Pat Has a Few Words

A Little Trip Down Memory Lane

Michael L.

This is the piece, dated 3/10/10, that got me booted off of Daily Kos.

I like this bit because I think that it is funny, as did others, as you can plainly see if you are crazy enough to slog through all 423 comments.

So, without further adieu:

Breaking: Jew Builds Second Bathroom in East Jerusalem

Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem --- The entire world was shocked yesterday when this reporter revealed that retired electrician, Ehud David Netanyolmert, shook the peace process to its roots by building an illegal second bathroom in his East Jerusalem home.

“This is yet another example of Israeli intransigence,” said Palestinian Authority PM, Mahmoud Abbas. “We cannot negotiate with the Israelis if they insist upon violating international law with the continued building on Palestinian lands. Israel must pressure Mr. Netanyolmert to dismantle the illegal mini-settlement that he has constructed.”

Only slightly taken aback by the world community’s rejection of the second bathroom, Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post, “Israel wants peace and two states for two peoples. The Palestinians need to sit down at the negotiating table and I honestly do not see what some guy's second bathroom has to do with anything.”

In Washington, US President Barack Obama convened an emergency meeting with his cabinet in order to evaluate the situation and to determine the best response to this most recent Israeli aggression. In response to the crisis US diplomat George Mitchell claimed, “Israelis have rights, but so do the Palestinian people. While the United States remains deeply committed to Israeli security, it is entirely unclear how the second bathroom promotes that security or in any way advances the cause of peace.”

When queried about this blatant Zionist violation of international law Mr. Netanyolmert objected to the entire line of enquiry. “You people are meshuganah,” Netanyolmert said while standing in his doorway, wearing his jammies and blinking into the morning sun. “Are you honestly telling me that Vladimir Putin objects to my second bathroom on the grounds that it is an impediment to peace? Vladimir Putin? Really?”

It should be obvious to any reasonable observer that Mr. Netanyolmert’s myopia regarding Zionist aggression, and his willingness to derail the peace process, cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. The Palestinian peace organization, Hamas, therefore responded today with a flurry of Qassam and Katyusha rocket attacks on S’derot and Ashkelon. The typical Israeli myopia extended to former S’derot mayor, Eli Moyal, who, while quivering under his desk, is alleged to have told his secretary, “Second bathroom? What second bathroom? What the hell are these people talking about?”

Meanwhile, a variety of Israeli left-of-center organizations are planning a mass rally in opposition to The Second Bathroom. Naomi Chazan, of the New Israel Fund, said that dozens of people will gather outside Mr. Netanyolmert’s home in solidarity with Palestinian activists in a No Second Bathroom rally. The protestors will carry signs reading, “Get the Hell out of the Bathroom, Already!” and “Netanyolmert, Zionist Criminal Baby Killer!” and “Who Do These Jews Think They Are, Anyways?!”

Some fear that just as Ariel Sharon's stroll on the Temple Mount inevitably caused the Al-Aqsa Intifada, so Mr. Netanyolmert's violation of Palestinian sovereignty might spark a third... The First Second Bathroom Intifada.

One hopes that if the Israeli government makes the necessary concessions by evacuating the bathroom then the Palestinian Authority might be persuaded to sit down for peace talks.

But who would blame the PA if they refuse?

Are We Intended to Believe that John Kerry is a Moron?

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

I voted for John Kerry for president of the United States in 2004.

Of course, I also voted for Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, and the current resident of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the past Kerry has suggested that unless Israel does what he wants - which apparently is to stop the building of second bathrooms in Jewish homes in the eastern section of Jerusalem -  then the country will likely face delegitimization and BDS "on steroids."

We were to understand that this did not represent a threat, but merely a description of what Israel would likely face if it did not heed Kerry's warnings, although it is entirely unclear what the Jews are supposed to do beyond releasing our murderers and cease building housing for ourselves and our children on historically Jewish land.

Many people took it as a veiled threat because it screams out like a veiled threat and acts as a green light for the Nazi-like BDS movement within the European Union and American college campuses.  If it was not a veiled threat then it clearly represents diplomatic stupidity.  We cannot read John Kerry's mind.  We do not know what he was thinking when he said what he said.  All we know is that he said it.  Now, if he said it with the intention to threaten then he said it with the intention to threaten.  If he did not say it with the intention to threaten, then just why did he say it?

Are we supposed to believe that the current Secretary of State of the United States is just plain dumb?

I find that rather hard to imagine.

And now we have Kerry's "apartheid" hoopla.

Elior Levy and Yitzhak Benhorin write in Y-Net:

After a day of outraged responses, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that he had chosen the wrong word when describing Israel's potential future as an "apartheid state" if it didn't reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

In a statement released by the State Department, Kerry lashed out against "partisan political" attacks against him, but acknowledged his comments last week to a closed international forum could have been misinterpreted.

He thinks that his words could have been "misinterpreted"?

What part of the word "apartheid" are we supposed to misunderstand, I wonder?

By following Jimmy Carter's slander, Kerry has yet again busted out with a veiled threat.

By suggesting that Israel will become an "apartheid" state unless it acquiesces to an American diktat, he essentially threatened that, like apartheid South Africa, Israel will be dismantled by the world community.

The Obama administration, however, wants us to think that Kerry has foot-in-mouth disease.

I am not so sure.

From the comments:

3. Political correctness + decent manners means  

choosing your words beforehand. But, If I was a barometer of character, I would say that Kerry's spontaneous choice of words are true to his character.  

barbara , Haifa Israel (04.29.14)

I have to agree with barbara in Haifa and I very much wish that I was in Haifa right at this moment!

The man is the Secretary of State of the United States of America.  He is the chief diplomat of the United States of America, and yet he flings around horrendous implied accusations toward the small Jewish minority in the Middle East within the State of Israel and then insists that he was misunderstood.

So, the question remains, is it stupidity or intent?

11. To: No. 6

Amen! We did not ask for war in 1967, but the Arabs waged it -- and lost. Time for them to accept the consequences. Israel will annex Judea and Samaria and its Arab population will be either repatriated to Jordan, or relocated to Gaza. War is not a picnic. And we should not reward those who wage it. West Bank Arabs will never be absorbed into the Israeli body politic; it is time, as you say, for them to move on.

Sarah B, U.S.A. / Israel (04.29.14)

For those of you who actually read the comments beneath Y-Net articles, the name "Sarah B" may not be entirely unfamiliar.  I actually like Sarah.  She doesn't play games.  She says exactly what she thinks.  And she is not trying to make nice with people who have no intention whatsoever of making nice with her.

Agree with her or disagree with her, the woman has integrity.

16. How strange....

.....that it is always a denouncement of the only ones who truly strive for peace, Israel, and never of the palestinian-arabs who have no inclination too compromise, keep no agreement they ever signed and celebrate terrorism and deceit.

mindRider, The Free World (04.29.14)

And that, my friends, speaks for itself.

Bat Ye'or and Barack Obama

Michael L.

Bat Ye'or and American president Barack Obama seem to be in fundamental disagreement.

In his Easter message last Sunday, April 20, the president claimed that the “common thread of humanity that connects us all – not just Christians and Jews, but Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs – is our shared commitment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”

Well, that is a very nice sentiment, now isn't it?

But, is it true?

Bat Ye'or is a public scholar of Middle Eastern history and the history of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish relations in that part of the world since the 7th century.  Her books include Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001), The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (French: 1991, English: 1996), and The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (French: 1980, English: 1985).

Esteemed British historian, Martin Gilbert, has called her "the acknowledged expert on the plight of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands."  (Sir Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume III: 1952–1999, p. 127.)

