Monday, July 11, 2005
The Israeli flag wrapping thing and the desecration of the Star of David
Because I believe that you have to read what the other side writes in order to keep your head on straight, I fight my way through the New York Review of Books as often as I can bring myself to. This afternoon I took the Bastille Day issue to the beach, and happened on this review essay on "the new world order" by Tony Jundt. Although the article warrants an extensive fisking, I have but two points to make, one general and one specific.
Jundt's article decries American foreign policy and prosecution of the war on terror, specifically as it involves violations of international law and the degradation of America's reputation in the world. My general point, which will not resonate unless you read the article, is that the overall impression is that the author fundamentally does not agree that we are in a war involving extremely high stakes. All sorts of bad things, such as the mistreatment of suspected jihadis, seem outrageous to Americans and foreigners who do not fundamentally believe that we are fighting for our lives. Since I do, Jundt's catalog of outrage doesn't really wind me up, even if I think that much of it is unwise policy. But it does bring me to my specific point:
Leftist critics of the United States love complaining about the wrapping of Muslim prisoners in the flag of Israel. For the life of me, I do not understand the outrage.
It seems to me that there are two lefty objections to Star-of-David wrapping (there is a third objection that I will address at the end of the post). The first is utilitarian: "a new generation of Muslims worldwide will identify the two countries as one and hate them equally." The second is moral: it humiliates the prisoner, and that's a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Neither of these arguments, however, reflect well on the person who makes them.
Consider the second argument first. How is it that wrapping a suspected jihadi in an Israeli flag humiliates him? Is it that wrapping him in any flag humiliates him? Of course not. Even Tony Jundt wouldn't object to wrapping suspected jihadis in, say, a United Nations flag. Rolling up a suspect in an Israeli flag is humiliating only if the prisoner is an unreconstructed anti-Semite. The beauty of the tactic is that it uses the prisoner's own vile bigotry against him. If the prisoner is not a vicious anti-Semite, the tactic won't be humiliating and therefore no violation of the Geneva Convention will obtain. The tactic only stands a chance of "working" against people who are manifest scumbags (even if not necessarily terrorists). So the people who bleat about Israeli flag-wrapping are really saying that we need to respect the anti-Semitism of prisoners who are suspected jihadis.
The utilitarian argument -- that "a new generation of Muslims worldwide will identify the two countries as one and hate them equally" -- is both asinine and repellant.
It is asinine because the Muslim world already identifies the United States with Israel. The Muslim world -- Arabs in particular -- have been obsessed with the relationship between the United States and Israel at least since Nasser told his "Big Lie" during the Six Day War. (Egypt's President Nasser explained away the humiliating defeat of his air force at the hands of Israel by claiming that American and British jets had taken out his bases. Hundreds of thousands of rioters took to the streets in cities across the Arab world, attacking American embassies, businesses and travellers. Read about it in detail here.) Arabs hate us, they have hated us for two generations, and they will continue to hate us until they stop looking for external explanations for their massive cultural and political failures. If they believe that we attacked Iraq to seize its oil, and that Israel was behind the attacks on September 11 to trigger a war against the Arab world, wrapping a few prisoners in Israel's flag is hardly going to make the situation worse. The whole idea is laughable.
The utilitarian argument is repellant because it presupposes that the United States should secure itself by disassociating itself with Israel in the minds of people who do not recognize that country's right to exist. Yes, we have deliberately limited our support of Israel in the past for fear that too close an association would jeopardize the willingness of authoritarian Arab regimes to supply us with oil or support us in other geopolitical ambitions (such as containing the Soviets or al Qaeda), but these compromises are embarrassing and have probably been counterproductive in the long run. As Jundt himself claims, Israel is just about our "only uncondtional ally" in the world (a ridiculous overstatement). He apparently thinks that we should betray her by eschewing tactics that might further associate the United States with Israel in the minds of people who want to drive Jews from the Levant. Under Jundt's reasoning, that would leave us with exactly no allies, but improved relations with the people who want to destroy Israel. This does not strike me as a moral argument.
There is, as I said, a third argument against wrapping suspected jihadis in the Israeli flag: it desecrates the Star of David, and the flag of our one of our most loyal allies. It is highly unlikely that one would read that argument in The New York Review of Books (Jundt, after all, thinks that it is a "generous gesture" to use the flag of our ally as a coercive device), but I'm personally rather more troubled by that than any alleged "desecration" of the Koran.
Jundt's article decries American foreign policy and prosecution of the war on terror, specifically as it involves violations of international law and the degradation of America's reputation in the world. My general point, which will not resonate unless you read the article, is that the overall impression is that the author fundamentally does not agree that we are in a war involving extremely high stakes. All sorts of bad things, such as the mistreatment of suspected jihadis, seem outrageous to Americans and foreigners who do not fundamentally believe that we are fighting for our lives. Since I do, Jundt's catalog of outrage doesn't really wind me up, even if I think that much of it is unwise policy. But it does bring me to my specific point:
The United States "renders" (i.e., kidnaps and hands over) targeted suspects to third-party states for interrogation and torture beyond the reach of US law and the press...
