Sunday, November 12, 2006
I'll Agree with Bush & CO on this one
We were right to veto that one-sided Security Council resolution about Israel's incursions into the Gaza Strip: while Israel may make some strategic mistakes and suffer from some ethical and moral lapses in its self-defense, which lapses should shame any Jew as we are supposed to be the "chosen people" holding ourselves to a higher standard not the "we Jews should be like any other nation" moral relativism standard of Zionism, Israel is a nation-state on the ground and has a right to some sort of self-defense. It would be one thing to ask Israel to hold to the highest standards in its defense actions, but there has to be some guarantee for Israel's security -- it is not fair to ask a nation to ignore attacks on it when no nation would really do so.
If the UN resolution had some mechanism to stop those rocket attacks from Gaza, then it would be fair to also ask Israel to withdraw post-haste ... but unless the UN plans to do something about the attacks on Israel, they shouldn't be asking Israel to just withdraw.
And note to UN-backers, et al -- the reason why many hate the UN and why we in the U.S. need to retain veto power is precisely because of one-sided resolutions like this. Although one can certainly argue that the US support of Israel is bad for both countries as it allows us to be the victim of anti-Semitic-based hatred of Israel but also causes Israel to be used as a whipping boy for anti-American sentiment (cf., these comments, many of which consider the latter reason to be why the US supports Israel, and should at least give pause to those who think, either as Zionists or anti-Zionists, that American politicians who support Israel are really "pro-Israeli" -- N.B. -- cf. earlier comparisons to those supporting righty-tighty causes against their best interest to victims of abuse who blame themselves for it, etc. -- if someone is egging you on to do things that are dangerous to yourself or using you as a whipping boy, they don't actually like you!), certainly if the UN wants to be credible both in the US and in any real sense, the member countries have got to stop using that organization as a "gang up on Israel to take out our anger about US hegemony" club ... there's so much that needs attention in this world and the prioritization of Israel as "problem #1" does bespeak a certain amount of anti-Semitism.
If the UN resolution had some mechanism to stop those rocket attacks from Gaza, then it would be fair to also ask Israel to withdraw post-haste ... but unless the UN plans to do something about the attacks on Israel, they shouldn't be asking Israel to just withdraw.
And note to UN-backers, et al -- the reason why many hate the UN and why we in the U.S. need to retain veto power is precisely because of one-sided resolutions like this. Although one can certainly argue that the US support of Israel is bad for both countries as it allows us to be the victim of anti-Semitic-based hatred of Israel but also causes Israel to be used as a whipping boy for anti-American sentiment (cf., these comments, many of which consider the latter reason to be why the US supports Israel, and should at least give pause to those who think, either as Zionists or anti-Zionists, that American politicians who support Israel are really "pro-Israeli" -- N.B. -- cf. earlier comparisons to those supporting righty-tighty causes against their best interest to victims of abuse who blame themselves for it, etc. -- if someone is egging you on to do things that are dangerous to yourself or using you as a whipping boy, they don't actually like you!), certainly if the UN wants to be credible both in the US and in any real sense, the member countries have got to stop using that organization as a "gang up on Israel to take out our anger about US hegemony" club ... there's so much that needs attention in this world and the prioritization of Israel as "problem #1" does bespeak a certain amount of anti-Semitism.
# posted by alberich @ 7:43 PM 
