A consensus has emerged according to which no one predicted that the “Palestinian People” would elect Hamas as their representatives—democratically.
It shows you what little attention I pay to the talking titmice out there, because I thought that when I called the elections, I was merely stating the obvious. I believed that a consensus existed according to which there would be no other outcome.
I foresaw both the victory in the municipal elections of 2005 and in the general elections of 2006. On January the 7th this year, I called Hamas “the Palestinians’ unofficial representative,â€? and spoke of a shoo-in for the terrorist organization. Apparently the precious few who read the forecast viewed it as comic relief. What are you going to do!
Isaiah Berlin said that an ideologue is someone who is prepared to suppress what he suspects to be true. Those who fetishize the Palestinians are ideologues who’ll put a spin on reality so that it’ll comport with their ideology.
To foresee the results of the recent elections in the Palestinian Authority, all that was required was a commitment to “unvarnished objective reality.” But no one wants to take an honest, hard look at the cruel complexion of Palestinian society—unless, of course, it is to blame the liberal, orderly commonwealth adjacent to it: Israel.
Category Archives: The Zeitgeist
2005’s Hottest Trends
‘A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag’ were the things that Peggy Noonan saw ‘rise from the rubble’ of post-Sept. 11 America. By 2005, a very different set of emblems had emerged to animate the American imagination. Let us examine them, shall we …
More of 2005’s Hottest Trends“count among them a dog, a kid, and a continent” in my new WorldNetDaily.com column. Comment are, as always, welcome.
2005's Hottest Trends
‘A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag’ were the things that Peggy Noonan saw ‘rise from the rubble’ of post-Sept. 11 America. By 2005, a very different set of emblems had emerged to animate the American imagination. Let us examine them, shall we …
More of 2005’s Hottest Trends“count among them a dog, a kid, and a continent” in my new WorldNetDaily.com column. Comment are, as always, welcome.
'Midnight Express'
That “Midnight Express” didn’t make Time’s All-Time 100 Movies confirms my opinion of the magazine. (Thankfully that 1952 classic, “Ikiru,” made the cut. I’m a big fan of Akira Kurosawa’s work. You bought that last statement? It was a joke; I was just mimicking the pretentious pseudos at Time.)
These days, a man’s home is considered the government’s castle. The case of Cory Maye, unjustly placed on death row for defending his home during a drug bust (the intrepid Tom Knapp elaborates on the case here, as does Radley Balko) conjures the achingly beautiful words of the convicted protagonist in “Midnight Express”:
“Mr. Prosecutor, I just wish you could stand right here where I am standing and feel what that feels like…cause then you’d know something you don’t know—you’d know what mercy means, Mr. Prosecutor—and you’d know the concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice…”