Yet more on Rachel Corrie

Why write still more on this topic? That's a good question, given how tired readers of (and posters on) this site are of this whole issue. Especially given that those who support the likes of Rachel Corrie (who may have been naive, idealistic...insert your own adjective), who hardly expected to die in pursuit of her beliefs, conspicuously fail to acknowledge facts and evidence about the Middle east.

Or, as the author of the article from The Tablet puts it: "Even the bloody, intra-Arab strife coursing throughout the region hasn’t derailed the notion that the conflict in the Holy Land is the most significant conflict in the Mideast: It remains useful as a reflecting pool for a well-known variety of Western narcissism." Can't you just see it? The problem of Israel/Palestine really does go away (probably, in the eyes of these people, with the dissolution of Israel..but why worry about the fate of a further 6 million Jews? Okay, that's too cynical, even for this site, but still...), and suddenly, the anti-Assad forces win, or make peace, or something. Iran stops trying to develop nuclear weapons. China leaves Tibet...

Now I know that I'm a cynical, seen it all, sane lefty who's in his dotage (i.e., I'm retired), but we all know that's a load of utopian nonsense. Even if we manage not to impute extreme ideological motives (polite way of suggesting that these people are, at best, anti-Zionist), we all know that this is political tunnel vision at its most obvious. Perhaps the following comment from the article, that "The obvious advantage that Israel offers is that, compared to the rest of the Middle East, it is relatively safe" gives the clue. After all, where did the kidnapped reporter, Alan Johnston, go when released from captivity in Gaza (and he was kidnapped, despite his "friendship with the Palestinian cause" credentials)? That's right, Israel. Where "it is relatively safe".

Just how (politically) stupid can these people get? That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

By Brian Goldfarb.