‘It’s Easy For Me But Not For Thee’
David Adesnik, dork extraordinaire, offers a self-serving analysis of why Israel’s so easy to write about for wingnut bloggers, but is difficult for lefties to discuss:
Clearly, something else besides complexity is preventing liberal bloggers from writing about Israel. I would suggest that there is a part of the online left which is so viciously anti-Israel that moderates have been intimidated into silence. Let’s hope that this kind of viciousness never migrates off line, where it might threaten bipartisan support for Israel.
Contra Adorknik (whose schtick is “civility” but whose tolerance for extremist and indecent positions from the Right is only matched by his intolerance for decent and often even-handed positions from the truly Left of Center; quick, someone get him a date with Mark A. Kleiman), I would suggest that, “clearly”, lefties are hesitant to talk about Israel because:
a) We’re sick to fucking death of being called anti-semites which, since wingnuttia thoroughly internalized Norman Podhoretz’s absurd and wickedly dishonest formulation that criticism of Israel = anti-semitism, is the inevitable reaction to any writing we do on Israel, because
b) We tend to deal with Israel-Palestine evenhandedly. This, of course, is the true crime in the eyes of the Right, which sees through its tribalist, nationalist and sectarian filters any criticism of Israel or America as inherently immoral. Hence their bullshit “moral equivalence” hectoring.
c) We think there’s plenty of guilt to go around and it stems from two of the nastiest urges in human history: tribalism and religion. Since the Right loves the identity politics of extreme tribalism and thinks religion in general is the bee’s knees, it’s going to be more enthusiastic about taking sides and
d) The right wing loves war for its own sake — or perhaps it’s better to say, loves the idea of “righteous slaughter” for its own sake. Wingnuts are either butchers, butchers by proxy, or connoisieurs of butcher porn. They love the smell of incinerated civilians in the morning, of this I have no fucking doubt, so long as the civies are “heathens” or “useful idiots” (like the Lebanese who apparently should have murdered all of Hezbollah on their own or else be deemed guilty enough to deserve “collateral” damage) or “wogs”. Slaughter is what gives them purpose, what makes them feel morally alive, what gives them direction in life. For wingnuts, neutrality is only for the Swiss while disgusted and appalled wholesale condemnation is only for appeasers and traitors. A side must be taken, a purely good and purely evil declared. Wingnuts are Manichean for things about which they have imperfect knowledge and irrational biases. We’re only Manichean for things about which we do have perfect knowledge because such things are from within our own culture and socio-political context — if it comes from without, we just try to be as objective as we can, which is a damn sight better than the wingnuts’ tidy formulation that ‘if it’s American or Israeli it must be good, and if it’s anything else, it’s evil.’
Retardo,
I think d) sums it up best, in reality, they are mostly, if not all, bloodthursty tossers. Some hide it better than others, but recently the mask has slipped.
If there’s on thing liberals simply can’t handle, it’s complexity.
We luvs us black and white answers!
I never really got the Conservative fixation with the idea of intimidation. They go on about how the left are a bunch of pussies, yet claim that we spend all day intimidating each other over something.
Aside from the obvious Freudian/Alpa-dog pack mentality undertones, I can only assume that the ones who have a firm enough grasp on phrasology to comprehend the subtles of the English language (not many) use this to try to underscore just how many on the left are the “far-left radicals” (as O’Reilly loves to masturbate too). I guess the idea is that the crazy lefties far outnumber the reasonable moderates.
This is, A) laughable. and B) to anyone who’s take any math past the level where “multiplication” involves an “x”, statistically impossible.
I would think that the reason that left blogs are quiet about Israel (which ones? All the ones I read have had posts delegated to the topic. More made-up eeeevil lefty blogs?) is that it’s a redundent topic. Gosh. Wonder how this is going to play out. Hey, you don’t suppose Bush with find a way to fuck this up to, do you?
Not to mention the whole Iraq thing still, you know, boiling over.
I’ve spent the last 3 days reading nothing but blogs about how nobody blogs about Israel. The meme is over: obviously, we do blog about Israel. We just preface it with some weird meta-intro, like a Shakespearean page addressing the audience. “Lest this our tale be not by you despised/That we for Zion ne’er so greyly pined…” ya di da.
