No Baloney from Lebanon

I am really tired of Westerners (yesterday, on this blog it was a Canadian - CANADIAN!) chastizing me about not being Arab enough, not fighting Israel enough, not pushing for the Arab cause enough. What in the world is that?....Who in the world is a Canadian to tell me such things? Because he thinks I should be fighting for the Arab cause, I need to: live without electricity; live under constant bombardment; live with terrorism; live without running water; live in constant fear of violence from all around (remember, pan-Arabists love to fight each other, too).

Unfortunately, this wonderful opening graf is not Wonker's brilliant prose but the opening shot of a fairly new Lebanon-based blog that's really on to something serious--the fierce anti-Israeli bias of the international left, and the underlying presupposition that this essentially anti-US position is shared by all the "oppressed peoples" of the universe, particularly the Arabs.

Our blogger is having none of this, and his stemwinder reaches a telling crescendo as it nears its conclusion:

And I don't understand why it is so difficult for people to acknowledge the possibility that Lebanon isn't just an Arab country. We're a Mediterranean country with Jews, Iranians, Greeks, Turks, Turkmen, Armenians, the descendents of crusaders, Italians, Syrians, Arabs, and even the descendents of Russians living amongst us. To claim that we are simply "Arab" is to disenfranchise a huge segment of the population, let alone history. It undermines the pluralism of the Ottoman Empire and ingenious systems the people living in this region came up with to work problems out amongst themselves in coordination with the Ottomans, French, British, Russians, and others.

Why are Canadians and foreign leftists adding to the racist propaganda in the Middle East? Why are they giving credence to fighting a war with Israel?

We don't need any more war here. Let Canada and France and The Netherlands fight a war with Israel if they feel so strongly about it.

Oh, but war is against human rights, so no white person should ever do that. Leave that to the slightly colored folks with big noses and claim that you would be oppressing Middle Eastern culture if you stopped wars in the Middle East. The liberal white people will set the battle lines through international agreements and centuries old lines, but let the savage Jews, Muslims, and tainted oriental Christians fight for rights. The leftwing will support the weaker power, the rightwing will overwhelmingly support the stronger power.

That's the fallacy of the Western leftwing. None of its arguments on foreign policy are coherent.

Amen.

In his brilliant fusillade, this anonymous Arab blogger shows himself to be first and foremost a human being, not a cheap ideologue like his leftist antagonists who breezily deploy the same racism they spy and decry in all others, cynically exploiting it to further their own spluttering ideology.

Their anti-Israeli warmongering, hateful on the face of it let alone condescending to right-thinking Arabs (of whom there are many), reminds Wonker of the ongoing scandal in Maryland featuring righteous progressive Democrats pitching Oreos at black Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Steele. Like the boasting Pharisee in the synagogue in the New Testament parable, these preening hypocrites bask in their self-proclaimed moral superiority, but seethe 24/7 with pure hatred toward anyone who doesn't follow the Party Line. (Update on the Oreos here: there's been some slight backpedaling by saner 'Rats.)

Meanwhile, to luxuriate in the this spot-on young Lebanese blogger's well-written counter-attack on the left, read the whole thing here.

For additional informed comment on positive developments unfolding in Lebanon, check out Jamie Glazov's piece here.