The Great Conflator

Michael Hirsch on Bush in the Palestinian territories:

Enough already. We've had a president who was the Great Emancipator. And another who was the Great Communicator. Bush is the Great Conflater. In his first term he conflated the threat from Al Qaeda with the threat from Saddam ("You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," Bush said in September 2002), and then tossed groups like Hizbullah and Hamas into the mix (though their goals were markedly different from Al Qaeda's). Now Bush is suggesting that all the problems he lumped in together can be solved by an equally lumpy panacea of freedom and democracy.

If hollow sloganeering were an adequate substitute for serious American leadership freedom would, of course, have been on the march long ago. On the specifics of the Palestinian issue, Bush's conflation of freedom, democracy, and self-determination are especially dangerous since he plainly has no intention of taking any of the steps that might actually lead to the creation of an independent Palestine as the main impact at this point is to simply re-enforce the idea that high-flying American rhetoric is just a mask for violence against Arabs.

Comments

1. "On the specifics of the Palestinian issue, Bush's conflation of freedom, democracy, and self-determination are especially dangerous since he plainly has no intention of taking any of the steps that might actually lead to the creation of an independent Palestine as the main impact at this point is to simply re-enforce the idea that high-flying American rhetoric is just a mask for violence against Arabs."

I would be interested to know that steps Mr. Yglesias has in mind that President Bush or his successor could take to accomplish this goal. Other then of course demanding that the Government of the State of Israel agree to go out of business, which is the only "solution" that the Fakistinians will accept.

Posted by SLC | January 11, 2008 9:20 AM

I have always wondered where Bush got his deep knowledge of "freedom and democracy". from the evangelicals? from Karl Rove? Cheney? Libby? Gonzalez? maybe from his careful study while at Yale? or when he was AWOL fom the National Guard? or on Barbara ("let them eat cake") Bush's knee? Wherever he got this love from it is very touching how deeply abiding it has been.

Posted by della Rovere | January 11, 2008 9:31 AM

SLC is a master of vile prejudiced hatred. SLC, you miserable prejudiced wretch, the name is "Palestinians."

Posted by Jennifer | January 11, 2008 9:34 AM

SLC, you wretch, stop the prejudiced lying.

Posted by Jennifer | January 11, 2008 9:36 AM

Several Israeli leaders (and Bush) have agreed recently with the idea of an independent Palestinian state. It's going to happen eventually.

Bush, of course, has spit to do with the transition but he sure would love for the event to happen on his watch.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 11, 2008 9:39 AM

"I would be interested to know that steps Mr. Yglesias has in mind that President Bush or his successor could take to accomplish this goal. Other then of course demanding that the Government of the State of Israel agree to go out of business, which is the only "solution" that the Fakistinians will accept.

Posted by SLC | January 11, 2008 9:20 AM"

You have to love how SLC gets this same rant into every Israel-related post. It's even better coming from a guy who admits hating Israelis and not ever wanting to go to Israel because he thinks Israelis are assholes.

Posted by Reality Man | January 11, 2008 9:43 AM

Please don't feed the troll.

Posted by Joel | January 11, 2008 9:51 AM

I will stop being crazy when I see the back of my own ear.

Posted by SLC | January 11, 2008 9:55 AM

Hollow sloganeering? By a politician?

On the specifics of the Palestinian issue, Bush's conflation of freedom, democracy, and self-determination are especially dangerous since he plainly has no intention of taking any of the steps that might actually lead to the creation of an independent Palestine.

No doubt he has no intention of taking any big steps. But those steps are not his -- not ours -- to take. We can only push and pull. The steps have to be theirs.

And one more thing. I know Bush has earned the cynicism, but since when do Americans think it's dangerous to conflate "freedom, democracy, and self-determination" as the way forward for the world?

Posted by JA | January 11, 2008 9:58 AM

Re SLC (the phony one)

Mr. SLC (the phony one) is about as humorous as AIDS.

Re Reality Man

Maybe it's because if the State of Israel goes out of business, the Israelis will end up over here.

What's even more amusing about President Bushs' visit is his endorsement of Prime Minister Olmert. Not surprising, considering the total lack of competence shown by both men in conducting their adventures in Iraq and Lebanon respectively. Birds of a feather flock together.

Posted by SLC | January 11, 2008 10:33 AM

Hey SLC, AIDS IS funny! It's been over twenty years.

Posted by Trey Parker & Matt Stone | January 11, 2008 10:41 AM

Actually, SLC - while his language may be colorful - is 100% correct. The notion of a "Palestinian" nation or "Palestinian" people is an utter historic fabrication.

