It’s often hard to know what to make of a Maureen Dowd column. She’s so interested in sounding snarky, it’s often hard to know when she’s being serious. She’s in Riyadh now, acting as a stenographer for Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
Here’s her setup:
Actually, the president didn’t say all the right words in his speech. He created an obstacle for himself by demanding that Israel stop expanding settlements when it was not going to do so — even though it should — and when that wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs.
Now Obama seems ineffectual, as Israel pushes ahead on 600 more new homes in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want their capital, despite the White House protest in November about 900 other houses that Israel plans to put up there.
Then she gets the Prince’s comments:
I asked Prince Saud if he thinks America has less influence over Israel than it used to.
“You’re asking me about something that has tickled our imagination,†he replied. “If the settlements are illegitimate, the least you would expect is that the aid the United States gives to Israel would cut that part that is going to build settlements. Israel is getting away without implementing the Geneva Convention as an occupying authority. Now if it were somewhere else, in Burma or somewhere like that, hell would be raised.â€
It’s probably a sign of progress that Prince Saud calls it “a border dispute.†Unless it’s just his understated way. He also refers to “the 9/11 incident†and alludes to the Holocaust obliquely as “World War II.â€
Now there’s nothing in that comment about a “border dispute,” so it must be from a comment the Prince made that she didn’t transcribe. Dowd doesn’t dispute the Prince’s dubious use of “occupying authority.” In an earlier paragraph it’s clear that she doesn’t approve of Israelis living in any territory that wasn’t part of the country before 1967.
But then Dowd writes:
Despite repeated attacks by Arab states and Arab and Iranian-backed militant groups, and a call for Israel’s destruction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Prince Saud suggested that Israel might be overreacting about security because of “World War II†and that this prevented a peace deal.
“There are no troops arrayed on the border of Israel waiting for the moment to say, ‘Attack Israel,’ †the prince said. “Nobody is going to fight them and threaten their peace. But they didn’t accept that. So it makes one wonder, what does Israel want?â€
If anyone deserves to be paranoid, of course, it’s Israel. But Israel can’t be paranoid because paranoia is the mistaken perception that people are out to get you.
Now, it’s clear that she has a different opinion of Israel than I do, but did she just diss the Saudis in their own home by acknowledging that Israel’s fear of its Arab and Islamic neighbors is well-founded?
Crossposted on Yourish.
No one on their borders massing? Perhaps “Marueen Dowd” has never heard of ballistic missiles.
I put “Maureen Dowd” in quotation marks because actually I have proved through reason alone that there is no such person. I’ll offer my proof another time, but “Maureen Dowd” is in fact an elaborate practical joke the New York Times editorial staff has been playing on its readers for many years. Personally, and speaking as one whose life has basically been running one joke after another into the ground, I think it’s gone on long enough.
But whoever is behind the construct (I suspect it’s at least in part Anna Quindlen because “MoDo” has a habit of seeing “we,” “us,” and “everyone” when she in fact means “me”)does have that annoying propensity to trust without much question the word of a member of the royal family in a highly authoritarian and religiously-bigoted country while subjecting the word of politicians in an open society–the US and Israel–to extreme scrutiny.