I usually avoid writing about political lunatics, to the left and to the right, who hate Israel and can’t find a good thing about it. But an Egyptian writer, who calls himself “Salam”, has written an article about tucker carlson’s opinion of Israel which should be read by everyone who pays any attention to this formerly rational conservative who, like candace owens, has become an Israel-hating waste receptacle.
Here is what carlson says about Israel:
“One thing I have noticed, I can’t contain myself and have to express it, but when you say that the Israelis are destroying Beirut, which, having been to a lot of places in the world, one of the prettiest places on the globe, Beirut is just a marvel, it’s beautiful — it reminds me — and being destroyed by Israel, which is one of the single ugliest countries in the world. Nothing of beauty has been built there since 1948. Sorry. I have been everywhere in that country. And it’s true.”
That so, carlson?
Here, in part, is Salam’s response:
To understand what Israel built, you must first understand what existed before. The land that became Israel was not a paradise of civilization waiting to be spoiled. Large parts of it were genuinely inhospitable: the Jezreel and Hula Valleys were malarial swampland, the Negev was desert, and Tel Aviv — today a thriving metropolis of over 400,000 people — was quite literally founded on sand dunes in 1909.
This is not a polemical claim. It is straightforward history. The draining of the malaria-ridden marshes was one of the great public health achievements of the early twentieth century in the region, eliminating a disease that had plagued the population for generations. The transformation of arid land into productive agriculture through irrigation systems, kibbutzim, and eventually one of the most sophisticated water management networks on Earth, was a feat of engineering and human determination.
Carlson speaks of what has been “built” since 1948 as if the answer were “nothing.” The actual answer is: a country.
The Architecture Tucker Apparently Missed
Carlson assures us he has “been everywhere” in Israel. If so, his powers of observation are remarkably selective.
Tel Aviv’s “White City” — a district of over 4,000 buildings constructed in the Bauhaus and International Style during the 1930s and 1940s — is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO, the world’s foremost authority on cultural and architectural heritage, designated it as such in 2003, describing it as “an outstanding example of new town planning and architecture in the early twentieth century.” When the world’s architectural historians were asked to identify buildings of beauty and significance, they pointed to Tel Aviv. Apparently Tucker missed the memo.
Jerusalem is among the most architecturally layered cities on earth, a living palimpsest of Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman, British Mandate, and modern Israeli construction. The Israel Supreme Court building, completed in 1992 and designed by Ram Karmi and Ada Karmi-Melamede, is considered a masterpiece of civic architecture, incorporating ancient and modern forms in a building that has been exhibited and studied in architectural schools worldwide. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum completed in 2005 and designed by Moshe Safdie, has been universally praised as one of the most powerful and architecturally significant memorial structures ever built anywhere.
In Haifa, the Bahá’í Gardens — another UNESCO World Heritage Site — cascade down the slopes of Mount Carmel in nineteen immaculately designed terraces, drawing visitors from across the world. They are, by any reasonable aesthetic measure, breathtaking.
And then there is the modern Tel Aviv skyline: the Azrieli Towers, the Moshe Aviv Tower, a dense and striking urban landscape that any neutral observer would recognize as a functioning, visually dynamic major city.
One UNESCO designation might be luck. Two is a pattern. And two, combined with globally recognized civic buildings and a flourishing architectural culture, is an outright refutation.
I’d call that a pretty good answer. Even though I have no doubt the sad residue of an intelligent human being called tucker carlson would probably disagree completely.
How about you?