Here's a test: Can any of you identify a point in time during which there was an independent "Palestine"? Was there ever a "Palestinian" currency? Was there ever a "Palestinian" government? What is analytical difference between "Palestine" and "Jordan", which was unilaterally carved out from the Palestine Mandate as a reward to a Bedouin clan that had assisted the British fight the Turks? Where did the name "Palestine" came from? Why was it that all of the leading Arab/Moslem historians and intellectuals, in testimony before the various international commissions established to determine the disposition of the Palestine Mandate, testified that the notion of "Palestine" was a Western colonial artifact, that there was no such thing as a "Palestinian" people, and that "Palestine" was actually part of Greater Syria? And why was it that before 1964 or so, and certainly before Israel was declared, the word "Palestinians" was used solely in reference to the Jews? Any guesses?

Here's the truth: The primary marker of, and in fact, the foundational principle, of Arab "Palestinian" identity is anti-Semitism. Prior to the 1920s (and still today throughout the Mid-East) the Arabs identified first with their clans, and then with their villages. The notion of the "nation" of Palestine did not exist. Beginning during the 1930s, drawing on the basic organizational principles of European facism and helmed by the Mufti of Jerusalem (who played a major role in the German's "Final Solution" to the European Jewish Question), and then again in the 1960s, with the help of the Soviet Union and money from the UN, Arab elites manufactured "Palestine", and built a (dysfunctional) polity using Jew-hatred. To this day, the core of being a "Palestinian" means hating Jews: its what they preach in their mosques, and its what they teach their kids in school.

The people are there, and like all other peoples (including the Jews), they deserve the right to self-determination and peace - assuming that they refrain from making war on their neighbors. But please, at least get your facts right.

Posted by Eagle613 | January 11, 2008 10:51 AM

Exactly what is your point, Eagle? Since, as you say, the Palestinians have the right to self-determination, is there any relevance at all to how the concept of "Palestine" came to be?

And are you really saying that calling them "Fakestinians" is correct? Seems a little incoherent with self-determination.

Posted by AlanC9 | January 11, 2008 11:15 AM

Can any of you identify a point in time during which there was an independent "America"? Was there ever an "American" currency? Was there ever an "American" government?--Lord North, circa 1776

Posted by rea | January 11, 2008 11:17 AM

Eagle613,

I find the questions you raise about the Palestinians less interesting than why they should matter for any issue related to the Israli/Palestinian question. Suppose that Palestinians did only find identity due to their hatred of jews, and they are simply generic arabs, would this mean that it is acceptable for them to continue to live under occupation which is then pretended to be peace? Would it justify cleansing them from Israeli occupied territory because they can't use the name Palestinian anymore?

These questions seem to presuppose a view that there are legitimate people types, and that each such people type deserves to have its own country, so Israel is justified as a jewish state. But if Palestinians are really just arabs then they should move to an arab state. But that view is just idiocy. Is the question of whether the Palestinians represent a distinct subset of arabs or not (what you oddly call an analytic distinction) relevant to any issues that do not presuppose idiocy?

Posted by Lon | January 11, 2008 11:22 AM

I'm kind of hoping that somehow Bush Jr's hollow statements about the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories having to end manages to p*** off the already deranged neo-Khan network that worships him.

Posted by El Cid | January 11, 2008 11:50 AM

(1) Truth always matters - how do you expect to do analysis or solve a problem without it? If you assume that the Arab "Palestinians" are a genuine, Western "nation," then the Arab-Israeli dispute seems amenable to a solution based on a land split (ala India - Pakistan, which BTW led to the forcible transfer/relocation of tens of millions of people), and causes some well-meaning people to focus on "occupation." "Occupation" is a red herring; the Arabs have repeatedly been offered land splits the past 70 or so years, and have accepted none of them. And there is nothing in the historic record that suggests the rejection has ever had ANYTHING to do with concerns about the precise location of a border split, or worries that the exercise of "Palestinian" national "rights" (voting? freedom of religion? democracy?) would be frustrated by yet a third partition of the Palestine Mandate.

On the other hand, if you acknowledge the facts, and recognize that the "Palestinians" are not a "nation" in the Western sense, then you must come to terms with the fact that the dispute has nothing to do with land or borders or "refugees", but rather with the Islamist rejection of the very concept of Jewish self-determination. The Islamist position is what makes the dispute so intractable, and it is why the organizing principle of "Palestinian" identity is fundamentalist anti-Semitism - it was/is the only over-arching idea all of the different clan groups could/can accept. Take away anti-Semitism, and the idea of a "Palestinian people" translates into Gaza.

(2) AlanC9 states: "And are you really saying that calling them "Fakestinians" is correct? Seems a little incoherent with self-determination." Well, yes, empirically it is defensible to call them "Fakestinians", but no, its not incoherent with self-determination. All of the Arab countries (except for Egypt) are total fabrications. "Palestine" would be no different in this respect than Syria, or Jordan, or Iraq, or Saudi, or the UAE. As the Islamists themselves point out, the notion of separate Arab "nation states" is a Western colonial construct. If you are going down that road anyway, why not create one more?

