On MR, we often talk about how anti-Semites are fundamentally unpersuadable. They don't hate Israel because they believe the lies that they spew, they spew those lies because they already hate Israel. Pro-Israel advocates get frustrated, because as soon as they disprove one lie, the anti-Semite always slips back to another one. And then another one. And so on. Because the particular lie doesn't matter - what matters is that the anti-Semite is already certain, for totally different reasons, that the Jewish State is evil.

A similar dynamic, but for very different reasons, occurs when you try to discuss Israel with a typical liberal sophisticate. We have a very close friend but, like many of our close friends, she suffers from having been raised in an environment of relatively lazy liberalism. Her opinions about the Middle East are a combination of very certain truths ("all sides are to blame", "extremists on both sides block peace", "it's a cycle of violence", etc) and a hodge-podge of vaguely remembered facts (suicide bombings, Israeli retaliations, etc). Picture your basic Los Angeles Times liberal, plus about 20 IQ points.

There's nothing particularly vicious about vague liberal sophistication. It's important that some of our... er... more enthusiastic readers remember this. There's a difference between hating Jews and the combination of moral superiority and faux sophistication that passes for the liberal cocktail party judgments about Israel. We're willing to entertain arguments about how the result is the same when Israel is facing an existential threat - but let's be careful about ascribing motive, if only to better repudiate vicious anti-Semites.

The problem, however, is that the process of arguing with your average liberal sophisticate is the same. When presented with obvious evidence that some vaguely held opinion is wrong, they'll slip back into another opinion. The result is that it gets very hard to get them to admit - even to themselves - that there's something deeply wrong with what they've come to believe.

So back to our friend. During this summer's Lebanon II war (or whatever the hell we're supposed to call it now), we kept trying to get her to realize that Hezbollah was actually run by real-life bad people. They're vicious anti-Semites who raise their kids to be vicious anti-Semites, and they intentionally sparked a war because they hate Jews and want to destroy Israel. But it's hard to penetrate the thick liberal fog by which Israel is an aggressor and Arabs are just naturally defending themselves. This went on for about a month. Then we finally found this video and showed it to her:

And - and this is burned in our mind - she took a couple of seconds and said: "Well, what do you expect? It's Hezbollah!" But - of course - the rest of the Arabs that refused to accept Israel must still, presumably, have some good reasons for doing so. Cycle of violence and so on.

But of course, it's not just Hezbollah and the Lebanese and the Saudis. It's also the Palestinians who bring toddlers on TV to talk about how beautiful it is to murder Jews:

And the Iranians:

And the Egyptians:

And so on.

And yet, we have no doubt that most liberals will still be able to insist that both sides are equally to blame, that it's reasonable to demand that Israel continue taking nation-endangering "risks for peace", and that it's unreasonable for anyone to suggest otherwise. Unfortunately, the vast majority of otherwise pretty reasonable people approach Israel only to find what they already "know". And what they "know" is nothing more or less than the insipid, banal catechism of bleeding heart liberalism - the Arabs are victims and the Israelis are aggressors.

Why let facts get in the way of pathetically misguided moral sensitivity, right?

References:
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics [MR]
* 3 Years old Muslim : Jews Are Apes and Pigs !! [YouTube/bq8]
* Children of Palestinian Suicide Bomber [YouTube/MediaMayhem]
* Iranian Children Show Brainwashes Kids for Death Admiration [YouTube/taximax]
* Egyptian Cleric tells Children of Martyrdom [YouTube/taximax]
* Lebanon conflict a war, says Israel

Previously:
* Liberal Academic Middle East Experts Seem To Know Nothing About The Middle East
* Liberal Christian Organization Very Proud That It Has Only a Large Minority of Anti-Semitic Members
* Liberal Back-Patters Get Dismantled by Real Life Expert