http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1139395589709&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
I allow myself to quote extensively from it:
Categories like optimistic/pessimistic, liberal/conservative, pro-Israel/pro-Arab should not play any role with our analysis, except as impulses we should try to keep under maximum control while doing it. Arbitrary consistency is indeed, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, a hobgoblin of little minds. The role of politics should be to come in only when politicians, policymakers, or anyone else decides what is to be done on the basis of an analysis.
Let me give an example, using Israeli politics for simplicity and brevity.
The analytical proposition universally accepted and based on lots of evidence is that there is no partner for peace in the Palestinian camp today who is going to produce any results. The Labor party takes that and concludes it is a good idea to emphasize talks with Mahmoud Abbas as the lesser of evils. Kadima chooses unilateral withdrawals to focus Israel's efforts on territory it wants and needs. Likud argues that this conclusion makes necessary control over all the territories captured in 1967. Each party draws very different policy views from a similar interpretation of the facts.
This is as it should be.
...
Instead, however, we often hear arguments to the effect of: "Hi! I'm a liberal so naturally I believe that..." Or: "Greetings! I am a conservative so I must claim that..."
This is nonsense.
...
A common and pernicious example of this, powerful though unspoken, is what I call "lying for peace." It goes something like this: Peace is good; tolerance of other peoples and religions is good, people having their aspirations satisfied is good, alleviating the plight of the oppressed is good. Opposite these beliefs have stood certain facts: that Yasser Arafat was a terrorist who didn't want to resolve the conflict, Mahmoud Abbas is a weak incompetent, the peace process is dead, and Hamas is going to remain an extremist terrorist group. Yet when forced to choose between these beliefs and facts, the preference has been to jettison the latter. For if peace seems more obtainable, so this thinking goes, it will be easier to achieve.
It should be unnecessary to say - but alas it isn't - that such nonsensical substitution of wishful thinking and ideology for being truthful is quite dangerous. We should have learned from the 1990s' experience with the peace process that "lying for peace" produces only more bloodshed and suffering.
I allow myself to quote extensively from it:
Categories like optimistic/pessimistic, liberal/conservative, pro-Israel/pro-Arab should not play any role with our analysis, except as impulses we should try to keep under maximum control while doing it. Arbitrary consistency is indeed, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, a hobgoblin of little minds. The role of politics should be to come in only when politicians, policymakers, or anyone else decides what is to be done on the basis of an analysis.
Let me give an example, using Israeli politics for simplicity and brevity.
The analytical proposition universally accepted and based on lots of evidence is that there is no partner for peace in the Palestinian camp today who is going to produce any results. The Labor party takes that and concludes it is a good idea to emphasize talks with Mahmoud Abbas as the lesser of evils. Kadima chooses unilateral withdrawals to focus Israel's efforts on territory it wants and needs. Likud argues that this conclusion makes necessary control over all the territories captured in 1967. Each party draws very different policy views from a similar interpretation of the facts.
This is as it should be.
...
Instead, however, we often hear arguments to the effect of: "Hi! I'm a liberal so naturally I believe that..." Or: "Greetings! I am a conservative so I must claim that..."
This is nonsense.
...
A common and pernicious example of this, powerful though unspoken, is what I call "lying for peace." It goes something like this: Peace is good; tolerance of other peoples and religions is good, people having their aspirations satisfied is good, alleviating the plight of the oppressed is good. Opposite these beliefs have stood certain facts: that Yasser Arafat was a terrorist who didn't want to resolve the conflict, Mahmoud Abbas is a weak incompetent, the peace process is dead, and Hamas is going to remain an extremist terrorist group. Yet when forced to choose between these beliefs and facts, the preference has been to jettison the latter. For if peace seems more obtainable, so this thinking goes, it will be easier to achieve.
It should be unnecessary to say - but alas it isn't - that such nonsensical substitution of wishful thinking and ideology for being truthful is quite dangerous. We should have learned from the 1990s' experience with the peace process that "lying for peace" produces only more bloodshed and suffering.