Describing the difference between the Lands of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the Lands of War (Dar al-Harb) within classical Islamic doctrine, she tells us the following:

The inhabitants of the lands of war are people to be fought because they oppose the introduction of Islamic law to their country. These infidels have no rights, their person and their posessions are licit – to employ the usual formula – for any Muslim whomsoever he may be. This explains the murders and assassinations of civilians on the roads when occasion presents itself. Their very existence is considered illegal. The infidels from a land of temporary truce are in a state of a respite between two wars.

The dhimmis are former harbis who have moved from one category - the domain of war (the dar al-harb) - into the category of being a ‘protected’ people (within the dar al-Islam). They have brought the jihad which threatened them to an end thanks to the magic formula: ‘land in return for the peace and security of dhimmitude’. They have ceded their land in exchange for protection. Islamic law defines their rights which it protects under certain specific conditions (by the dhimma). This means that the non-Muslim has no rights beyond those specified and protected by Islamic law. This law is the source of non-Muslim rights. Today, in all the societies mobilized by jihad, this is the interpretation which prevails – and even in Egypt.

This is, of course, not to suggest that all Muslims everywhere wish to hold non-Muslims in a state of persecution and submission.  It is, however, to acknowledge that the submission of non-Muslims is essential to basic Islamic doctrine, as it is found in the Koran and the Hadiths.  Furthermore, the contemporary Arab-Muslim world within the Middle East is replete with examples of mobs burning down Christian churches, kidnapping Christian women for the purposes of forced conversion, or gang-raping women in Tahrir Square to the cries of "Alahu Akbar!"

I am sorry, but there is little in Islam to suggest that the love of one's neighbor is a central Islamic doctrine.

The purpose of saying so is not to maliciously denigrate Islam.  The purpose of saying so is to acknowledge the obvious.  It is to face reality.

In any case, no one is going to convince people who have heard the imams and the ayatollahs screaming for the blood of the Jews and the infidels that Islam is a religion of peace devoted to loving one's neighbors as oneself.

That is Christian doctrine.

Whatever else anyone might say about the founder of the faith of Islam, Muhammad was no pacifist.

He was a chieftain and a warrior and a mystic, but he was no lover of peace, nor an advocate for peace.  Judaism is concerned primarily with justice.  The teachings of Jesus are primarily concerned with peace.  The teachings of Muhammad are concerned primarily with submission, which is the very meaning of the word Islam.

Barack Obama knows this.

A Rotten Apple At The Core Of The State Of Tasmania

geoffff

This is troubling.

Tasmania is Australia’s smallest and poorest state and in many ways its most problematic. It has always been a focus of the Australian culture wars given its history as the place of the harshest of the penal colonies and of a particularly brutal war with the indigenous people that ended with their almost complete extinction.

Whether the extinction was complete is one no-man’s land in these wars. There are some descendants of these people but they tend to have fair skin and blue eyes. Some people find that bracing. Does it mean they are not who they say they are and therefore they may be ridiculed for identifying as such? That because they had a choice not to identify as they have chosen then the public choice they made is somehow not valid? That in fact they may feel they had no choice could be at the heart of this? That even the choice they have made, to the extent they had any choice was motivated by something ulterior? That others can claim to define who a people are and that they can override or ignore what the people and their survivors have to say about it themselves whether they be the Tasmanians or the mainland peoples?

I don’t think so. Bolt and his admirers are dead set wrong about that and its a pity no one seems to have taken the trouble to point out why. I think he was owed that. He is after all among the closest friends of Israel and the Jews in the Australian media and he has no trouble at all getting that. Friends like that are not falling from the trees like macadamia nuts. It is not as if there are any to burn.

There is about to be another front in this culture war. Whether what happened in Tasmania was “genocide”. You might ask what else you would call it but apparently the issue is how much of the dying off, for want of a more neutral and less offensive term, was due to killings in what I guess could be called a civil war that saw atrocities on both sides and how much was due to stupid, paternalistic but well intentioned policies that had the unfortunate but unintended consequence of polishing off all but a fragment of the surviving population.

An unintended consequence. We’ve all had those.

There has just been a book published by an historian presenting a debut work that its publishers and others are claiming is the last word on everything to do with what happened to the Tasmanian people. Somehow I don’t think so.

Tasmania is among the most fascinating places on the planet. With about half a million people it is sparsely populated with only a few major towns including the capital Hobart with about 200 000 people. It also lush, mountainous and rich with rivers, lakes, forests, coastlines drenched with fish and seafood and a heartland with precious things there for the digging including gold.

Did I mention the fruit trees? Tasmania is known as The Apple Isle.

Tasmania is startlingly beautiful. It has a hinterland so vast that it harbours legends of sightings of theTasmanian Tiger , not a cat but a carnivorous marsupial that was plentiful when the settlers came but despite the high hopes of some including Ted Turner is very likely extinct at least since the 1960′s. There is strong political sentiment that the place not be plundered and destroyed and of course a fringe party pressing crackpot populist issues as the winds take it has been able to spark into life on the back of the raw emotion of the cause.

At about 90 000 sq kms, it is three times the size of the Land of Israel and by that I mean the whole of the land between the river and the sea. I once accepted an offer from a native born Tasmanian, and by that I mean a settler if the word ever had a meaning, for a straight swap. He was testing my Zionism resolve, as he saw it, I suppose or prodding to see what reaction he might get. Naturally I had to claim to speak on behalf of all the citizens of Israel and all the world’s Jews to close the deal and I was attacked from the Left for being presumptuous or egotistical or something for having done so.

You can understand my dilemma. But I’m nobody’s fool. I knew this native born Tasmanian settler had been resident in Sydney for decades and therefore was certain to welsh on the deal. Therefore I saw nothing controversial in calling his bluff.

You are probably wondering by now where all this is heading.

Friday was Anzac Day which is a pretty big deal down under and will get bigger as we move through the anniversaries of events of a century ago. Next year, the centennial of the Anzac landing itself will be bigger still, 2016 will be just as big and 2017 and 2018 with the anniversaries of the campaigns in France and Belgium, and of Palestine, will be biggest of all as the country recalls or learns just what that generation went through and what it achieved and lost. What we lost.

There are some people who are saying this is a bad thing. One of them is Peter Underwood, the Governor of Tasmania who in his Anzac Day speech to the crowd at the ceremony at the Cenotaph in Hobart said among a bunch of other dopey stuff:

“In this year of peace, Australia should establish a centre for the study of peace, conflict and war,” he said.
Mr Underwood told the service, “if that can’t be done, how about diverting some of the millions of dollars that will be spent on the Anzac Festival to provide proper support for the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.”

For the benefit of US readers and others, Australian governors are not elected and do not have any political power. Their role is ceremonial. They are ostensibly appointed by the Queen but in reality by the government of the day. By convention they are never former politicians but eminent and respected persons especially academics, judges and senior military officers. Underwood is a former Chief Justice of Tasmania.

As usual, Andrew Bolt was first on the scene. What would we do without him? Who would do the heavy lifting then?

“How about diverting some of the millions of dollars that will be spent on the Anzac festival to provide proper support for the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies?”
Underwood is no doubt voicing his Quaker beliefs. But those beliefs conflict with his duty as Governor — and are indistinguishable from those of a dangerously naive boor.

First, Underwood is the Queen’s representative. No one elected him and his role is to unify. To instead preach politics on Anzac Day is impertinent and a breach of duty.

Second, Underwood was guest of honour at a ceremony attended by people paying their respects to the dead and to those who served their country in war. His attack on the ceremony, the soldiers and their cause was unfeeling, disrespectful and another abuse of his position.

