Diversionary Tactics

In today’s New York Times, Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss begin their opinion piece (“Why Is Israel Scared of This Young American?“) by admitting the partial truth of Andrew Sullivan’s description of them as “Zionist fanatic[s] of near-unhinged proportions.” “It was cheap shot,” they contend; the description should not have contained the word “near.” Otherwise, they say, “we happily plead guilty as charged.”

     They go on to say that “even unhinged Zionists can level criticism at Israeli policies,” and they proceed to do so but with great, and illogical, reservations. Consider this paragraph, which makes use of a form of Schopenhauer’s 18th way to win an argument: Divert, divert, divert.

Israelis have good reason to see the B.D.S. campaign as a thinly veiled form of bigotry. Boycotts of Jewish businesses have a particularly foul pedigree in Nazi Germany. And the same activists who obsessively seek to punish and isolate Israel for its occupation of the West Bank rarely if ever display the same passion for protesting against China for its occupation of Tibet, or Russia for its occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Let’s take the last sentence here, because I see this kind of argument used over and over and over and over again. That someone isn’t making another argument says nothing about the argument that they are making. That Stephens and Weiss themselves don’t argue that Russia should be excused for its occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine or China for its occupation of Tibet - that they wouldn't make such arguments - doesn’t mean in any way that any argument they might wish to make for Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank is suspect.