I very much hope that Norman F will forgive me for simply stealing his writings and front-paging them on Israel Thrives, because that is precisely what this post is.Laurie and I have been up around Mount Shasta for the last week with friends and we just returned. This is the tippity-top of northern California and it is nothing but vast gorges with rivers running through and tall mountains covered with pine trees.
And rainbow trout.
I caught eleven, but have now decided upon a strict catch-and-release policy.
In any case, this is what Norman has to say concerning my last piece for the Elder entitled, The Palestinian Colonization of the Progressive Jewish Mind.
Mike,
You've already read the last thread today about the US accusations Israel doesn't want peace - it fits in with the current view its Israel's responsibility to make amends to the Arabs; its not the Arabs' duty to make amends for their genocidal warfare against the Jewish people perpetrated by them since the time of Mohammed. Islam stands guilty of a crime against humanity and against peace by persecuting the Jewish people down through the ages and placing them in conditions guaranteed to effectuate their destruction. The current campaign against the State Of Israel is simply more or less this age-old Muslim campaign against the very existence of the Jewish people now pursued as a nation in their ancient national homeland - Israel.
And who do the unnamed US diplomats making these reprehensible accusations side with? Not with the Jews who were and the victims of the Islamic crusade against them; they openly side with their enemies whose commitment to the extirpation of Jewish existence that began with the dawn of Islam continues to this very day. What has changed is not the Arab dream of eliminating the Jews from Dar Islam; what has changed are the tactics to attain it. In a word, the Palestinian Arab claim of national self-determination is not to have their own state but to establish one as a Trojan Horse to upend and subvert the Jewish right to national self-determination. They reject peace unless Israel agrees to an open-ended conflict that down the road will result in its destruction. This is more or less the state of affairs today.
Now we know the real roots of why peace in the Middle East is impossible. What has happened in the last twenty years even as the Arabs have become more obdurate and have rejected peace with the Jewish people and Zionism on the people to people level, is that astonishingly and correspondingly, hostility to the Jews and Israel has zoomed to unprecedented levels in the West and especially on the Jewish/Israeli Left. It matters not that Israel has done every thing it can to settle a conflict to which there is no real solution in sight. The Jews must be vilified, threatened and ultimately punished for not making it easier for Islam and the Arabs to do away with them in due time. Put it another way, the real reason for the hatred of the Jews and Israel that gained respectability in the West is not due to any desire for peace but to return the Jews to the state to which they were previously subject.
That's not just been the goal of Islam and the Arabs; it has also been the goal of Edom - Europe/America and Christianity over the centuries. They both see Jewish equality and the notion the Jewish people have a national existence in the human family as intolerable. Now we begin to understand the prejudices, obsession and bias against Israel in the fulmination of unnamed American diplomats against the Jewish State. Israel is not within the sovereign rights of the Jewish people to maintain; the Jewish State exists solely at the sufferance and convenience of its enemies and well-meaning friends and the Jews must do what they're told - or face the consequences. This is the true meaning of the US diplomats' ugly outburst - rooted in age old anti-Semitism and the notion that the Jews have no right of their own to defend their independence and their freedom. Its not and has never been about peace.
We see the true picture now in front of our own eyes and we begin understand why the negative picture of the Jewish people - the Islamic/Arab colonization of the West and leftist Jews abroad and in Israel has become over time a conventional wisdom, an entrenched dogma and virtual article of faith. It follows logically that no matter what Israel does - it cannot change how its seen by the world. The erosion of Jewish moral defenses has resulted in Israel's delegitimization and weakened the ability of the Jewish State to resist powerful forces that seek to secure its eventual destruction. All that's left is to force Israel to sign the terms of its own surrender - being framed of course for its own good. The rest is simply commentary. I don't have any answers as what Israel can do to stop being the victim - that said, understanding what is really happening and telling the truth will get the Jewish people back on the path to ensuring their future.
It wasn't easy in the past or in the present and now we know what to look forward to in the future. The Jewish people and Israel above all should be aware whatever they decide to do - is to recollect the fact the world does not wish them and surviving their enemies and the wrath of the so-called civilized world that has sided with their enemies will be the defining rule of Jewish life as long as the Jews remain a living people in our world. How the Jewish people and Israel cope with it will tell us much about whether the Jewish people maintain their national existence in Israel and whether we will have a Jewish Century to celebrate. In truth, there is no other option, no other alternative. As we all know, when we read the end of the Hebrew Bible, all we do know is the story of the Jewish people will continue. And uniquely, for the first time in Jewish history, the fate of the Jewish nation is no longer in the hands of others, its in the hands of the Jewish people themselves.
This is why fittingly, Israel's national anthem is named Hatikvah - "The Hope." A national dream that has never died, has always endured and which still lives - all embodied in what is Israel today.
No forgiveness necessary!
ReplyDeleteTo borrow an expression from George Orwell, as an honest man, I felt it my duty to state the truth.
Whether over at the Elder Of Ziyon or on your blog here.
I appreciate that very much, Norman.
DeleteYou are a good friend to me and the site.
It is occasionally useful to adopt the perspective of the outside looking in but from the same point of view that the so called 'non aligned world' uses. Israel's treatment, materially may not be that different from how the US and the rest of the first world treats anyone else not of that world or where they are perceived not to belong to that world. Where for example has the US actually worked to anyone's benefit in Africa or SE Asia where that didn't coldly align with whatever the US or the west felt was in support of their own agenda? And just as likely even if it DID align with those interests the results could be just as horrific.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Israel is just coming to that conclusion as well, that it's not a good thing to be a place that attracts the west's attention in that way. Look at Singapore, look at the UAE. Tiny places that are either materially wealthy or technologically wealthy or wealthy in human capital or all of those things. And in every one their so called human rights agenda isn't all that charming, is it? But they've escaped the attention of Planet Do-Gooder. No one's telling Doha to end what is essentially slavery. No one's telling Singapore to let as many foreigners into their country as those foreigners like even if, especially if they want to kill all the the Singaporese. No one (except Spain) is telling all the English speaking Gibraltans to jump off that big rock and 'liberate' Gibraltar to Spain.
No, I'm afraid in the end it's more than the simple hypocrisy of bullies. It's a world where the west really does reserve the right, their own right, to wipe out whomever they like for the furtherance of their own aims. Sometimes it's Vietnam sometimes it's the Jews.
Empress Trudy,
ReplyDeleteIsrael is coming into its own in a year or two as a major gas and oil power. Let's hear it if every one still cares then about "Palestine" when the Jews have what every one needs. The age of Jewish powerlessness is coming to an end - at precisely the time when Israel's economic independence will suck the winds out of the BDSers' sails and drain the life from the global anti-Israel movement. And with power comes respect. People will see the Jews in a new light not because they love them but for once because they'll fear them.
How long can the simple hypocrisy of bullies last, incidentally at a time when the West is in seemingly terminal decline? I've thought this century may well be the Jewish Century.
Whether I'm right, we'll find out in due time.