Author: Andrew Sullivan

Goldberg condemns Netanyahu for agreeing to release 104 Palestinian prisoners as a precondition for the Kerry-mediated talks that started yesterday:

Two of the men set to be released, according to the Washington Post, are Jumaa Adem and Mahmoud Kharbish, who killed a mother and three of her children in 1988, along with an Israeli soldier who tried to save them. Another is Mohammad Adel Daoud, who killed a pregnant woman and her 5-year-old son in a 1987 firebomb attack. Members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, and many other Israelis, opposed the release, but the prime minister, mindful of pleasing the American government, rammed it through. …

The real tragedy here is that the prisoner release is unnecessary. The Palestinian side was looking for any number of concessions. The Israeli government wouldn’t have been forced to release these murderers from prison had it agreed to a full freeze on the growth of Jewish settlements.  … So there you have it. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu would sooner release murderers from prison than stop building apartments on the West Bank.

Shmuel Rosner provides two interpretations of Bibi’s move:

Approving: Yes, it is heartbreaking and enraging to see those cold-blooded killers released. But Netanyahu prefers to pay this emotionally high price rather than pay a price that has strategic meaning. Agreeing in advance to the freeze or to the 1967 line would have much graver consequences than releasing some killers – it would weaken Israel’s position in negotiations, and would weaken the only card it has as it talks to the Palestinians, the land card.

Critical: Yes, agreeing to the 1967 line would be a strategic mistake. But mixing the line and the freeze is a political trick.

In fact, Israel has already agreed to a freeze in the past and it had no serious ramifications. A temporary freeze could have been the wiser choice – and Netanyahu didn’t go for the freeze because he wasn’t sure if he has the votes necessary to approve it. In other words: you aren’t happy with the release of murderers? Blame the coalition, blame hawkish Likud members of Knesset and the Habait Hayehudi party.

Brent Sasley figures the even if the moral cost of releasing the prisoners is high, the actual security risk is low:

[T]he Israeli security clampdown on the West Bank, the security barrier, the siege on Gaza, the Palestinian Authority’s own security measures, and broader stability in the West Bank seem to have removed both the incentive and the opportunity for a renewal of violence and terrorism. The stipulation that those most likely to engage in violence again be deported to Gaza or outside Israel/West Bank only reinforces the importance of this consideration.

In light of this, then, it’s easy to see why Netanyahu decided that releasing these prisoners was the best way to go in order to persuade Palestinians to return to talks. The security and political price was relatively small and easily absorbable. In his analysis [Shin Bet head Yoram] Cohen continued that the release of these prisoners would also lead to “calm” in the West Bank, dampening dissatisfaction with the process and undermining the motivation for a broader uprising. The release is also to take place over stages, and can be stopped any time Israel decides the Palestinians are not meeting their own obligations. And there is probably a sense that many who might engage in terrorism will get caught by normal counter-terror operations anyway.

Olga Khazan notes the popularity of the release in the Palestinian Territories:

[J]ust as Israelis believe passionately that the prisoners are terrorists, Palestinians view them as heroic crusaders, and most see their release as essential to the renewal of talks. According to a recent Gallup poll, the prisoner release was the top precondition for peace negotiations for Palestinians, with 93 percent saying it should be a precondition and 99 percent saying it was a “top priority.”

Previous Dish on the potential of the new talks here and here.

Michael Agresta pities the state of the Western, which “finds itself in the ironic position of needing a hero to save it, and quick”:

If the genre in this era can be said to have a unifying aim, it’s to divest itself and its audiences of a strictly white, male, heterosexual perspective on history, and by extension on present day conflicts. Cowboys & Aliens is a cynical attempt at a post-racial Western–just take the Indians out of the equation so we can be good guys again!–but with more sincerity, True Grit, Django Unchained, and now The Lone Ranger have all put non-male, non-white perspectives front and center. (Two other notable movies from the past 15 years, the wonderful Brokeback Mountain and the awful Wild Wild West, also fit this model.) It’s worth pointing out, however, that all of these examples (except Brokeback Mountain) were directed by white men, and The Lone Ranger has Tonto played by an actor with only the slightest claim to American Indian ancestry.

