Thursday, September 18, 2014

David Harsanyi on why Ted Cruz was right

Here's the best-written article I've found to sum up how I feel about persecuted Christians in the middle-east, the State of Israel and Ted Cruz getting booed a week ago. Here's the meat of it, but it's worth reading the whole thing:

But when it comes worldly matters, here’s what I think I know: There’s only one country in the Middle East that doesn’t persecute – or allow the persecution of – Christians. And, in today’s world, that makes them an ally of the oppressed.

As Cruz points out:

Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish people, you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians, who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith, for the same reason.”

No, Israel’s not going to drop commandos in to rescue the Coptic or send an airlift for the Assyrians– any more than the United States can or would. (Though, sometimes, I wonder why.) But in the Middle East, secularism is far less dangerous to Christians than theocracy. Assad, then, might be a better option than ISIS, but Israel is better option than any of them. Because, generally speaking, Israel shares the same enemies, the same broader geopolitical aims and the same moral outlook. Which, today, makes it the only nation to ally with Christians in the Middle East.*

The best testament to how Jews feel about Middle Eastern Christians can be seen in how they treat them. According to a 2013 Israeli census, the Christian population in Israel has been growing over the years. The only stable Christian population in the Middle East. There are 158,000 Christians in Israel (many of them Arab, and some of them Russians who were offered asylum through The Law of Return). And on average, they were better educated than Jews, and just as prosperous. The Israeli government has actively attempted to better integrate Christian Arabs, who are politically dissimilar from many Muslim Israeli Arabs. It must be working to some extent. According to Time magazine, there’s been a big increase in Arab Christians enlisting in the Israeli army, “doubling the number of each of the preceding three years.” Israel should do more to make it happen.

What threatens the Christian population in Israel? It’s what threatens them everywhere. According to the census takers, “there were fears that Muslim intimidation in cities in northern Israel, where many of them live, are causing large numbers to consider emigrating to the West.”

The reason I like this article so much is it addresses the usual canards thrown around about the views of people like me who support Israel. Harsanyi shoots down the idea that we think Israel can do no wrong or that we prefer secular over religious in general for some insidious reason. I'll take peaceful secular governments over murderous Muslim ones any day, thank you. As far as I can see, the countries being considered aren't Catholic and the call to prayer in these countries does not contain words from The Purpose-Driven Life translated into Arabic.

I don't claim to know why or if Cruz should have said everything he said to that specific audience. But I agree with it in substance. The elephant in the middle of the room remains the question of why do people hate Israel so much. I think there is an answer to this and you may want to go read it here if you wish, with one warning. If you didn't like what David Harsanyi and I have written you will possibly be very angry at what Aryeh Spero writes there.

10 comments:

  1. This is a bit tangential to your post, but because I've already said so much else I might as well stick it here.

    One of the weirdest things about Dreher and his anti-Cruz fellow travelers is the way they write (needless to say, unchallenged) about Mideast Christians as if they somehow can be singled out for saving from persecution, as if someone, somewhere can just light them up with ultraviolet or whatever and then beam them and them alone to safety. This is one of the telltales that what is being written is being written solely as self-aggrandizing tribal pandering - "Do we have any Christians in the audience tonight? Hey, how 'bout those persecuted Mideast Christans! Huh? Am I right?" - and not out of any genuine concern for those Christians.

    Because the fact of the matter is that wherever those Christians are being truly persecuted their friends and neighbors who aren't already the top persecuting dogs themselves are being persecuted right alongside them and pretty much for the same reasons.

    The way to help the persecuted Christians is not to cynically attack Ted Cruz to score inside ideological points while going all Stockholm Syndrome on Assad and Putin the way that Dreher and TAC have been doing but rather to oppose the persecuters and those who make their beds with them instead.

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    1. but rather to oppose the persecuters and those who make their beds with them instead.

      And so you can see the real propaganda triumph of Islam. In the book Because They Hate, Brigitte Gabriel talked about how the Arab Christians she grew up with were taught to hate Israel and how many did for the same reasons as Mulsims. Envy and lies. She later got a job at a hospital in Israel where she saw a old Palestinian Muslim woman being cared for and spewing hatred and invectives against the Jewish doctors taking care of her. She was there because the Israeli's were better at medicine than her backward country.

      Of course we have a certain percentage of people in this country ready to side with thugs whenever a policeman steps out of line. Or even if there's a perception of that. The news that many Christians actually *want* to live in Israel and even join the IDF never gets reported. It doesn't fit the narrative.

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    2. ... what is being written is being written solely as self-aggrandizing tribal pandering ... and not out of any genuine concern for those Christians.

      Yup. It's the equivalent of hashtag activism. Maybe Dreher can get Michelle Obama to post a selfie in which she holds a sign while making a sad face.

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  2. It is interesting to compare what IDC has to say about the Cruz incident with the TAC/Dreher position. Seems to me that, to the extent that IDC has a beef with Cruz, it is because he walked away -- but not about what he said in defense of persecuted Jews. In fact, from that quoted piece, it sounds like the conference was all about "standing united against religious persecution regardless of the religion", as the woman introducing Cruz said.

    OTOH, Dreher has been lambasting Cruz because of what he said, deeming it as forcing the attendees to swear allegiance to Israel at the peril of their lives, by the mere act of sitting politely while Cruz spoke rather than chasing him out of the hall. The IDC position, and apparently that of the vast majority of the attendees, is nowhere close to that.

