spinbadz own

Reading the latest offering - and many items - by left-wing Ha'aretz journalist Amira Hass arouses a number of ideas, including the one behind this tract from a blog I wrote last year:

... (T)he Ottoman boundaries in the Middle East disappeared following the defeat of Turkey in WW1. The countries carved out of the area by the French and the British in 1918 have, by and large, survived to the present day.

In the 1930s and 40s the map of Europe changed in the face of Hitler's WW2 advance, and was then restored by the Allies' successful counter, culminating in the division of Germany into East and West after the war.

That division of Germany is now as passe as Mesopotamia, Siam and Gaul, all of which loomed large on human maps at various times over thousands of years.

In a philosophical sense national borders are but creations of our imagination, as is the very concept of "country" itself.

Arguments purporting ultimate truth in such matters can be obscene, often inspiring futile and bloody battles. Fairness, reasonableness and good-heartedness are not simply esoteric ideals but, I believe, ultimately very helpful in the serious business of divvying up this planet we all share.

This kind of reasoning seems lost on Ms Hass.

Clearly, part of the sub-text of her latest attack on Israel's security fence is that (left-secular) Palestinian land-ownership claims are legitimate, while Israel's are illegitimate: white and black. Good and evil.

From whence the writer's acutely state-critical feelings arose is not my concern, though it intrigues me how or whether she genuinely rationalises (as symbolically unbalanced and unfair) her ability and right, as an Israeli, to proffer anti-mainstream Israeli opinon to an Israeli audience through the organ of an Israeli newspaper, operating under the auspices of her imagined ugly Israeli state - even while no Israel-sympathetic body of journalistic opinion can operate on the Palestinian side, even while Palestinian media organs flagrantly advertise, on TV, recruitment of shahid-lemmings to dismember themselves amidst crowds of Jews, and even while great swathes of Palestinian propaganda at many levels lionise these blow-up heroes (while dehumanising the slaughtered Jewish innocents, except to the extent of their "evil").

Such shahid-lemming sponsors of course reject out of hand the 1947 division of Palestine Ms Hass purports to revere, the same division that was rejected out of hand by Palestinian Arabs in 1947, but which Arabs and Jews alike may assert meaningful majority support for at any time within the democratic electoral institutions established and nascent amongst Israelis and Palestinians, but absent in most of the Arab-controlled Mazrach and Magreb.

Those same democratic institutions that protect Ms Hass's right of opinion, as well as the rights of opinion of over one million Israeli Arabs.

The same institutions missing from Israel's neighbours, where Jews cannot live freely and safely, and where utterence, let alone publishing, of an anti-authority - let alone pro-Israel (!) - opinion may be treated with extreme prejudice.

Even in the case of a former Prime Minister, like Lebanon's Rafik Hariri.

In every Israeli election over nearly 60 years, persons with views like Ms Hass have been able to run and have been roundly, electorally, rejected. Tailwhacked, in fact.

Moreover, in recent elections an Israeli public only too mindful of the "he-is-a-war-criminal" hatred of Ariel Sharon propagandised through much of the world, has elected and re-elected, approved and re-approved, that man, his party, his government, and his ideas - for all his well-known and much-highlighted faults.

What can be the reason for this? Is it because the Israeli body politic is stupid, paranoid, misled, all of the above - as per the view of the Hass's, Pilgers, Chomskys and Fisks of the far left?

Perhaps it's because a range of matters other than those thought to be of prime importance by such commentators have - legitimately - influenced the majority of Israelis. Perhaps it's these commentators who are paranoid, stupid, blinkered, biased, all of the above. There is strong precedent. The bogus projection of one's own ill-intent upon an opponent was a favourite method of Stalin, and a recommended recipe of Machiavelli.

Minus the said projection elements, we can agree with Ms Hass about the widespread "justified personal dread" of terrorist acts sensed by the majority of Israelis, those present-day descendants of the Israeli majority who sensed a genuineness of intent and purpose from Anwar Sadat when he initiated peace moves between Egypt and Israel in the late '70s. At that time Israel of course agreed to the transfer of oil-rich and bigger-than-Israel Sinai to Egypt.

Both then and now a Likud-led government, the loathed bane of Ms Hass and her lunar colleagues, headed (and heads) Israel.

The present government is seen by the Israeli body politic to have concocted the concept of the security fence as a response - a somewhat effective and satisfying response - to anti-Jewish terrorists. That government chooses not to equate, as per Ms Hass's (serious?) prescription, anti-Jewish terrorism with generic male abusers of women.

It is of course a stupid equation, an insane argument. It is not practical, reasonable, effective or within the ballpark of credibility to suggest employment of the same methods used by the Israeli government and army in the trans-generational war with Palestinians as appropriate means for the prevention of male abuse of women in society at large.

As ridiculous as it seems to even put pen to paper on such a topic, in today's world a regular stream of such twistedness flows from the pages of Ha'aretz, from Britain's Independent, from Reuters, from European and world mainstream media.

Just this morning we hear - from everywhere - that American anti-Bush fanatic George Soros has surmised and declared, in criticising the US government, that "(t)he attitude of creating innocent victims creates terrorists", thus ignoring the deliberate "attitude" of the terrorists who "created" the innocent 9/11 victims, and the obvious implications of his reasoning in application to that event.

From Amira Hass it's a similar formula. Excuse and "explain" fanatic malice. Imagine and highlight malicious sub-text in the attacked party's response. Underline the human tragedy on the client's side, ignore the human tragedy on the adversary's.

Ignore the fact that, in this new world of information empowerment, many readers are equipped and willing to dispute the ridiculous, to call stupid stupid and biased biased. To assume their own versions of subtext, and to suggest their own ideas for achieving a better world, ideas that in some cases may take into account the rational feelings of the majority, rather than the emotional rantings of a minority accustomed to dealing with a captive audience.