Today’s New York Times has a report from a town in southern France from which many young Muslims have gone off to fight for Islamic forces in Syria; six have died. “A French Town Linked to Jihad Asks Itself Why.” Andrew Higgins reports that the mayor asked the head of the local mosque, Lahoucine Goumri, to make a statement condemning the jihadists.
He did. But instead of condemning the surge of young recruits, Mr. Goumri told local news media that the policies of President François Hollande were the main culprit and complained that it was not his job to denounce the jihadists when nobody protested French citizens who traveled to Israel to help the army “kill Palestinian babies.”
The quote jumps out at you, and you may have a little bit of a shock. But on reflection you see that he has a point even if you don’t necessarily endorse everything that may be going on in his mosque in southern France.
Besides, there’s a double standard here. There are many American “lone soldiers” who have gone over to serve Israel in the occupation, and it’s never seen as a big problem. When the Times reported on them, the headline was “Enlisting From Afar for the Love of Israel” and there was romance in the choice:
Part of a growing cadre of what are known as lone soldiers, they left behind parents, girlfriends, cars and stuffed animals to become infantrymen, intelligence officers, paratroopers and pilots in a formerly foreign land. All told, according to a military spokeswoman, Israel has enlisted 8,217 men and women from other countries since 2009, 1,661 of them from the United States, second only to Russia’s 1,685.
The theme of that piece was love: “I love my family, I love my friends and I love the Jewish people. The Jewish people don’t need another Jew in suburban New York,” Josh Warhit said at the end of the article.
The Times has reason to empathize with such young people. The son of Times columnist David Brooks is now in the Israel Defense Force. The son of the former Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was in the IDF. The son of Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, an Israeli, is now serving in the Israeli military. Brooks’s son was in the IDF for months before the New York Times even mentioned it. Brooks said his son believes in the cause:
“He believed in the cause and knew he needed one hard thing to complete his trip to full adulthood. And he was right, and I appreciated his wisdom about himself, and he’s one to do that and he believes in serving Israel.”
But an audience in Aspen sort of gasped when he made the disclosure. Maybe this is part of the problem too?
Thanks for posting this. One small edit to suggest. Instead of “There are many American ‘lone soldiers’ who have gone over to serve Israel in the occupation, and it’s never seen as a big problem,” consider saying ” . . . it’s never seen as a big problem by the big mainstream media in the U.S., or by Americans who have an emotional attachment to Israel and Zionism.”
Local boys fighting as “lone soldiers” in Israel are praised in my local paper too (one of the Hearst chain). And there is plenty of Islam-bashing and terrorist-threat hype to be heard in this red state. But I know there are many Americans who resent being implicated, who resent having our foreign policy hijacked, who believe that it is not anti-semitic or “isolationist” (another favorite epithet of the chickenhawks) to think that restrictions on free-lance military actions by American citizens are appropriate.
It’s all a double standard when it comes to Israel. When it comes to Israel there can be no daylight…what they really mean is there can be no sunlight to disinfect the infection in US politics. What the congress needs is to wear jersies like NASCAR drivers with sponsors ..like AIPAC across the front. Look what happened to that poor bastard Jim Clancy a 34 yr career ruined over night because of some dumb tweets that offended som Israeli tweeters
Maybe in a few years’ time, with Israel up before the ICC, we’ll see a few of these ‘lone soldiers’ (what an asinine term) in the dock, having been thrown under the bus by the senior politicians who really should be there.
Fighting on behalf of another country is sometimes inevitable, if your own country joins an ally in war – like NATO, for instance. For a single individual to do it on his own (unless one is a soldier of fortune, aka a mercenary), anyone who loves a country other than his own so much that he is proud to join that country’s military and fight their battles should be free to do so as long as he relinqishes his present citizenship and moves himself and his loyalty to that country permanenty. This of course would apply to people of all nationalities and religions.
Corporal Jeffrey Goldberg earned those stripes not in the US military but in Isreal’s IDF where he dutifully served as campguard of Palestinian prisoners. How did such an obvious Israeli agent get declared a journalist?