Crusader War College

So Where ARE they?

"Where are Who?" Yoel Marcus asks. Who, you ask? Why, the Palestinian Leftist peacemongers, of course

Eitan Ronel, a retired lieutenant colonel, returned his rank insignia to the chief of staff this week, along with a letter full of bitterness. "Human life has lost its worth and values we were raised on, such as purity of arms, have become a bad joke," he wrote (Haaretz, January 4). Ronel's protest over the IDF's conduct in the territories is not the first and won't be the last. The reserve pilots, the Sayeret Matkal commandos and the 12th graders got there before him. Before them, there were the four Shin Bet chiefs and the former head of the Mossad. On top of that, we've got B'Tselem and Gush Shalom, plus the Beilins and the Sarids and the Burgs, who are big on peace with the Palestinians and feel their pain. We have committees of inquiry investigating how and why Palestinian women and children were killed in this or that operation. We have a High Court to which every Palestinian can appeal. We have a media that will not allow the least injustice or wrong to slip by. We have columnists whose hearts ache along with the Palestinians.

What I would like to know is why there is no one on the other side crying out against the Palestinian Authority's policy of hatred and bloodshed. Where is their B'Tselem? Where are the Palestinian refuseniks who object to the murder of women and children?

A damn good question that deserved a slap on the forehead while uttering "Doh!"

I don't know about you, but when I'm trying to sort out a problem, I find that things go so much better once the right questions are phrased. I sometimes struggle for days over a particular issue, only to have everything clarify when a related question pops into my mind. Good questions help guide the seeker to good answers.

In fact, a lot of times, one doesn't NEED the answer to a question. Merely ASKING the question elicits a significant amount of information. One of the "red lines" that I've come to accept in life as axiomatic, and from which I refuse to budge upon or give up is to automatically classify as "dangerous" any person who gets angry, defensive, or evasive when certain questions are asked. Some questions, of course, are purely traps: "When did you stop beating your wife?" is one, and one takes courses in logic and argumentation to detect when a question like this is asked, as well as to know why the question is evil in itself.

But others are quite legitimate, and a person's response to them can be significant. During the Clinton scandals, Bill laughed off all the questions and attacks from the Republicans and the press, but got positively hostile when questions about Paula Jones were asked: So much so, that people instinctively backed away and learned NOT to ask such questions of the former President. THAT behavior of Clinton crossed a red line of mine: What was it about the Paula Jones issue that made Clinton so defensive? No, nobody really got a straight answer from Bill Clinton when a question about Paula Jones was asked, but his REACTION answered a DIFFERENT set of questions, and clarified a lot of behavior to me. Once you ignored everything else and focussed on the Paula Jones' case, and everything logically and legally necessary to conduct it, everything not only made sense, but everything the Democrats and the media said and did to distract everyone from focussing on the Paula Jones case also made sense.

This is a two edged sword: Not only should one be judged by the way they react to a question asked of them, but one should also be judged by the questions one asks.

Hattip Tamar, via Email.

Posted by ptah at January 15, 2004 03:56 PM