The end of an occupation

Sar Shalom

In just over a week, we'll be celebrating the anniversary of the end of the Soviet occupation of West Berlin. What's that, you don't remember the Soviets having ever occupied West Berlin? Well, don't you remember the Berlin Airlift during which the Soviets prohibited all ground deliveries to West Berlin? What? You don't consider that an occupation and even if it was an occupation, it ended in less than a year and for over 40 years it was possible for supplies to get to West Berlin over land. Fine, does Checkpoint Charlie ring a bell? From the time the Berlin Wall was built until the fall of East Germany, anybody entering of leaving West Berlin had to pass through a phalanx of zigzag barriers and military inspections on the eastern side. What's that? You say that the Soviets still did not have any forces actually present in West Berlin?

Well there you have the real definition of occupation. It consists of forces of the occupying power being garrisoned in the occupied territory and the legitimate government of the territory being unable to function. Yet somehow, this requirement for occupation does not stop much of the world from decrying Israel's occupation of Ramallah and Jenin. Just as Palestinians have to pass through checkpoints when they pass from Area A/B to Area C, Germans had to pass through checkpoints to move between East and West Berlin. Just as the West German government was able to carry the full scope of its operations in West Berlin and no Soviet troops were garrisoned there, the PA is able to carry the full scope of its operations in Area A and there are no IDF troops garrisoned in Area A.

The major argument for the notion that Israel is not occupying the "West Bank" is that there is no legal basis on which to say that the territory belongs to anyone besides Israel. However, there is another why the Palestinian people are not under occupation. Over 90% of the Arab population of the "West Bank" lives in territory governed by the PA. Unless one is willing to say that West Berlin was under Soviet occupation prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, that means that over 90% of the Arabs of the "West Bank" are not living under occupation.

Israel and Contemporary Forms of Western-Left Racism

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

A Symbol of the Pro-Palestinian Movement

As the progressive-left and Democratic Party fling around charges of racism like confetti, perhaps it is time to remind people of the forms of western-left racism.

Why, after all, should Republicans and independents get all the fun?

There are charges of racism to be flung with wild abandon on all sides!

The racism embedded in the progressive movement, and thus embedded in the Democratic Party, takes three interrelated forms.

These are humanitarian racism, anti-white racism, and anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.

Humanitarian Racism

The most prominent form of western-left racism is what scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld dubbed "humanitarian racism." 

Humanitarian racism is the primary form of racism practiced in the West, today, but it is a socially acceptable form of racism. It is a type of racism that currently flies under the radar of most Americans even as a form of racism. Humanitarian racists regard all minority groups, and all individuals within those minority groups, as perpetual victims of white racist imperialism, including minority students at elite American universities.

Western-left humanitaran racism acts as a sort-of umbrella racism that shields and nurtures hostility toward white people, malice toward the Jewish state of Israel, and demeaning condescension toward all peoples of non-European backgrounds.

As an underlying theme within the western progressive-left, humanitarian racism can be defined as a prominent form of discrimination typified by the tendency to see minority groups as mere pawns on a world stage dominated by malicious white people intent upon imperial dominance.

Wherever the humanitarian racist casts his eye he sees aggressive western imperialists intent on stealing the resources of non-white peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He sees aggressive western corporate marauders endeavoring to impose their vapid and inauthentic Playstation Culture on the peaceable indigenous peoples of the world. He sees People of Whiteness absconding with the cultural creations of indigenous cultures. 

And, of course, he sees the United States reeking havoc throughout the world in order to yank another filthy dollar out of other people's lands and labor.

Among the things that the humanitarian racist refuses to see, however - aside from the idea that white people are not evil - is the fact that non-white people have dignity, history, and agency. While those of us who are concerned about the rise of Political Islam respect that movement as an aggressive power in the world, humanitarian racists pity Jihadis as Victims of the White Man who can be sympathized with when they endeavor to kill non-Muslims. 

The Muslim worlds, in particular, represent ancient peoples with long histories of struggle and dominance that created highly influential works of science, art, architecture, religious innovation, and various other forms of cultural production. Islam, after all, is the most successful example of aggressive imperialism in world history. Of the great national powers, only Islamic imperialism to this day maintains far-flung colonies thousands of miles from the imperial bases of Mecca (for the Sunnis) and Tehran (for the Shia).

When humanitarian racists look at Muslim societies outside of the West they see little children in need of protection in a way suggestive of nineteenth-century European notions of "white man's burden." When non-racists, of any type, look at Muslim societies, outside of the West, they see the inheritors of a once great theocratically-based empire that fell into decline when faced with superior western technology, but now resurgent as the West loses confidence in itself.

Whatever the influence of white westerners in the world - good, bad, or otherwise - the humanitarian racist refuses to recognize that non-whites are not merely victims. This is due to the essential narcissism of the movement which insists that ultimately everything is about white people.

Here's a newsflash.

It isn't.

Anti-White Racism

It is not unfair to say that following the Vietnam War, within academia, post-structuralist theorists undermined the knowability of truth, while post-colonial theorists reduced the world to indigenous victims "of color" and their white, imperial victimizers.

It is for this reason that the well-meaning students at the University of Wisconsin sell "All White People are Racists" hoodies, which is an act that ultimately encourages violence by thugs upon ordinary Anglo-type nobodies walking home from work.

It is also for this reason that so many anti-white humanitarian racists believe that there is something inherently malicious within white Wonder Bread culture, particularly in the United States. It is not merely that the petite bourgeoisie support western imperialism through their very act of being - that and paying taxes - but that there is something deplorable and irredeemably awful in White Ways of Being.

The concept is entirely nonsensical, of course, yet it is fascinating.

Many anti-white bigots think that Whiteness is not merely about skin-color, but about ways of being (ontologies) and ways of knowing (epestimologies).  In this way Whiteness is essentialized into a form of evil that is directly embedded not only into white-European cultures, but into every aspect of white lives. White people are "white" not merely for coming out of the Euro-family of peoples, but as a matter of consciousness characterized by vapid inauthenticity, rapacious greed, and heartless militarism.

