Know Thy Idiots

As the Israel-Hezbollah conflict continues, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have particularly savored the letters to the editor sections of numerous American dailies. During this Middle East crisis, it seems, normally dimwitted epistlers offer even stupider thoughts than is usually the case. This results, dear reader, in missives that are a treasure to behold.

A perfect case in point is a letter found in the August 10 number of The Boston Globe. Penned by a cranially-challenged gal named Eleanor Klauminzer, it is worth quoting in full. It reads:

It seems apparent that in the asymmetrical war going on in Lebanon, knowledge of the enemy is also unbalanced. David Green writes (“Know thy enemy,” Ideas, Aug. 6) that the Hezbollah reader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, strikes fear into Israelis, despite Israel’s overwhelming military superiority, because he appears to know so much about them.

For many years, I accepted the Israeli narrative as the one true history of the modern Middle East. But the Palestinians also have their narrative, and, as I have recently become aware, it is just as compelling. The truth of one does not cancel out the truth of the other.

The tragic irony is that both sides, Palestinians no less than Israelis, appear to be pleading for the same thing: their right to exist and prosper in peace and security.

Wow. It’s a real tour de force of complete idiocy, is it not? In fact, the dimwitted Ms. Klauminzer offers so many errors we hardly know where to begin.

We suppose we ought to start by mentioning that the odious Sheik Nasrallah’s hunch that committing acts of terrorism against Israelis will frighten them doesn’t exactly amount to the deep-seated knowledge Ms. Klauminzer claims for him. Gee: Israelis are frightened of terrorist acts—who would have thunk it?

But notice how this “knowledge” of the Israelis is wholly different from the “knowledge” she hopes Israelis will gather: “What if the Israelis knew as much about their opponents—not just military knowledge, but a deep understanding of how it feels to be Palestinian or Muslim?”

Uh, Ms. Klauminzer: Do you believe that Nasrallah gives a darn about “a deep understanding of how it feels to be Israeli or Jewish”? We suspect not.

As stupid as all this is, there’s even more. Delight in this line, dear reader: “The truth of one does not cancel out the truth of the other.” Ah, so Ms. Klauminzer is a postmodernist, eh? Either that, or she’s a complete twit, and ought to take a philosophy class. Or perhaps look up the word “truth” in her dictionary.

But surely the end is the coup de grace of this exercise in Mongoloid reasoning. After criticizing Israelis for lacking some elusive “knowledge” of Palestinians, she then tells us: “The tragic irony is that both sides, Palestinians no less than Israelis, appear to be pleading for the same thing: their right to exist and prosper in peace and security.”

Dear, oh, dear. Maybe Ms. Klauminzer, instead of brow-beating the Israelis, ought to learn a thing or two about the Palestinians herself. As the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks amply demonstrate, many Palestinians (and, more broadly, many Muslims in the Middle East) do not pine for “peace and security.” On the contrary: They aim for the elimination of Israel and the mass-murder that it will entail.

This is why, of course, the “knowledgeable” Nasrallah offered an unprovoked attack on Israel proper, despite the fact that the Israelis have not occupied any of Lebanon since 2000. And this is why, of course, the “knowledgeable” scamps in Hamas have lobbed missiles into Israel proper ever since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. These actions—massively supported by the Palestinian people—are not the acts of those chiefly concerned with “peace and security.”

Boy, you would have thought this was obvious to anyone with a brain. Clearly, the only “tragic irony” here is that the dunderheaded Ms. Klauminzer wrote a ridiculously inept letter chastising the Israelis for their lack of knowledge, when it is she who lacks even rudimentary understanding of the Middle East.