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The New York Times had a typical front-page feature story entitled “2 Girls, Divided by War, Joined in Carnage.” It described Ayat al-Akhras and Rachel Levy. Al-Akhras was a suicide bomber and murderer, and Rachel Levy was one of her victims. The author, Joel Greenberg, writes, “Two high school seniors in jeans with flowing black hair, the teenage girls walked next to each other up to the entrance of a Jerusalem supermarket last Friday. . . . The vastly different trajectories of their lives intersected for one deadly moment, mirroring the intimate conflict of their two peoples.” Greenberg also quotes President Bush as saying, tenderly, “When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying, the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people.” Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yadda, yadda, yadda, ain’t we all nice and sociological and poetic
and all? But, in a way, the event did “mirror the conflict of the two peoples”: The one side wants to co-exist in peace; the other side is determined to murder Israel out of existence. If you think that the Palestinians merely object to a few settlements, you refuse to listen to them. People wonder what it would take to improve the situation in the Middle East. I think I know one thing that would help quite a bit: the defeat of moral muddle.
Like perhaps a few others, I have spent the last couple of days sort of appalled that our government will not permit Israel to defend itself, to protect its citizens from outright murder. That, of course, is the aim of Israel’s recent “incursions”: to stop such murder. No one told us that we had so many days — so many hours — to root out the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We took our sweet time — we committed to “as long as it took,” to borrow from an old rallying cry. The Israeli government is in a breathtakingly difficult position, having to scramble to kill or capture as many terrorists as possible, to confiscate as many explosives as possible, as the American clock is ticking and Bush is demanding “WITHDRAW NOW!” It will be complained that, as the financial benefactor of Israel, we have the right to call its tune. But we are equally the benefactor of Egypt. We, in fact, give more foreign aid to Egypt than to any other country (as per Camp David). Why does it seem to have all the sovereignty it needs? Why is it free of American dictates? Why, our government isn’t even interested in removing the anti-Semitic filth that daily floods the official — the official, mind you — Egyptian press. And we then, stupid us, wonder at the rabid hatred expressed by the Egyptian people, particularly the young. American officials — particularly Colin Powell — complain about Israel’s “humiliating” the Palestinians. Apparently no one in the administration worries about humiliating the Israelis by hampering their ability to defend themselves. A “senior administration official” told the press that Bush admonished Sharon that “Israel needs to make progress now.” By that, the senior administration official, and Bush, meant that Israel had to withdraw its forces, had to cease combating the terrorists. Funny thing is, most clear-headed people believe that “progress” is what Israel had been engaged in before being ordered by Bush to cease and desist. True progress does not come by withdrawing only to be killed again. And when innocent Israeli civilians are killed again — as surely they will be, particularly because the country hasn’t been allowed to disarm its enemies — will our government recognize that it has any responsibility whatsoever? Of course not.
You will recall that many people laughed at the first President Bush’s sentence fragments. “Don’t think that’d be prudent,” etc. Part of it stemmed from his reluctance to utter the word “I.” When he was growing up, his mother, Dorothy Bush, would say, “Now that’s enough of the great I am,” in quelling her boys’ boasting or self-regard. Neat.
And for the revocation of whose prize do Europe’s finest call? Peres’s, of course. Although I think that the foreign minister is possibly the most dangerous official in Israel, I’ll take Peres over Paris any day.
In the Sunday New York Times, there was an article on the matter, and it quoted from many Hispanic Americans angry over the Cartoon Network’s PC strictures. One of the complainers said, “Come on! What is America coming to? . . . I guess they’ll censor ‘West Side Story’ because they’ve offended us Puerto Ricans in Nueva York.” Actually, that’s already happened. I have just read, and reviewed, Paul Hollander’s bracing new collection, Discontents: Postmodern & Postcommunist (Transaction Books). Hollander is now professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Amherst is one of the most PC places in the United States, right up there with my hometown, Ann Arbor, Mich., and my current home, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (Actually, the Upper West Side is reminiscent of Provo, Utah, compared with Ann Arbor — but the line sounded good.) In his introduction to Discontents, Hollander tells of the canceling of West Side Story by an Amherst high school, on grounds that the show perpetuated stereotypes harmful to Puerto Ricans. Writes Hollander,
That’s Hollander, a brilliant and astringent scholar, and commentator, and man.
I started at a news item from my home state, explaining that Michigan State University has instituted a graduation ceremony for black students only (it’s called Black Celebratory — a nonsensical name for a nonsensical event). I then read that the ever-despicable University of Michigan had been providing for such a separate ceremony for about ten years, as do Eastern Michigan, Wayne State, and Oakland universities. Speaking to the Detroit Free Press, Nikki O’Brien, Michigan State’s “coordinator for African-American Affairs,” said, “The response of critics is indicative of white privilege, because they don’t really understand why this is a significant accomplishment for black students.” (Gee, they don’t make O’Briens like they used to.) According to the Free Press, “Supporters of the Celebratory said many black students are the first in their families to attend college, so the accomplishment takes on greater meaning for them, their relatives, and friends.” In reading this, I thought of this business of “white skin privilege” (as it’s usually known) and of a man I once worked with. He had been an assistant secretary of labor, I believe, and he had earned degrees at three of the best universities in the world: Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard. Being a prying sort, I asked him about his background. Turned out he had been reared in dire poverty in West Virginia — no running water, hardly any shoes, etc. Perhaps more to the point, he had no regular access to books — and then not to very many — until he was 14. Overcoming immense adversity — by dint of his own effort and wit — he succeeded. And yet, to a racialist, he will never be anything but a whitey — a beneficiary of white skin privilege, a card-carrying member of the “white power structure.” The children of Diana Ross will be thought more underprivileged than he. Amazing, and disgusting. Race, though important, is not all-important. My acquaintance will never be given a lick of credit. “First in one’s family,” indeed — I doubt that this West Virginian asked for a separate ceremony, either. The idea was to integrate, to join the American Dream. Didn’t that used to be the idea — Martin Luther King and all that? How did it slip away, so fast?
“Economic terrorism,” at such a time. Jesse L. Jackson, not long after Sept. 11, used that precise term in reference to the president’s budget policies. No decency. Simply no decency.
I’ll be seeing you. |
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very now and
then, I’m asked to summarize my objection to the Mainstream Media,
in one big gulp and whoosh. It’s hard. It’s an objection formed
over a lifetime of reading, watching, learning, thinking. But would you
like a tidbit? A crumb that gives an indication of the whole loaf, or
bakery?
Never
before have I been clearer on the fact that Israel is not truly a sovereign
nation, that it is a puppet of the United States, just as many radical
leftists have always claimed. At least this is true with regard to security
policy, with regard to matters of war and peace.