Third, I saw no one on Anzac Day celebrating some “mythical tall, lean, bronzed and laconic Anzac” or “glorifying war”.
Among the marching soldiers I saw in Melbourne were female officers, an African-Australian, a Sikh and a bearded Jew. The clapping crowds were honouring sacrifice and service for the nation.

Fourth, to ridicule the idea of our soldiers “enthusiastically and unflinchingly carrying the torch of freedom” is to ridicule what was often the truth.
What else but freedom were our soldiers fighting for in World War II? I’d say much the same of our interventions in East Timor, Korea and Vietnam.
Indeed, in Iraq, we helped depose a genocidal dictator. In Afghanistan, we repelled a fascist terrorist movement and guarded a democracy.

Fifth, Underwood suggests we should celebrate Anzac Day less and peace more, as if one comes at the cost of the other.

I dare say almost every man and woman listening to him would just as fervently prefer peace, but also know our peace is protected by people prepared to fight for it.
And how dare Underwood urge that “millions of dollars“ be given instead to the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, which is so far Left that its academics recently included Australia’s Communist Party boss.

Andrew Bolt: Herald Sun

At his blog he adds

What a disgraceful suggestion.

The reason?

Here are just some. This misleadingly named Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies promotes an essentially racist boycott of Israeli Jews to punish Israel from defending itself against movements that wish it destroyed. It has held talks with the leader of Hamas, which maintains a terrorist wing. It is so far to the Left that until recently its staff included the then head of Australia’s Communist Party and now a member of its central committee.

Incredibly the Centre which Underwood recommends includes on its academic staff Johan Galtung, whose bizarre anti-Jewish rants include claims that “the Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel”, “six Jewish companies control 96% of the [US] media”, “seventy percent of the professors at the 20 most important American universities are Jewish” and Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik had ties to the “Freemasons” organization “which has Jewish origins” and Mossad might have given Breivik his orders, so “it will be interesting to read the [Norwegian] police report on Israel, during the trial”.

Galtung has even claimed “terrible Auschwitz,” had two sides. “[It was] not unproblematic that Jews had key niches in a society humiliated by defeat at Versailles”. “In no way, absolutely no way, does this justify the atrocities. But it created anti-Semitism that could have been predicted.” Oh, and Mao’s China, responsible for the murder and man-made starvation of between 40 million and 70 million people, was in fact ”endlessly liberating when seen from many other perspectives that liberal theory has never understood”.

The Centre’s president, Ken McNab, claims America’s war on terrorism is largely a hoax: “…a largely artificial, politically inspired, illegally conducted, ineffectual and counter-productive campaign”. And so is ours: “ASIO Director General David Irvine warned that ‘the threat of terrorism remains real and persistent’. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” The war in Iraq was just a fight for capitalism: “Violence and war became more openly than ever before the tools with which to defend and extend American capitalism.” In fact, war is just a tool to make capitalists money” “Quite apart from its vanguard role for capitalism, war itself is highly profitable for capitalists.” (Really? So Socialists, Fascists, dictators and religious extremists don’t start wars?) We should subcontract part of our foreign policy to the Australian members of any tribe we confront: ”Including the Iraqi peoples in Australia [on reaching peace in Iraq] intends to give them a voice and to allow them to take ownership of the process.”

Perhaps worst of all, the Centre, through its Sydney Peace Foundation, has given its annualSydney Peace Prize to John Pilger, a man who once urged us to support Sunni militants, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Iraq who fought our soldiers in Iraq – soldiers Underwood was meant to be honouring on Anzac Day:

Here’s a taster of the inspiration for peace and justice that Pilger provides, from an interview he gave to the Australian Green Left Weekly in 2004:

‘Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq’s anti-occupation resistance?

‘Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.’

Evidently the Sydney Peace Foundation resolved that it wasn’t going to be choosy either.

That is the Centre that Underwood wants us to give “millions of dollars”.

Peter Underwood is not fit to be Governor of Tasmania.

Hear. Hear. It is the sanctimonious condescending preachiness that perhaps offends me most about the pacifists. The hypocrisy. It is difficult to say. There is so much about about them that is offensive. Perhaps I should launch a Section 18C prosecution.

Which brings me to the point about Tasmania and Israel. Underwood is the head of state of a polity of settlers whose arrival in the nineteenth century lead to the destruction of the indigenous people by the next century. Yet he does not even pause before calling for public money to be diverted from learning and meditating on what Australians had to do just a hundred years ago, to of all things, an academic discipline that it right on the cusp of the arcs of the extreme left and the extreme right when it comes to Israel and the Jews. Right at the point where the Communists and the Nazis shake hands.

Peace and Conflict Studies. The discipline of Stuart Rees and Jake Lynch and whose intellectual godfather is Norwegian academic Johan Gultang who has said that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves, to understand the world today you should read the Protocols of the Elders of Zionand who uses as sources material published by US Nazi groups.

It is easy to imagine the glee of the neo Nazi antisemites. Gultang is no longer an extreme leftist in their eyes. He is a prominent Norwegian sociologist.

Peace and Conflict Studies is a discipline known for its intolerance of internal dissent and which is committed to the elimination of the indigenous people of Israel as free and independent people entirely from the Middle East as comprehensively as the indigenous people of Tasmania were a century ago. It is astonishing how frequently Israel and the Jews come up in the teachings, public lecturing and political campaigns of Galtung and his acolytes in these strange little monocultural departments sprinkled in public universities across the West.

No wonder Underwood wants us to forget about the Anzacs. This is what comes of a short memory. The same horrible things keep happening over and over again.

cross posted

Geoffff's Joint

Jews Downunder

Elder of Ziyon Weekly Column

The Elder was kind enough to publish my latest Sunday column entitled, simply, Betrayal.

Here is a snippet:

The progressive-left, and the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic Party, has betrayed its Jewish constituency through its acceptance of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, and the BDS movement, as part of its larger coalition.

This betrayal is a symptom of the undermining of progressive-left values due to the ascendancy of the multicultural ideal over that of universal human rights within the heart of the western progressive movement and of the Democratic Party in the United States and the West, more generally.

The undermining of universal human rights as a core value within the progressive movement led also to the betrayal of women, the betrayal of Gay people, and the betrayal of Christians throughout Islamic regions of dominance, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, but also in Europe.

This is, of course, my central thesis and one that I need to continue to flesh out.

In any case, many thanks to the Elder of Ziyon and I hope that you guys will go over there and read the rest.

Our Harvest is Your Heads

Michael L.

In an April 24 piece for Palestinian Media Watch by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik we read:

A video broadcast on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV yesterday shows actors playing Israeli soldiers entering the Gaza Strip, as a text on screen warns, "You will end up in Hell." One by one the actor-soldiers are shot in the head, after which a Hamas sniper collects all the dog tags of the killed soldiers. A text appears on the screen: "Our harvest is your heads."

Marcus and Zilberdik write:

Palestinian Media Watch reported that during Operation Pillar of Defense (20012) and the Gaza War (2008-2009), Hamas broadcast numerous TV clips celebrating the killing of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Although the world was surprised by the unity agreement announced yesterday between Hamas and Fatah, the official PA daily had already reported nine days ago that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh announced a unity agreement was about to be finalized and implemented. In addition the Hamas head reiterated that kidnapping Israeli soldiers continues to be Hamas policy.