Anyway, if there is reluctance on the left to blog about this, at least one of the reasons is obvious. It’s become increasingly clear over the last 6 years that there isn’t going to be any peace agreement. Not for a decade or two, at least. In that environment, we find ourselves somewhat depressed, and at a loss what to say. Or maybe I just speak for myself here. I also find it very difficult to blame anyone for this development – or not to blame everyone, which amounts to the same thing.
I’ll take (e) all of the above. They are all bullies and cowards. The left may fracture easily and have trouble uniting, but the few bullies in our midst can’t transform the left into an insatiable beast feeding on misery & war.
The rightwing thrist for blood and wholesale slaughter sicken me. Not all of those bloothirsty pundits can be millennialist hoping to kick start the end times… can they?
I don’t hate Israel. I do however, hate to the core people who can’t see it from the Palis’ point of view if only for the arguments’ sake — something most Israelis can manage, but American wingnuts can’t.
It’s about land. If a foriegn people came to take *my* great great grandfather’s farm on which I lived, they’d take it over my dead body. And to a person that attitude is shared by most rural people here and, I would imagine, most everywhere else. It is exactly why the Palis have a moral case and are pissed to no end. Western guilt, and a fucking goddamn religious book said that Jews’ right to the land of their ancestors 2,000 years ago, trumped the case of the Palis who actually inherited the land from people in living motherfucking memory, from people they knew.
This is exactly what we did to the Indians, it is ethnic cleansing, was wrong in 1876, 1492, 1948 and is wrong 2006. All the Indians could do is fight back haphazardly, “terroristically”. They did. They were exterminated (genocide; and yes it would be the exact equivalent of the Holocaust had Sherman and Sheridan, Jackson and Harrison had the technology and infrastructure Hitler had), which is why Glenn Reynolds prefers that particular final solution to every problem.
But once land has been taken and held for generations, something called just title applies. Israel was the mother of all mistakes but now has a right to exist, but in consideration of the initial injustice and subsequent violent bullshitting of it, it’s Israel’s duty to kiss the ass of those people whom they cleansed liked so many Cherokees from georgia, from Israel proper, just as we should kiss the Indians’ asses but instead treat them like crap.
Palis fight back like Indians did because it’s all they can do (though I’d like to see them try passive resistance a la Gandhi — I have no doubt Israel and America would slaughter them by the thousands but that’s a probability anyway and would eternally damn the slaughterers in the world’s eyes and therefore might be productive); give them tanks and jets and they wont suicide bomb anymore. after all, the first Zionists DIDNT have tanks and jets, they were fucking “terrorists” too, just ask the British or Count Bernadotte.
I’m sick of the whole thing, selfish as it is to say. If it were up to me I’d take all the Israelis, bring them over here, give them a state and let them secede or stay according to their wish, or disperse within America if they wished. If that had been done to begin with, we’d never have this fucking problem. A disgusting and cynical world could handle naked colonialism tot he point of ethnic cleansing in the 19th Century but not now and not with guerilla warfare being refined since, and with modern military technology. Now naked colonialism just results in a constant war. But then wingnuts see nothing to regret about Attilla or Pizarro or Joe Chamberlain, either. Wingnuts admire those who conquer, take what is not theirs, tell other people not their own kind how to live, and murder those who object: “tribes conquer other tribes” is their fatalist conceit, worship of brute force and triumph of will is their actual favored pastime. Their preference is for bullies. I’m sick of this country supporting bullies.
America shamefully closed off itself from Jewish immigration during the Nazi era. This too was tribalism/bigotry, and it was at the expense of the helpless. Then it felt guilty. wingnuts *then*, though, didnt give a shit or were actively against Israel. But when Israel kicked the shit out of the Arabs in 67 and 73 and inbetween and since then has been a complete dickface to the Palis, well that got the wingnuts attention: look, here is a people more like us! They are whiter and completely abuse those they are comanded to look after and are completely responsbile for. They’re our kind of jackasses! And ever since, when Peace Now Israelis get the upper hand, wingnuts dont like Israel, but when it’s Likud in power, it’s teh awes0me cos some the filthy wogs are gonna die and the Rapture might start!!!
Fix the problem by giving the Palis a real state, and not a bunch of little non contiguous clumps of shit ground like what was “generously” offered last time. Withdrawl from all occupied territories. If the Israelis then want to build a wall that’s true to the new border, fine. They have a blanket right to shoot anyone who jumps over that wall. And we should then say, “cruise missiles for anybody who attacks them.” But until then, I’m not taking up for Israel. Until they straighten their act up they and the terrorists deserve each other. Both sides are full of jerks, yet neither of them approach the level of wingnuts, who conjure such things as “human-sized microwaves” as appropriate weapons to use on people they hate. It would be nice if we could move the wingnuts to Israel and the Israelis, most of whom being liberal and desiring of a Pali state, here.
