Voxsplaining Israel: It's All the Jews' Fault

Vox puts its brain trust to work to discover the secret behind the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Conclusion: Jews are wicked people.

David Harsyani rips the author, one Max Fisher, and also Vox for publishing it.

“The end of ‘both sides’: Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is indefensible,” is the title of Fisher’s piece. It begins by offering dispatches on some of the hardships Palestinians have been subjected to after the recent kidnapping of three teenage yeshiva students in the West Bank — one an American citizen (a fact Fisher is not moved to mention). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Palestinian terrorist/unity government participants Hamas of being behind these abductions, which does not exactly sound farfetched. But we’ll see.

And while Fisher offers a few superficial declarations about spreading the blame (“no one is pure” — and isn’t that the truth?) overall the Jews are aggressors, paranoid and unreasonable. And it is they who should cease the occupation, the root cause of all problems...

Now, it would be waste of time to point out every context-free historical tidbit Vox employs to hang the entire conflict around Israel’s neck. We’ve heard it all before. What is worthwhile, though, is pointing out the morally contemptible rationale it offers regarding today’s events. Here’s one for starters:

As children, the kidnap victims surely cannot and should not be held personally culpable, but they could be considered an extension of the occupation, which has been far from a peaceful endeavor.

...

So just to recap: Three teens could be seen as an extension of a brutal occupation. Hamas’ political organization should not be put out by Israel. Collective punishment that ropes in Hamas is bad. Collective terror that ropes in a trio of hapless Yeshiva students could be understandable.

So that's now Voxsplained to you.

I have a question that I need a Voxsplanation for:

The left always justifies Arab violence (or terrorist violence) in terms of feelings of oppression.

Why does the left never consider that perhaps Israelis feel the same way, and that their own anti-terrorist violence can likewise be justified and explained away?

Why are "context" and "root causes" forever marshaled to justify the left's favored aggressors -- Muslim terrorists, the Soviet Union -- and yet this context/root cause analysis is suddenly discarded when examining the actions of the West?

Oh: They also Voxsplained the IRS scandal.

posted by Ace at 04:07 PM

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