This is text from the official PA daily on April 16, 2014:

"Yesterday morning [April 15, 2014], Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the deposed Hamas government in Gaza, said that the next stage would be the implementation of the reconciliation [between Fatah and Hamas] agreed on in the past, and the announcement of the end of the schism... Haniyeh emphasized that the next stage would be unlike those that preceded it, and would not [consist] of meetings alone, but of progress, through intensive steps, toward the completion of reconciliation and the implementation of that which has been agreed on. He [Haniyeh] added: 'The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers is part of the agenda of the Palestinian resistance and of the Hamas movement, and will continue as long as there are Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons.' [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 16, 2014]

Now, excuse me if I am wrong, but if Hamas considers the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers to be wise policy and if the Palestinian Authority is joining with Hamas in a unity government, would it not be basic common sense to conclude that perhaps Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are not so interested in a negotiated conclusion of hostilities with a Palestinian-Arab state in peace next to Israel?

It says an awful lot about the current political moment that both the European Union and allegedly pro-Israel organizations like J Street are perfectly satisfied in welcoming Hamas into negotiations.  One does not make peace with one's friends, after all.  One makes peace with one's enemies.

Of course, throughout human history one generally makes peace with one's enemies after one either defeats that enemy or is defeated by it.  What we are trying to do with the Palestinian-Arabs is to get them to understand that their ongoing Jew Killing Policy is rather detrimental to their own well-being and the well-being of their children and that, therefore, maybe compromise is in order.

While we all understand that there is a long and honorable Arab-Muslim tradition of stoning Jews and chasing them through the streets and rioting against us, I would ask those who are inclined to keep that tradition alive in places like Jerusalem or upon the Temple Mount to reconsider what is in their own best interest.  I would particularly encourage their parents to reconsider just what they may be teaching their children about Jews.

When I was a kid my parents encouraged my brothers, and sister, and I to take up worthy professions.  Most of my Jewish friends, typically enough, became professional people.  What our parents never suggested to us is that it would be worthwhile, and morally uplifting, to go find some Arabs or some Muslims and beat them up as just recently happened to a young Israeli on the streets of Berlin by a gang of Arab-Palestinian thugs.

And certainly, of course, they never in their wildest dreams thought that strapping a belt full of explosives and shrapnel onto their kid and have him trundled off to the nearest pizza parlor was a very good idea.

What many on the Left need to understand - including very many Jewish "progressives" - is that Palestinian-Arab violence against Jews is not because Jews are mean to Arabs, as they perpetually tell us on places like Daily Kos and the UK Guardian and the Huffington Post.  Arab domination of, and violence toward, Jews has been incessant since Muhammad's armies captured Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in the 7th century.

It was when we finally freed ourselves via the rise of the movement for Jewish liberation (Zionism) that the Arabs launched a war against the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East that continues to this day.  Westerners who portray the Long Arab War against the Jews as a matter of "resistance" are actually fighting, whether they realize it or not, for the reinstitution of submission upon both Christians and Jews in the Middle East.

The Jews are handling the rise of Jihad in the region quite well, but this is because they reside in Fortress Israel and are no longer a people without autonomy or self-defense.  Christians, however, in Egypt and Syria and Lebanon and elsewhere are under intense pressure from those of their Muslim neighbors who favor al-Sharia and who are often more than willing to use ghastly violence against those Christians in order to force compliance.

So, the Jews of the Middle East have their back against the wall, but the Christians in the region are being chased out entirely.

Meanwhile, comfortable and safe progressive-left westerners think that the large Arab-Muslim majority in the Middle East, descendants of one of the great conquering empires in human history, are actually a weak and pathetic people in need of succor.

The Nazi Zombie

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

Talk throughout the Jewish press and blogosphere is consumed with the apparent death of the non-peace process.  Mahmoud Abbas says that Fatah is now seeking unity with Hamas and Netanyahu is claiming that his government will not negotiate with terrorists, thus bringing this long, miserable Obama-Kerry diplomatic fiasco to a staggering and stumbling non-finish.

Of course, the peace process is not dead, however.  The reason that it is not dead is because no one who counts has the will or ability or bravery to kill it.  Oslo is like a Nazi Zombie that simply will not die.  We watch the Nazi Zombie shuffle around in his tattered uniform and make threatening grunting sounds and gape in horror as bits and pieces of the Nazi Zombie fall off of the creature's body.

It's grotesque, but it is fascinating in a horror movie kind of way... except for the fact that it is real.

The reason, by the way, that I call the non-peace-process a "Nazi" Zombie - as opposed to your regular, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day kind of Zombie - is because ultimately the trend-lines within the process threaten the Jewish minority in the Middle East in a direct and physical way.  An obvious example is handing over psychopaths who think that killing Holocaust survivors is sanctioned by Allah and who get hailed as heroes by both Fatah and Hamas.

Many of us, I suspect, simply want the Nazi Zombie to wander off someplace and get lost - or perhaps someone can induce it to go play in traffic - but this does not seem likely.  Oh, sure, he's crashing into trees and shrubbery and chasing around ducks, but he never seems to actually depart the village.  It is not that anyone really wants him here.  The Jews generally do not because we tend to oppose freeing the murderers of Holocaust survivors.  {We are funny that way.}  The Palestinian-Arabs definitely do not want him here because if the Nazi Zombie were to, by some miracle, find a truffle in the forest than the PA might have to make an actual negotiated settlement of hostilities, which would not be the least bit good for business, nor for Mahmoud Abbas's already failing health.

So, the question becomes, as we watch the Nazi Zombie blundering about, what direction the creature might take and therefore how should we prepare ourselves for its next round of chaos and mayhem?  The only ones who show any genuine enthusiasm for this particular golem are its masters on Pennsylvania Avenue, but they have no real control over the beast.  Sometimes they might put some delicious roast mutton in a particular place in order to induce the Nazi Zombie to shamble in a certain direction, but for the most part they have no idea what the damn thing is going to do.

What they are mainly concerned about, needless to say, is that their own insidious creation will turn around and bite them directly in the tuchus - which if I had any influence over the beast I would very much encourage it to do.  Unfortunately, I have none and am just as horrified and disgusted as the rest of you people.

Although, I have to say, you get used to that after awhile.  The sense of horror and disgust becomes a sort-of cozy blanket that one wraps oneself within.  The horror and disgust becomes habitual and normal and expected and, if not warm, exactly, at least something other than frozen-to-the-bone-cold... which is what full-on horror and disgust at the Nazi Zombie actually should be.

In any case, I do not know where the monster is going next and neither does anyone else, least of all the thing's masters on Pennsylvania Avenue.

My suspicion is that the creature will upset the Europeans who will, in reasonably short order, push it back into the faces of the Jews.

We shall see.

Fatah = Hamas

Michael L.

Attila Somfalvi, writing in Y-Net, tells us the following:

Israel has pressed pause on negotiations and will take steps to cause financial pain for the Palestinians, in light of an announcement Wednesday that Fatah and Hamas have reconciled and are to form a unity government, but has decided against toppling the Palestinian Authority altogether.

"Until now, we have warned them about sanctions, and now we will impose them," a political source said. "The moment they announced that they were becoming one body, negotiations became impossible. Abbas has gone a step too far. There will be no political contacts with the Palestinians."

Somehow I doubt that Israel is going to give up all high-level political contacts with the local Arabs, yet that probably is exactly what they should do. Israel cannot negotiate with people who call specifically for the genocide of the Jews directly in their charter and Hamas calls specifically for the genocide of the Jews directly in their charter.

This is a little section from the Hamas Charter that reflects a hadith calling for slaughter:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem."

Of course, anyone paying attention, without ideological blinkers, knew that dictator Abbas was not an actual partner for peace due to the fact that the Palestinian Authority continues to incite hatred for Jews via PA media and little things like welcoming home the murderers of Holocaust survivors as national heroes.