The whole anti-israel=anti-semitic smear only makes sense if you view Israel as a truly religious state. The difference between thinking Israel’s right to exist(and yes it has one) is rooted in the torah and scripture or is based on international law and treaty is the important but seldom broached aspect to discussion of Israel. Because liberals tend to not think of things as being divinely cast, they get to think of Israel as just another state that is subject to no more or less the same laws as any other country. If, like a wingnot, you believe it is a divined country, then, well, every word coming out of Bill Kristol’s or Atlasshrug’s mouthes might actually make sense.
Forgive me for my unwillingness to follow the link and read the actual article. So I’m only looking at the paragraph you quoted. Is it possible that when he writes of the silence of the l\a\m\b\s\ liberal bloggers, he means decent, moderate liberals, as opposed to the rantings of the rabid left? Or am I full of crap again?
Here I use “decency” in the technical sense of “sticking to the proper bipartisan consensus”. In this interpretation, the left-leaning blogs which have discussed Israel can safely be ignored, because of their egregious departure from bipartisan support, which identifies them as part of the rabid left. The only blogs left in his category of “moderates” are — by his definition — silent on the issue.
Normally I aim to be amusing (or at least inane) in comments but I’m not much good at that either.
though I’d like to see them try passive resistance a la Gandhi — I have no doubt Israel and America would slaughter them by the thousands but that’s a probability anyway and would eternally damn the slaughterers in the world’s eyes and therefore might be productive
I don’t think so. No they wouldn’t, they’d just ignore them, continuing their stranglehold on Palestinian society and infrastructure, making sure there would never be a viable, self-sustaining Palestinian state. They wouldn’t have to get their hands dirty by actually slaughtering anybody themselves. To paraphrase Gandhi; first they ignore you, then they win.
Gideon Levy was on to something similar (although in a slightly different context) recently in Ha’aretz when he wrote:
Send the dork extraordinaire to Billmon and stand back. When that man gets his teeth into something, we all stand back in awe..
great post, retardo. i didn’t realize that formulation for anti-semitism went back to podhoretz. i was thinking the other day that i couldn’t come up with any rational definition of anti-semitism in this country in which there is a great constituency people who favor the palestinian cause cause they hate jews, cause how many people in this country hate jews and like muslims? my guess is, maybe some muslims.
Fix the problem by giving the Palis a real state, and not a bunch of little non contiguous clumps of shit ground like what was “generously� offered last time. Withdrawl from all occupied territories. If the Israelis then want to build a wall that’s true to the new border, fine. They have a blanket right to shoot anyone who jumps over that wall. And we should then say, “cruise missiles for anybody who attacks them.� But until then, I’m not taking up for Israel.
Then you’re not taking up for Israel. What you have described is not politically possible while Palestinians continue to launch Qassams and kidnap soldiers. And, partly for the reasons Gideon Levy so brilliantly describes, the Palestinians will not stop launching Qassams or kidnapping soldiers. (Partly, also, because factions of Palestinians which launch Qassams and kidnap soldiers generally profit politically from the ensuing violence, creating a self-reinforcing dynamic of violent provocation that seems almost impossible to stop.) Also, as Shmuel Rosner has pointed out, by launching the Qassams, the Palestinians torpedoed the possibility of any near-term Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, which would put Qassams in range of Tel Aviv.
I can see why you’d be sick of this whole thing. There seems to be no acceptable position to take. I sometimes think it’s possible to simply affirm my absolute support for Israel, while urging that they stop stupidly retaliating massively against these provocations, since it’s counterproductive. And then I realize: who the hell am I, a fat comfortable Jew living in squeaky-safe Southeast Asia, to tell somebody who serves in the reserves and takes his kids into bomb shelters how they should respond to the kidnapping of soldiers fifteen minutes from his house? And the rockets? Why should he pay any attention to me? Who am I to tell him, with obscene confidence, to just do nothing, hold fire, ignore the provocations? It’s his kids at stake.
As I said: it is very easy to understand why one would hesitate to blog about something like this. What’s to say?
Wingnuts will always come down on the side of the bully. Harder to figure out which is which in this case so they just use firepower as the yardstick.
i didn’t realize that formulation for anti-semitism went back to podhoretz.
