“Here’s hoping that the rest of ‘Moral Clarity Week’ has a bit more clarity”: Law prof Jeff Cooper (himself a left leaner) takes the time to graciously answer brave morality soldier MaxSpeak (champion of the “See? They did it, too!” school of ethical argument) on his charges that advocates of Israel don’t spend enough time vilifying examples of Israeli brutality.
Me, I’m done with silly equivalency arguments like Max’s. With regard to the Palestinian situation, either you’ve pulled your head out of your ass by now or you haven’t.
Max is still a tumbler.
Tumbler? Define please, with as much delicacy as you can muster.
…Imagine trying to perambulate with your head up <i>your</i> ass…
Congrats, Protein Guy, for packing more distortions of what I wrote into fewer words than anybody I’ve seen recently. At least you linked so that anyone who lacked faith in your veracity could check for themselves. I won’t recapitulate, except to ask: did you yourself pause for a microsecond to take any un-vilified note of reported crimes by the IDF or the funeral mob? Now I’ll be rollin’ and tumblin’ out of here. Cheers.
Yes I did, Max. And I’m against the killing of innocents on a consistent basis—though I recognize the difference between the death of innocents that happen as a result of agression and the death of innocents that happen in the course of defense. Which is why I didn’t feel the need to comment.
Your defense of relentless Palestinian atrocities is to point to Israeli crimes that take place in reaction to them and wonder why us “warbloggers” aren’t shouting as loud about <i>those</i> atrocities as they are about Semtex-laden teens walking into pizza parlors or holiday dinners and intentionally targeting civilians. Well, why would we? And further why <i>should</i> we?
I don’t know how I “distorted” what you wrote. If you care to explain, you know where I am.
(ps. Of course I linked to your post. Why wouldn’t I? As you say, that allows people to judge for themselves whether or not I’ve distorted your position.)
I said:
“did you yourself pause for a microsecond to take any un-vilified note of reported crimes by the IDF or the funeral mob?”
You said:
“Yes I did, Max.”
Exactly where, please?
As to explanations, I’ll leave that to your intelligent readers. Any of them can tell the difference between what I said and a “defense of relentless Palestinian atrocities.” Any of them who can’t are not worth the conversation.
cheers.
P.S. Argument by assertion and name-calling is sophomoric. Try and take things up a notch, if you can.
Could it be that you’re confusing not <i>writing</i> about something in a weblog with not “pausing to consider,” Max?
Implying that because some writers aren’t writing as much about the death of innocent Palestinians as they are about the death of innocent Israelis, those writers are less sensitive to the crisis in the Middle East than are you for having the cleverness to point it out, is <i>worse</i> than argument by assertion and namecalling. It’s argument by innuendo and veiled equivalence.
I’ve written thousands of words here about the Palestinian/Israeli situation. And I provide an archives link and a search button. The thing is—as I made clear in my original post—I’m no longer interested in being baiting by juvenille “arguments” like yours (Why haven’t the warbloggers written about <i>these</i> things, eh? Do they not care about innocent humans when those innocent humans are Palestinian? They mustn’t because where’s the outrage?) That’s nothing but a cheap and hamfisted attempt to disqualify the arguments of your opponents by suggesting they’re unwilling to consider the whole of the problem. When in fact they’re just no longer willing to be baited by silly, crass, implied indictments.
And so it comes back to what I wrote originally: Jeff Cooper had the patience to deal with your drawing of parallels. I don’t—save for pointing out that you’ve drawn them. If you’re interested in my arguments about the Palestinian situation (and I suspect you’re not), they’re available to you.
In the meantime, you might resist being so smug about your own perceived lack of bloodthirstiness. Your willingness to draw certain parallels is one of the things the P.A. propoganda machine counts upon to allow them to continue their strategy of targeting civilians—no matter how much you’ll protest that you support Israel’s right to strike back at terrorism.
Again: every death of an innocent is a tragedy; but to suggest that simply because some bloggers haven’t written about the deaths of innocent Palestinians these bloggers have moral failings is insulting. Faux moral superiority is the easiest thing in the world to affect. You wear it well. But I’m not fooled, and I’m not impressed.
I asked “exactly where did you yourself pause for a microsecond to take any un-vilified note of reported crimes by the IDF or the funeral mob?” And your answer can be paraphrased as “I didn’t, but it doesn’t matter.”
Thank you for answering my question. I won’t harrass you any longer.
cheers.
No, that’s an inaccurate paraphrase, Max. My answer to the question “<i>exactly where did you yourself pause for a microsecond to take any un-vilified note of reported crimes by the IDF or the funeral mob>/i>?” can be much more accurately paraphrased as “not blogging it and not pausing over it are different things entirely, but suffice it to say, I pause over the death of innocents whenever I hear of such things.”
Of course, this was my answer to your <i>follow up</i> questions. My answer to your original post, you’ll remember, was that people who haven’t figured out where to aim their outrage with regard to the Palestinian situation have their heads up their asses.