Barack Obama recently claimed that Mahmoud Abbas "consistently renounced violence."

Here is a news flash for you folks:

Barack Obama lied.

Obama knows full well that Abbas has never in any genuine way renounced violence toward innocent Israeli civilians because Abbas does not believe in any such creature as an "innocent Israeli civilian." Furthermore, how can Abbas or Fatah or the Palestinian Authority claim to renounce violence even as they name government buildings and roads and ice cream parlors for those who are known for nothing else beyond committing violence specifically targeted toward Jews?

I have always favored a negotiated two-state solution to the Arab-Israel conflict, but there comes a point wherein one must rethink former presumptions.  In my view, it is long past time for world Jewry to look beyond the failed Oslo Accords and to think in fresh ways about how to handle the ongoing aggression against the Jews in the Middle East.  Since Arab political forces throughout the area have consistently rejected a Palestinian-Arab state in peace next to Israel, with a full cessation of hostilities and an acknowledged end of the conflict, then Israel has no choice but to act unilaterally.

Sometimes people like to tell me what my political positions are without any reference to my political opinions.  I was even told in the comments over at the Times of Israel under a recent piece that clearly I must have a racist disdain for Native Americans.

Why this person said such a thing is entirely beyond me unless he thinks along the lines of:

Arabs = Indigenous Innocent Natives /  Jews = Aggressive Imperialist Interlopers.

In any case, all of our views on the conflict need to evolve and change according to evolving and changing circumstances.

My position is this:

Israel needs to declare her final borders and remove the IDF to behind those borders.

Period.  End of story.  {As I like to say.}

I am not an Israeli, so it is not up to me to decide just where those borders should be.

If Israel thinks that retreating to the 1949 armistice lines will result in a manageable situation, then so be it.  If, on the other hand, Israel were to go Naftali Bennett's route and annex some version of Area C, leaving the rest of the region for yet another Arab state, then that is fine with me, as well.  Finally, if Israel decides to annex the entirety of Judea and Samaria, from the river to the sea, that is an option, but it is an option, like the other two, with significant difficulties.

If Israel annexes the so-called "West Bank" then it will need to provide a pathway for citizenship for the local Arab population.  I do not believe in loyalty oaths because they are emphatically meaningless, but there needs to be a reasonable pathway.

What I would recommend is that non-citizens of Israel who live in Judea and Samaria who wish to become citizens of the State of Israel be required to complete two to three years of community service.  If at the end of that period the individual has shown him or herself to be non-hostile then the person should be granted full citizenship.  Those who refuse such service should maintain full civil liberties, but no rights to the national franchise.  Those who prove themselves to be hostile, of course, should be denied the national franchise.  The tricky part is determining fair and consistent metrics for what constitutes hostility.

The result of such a move, however, would be full Israeli control of Judea and Samaria west of the Jordan River and a significant increase in the Arab population of the Jewish State of Israel.  The risk of the single-state solution, which people like Caroline Glick and Martin Sherman champion, is that the wrong demographics could threaten Israel as a Jewish State.  If Israel were to annex Judea and Samaria at what point would the Jews find themselves as, yet again, an oppressed minority under a viciously anti-Semitic Muslim regime?

What people on the hard-left argue is that the Jewish concern around demography within Israel is flat-out racism.  They make this argument because they simply do not care about Jewish well-being and therefore entirely discount the history of the Jewish people under circumstances of dhimmitude and submission within Islam for thirteen hundred years.  Those on the moderate-left, who actually do care about the well-being of persecuted minorities, understand that the Jewish people will never again allow ourselves to live or die according to the whims of a non-Jewish majority.

What people on the hard-right argue is for full annexation of Judea and Samaria and to heck with the Arabs.  Expel them to Jordan if need be.  What people on the moderate right argue is that the demographic threat is overblown and that the Palestinian Authority has grossly (and intentionally) over-inflated the numbers of Arabs who live in the area and thus a single-state solution is not a threat to Zionism.

I consider it a good thing that Jewish people are beginning to free themselves from the shackles of Oslo.

It was a pleasant dream for awhile, but ultimately it failed and the reason that it failed is because the Arabs of the Middle East have no intention whatsoever of giving up their Long War Against the Jews.  Why should they?  Jewish sovereignty on any land that was once part of the Dar al-Islam must, according to al-Sharia, remain within Dar al-Islam forever.  Furthermore, the Arab governments can simply continue to brutally use the Palestinian-Arabs as pawns in their never-ending cosmic war against the Eternal Jew.

What we cannot do, however, is remain chained to failed ideologies, even if our friends wish us to remain so... for our own alleged best benefit.

It is time to move on and rethink and what that means is acknowledging the failure of Oslo.

This does not necessarily mean the end of the two-state solution, but it does mean that a two-state solution will not come about within a negotiated settlement.

Not any time soon, that much is certain.

Spreading Hatred Toward Jews on Daily Kos

Michael L.

{Cross-Posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

Outside of political Islam, the most racist political movement in the west, today, of any significance, is unquestionably the progressive-left... the movement from whence I sprang.

The style of contemporary progressive-left racism varies from the dying old-fashioned right-wing variety, because it is grounded in a condescension that sees the ethnic "other" as both inferior and in need of protection.  In this way it bares similarity to imperial western nineteenth-century notions of "white man's burden," rather than classic twentieth-century racism championed by the hard right and organizations like, for example, neo-Nazi or "skin head" groups, not to mention the National Socialists, themselves.

This form of progressive-left racism however does not apply to the Jews.  Instead they have swapped out hatred for the Jewish people with hatred for the Jewish State.  This is not the "humanitarian racism" that the Left practices on non-white peoples, but a form of overt hatred, rather than condescension.

Progressive-left disdain for the Jewish people takes the form of disdain for the Jewish State.  Disdain for the Jewish State takes the form of perpetually condemning it as a racist, imperialist, colonialist, militarist, apartheid, racist state.  It's the Big Lie and if you say it over and over and over again eventually people will come to believe it.

Let's take a gander at an example from the "progressive" Daily Kos website, shall we?

One of the more hostile individuals toward the Jewish people that posts in that venue goes under the moniker "Eternal Hope."

Eternal Hope currently has a "diary" posted entitled, Israel Denying Palestinian Christians the Right to Worship in Jerusalem.

First off, the title of the diary, itself, is a flat-out lie.

It is a lie of implication.  The implication is that Israel is denying Israeli Christians, in general, the right to worship in Jerusalem, which is plainly false.  Christians of all varieties and of all ethnicities worship in Jerusalem on a daily basis.  It is not Israel that practices religious apartheid, but almost the entire Arab world which does.  In other words, Christians and Jews are prevented from practicing their faith throughout most of the Muslim world, yet Eternal Hope lambastes the tiny besieged Jewish minority in order to piss all over them before a western audience for the purpose of spreading hatred toward Jews by holding them to an insidious double-standard.

Please note that Eternal Hope's source for this accusation is Der Sturmer Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera, needless to say, is in bed with "Palestinianism" (as is Eternal Hope, actually) and cannot be trusted as a fair source of news and information concerning the Jewish State of Israel.  Al Jazeera, itself, is heavily involved in the delegitimization project and this is precisely how it works.  It is a blatantly hostile and heavily biased source of news and information that advertises hatred against the Jews for people like Eternal Hope to further disseminate in venues like Daily Kos or the UK Guardian or the Huffington Post and innumerable smaller progressive-left venues.

