Jonathan Vincent’s Reviews > The Slopes Of Lebanon > Status Update

the Palestinians at Tel Zaatar (1976), in order to justify their own doings in Lebanon, declaring that this was no place for self-righteousness-after all, Israel has always been murderous and savage. This is exactly the way in which they justify the confiscations of Arab land in the West Bank, claiming (with hysterical distortion) that, after all, Tel Aviv and all the kibbutzim, too, were built upon land that
once belonged to Arabs. The crux of the claim is simple, primitive, and therefore effective and even compelling: We were always bullies, we have always dispossessed others, we
always committed murder to take possession of land, and so all those bleeding hearts should kindly stop playing holier-than-thou, because their hands are no less covered with blood.



This is so interesting to me! Because this is basically the modern left-wing critique of Israel, but Oz is saying it was coming from a very right-wing figure. I've noticed this in the US too- Donald Trump, whenever somebody criticized Russia, liked to say that the US wasn't innocent either (I think he even brought up stuff like coups in Latin America). It's a cooption of left-wing talking points by the right, because the left-wing sees it as something to be ashamed of, while some figures on the right basically go "Who cares?". (This can work the other way too, I think, but it's less common in the West, at least.) This might be a basic weakness of critiques that pretty much say a country has always been one way- people who are satisfied with their country might then take it as a reason not to care about the problem.