Sometimes journalists say the damnedest things. “Giuliani’s Gaza Analogy” caught my attention because I haven’t been following the Republican candidates very well and was curious what his take on Israel/Palestine was. Alec MacGillis goes through some moderately interesting points about Giuliani’s 17-page foreign policy proposal, trying to say that he will deviate from the neo-con stance that democracy should be established whenever and wherever we go, regardless of the cultural and political climate in the countries we (will) invade and/or influence unduly. Personally, I think this is whitewashing. Just because he recognizes that democracy won’t take root in a place like Iraq or that it will elect “terrorists” in a place like Palestine doesn’t mean he has left neo-con behind.

In a debate, Giuliani drew an analogy between the New York of pre-1993 and Gaza to point out that civil rights don’t mean much when you are living in fear. The reporter uses this to wonder if Giuliani is therefore questioning the validity of his own election:

The comparison of New York circa 1994 to Gaza is provocative, and one that raises an obvious question: if Giuliani believes that the city was so crippled by crime that its democracy was effectively weakened, then is he effectively questioning the validity of his own election in late 1993? Sure, the city was suffering the tail end of a crack-fueled wave of violence, yet more than 1.75 million people made it to the polls to narrowly elect him over incumbent David Dinkins. In fact, it was the very violence that Giuliani now compares to the Middle East that helped elect him in 1993, by allowing him to paint Dinkins as weak on crime.

Simply put :If you follow Giuliani’s analogy through, Dinkins was the equivalent of Fatah, the incumbent struggling to contain disorder — and Giuliani was Hamas.

So I just had to post the following comment:

I am no supporter of Giuliani by any stretch of the imagination, but I think this is quite a stretch. I think the bigger picture here is that Giuliani is dangling in front of the American people something so obvious, they can’t see it. What he is actually saying is that FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) got Hamas elected, FUD got himself elected as mayor in ‘93, and FUD will get him elected president next year. I think the conclusions he means us to draw from his comments are that Palestinians live in fear and so elected a leader to take them out of that (one that he opposes), the New York people were afraid and so needed a leader who could cut crime, and the American people are now afraid and need someone to bring security. By just questioning the legitimacy of his election, this article misses the mark. Of course his election was legitimate. Do we really believe that New Yorkers were living in as much fear as the Palestinians?