Furthermore, just what is a "Palestinian Christian"?  Everyone who lives in the Land of Israel is a "Palestinian" in the sense that prior to the re-establishment of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, the area between the river and the sea was alternatively known as either "the Holy Land" or "Palestine."  But "Palestinian" is no more a separate ethnicity than is "Californian."  No exclusive groups can lay claim to being "Californian."  "Californian" does not represent a distinct ethnicity and neither does "Palesinian."

The so-called "Palestinian" people only emerged as a separate variety of Arab toward the end of the twentieth-century and did so for the specific purpose of challenging Jewish self-defense and autonomy on Jewish land.  That being the case - which it most emphatically is - the Jewish people are under no obligation to recognize the government of an alleged people who came into existence for the specific purpose of undermining Jewish autonomy.

There has never been a Palestinian-Arab state and, unless they, and the Arab world, more generally, accepts Jewish sovereignty within Israel, there never will be.

Furthermore, the point in offering Christians the moniker of "Palestinian" is to encourage Christians to join with Muslims in their efforts to undermine, and eventually destroy, Jewish sovereignty and self-protection on historically Jewish land.

Thankfully, as I have read elsewhere, Christians in the Middle East are moving away from associating themselves with Arab political parties because the days of Pan-Arab Nationalism are over and the day of rising Jihad begun.  Most Middle Eastern Christians, like most Middle Eastern Jews, have no burning desire to return to the submissive conditions of dhimmitude which is why, outside of Israel, the Christian population in the region is being decimated.

Since the overthrow of Barack Obama's friends in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamists have burned down how many churches in that country?  Maybe 100 by this point?  Maybe more.

Eternal Hope writes:

This undermines the basis that Israel has to claim that it is a democratic system. Instead, it is treating its Palestinian Christian population with the same sort of discrimination that it is the rest of their Palestinian populations.

Israel, while flawed, is far and away the most democratic state in the region.  No other country in the Middle East comes even remotely close to Israel as a fair and open democracy, yet malicious Jew Haters like Eternal Hope want to besmirch the character of the Jewish minority in the Middle East in order to erode what little support they have elsewhere in the world.  Whatever Eternal Hope thinks that she is doing, she is helping to isolate and harass a small minority of Jewish people who have had war waged against them by a much larger hostile majority population over the course of about one hundred years, now.

Eternal Hope writes:

The end result is that it is breaking up families and shutting people out of the process. This is hardly surprising coming from a government whose foreign minister openly advocates the transfer and revocation of citizenship for its Palestinian minority within Israel.

This is yet another lie.  I have never been an advocate for Avigdor Lieberman, but he has no intention whatsoever of forcibly transferring anyone to anywhere, yet someone who did not know this, reading Eternal Hope's malicious lies, would assume that Lieberman advocates for the physical expulsion of Arabs from Israel.  He doesn't and even if he did, just what do you expect from a minority population under siege by a hostile majority population?  Of course there are Jewish Israelis who would like to see the expulsion of Arabs from the country.  The reason for that is because a goodly proportion of those Arabs seek either to murder Jews or justify the murder of Jews, which is essentially what Eternal Hope is up to at Daily Kos.

Ultimately what Eternal Hope is endeavoring to accomplish - whatever she tells herself concerning her motives - is normalizing and encouraging violence toward Jews in the name of "social justice" and "human rights."

She concludes:

But Israel's policies of perpetual warfare against the Palestinian people as well as its rules and regulations designed to exclude Palestinian Christians from a meaningful civil life means that they are not the democratic system of government that was first envisioned when Zionism was first through up. Instead, they are an apartheid dictatorship which is designed to confer special rights on its Jewish majority population while denying rights to Muslims and Christians.

Notice the inversion embedded in the first sentence of that paragraph.  "Israel's policies of perpetual warfare"?  The Jews of the Middle East want nothing so much as to be left alone in order to write computer code, litigate against one another, and send Natalie Portman's out into the world.  What they do not have is a policy of perpetual war.  On the contrary, it is the Arabs who have for 13 long centuries kept the Jewish people under conditions of submission according to the doctrine of dhimmitude as expressed in the Pact of Omar during the seventh century.

Eternal Hope's writings on the Arab-Israel conflict are something akin to a self-professed "liberal" blaming African-Americans for the oppression of white people for daring to oppose the system of Jim Crow.  All Israel is doing is protecting the Jewish people from the intense malice around them and that intense malice long, long precedes the creation of the modern State of Israel.

In her commentaries on the Arab-Israel conflict Eternal Hope perpetually places all blame on the Jewish minority in the Middle East for the hostility against them, while siding with a majority population whose leaders often call for the genocide of the Jewish people through the wiping out of the State of Israel.

Furthermore, to claim that Israel has a policy of "perpetual warfare" is the classic anti-Semitic trope that we've seen in Europe for centuries and in the Middle East for at least one hundred years.  The Jews are warmongers!  They like war for the sake of war!  All good Germans people should ban together in order to confront this menace!

Finally, to call Israel an "apartheid dictatorship" is not only grossly unjust and malicious, it is also hugely hypocritical given the rest of the countries in the region.  Muslims and Christians vote for national leadership within the Knesset and the Knesset actually contains anti-Zionist Arab members.

How much more democratic can a country be if they allow those who seek to destroy it as members-in-good-standing within their own parliament?

Arabs and Muslims share schools with Jews and restaurants with Jews and hospitals with Jews and university campuses with Jews. Arabs, furthermore, have greater access to all of those things in Israel than anyplace else within the entire Middle East. This is partly due to the fact that Palestinian-Arabs within Israel also have greater economic opportunities than do Palestinian-Arabs elsewhere within that entire region.

Notice that Eternal Hope does not mention the treatment of Palestinian-Arabs by their cousins in Lebanon or Jordan or Syria where they are largely kept in refugee camps and generally refused access to Lebanese or Jordanian or Syrian civil society.

The very last thing that Israel is is an "apartheid" state and the only people who claim otherwise are those who absolutely have it in for the Jewish people.

And notice, of course, that Eternal Hope could not care less that Jewish people are not even allowed to enter the city of Mecca.

The hypocrisy could not be more blatant and it is an hypocrisy shared by the trends within her own political movement.

Eternal Hope is a racist, but as I said in the beginning, outside of political Islam the progressive-left is the most racist political movement of any significance in the west today.

I have watched it become more so in recent years and it is truly very sad, but it is also simply undeniable.

Love of the Land Links

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}


Gotta Smile! How would you like your judge? Zionist or patriotic?

(Video) Happy Gaza , Where the Suffering is Unbearable

Undermining the Peace Process With Prisoner Releases

Love of the Land is the blog of Yosef and Melody in Hebron.

Let me ask you, how much guts does it take for a Jew to live in Hebron, the land that according to the Bible was purchased and settled by Abraham?

Jews have been living in that little corner of the universe for thousands of years before there were any such places as London or Paris or Berlin or Washington, D.C.

And, yet, we are supposed to believe that it is both just and right that John Kerry, Barack Obama, and the European Union condemn a Jewish presence on historically Jewish land.

We are supposed to believe that it is not traditional Arab theologically-based race-hatred toward Jews that is the problem, but that Jews like Yosef and Melody who wish to live where our ancestors came from.

That, we are told by people like Barack Obama, is the real problem.  Jews are living in the wrong place.  Like some medieval Italian prince he believes he has the right to tell Jews where we may, or may not, be allowed to live.  At least the Italian princelets were pushing us around on their own land.

Barack Obama is trying to push us around on Jewish land.

In other words, the very foundation of western-left understanding of the Arab-Israel conflict is grounded in the acceptance of Arab-Muslim racism toward Jews.  Even as Mahmoud Abbas insists upon the faux "right of return" for millions of Arabs to flood into Israel, he and much of the rest of international community are demanding something akin to a Judenrein Palestinian-Arab state right in the heart of historical Israel.

