Click here (FoxNews) for a take from the right.
Click here (MSNBC > thinkprogress) for a view from the left.
Your thoughts about this affair? Is it a tempest in a teapot? Or something more?
September 6, 2012
Unconventional?
Click here (FoxNews) for a take from the right.
Click here (MSNBC > thinkprogress) for a view from the left.
Your thoughts about this affair? Is it a tempest in a teapot? Or something more?
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6 comments:
“Quid est veritas?” “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence?” The first quote is from Pontius Pilate and the second is taken from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus. The truth is elusive and difficult to obtain. Post-modernism, the official and strictly enforced ideology of academia in the West, goes even further to deny that there is such a beast as truth.
I like the idea of posting the two poles of journalistic truth and opinion on the class website—Fox and MSNBC. True objectivity is humanly impossible and it is ludicrous to expect it. But it is not unreasonable to expect a person to reinforce his opinion with facts (whatever is meant by ‘facts’) and to be straightforward about his agenda. Oops, I just posted a politically incorrect grammatical boo-boo.
As for Israel, Daniel Pipes, who is considered an expert on middle-eastern affairs, writes that if someone gives him his (oops, there it is again!) position on Israel, then he, that is, Daniel Pipes, can with a fair degree of reliability, also predict that person’s position on economics, the culture wars, foreign affairs, etc.. In so far as Israel is the canary in the coal mine, that’s true. There’s been a huge paradigm shift in the last few decades with respect to Israel and anti-Semitism: the loci of Jew hatred has shifted from the Catholic Church and Europe to the Middle East and Islam, from the Christian right to the hard Left. This, I believe, is a fact. Nowadays if you encounter a hard-shelled Baptist he (oops!) is likely to be a strong supporter of Israel and the IDF. Israel knows this and is very assiduous in cultivating the good will of evangelical Christians in North America.
This is one of the many strange ironies associated with the State of Israel. According to the pundits and progressives of the nineteenth century, what with the Enlightenment and scientific advances of the time, religion as a driving force in politics and culture was supposed to disappear. As a matter of fact, it’s (i.e. religion) grown stronger than ever. This I owe to Phillip Jenkins, a religious sociologist who accurately predicted twenty years ago that religious civil war would erupt all along the fault lines where Dar-al-Islam encounters Dar-al-Harb. It’s truly fascinating, albeit frightening, to observe the intersection of religion (metaphysics and eschatology) and global events. The squabble over Israel in the Democratic National Convention, which the leaders of the Dems want to dismiss as a non-issue, is another instance of the same (remember Senator Dale Bumper’s speech quoting H.L. Menckin in defense of Clinton at the impeachment trial—if they say it’s not about sex, then that means is really is about sex! For ‘sex’ substitute ‘religion’.)
That’s why I am very pessimistic about the possibility of reason and information having much of persuasive impact. Images as our class website demonstrates are much more powerful as motivators of human actions than reason and words. The Oslo accords tried that and they were dead on arrival. Israel and the Arabs are just going to have to slug it out in Armageddon.
I hope we'll be talking about the US-Israel relationship and the power the Israeli lobby holds in the states in class.
-Elika
Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of the argument, the US included. It's as one of the articles said: it's bad to side with the idea of an undivided Jerusalem.
Traditionally, the US foreign embassies have been in the nation capitals (though there are usually some branches elsewhere in the country depending on the country), so I believe the US is being a bit dodgy by not sticking to its guns in this matter and keeping with tradition and with what it states is the location for the US embassy in Israel (1995). Mayhaps if the US moves the embassy to Jerusalem, they would be further supporting the desire to resolve the conflict and would have a fair bit of emphasis in the speed of change for the region, being that the US is one of the main world powers.
-Shaun
Jerusalem, the axis mundi, as we discussed briefly last week has huge iconic significance in the in the Western civilization. America, in bestowing official recognition on Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, would be granting legitimacy to the “Zionist” narrative. That’s not going to happen with the Obama administration. If the Bush administration, following ‘W’s’ reckless but admirable Texan instincts, declined to do so, the certainly Obama, who defines himself as the anti-Bush is most certainly not going to do that.
All party conventions are circuses. I think this whole deletion-reinsertion affair was a political non-event; I certainly don't think this is a sign of any major upcoming changes in US/Israel-Palestine relations. That said, I think the Democratic party's original language on the matter was far better, or at least more realistic. My own limited knowledge of the Israel-Palestine conflict leads me to believe that a two state solution is the only practical and moral way to resolve this whole thing. I'm fairly certain that this is what the President believes as well, and last I heard this was his and his administrations official position on the matter (I could be wrong about this). Well, the idea of exclusive Israeli title to Jerusalem in the context of a two-state solution is fantasy, and I think any serious foreign policy expert in either political party knows this. Just because you disagree with the idea of an exclusive Jerusalem doesn't make you anti-Israel -- the President obviously isn't anti-Israel. The rhetoric of both the Democratic and Republican parties during their conventions was fantastical and unproductive. But, like I said, party conventions are not and never have been places for serious talk.
-Nate
Powerful and insightful comments, folks... keep 'em coming (and, of course, keep 'em respectful)!
pdk
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