"I nearly always agree with Camille's political viewpoints, but this
one stumped me."
This anonymous reader can hardly be the sharpest tool in the box then. Whether one agrees with the excerpt or not I think it is pretty self evident that, whatever flaws Camille Paglia can be accused of, a lack of clarity is probably not one of them. More generally, while I find little to violently disagree with in Paglia's comments, I remain wondering whether this position of being pro or anti Israel (framed as the two sole options) is ever likely to get anyone anywhere.
Paglia makes a very valid point that the Palestinians are unlikely to regard the kind of settlement that would typically be thought just (retreat to 1967 borders etc) as an adequate substitute for the defeat of Israel. On the other hand, supporting Israel in this context means supporting the status quo, which essentially means perpetuating the current violence (which is not in the interests of Israel either). My suspicion is that her earlier comments concerning a settlement still pertain, though I would suspect that the protracted presence of a UN peacekeeping force would be required. Frankly, what other long-term solution is there? The only others are, after all, apartheid, expulsion or extermination.
"Since 9-11, vastly more open debate about Israel, pro and con, has
been permitted in the American mainstream media. Unfortunately, a strident polarization, close to hysteria, has also developed."
One of the things I neglected to mention in my earlier analysis, is the manner in which the US sees the conflict in Manichean terms of good and evil (the terms are exclusively moral and certainly never legal), and Europe sees a number of complex and interlocking factors usually relating to poverty and oppression. As I indicated on that previous post, I'm not sure that either analysis has a great deal to commend it.
---- This message was posted by kharin to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=26246>
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