Christopher Hitchens fancies himself a rigorous and reflective thinker, and he may well be. But he has a hopeless blind spot when it comes to Jews Israel. Consider this paragraph:
The Palestinian people have a much more justifiable grievance against Israel than even the most alienated Sunni slum-dweller has against the Coalition in Iraq. The Arab citizens of former mandate Palestine live, at best, as second-class citizens in Israel. At worst, they live in vile refugee camps in other states. In the middle, in Jerusalem and Gaza and the West Bank, they experience occupation and colonization and annexation. More than that, they have been told that their very presence is an inconvenience, since the land was awarded by God to the Jews.
Hitchens offers this paragraph as a premise for his discourse; it's not up for discussion; anyone who aspires to Hitchens's cosmopolitan sophistication must simply accept it all as true.
Of course, it isn't. At best, it's argumentative, and at worst it's all false and misleading.
Hitchens may be a knave, but he's no fool. He understands that in arguing his points, he must take responsibility for the implications of the argument.
And his central point is that Jews have no business being in Palestine. Justice will only be achieved if the Zionist enterprise is abandoned, leaving Palestinians to take over their country. Justice, that is, for the Palestinians. Hitchens doesn't talk much about what will happen to Israeli Jews if his demand somehow is met.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Hitchens simply doesn't care what happens to Israeli Jews. He doesn't concede that Jews have any claims to Israel, but neither does he argue what the alternative would be. It's all about making it right for the Palestinians, and that will only happen if Jews surrender any claim to what is right. Because it's obvious to Hitchens that nothing Israel does in its self-defense is justified; it's all about colonialization, occupation, annexation, vile refugee camps, etc. The only justification he can think of for the the establishment of Israel is religious fundamentalism.
Let's assume that the result of justice for the Palestinians is that all Jews in Israel - about 5 million - must leave and find homes in Europe, including all of the EU and Norway. Let's further assume that each European country should accept such refugees in proportion to their existing population. That means that Hitchens's home country of the United Kingdom should accept 640,000 Jews. Germany will have to welcome 888,000 Jews; France 646,000; Poland 410,000; and my home country of Norway 49,460.
The alternative would be sending the Jews back to refugee camps, since that - following Hitchens's logic - would not constitute a justifiable grievance.
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