Nicholas Kristof Gets Ahead Of Himself

In Waiting For Gandhi, Nicholas Kristof has the following bizarre bit:

Another problem with these protests, aside from the fact that they aren’t truly nonviolent, is they typically don’t much confound the occupation authorities.

But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.

“This is what Israel is most afraid of,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian who is calling for a nonviolent mass movement. He says Palestinians need to create their own version of Gandhi’s famous 1930 salt march.

Huh--say again?

What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown?

Putting aside Kristof's odd desire to put women up to being beaten, he misses a simple, straightforward point: without the rock-throwing--and worse--of Palestinian terrorists, there wouldn't be tear gas, beatings and arrests to begin with.

In response to the paragraphs quoted above, Jennifer Rubin writes about Kristof's odd obsession:

No, I think Israelis are most afraid of having their children blown to smithereens by terrorists. Or incinerated in a nuclear attack. Or killed by rockets launched from behind the skirts of Palestinian women.

But let’s get back to Kristof. What if Palestinian women didn’t delight in their children’s martyrdom? Yes, what if they didn’t send their offspring to Hamas summer camps? What if Palestinian women in ever-increasing numbers didn’t themselves resort to suicide-bombing? Yes, then it would just be a question of convincing the Palestinian men not to slaughter Israelis. But in the real world, far too many Palestinian women are either victims or enablers of the cult of death (and sometimes both).

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Kristof stubbornly clings to the notion that Israel is engaged in violence for violence’s sake against innocents. When he asks, “What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown?” you wonder if he’s serious. I mean, obviously, there wouldn’t be a need for tear gas if the rock-throwing stopped – and no need for checkpoints and fences if the terrorists stopped killing Jews. But let’s not let logic or reality mess up another ode to the nobility of the Palestinian cause.

One wonders whether logic or reality actually has anything to do with what Kristof is writing.

See: Nicholas Kristof And Those Ugly Israelis

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