“The left’s embrace of an Islamist movement supported by Iranian mullahs would have appalled Karl Marx.”
Hazem Saghieh in Open Democracy:
Europe’s left-wingers are supporting us Lebanese against Israel and its war crimes. Thanks, that’s great: the Lebanese need all the backing they can get in facing the overwhelming technological savagery unleashed on their land and airspace, scorching the earth and not distinguishing civilians from soldiers, babies from adults.
Yet it would be better if the left, which is by definition progressive, grasped the specificity of the situation it is dealing with, rather than contenting itself with generalisations motivated only by hatred of American foreign policy and sometimes of America itself. American policy, especially in the middle east, is certainly despicable, but love for Lebanon and other countries and peoples should come before hating America and its policy, just as devotion to concrete peoples should always take precedence over allegiance to “causes”.
It is all very well for demonstrators to wave placards depicting George W Bush, Tony Blair and the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, but it would be much better if the face of Hizbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah were up there with them, too.
More here. [Thanks to Asad Raza.]