Middle East "Expertise"
Across the Bay has a long, informative post on the double-standards at work in blogger/professor Juan Cole's analysis of Middle Eastern history.
Here's how one of Cole's latest posts breaks down. He begins by linking to a story about how President Bush warned Israeli Prime Minister Sharon against settlement expansion, or as Cole prefers to call it, "large-scale land theft."
Rather than analyzing this development, he jumps into a long tirade linking Israel to September 11 and Islamic terrorism generally. He claims the September 11th terrorists' "stated purpose was to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel's crackdown on the Palestinians." That's completely misleading. The terrorists were primarily Saudi--none were Palestinian--and in this famous fatwa, the grievances related to Saudi Arabia clearly are most prominent. Complaints about U.S. policy in Iraq come second, while the offenses of the "Jews' petty state" get an obligatory mention third.
Next, Cole suggests Sharon failed at "any show of respect at all for the needs of the United States" after September 11th, because Israel continued to battle Palestinian terrorists. Some might argue that Israel was, in fact, serving U.S. needs by fighting terrorists with a similar ideology to those that attacked the U.S., and who helped legitimate high-casualty suicide terrorism in the first place.
Not Cole, though. He thinks "Congress should cut [Sharon] off without a dime until he stops stabbing the United States of America in the back with his aggressive expansionism." Thanks for sharing.
In any case, the spat over the Israeli construction plans between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem seems like a manufactured crisis, since the construction isn't even slated to begin until 2007. By emphasizing big settlement building plans now, even though they aren't scheduled to start for a long time and can obviously be changed, Sharon can pacify some of his more right-wing constituents in the Likud ahead of the disengagement plan. Ha'aretz correspondent Aluf Benn has some interesting analysis:
"It seems neither Sharon nor Bush had much to lose by displaying their disagreement. Sharon can show his rivals in the Likud that he isn't the Americans' yes-man; Bush can show his European and Arab friends that he isn't in Sharon's pocket."
Here's how one of Cole's latest posts breaks down. He begins by linking to a story about how President Bush warned Israeli Prime Minister Sharon against settlement expansion, or as Cole prefers to call it, "large-scale land theft."
Rather than analyzing this development, he jumps into a long tirade linking Israel to September 11 and Islamic terrorism generally. He claims the September 11th terrorists' "stated purpose was to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel's crackdown on the Palestinians." That's completely misleading. The terrorists were primarily Saudi--none were Palestinian--and in this famous fatwa, the grievances related to Saudi Arabia clearly are most prominent. Complaints about U.S. policy in Iraq come second, while the offenses of the "Jews' petty state" get an obligatory mention third.
Next, Cole suggests Sharon failed at "any show of respect at all for the needs of the United States" after September 11th, because Israel continued to battle Palestinian terrorists. Some might argue that Israel was, in fact, serving U.S. needs by fighting terrorists with a similar ideology to those that attacked the U.S., and who helped legitimate high-casualty suicide terrorism in the first place.
Not Cole, though. He thinks "Congress should cut [Sharon] off without a dime until he stops stabbing the United States of America in the back with his aggressive expansionism." Thanks for sharing.
In any case, the spat over the Israeli construction plans between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem seems like a manufactured crisis, since the construction isn't even slated to begin until 2007. By emphasizing big settlement building plans now, even though they aren't scheduled to start for a long time and can obviously be changed, Sharon can pacify some of his more right-wing constituents in the Likud ahead of the disengagement plan. Ha'aretz correspondent Aluf Benn has some interesting analysis:
"It seems neither Sharon nor Bush had much to lose by displaying their disagreement. Sharon can show his rivals in the Likud that he isn't the Americans' yes-man; Bush can show his European and Arab friends that he isn't in Sharon's pocket."
posted by Josh
at 3:41 PM
2 Comments:
You forgot to mention one of the most convincing reasons to counter the assertion that demagogues repeat that the 9/11 attacks were in response to Americas support of Israel. The 9/11 attacks must have gone into their intensive stage of planning in the summer and Spring of 2001 - the exact time when Palestinian and Israeli negotiators were doing their best to hammer out a final status agreement that would have resolved the conflict. That fact obviously did not deter the jihadists and would not have detered them from carrying out the attack even if a full fledged peace treaty had been signed and Palestinian grievances against Israel were no longer.
Summer and Spring of 2000 -- Yes, good point.
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