Comments on reads 1/18

Michelle Goldberg and Lee Smith: Body Politics

Iran’s birthrate has fallen. Is it because Iranian women have greater opportunity? Or is it a reaction to the Islamist regime?

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“Preposterous,” my colleague Michelle Goldberg writes in response. She argues that Iran’s fertility rate, similar to that of Iceland and Chile, is evidence of “fitful modernization.” Goldberg explains: “As education and opportunities increase for women, fertility rates go down. That’s as true of Iran, where women now outnumber men by two to one in universities, as it is anywhere.”

Goldberg’s argument ignores the thrust of my column, which was that the debate over whether or not Iran was rational or suicidal was beside the point. Instead, she fastened on to a marginal sentence to defend her version of first-world feminist orthodoxy. The perhaps unintended result is that she winds up arguing that the Iranian regime is actually pro-feminist.

FP: It’s been a major argument of mine that the West is clueless about the Middle East and tends to project from itself. Nowhere is that problem worse than the left and this actually explains the illogical affinity of its progressivism to Islamism. The left is incapable of comprehending anything that does not belong in the left-right framework and forces forces it on everything, even if it does not apply, like the Middle East. This is what explains, for example, why Chomsky is reasonably good at his analysis of the US system, but his perceptions of the ME are idiotic. And that also explains the feminists’ defensive stance on what ought to be their nemesis: the Islamist treatment of women. Ignorance and blind dogma leads to nonsense. (see next)

 

No love for Ahava as calls to boycott Dead Sea firm grow in UK

British scientists and filmmakers urge London Natural History Museum to pull out of study due to Ahava company’s participation • They say Ahava "extracts, processes and exports Palestinian resources to generate profits that fund an illegal settlement."

FP: Sure, why should Jews employ Palestinians when they can be dependent on UK’s taxpayers while Europe goes bankrupt?

 

'Hamas, Hezbollah would run riot under Iranian nuclear umbrella'

IDF Planning Directorate's Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel: "They will be more aggressive and will dare to do things that right now they would not dare to do" • Ehud Barak says Israel "very far" from decision to attack Iran.

FP: That’s the core danger of Iranian nukes which the West mostly ignores, stupidly focusing on whether Iran will use them or not. Barak’s declaration is the correct one particularly if you intended to attack, but recent pronouncements by the US and Israel create an impression of assuaging Iran more than anything else.

 

Daniel Doron: Are we in Sodom?

Tycoons could not have robbed the public without support from MKs and government officials who created the "legal" infrastructure to do so.

FP: Well, duh! The corporate welfare state is a universal characteristic of all capitalist states.

 

'IDF lost Second Lebanon War because it didn't pray enough'

Interior Minister and leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party Eli Yishai says that during the Six-Day War, when Israel had the weakest army and fought off numerous Arab countries, every Jew "raised his eyes to the Creator."

FP: And he is actually a minister in the country’s cabinet. How do you like him involved in policy making, including security?