Like Ahab's Great White Whale, "whiteness" symbolizes a form of evil in the world and, therefore, irrepentant white people, much like Jewish-Israelis and their "Zionist" supporters, are fabricated as an enemy of "indigenous" people, everywhere.

Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionism

Humanitarian racism should be of particular interest to those of us concerned about the rise of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism and the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel.

Jewish-Israelis are surrounded by a hostile population in the Middle East that outnumbers them by a factor of 60 to 70 to 1. Many of those neighbors advocate for the destruction of those Jews given any real opportunity. The Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East is grounded in an irrational, Koranically-based rancor, but sold to the West as a matter of "social justice."

Following World War II, Nazi-flavored anti-Semitism met with (and married) traditional theocratically-based anti-Jewish Muslim bigotry which then heavily influenced the Palestinian Narrative. Within that narrative, the returning Jewish remnants, including Holocaust survivors, are portrayed as violent colonialist intruders intent on the ethnic-cleansing and exploitation of the Palestinian-Arabs. 

This, in a nutshell, is the so-called "Palestinian narrative" and western humanitarian racists gobble it up like cherry pie.

Jewish-Israelis, who want nothing so much as to be left the hell alone to create their medical and technological doo-dads and live their lives without friends and family blown to smithereens by Jihadis, are depicted as the very worst people on the planet.

The Muslim peoples of the Middle East have persecuted the dhimmi minorities in that part of the world since Muhammad started receiving astral visitations from the Archangel Gabriel in the seventh-century.

And every generation Jews are told by both Arabs and Europeans just why it is that we deserve a good beating.

This generation is no different.

Moment of Truth?

Michael Lumish



Without plunging head-first into the muck which is this presidential campaign - or is that inescapable? - I want to make note of this Pat Condell video wherein he compares Hillary and Trump.

It is highly likely that we are looking at four to eight years of Hillary Clinton and Condell's analysis of the consequnces are worthy of consideration.

He stresses that Hillary will continue Obama's push toward a European-style social democracy as developed in recent years by the EU. Condell, however, considers the EU to be a non-democratic disaster and warns Americans away from making the same mistake.

Condell, in fact, is so disenchanted with the EU that he sees it - not unreasonably - as a step toward a world without borders. This world without borders, he suggests, will be controlled by a centralized global corporate government.

He stresses the significance of the upcoming election by suggesting that it is really a choice between American-style secular democracy versus European-style social-democracy. He characterizes the latter as obsessed "with open borders, mass migration, and a remote unaccountable government dominated by large corporations."

{Think James Caan in Rollerball... except with Jihadis.}

Condell suggests that Brexit was an expression of the will of the British people to not live under the domination of a foreign capital, Brussels, that is beholden to the corporate world. He is also displeased that the EU has forced the immigration of millions of non-democratically-inclined people into Europe, great numbers of whom refuse to integrate, as they set up their own systems of jurisprudence within sovereign nations.

Condell's piece caught the eye of Israeli columnist Martin Sherman who differed in his analysis.

Sherman does not believe that it is America versus Europe so much as a contest between "traditional Western values" with "Judeo-Christian foundations" versus... something else.

He described this something else, in a 2012 article, as displaying “the same strains of resentment and envy, suspicion of others’ achievement, the belief that the success of some was necessarily the product of exploitation pervades much of the anti-colonial, anti-American – and yes, anti-Zionist – philosophy of many members of the Non-Aligned Movement.”

I prefer Condell's view on the matter and see it as a contest between a more traditional American political culture that stresses individuality and freedom versus a European political culture that is concentrating power in the European Union.

What's important in Sherman's argument, to my mind, is this:

As Obama’s perceived successor, Clinton will be bound to preserve and promote—whether of her own volition or not—these political perspectives, simply because of the political milieu in which she will be compelled to operate, the political interests she will be compelled to serve and the political allegiances she will be compelled to maintain.

Every four years we are told that this is the election of a life-time.

Every four years the US newsmedia stresses over and over and over how crucial to all of humanity the upcoming election is.

And every four years I dismiss this notion as nonsense.

This year I am less certain.

It's Time For The World To Ostrasize Palestine

Doodad

Any decent society would dislike and ultimately ostracize any overtly violent hateful murderous country so why not the ultimate candidate: Palestine? Daily, this disgraceful culture displays its hate and murderous violence sanctioned by its political elite. I could list hundreds of examples but here is the latest atrocity.

From Palestinian Media Watch:

New PA school named after mastermind of Munich Olympics massacre

PA official on importance of school's name: 

"To commemorate the memory of this great national fighter" 

- School in West Bank named after Salah Khalaf, head of Black September terror group. 

- Attacks he planned include murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and murder of 2 American diplomats in Sudan. 

- PA Ministry of Education is responsible for naming schools. 

- This is the 4th PA school named after terrorist Salah Khalaf. 

- PMW has written to the European Union which funds the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education to condition its funding on the PA changing the names of all schools named after terrorists 

The Palestinian Authority has again chosen to name a school after a terrorist. Soon children in the West Bank city of Tulkarem will be reminded daily that murdering Israelis is heroic when they attend "the Martyr Salah Khalaf School," which is named after the head of the Black September terror organization, Salah Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad. Attacks he planned include the murder of the 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics (Sept. 5, 1972) and the murder of 2 American diplomats in Sudan (March 1, 1973). 

The Palestinian Authority laid the cornerstone to the new school a few weeks ago, and at the ceremony PA official Issam Abu Bakr, District Governor of Tulkarem, "emphasized the importance of the project of building the school named after Martyr Salah Khalaf, in order to commemorate the memory of this great national fighter." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 24, 2016]

Need I say more? They do this crap all the freaking time and the international community doesn't even bat an eye. Shame on them. Can you imagine though if Israel named a school after Baruch Kopel Goldstein? Of course it would never happen because Israel is a civilized, sane society, unlike others in that hood.

