After seeing recent Gaza coverage in the Jerusalem Post and NY Times, Martin Peretz of the New Republic ponders the fall of Palestinian national nobility:
What will happen next is that other myths of the Palestinian movement will begin to unravel, among them the one about the fidelity of fellow Arabs to their “brothers.” What are their Western partisans going to say now when the essential minimum of peoplehood turns out to have been sheer rhetoric?….
The rhetoric now shows itself to be empty, the rhetoric–Edward Said’s rhetoric–about the nobility, the delicacy of “the children of stones.” The Palestinians were so more civilized than the other Arabs. So much more advanced. But how much can you prove by sending the one pathetic, sad Sari Nusseibeh–his pathos being his cachet–around to Harvard and Oxford to show that the thugs have their betters?
This is cold comfort to the Israelis. Their enemies can still maim and kill. It is entirely preferable for the Palestinians to have their rump and run it as they will or can. But, please, enough about how civilized they are. They are on their way to being Iraqis.
What other myths have been shattered by the violence? And what would the late Professor Said (pictured) say?
