Huh?

What's the refutation? That Rice is smiling and shaking hands with Abbas?

Don't diplomats smile and shake hands with people they despise all the time?

I agree that there's such a myth as you describe, but I don't see this as a refutation of it. Do they really claim that it's true of every single supporter of Israel?

Would those who subscribe to the myth have predicted that Rice would never do this if their theory is true? I'm skeptical.

Posted by Gil @ 06/30/2003 02:44 AM EST

I only have one concern:

This picture is misleading as a representation of anything, other than two diplomats smiling for the cameras and reaching, notice the distance, to touch palms.

Again and again and again, i see the responses. Good Israel, bad Arabs. Or, if you wish Bad Israelis, good Arabs. No less silly. Flawed thinking. Yes, many many many bad Arabs who would like nothing better as crazed Islamics to wipe any state of Israel off the face of the earth. But can it be said that there are no Israelis who are any less fundamentalist than their neighbors who would not wish the same? Sometimes there are no clear sides to take. Sometimes there are, necessary for a time. But when women and children and some innocent men continue to die, year after decade after generation for the cause on either side, something is wrong. For how many years? For how many more generations? At what cost to Israel and the middle east and to the world?

So pictures do not bother me. Acts, each one, i watch. I see two faces here, two hands, and a smile for the cameras. It means very little.

But each human life means alot. Defend, argue, fight if necessary. Stand up against injustice.

Resolve it. Find the common ground, even if its over the innumberable angry and innocent dead. Ultimately it will come down to this. Find a way, gradually, with acts, if not trust, build not destroy.

It needs to come about. Destruction only works to a point. After that there is only a choice to continue that pointless path, or to find together, grudgingly and tentatively, another way.

The larger idea, the larger question will prevail. The smaller idea, the smaller question will continue without end.

Posted by Dick @ 06/30/2003 01:54 PM EST

Gil and Dick:

I think you may have missed the point.

I think the point is that there is a myth that pro-Israeli Americans are pro-Israeli because Palestinians have darker skin than they do.

The picture refutes this myth by showing that the Palestinian Prime Minister does not have darker skin than a prominent pro-Israeli American.

No interpretation of what the people in the picture are doing, or thinking, is needed to make this refutation work.

Posted by David Deutsch @ 06/30/2003 04:11 PM EST

Thank you for thinking, David. (A compliment, always.)

While i didn't miss that point, i also noticed that most of the posts on lgf seemed disenamored of skin touching skin and the interpretation of what that might mean without an accompanying visage of disgust on the face of either skin touching party. (perhaps the cameraperson was the one who winced?)

Never-the-less, certainly a one trial refutation, adding the assumptions that at least one or the other of the two palm touchers is American, prominent, and also pro-Israeli.

and furthermore...

Refutation of the myth of skin shades and mindsets entirely accepted.

Posted by Dick @ 06/30/2003 05:51 PM EST

I understood it too, but thought the smile and near contact is what made the refutation "excellent"; because she seemed to be treating him better than one would treat somebody from a group discriminated against by the mostly-white administration.

Again, it's a refutation that the skin color is the reason of each and every pro-Israeli.

But I doubt that's anybody's actual position.

Posted by Gil @ 06/30/2003 11:32 PM EST

I have never before heard that argument, so I am surprised it needed refuting. But then, I don't frequent LGF.

Posted by Dan Frank @ 07/04/2003 12:00 AM EST