Bibliography of SFSU Controversies

Michael Lumish

I am in the process of compiling a more-or-less comprehensive, politically non-biased, on-line bibliography of newspaper articles, blog pieces, television reports, and so forth, concerning the various recent controversies at San Francisco State University (SFSU) around questions of anti-Semitism, primarily from about 2006 until the present.

This material can be easily accessed from the front page of Israel Thrives under the tab reading, Bibliography of SFSU Controversies.

These controversies include, in reverse order:

1) The David Horowitz Poster Campaign

2) The Disruption of Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat

3) The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between SFSU and An-Najah University

4) Professor Abdulhadi's visit with terrorist Leila Khaled

5) Former GUPS President Muhammad H. Hammad and his trusty blade.

6) The Edward Said mural controversy

My hope is that this series of links may prove useful to those looking for easy access to what has been written publically on these matters.

This material should be helpful to researches, writers, and political advocates concerned with contemporary western academic relations with both Israel and the Jewish people.

San Francisco State University, of course, merely represents one prominent example of larger campus trends in the United States and the West, more generally. It is not necessarily typical of American universities, but if European campuses are any indication, it is ahead of the curve.

In any case, expect additional material and format changes going forward.

This is very much a work in progress.

Raw Deal 10 - On Muslims versus Jihadis

Michael Lumish


Heya guys,

I want to talk to you this moning about a matter of some importance for the pro-Israel / pro-Jewish / pro democracy movement.

(And, really, the pro-Israel / pro-Jewish part is redundant because if one is not pro-Israel then, pretty much by definition, one is anti-democratic and, although vocal anti-Zionists may disagree, we can get into the nitty-gritty on that question some other time.)

First, it needs to be stressed that this is not just about Jews or just about Israel, but about a political, religious, non-democratic ideological trend that is spreading throughout the Middle East and the West grounded in the movement to spread al-Sharia, which we typically call Jihadism or Islamism or Political Islam, or whatever.

For now I want to discuss the tendency within pro-Israel circles to sometimes conflate all self-identified Muslims with Jihadis.

We must, in my opinion, draw a distinction between self-identified Muslims and Jihadis. A Jihadi (or Islamist) is anyone who uses violence, or who justifies the use of violence, for the purpose of establishing an Islamic Caliphate. A Muslim, on the other hand, is simply a person who grew up in the community, or within a Muslim family, who self-identifies as Muslim.

Now we can criticize my Muslim pharmacist buddy down the street for not being vocal enough against the Jihad, but what would you have him do? He’s just a married guy, working a job and raising some kids.

I understand, of course, that devout Muslims consider the Koran to be the unalterable and true word of Allah before it was corrupted by the Jews and the Christians.

And I understand that the Koran calls for Jihad and not just the quiet meditative type - or the nonsensical type found on buses in New York reading things like “My Jihad is loving my children,” or however those ads read – but the real kind, which is to say, the physical kind wherein the Holy Shaheed seeks to murder Jews and Christians simply because we are Jews and Christians.

But the point is that we cannot hold people accountable for thought crimes.

It would be exceedingly helpful – and to no one more so than the Muslim people – if more regular non-Jihadi-type Muslims, just regular people, spoke out forcefully against Political Islam as it spreads throughout the Middle East and Europe.

I do not know about you guys, however, but I am certainly not ready to condemn anyone for NOT putting forth a political opinion.

I recognize, of course, that Islam is not merely a religion but is a total system of human regulation and is political in its essence.

However, one is either engaging directly in the violent Jihad, or one justifies the Jihadi trend, or one doesn’t. Our fight should not be with those who do not, but those who do.

It should also be noted, tho, that any Muslim who claims to work social justice – such as our friends at San Francisco State - yet who refuse to loudly and consistently condemn the Jihad, or the more vicious practices of Islamic jurisprudence, such as the hacking off of body parts as a matter of holy religious law, is a hypocrite because social justice and al-Sharia are mutually exclusive categories.

Any such Muslim would be something akin to the kind of western-progressives who claims to stand for social justice yet who, likewise, cannot find it in their hearts to condemn the Jihad lest they be smeared as “Islamophobes” and thereby alienate their political-social compadres.

In both cases the advocates integrity is undermined by the tension between holding certain views on social justice, while refusing to express those views, or necessarily even able to think about those views, when it comes to the Jihad.

Finally, partly as a nod to Graham Coffey’s personal experiences throughout the Muslim world, as he describes them in commentary beneath my piece Myopia and Dismissiveness, the Islamic world is very diverse. A Muslim who grows up poor in Pakistan is likely to come to adulthood with a set of religious / ideological tendencies that are very different from a Muslim born and bred in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Thus - as I am sure Graham is well-aware - the Muslims he talked with in Indonesia, in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Middle East, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, presumably reflect ideological trends and forms of bigotry common to that part of the world.

In fact, there seems to be a positive correlation between vocal pro-Jihadi sentiment among Muslims in majority Muslim countries versus countries like the United States with, for the moment, a very small Muslim demographic.

In any case, pro-Israel / pro-Jewish / and pro-democracy advocates should not put ourselves into the position of taking on the entire Muslim world. Aside from the fact of sheer numbers, it is simply unjust to call out regular people, who are not political advocates, for not expressing political opinions.

That, I think, is a very dangerous road to drive onto.

On Myopia and Dismissiveness

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

MYOPIA

Some time ago one of our participants at Israel Thrives suggested that my focus on Israel, and the rise of Political Islam, is myopic in terms of the forthcoming US presidential election.

I take such criticisms seriously and even though I might not respond immediately - or at all - it does not mean that I am not chewing on the matter.

This writer proposed that there are plenty of other things to consider, beyond the never-ending Arab-Israel conflict, when determining who to vote for. He is right, of course. Americans are coping with a huge range of life-effecting issues that must be addressed through our politics.

So, why focus on an entirely sectarian issue like the Arab-Israel conflict?

There are a number of reasons.

