? It will be brutal | Main | Pomplamoose: Telephone ?
March 18, 2010
The problem, in a nutshell
This is what the IDF thinks will win hearts and minds in the West.
It won't.
A self-declared “green” army, the IDF recognizes projects that connect its soldiers with the environment.
Look, barn owls are awesome (at the link) but they are also entirely beside the point.
Almost nobody in the United States who supports Israel is much fussed about an impact on the environment if it means defending an embattled democracy, still less by yesterday's carbon emmissions hoax. And anybody in the United States yearning for a "green army" (most Leftists would describe this as a contradiction in terms) would already be convinced of Israel's virtue by now were they open to reason, justice, even naked self-interest, in the first place.
The Left is right about one thing: They do not despise Israel out of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is an excuse - for the paleocons, a reflex - but I expect the Left would hate Israel all the same if its first language were, say, Swedish. The key is to find a people other than the Jews who would have dared a democratic and socialist experiment in the desert, who would have attempted to found a polity grounded in equality in the midst of medievalism, barbarism and spiritual darkness.
The Left despises Israel not for its crimes (imagined, for the most part) but precisely for its virtues. The Left hates Israel because Israel is a democracy, because Israel supports the rights of minorities, because Israel defends the rights of women. Advertising the green credentials of the only country in the Middle East that isn't an environmental (economic, social, political and moral) disaster is a lost cause. If anything, it is more fuel for the fire.
The Left hates Israel because the Left hates itself. The Left is a suicide cult but - as with their shaheed brothers - they do not have the decency to top themselves quietly in a corner. Their plan is to take as many of us with them in as gruesome and pointless a manner possible.
Worse yet, Israel is itself largely a product of the Left. How else to explain Gaza, armed and aggrieved with a stated aim of genocide. In most normal history, Gaza would be green, prosperous and empty of evil squatters. The war would have been over fifty years ago and the Arabs, having lost, might have learned to live with their neighbours in peace.
Note to future civilizations: Think carefully before extending the franchise to the mob. It is not as if you haven't been warned. We were.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 18, 2010 08:08 AM