Meanwhile, Paul Cantor thinks the zombie film has taken the Western’s place as a cultural touchstone. Millman objects:

If we are uncomfortable with the traditional western because of the role it assigns to the aboriginal Americans, and this is because we recognize the massive injustices committed by our nation and our government in the course of our conquest and settlement of the continent, well and good. But it might be that we’re uncomfortable for the opposite reason – that we prefer to see our enemies as truly non-human. As orcs, or zombies.

And we still do have enemies, after all. But those enemies are human, with human, comprehensible motivations.

Lauren Sarner makes the case for Khaled Hosseini:

Hosseini writes about a region of the world that many Americans don’t understand, but desperately need to. Among other things, he explores people living ordinary lives in Afghanistan, and how war and oppressive religion shape those lives. Hosseini depicts the culture without encouraging the reader to pass judgment; he simply presents it to us in clean, matter-of-fact language. By presenting their lives in such a straightforward, almost Hemingway-esque fashion, the cultural practices seem no stranger than Hem’s protagonists going hunting. And, through it all, Hosseini infuses his stories with humanity and warmth. His books could easily stray into melodrama, yet he keeps them firmly anchored in gritty realism. …

Hosseini’s first two books, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” have occasionally garnered criticism for being simplistic, akin to fairy-tales; with characters who are either Good or Bad. However, there is an important distinction to be made here: in fairy tales, good always triumphs over evil. Hosseini’s books, then, can be seen as fairy tales for adults. They prepare us for a world in which the man who shoots an innocent child gets to walk away with his gun returned to him — quite relevant in the wake of the verdict regarding America’s most recent media circus trial.

(Hat tip: Book Riot)

A reader quotes the previous one:

To me the idea of adding medicines to drinking water seems to be the nanny state operating at its finest (there is no other reason for adding fluoride to water beyond the prevention of tooth decay).  If I want to use fluoride, then it’s super simple for me to just buy a fluoridated toothpaste, giving me a degree of choice and control over what I put into my body that federally-mandated fluoridation just doesn’t give me.

This statement is so full of naivety that I barely know where to start. Does the reader also oppose all other federally-mandated water requirements? Does she realize how many chemicals (or medicines) are required to get water treated and safe? Why are they not nanny-state? Why not abolish those? People are perfectly able to buy bottled water in the supermarket, no? Or would that not be possible because most bottled water is just tap-water from elsewhere, and you need some standards to keep that safe?

Another reader:

The post from your Seattle correspondent could have been drafted by my lesbian sister and her naturopath wife. Nothing that wasn’t organic ever crossed their daughter’s lips and she was never sick. Until she had nine cavities. And until she was diagnosed with leukemia. It nearly killed her parents to subject my niece to general anesthesia for dentistry and chemotherapy for cancer, but now she is healthy and thriving.

Ignorance of science and medicine is a luxury that is great so long as you’re basically healthy. When you’re really sick, however, you’d better toss all that alternative crap out the window.

Another:

It never ceases to amaze me how oblivious self-identified “progressive liberals” are to the defining characteristic they share with the Tea Party: nostalgia for a world that never existed.

When in American history did everyone – rich or poor, white or black – “have access to nutritious food grown in proper soil by local farmers”? Is this the same “earlier simpler world” as the unvaccinated utopia where no one was ever crippled by polio or killed by the measles?

I especially like the repetitive linking to an advocacy website reliant upon selective quotation and interpretation of scientific literature. It’s a perfect example of how the simultaneous blind reverence for and total ignorance of science permeates so much of this community.