This first is that the focus of Israel Thrives is what it is. If it were a blog devoted to fishing nobody would complain that it is not discussing duck hunting. This is not to say that murdering perfectly innocent ducks isn't a worthwhile endeavor, delicious as they are, but it simply has nothing to do with fishing other than the fact that both are outdoor sports.

What is more troubling are charges of semi-irrelevant sectarianism, because such charges promote indifference of, and dismissiveness toward, the fundamental issue of Political Islam.

DISMISSIVENESS

When we dismiss concerns about Jihadism as racist, anti-Muslim, Islamophobic bigotry (as Pamela Geller might put it) we not only stifle the possibility of discussion through a slander that has ruined peoples lives, but call our own ideological credibility into question.

Jews or no Jews, al-Sharia persecutes millions of people throughout the Middle East and Europe and how we react to that persecution speaks volumes toward our credibility in speaking on other issues concerned with human rights.


1) The Abuse of Non-Jews Under Sharia

The Jews of the Middle East are victims of al-Sharia who refuse to be victims of al-Sharia. 

Israel may be The Dhimmi that Got Away, but that doesn't mean that the much larger, hostile, majority-population of the Middle East are not intent on retrieving it.

That is, even as Israel stands strong militarily, technologically, and economically, Israeli-Jewish society lives under a constant threat of Jihadi violence that kills innocent people thereby propelling hatred and fear throughout much of the culture.

Israel, however, has the IDF, but the Christian Copts in Egypt do not.

The Yazidis of Nineveh, Iraq, do not.

Neither do women anywhere in the Arab-Persian-Muslim World who are generally treated - at least, according to contemporary western standards of human decency - as something approaching chattel.

We are talking about hundreds of millions of people, almost all of whom are non-Jewish, who live under medieval systems of jurisprudence derived from Islamic primary sources. We know that in many parts of the Islamic world, such as Saudi Arabia, they are still hacking at body parts as a form of Holy Justice.

In the Quran, Surah 5:33, we read that one such punishment takes the form of chopping off one foot and one hand from opposite sides of the individual's body and then, presumably, leaving that person to simply writhe to death in the sand.

One can only wonder if that particularly evil form of "justice" is still practiced in Riyadh today.


2) The Maintenance of Ideological Credibility

How we respond to the issue of rising Political Islam is, or should be, an expression of our political ideologies.

If we claim to stand for social justice then we have an obligation to stand up for women in the Middle East, Gay people in the Middle East, and all non-Muslim peoples living under al-Sharia. And it must be said that the greatest victims, by far, of the Jihadi trend are Muslims, themselves.

If we fail to speak out definitively against Political Islam then we cannot claim the mantle of social justice or universal human rights and, therefore, any claims that we make along such lines can be airily dismissed, with the wave of a hand, as hypocrisy.

That is, if we claim to stand for women's rights, but cannot bring ourselves to vocally and consistently condemn practices like burying condemned women up to their shoulders in preparation for a proper stoning in Iran, then we have no right to claim to stand for women's rights.

If we claim to stand for GBLTQ rights, but cannot bring ourselves to vocally and consistently condemn the execution of Gay people under al-Sharia, then we have no business claiming to be pro-Gay.

If we claim to stand for secular democratic principles in western lands, but have no problem with dual and, thus, unequal legal systems in European countries, then our claims to stand for secular democratic principles are precarious, at best.

Finally, for those who think that standing for universal human rights is inconsistent with being pro-Israel, then I recommend that one read more deeply into the history of the Jewish people under thirteen centuries of Islamic dominance in the Middle East, prior to World War I.

Thirteen hundred years of second and third-class non-citizenship under the boot of imperial Islam was quite enough for the Jewish people, and all other non-Muslims, living in the Middle East.

One cannot understand the never-ending conflict if one refuses to place it into its larger historical and geographic context.

Martin Gilbert's, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (2010, Yale University Press) is a good place to start.

Who Are These Guys?

A response to Hillary's foreign policy

Empress Trudy

I believe that progressive's dire threats that Hillary is a secret war hawk are nonsense.

First - that's a political statement to set progressives apart. Second - there's little history to suggest this is true. The US has been very reluctant to do more than window dressing foreign policy-wise. Oh they talk shit but it's 10x louder than a real effect. And yes there's 6,000 or so troops in Iraq and Syria (but don't mention that, that's a big secret!) as well as helicopters and strike drones and the random air strike but in the context of the whole region the US presence in the Mideast and North and Sub Saharan Africa is about the size of France's involvement.

The Hillary regime will be no less neo-isolationist than Obama. We're in a new era - an era of proxies with new customers and their new enemies. Western leaders of France, the UK and the US see their foreign policy role as arms dealers to local presidents, generals, wazirs, republican guards, rebel armies and the like. President Dear Leader Queen Hillary the Even Greater the Second will sell gear to them before she sends our people in droves. After all, that would require her to put women in harms' way under the new rules of the DoD which opened almost all combat jobs to women. No one seriously believed they'd be called on to follow through on that.

Moreover, Hillary's mutterings about overall budgets and funding puts the US on a path to have the smallest armed forces since the late 1920's-early 1930's. And ALL the western states are on the same path - Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and the minor NATO states. Even Turkey with its purges has no choice but to shrink its overall posture.

But leaving that aside, we're left with 'soft power'. That is, the power of transnational bodies like the UN, EU, NGO’s, ‘foundations’, unapproved treaties, international law and such. The people extolling the greatness of that plan are the same people who are relying on them. That's not a reliable or accurate point of view to have. Maybe it’s effective but it’s probably not very effective for the same reason any cartel isn’t effective. Everyone makes grand pronouncements then violates their own deals and cuts secret side deals on their own.

The real charm, the real appeal of forking over your nation's law making to international and transnational bodies, is in fact a domestic political issue entirely. It's meant to override the Constitution, checks and balances and rule of law for our country not some ally or foreign foe. And while the US waves a Sword of Damocles in the UNSC over the Jews as a credible threat it's increasingly not a POTENT one. What, after all, are the real consequences of the UNSC decreeing where they shall suffer the Jews to live? I suspect it’s more hot air than cold pragmatism, like every Arab state who promises to shovel billions and billions of dollars to the poor peaceful peace loving ‘palestinians’ of peace and never do it.