I’m sure he wasnt the first to do it, but so far as I know he basically codified it and popularised it, though he didnt always use that particular smear, even after he became a wingnut. I think he started doing it in the early-mid 70s but I could be mistaken.
Well said, Retardo.
I’m anti-militarist. But I’m no pacifist. One thing which seems to be forgotten a lot by idealists on the Left is that Gandhi was one case. One. That’s one exception out of the entire history of the world where the oppressed had to fight back against their oppressors to make gains. To me that’s not a good track record. Further, his followers’ actions would be denounced by the pacifistic Left today, because they participated in direct action and economic sabotage, which we’ve already seen denounced by the pacifists during Seattle 99 and all other massive summits that ended with the people fighting back through direct action.
We need less civil disobedience, and more uncivil disobedience.
Send the dork extraordinaire to Billmon
I wish but sorry, no, that won’t work. Billmon is too”extreme” for Adornik, whose idea of the ideological spectrum starts with LGF, Instayokel, etc on the “conservative right” and Yglesias on the fringes of the “Left” (he’s almost too far out there!). Billmon might as well be a communist in Adornik’s eyes.
But not only that, Billmon says mean things about people! He’s not nice! Plus, he curses! “Arabs: Kill ’em all” is acceptable fodder for discussion, but I’m sorry, Adorknik does not directly address people who are as “uncivil” as Billmon!
He’s the wingnut Mark A. Kleiman, except better than Kleiman because at least his bias is toward his own side.
BTW – I havent read Oxblog much for a long while, but by all appearances and in spite of crapola like the linked post, it’s still better than it was when that dissembling shit Chafetz posted there.
Yes to d) and yes to lobby_dosser.
The thing that pisses me off most about the Israel-is-always-right Right is that they shower praise on Israel only when it is using lethal force, and they criticize and taunt and gnash their terrible teeth when Israel is taking the baby steps towards an incremental solution to the problem of occupation.
Thus, the Oslo Accords and pulling out of Lebanon and Gaza are Israel’s darkest hour in their view, while these past few weeks and the crackdown on the al-Aqsa intifada are its brightest of recent vintage.
Their take on what’s in Israel and Palestine’s best interest over the long haul is so fundamentally the opposite of what’s actually in their best interest, that I can only conclude that they are hard-core tribalists with a fetish for slaughter, as Retardo describes.
Thing is, nobody knows how to fix this ongoing problem, save for one thing we all know. That if, over some unspecified but long amount of time, a tipping point of people in the Middle East can come to find it just too costly to their quality of life to pursue these wars, they will eventually peter out.
And the only way that will happen is if quality of life is improved on a broad scale across the region, mostly by just the steady march of progress and opportunities, but crucially midwifed along by active good-faith efforts such as the Oslo Accords, the reining in of its settlers by Israel, the recognition of Israel by other Middle Eastern governments, etc. etc.
All of this takes lots and lots of patience, which wingnuts do not possess at all, and a resolve to see the thing through in the face of a daunting string of two-steps-forward-one-step-back outcomes.
And lest wingnuts dismiss that plan for a slow incrementalism to finally win the peace as a pie-in-the-sky dream, we need only point to the steady resolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland as proof that a peace process CAN work; to the return of East Timor by Indonesia as evidence that an occupation CAN be ended despite the political and military clout of the occupying country’s settlers; and to South Africa for a shining example of how outside pressure and inspired, steadfast leadership on the part of the victims can win the day.
But the wingnuts don’t like those examples, for the reasons Retardo states. Achieving peace in this situation will require their tribe to take some lumps, to ignore or downplay their response to some transgressions by the other side to acheive the longer goal (and vice-versa, of course). All they know is offense in the immediacy of the moment, and they care nothing about pissing away acheivements like the Cedar Revolution as they lick their chops over this latest escalation of disproportionate killing … which, of course, is the “only thing the Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims understand”, despite it not having acheived anything close to peace in 50+ years.
The Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims do of course understand overwhelming violent force, just as the Israelis understand suicide bombings and bombastic threats from their neighbors. They understand that it means the fight is still on, that nothing has changed, and that peace is a long ways off.
escalation of disproportionate killing … which, of course, is the “only thing the Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims understand�
That always struck me as a classic example of projection. Indeed, it is the wingnuts who only understand force; that’s why they advocate it for ills real and imagined. If all you have is a hammer…
It’s even more screwy when you consider that we currently have American wingnuts cheering on Israeli wingnuts as they bomb Shi’ite wingnuts. If the respective left wings of all these groups were in force, the likelihood of things being as they are today would have been greatly lessened.
