TED, MEET JONAH. HE WORKS

TED, MEET JONAH. HE WORKS FOR YOU. I noticed this paragraph on the Brothers Judd’s link to Ted Turner’s astonishingly boneheaded rant (even for Turner) about “Israeli terrorism”:

“The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis, they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. … So who are the terrorists?” he told the Guardian newspaper.

Here’s a flashback to Jonah Goldberg’s comments in early May about this kind of thinking (Jonah is a part-time cohost of CNN’s Crossfire and frequent panelist on other CNN shows, when he’s not editing National Review Online):

The most annoying argument made by apologists for these massacre-bombers is the one which begins with something like, “the Palestinians don’t have American-made tanks and helicopters, ‘suicide bombers’ are the only weapons the Palestinians have….” The reason this argument is so annoying is threefold.

First, the explicit assumption in this formulation is that if indeed the Palestinians had helicopters and tanks, they would in fact use them. In other words, to make this argument is to concede that the Palestinians are at war with Israel which would put all of the peace rhetoric in a very different light.

Which leads to the second issue. Nobody who makes the “the Palestinians don’t have tanks” argument will ever concede the logic of their assertion. If you say to them, “So if they had tanks they’d use them? That doesn’t really sound like a desire for peace.” You get eye-rolls as if you just don’t get it.

And, lastly, contrary to what this argument implies and the assertions of countless Arafat apologists, the Israeli military was not designed nor intended to be aimed at the Palestinians. It was designed to fight wars with actual nations which, several times in the past, tried to destroy Israel. To suggest that the Israeli military is a weapon intended for the Palestinians is a form of moral equivalence. It assumes that Israeli weapons were intended for murder just like Palestinian bomber belts. And that’s a lie.

UPDATE: Happy Fun Pundit also weighs in on Ted’s continued relevancy–or astonishing lack thereof.