Another piles on:

I can’t believe we’re still talking about this crap.  Are there legitimate concerns about fluoride? Possibly. Should our diets contain less sugar and processed junk? Yes. But the bottom line is that fluoride is great for those among us, especially children, who can’t afford to go to the dentist. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need fluoride because everyone would receive basic healthcare despite their ability, or lack thereof, to pay for it. Maybe we’re working on creating that kind of world, but we’re not there yet, and fluoride is something that even the smallest municipalities can do right now. The fact that the citizens of Portland couldn’t find it in their hearts to think of the welfare of their least fortunate community members (who are not so gradually being pushed into the suburbs by gentrification anyway) instead of a bunch of reactionary pseudo-science is a travesty.

Over the weekend, Reza Aslan went on Fox News to discuss his new book Zealot (which I covered and discussed here before the fooferaw). Lauren Green spent the entire segment interrogating Aslan, a Christian-turned-Muslim, as to why a follower of Islam would dare write about Jesus, while never actually dealing with the specific arguments of the book.

What strikes me about this tactic is how it exposes the weakness of fundamentalist Christianity when it comes to dealing with historical scholarship that may challenge some aspects of Christian orthodoxy. Christian fundamentalists often simply have no way to respond to the facts – because empirical inquiry is anathema to fundamentalists. They refuse to acknowledge the extraordinary insights into the origins of the Gospels that historical research has unearthed; they cannot tolerate any dissent from Biblical literalism (itself an inherent contradiction, since the Bible repeatedly contradicts itself if taken literally); they have to blind themselves to the science of our time in a way someone like Aquinas did not in his; they even have to insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis, for goodness’ sake.

So what are they to do when someone pops up with some actual research and arguments and challenges to received dogma? The only thing they can do is attack the messenger. That’s how intellectually bankrupt Christianism is. It cannot relate its own dogmas to the truths about the world we have discovered outside of faith. Christianists do not seem to understand that if something is demonstrably true, it cannot be counter to God, who is the ultimate Truth. They are terrified of using their minds because their faith is so often mindless – and any engagement with contemporary scholarship on Christianity is a threat to their faith, rather than, as it should be, a spur to see it in a new light.

What you see above, in other words, is an expression of fear and unreason. Which is roughly all that Christianism has in its rigid quiver.

Of course, you cannot truly blame a Foxbot interviewer who hasn’t read the book for following the script laid out for her by Roger Ailes or one of his lower-level propagandists. Or maybe you can. David Graham has a great idea:

I find myself wishing [Aslan had] flipped the argument around on Green: After all, isn’t any Christian too hopelessly biased to write a serious book on Jesus? Most folks would say no; it’s as spurious as the attack against Aslan. But for a network that defines itself against a “liberal media” it insists is too biased to offer a clearheaded, fair interpretation of current events, there’s a glaring double standard.

Aslan might also have mentioned the many non-Muslims who have written books about Muhammad and Islam. Fox has happily given a platform to Christians and Jews who have been critical of the prophet and the religion, from the scholarly (Bernard Lewis) to the hysterical (Frank Gaffney) to the … also hysterical (Andrew McCarthy). In addition, although Aslan noted his conclusions conflicted with Islamic positions on Jesus — for example, he argues that the crucifixion, which Islam denies, actually happened — it might have been helpful to point out that Muslims revere Jesus as an important prophet, though refuting his divinity.

Waldman views the interview as symptomatic of the way the media covers religion, Islam in particular:

Green came pretty close to saying that as a Muslim, Aslan must by definition be hostile to Christianity in general and Jesus in particular and therefore incapable of writing a measured piece of history. This gets back to something I wrote about last week on the privilege associated with being the default racial setting, although here it’s the default religious setting. If you’re in the majority, it’s your privilege to be whatever you want and speak to whatever you want, and you can be treated as an authority on anything. But those in the minority are much more likely, when they come into this kind of realm, to be allowed only to speak to the experience and history of their particular demographic group.

So Fox has no trouble treating Reza Aslan as an authority on Islam, but if he claims to also be an authority on Christianity, those Christians react with incredulity.

They’re so hermetically sealed in their bubble, they cannot see their bigotry. Which is why, of course, they react so strongly whenever they are accused of such. And so the beat goes on.