No I suspect that progressive democrat Frankenhillary’s foreign policy will resemble the most freewheeling unhindered robber baron limitless mercantile capitalism that puts everything in the country up for sale to the highest bidder. Everything that’s not nailed down and some of which that is, is all going out the door at fire sale prices. This plays directly to the liberal progressive ethos of the emergency of shortages. You can’t have have a liberal progressive nanny state w/o rationing and shortages and the overall belief that however much you have of anything, today, is as much as it will ever be. The role of government in that space is to micromanage that dwindling quantity in carefully controlled portions until nothing’s left. What better way to set the stage than to sell off everything in the country until there are shortages.

Yesterday in the last debate Hillary ranted about Chinese steel that ‘Donald’ buys. She left out that WE in THIS country make almost NO steel at all. The few companies that do, like Arcelor, are Indian firms operating in the US in the specialty steel and steel recycling business. If anyone wants to use steel in the US in large quantities they HAVE to buy it from overseas. I really can't see Hillary bringing the steel business back to the US. What’s in it for the American government and her administration to do so?

But I diverge. Foreign policy. The question is, what IS foreign policy – what purpose does it serve? Which strategic national interests does it answer to? What are those strategic interests in the first place? Obama is slowly turning over the Persian Gulf to Iran through which 40% of the world’s crude oil moves. He’s turning over the South China Sea to China, through which big gobs of world trade move. He’s watched as Russia takes over Crimea with one hand while it chokes Europe with the power of being able to provide half their energy with the other. If all of that is in our interest then there’s little for Hillary to change or do. Just do that more. And by that, I mean ‘nothing’. If Hillary has a different portfolio of national imperatives informed by foreign policy she has yet to articulate it. Green energy? Where are all the solar panels coming from? China. Nothing else we’ve heard so far involves making anything – just entitlements, empowerment and social welfare programs that ‘the rich’ are going to pay for. ISIS? The supernal voodoo evil that’s a great punching bag and fear monger. We can’t even call it what it is we’re not shaping a foreign policy against it.

That leaves our parochial interest in Israel. The land based aircraft carrier formerly known as America’s proxy spear against Soviet incursion in the Mideast. Problem is that the US switched sides and isn’t worried about the Russians, the Iranians or the Arabs anymore. It’s Jews who are on the outs, they’re dead men walking. Hillary’s foreign policy will resemble that of Obama’s so lets encapsulate that. Obama loathes Israel and likely is an antisemite. But Obama is also passive and a narcissist. He never takes direct action AT anything. He stands aside and lets others do it or better yet waits for the target of his hatred to lash out at him first. He wants Israel and all the Jews in it to vanish but he’s perfectly willing to let others take the lead on that. So drip by drip he cuts them out, cuts them down, gives more to their enemies. The goal is the slow erosion of the Jewish state much like Arafats’s as constructed by his KGB handlers in the 1960’s. This strategy has a fatal flaw though. It relies on Israel playing along. If Israel were to disengage at the same rate the US is disengaging, since hostility is the same thing as disengagement, Obama’s plan falls apart. Importantly, there’s no evidence that shows us that Hillary’s stratagem will be any different. How many cards does the US have to play? Just one, the ‘unbreakable relationship’ card. That is a weak card to play for a couple of reasons. 1) there’s little in the way of technology and money the Israelis can't do without if the costs gets very high. 2) the threat of withdrawing that support has never been tested and so the outcome is very unpredictable. 3) the aid package just floated only restricts those dollars and no others. Since there’s a worry that the aid must eventually be spent 100% in the US, spend other money on indigenous and other efforts.

The Obama/Hillary foreign policy vis a vis the Mideast is one of resignation, confusion, chaos, withdraw. After a half century they have little to show for it other than a teetering relationship with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the GCC compounded by utter cluelessness about Syria and Iraq compounded by a toxic bizarre love affair with Iran. An Iran who’s firing land based Chinese cruise missiles at the US Navy today. And finally a diplomatic quagmire with Turkey, NATO’s second largest partner and openly militarily hostile to US interests. And lest we forget the Obama/Hillary foreign policy actively interfered with the elections in Israel and Egypt in an attempt to topple both governments.

The conclusion I draw is that Hillary’s foreign policy will be hollow – a loud resonating chamber of noise from them about them for the benefit of the cheap seats in the domestic media. Obama frittered away almost all respect others have for the US and the Presidency as if almost intentionally. Hillary is even less credible and less serious. Her administration will be a RICO crime not a statement about world affairs.

Brief Note: Hillary's Likely Middle East Foreign Policy

Michael Lumish

It's always dicey, and usually quite foolish, to predict the future.

Nonetheless, this morning I intend to take a quick whack at it.

What we are likely to see going forward is a Hillary Middle East foreign policy that will be similar, in broad strokes, to Obama administration tendencies.

This will mean the continued erosion of US influence in that part of the world resulting in a power vacuum - as we are clearly already seeing for a number of years, now - that will be filled by Russia, Iran, and mutating rogue Jihadi forces like ISIS.

The Hillary administration, much like the Obama administration, will continue to support certain Islamist organizations, like the Brotherhood in Cairo, but not others.

If she follows Obama's Middle East foreign policy then she will divide the Islamist world into three parts:

Good Jihadis (who we support, like the Brotherhood).

Bad Jihadis (who we sometimes kinda fight, like al-Qaeda).

And

Jihadi groups that the US is basically indifferent toward (such as Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon).

Hillary will not - or so I suspect - be quite as reluctant as Obama to use American military force, but will be exceedingly reluctant to strike at Islamist groups, with the possible exception of the Islamic State.

She will also, like Obama, probably refuse to publicly note that "radical Islamic extremism" is "radical Islamic extremism" and will, thereby, hobble FBI efforts to stymie the advancement of Political Islam or Islamic terrorism within the United States because they will not study "violent extremism" within the context of Islamic primary sources, such as the Quran and the Hadiths.