Furthermore, if any of us consider such an arrangement to be entirely unjust and racist toward Jews, it means that we are the problem.  The problem is not their racism.  The problem, from the point of view of people like Obama and Kerry and Abbas, is our objection to their racism toward us.

I have to say ultimately I feel sorry for progressive-left diaspora Jews.  Jews like Yosef and Melody know who they are and have the guts of their convictions.  I am not particularly religious, but they are and I respect that.  I respect the fact that they, and all the Jews under siege in Hebron, are taking it on the chin for all Jewish people, everywhere.

This is not a matter of one-state or two-state or three-state or blue-state.

This is about Jewish rights to property on historically Jewish land.

This is about whether we accept flat-out racism towards us by much of the international community, including the president of the United States, or whether we reject that racism.

I say, we reject it.

Time to Take Back the Temple Mount

Michael L.

In the Jerusalem Post we read:

Two Border Police officers were lightly injured in clashes with Arab youths at the Temple Mount on Sunday morning.

The rioters threw fireworks and rocks at security forces upon the opening of the mount to Jewish worshipers. Police responded with riot dispersal measures.

Police arrested 24 people for disturbing the peace.

The Temple Mount was again closed to visitors following the disturbance.

Prior to the closing of the facilities Moshe Feiglin and hundreds of Jewish tourists visited the mount.

The disturbances followed similar violence on Wednesday at the holy site.

Enough is enough.

Handing the Temple Mount over to the Islamic Waqf was a monumental mistake by Moshe Dayan in dire need of correction.  The Muslim custodians have actively sought to erase any trace of Jewish history within Judaism's holiest site, they destroy priceless historical and archaeological artifacts, and they get violent at the sight of a Jew so much as moving her lips in silent prayer.

And this is within the Jewish State of Israel.

This is simply unacceptable and Israel needs to declare sovereignty over the Mount and release the Waqf from any administrative authority.  The Temple Mount should be open to anyone and everyone who wishes to ascend it for the purpose of prayer.

Period.  End of story.

Furthermore, the Jews of Israel should not be afraid of Arab-Muslim rock-throwers.

On the contrary, Arab-Muslim rock-throwers need to learn some fear of the Jews.

Elder of Ziyon Weekly Column

The Elder was kind enough to publish my second weekly column for EOZ entitled, The Death of the Left.   This is the type of material that readers of Israel Thrives will be familiar with:

My problem with the progressive-left is not that I am either a conservative or a Republican who opposes western-liberal values, but that the western-left has betrayed its own values, as Phyllis Chesler would certainly understand.

The western Left, as a political movement, claims to believe in universal human rights. It believes that people the world over, in every society, deserve to be treated in a decent and respectful manner consistent with contemporary western ideals of human justice as derived from the political Enlightenment prior to the American and French Revolutions. Progressives also claim to believe in the ideal of multiculturalism. As alleged anti-racists they refuse to condemn social practices or ideologies of "indigenous" peoples - by which they mean anyone who is neither white, nor Jewish - because to do so represents a white imperialist racist imposition onto the natural autonomy of other peoples.

The betrayal of universal human rights by the western-left is nothing less than a betrayal of its own reason to be as a political movement.  The abandonment of women, Gays, Jews, and Christians to the violence and suppression of political Islam is perhaps the greatest unspoken political betrayal of the current century.

Anyway, read the rest.

Skunked on Passover

Michael L.

I cannot believe this.

We are conducting our Passover seder tomorrow evening and I have a bunch of people coming over.

However, this morning, as Laurie was walking our sweet, new poooch Gorgie-Porgie, he got sprayed by a skunk and now the entire house reeks of it.

I may literally have to cancel because I cannot have dozens of people coming into a house for Passover that reeks of skunk!

I am simply flabbergasted and last year there was also a problem on Passover that saw me admitted into an emergency room.

I am guessing that Hashem does not want me conducting Passover seders!

I am horrified, disgusted, and dismayed and this house reeks!

Oh, for G-d's Sake, really???

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Michael L.

Here is one way of thinking about the differences between the big three religions of the Levant.

As "Universalist Religions" and / or as "Political Religions."

I am admittedly painting with broad brushes here, but it is probably fair to say in this point in human history that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam take significantly different positions on the universalism of the different faiths and the political imperatives of the different faiths.

Christianity, for example, is a universalist religion in the sense that it believes itself to hold a spiritual message for all of mankind.  Ultimately, the purpose of Christianity, as it acts in the world, is to bring the faith in Jesus to all humanity.  So, there is no question but that Christianity is a universalist religion, because it is a religion that endeavors to speak to all people.

What Christianity is not, for the most part, since the Enlightenment, is a political ideology.  Following the trends of the Renaissance and the Reformation and the Enlightenment, Christianity throughout the west has generally embraced the separation of church and state.

Judaism is also not a politically-inclined religion.  Jews are notoriously political, as a people, in part because we come out of a tradition wherein debating with G-d, Himself, is part and parcel of the faith, but the great majority of Jews are not the least bit inclined to see Torah Law as the basis for the Israeli legal system or any other national legal system.

Nor is Judaism a universalist religion.  There is no notion within Judaism that all peoples throughout the world should adopt the Jewish religion for the purpose of "saving" their souls.  Christianity is universalist.  Islam is also universalist.

Judaism is not.

Islam, however, is both universalist and political.  Along with Christianity, Islamic doctrine suggests that the only possible spiritual salvation is via the one true faith.  Islam is 1.5 billion people, so it is remarkably diverse, but as a religious-political ideology it is also generally absolutist, if not fascistic.

It looks like this:

Christianity:  universalist, but generally non-political

Judaism: non-universalist, generally non-political

Islam:  universalist and political

And that is the problem.

The reason that we have a never-ending conflict between the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East and the large Arab majority is because, for religious reasons, even a small Jewish State on any land that was once controlled by imperial Islam must stay within Dar al-Islam.  The hatred and the violence and the never-ending vitriol is not because Jews are mean to Arabs, but because the majoritarian Arab culture is deeply racist toward Jews.

This is what is most infuriating about the insipid and condescending progressive-left glance at the Arab-Israel conflict.  They honestly think that 6 million Jews on the Mediterranean coast are mean to 400 million Arabs.  They fail to recognize that the Palestinian-Arabs are used as a club by the surrounding governments and peoples in order to strike at Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land.

Despite living under 1,300 years of Jim Crow dhimmitude, followed by a century of ongoing warfare against us, western "liberals" blame the harassed Jewish minority for the racially and religiously-based Muslim majority hatred toward us in that part of the world.

The western-left has betrayed the Jewish people and we need to wrap our brains around this notion, because it happens to be the truth.

We do not need to run to the Right - I have not - but we need to understand where we stand with the Left.

What is a Nazi, anyways?

Michael L.

That word, more than any other word that I can think of, is just laden with various miserable connotations and implications and political and psychological resonances.  The word is semiotically rich.  For reasons that could not be more obvious, it resonates deeply with almost everyone.

But, when we talk about Nazis, just who are we talking about?

Among academic historians the meaning of the term is limited to people who were members of the National Socialist German Workers Party between 1920 and 1945.  No one can be a "Nazi," i.e., a member of the Nazi Party, who was not a member of the party while it existed.

Nonetheless, words are slippery.  Would one hesitate to call a neo-Nazi with a bald head and a swastika tattooed onto the back of the neck a "Nazi"?  I would not hesitate for a moment.  And presumably neither would she.

