or was the state of israel itself palestinians' punishment for failures of diplomacy?
do tell. start by defining the term "Palestinian" in the context of the phrase "Palestinian failures of diplomacy."
i think your argument here is a red herring. and i'm trying to understand an analogy that puts palestinians in the place of american civilians relative to the state of israel in the place of terrorists.
american civilians:al-qaida::palestinians:israel
this is very strange, to my mind. the complementary analogy would be:
american civilians:palestinians::al-qaida:israel
it plays on our sense that the state of israel is a terrorist state, and then obliges us to imagine that american civilians are under the heel of al-qaida in the same way that palestinians are under the heel of occupation troops.
the more i think about this, the more i think there's something instructive about it. this is an exercise and coming off the top of my head, so hang with me, please. it may not work. i repeat: it may not work.
i think the analogy actually argues the opposite of your deployment of it. that is, does the oppression of jews over the last couple of millennia, and particularly the Holocaust, justify israeli repression of palestinians? here we can talk about the reality of jewish history and emotions and what we do about antisemitism without endorsing the terorism of the israeli state. why can i do that and *not* talk about the history of american foreign policy relative to the acts of al-qaida without endorsing al-qaida?
interestingly enough, the bush administration seems to have relatively little difficulty itself (in practice if not in rhetoric) seeing the connection between palestine, iraq, etc. and the WTC bombings while also recognizing the difference between the plo and al-qaida. sharon called arafat "our bin laden," but no one in the bush administration has done anything like that.
on the other hand, i'm listening to npr and the announcement of awards to the victims in the pentagon of purple heart and "freedom" awards (civilian equivalent). Rumsfeld said, "we can no longer count on wars being waged safely [sic] in their countries of origin." Shelby (i believe) said they received this award for their "courage, dedication to duty, and sacrifice." apparently, the united states understands these attacks as, well, acts of war in a way that seems to me to actually validate (in a roundabout way) the sense that they were legitimate war targets, certainly more effectively than any of the arguments i've seen on this list. michael lewis's NYT magazine piece does the same thing but even moreso. maybe we ought to be arguing with them rather than each other.
j
> From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 11:22:06 -0700
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Subject: Re: Sociology and Explanations (Re: Hitchens responds to critics
>
>
>> ... that we (willfully?) confuse a concern for
>> the role of truly twisted US foreign policy in the production of this
>> twisted act with justifying the act and blaming the victims.
>>
>> that's what i think is sad.
>>
>> j
>
> What if I spent my time analyzing Palestinian failures of diplomacy that
> have "resulted" in their inability to get a state? Wouldn't I be seen as an
> apologist for Israel?
>
> -- Luke
>