(3) REA's attempted equation of Colonial America with the Middle East demonstrates a lamentable degree of intellectual imprecision, cultural insensitivity, and/or stone cold ignorance.

(4) Lon - the source of "Palestinian" identity matters a great deal. If in fact "Palestinian" identity was/is formed around Jew-hatred, then there is no empirical basis for believing the violence will end no matter what the Jews do (and if the Jews were to disappear tomorrow, what do you think you'd get? Switzerland? Saudi Arabia? Iran?) IMO, if "Palestinians" actually WERE a real, Western style nation, then the dispute would have been resolved years ago. Don't delude yourself - until the "Palestinians" have something to hang their polity's hat on besides anti-Semitism, their society is going to continue to be rife with corruption, violence, poverty, social repression, dictatorship, and brutality.

Posted by Eagle613 | January 11, 2008 12:16 PM

These pro-Israel trolls are being very silly. The Palestinians are the philistines of the Bible, of course, they've been there since before the Christian era. (The ancient Greeks used to mispronounce foreign words, changing several consonents, including the "p" sound, to an "f" - hence the English orthographic convention of spelling a Greek "f" sound with "ph" to let you know it might not really be an "f" in the original.) "palestine" and "pilistine" is the same word.

Posted by Diana | January 11, 2008 12:37 PM

Eagle613,

It is certainly true that if one assumes that Palestinians are not real people, but characters in a poorly written novel who only serve the purpose of glorifying the main group (say like anyone but the heroes in an Ayn Rand novel) then that would make a difference. But that is a pretty ludicrous assumption.

Whether Arab hostility towards Israel is based on an objection to Israel existing on traditionally arab territory or on traditionally Palestinian territory, however, seems besides the point.

The problem is that the majority of Palestinians alive today in Gaza and the West Bank have lived under nothing but occupation, so when they act like people who have lived their entire lives under occupation, it becomes hard to attribute those actions to something other than the fact that they have lived their entire lives under occupation.

That does not mean that Palestinians are not in fact stock characters from B movies of the '30s, it just means that since their actions are all pretty much understandable in terms of their occupation, their actions do not give any support to the stock character hypothesis.

Whether Palestinians are distinct from Arabs would seem relevant towards whether they would accept being part of a Jordanian state instead of independence, and whether there would be Palestinian populations within another Arab country like Jordan. The reality in both cases seems to support the sense that Palestinian is a real identification and not something dreamed up because Arabs define themselves according to jews rather than according to themselves as do all other human beings.

So is your point at the end that corruption, violence, poverty, social repression, dictatorship, and brutality are something unique to anti-semites? As you note, if the jews were to disappear tomorrow, the arab world would still be the arab world. So your hypothesis that these problems in the arab world are a result of some arabs defining themselves based on anti-semitism would seem to be wrong on your own terms.

But certainly one would never see such fights festering in true western style nations unless you count all of the similar fights that festered through most of the history of western nations.

Posted by Lon | January 11, 2008 12:40 PM

"The notion of a "Palestinian" nation or "Palestinian" people is an utter historic fabrication."

That statement goes against the entire historiographical scholarship on Palestine and Israel. It is pure myth.

Any study of Palestinian textbooks for schoolchildren in the first decades of the 20th century reveal a distinct Palestinian identity.

Posted by Rickm | January 11, 2008 12:51 PM

The real issue here is three things

1. Israel has to agree to give up 95% of the West Bank and swap land for the remaining 5%.

2. Israel has to agree to give control of some neighborhoods of jerusalem to palestinans.

3. Palestinains need to reverse 100 years of indoctrination that israeli Jews are subhuman animals who deserve to be salughtered and agree to let them live in peace given the borders denoted in 1 and 2 above.

Now given most Israelis are in favor of 1 and 2 and the Palestinians were offered 1 and 2 by Barak in 2000, we have a problem that the Palestinians refuse to do 3.

Posted by Dave | January 11, 2008 1:52 PM

All of the Arab countries (except for Egypt) are total fabrications.

And Israel isn't?

Ooh, but you can't say that, because that's 'denying the right of Israel to exist', when its legitimacy is entirely constituted within the spectrum of legitimacy held by any modern nation state. The 'b-but it was in the Bible!' line butters no parsnips, unless you're looking to carve out the Land of Nod.