Or, let's take the hypothetical case of a businessman in the United States who believes in a biological hierarchy of races, but who keeps that belief mainly to himself because he possesses something resembling normal intelligence.  And let's say that he considers black people and brown people and Jewish people and all non-white people to be basically inferior.  And let's say, in his imagination, he would very much like to see white people organize themselves politically around "whiteness."

Would it be fair to call such a person a "Nazi"?

He is not a member of the Nazi party, because the party is long gone.  As soon as Eva - who as it turns out may very well have been Jewish - gobbled down that cyanide in the Führerbunker, the party was over.  Yet I think that any reasonable person would agree that the attribution "Nazi" is appropriate for such a person.

Now, let's take things from a specifically Jewish perception for a moment.  Prior to the Holocaust what the Nazis did was demonize and defame the tiny Jewish minority in Germany.  We represented about 1 percent of that entire population.  And, just as in the Middle East today, the hostile majority population yammered at one another that Jews have too much power and that we have nefarious plans to take over the universe and that we are secretly and maliciously subverting the health and well-being of perfectly innocent children, nuns, and bunny-rabbits.

What I would suggest is that when anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and Israel Haters in places like Daily Kos or the UK Guardian or the Huffington Post or the New York Times or the European Union malign the tiny Jewish community in the Middle East then they are acting as "Nazis."  They are behaving essentially as the National Socialists behaved prior to the slaughter.  And just as the original Nazis honestly believed that what they were doing was right and good and just, so do the anti-Zionists, BDSers, and malicious Europeans.

And this is what slays me.

It is as an alleged matter of "social justice" that the western left kicks the Jewish people in the teeth.

The Return of Old-Timey Jew Hatred

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The news, on this first day of Passover within the American Jewish community, is of the shooting-up of a number of Jewish facilities near Kansas City, Kansas.

CBS reports:

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- An elderly man opened fire Sunday at two Jewish facilities in suburban Kansas City, killing a doctor and his teenage grandson and an elderly woman before he was taken into custody, authorities and witnesses said.

The suspect was shouting anti-Semitic slogans as he was arrested, CBS affiliate KCTV reported.

"I've been told he was yelling 'Heil Hitler' as he was being taken away in cuffs," Rabbi Herbert Mandl, who serves as a chaplain for the Overland Park Police Department, told CNN.

Three people were killed including a local physician and his teenage grandchild.

Grandfather and grandson attended the United Methodist Church in nearby Leawood. The church's senior pastor, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, broke the news to church members at a Palm Sunday evening service, The Kansas City Star reported.

Although Corporan and his grandson apparently were not Jewish, the shooter could be charged with a hate crime if he targeted him because he thought they were.

There is a certain hideous irony, I suppose, in the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the killer, Frazier Glen Miller, 73, as a "raging anti-Semite" and a former "Grand Dragon" of the Ku Klux Klan... yet he ends up killing Methodists.

My experience tells me that the truly troubling anti-Semitism in the west today comes out of the Left far more so than it does from the Right, but that does not mean that the political right-wing is free from anti-Jewish bigotry.  The difference is that on the Right anti-Semitism is marginalized, while on the Left it is being maintreamed, hysterically enough, under the banners of "social justice" and "human rights."

Things have changed very much since the bad old days of mid-late twentieth-century American race hatred.  In the 1960s and much of the 1970s it was the political right-wing which could be counted on to carry the proud banner of bigotry and racism, which is part of the reason that so many American Jews identify with the progressive-left and the Democratic Party.  It is precisely because the Left took the lead in the struggle for civil rights after World War II that it earned a large majority allegiance within the Jewish community and rightly so, at the time.

Since then, however - sadly enough - the great majority of anti-Jewish sentiment comes from the Left in the west, not from the Right.  The grand hypocrisy, today, is that the political Left expresses its dislike of the Jewish people as a matter of "anti-racism."  Because the Arabs of the Middle East tell the world that the Jewish minority is mean to them, sympathetic progressive westerners have taken up their violent and genocidal anti-Israel / anti-Jewish cause as a matter of human rights.

How's that for a kick in the head?

And, yet, leftists are shocked and dismayed when their fellow Jewish leftists complain about little things like Nazi Swastikas entwined in Shields of David during anti-war protests in Civic Center, San Francisco.  Or the fact that high profile western leftists joined with actually Jihadis, who they describe as "peace activists," in an attempt to confront Jews off the coast of Israel aboard the Mavi Marmara.

Traditional right-wing racism in the United States is not dead, but it is dying.  As far as traditional right-wing Jewish animus goes, William F. Buckley, Jr., founder of the National Review, did as much as anyone on the political Right to combat that racism.  Writing in the New York Times, Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The Times Book Review and Week in Review, tells us this:

In the 1950s, when American conservatism still bore the taint of anti-Semitism, Bill Buckley moved forcefully to erase it. One important step was banning anti-Semitic writers from National Review, the magazine he founded in 1955. Many of his allies included Jews — from Marvin Liebman, the publicist who helped organize conservative rallies and events, through his great friend Richard M. Clurman (of Time magazine) and also, as you point out, neoconservatives like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Buckley was also a champion of Henry Kissinger, who remained one of his dearest friends.

I am not a huge fan of Kissinger, but that is not the point.   I am not even a fan of the political right-wing, on the great majority of issues, but that is not the point, either.  The point is that despite the old maniac in Kansas, the Jewish people in the United States, and perhaps the west, more generally, need to acknowledge that which they have been loathe to acknowledge.

We need to acknowledge the fact that the progressive-left, and significant segments of the Democratic Party, have betrayed their Jewish constituency through the acceptance of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, and the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish State of Israel.

Until this betrayal is acknowledged, western Jewish leftists will continue to support, implicitly if not explicitly, a political movement that is perfectly comfortable in the defamation of Jews via anti-Zionism within progressive-left venues.

Until this unfortunate little fact sinks in to the minds of Jewish Democrats we cannot stem the tide of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism within the western-left.

Announcing My Sunday Column for the Elder of Ziyon

Michael L.

The Elder and I, happily enough, have agreed to an arrangement wherein I will write a regular and exclusive Sunday column for the popular and influential Elder of Ziyon blog and he certainly has my thanks.

The first piece is entitled, Presbyterian Aggression, and is concerned with "Zionism Unsettled," a booklet written and published by the Presbyterian Church (USA), which blames the failure of Arab-Jewish relations in the Middle East on the Jews.

Here is a tid-bit:

As people who follow the ongoing Arab aggression against the Jews in the Middle East know, the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently published a booklet entitled "Zionism Unsettled" in which the American branch of that denomination condemns Israel and Zionism for the deterioration of relations between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.

As the JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) author of the piece writes:

"But instead of recognizing the reality of rampant, deep-seated anti-Semitism in the Middle East & North Africa, "Zionism Unsettled" places blame on the State of Israel and presents a revisionist history of the Mizrahi refugee experience. Among many unfounded claims, the blooklet states that Mizrahis "share a history of largely harmonious integration and acculturation in their host countries. Sadly, this model of coexistence was destabilized by the regional penetration of Zionism beginning in the late 19th century." 

It staggers the imagination to realize the degree of hatred, ignorance and moral stupidity required of the Presbyterian Church for them to publish such toxic rubbish under their official seal. Whatever their reasonings or excuses or justifications or apologetics, this little "booklet" is nothing less than a true kick in the head to the Jewish people.

Read the rest at the Elder of Ziyon and drop in there regularly because it is the foremost site devoted specifically to the Arab-Israel conflict from a pro-Israel perspective.

Also, needless to say, please drop in on Sundays.

I may have a word or two.