Warped perspectives

Richard Baehr sent me a link to a horrible Chris Hedges article painting Israel as a fascist state, with its hands dripping with the blood it wrenches from the innocent Palestinians over whom it exerts the most evil imperialist control. A couple of preliminary comments before I get to the meat of my own post about Hedges’ world view.

First, Chris Hedges has been popping up in the internet world lately because Zombie wrote a marvelous report about his debate with Christopher Hitchens over religion — Hitchens, of course, being a Leftie who has embraced wholeheartedly and intelligently the war against jihadism, but who clings to his aggressive atheism. Zombie nails why Hedges, an avowed Leftist and, in values, a secularist, would engage (apparently quite badly) in this debate:

Surprising as it might seem in a contemporary political landscape where mocking religion is an established liberal pastime, and where Christianity and spirituality are most often associated with conservatism, it was Hitchens — now loathed by the left for not toeing the party line over the Iraq War — who attacked religion, while the neo-Socialist, anti-patriotic, radical Hedges volunteered for the seemingly topsy-turvy position of having to defend spirituality and the existence of God.

How did this strange state of affairs come to pass? In one word: Islam.

The left — of which Hitchens was a part until recently — has always been anti-religion. But now, they’ve become caught in a philosophical bind: how can they promote multiculturalism — and by extension all non-Western cultures, such as fundamentalist Islam — if they condemn religion in general? Neocon pundits have since 9/11 frequently accused the left of being in bed with Muslim extremists, a charge which the left has vehemently denied. But with every denial their position was becoming more and more untenable, as the verbiage and narratives of Islamic radicals and “anti-war” progressives have grown to become virtually indistinguishable.

Someone had to take the lead and resolve the dilemma that the left had created for itself. And so it was Hedges who stepped forward in this debate to test the waters for the first time, taking what is for him (and the left) a revolutionary position: that spirituality and religion — with the noteworthy exception of organized Christianity — is good.

Now, at no point did Hedges state that he was performing this amazing flipflop specifically due to Islam. He didn’t need to say it — because Hitchens said it for him. In fact, Hitchens repeatedly tore the roof off of Hedges’ carefully constructed rhetorical edifice, saying aloud the exact thoughts that Hedges and the left didn’t want anyone to hear.

Second, Hedges’ scathing indictment of the Israeli reign of terror is a bit funny considering the stuff that’s coming from Palestinian mouths nowadays. Thus, the guys at Power Line quote from a true man bites dog story at Reuters:

“It’s very ironic but I’m relieved the Israelis have started a bombing campaign. The gunmen killing each other on the streets were forced to go into hiding,” said Mai, a Gaza housewife, referring to strikes aimed at halting rocket attacks on Israel.

***

“Many of these groups are now a burden on society. They were created to fill a security vacuum under the pretext of national resistance, said legislator Nasser Jum’a, once a leading member of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

***

Jum’a said ordinary Palestinians were so fed up with the armed groups “they now wish the Israeli occupation would take over in Gaza or hope for the return of Jordanian rule in the West Bank” to get rid of them.

***

In a poll conducted by the Palestinian independent pollster NearEast Consulting in the West Bank and Gaza in May, 70 percent of those surveyed said they feel more insecure since Hamas came to power last year.

All of the above is background, though. What I wanted to talk about was the fact that Hedges looks at the single nation in the Middle East that is the most free: that gives its Arab residents voting rights, while Jews have been expelled from almost all Muslim countries; that allows freedom of religion, all religions, while Muslim countries discriminate, often violently, against non-Muslims in their borders; that is a haven for openly gay people, who are routinely tortured and executed in places such as Iran; and that treats women with perfect equality, a concept utterly alien to other Middle Eastern countries. He looks at this nation, and he still manages to see the worst hellhole on earth.

