"What's With The Lovefest For Hezbollah?"
Michael Young, opinion editor of the Lebanon Daily Star, writes in Reason Online:
". . .A bizarre offshoot of this trend has been the left's elevation of Islamist "resistance" to the level of a fetish. You know something has gone horribly wrong when the writer and academic Norman Finkelstein volunteers to interpret Hezbollah for you, before prefacing his comments with: 'I don't care about Hezbollah as a political organization. I don't know much about their politics, and anyhow, it's irrelevant. I don't live in Lebanon.'
"In a recent interview on Lebanese television, Finkelstein made it a point of expressing his "solidarity" with Hezbollah, on the grounds that 'there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question.'
"It is indeed uncomplicated if you remain mulishly unwilling to move beyond the narrow parameters you've set for discussion. . ."
Young refers to Fred Halliday on the same subject.
And here is a socialist viewpoint from the left that has not lost its damn mind.
". . .A bizarre offshoot of this trend has been the left's elevation of Islamist "resistance" to the level of a fetish. You know something has gone horribly wrong when the writer and academic Norman Finkelstein volunteers to interpret Hezbollah for you, before prefacing his comments with: 'I don't care about Hezbollah as a political organization. I don't know much about their politics, and anyhow, it's irrelevant. I don't live in Lebanon.'
"In a recent interview on Lebanese television, Finkelstein made it a point of expressing his "solidarity" with Hezbollah, on the grounds that 'there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question.'
"It is indeed uncomplicated if you remain mulishly unwilling to move beyond the narrow parameters you've set for discussion. . ."
Young refers to Fred Halliday on the same subject.
And here is a socialist viewpoint from the left that has not lost its damn mind.
posted by Terry Glavin at 6:39 PM
4 Comments:
So if Hizbullah are genuinely fighting against foreign occupation, why haven't they chucked Syria out? Haven't even heard an attempt at an answer for that one.
Graeme, you've touched on one of those things that's eaten at me for yonks. For all the calls we hear for Israel to get out of the occupied territories, there's sweet F.A. from the "peace movement" and the anti-occupationists for Syria to quit screwing over Lebanon and get the hell out. Instead, it's apologetics for Hizbullah and silence on what might as well be that other occupation in the Middle East.
"Instead, it's apologetics for Hizbullah and silence on what might as well be that other occupation in the Middle East."
Andre Glucksman calls it "The Jerusalem Syndrome". Though slightly different in context, the phenomenon is the same:
"The outrage of so many outraged people outrages me. On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures, two weights."
http://www.signandsight.com/features/894.html
A group of counter protestors known as the Protest Warriors used to have a slogan/sign "From Palestine to Iraq, end the Occupation... ...but Lebanon, Taiwan, Tibet and other countries under Communist or other fascist rule, you just shut up."
Or something like that
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