The nature of Israel’s “provocation”

In a typically sick, uber liberal editorial, the Los Angeles Times on March 14 wrote:

Which is worse—stabbing children to death or building new houses in West Bank settlements? The answer is obvious. But that’s not the point. The point is that no matter how abhorrent the murders are, it serves no purpose to aggravate the provocation that led to them in the first place.

In response, VFR reader Carl Pearlston got this unusually strong letter published in the March 19 print edition of the paper:

Your ascribing the brutal murder of an Israeli family by Palestinian thugs to some “provocation” on the part of Israel actually, though probably unintentionally, states the matter well.

The continued existence of Israel is a provocation to the Palestinians, who refuse to recognize or tolerate its existence and strive to annihilate it. The only way for Israel to remove this “provocation” is to commit national suicide. That is the “peace” sought by the Palestinians.

Making much the same point, Giulio Meotti at the Corner observes that “in the eyes of Islamists and terrorists, Israel itself is just one big settlement.”

And, in words that echo Geert Wilders’s excellent statement last year (see also this follow-up) about support for Israel against those seeking to destroy it being a litmus test of basic morality, a self-described neoconservative blogger writes:

There’s a moral inversion in the world, and an individual’s stance on Israel is a pretty good indicator of one relationship to universal right.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 25, 2011 10:42 AM | Send