Sullivan and Israel

To conservative (but sometimes sensible) blogger Andrew Sullivan, the destruction of Lebanon is justified as part of the existential struggle of the state of Israel. An email from me to Andrew:

So, just so I'm clear, you support this, right?:
http://visopsys.org/andy/cat/2006/08/Lebanon-pt-ii.html

Because Hezbollah attacked a military patrol on the wrong side of the border? That's the threat to Israel's existence?

(the whole "threat to Israel's existence" thing is laughable anyway. They could kill every Arab in the Middle East if they were allowed to)

Did you notice that Hezbollah only fires rockets at Israeli cities in *response*, and that the other day, they largely stopped when Israel paused its attacks?

You know as well as anybody that Olmert needed a provocation so that he could swing his dick around, proving his tough-guy bona-fides, because he didn't have the military resume of Sharon.

Ever been to Lebanon? I visited in November. It was becoming beautiful again. The Lebanese have worked so hard to put conflict behind them. They are a natural democracy. They are friends of America. They barely *have* a military, for crying out loud.

Israel are bullies.

No response to that. But then, maybe that's to be expected. To Andrew, people who oppose the actions of Israel are anti-Semites:

The current war is not only bringing out the Jew-haters in America, like Mel Gibson, but also in Europe. Yesterday, one of Norway's leading writers, Jostein Gaarder, author of best-seller "Sophie's World," with 26 million copies in print, wrote an astonishing op-ed in Aftenposten, Norway's leading paper. It's called "God's Chosen People."

Here's a translation of some of the Gaarder piece to which he's referring:

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep at its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism...

We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

I don't like the tone of this either, in that it's a bit overwrought, but that's all. Is it not legitimate to be enraged by what Israel is doing in Lebanon? To Andrew Sullivan, this is anti-Semitism. Some people, like Andrew, willfully refuse to recognize the difference between disagreeing with Israel, and racism. It's not that he doesn't know the difference, of course, and I don't even think it's necessarily malicious -- it's just intellectual laziness. If you're engaged in debate, and the person on the other side of the issue resorts to crude (and inflammatory) name-calling, it usually means they've run out of worthwhile arguments -- they want to shut you up. One way to end a meaningful debate in a hurry is to start calling the other person a racist.

Mr. Sullivan does have ideas about the current Hezbollah-Israel conflict, and here they are: The survival of Lebanon is a worthwhile cost of Israel asserting itself, and deterring Hezbollah from cross-border skirmishing. People of Lebanon be damned. Dead civilians be damned.

That's a legitimate position to hold (though I happen to stongly disagree), but let me turn Andrew's name-calling around on him: Mr. Sullivan has nothing but contempt for Arabs and Muslims, and displays a typically American (sorry!) combination of derision, arrogance, and ignorance. Even while he mocks them, he can't be bothered to learn the difference between a burqa and a hijab.

He didn't change his mind about the Iraq war until lots of Americans started dying. Tens of thousands of dead Arabs didn't really rate a second thought. Why? Maybe for the same reason he doesn't care about the suffering in Lebanon. But I wouldn't want to start name-calling.