* And yet it is the civilians of both sides who really take it on the chin. To pull out another saying: When elephants fight, the grass suffers.
You left out “advocating the right of an oppressed people to defend themselves is an endorsement of terrorism”.
Has Israel ever offered monetary compensation to those Palestinians whose land was siezed in the founding of Israel? I have never heard it discussed in any of the news. That could help. Of course, that would be an admission that an injustice was done in the founding of the modern state of Israel.
Many, probably the vast majority, of Palestinians and Israelis have no problem working and living together. If they did, there wouldn’t be any border crossings to close, right? Many Palestinians work (or used to work) in Israel proper. So, really, peace shouldn’t be as far off as it is. If it really was an all out tribal genocidal conflict, it would have been totally partitioned a long time ago. The fact that a Palestinian bomber CAN sneak onto a bus in Israel means that there is an accepted assumption among Israelis and Palestinians that they’re going to be occupying the same space to some degree.
On the Palestinian side, there is a small radical militant element that keeps things violent, and this side benefits whenever they can provoke a response from Israel that makes the Palestinians suffer. The more hopeless the Palestinian situation, the more attractive joining Hamas or Fatah looks. For the Israelis, plowing up entire olive groves because one sniper shot at a settlement from behind one of the trees is counterproductive. (Oh, and since the land is clear here now, we might as well put in a settlement, with some nice Jewish families who moved here from New Jersey). The more they make the Palestinians suffer, the more radicalized the Palestinians become. And the more the Israelis feel that they are under attack, the more militant they become in theire attitudes towards Palestinians.
The thing is, as the Palestinians get more and more desperate, the more likely they are to do crazy shit. Someone once told me “you can’t win against someone whose got nothing to lose.”
Finally, the other Arab states COULD help out the Palestinians, give them aid, jobs, etc. But they seem to want the Palestinians in desperate straits for a couple of reasons: 1) It helps demonize Israel, and 2) it helps unite various Muslim societies (that otherwise would be in conflict) around one issue (Israel sucks). Funny how so much of the aid ends up financing the militants and not the kids.
anyway, just some thoughts….
That always struck me as a classic example of projection. Indeed, it is the wingnuts who only understand force; that’s why they advocate it for ills real and imagined. If all you have is a hammer…
Yeah, I have this idea for a sketch called “Cooking for Misha”, where you see him on a standard TV kitchen set, and he pulls out all the ingredients for some dish, then proceeds to smash them all together with a hammer, the only tool he has or ever uses.
Sorry, “Cooking with Misha” …
My guess is more along the lines of: liberals tend to not think in such stark black-and-white terms as right-wingers and, as such, recognize that there is no simple equation such as Israel=good, Palestine/Lebanon=evil.
[…] Retardo gets it exactly right, both here I would suggest that, “clearly”, lefties are hesitant to talk about Israel because: […]
I had no idea anybody still read Oxblog. To those who do: stop.
is oxblog affiliated with OX-HO?
I guess the idea is that the crazy lefties far outnumber the reasonable moderates.
The crazy lefties don’t have to outnumber the reasonable moderates, which would imply that a lot of people find some merit in the crazy lefty worldview, and we know they don’t because on those occasions where they’re not forcing straight people to get gay married and declaring that all sex is rape and discriminating against whitey, they’re really a small bunch of political dead-enders, and America is seeing through their extremist positions.
Indeed, all that is required for the crazy lefties to intimidate the reasonable moderates is for the crazy lefties to, simply put, engage in a form of rhetorical terrorism. Of course, since it works, not only are the lefties terrorists, but the moderates are appeasers, and it’s only the far right that’s virtuous at all.
That’s probably why we’re always oppressing them with our tiny, tiny numbers and our marginalized views.
Hear fucking hear. Your post neatly summarized why I personally using the word “Israel” in mixed company.
Sorry, that was supposed to be “I personally avoid using the word Israel”…
Comrade Billmon a Communist?
He would certainly be in a gulag by now..He knows 1984 by heart.
