Christopher Hitchens was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt. He frames the matter in the most simple, honest way: half the people in Israel/Palestine are being ruled without their consent (and it’s on a racial basis). The question I have here is how much of the Western battle against "religious barbarism" is driven by Western investment in Israel? If the Israel/Palestine issue were resolved, how quickly would theocratic nuclear aggression disappear as a concern? Just asking. Hitchens:
In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can’t, it’ll have to dispense with the occupation. It’s as simple as that.
It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can’t govern other people against their will. It can’t continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day. And it’s unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I’m afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I’m a prisoner of that knowledge. I can’t un-know it.