In terms of the Arab-Israel conflict, Hillary will unfortunately stay the course.

That is:

1) She will continue to demand a two-state solution, despite the fact that the Palestinian-Arabs, themselves, emphatically want no such thing and are not the least bit shy about using random violence to prove it.

2) She will continue to insist that Jews be allowed to live in some places, but not others, within the Land of Israel. She will then blame those Jews (those insidious settlers), and the Israeli government, for Palestinian-Arab refusal to accept a state for themselves in peace next to Israel.

3) Through such behavior she will, knowingly or not, bolster the ambitions of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, Israel Haters, and their friends in the BDS.

Meanwhile, things will become even more uncomfortable for pro-Israel Jewish students on American campuses and Jews with a sense of self-respect will slowly, quietly, over many years, depart from the Democratic Party.

We shall see.

The Hypocrisy of San Francisco State University President, Leslie Wong

In a recent piece, I noted that right-wing provocateur, David Horowitz, recently set his sights on San Francisco State University.

He and his people did so as part of a larger campaign to rile up political discussion concerning the connection between anti-Zionism and increasing levels of Jew hatred on American university campuses.

SFSU, like many universities around the United States, promotes three types of racism. These are humanitarian racism, anti-white racism, and anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.

In response, Horowitz sent some little ideological ninjas onto that campus at night - just before the biggest rainstorm San Francisco has had in almost a year - and plastered the area with various posters pointing out that targeting Jews for death, as Hamas does, is not very nice and that, perhaps, SFSU should not support it.

But support it, it does.

One of Horowitz's posters features professor Rabab Abdulhadi with text reading, “a leader of the Hamas BDS campaign; collaborator with terrorists; San Francisco State professor.”

Nick Madden, in SFSU's Golden Gate XPress, tells us that President Wong is none-too-happy with David Horowitz and his FrontPage Magazine and his Freedom Center or wherever these meshuganah posters came from.

Horowitz says:

Our goal in placing these posters on prominent campuses across America is to expose the true motivations and allegiances of these groups who have chosen to join forces with terrorists, to challenge their lies and to expose the financial and organizational supports which allow them to pursue their genocidal agenda.

This upset President Wong who threatened that "a line has been crossed."

Normally when people speak of the crossing of lines there is the inherent threat of counter-action and reprisal. For some reason, however, I think that Horowitz has as much to fear from Wong's enmity as Syrian "president" Bashar al-Assad has to fear from Obama's. 

Concerning the posters, Wong said, "... we must defend each other from personalized attacks that serve no purpose but to incite fear and promote division."

Wong's concern for incitement to fear and promotion of division is highly discriminating. Wong is not the least bit concerned that SFSU's anti-Semitic anti-Zionist organizations, such as the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), and other allied student organizations, regularly call for the murder of Jews via the calls for Intifada.

This is the university president who said:

I want to offer my personal congratulations to the student leadership of GUPS. They have been an inspiration for me. And they have helped me when I have to tell other community groups to mind their own business. GUPS is the very purpose of this great university.

GUPS is the very purpose of SFSU? An organization that quite literally calls for the murder of Jews in the Middle East is the "very purpose" of San Francisco State University according to the president of that university?

{Really. Who knew?}

And one must wonder just who these "other community groups" who refuse to mind their own business are? For some reason I do not think that he is talking about the Chess Club.

 “Let me be clear," Wong said, "this is not an issue of free speech; this is bullying behavior that is unacceptable and will not be tolerated on our campus."

Who is this guy kidding?

Bullying behavior is not only accepted on the SFSU campus, it is absolutely encouraged by Wong, himself.

Wong's outrage is entirely hypocritical. I would call it self-consciously manufactured if I did not have faith in the man's sincerity. He believes what he says and thereby reveals the plain fact of his ideological blinkertude.

Ultimately what Wong is telling us is that inciting violence against Jews on his campus is just fine, but complaining about it and calling it to the attention of others is bullying.

I do not know that Horowitz's political-guerrilla tactics are effective, mainly because such efforts need to arise organically from the university student population. Unfortunately, the political atmosphere on that campus actively discourages pro-Israel / pro-Jewish sentiment while positively encouraging anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.

President Wong, as a matter of social justice and basic human decency, needs to be held responsible for encouraging anti-Semitic anti-Zionism on the campus of San Francisco State University.

Raw Deal 9 - UNESCO, Hillary, and Students Chanting for Intifada

Michael Lumish

Heya guys,

This is Michael Lumish talking with ya this beautiful Monday morning, October 17, 2016, high atop my perch here in the Oakland hills looking out upon a world gone absolutely bonkers.

As you know, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization obliterated over 3,500 years of Jewish history on Jewish land in order to appease the OIC, that is, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation with its 57 member states in the United Nations.

Shocking, I know.

We have an historical and hysterical campaign for the presidency in the United States wherein for the first time ever in American history, and perhaps in world history, will a candidate for the executive be declared unfit for office due to alleged sexism.

From a cultural historical perspective that is pretty remarkable.

And we have universities around the country, such as San Francisco State, in which students learn that Israel is evil and Jews who don’t despise the Jewish state are very much encouraged to despise themselves on moral grounds… on grounds of “social justice.”

The UNESCO vote was, of course, heinous, but it must be understood that it represents a way in which the United Nations courts the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Delegitimizing Israel serves the anti-Zionist cause and what better way to delegitimize than by simply erasing millennia of Jewish history on the very land where Jewish people come from?

Poof!  They simply declare Jewish history null and void in order to give Mahmoud Abbas an orgasm.

The theft of Jewish history, and the erasure of Jewish history, while replacing it with the ahistorical Palestinian Narrative, is a primary tactic of the Arabs in the Qur’anically-based Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East.

Just think Anne Frank in a keffiyah to get my meaning.

The difference, however, is that instead of this form of delegitimization coming just from the Arabs it also comes, sometimes in dramatic forms like this recent vote, from the very organization that claims to stand for peace and universal human rights within world opinion, which is the UN.

