I suppose the cleanest route to gaining the most desired result on a thorny issue is to ignore the rest of the world. Ask yourself 9 pulsating questions and answer them yourself, as if you were student, teacher and left-wing historian blended into a single body. A virtual tautology.
Take Ed Sanders’ utterly incoherent Page 3 commentary in Sunday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times headlined, “Lessons of the Gaza withdrawal.”
I held my breath for 4 ½ minutes ploughing through the fog and forest of the boyishly constructed straw men neatly arranged by Mr. Sanders.
Would the Times’ journalist be a hero?
After 62 years of constant Arab-Israeli conflict — that is uninterrupted violence against Jews by Arabs — would Mr. Sanders finally blame Arabs?
Nah.
The streak lives.
Arabs are fulltime victims of a dastardly enemy, Mr. Sanders wrote, transcribing verbatim out of Palestinian (you will excuse the expression) “history books.”
The succinct background for this piece is that Palestinians and Arabs of all stripes have been shouting for the Jews to quit Gaza since the first Israeli family arrived. The Arabs regularly terrorized them. Five years ago, to thwart the latest Arab excuse for not making peace, all 9,000 Jews were forcibly removed from Gaza by the Israeli army so warring, kvetching Arabs could have their miserable patch of land to themselves.
Conclusion of the gifted Mr. Sanders:
The Jews blew it by leaving unilaterally.
Because they didn’t kiss all Arabs g’bye? No.
Because they didn’t hand over their wallets and all earthly materials to the Arabs? No.
Breathing hard as I shoveled through his practically impenetrable rhetoric, which reminded me of a tennis ball on steroids, I discovered that the Israelis are to blame for Gaza’s present and historic state of dumphood for a reason that caught me by surprise.
We Know Who Is at Fault
After noting that Hamas told the world the Israelis were withdrawing because Hamas’s terrorism had driven them out, Mr. Sanders dropped this gem of balmy thinking upon our unsuspecting little heads:
“The (unilateral) pullout also undercut the more moderate Palestinian party Fatah, which leads the Palestinian Authority but was shut out of the process and couldn’t claim credit for it. Perceptions of a Hamas triumph over Israel and frustration over Fatah’s alleged corruption propelled Hamas — which in 2004 was polling at just 20 percent — to victory in several local elections a few months after the withdrawal.”
As the Times’ bureau chief since last year, Mr. Sanders is presumed to hold a rudimentary knowledge of the history of the region as well as to have a contextual command of current events.
My common complaint against the gentleman, besides his spectacular lack of imagination and curiosity, is either an inability or a refusal to reason deeper than knee-jerk level.
Five years after the Israeli army, at the behest of its government, at gunpoint, bullied the thousands of Jewish residents out of the Gaza Strip, it still resembles a giant outdoor Arab prison, unfit for human habitation.
Knowing the proclivities of the Times for slanted reporting, you would expect Mr. Sanders to seed his story with expert opinions from the terrorists who run Gaza, from terrorists sympathetic to Gaza and from an Israeli or two.
Wrong. Mr. Sanders turns out to be Mr. Sanders’ not only favorite but virtually only maven on the subject of whether the Jews’ pullout from Israel was healthy for the world because that is the only crucial question.
What a Lovely Unsurprise
As a Jew, I expected, from the outset, to disagree with Mr. Sanders’ predictable conclusions. Instead, I am still searching for his point. Why did he write the story? His point must have been kidnapped by Hamas.
Since the founding of the state in 1948, incoherence has been the foundation of convoluted, conflicting Arab pleas to be understood by the Western world.
Now they have the “international community” unswervingly in their corner, led entirely by bubblegum-chewing left thinkers.
The American left loves victimhood, ergo the Palestinians. Long ago, they adopted the poor “stateless” Palestinians as their favorite victim on the whole darned planet.
All of this we knew coming into Mr. Sanders’ story, which should have been arrested for drunk driving the way it weaved across lanes of reason.
As a left wing journalist, Mr. Sanders adheres to the egalitarian-centric theory that equality for all is dominant, that there is there is no right or wrong, just your opinion and mine. The goal is to feel good about yourself and about victims.
If a student suggests that 4 plus 6 equals 9, that is his rightful opinion and he is blameless, say Mr. Sanders and his friends. Don’t correct the vulnerable child. Could mar his self-esteem. This is the way Mr. Sanders writes.
I leave you with Mr. Sanders’ most sparkling piece of rhetorical bilge.
Instead of saluting the Jews for heroically evacuating their deeply emotionally entrenched homes in the name of peace with the Arabs, the dastardly enemy of all things good is scorned again by Mr. Sanders.
Sitting at his computer, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling mirrors, Mr. Sanders asked himself tough darned questions and surprised even himself by giving even more superior responses.
Who, he asks in Question No. 2, is responsible for putting the Hamas terrorists in charge of the Gaza landfill?
No need to hold your breath. The Jews, of course. Eh, what?
“After Israel unilaterally disengaged instead of working with Palestinians in an internationally sponsored peace process, Hamas got to crow that its policy of armed resistance and attacks on Israeli civilians had led to the withdrawal.”
Say, Murgatroyd: Sign up that boy Sanders for permanent latrine duty.
The Irony of Ignorance
Mr. Sanders returned to the front of the Times this morning, blithely boasting about his ignorance of Jewish tradition.
In the process, he inadvertently reminded us of the historic deviousness of Muslims who are presently in the news. While the healthy nationwide flap continues over whether to build a mosque at the doorstep of Ground Zero in Manhattan, Mr. Sanders wrote this morning about the view of Jerusalem from his hilltop home. He mentioned that he could see “the golden Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount.”
Which reminded me that Muslims throughout history have been in the business of insulting other religions. The Temple Mount and adjoining Western Wall are the holiest sites in Judaism. Ancestors of our dear peace-chasing Muslims deliberately built a mosque atop the Temple Mount late in the 7th century, 60 years after Mohammed’s desk to once again put their thumb in Jews’ eyes. What a lovely people.