As always when I read this type of weirdly delusional writing, I flash back to Helen MacInnes, one of the great writers of Cold War thrillers. Two of her earliest books, while describing Communists, are nevertheless eerily prescient of the apologizers for jihad who live in our times.

In Rest and Be Thankful, MacInnes has two American expatriates, women who have lived abroad in the elite world of modern literate, return to America and buy a ranch in Wyoming. Their plan is to turn the ranch into a writer’s retreat. Much of the book is taken up with the culture clash between the solid American values to be found in Wyoming, and the American hating values of the East Coast elite. While most of the young writers learn from the Wyoming people, since their allegiance to anti-Americanism is only skin deep, the one Communist in the bunch (who, of course, denies that he is a Communist) looks around and sees nothing but ugliness and despair. He is incapable of seeing America’s beauty and freedom. MacInnes has one of her characters say of this man “There is something evil in a mind that wishes ill-fortune on others who have done him no harm. I think it is all the more evil for disguising itself as idealism.” The book, which could have been written yesterday or today, and which accurately describes Hedges’ warped outlook, was written in 1949.

An equally accurate book, both in describing the Communism of the 1950s and the Leftism/anti-Americanism/pro-Jihadism of today is MacInnes’ 1950 book, Neither Five Nor Three. The story is simple: A man returns to New York from service in post-war Germany only to discover that Communists are trying to infiltrate the upscale magazine where he used to work, and that his former girlfriend is unwittingly embroiled in the plot. What makes the book so amazing to me is MacInnes’ description of the techniques the Communist infiltrators use. Here, she has a character discuss a man who denies that he is a Communist, but repeatedly submits very specific types of articles to the magazines that the comfortable liberal elite love to read:

In particular, he has been attacking the corruption of the American press, the menace of the FBI to our freedom, the hysteria of spy-hunting, the war-mongering of our draft laws. In general, if there is anything bad that he can magnify, he certainly does. If there is anything good about the United States, he never mentions it. If there are two interpretations to be put on any American problem, only the worse interpretation is made. He says he’s fighting for the oppressed and the exploited; but he never mentions slave labor in Russia [today, read the oppression of women and non-Muslims in Islamic states]. He talks of witch-hunting; but he never mentions purges in Eastern Europe [ditto]. He talks bitterly of intolerance; but he never mentions the Believe-or-Obey rules of Communism [ditto]. He speaks of peace most glowingly; but he never mentions that Russia has more soldiers and more equipment than any of the Western countries [think Twin Towers]. Yes, he talks of peace, while he is fighting a war in secret.

The same, of course, can be said regarding those in the West who bring their particular brand of animus, not just to America, but to Israel too. With regard to these people, whether they reside in newsrooms or ivory towers, I’m no longer inclined to give them the limited credit of being useful idiots, which excuses them on the ground that they’re malleable fools who don’t know what they’re doing. Nowadays, in the wake of 9/11, there is no excuse.

UPDATE: For more on warped perspectives, please read P. David Hornik’s scathing denunciation of the way in which Britain’s University and College Union has attacked Israel:

The UCU’s resolution “notes that Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement” and “deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.” It also “condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.”

The resolution does not include a single mention of: Palestinian terrorism against Israel; Israel’s total withdrawal from Gaza including the destruction of decades-old Israeli villages and even the exhuming of all Israeli graves; the 1993 Oslo agreement and Israel’s transfer of civil administration in the West Bank (and Gaza) to a Palestinian government that Israel created; Israel’s 2000 offer of full statehood to the Palestinians; or the fact that all universities now existing in the West Bank and Gaza have been established since Israel took control of these territories in 1967.

Gone, wiped from the record; in the UCU resolution, none of this ever existed. Israel engages in “invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests” out of sheer evil and malice; it has never witnessed waves of suicide terrorists blowing bus passengers, café patrons, and hotel guests to bits, thousands of rockets falling on towns and farms, or genocidal exhortations on official Palestinian TV—all of it Orwelled out of reality.