If they cannot defeat the Jews militarily then, much like termites, they seek to slowly chew away at the very foundation of the cause for Jewish freedom by whipping up hatred toward Jews, thereby promoting violence against us while eroding our morale… our very will to survive as a people.

As for the coming election, it is notable for at least two reasons. The first is that Trump will get dumped as a sexist. When was the last time that anyone in the secular West ever lost a national election due to charges of sexism? The only one that comes to my mind is former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who definitely riled up Italian women, but I do not know what electoral price he paid, if any.

The second reason this election is historically notable is because it represents the most extreme case in modern American history of media bias dominating an election and pre-determining its outcome.

Leaving aside the issue of Mr. Trump’s alleged demonic nature, there is no question but that the standard media is using the sexism charge as a club in a way that they never did with Bill Clinton, who was not exactly Mr. Clean Marine, himself.

What this means is that over the next decade we will see the country further divided. If Obama divided the United States over issues of race (and he did) then Hillary, working from the same Democratic Party playbook, will do likewise over issues of sexism.

The rich irony in this is that American feminism is actually long dead, having hung itself by an Arab keffiyah. The last gasp of American feminism was when they stood up against the Taliban in the 1990s. Since that time, the American feminist establishment – according to people like feminist professor Phyllis Chesler and former National Organization for Women director, Tammy Bruce – has shoved women to the back of a bus driven by Arab men.

Finally, as for the universities, we have got to make it clear to the administrators that when students call for Intifada that they are calling for the murder of the Jewish people in the Middle East.

When they call to bring the Intifada home to the United States, they are, in fact, calling for the murder of American Jews.

I’ve been banging this drum hard because it is damn important. My guess is that when most western university administrators here the chanting of “Intifada! Intifada! Long live the intifada!” what runs through their minds is not children with kitchen knives stabbing random Jews in Jerusalem at the behest of their culture, if not their parents, but earnest, socially-conscious, Berkeley students, circa 1969.

Well, here’s a newsflash. It’s not the same thing!

60s radicals in the United States never targeted a single specific ethnicity for death.

Even the most radical members of the Weather Underground – when they weren’t inadvertently blowing themselves up - never suggested that evil imperialist white people be shot dead at random.

It’s frankly amazing that student groups like GUPS or Students for Justice in Palestine can literally call for the murder of random Jewish people and that’s just fine.

What they can’t do, however, at least not at San Francisco State is enjoy a cigarette while doing so. That might get you a ticket or however they enforce the no smoking policy on campus.

Calling for the murder of people is just fine, but a cigarette before lunch?

Now that is over the line.

FrontPage Mag Says "Hello" to San Francisco State University

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine has a piece entitled, San Francisco State: A Haven for Supporters of Terrorists.

Whatever anyone might say about Horowitz he definitely does not pull punches. I always think of the guy as a general marshalling his troops and setting them forth to ideological warfare. But I feel reasonably certain that he, himself, would agree with that assessment.

The editors at FrontPage tell us:

Last night, the David Horowitz Freedom Center brought its Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus poster campaign to San Francisco State University, a campus that is notorious for its glorification of anti-Israel terrorism and anti-Semitism...

The posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and expose the financial and organizational relationship between the terror group Hamas and Hamas support groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine. As part of the campaign, the Freedom Center has placed posters on several campuses including San Diego State University, the University of California-Irvine and the University of California-Los Angeles. The campaign also recently released a report on the “Top Ten Schools Supporting Terrorists” which may be found on the campaign website, www.StoptheJewHatredonCampus.org. San Francisco State University is among the campuses listed in the Top Ten report.

I do not know what effect this kind of "guerrilla politics" will have on the way people think about either the rise of Political Islam or the Arab-Israel conflict, although it may get a few people talking on that campus... either that or they will ignore the whole thing entirely.

One or the other.

My guess is that many Jewish students at SFSU will roll their eyes and turn away. Some will want to keep their head down out of fear for their social standing. Others will feel a degree of relief in recognizing that at least some people genuinely are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, even if it does come from the much berated American right-wing. And maybe there will even be a few other Jewish students inspired to stand up and organize on behalf of their own people.

We shall see.

I feel a strong connection to this story in part because I am an alumnus. It is also because the university put up a mural of Edward Said, one of the most prominent anti-Semites working in academia in the United States during the twentieth-century.

There should be two caveats in discussing SFSU anti-Semitism, however..

The first is that Jewish parents who send their kids to that university should know that if their kids keep their heads down they'll be just fine. When I was there at the end of the 1990s, I honestly did not care that much about Israel and I had a terrific university experience at SFSU.

Of course, there was the day where I witnessed a bunch of black students holding up a poster with an American flag wherein the stars were replaced by 50 little Stars of David. That was a sort-of "wake up call" but all it elicited from me was a strongly worded letter to the editor. As I recall, the letter was not so much about condemning the poster itself, as it was about its potential for alienating Jewish students from left-leaning coalitions.

The second caveat is that this is obviously not a distinct SFSU problem. Sure, SFSU is prominent among American universities in its advancement of hatred toward the Jewish State of Israel - and thus inevitably toward Jews, in general - but it is hardly alone.

The current ongoing kerfuffle around SFSU is primarily about the rise of an anti-Israel / anti-Jewish political culture on that campus nurtured by, among others, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, faculty advisor to the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and Associate Professor of "Race and Resistance Studies."

The development of these interrelated stories was organic. I wrote about it. Dusty at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers wrote about it. And, most significantly, both Cinnamon Stillwell (West Coast Representative for the Middle East Forum's Campus Watch) and Tammi Benjamin (AMCHA Initiative founder and UC Santa Cruz instructor) covered the stories, as well.

Most recently even Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Studies Forum has written about SFSU anti-Semitism, so the broader story appears to have legs.

