Well, each of them was partitioned

It's taken us nearly a week to tune into the political science stylings of Judith Apter Klinghoffer, Andrew Sullivan's substitute blogger during Week 1 of his retreat to the hammock in Provincetown. We think the process of understanding was helped by the validation of finding out that Sullywatch also has problems with her writing style, but anyway, one of Friday's entries was clear enough:

TOM FRIEDMAN HAS A MAJOR BLIND SPOT ... The countries to compare Israel with is not the [Palestinian Authority] but Ireland and India. Not only are the three former British colonies engaged in a lengthy territorial conflict but they are also in the midst of a politically controversial but economically successful transformation from socialist to liberal economic systems.

To which our first reaction is: huh? And our second reaction is: well, you might be able to justify those claims, but it would take a couple of history books and a fair bit of argumentation to do it. We don't think that level of sourcing lies behind those statements, so let's deal with what we can in the length of a blog post.

First off, one thing that's repeatedly annoyed us about the GWOT/GSAVE is its imprecision and this habit seeps in here. When she says Ireland she means Republic of Ireland and whatever one's opinion about whether the Republic has been in "long territorial conflict," it's tough to make the argument that the presence of conflict in Ireland has interacted at all with the Republic's economic boom. If anything, it made the courting of multinationals easier, especially in the day when the British were chasing the likes of John DeLorean in their eagerness to bring some showpiece economic development to Northern Ireland.

And what of our friends in India? True, they had to survive a disastrously botched Partition of British India, and then undo some of that lunacy with their liberation of Bangladesh, and Kashmir remains unresolved. But again, how much of the country is impacted now by territorial conflict?

Our point is that the Republics of Ireland and India did indeed face territorial, shall we say, issues, but these impinged very little on the economic lives of citizens. And while India did have to untangle a legacy of socialism with Indian characteristics, it'll come as news to the Irish Republic's natural party of government, Fianna Fail, that they were socialist. And it'll come as unpleasant news to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that he's now creating a liberal economic system.

In any event, it's hard to see these experiences as relevant to Israel. Israel is tiny. It has land borders with two at best lukewarm neighbours, another one tepid, and another one outright hostile. And it has internal borders with a deeply resentful and marginalised population. It's tough to think of any relevant comparison for that situation, although (in the silly season tradition of recycling old posts), who amongst us doesn't recall the following comic spectacle:

Rebel, Johnny Adair's [loyalist extremist] pet Alsation, has become the latest member of the Ulster loyalist community to display support for Ariel Sharon's assault on the West Bank and Gaza. Last Monday afternoon the UDA commander's four-legged friend was seen being taken for a walk along Belfast's Shankill Road with the Star of David flag wrapped around its body.

But seriously, we suspect that the choice of the Republic and India reflects the current trendiness of these as case studies, due to Tom Friedman. Who her post began by criticising. If you're making comparisons to Ireland, then Tom Friedman has already won. But he's still a jackass.