I know I usually reserve this blog for comment on Columbia-related issues, but it was really difficult to follow the news coming out of the Middle East this week without wanting to write something about it.
A recap for those of you who haven’t been following it: as part of a possibly misguided live-terrorists-for-dead-bodies swap, Israel freed quadruple murderer Samir Kuntar, a stain on the human race whose only detectable accomplishment involved killing a family of Israelis and savaging a four year old girl with a rock. Naturally he was given a hero’s welcome upon his return to Lebanon, where murdering a child with your bare hands is fine, so long as that child is Jewish. In Lebanon, the children you kill needn’t even be Israeli if you’re looking to elevate yourself to superstar status—just look who turned out for the funeral of Imad Mugniyah the monster (or rather Hezbollah military commander) responsible for the JCC bombing in Buenos Aires in the mid-90s. Apparently, any Jew will do.
But this isn’t merely a case of terrorist pathology seeping it’s way into a country psychologically battered by 25 years of more or less continuous bloodshed. Indeed, Kuntar was feted by the government of Lebanon itself—greeted by its president, dressed in military garb, walked down a red carpet. One can only imagine what the country’s officials and cabinet ministers must have said to him as they shook his hand and patted him on the back: “nice wrist action when you bashed that defenseless girl’s head in, Samir! You really showed her!”
This reveals more than just the moral equivocation—and worse, moral depravity—that accompanies an increasingly nihilistic modern-day anti-Zionism. It goes beyond that to mock moral relativism itself, to shatter the idea that nothing is wrong so long as it can be justified in context. I hate to sound like Bernard Lewis or Norman Podheretz, but to me the following statement couldn’t possibly be more obvious: there are societies that pin medals on racist child murders, and who see such people as symbols of national redemption and hope. And then there are the people and societies who will defend liberalism even—and especially—when they are being made a travesty of. Lebanon’s (and, while I’m at it, the Arab world’s) celebration of anti-Jewish barbarism is another reminder of the crossroads at which the Saidists now find themselves, even if they’re too self-absorbed to realize that such a crossroads even exists. In a very real sense, it’s a reminder of where all kinds of lines are drawn–and that those lines are there in the first place.
I am sick and tired of this being your attack on liberalism, Armin, and using the atrocities committed by others in defense of your own ideology of Zionism and elitism. Your blame of “The Arab World” is as irrational as blaming every German citizen for the Holocaust or every Russian for the purges. Obviously, obviously Kuntar, and anyone who praises his heinous acts, is a monster–and you are absolutely correct to point that out. But you, by extending your attack to the Arab world (and I suppose Islam as well) are in fact guilty of the very same logical fallacy that they are. Just as Kuntar degrades and dehumanizes the Jewish people, you do the same to Muslims and Arabs. Your rhetoric is EASILY extendable to justify the exact same attacks against Lebanon as they are doing right now to your people.
Rant done. I’m also done reading your foreign policy posts. From what I can see, I’m the last person to do that.
Said defender of liberalism,
On July 18, 2008 at 4:26 pm:
My what a silly comment. I don’t ever remember blaming “The Arab World” for anything; meanwhile your aside on my Islamophobia is a pretty bizarre interpolation on your part, since I don’t discuss Islam at all in this post. It’s an interpolation that arguably says more about the moral authority of being offended in our PC age (the whole “I’m offended, therefore you’re wrong” thing. The first-world version of the victim complex, perhaps?) than it does about anything I believe.
But I digress. The article I link to within the words “The Arab World” describes Mahoud Abbas’s approval of the prisoner exchange and congratualtions of Kuntar specifically. While Hezbollah’s recent blackmailing of the Lebanese people–with civil war, no less!–and grotesque use of a dead-bodies-for-an-unrepentatant-child-murder swap as (successful) political fodder should have given pause to progressive-minded Arab leaders and intellectuals, the exact opposite happened. Rather than expressing fearful revulsion at Hezbollah’s horrific co-opting of a major Arab state, people were positively giddy. From Al Ahram:
In Ras Al-Naqoura, the border town in South Lebanon where the five Lebanese prisoners were going to be delivered, a woman said, “we have no king, but Nasrallah is the emir [prince] of all Arabs.”
Thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese and Hizbullah flags fluttered across South Lebanon and in Beirut’s Al-Dahia district — Hizbullah’s stronghold — as resistance songs filled the air via loud speakers. The day also marked the first meeting of the newly formed Lebanese cabinet after a long period of domestic unrest that almost descended into civil war two months ago.
Newly elected Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the entire cabinet and a host of high-profile political figures were due to welcome the released prisoners at Beirut airport in a formal ceremony. Thousands of balloons and red carpets were stretched both in Ras Al-Naqoura, Beirut airport, and Al-Dahia for the reception as Lebanon declared 16 July a national holiday. (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/906/fr1.htm)
It doesn’t degrade or dehumanize anyone to point out how utterly mind-boggling that is. It would be a much greater disservice to the human race to obfuscate a hard-hitting discussion of the realities with ad hominem moral equivalencies and groundless accusations of bigotry–especially since you agree that Kuntar and his fans are “monsters.”
One last point, in the form of a question or two: what is the significance of Kuntar and his fans being monsters? Are they bad people in isolation, or does their badness speak to larger political, social and even moral circumstances? Is there nothing else we can say about this other than “Kuntar is a monster and to in any way implicate society at large is racist and Islamophobic?”
Said Armin Rosen,
On July 18, 2008 at 4:57 pm:
0☺☻♥♦♣♠•◘○◙♂♀♪♫☼►◄↕‼¶§
I still haven’t accepted the notion that Larry Silverstein is the son of Jehovah on this campus.
Satan, maybe, George W Bush, maybe, but….
Said Marvin L Foushee,
On July 18, 2008 at 12:02 pm:
I have to admit that the current situation in the Middle East is still a British, Crown government deck of cards—where the British and the Americans in 1948 had devised a Machiavellian plan to force the infidel Jews to accept Fango Fett as their person savior and Crown King in the time travel. It is quite an interesting plan, actually.
Said Marvin L Foushee,
On July 18, 2008 at 12:22 pm: