Huntingdon: Racist or Rational?

Is the Huntingdon doctrine thinly veiled racism or rational thinking? You decide. This from Rafi Dajani of ATFP who sends us a particularly interesting alternative view from Avraham Burg:

In Haaretz former Israeli Knesset speaker Avraham Burg uses the example of Israel to reject the Huntington 'clash of civilizations' theory, instead finding the clash as one between 'democratic' and 'theocratic' civilizations, with Muslims, Christians and Jews on both sides of the divide

TIME TO ATTACK By Avraham Burg Haaretz, Opinion (Israel) August 15, 2007
The system of "sacred balance" is Israel's way of surviving and feeling normal. If something happens on the left, it immediately must be canceled out by an event on the right - and then everyone can relax. These equations create the illusion of sanity and save the sticky majority, which is searching for the warm and opinionless center, from having to relate to matters in a matter-of-fact way. It is from there, from the wide open spaces of a valueless and content-free consensus, that Israel's ruin will come - because if everything is balanced and canceled out, there is no need to take a position, or to do anything. It is therefore not surprising that Israel, with all its equations, cannot make decisions on matters of morality and state. The latest equation bridges between draft-dodgers and the soldiers who refuse to evacuate homes in Hebron. On the face of it, we have draft-dodgers - the left-wing bleeding hearts from greater Tel Aviv - and evacuation refuseniks - nationalistic and idealistic, but "a little" too extreme, too patriotic and too religious. And we are in the middle: We live outside Tel Aviv, but not in Hebron; we want peace but are not prepared to pay the Arabs the price. Instead of being flooded with concern over the fanatics and rabbis who have penetrated the fabric of Israeli statehood like cancerous cells, we have created an equation. We were furious for two days, we condemned them - and we went on our merry way. Everything is balanced, thank God.

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