Jeffrey Goldberg says that the Fort Hood killer’s religious background is signficant:
Here’s a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism.
Yes, and what if the intellectuals who pushed the disastrous Iraq War for years were Jewish neocons by and large, with a few liberal Maccabees like Goldberg joining the parade? What if they cared about Israel’s security above all things? Would their religion be relevant? When a few intellectuals and journalists sought to impose this standard, Goldberg railed at them as anti-Semites.
I see the Israeli press is the one making the BFD about Hasan’s religion.
Just as they did making Obama into a Muslim. (Haaretz excluded)
Not excluded this time.
Good point about the double standard.
I’m reminded of Robert Goldstein, the Florida man with a huge cache of weapons and a plot to blow up US mosques.
link to soundvision.com
More on the double standard here:
Low-Key Treatment of Jewish Terrorists Rubin and Goldstein Shows Double Standard
Most of the “journalists” to mention Joe Lieberman’s hacktatic statement yesterday are Jewish. They sure think they’re helping Israel when they demonize fellow (Muslim) Americans.
One article I read mentioned that 3,500 Muslims serve in the US armed forces compared with 1,500 Jews.
The two paragraphs above are not related. Should have made that clear.
That Goldberg clip is a keeper to rebut the two-faced coverage in future. And it looks like the future is coming, after reading Sullivan’s post, which he ripped off wholesale BTW from AmericaBlog.com.
Jeffrey Goldberg? Is that the same guy who served as a prison “guard” with the Israeli army at the Ansar 3 prison? How many Palestinians do you suppose he tortured?
I agree with Goldberg. His religion is relevant, just like the Jewish Neocons are relevant to understanding the Iraq war.
Another theoretical question would be if a Jewish American were forced to fight to destroy Israel, would they just get on the plane and say who do I need to kill in this battle?
Although he was a psychologist, it must be a betrayal as a Muslim to go and kill your religious counterparts for American interests. Investigators need to explore why he was not allowed to remain here, after his strong positions against going to Afghanistan.
Let’s rephrase Goldberg to make it more realistic:
“Here’s a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Jew, with pronounced anti-Palestinian views, and had he, say, committed one of the largest security breaches in US history and given reams of classified data to Israel, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of his treason? Of course not. Elite opinion makers, as a rule, try to protect Jews and Jewish loyalty to Israel from investigation and criticism.”
That’s why we still have The Israel Lobby pressing for the release of Jonathan Pollard.
When Marty Peretz labeled what occurred at Fort Hood as jihad, I felt it was premature. How did he know? Now that I have read that Hasan had been in contact with a jihadi imam, it turns out that Peretz was right.
I am unsure about the analogy to the support for the war against Iraq. The war was launched about a year and a half after September 11th. There are many factors that go into a world view that supports the president in a militaristic reaction to an attack against the World Trade Center. Support for Israel could be a determining factor but might not be.
(The group of neo cons who proposed the war, had a world view in which Israel played a prominent feature of their strategy for US military hegemony. But the support of the public for Bush is an entirely separate matter.)
Right like a broken clock, twice a day. Being right in the end is no excuse for irresponsibility.
I don’t know that Hasan was mentally ill, but if a person is violently schizophrenic I don’t think it’s relevent what his religion is. His background including religion might affect what form his mental illness takes, that is, who he attacks, however, the real problem was the mental illness. On the other hand, there due seem to be elements among the U.S. military who proselytize fundamentalist Christianity with a heavy hand, to the point that someone of Muslim faith might become convinced that they’re the enemy. I mean, the kind of fundamentalist Christians who believe in killing Muslims but of course are happy to do it in Iraq or Afghanistan.
See the comments by Mikey Wienstein below:
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/110509vh09