Okay, I refuse to buy in to this belief that liberals aren’t blogging about Lebanon. I am, and almost every blog I go to is. I think maybe some very large lib bloggers have ceded their responsibility to blog about such a major issue, but every single blog that I like to visit has touched on this issue and as far as I can tell, none of them are worried about being called anti-semites (I’m not.)
I don’t know where this meme came from, but right-wingers are peddling it and even some in the media are buying, and I think it’s a load of crap. I’m not into the “Let’s not talk about this because it helps the enemy” school of blogging, but I am into the “Let’s not talk about this because it’s not really true” approach.
my biggest gripe with our (frequently evangelical) right-wingers on the subject of Israel is that they don’t really love Israel or the Jewish people, they only back Israel on the premise that if Israel becomes embroiled in an all out war with its neighbours, it will be the catalyst to force their God’s hand and fulfill their fucknutty dream of being raptured away
I’ve searched for this before but my Googling skillz must blow goats because I haven’t been able to find a good answer, so I’ll throw it out to the S,N! crowd:
Who was there first? I mean, at the start, thousands of years ago, who was on the land that is now called Lebanon, Israel and Syria (roughly) first, the forebears of the Palestinians or the Israelis? My fuzzy knowledge leans towards “the Israelites came from further east and moved to the sea after the Palestinians”. The reason I ask is because I think that’s the basic question, who was there first? I realize that no pat “Pilgrims landed in 1620….” neat and tidy narrative is possible, with that area being a major trade crossroads and all, but any insight that anyone can provide would be really appreciated. Thanks.
Henry:
Best I remember from by Xtian days it was, according to the Bible, the “Canaanites”, many tribes who in aggregate I believe would be proto-Phoenecians. Which in turn means that the Lebanese have probably the oldest claim there. The Philistines, whom David famously conquered and Samson famously crushed, were a Canaanite group culturally related to those up north (Phoenicianites).
But then when Yahweh “re-gave” Canaan to the Jews after the Egyptian captivity, some people had filled up the empty spaces. One such group was the Amelekites, whom Yahweh gave Yeshua permission to mass-murder. And so he did to the last man woman and child, which is why pieces of abominable shit like Rabbi Kahani ressurected the term and applied it to the Palis.
Ahh, but I can hear the wingnuts now: just as the Phoenicians/Philistines sacrificed babies to Ba’al, and therefore desrved divine slaughter, so too do the Muslims who sacrifice their babies to Allah in the form of suicide bombers! Never mind that for the first example, Yahweh had also asked for human sacrifice (allowing Abraham to spare Isaac at the last momemnt) and never mind in the latetr example that Israel drafts their children in part to “defend” occupied territory and murder rock-throwing children on the other side who don’t like being conquered.
connoisieurs of butcher porn
That’s the only phrase I’ve ever seen with the literary grace and dexterity to sum up the couchbound wingers’ fetishistic attachment to distant warfare. Kudos.
[…] Dershowitz used to have a fine mind but now, if Israel does it — no matter how depraved it is — he feels obliged to justify it. Torture, murdering civilians — if Israel set up Adam Yoshida’s precious “human-sized microwaves” and melted Palis wholesale (basically Zyklon B updated as a fine Kenmore with stainless steel appliques and also no doubt handy for cooking those extra-large bags of butcher-porn popcorn), Dershowitz would find a way to make that legal and moral, too. And what’s good for Israel is, of course, good for the U.S. Or, put another way, what one country/in-group has done in monstrous abuse of the filthy wogs/out-group, might be fun for another country to try. […]
Wow:
We need an antonym for “Occam’s Razor.”
Oswalds’s Algorithm or sumpin’
o
Retardo scripsit:
, according to the Bible,
Ah, well, that’s more or less the problem in a nutshell right there, innit? The Old Testament is, at best, a rather unreliable source for history. While biblical archaeology has confirmed some of its claims (names of rulers, geographical locations, that sort of thing), it has also cast severe doubt on some of the most crucial events depicted in the OT, eg. the Egyptian captivity, the unification of the North and South Kingdom, the siege of Jericho, etc.
(I’m not an archaeologist, mind, and won’t pretend I know anything about the history of the region until, say, about two and a half millenia ago.)
Oh, and I think Mr. Bike Shop has struck gold with his suggestion; Oswalds’s Algorithm or sumpin’ seems to be exatcly the right name for whatever strained excuse for thought passes for coherent logic among the wingers these days.
[…] Yet, somehow, I’m an anti-Semite for daring to question Israel’s foriegn policy. […]