Defending the indefensible — badly

Defending the indefensible — badly


Mar 04, 2011 03:07 pm
Pamela Olson





The following is a piece from the Jerusalem Post (JPost), which is usually a pretty right-wing Israeli paper, but it has one amazing column called Rattling the Cage by Larry Derfner.



Let me back up a minute. Last night I went to a debate about the Goldstone Report featuring former Congressman Dr. Brian Baird (D-WA) (you can pretty much guess he's no longer a Congressman based on the fact that he tells the unvarnished truth about the situation in Israel/Palestine -- that kinda thing gives you a very short shelf life in Washington) and Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who defines the concept of Progressive Except for Palestine. The moderator was a columnist at the New York Times, Roger Cohen, who frequently covers the Middle East and usually knows what he’s talking about.

Dr. Baird, who actually visited Gaza and saw the results of Operation Cast Lead for himself, and also visited Sderot and talking with several Israeli officials, argued that the Goldstone Report is a fair document with respect to both the reality of what happened during Operation Cast Lead and the international laws that were violated by both sides, and it should be taken seriously and acted upon.




When Weiner wasn't fabricating demonstrable falsehoods out of whole cloth (There are no Israeli soldiers in the West Bank? Goldstone didn’t criticize Hamas?), he countered by talking really loudly about how Israel is...



Well, here's the thing. I don't need to tell you what Anthony Weiner said because Larry Derfner, in the following article, explains most of his points. It's amazing. Almost as if Weiner were reading from some pre-fabricated set of talking points. Guess that's what you gotta do when you don't have any actual arguments -- when you're called upon to defend the indefensible. [My comments are in brackets.]



After you read this, watching Israel apologists at work becomes kind of entertaining. I bet we could make a good drinking game out of it.


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