Thursday, March 29, 2007

Stan finds Middle East hard to understand - shock !

(1) Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler and Kafka - Jewish people are great. Their culture is rich, they bake the best bread, tell the best jokes and in the face of millenia of hatred they have kept their faith alive.

(2) Israel is a deeply flawed country - their mistreatment of the Palestinians is shameful.

Apparently by saying (2) I'm anti-semitic, even though I believe (1).

When did it become impossible to criticize Israel ?

The Jews are more than Israel, and Israel is more than the Jews. In a similar way, just because I think American foreign policy (and American beer) suck, doesn't mean I'm anti-American.

I just don't get it. Maybe if I bang my head off the desk a few times it'll become clear. Wait a minute ...

(Thud) (Ow)

(Thud) (Ow)

(Thud) (Ouch)

Nope, still a mystery.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's not what I think the article is saying, but I'm not going to try and tease out the whole thing at this ungodly hour of the morning. He seems to be mostly talking about people who take a particularly extreme stance, which I doubt you do.

BTW, Spiked was founded by the Living Marxism lot, after LM got sued out of existence for lying to cover up Serbian atrocities, so personally, I count them as somewhere below the Daily Mail in my list of reliable publications, thus I wouldn't worry what they say anyway!

Stan said...

The actual story that got me in the posting mood was on the radio - this was the closest I could get in print.

Here's one from the Times : Mr Obama is being branded as unfit to govern because he said "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people."


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1588756.ece?openComment=true

Anonymous said...

Dude, that's America, they do things differently there! In the UK you're more likely to get the Respect bunch sucking up Hamas's collective posterior. Neither party are right.

Kenny said...

I'm with flit.

Stan said...

Good call - she's way smarter than me.

I'm not saying the Palestinians are right btw. - their indiscriminate shelling of Israeli settlements is a disgrace.

I'm going to do the only sensible thing and pull out of the Middle East post haste.

Now blogging on Doctor Who.