Soccer Dad

Battlestar Israel: Palestinians and Cylons

Jonah Goldberg of The Corner is a big fan of Battlestar Galactica, and in a post on Tuesday Goldberg revealed some of the background behind one of the characters:

It’s revealed that Admiral Adama once led a "black-op" to investigate whether or not the Cylons were preparing for war. He sent a stealth pilot past the agreed-upon armistice line. The ship was fired upon and a couple years later the Cylons returned, murdering billions of humans in an attempt to completely wipe out the entire human race.

From this set of facts, Adama concludes it's all his fault because he led the mission that proved the human race really were "war mongers" in the eyes of the Cylons.

Goldberg takes issue with the broader moral implications of Adama's sense of guilt as applied to the world at large

The idea that the human race had it coming from the Cylons is moral flapdoodle (and flatly unbelievable; the creators seem to think decent humans would be deeply conflicted about declaring total war on a bunch of artificial lifeforms who slaughtered 99% of humanity). Similarly, the suggestion that the we are solely to blame morally for the war on terror because a bunch of psychopaths take offense at what we do is idiotic. Sure, we can debate whether this or that policy is defensible, wise, just etc. But this "Why do they hate us?" piffle is so morally unserious it's horrifying how widely held it is. It's also incredibly vain. It assumes that everything is about us — that terrorists aren't fully human moral actors and therefor responsibility for their actions lies with us.

For Goldberg this attitude is comparable to the "Why do they hate us?" approach of many in the US, who are ready if not downright eager to blame the US for the actions of the terrorists. In the same way, many place the responsibility for the murders committed by the Palestinian terrorists squarely on the shoulders of the Israelis themselves.

Palestinian-as-victim has now been adopted and expanded to the point that now the Muslim world is the victim of Western oppression:

1. Israel and the US are portrayed as oppressors of Islam and of the Muslim world at large.
As many as 10 million Muslims have been killed in the past few decades—by other Muslims. The Muslim world, however, would have us all believe that the real threat and oppressor in the region is Israel, though during all the wars starting from 1948 only 60,000 have been killed by comparison.

Similarly, the Muslim world has had to deal with the imperialist expansionism of France, Great Britain, and Russia who exercised both influence and control in the region—yet it is the US who is portrayed as the Great Satan.

2. Islamist terrorism against both Israel and the West is being justified.
The polls out there are showing that Muslims really believe the claim that Islam is under attack and support the terrorist attacks, both in Israel and in Great Britain. Islamist terrorists are murdering people by the thousands each year, yet Muslims claim that they are the ones being victimized. Israel is both condemned for being the cause of the terrorism and for over-reacting when she responds to the attaks.

3. Both Israel and the West accept the guilt trip and concede accordingly
From England in particular we hear about legislation to protect Muslims from attack—at the same time that free speech is curtailed in the process. Piglet is banned and police must show special sensitivity when arresting Muslims—as if Muslims as a group were a specially religious group. The US is not far behind. Rep. John Conyers wants to pass legislation banning religious hate crimes, while marking Muslims in particular for such treatment. Meanwhile, CAIR provides numbers for the alleged rise in anti-Muslim attacks: numbers that have been document as sloppy and exaggerated.
Meanwhile, in Olmert defends the Disengagement and at every opportunity talks openly of his willingness to make broad concessions to the ‘moderate’ Abbas whose men still go around killing Israeli civilians.

Daily we see the results of the manufactured claims of oppression by the Muslim world.

This week, Mme. Arbour, the former Supreme Court of Canada justice visited the bombed-out house of a family in Beit Hanoun, where she declared that local Arab civilians suffer from "catastrophic human-rights violations." Yet, after witnessing two Kassam missile attacks on Sderot, she refused to condemn the Arab attacks on Israeli civilians, and refused to meet with the families of the three kidnapped IDF soldiers.

Goldberg actually understates his case. He questions the judgment of the creators of Battlestar Gallactica that humans would be conflicted about declaring total war on the murderers of a large portion of humanity. One would think he has not been paying attention to the bend-over-backwards gymnastics of the Israeli government in avoiding an all-out attack in Gaza to defend against the Kassams. On Wednesday, the Israeli Cabinet decided to use targeted assassinations against Hamas while at the same time declaring up front that she will not target the leadership of Hamas which is making the decisions

Flapdoodle is putting it mildly.

by Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Israel and Moslems and Terrorism and Islamists

Posted by daledamos at November 23, 2006 2:56 AM