Kumbaya Watch
The latest in anti-American commentary from the Left.

By Ross Douthat
September 18, 2001 2:40 p.m.

he anti-American Left has settled on its post-terror party line, it seems, which can be boiled down to two words: blame Israel. Writing in the U.K.'s Guardian, the ever-reliable Edward Said remarks that Arab hatred of the U.S.A. is eminently understandable, given America's "support for the 34-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Israel," he adds, "is now cynically exploiting the American catastrophe by intensifying its military occupation and oppression of the Palestinians." Said is joined by Jonathon Power in the Boston Globe, who denounces Israel's "foolish and counterproductive policy of building settlements on what everyone knew was Palestinian land," which led an "inevitable" (and not, he implies, necessarily regrettable) shift toward "serious violence" in the Islamic world. And in the London-based Observer, Richard Ingrams wonders "Who Will Dare to Damn Israel?" and then answers his own question by reporting on "the undeniable and central fact behind the disaster that Israel is now and has been for some time an American colony, sustained by billions of American dollars and armed with American missiles, helicopters and tanks."

Still, for sheer chutzpah, it's hard to top Salon's Gary Kayima, who blithely counsels America "to start throwing its weight around" by threatening to cut off all aid to the Israelis unless they take the "concrete steps necessary to provide justice for the Palestinian people." Kayima pays lip service to the "tragic missed opportunity" at Camp David last year, when Ehud Barak offered sweeping concessions to Yasser Arafat, and provoked a new intifada for his pains. But in point of fact, he writes as if the Camp David disaster never took place, and as if the obvious answer to the Middle East quandary was for Israel to offer concessions, concessions, and still more concessions. "There are no heroes and villains here," Kayima insists, neatly placing suicide bombers and Israeli soldiers on the same moral plane, and then reports that despite those street celebrations last Tuesday, "in their hearts, the Palestinians, like the Israelis, like Americans, like all the people of the world, want the same things. Peace. A country. A decent life." Oh, and the utter and completely destruction of Israel. But never mind that.

"As long as millions of Islamic and Arab people hate America because of its Mideast policies," Kayima warns, "we will be in danger" of further terrorist attacks. And if millions of people hate our policies, well, then those policies must be changed. After all, "no one in the world, aside from some segment of the Israeli public and, apparently, the U.S. government, believes" in the moral superiority of Israel (the only constitutional democracy in the entire Middle East) to the Palestinian terrorists who seek Israel's destruction. "The Third World doesn't believe it," Kayima points out, nor does "the United Nations." So sub-Saharan strongmen, tinpot tyrants, and their tame General Assembly become the world's sole source of moral authority — and the time has come, Kayima implies, for the U.S.A. to get with their program.

Not even the slaughter of thousands of Americans, it seems, can shake the hold of certain illusions over the left-wing mind.