The nation state is the modern fabrication of governance, regardless of what kind of 'construct' you flap around. Selectively arguing against the legitimacy of nation states is just disingenuous.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 11, 2008 1:52 PM

Dave,

Wow Israel has agreed to give the Palestinians control of 95% of their territory in the West Bank? That is almost as much as they control in Gaza where they control all but their borders. Of course that led to a humanitarian crisis recently when religious pilgrims were not able to cross that border because the Israelis were afraid they were bringing in money.

But the Palestinians in the West Bank are not jumping at the offer to get to live like Palestinians in Gaza as long as they call it peace. How stubborn of them.

Posted by Lon | January 11, 2008 2:54 PM

For the record, the region has been known as 'Palestine' ever since the Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea 'Syria Palestinia' following the Jewish Revolt of 132-135 AD.

And, as has been pointed out, the name comes from the Philistines. Who, if I'm reading my Bible correctly, were there since the end of the Bronze Age.

The Palestinians themselves, of course, aren't descended from the Philistines (any more than the English are descended from the Normans). They're the descendents of the people who stayed in the region rather than join the Diaspora and eventually converted to Islam.

But what-the-hey! Googling on something is so very boring and time-consuming when you've got a gutful of hate to regurgitate, eh?

Posted by Tony J | January 11, 2008 3:03 PM

Weren't the Sunnunus (of the very same major Republican family, however it's spelled) an old wealthy Palestinian merchant family hailing from Jerusalem before they moved to what is now Lebanon?

By Eagle's standard, there are no actual nations in the Americas and no African nations. As the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire has shown, an identity (such as ivorite) can spring up rather quickly. What really separated Colombians from Peruvians and Venezuelans 200 years ago? Meanwhile, one of the most intractable conflicts in the world is taking place within a single nation that is one of the homogeneous on earth: Korea. Ghana's name comes from an earlier kingdom that existed to the northwest of where Ghana is now, but that doesn't make Ghanian identity fake.

Also, the 95% deal was pretty crap. In addition to the border issue (allowing trade through one's borders is part of what separates a country like the US from one like North Korea), a lot of the best land, water resources, transportation infrastructure, etc. would likely still be controlled by Israel. Would we accept the British still controlling pockets within the continental US, as well as the relevant transportation and infrastructure frameworks? Of course not, so why should the Palestinians? Just because a few psychos, in the presence of a political crisis and sometimes seeing their friends die as "collateral damage" (Israeli forces that have foiled suicide bombing attempts and have interrogated the intended bombers have found a lot of them have been close to somebody who died), have decided to go the martyrdom, kill people on a bus route instead of the Jeffrey Dahmer or Seung-Hui Cho route doesn't mean the Palestinians deserve less sovereignty than the rest of us.

Posted by Reality Man | January 11, 2008 3:23 PM

Eagle creature: ++If you assume that the Arab "Palestinians" are a genuine, Western "nation," ++

Rarely I see prejudice so unselfconscious. This globe is populated by genuine Western nation plus a bunch of fakes.

So one problem appears to be that "Palestinians" are not a genuine nation but an artificial construct that would not exists if not for anti-Semitism. Perhaps. But the same can be said about Israelis. At least Palestinians did not invented a brand new language to communicate.

El Cid: I cannot build a mental model that would lead to a heart-felt attack on Bush as betrayer of Israel. However, what a hack has to do a hack has to do. There exists a certain market for fighting anti-Semitism, so with a scientific accuracy anti-Semitic (including "objectively anti-Semitic") views are catalogued, the list of their code-phrases is being continually updated (E.g. any phrase that starts with Walt and Mearsheimer and which does not contain "anti-Semitic"). Any new occurrence is noted and resisted. (By the way, I got the spelling of Mearsheimer by googling "walt antisemitic"). It is a bit like working for IRS, case after case.

Posted by piotr | January 11, 2008 4:26 PM

Israel is not only a manufactured state, it was illegally manufactured, since the UN Commission set up to study that exact question determined that the UN had no legal authority to partition Palestine at all - only to implement the League of Nations Palestinian Mandate.

Therefore, Israel is an illegal state. Not only that, it's behavior for the last fifty years establishes it as a rogue, terrorist state.

So it is correct to say that Israel AS A STATE has "no right to exist."

The X million Jews living there, of course, do. Whether they have a right to physically occupy the space at the expense of the Palestinians who lived there before is the question. That is a legal question, which has been answered: no, they don't.

In the interests of minimizing violence, the one state solution - i.e., the implementation of the original Palestinian Mandate - clearly is the only valid solution. Jews and Palestinians must be organized into one state, with civil and religious rights guaranteed for all, and its borders security guaranteed by the UN and the international community.

Of course, it won't happen because the Zionist thugs and the Islamic radicals won't let it happen.

So Israel and/or the Palestinians are doomed.

Have a nice day.

"However, what a hack has to do a hack has to do."

Thank you, piotr.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 11, 2008 8:28 PM