Israel's Actions Incite Terrorist to Attack America

Greenwald is a brilliant thinker, and I agree with his positions much of the time. But today's piece in which he connects the dots between Al Qaeda, Israeli actions against the Palestinians, and attacks on the U.S., is incredibly biased. His central argument:

If it is taboo to discuss how America's actions in the Middle East cause Terrorism -- and it generally is -- that taboo is far stronger still when it comes to specifically discussing how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels Terrorism directed at the U.S.

Taken at face value, Glenn is saying that because terrorists so frequently cite Israeli military actions against the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors as reasons why they decide to attack America (and, of course, Israel), then the U.S. should take a hard look at our Israel policy.

Glenn's failure here is that terrorists and their state-sponsors -- including our supposed ally Yemen, whose own president has called for the opening of camps in his country to train fighters against Israel in Gaza -- are using Israel's actions as cover for what they really believe. It's not as if Israel, if they'd just put down their guns, stop crossing the border into Gaza, stop the settlements in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem, and unilaterally declare a non-aggression pact with their Muslim neighbors, would then get to live in peace on the land granted to them by the U.N. in 1948. To Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East, the very existence of a Jewish country on land that they believe to be Palestine is a direct affront to their worldview. Therefore, they simply want Israel to disappear, and they would attack and attack and attack, a war without end, until they achieved their objectives. Glenn mistakenly thinks that the Arabs' objectives are political; they are not. They are genocidal.

This is not to take away anything from Glenn's criticism of Israel's political and military policies. Israel, in continuing to build settlements in Judea and Samaria, undermine any possibility of peace. But, it must be said, the unofficial Likud position is that peace is impossible with people who want to exterminate them, and if it's war they want, it's war they get.

Greenwald redeems himself in his final paragraph:

Again, these facts do not, standing alone, prove that we ought to change these policies. The mere fact that Islamic radicals object to what we do does not prove we should stop, as there may be net benefits to those actions or they may be morally justifiable. But at the very least, rational discussions require that these costs and benefits be weighed, and that can only happen if we acknowledge the costs.

He's right, of course. The trouble begins, however, when we take those rational discussions to national leaders whose citizens still harbor a millenia-old hatred of Jews.