israel as oppressor and the Palestinians as the oppressed in this "sophisticated" scheme; terrorism is simply "resistance." He dreams of a through-the-looking-glass world where the West imposes sanctions on Israel, and cheers on the "resistance" of the suicide bombers. Remember the 60s, when terrorism and "liberation" were seen as two sides of the same coin? Smash the state, and utopia blossoms: those were the days. Thankfully, people like Foot no longer have much of a say in running the world, and his plan has no chance of being put into practice, as he well knows.

He waves away "the bleating about anti-Semitism," saying of the "pathetic" supporters of Israel that "the sort of oppression they favour is the seed from which all racialism, including anti-semitism, grows." This is a variation on the idea that the Jews are to blame for their own persecution, which has a long and ignominious history. Foot's crude oppressor/oppressed dichotomy softens the rhetorical blow slightly for those inclined to think in such terms, perhaps; maybe I'm just bleating here, but championing the cause of those who wish to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth sounds like anti-Semitism to me, whether they are "the oppressed" or not. It really doesn't matter what you call it. We all know what would happen if Foot's plan of disarming Israel were implemented-- or if any of Israel's enemies were to be allowed to realize their cherished dream of an "Islamic bomb." The first is never going to happen, which is what makes Foot's fanciful, retrograde "analysis" of the "structure of the conflict" silly as only disingenuous rhetoric can be; the second is a very real danger, which is what makes his cavalier dismissal of Israel's security concerns abhorrent.

Here's Foot's "sophisticated" conclusion:

There is a solution to the Palestine conflict. It depends on the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disbandment of the settlements. Such a solution is easily within the grasp of western diplomacy, and would stop the killing.

No it isn't, and no it wouldn't. How's that for simplism?

Posted by Dr. Frank at March 6, 2002 11:34 AM | TrackBack