{"id":291,"date":"2009-01-05T06:41:02","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T04:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2009-01-05T06:41:02","modified_gmt":"2009-01-05T04:41:02","slug":"response-to-freedland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/response-to-freedland\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to Freedland"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This article originally appeared on Engage<\/a>.]
\nThe worst thing about Jonathan Freedland’s article<\/a> is not the lyrics but the melody.
\nThe article is song-like in its constant repetition of a refrain of \u201cPalestinians say this\u201d followed by \u201cIsraelis says that\u201d, paragraph after paragraph, an unending rhythm, beautiful in its simplicity.
\nBut Freedland describes symmetry where there is no symmetry. He equates that which cannot be equated.<\/strong>
\nWriting from the safety of chilly England, Freedland looks down upon the hot-tempered fools in the Middle East who can’t see things as clearly as he does. He can’t understand why the residents of Ashkelon, Beersheba and Sderot \u2013 and today, all Israelis \u2013 are cheering on the IDF. They must all be mad.<\/p>\n


\nIt’s perfectly obvious to Freedland that both sides are responsible for this mess, that neither side is right, and neither side is wrong.
\nDespite the attempt at an oh-so-English even-handedness, the article bristles with contempt for Israel \u2013 and not for this or that Israeli politician, but for the whole country. Israel, he writes, is \u201cdazzled by its own military might\u201d and believes \u201cthat force is almost always the answer\u201d.
\nFreedland believes that in this case, force is not the answer. The answer to the incessant Hamas rocket barrage \u2013 which consisted of some 6,000 attacks on Israel \u2013 should have been … opening Gaza’s borders. Hug your enemies and turn the other cheek. That obviously would have worked. I wonder why Israel didn’t try that.
\nFreedland’s carefully-chosen language betrays his own bias. He speaks of \u201csupporters of the Palestinians\u201d — but Israel’s \u201ccheerleaders\u201d. He asks if what Israel is doing makes any sense \u2013 but he doesn’t ask the question of Hamas. He is neutral on the issue of who broke the cease-fire, but ignores the broader issue of what Hamas is (a fascist movement with genocidal intentions) and what it has done to Gaza since Israeli unilaterally withdrew its settlements and troops.
\nFreedland is convinced that if Israel does anything at all to defend itself it will only make things worse. He says that when Israel acts in self-defence, \u201cGazans blame Israel – and close ranks with Hamas\u201d. He quotes approvingly a Palestinian who says “anything which doesn’t kill Hamas makes them stronger.”
\nWhat utter nonsense. Wars end when the losing side becomes convinced that the enemy cannot be beaten, and that the use of force is counter-productive. That lesson was clearly learned by the Germans and Japanese in 1945. Killing lots of Germans may well have enraged them and caused them to \u201cclose ranks\u201d and so on. But in the end, that’s how wars are won.
\nJonathan Freedland is no enemy of Israel and certainly no fool. Yet he buys into the idiotic argument that Israel dare not defend itself for fear of angering its enemies. He’s equating the fire-fighters with the arsonists and is doing precisely what he accuses Israel of doing: avoiding the tough questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This article originally appeared on Engage.] The worst thing about Jonathan Freedland’s article is not the lyrics but the melody. The article is song-like in its constant repetition of a refrain of \u201cPalestinians say this\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israelgaza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}