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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Lileks: Israel at 60 |
| 2008-05-09 |
| . . . I feel compelled to talk about some things, but on the other hand, I’ve nothing to add. Israel’s 60th anniversary, for example: I’m glad. Hearty congrats, and good luck. I did hear an interview about the subject on the Prager show, and he noted this tiny country the size of New Jersey had more members of the international media than most nations, and wondered why. Seems obvious: no one who wants to report on the other actors in the neighborhood wants to be there. Who’d want to live in Syria? A posting like that would be like scraping your teeth on a concrete wall all day. Unfortunately, I suspect it’s easier to regard everyone in the area as morally equal actors if you’re reporting from a nice place with good beaches and lively bars and women who do crazy things like drive cars and wear bikinis; like the rest of the West, you begin to think that everyone wants the same thing, more or less, like cars and ice in their drinks and a day at the beach, but that only goes so far – and it’s also not entirely relevant when the other societies in the neighborhood aren’t free. And so you have stories that report The Israeli Position, which is the result of free elections imperfectly filtered through the fractious nature of democracy, and The Syrian Position, which is the result of Assad the Minor nodding “yes, of course” when Iran calls on the phone. Speaking of which: always one with the quick quip, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “labeled the Zionist regime as a ‘stinking corpse’ and said those who think they can revive the corpse of this fabricated and usurper regime are in mistaken." If you think he was taken out of context, well, that’s from the Iranian news agency. It’s enough just to point out the quote and let it sit there and stink. File that one away with the others. The future should never come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |