Against Melanie Phillips

I read Melanie Phillip's latest blog post last night, about the speeches of Abbas & Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly. It is called Truth & Lies at the Theatre of the Absurd. (You can find the piece itself here: http://melaniephillips.com/truth-and-lies-at-the-theatre-of-the-absurd N.B. it is on that page, you need to scroll down a bit to find it.)

There was a particular sentence, a particular assertion, which really bothered me, & I spent a little time quoting it & arguing against it on Twitter. It is this:


"As certain Palestinian spokesmen themselves have acknowledged, Palestinian identity was itself constructed purely to destroy Israel."

I was & am completely nonplussed by this statement. I am at a loss how any intelligent adult could propose it seriously. It has continued to bother me overnight, so here are a few thoughts about that statement, the blog post as a whole, & Melanie Phillips' style of argument in general.

Her logic & tone remind me of a hard-core Unionist in Northern Ireland in the 1970s & '80s, reacting to the IRA and Republicanism generally, conflating them as the same thing. The essence of their position could be put something like this:

"These people are terrorists, seeking our destruction. You don't accommodate terrorists, you fight them."

This is a recipe for never-ending conflict.

I wonder if one reason she puts forward such extreme, and sometimes frankly nonsensical, ideas is that she wants to avoid, to shut down, discussion; because such sentiments as the one she wrote that I quoted at the start make discussion impossible.

Nonsense has a certain power, because it cannot be refuted.

This is true of many, perhaps most, (but not all) conspiracy theories. The problem with conspiracy theories is distinguishing between those that refer to genuine conspiracies, & those that are fanciful. Not all conspiracy theories are nonsense, people do sometimes conspire. To take a random example, MI6 & the CIA, with the knowledge & approval of Churchill & Eisenhower, did indeed conspire to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosadegh in Iran in 1953, & succeeded. This is not my opinion, or suspicion; it is a fact, a matter of record.

In the second part of Melanie's sentence I quoted at the start, she presents what is her opinion as if it were a fact. Rather, it is just sheer assertion. I note that the certain Palestinian spokesmen in the first part of the sentence are not named or identified further, nor is there any source given for their remarkable opinion. As evidence of the truth of the second part, the first part is worthless. I'm embarrassed for her, pointing out such obvious flaws. A clever child could spot them.

Often for me with Melanie's arguments, it is like trying to persuade someone of the following: that 2 + 2 = 4 is an inarguable reality; whereas 2 + 3 = 4 is an opinion, not a fact, & does not have equal weight with a proposition that is true.

Not all claims are true.

I have a bad feeling too that Melanie is one of those people who take disagreement, in this case coming from a left-wing source like me, as automatic confirmation that they are right. This is another way in which it is impossible to argue productively with them.

It should be noted that I am not putting these points forward because I disagree with Melanie politically, which I do. They would bother me just the same way from anyone, anyone who took any position.

I completely recognise that the Israeli Government has legitimate security concerns which need to be addressed in any peace negotiations in order to protect its people. I think though that by muddling opinion and fact so badly, in a perverse sense Melanie Phillips is no friend of Israel, defending that State in such a shoddy way.