Amazing. The Wall Street Journal’s Op Ed page today has found a way to support Netanhayu’s latest efforts to further radicalize the Middle East crisis. Not even the Jerusalem Post, on its Op Ed page yesterday, could find sanity or sincerity in Netanyahu’s resolution to oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, which the Likud approved, despite the opposition of Sharon:

From the Jerusalem Post:

Just last month, Netanyahu wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Only under tyranny can a terrorist mindset be widely cultivated. It cannot breed in a climate of democracy and freedom…[It] is imperative that once the terrorist regimes in the Middle East are swept away, the free world, led by America, must begin to build the institutions of pluralism and democracy in their place.”

Netanyahu was right about democracy, but one might think that if he was serious about these beliefs he would congratulate Sharon for not only integrating the concept of democracy into his conception of Palestinian statehood, but for convincing the United States to do so as well.

The Jerusalem Post not only questioned his sincerity, it also questioned his veracity:

It is strange for Netanyahu to claim that he never supported the idea of a Palestinian state, when it was obvious such a state would have been the end result of the final-status talks that he tried so hard to initiate.

Which is awfully close to calling him a liar.

The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, willingly contorts itself into semantic knots to back Netanyahu, at the expense of its own internal logic. First, the defense:

What [Likud] did do is make clear that they do not want a state in the West Bank and Gaza, one that was free to raise an army, amass military materiel and sign treaties with nations hostile to Israel.

But then the legitimacy of this argument is splendidly undermined later in the article:

Of course, it is possible for a state to be constituted in such a way as to ameliorate some of these dangers; in the wake of World War II fears of renewed aggressive Japanese imperialism at some future date led to the creation of a state that was constitutionally prevented from building or fielding an effective military.

So the WSJ explains it clearly is possible to offer a “state” to the Palestinians that doesn’t threaten Israel. With Japan, the US successfully defused future seeds of Japanese resentment by offering it the dignity of equality with other states. And if the WSJ explains that “what the land occupied by the Palestinians is called is much less important than what it is,” why then does the WSJ not draw the obvious conclusion from its own arguments that Bibi Netanyahu’s resolution is just meant to humiliate Palestinians?

Andrew Sullivan Watch: Give him credit for a post called Bias Check (perhaps because I emailed him).

I’ve also amended the size of Holland in a post below. Although many media references have compared Holland to Rhode Island in area, it’s closer to Maryland.

And so I checked, and he’s right, and now it’s time for my own bias check post (ahem):

“I’ve amended the size of Holland in a post below. The Netherlands’ land area is 41,500 square kilometers, not square miles; that’s about 16,000 square miles.”

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I can’t help myself: On Andrew Sullivan today: first a piece on how blogs are a lazy reporter’s worst nightmare. Followed instantly by a lazy, error-riddled screed in defense of perceived slights against his newfangled hero, Pim Fortuyn:

By the way, Fortuyn’s party is not “anti-immigration.” It fully supports the right of every current immigrant in Holland to stay and be assimilated. All it wants is an end to further immigration in a country the size of Rhode Island with a population of 16 million.

The facts:

Rhode Island: 1,050 square miles, 1 million people

The Netherlands: 16,000 square miles, 16 million people

And “anti-immigration” means: against immigration. How else could you possibly parse that? I’ll admit Mr. Fortuyn was too smart to be openly anti-immigrant, which is an entirely different concept, though I suspect this distinction is lost on his followers and Andrew Sullivan.

Finally, since when is being compelled to assimilate a right? Imagine trying to enforce this “right” on the denizens of New York’s Chinatown, many of whom happily go about their life without a word of English. Had Fortuyn run for elective office here in the US, he would have been laughed off the hustings.

I find myself in a strange position vis-a-vis Andrew Sullivan—I’m defending core American values from someone who has suddenly adopted the continental European definition of liberalism. Andrew Sullivan approves of Pim Fortuyn’s admittedly complex political stance that nevertheless borrows heavily from a European tradition of cultural nationalism, a tradition that the United States has historically rejected in favor of a libertarian conviction that the individual’s beliefs and their expression of them are none of the government’s business.

And here I am, a Belgian living in New York City, in love with the social cacophony of this country (see previous blog) and well aware of the strengths that immigration engenders, both culturally and economically. I think Europeans who are seduced by Pim Fortuyn just don’t get how essential an ingredient immigration is in the US recipe for success. I’m disappointed with Europeans who convert a conviction that their Judeo-Christian heritage is superior into a political agenda that would compel immigrants to change the way they act or perceive themselves. (Le Pen’s repatriation idea is beyond the pale, by the way.)

I too happen to think that Islam could do with a dose of humanism, but it’s my conviction (and Andrew Sullivan’s too, elsewhere on his site) that it’s an individual’s right absolutely to hold the “wrong” belief and still partake fully in society, with all their rights intact. Pim was wrong too, but I’m deeply sorry he won’t be around to debate this, for he was certainly an engaging and articulate contributor to the democracy of ideas.

Successful conspiracies require means, motive and opportunity.

Successful conspiracy theories require only creative thinking about means, motive and opportunity. Conspiracy theorists have stock candidates for these components, and the mixing and matching need not be particularly imaginative for a new permutation to hit the meme market.

But successful conspiracy theories do have to find nourishment in a pre-existing mass psychosis. This makes them powerful cautionary tales—articulations of prejudices and fears that do not otherwise surface. And it makes them dangerous, because in the global democracy of ideas successful memes become historical facts.