    To me, that indicates that the TAC/Dreher position is more about Israel-hate (by TAC, particularly those that Dreher outed as not in support of Israel's right to exist or defend itself, as I noted yesterday) and Cruz-hate (TAC and Dreher himself), along with the parochial selection of those Christians as worthy of survival (as opposed to Jews, or those icky Christians of the wrong denomination or positions on social issues), with a little bit of Putin-worship on top.

    We ought to defend the ME Christians from persecution not because they are Christians, but because we are Christians. And, of course, for that same reason that defense should extend to Jews and persecuted Muslims in those lands.

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    1. Pik, thanks for this. Wow, what a novel idea, actually going to the source like you've done here. They should teach that in journalism school.

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    2. This

      "We ought to defend the ME Christians from persecution not because they are Christians, but because we are Christians."

      is more worthy of a post of its own than anything we've written about Dreher and Cruz to date, Pik. Maybe the Crips and the Bloods could learn something from it yet.

      Meanwhile, Dreher finally 'fesses up that his interests are not quite as altruistic as his earlier chorus of bleatings might have us believe. The Mideast Christians were only, as I've consistently pointed out, a convenient foil behind which to bash an ideological opponent. So what are his real interests?

      In response to what he'd do if there were a draft:

      [NFR: ...I would be making contingency plans to get him and his brother to Canada if it came to that...-- RD]

      That's interesting on a number of levels, first of which is that, to be drafted, his sons would have to be 18-year-old adults fully capable of making their own choices. Is Dreher fils already a draft-dodger? His affinity for military equipment seems to say no. So does Rod intend to kidnap him to Canada prior to his 18th birthday rather than have him possibly join the military?

      But what about the Mideast Christians?

      [NFR: At this point, leaving Assad alone, and offering the Christians asylum. We cannot and should not defend every Christian in the world, but neither should we make their lives worse by our intervention, especially when there is no clear US national interest at stake. -- RD]

      Oh, okay. So if they can play dodge-a-barrel bomb well enough to enter a U.S. Embassy, that would be good enough for him. Fortunately, while Cruz merely mentioning Israel to the IDC in America put them all in mortal danger, applying for U. S. asylum at the embassy in Syria wouldn't draw a second glance.

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  3. We should also mention another important reason why Dreher has locked onto the topic of the ME Christians: and that's to blame America, Bush, and Cheney (but not Obama!) for the actions of Islamofascist jihadists:

    I am ashamed of my country for creating the conditions that led to the extinction of Christianity in Iraq. At the very least we ought to offer asylum to these people. Let them all go live on George W. Bush’s, Dick Cheney’s, and Paul Wolfowitz’s front lawns...Eighteen hundred years of history did not exterminate Christianity in Iraq. The last 11 years, in which the do-gooder United States of America unleashed the demons biding their time in the desert, did...

    It requires some very serious blinders to both consider the Saddam Hussein era as the salad days for the Christians of Iraq and also skip over the favorable condition of Iraq when Obama's watch started (so favorable as to be touted as one of the great achievements of the Obama administration, sez Joe Biden himself).

    What a great way to score points with the TAC branch of alt-conservatism -- use the same tool as used to flog both GWBush and Ted Cruz to also disavow support for Israel and give Obama a fig leaf for his incompetence or willful malfeasance. Give that boy a bonus, Wick.

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  4. I can't express how much I disagree with what I'm reading here. If Rod Dreher came out in favor of free chocolate, it sounds like you would be against it.

    Dreher is a pathetic sentimentalist who also grovels before the Israel lobby. Demanding that Middle East Christians do they same is simply insane. Cruz seems to express a preference for Israel over his fellow Christians. If the price of standing with the Israel lobby is the lives of my fellow Christians, the price is far, far too much. I stand with my fellow Catholics, Orthodox, Maronite, Copt, etc. Christians over the interests of Zionists , their fifth column in our country and their dirty little rogue state.

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    1. Tom, nobody demanded that anyone grovel. There is only one country in the middle east that doesn't allow the persecution of Christians and that's Israel.

      I didn't bring up Dreher here, others did. I've stated before that I think Cruz can be muffin-headed. And I acknowledged in my "warning" that I knew certain people wouldn't like this post.

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    2. While I disagree with you on the issue, Tom, I appreciate your point of view because you are sincere in your positions.

      The problem with Dreher is that he has proven so often to not be sincere in the things he writes. His Time magazine piece on leaving the Catholic Church is the prime example, in that he admitted on his blog that what he wrote as his reason for leaving the Church was not in fact the reason he left. Keith has been especially diligent in pointing out how Dreher changes his position when challenged (in some cases, resorting to "it's just my notebook" or somesuch). One can rightfully wonder why he takes the positions he does (e.g., to keep the boss and the customers happy, as I pose above in these comments).

      Add to that his constant conflation of matters of taste with matters of truth, and it isn't hard to see that he adopts some of his positions for superficial reasons (Walmart-hate back in the Crunchy days, say, or Cruz/Palin-hate in this one), but dresses up those positions as Important Defining Principles. The whole Crunchy thing itself is an example of this, as is his past walking out of mass because the music is lame or the church building is icky. We'll see more of it as he takes his role of apostle for the New Urbanism.

      That's the difference.

      And there are things he writes (whether or not he believes them) that I don't disagree with. Including free chocolate, I guess. I don't comment on them here. But when it is a matter on which I do disagree with what he's written, and in which it appears from his abuse of facts and logic that he's taking the position under false pretenses, then I may well comment. This Cruz business is one of those.

      Hope that 'splains my take a bit. Keep keepin' me honest about it, tho. We all need someone to tell us when we're full of it.

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