Full Disclosure

In the interests of full disclosure and for the purpose of exposing my personal biases, I'd like to take this opportunity to make a statement of my beliefs regarding the latest round of combat operations in the Middle East. I have strong opinions on the subject that I generally keep to myself, because it's my experience that almost nobody shares them with me. (For example, I very much doubt that the other editors of The MojoWire would have much difficulty finding disagreements with my arguments.)

At the risk of pissing off every last one of our readers, I'll try to put this as politely as I can. The crisis in the Middle East serves as irrebutable proof in my mind that basing your claims to the sovereign ownership of land on interpretations of religious doctrine is a recipe for disaster. The problem in the Middle East is all the damned Zionists, particularly the Revisionist Zionists, the Christian Zionists, and those Palestinophiles who essential subscribe to a kind of "crypto-Zionism" (wow, what a bad term of art, eh?). They all have one thing in common: a tendency to defend their claims on the so-called Holy Land by killing people who don't worship in the same language as they do, and quoting badly misinterpreted scripture and historicla documents for their justification of it.

I have no patience for that bullshit.

Apparently, though— I'm in a rapidly diminishing minority. It would seem the vast majority of interested commentators on this subject have internalized the axiomatic systems peculiar to one or another of the various Zionist (or crypto-Zionist) philosophies, and in so doing, necessarily been swayed into taking a rhetorical side in the conflict, at least.

Don't get me wrong. Feel free to put the standard shibboleth to me, i.e. "do you think Israel has a right to exist?" Here's my answer: I would say that the relevant international laws recognize Israel's sovereign legal right to exist, and more importantly, I would tell you that those laws are not merely just and morally correct, but they are also the subject of a sad and terrible controversy that we should all be ashamed we are still having. Many Americans today reject the legitimacy of the international laws that recognize Israel's legal right to exist, while they simultaneously have the unmitigated gall to pillory those of us who contend that the law should mean something.

I don't have any clue what should be done to minize the fighting in South Lebanon, though I will go out on a limb and say this One True Thing: it would be a whole lot easier if more Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. in the Middle East were to wake up tomorrow and convert to atheism. This "my God can make your God into His little bitch" stuff is not helping anybody.