The most successful recent conspiracy theory posits that the September 11 attacks were in fact orchestrated by Mossad, which warned 4,000 Jews not to go to work in the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks: A poll taken late February 2002 shows a good majority of citizens of predominantly Muslim countries now take it for the truth; less than one in five thinks Mohammed Atta et al did it, at least not without brainwashing help from Mossad.

Bear in mind that the idea being promoted can be only one of these three things:

A) A deliberate piece of disinformation planted by Osama Bin Laden’s ilk in the more extremist Muslim media, which in turn somehow manages the extraordinary feat of simultaneously applauding an act of violence against the United States that it insists was carried out by Israel’s secret service in order to set the US against Islam.

B) A slightly more benign version of (A), which borrows the concept of natural selection to the extent that a conspiracy theory can evolve from a spate of sloppy, tendentious reporting and Op-Ed pieces masquerading as fact.

C) A horrendously well-kept secret involving foreknowledge by thousands of talkative New York Jews who nevertheless managed not to blab to their goy husbands, wives and waspy work buddies until the crime was perpetrated, because all Jews represent a monolithic front of hatred against Muslims.

The means, motive and opportunity proffered for scenario C are simple. Mossad provides the means, because–like the CIA–it is commonly ascribed by its enemies with the godlike qualities of omniscience and omnipotence. The technologically illiterate have no means of differentiating science fact from science fiction; Scenario C requires 20 Manchurian Candidates ready to crash planes and an efficient means of tracking and secretly contacting 4,000 Jewish employees in the World Trade Center. How hard can that be if these agencies have satellites that read license plates?

The ascribed motive betrays severe prejudices against Jews, because a central assumption of the conspiracy theory is that a secret and silent mass of Jews would be willing to condone the killing of thousands of innocents in order to effect a hardening in US policy towards Muslim countries. You have to buy into the most virulent of anti-Semitic constructs before this becomes plausible. Yet often these are the only constructs available to citizens of countries whose governments and clergy have long gained currency at the expense of Judaism.

Even worse, a tendency to believe conspiracy theories may be a healthy instinct in countries where conspiracy is the modus operandi of rulers. Predominantly Muslim countries, on the whole, have not had transparent and democratic government, and often these local autocratic regimes have been propped up with the support of the West. If the house of Saud is underhanded in its grip on power, its Western backers are seen capable of the same by implication.

And as for opportunity, why not throw in a little cooperation between elements in the CIA and Mossad? After all, Jews, more than likely, have infiltrated the CIA. And surely the CIA would know which weaknesses in domestic security to exploit?

Enough. Why am I riled up? Because nothing good has ever come from a situation where a significant portion of the worlds population have had their capacity for rational thought so brutalized that they believe something so patently false.

The two immediate situations that come to mind are German and Austrian support for their Fuhrer, and Stalinism. But other mass “errors in judgment” litter history, all the more densely the further back you go: McCarthyism, the Dreyfus Affair, Catholic anti-Semitism, the Crusades…

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I never want to hear another British complaint about silly EU directives. This one tops them all, so to speak. I don’t care how those warm, flat pints of what the British call beer are poured, but to mandate that Belgian draught beer be served without a head in Britain should be grounds for dismissal from the EU. We should not give Baroness Thatcher the pleasure of pulling out voluntarily. And while we’re at it, let’s boot out the Greeks as well, for not being sufficiently on our side.

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SAIS professor John Harper has an interesting thought experiment. Imagine if the President of the United States ran his country like a certain major European country… At the very least, it proves the the US public’s tolerance for corruption is a lot lower than in parts of Europe.

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Bless Colin Powell for finally stating the obvious:

“If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed – I don’t know that leads us anywhere,” Mr Powell told the congressional hearing.

In the meantime, what’s wrong with this statement?

On Monday Mr. Sharon told a parliamentary committee: “We have to deal [the Palestinians] very painful blows, continuously, until they understand that they won’t achieve anything with terror.”

It took a year, 310 dead Israelis and 1032 dead Palestinians for Sharon’s policy to be plausibly discredited. When Sharon was elected last February, the death toll stood at around 150 total. The Pro-Sharon argument then was that he was going to increase security by hitting the Palestinians harder (all of you, mind you, not just the guilty ones). I said then that was a ludicrous argument, both in terms of causality and morality. What should be obvious to people who watch the region is that the Palestinians see themselves as desperate, and a portion of them are willing to commit suicide to hurt the other side. That makes Palestinian militants even crazier than Israeli hawks, and in a cycle of violence the craziest side always has the upper hand. Meanwhile, Sharon’s motives are progressively being reduced to a naked hatred of Arafat.

Policy criticism should always include an alternative solution. This solution always was, and will remain, a policy of isolating extremists on either side. Moderates on either side have more in common with each other than with their extremist ends. It is in the interests of both the suicide bombers and the Israeli settlers to prevent a coalition of moderates negotiating a peace or even just a truce. But there are options that would frustrate extremists on either side: building a “security perimeter” on the 1967 borders and removing settlers from their provocative settlements; this would satisfy the entire international community, lead to recognition by Arab states, and stifle infiltration by suicide bombers from the West Bank. When it comes to the Golan Heights, it would likely have to become a demilitarized zone, under Syrian sovereignty but holding only UN Peacekeeping troops.

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