An excellent article on Sharon’s career, in The Australian.
Hitchens reverts to his uber-lefty roots with an anti-Sharon piece that purports to be complimentary. You can pretty much sum it up like this: “Holy crap! Sharon the war criminal and mass murderer actually wanted to make peace with the palestinians even though he spent his entire career brutally mass-murdering them.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. He predicts Netanyahu. Look, just because I like that Hitchens hates George Galloway doesn’t mean I like his positions on Israel. In fact, I generally don’t.
The latest AP report, which of course has whitewashed the palestinian celebrations.
Agreed. You can never really trust a lefty.
Ditto on Hitchens. I read his article (courtesy of Instapundit’s link) and was instantly reminded of pre-9/11 days. Sharon presented as former scary fascist (bad-guy) turned pragmatic peacemaker (good-guy), but with reservations about presumed intentions to annexe large parts of the “Palestinian West Bank” (!), and, of course, the terrible “wall”.
Hitchens even draws on Chomsky (!), conferring some sort of legitimate insight on his distortions that would otherwise be unthinkable for Hitchens’ view of, e.g., Iraq.
The good old double-standard, never far from the surface, re-emerges.
Thanks for the link to “The Australian” article – altogether more balanced.
To hell with Hitchens.
More interested in what Dave of Israellycool has to say for the moment.
Hitchens is generally a bright guy but still has an Israel animus bug up his keister.
Notice that while Hitchens would, I’m sure, give no credence to Chomsky’s views on Iraq, he hasn’t gone back to reassess his views on Sabra and Shatila.
This brings up an interesting point and I wonder if anyone has any ideas.
Hitchens is that rare thing, a lefty who actual learns from experience, and his post-9/11 work bears the earmarks of actual thought and analysis, taking new developments and information into account, etc.
Yet he still dislikes Israel, bears it a real animus. In most cases I’d simply ascribe it to what Meryl calls the Exception Clause but more properly should be called the (ahem) Bensky Corollar to Everything [see Meryl’s archives for the week of June 11, 2005].
In Hitchens’s case I just don’t pick up the feeling that this is the reason. I could be wrong, of course. Does anyone have any other theories?
Hitches had casue to learn from experience from 9/11, since he could clearly see that the jihadis were antagonistic to things he held dear. Unless they are stopped he will be one of those the jihadis stand against the wall, or whose head they will hack off. He feels no kinship with Israelis, and thus does not feel that jihadi terror against Israelis and the Arab threat to Israel has any personal consequences for him. Also, since 1967, hostility to Israel has grown steadily to become the standard party line for the left. There are limits to how far Hitchens is able to break away from the party line. Lefties in general seem to me to be very herd-like in their thinking.