At the US's own interrogation centers and prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, at least twenty-seven "suspects" have been killed in custody. This number does not include extrajudicial, extraterritorial "targeted assassinations": a practice inaugurated by Benito Mussolini with the murder of the Rosselli brothers in Normandy in 1937, pursued with vigor by Israel, and now adopted by the Bush administration. The Amnesty report lists sixty alleged incarceration and interrogation practices routinely employed at US detention centers, Guantánamo in particular. These include immersion in cold water to simulate drowning, forced shaving of facial and body hair, electric shocks to body parts, humiliation (e.g., being urinated upon), sexual taunting [the famous lap dance torture - ed.], the mocking of religious belief, suspension from shackles, physical exertion to the point of exhaus-tion (e.g., rock-carrying), and mock execution.
Any and all of these practices will be familiar to students of Eastern Europe in the Fifties or Latin America in the Seventies and Eighties—including the reported presence of "medical personnel." But American interrogators have also innovated. One technique has been forcibly to wrap suspects—and their Korans—in Israeli flags: a generous gesture to our only unconditional ally, but calculated to ensure that a new generation of Muslims worldwide will identify the two countries as one and hate them equally.
Leftist critics of the United States love complaining about the wrapping of Muslim prisoners in the flag of Israel. For the life of me, I do not understand the outrage.
It seems to me that there are two lefty objections to Star-of-David wrapping (there is a third objection that I will address at the end of the post). The first is utilitarian: "a new generation of Muslims worldwide will identify the two countries as one and hate them equally." The second is moral: it humiliates the prisoner, and that's a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Neither of these arguments, however, reflect well on the person who makes them.
Consider the second argument first. How is it that wrapping a suspected jihadi in an Israeli flag humiliates him? Is it that wrapping him in any flag humiliates him? Of course not. Even Tony Jundt wouldn't object to wrapping suspected jihadis in, say, a United Nations flag. Rolling up a suspect in an Israeli flag is humiliating only if the prisoner is an unreconstructed anti-Semite. The beauty of the tactic is that it uses the prisoner's own vile bigotry against him. If the prisoner is not a vicious anti-Semite, the tactic won't be humiliating and therefore no violation of the Geneva Convention will obtain. The tactic only stands a chance of "working" against people who are manifest scumbags (even if not necessarily terrorists). So the people who bleat about Israeli flag-wrapping are really saying that we need to respect the anti-Semitism of prisoners who are suspected jihadis.
The utilitarian argument -- that "a new generation of Muslims worldwide will identify the two countries as one and hate them equally" -- is both asinine and repellant.
It is asinine because the Muslim world already identifies the United States with Israel. The Muslim world -- Arabs in particular -- have been obsessed with the relationship between the United States and Israel at least since Nasser told his "Big Lie" during the Six Day War. (Egypt's President Nasser explained away the humiliating defeat of his air force at the hands of Israel by claiming that American and British jets had taken out his bases. Hundreds of thousands of rioters took to the streets in cities across the Arab world, attacking American embassies, businesses and travellers. Read about it in detail here.) Arabs hate us, they have hated us for two generations, and they will continue to hate us until they stop looking for external explanations for their massive cultural and political failures. If they believe that we attacked Iraq to seize its oil, and that Israel was behind the attacks on September 11 to trigger a war against the Arab world, wrapping a few prisoners in Israel's flag is hardly going to make the situation worse. The whole idea is laughable.
The utilitarian argument is repellant because it presupposes that the United States should secure itself by disassociating itself with Israel in the minds of people who do not recognize that country's right to exist. Yes, we have deliberately limited our support of Israel in the past for fear that too close an association would jeopardize the willingness of authoritarian Arab regimes to supply us with oil or support us in other geopolitical ambitions (such as containing the Soviets or al Qaeda), but these compromises are embarrassing and have probably been counterproductive in the long run. As Jundt himself claims, Israel is just about our "only uncondtional ally" in the world (a ridiculous overstatement). He apparently thinks that we should betray her by eschewing tactics that might further associate the United States with Israel in the minds of people who want to drive Jews from the Levant. Under Jundt's reasoning, that would leave us with exactly no allies, but improved relations with the people who want to destroy Israel. This does not strike me as a moral argument.
There is, as I said, a third argument against wrapping suspected jihadis in the Israeli flag: it desecrates the Star of David, and the flag of our one of our most loyal allies. It is highly unlikely that one would read that argument in The New York Review of Books (Jundt, after all, thinks that it is a "generous gesture" to use the flag of our ally as a coercive device), but I'm personally rather more troubled by that than any alleged "desecration" of the Koran.
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Nov 06, 06:50:00 AM:
We specialize in laptop battery,laptop AC adapters. All our products are brand new, with the excellent service from our laptop battery of customer service team.
the most convenient and cheap replacement battery online shop in uk. We specialize in laptop batteries,laptop AC adapters.
All our laptop AC adapters are brand new, with the excellent service from our customer service team.
the most convenient and cheap battery online shop in uk.
