Saturday, June 5, 2010

On The Rise: Israel Derangemet Sydrome

Andrew Sullivan is doing some excellent blogging in the aftermath of the Israeli slaughter of the civilians on the Gaza aid flotilla.  In this post, he outlines the symptomatic beliefs of those suffering from the "Israel Derangement Syndrome":

A country permanently occupying and colonizing a neighboring region, and treating its original inhabitants as dangerous interlopers, is the victim.

An elite commando unit attacking a ship carrying toys and wheelchairs in the hours before dawn are those we should feel pity for.

A country with 150 nuclear warheads and the strongest military in its region, the victor in every conventional war it has always fought, is somehow also always fighting for its very existence.

A country backed by the sole superpower, supplied with aid by huge majorities in the U.S. Congress, is facing extinction.

Self-defense requires not civilly disabling and inspecting the cargo of an unarmed ship but raiding it at dawn and killing nine and injuring dozens.

Basic human revulsion at a military that can kill over a thousand people - including scores of women and children in a trapped, impoverished enclave - can only be a function of anti-Semitism.

A territory that is being systematically populated with Israelis in illegal settlements in contravention of the Geneva Conventions is merely a "buffer zone". You need to colonize buffer zones?

Invasion and occupation of neighboring countries is "forward defense".

This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the "tribe".  Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable.

No comments: