Didn't Hugh get the memo? Or did the Counter-Jihad Movement's fax machine jam again....? And why didn't my ex-Muslim Friday get me my triple decaf Softiccino...???

Just yesterday, Robert Spencer published a posting boldly titled --

End the Hoax: There Are No Palestinians

-- in which he detailed how and why that term Palestinian is a propaganda fiction serving the interests of the Mohammedan Jihad in our time.

Yet only 3 days before that, his fellow Jihad Watch contributor (and formerly? "Vice-President" of Jihad Watch) Hugh Fitzgerald published an analytical piece there in which that term is used 21 times, and only once with appropriate (and actually, de rigueur) sneer quotes -- thus: "Palestinians".

(There is one use among those 21 where he uses quotes but it doesn't count because he is distinguishing "Palestinian Arabs" from "local Arabs).

The one and only time Hugh uses the sneer quotes is the first time out of the subsequent 19 times he uses the term without sneer quotes.  The sheer net effect for the reader of seeing it used overwhelmingly without sneer quotes is to subliminally reinforce the very propaganda fiction that lies at the heart of this whole problem Hugh and Robert are supposed to be valiantly disabusing us of.  Were Hugh to protest (and knowing him, I wouldn't put it past him) that his first -- and one and only -- use of sneer quotes was adequate and the reader should process that implication accordingly, I would counter that this point in this "battle space" (as Frank Gaffney aptly puts it) in this subset of the war of ideas we are all engaged in is too important to leave it up to such implications.  Rather, the pointed use of 21 instances of "Palestinian" -- relentlessly deploying those sneer quotes wherever that grievously murderous term rears itself in the text -- is one salutary way among many for us to wage this war of ideas.

In a subsequent two-part essay on the matter, in part 2 he deploys the un-sneer-quoted term 13 times.  Then suddenly out of the blue makes mention of how

for both Jordan and Egypt, the “Palestinian people” had not yet been invented...

At best, this would indicate Hugh cares not for, is careless about, the subliminal effects of his rhetoric.  Or, he may be intellectually schizophrenic about the issue, heedless of the fact that the sheer typographical effect of seeing the un-sneer-quoted term repeated over and over and over and over -- and over and over -- again not only reinforces the insidious propaganda that has snookered so many otherwise intelligent people of the West but is based on a logical absurdity worthy of a Dr. Seuss parody, but not of a serious counter-jihad argument.

Or, it's possible that Hugh has changed over time and actually believes there exist Palestinians without the sneer quotes.  I've seen many indications (mostly documented on my previous blog, The Hesperado, over the past 2 or 3 years, such as for example this one) where Hugh's intolerance of Islam seems to have relaxed for reasons inexplicable -- unless it is explained by what I speculate is the result of the understandable psychological need to relieve the pressure of an asymptotic vigilance.