This is twice in the last couple of months that I think Bill Maher has it right. In the video below, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC expresses skepticism that there are many pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli voices in the MSM. Maher doesn't actually answer Maddow, who asks a fair but answerable question, rather he just assumes there are such people and then gives a rather insulting, but understandable, explanation as to why.
The part that I think he has right, and the part more people need to comprehend, is the last thing he says:
I say his explanation is insulting but understandable because I think it's true that in the West the benefit of the doubt often goes, inexplicably, to those who are seen either as the underdog or as foes of the U.S. It seems both illogical and perverse, but that's how the liberal mind often works. It's why, perhaps, the use of deadly force by the Israelis to defend their lives has been condemned by many Western liberals as "disproportionate."
The reasoning, such as it is, goes like this: The Palestinians can't match Israeli firepower so it's unfair for the Israelis to use it. They should limit themselves in any fight to the death to the same weapons as those used by their opponents. It's this sort of thinking, probably, that underlies Maher's remark about "stupidity."
As for the last part of what he says, the Palestinians have indeed brought much of their suffering upon themselves. They elect a "government," Hamas, which declares the extirpation of Israel to be its primary goal and reason for being. They blow Israeli children to bits whenever they can, and then the world, silent withal, rouses itself to condemn the Israelis whenever they've had enough and undertake stiff measures, like a blockade, to defend themselves.
Anyway, while we're on the subject of the perversity of some of the anti-Israeli arguments one hears, we might lighten the mood with this little parody by an Israeli troupe called Latma of the "peace activists" aboard the Mavi Marmara:
Conning the world isn't hard to do, I suppose, when the world is so eager to be conned.
Thanks to Atlas Shrugs for the video.
RLC
