Last Friday, in the latest of her essential columns, Caroline Glick reported that:
Nahum Barnea, Israel’s journalistic supremo and proud socialist, wrote [last Friday] scathingly of Bush’s attachment to the notions of democracy and morality.
Speaking of Bush’s reading of Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky’s book, The Case for Democracy, which argues that peaceful relations are contingent on individual freedom and democracy, Barnea sneered, "The book publisher can now advertise it as ‘the only book the president has read in the last 10 years.’"
He then went on to witheringly criticize Sharansky’s book, describing it as "clear, easily digestible, unburdened by doubt, moralistic, very positive and totally simplistic."
In other words, it’s not nuanced.
It’s not the first time Sharansky has urged a "simplistic" approach. In his book, he recounts the following conversation within the Israeli cabinet about Yasser Arafat:
In 2001, in one of the first meetings of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s national unity government, I argued, as I had for many years, that Yasser Arafat was a corrupt dictator whom Israel should stop supporting.
A senior minister in the government who was very supportive of continuing negotiations with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority told me that regardless of what Israel thought about Arafat, he was "beloved by his people," as we could see from the "massive public support" he enjoyed.
I assured my colleague that Arafat was beloved by his people in the same way Stalin had been beloved by his.
Just as there were times in the Soviet Union when one couldn’t survive without expressing loyalty to the regime, so too the Palestinians must often express their loyalty to the regime that rules them.
Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz recounted last week his conversation with Jamal Salman, Director of Bethlehem, in Salman’s office in Bethlehem’s City Hall:
The municipality director uses our conversation to highlight a litany of complaints and frustrations. . . . He laments the absence of tourism just days before Christmas.
Our hotels are almost empty, he says, then corrects himself: "Not almost. Empty." He claims that he simply cannot understand why Israel insists on maintaining the roadblocks and checkpoints that so deter moneyed foreign visitors . . .
But it is apparently "not in [the Palestinian] interest" . . for Salman to mention the backdrop to his city’s current unenviable plight: the early months of shooting on Gilo, the murderous gunmen firing on Israelis on roads nearby, and the unceasing efforts to smuggle suicide bombers into Israel — the aggression that deterred the tourists and prompted the fence and roadblocks.
Some taboos are being broken, however. There is no portrait of Yasser Arafat in his all-but empty office.
At a recent luncheon, Dennis Ross said he had expected a three-day public mourning for Arafat after he died. Instead, it was over in half a day. Ross said he was surprised the demonstrations had evaporated so quickly.
It is unlikely that Sharansky was surprised.
Sharansky’s book would undoubtedly be better received in certain quarters if it were "complicated, hard to digest, weighted with doubt, anti-moralistic, very negative and totally nuanced." But what can you do? It’s what he believes, and so far he has a better track record than his nuanced critics. Read the book.