For me it started with the guy below, Mohammad G. Hammad, former president of GUPS, holding his trusty blade back in 2013:



If you are reading this it is fairly likely that the face above may look familiar. Mr. Hammad posted the photo above on his Tumblr page with this message:

I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…

That was the moment that I got hooked on the story, mainly out of well-founded concern that the university - while expelling an advocate for outright murder in Mr. Hammad - would nonetheless continue to support GUPS even as members of GUPS call for Intifada which is nothing less than a call for the genocide of the Jews in the Middle East.

This is what must be understood by university administrators around the country. When students cry out for Intifada they are crying out specifically for Jewish blood and university administrators from around the country (and Europe, and Australia) need to account for why they are just dandy with student calls for genocide.

Someone like Jerusalem mayor, Mir Barkat, must have an amazingly strong stomach to endure hate-filled students screaming in his face for his own murder as we saw last spring when he was invited by the local Hillel to speak on campus.

The man got ambushed.

Then, of course, we have Abdhuladi's attempt to normalize anti-Jewish hatred on university campuses though her successful efforts to partner SFSU with that "greenhouse" for Jihadis, An-Najah University in Nablus.

And finally - for the moment - there was the Edward Said mural festivities that featured GUPS members, and others, holding aloft signs calling for the murder of "colonizers." I do not know about you, but when Arab or Muslim students from organizations like GUPS - or, say, the Muslim Student Association, or, say, Students for Justice in Palestine - hold aloft signs calling for the killing of "colonizers" my guess is that they are not referring to the Polish. On the contrary, I get the sneaking feeling that they may be discussing my friends and relatives in places like Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.

In any case, stay tuned because as long as the President of San Francisco State University can say, as President Wong did not so long ago, that  "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university" then Jewish people associated with that campus, if they care about Israel and their fellow Jews, have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not.

My first recommendation is to encourage Jewish SFSU donors to divert their generous offers to AMCHA or Campus Watch, rather than to an openly anti-Semitic university.

My next recommendation is to keep a close eye on the writings and investigations of:

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.

Cinnamon Stillwell.

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.

And, indeed, I will have my say, as well.

I don't think that any of us are much in the mood to allow this virulent hatred of Israel and Jews - based on lies, misinformation, and propaganda - to continue without response.

What we need, however, is for the mainstream press to pick up the larger story of the camouflaging of campus anti-Semitism under a veil of anti-Zionism and drive it home to the peoples of North America, Europe, and Australia.

That and a little Krav Maga for your kids might be good.

The New New Testament

Democratize the Temple Mount!

Michael L.

This is a retread of a brief piece from last May which seems appropriate given the fact that the insidious UNESCO arm of the equally insidious United Nations just decided that the holiest site for the Jewish people, the Temple Mount, has nothing whatsoever to do with Jews (or Christians, for that matter) and is solely Muslim.

Needless to say, both UNESCO and the UN can go straight to hell.

.

{Also published at The Jewish Press.}
Temple Mount activist, Yehuda Glick, was elected to the Knesset and already there are concerns about World War III.

Glick got shot up and almost murdered in 2014 for the temerity to suggest that non-Muslims - even Jews - should be allowed to pray at the holiest site of the Jewish people.

Writing in the Times of Israel, Marissa Newman tells us:

Although Israel has repeatedly reassured the Palestinians and Arab states that it will not alter the status quo at the flashpoint site, Glick is confident he will find allies in the Knesset to support his cause.

And asked whether he would tone down his lobbying if asked to do so for security reasons, he said there would be “no reasoning” behind such a request and maintained: “I will continue advocating.”

I think that I am going to call the guy up and thank him for his bravery and essential human decency.

If there is one issue that genuinely pisses me off it is Israeli policy concerning the Temple Mount. How is it possible that someone like Moshe Dayan could be so naive as to think that handing over the holiest site of the Jewish people to Arabs would somehow placate them?

It did the exact opposite as should have been entirely predictable.

Instead of being grateful to the Jewish people for their generosity, the Arabs use the Temple Mount as a club and Israel allows this despite the fact that it need not do so.

They have even made it a rule that no member of the Knesset shall be allowed to go up there.

I do not know what to say. The stupidity is just breathtaking.

By preventing non-Muslims from praying on the Temple Mount Israel sends a message to the world that Jerusalem is not really a Jewish town. Maintaining the "status quo" is the same as maintaining the idea that Jerusalem actually belongs to the Arabs and, therefore, Jews are nothing more than land thieves.

The problem that Jews have with the Temple Mount is the same problem that Jews have with the notion of "Israeli Occupation of the West Bank." If Israel is illegally occupying someone else's land, including the Temple Mount, and thus Jerusalem, in general, then we might as well pack it in and say goodbye.

If Jewish people think that we stole land from others and if they think that we should not even be allowed to pray at the site of the Temples then what is the point of Israel? I understand that much of the rabbinate, for theological reasons, believe that Jews should not go up to the Holy of Holies, period, but that is not the point.

The point is the question of Jewish sovereignty.

Some critics warn that new MK Glick, a symbol of sought-for change at the Temple Mount, could spell trouble.

“Yehuda Glick’s joining the Knesset would create even more pressure on the government to change the status quo arrangements on the Temple Mount,” said Dr. Motti Inbari, an associate professor of religion at UNC Pembroke and expert on the Jewish Temple Mount movements, speaking days before Glick was sworn in. “I am doubtful that he can change anything, but the two appointments of [presumptive defense minister Avigdor] Liberman and Glick send a message of a harder line by the Israeli government, and I will not be surprised if the Muslims would see it a provocation against them and counterreact.

In my opinion, Israel should actually and honestly be provocative.

The truth, of course, is that the very last thing that Israel has been on this question is provocative. On the contrary, when it comes to the Temple Mount Israel does little more than cringe.

Instead of doing the right thing in regards the Temple Mount, which is to say democratize it, successive Israeli governments prefer to bow to the irrational demands of their tormentors. Instead of standing up for its own alleged values, Israel allows Muslim bigots to decide who may, or who may not, be allowed to pray on a bit of land within the ancient capital of the Jewish people.

It's a disgrace.

Raw Deal 8: The Clinton that Wouldn't Go Away (Updated)

Michael Lumish 

{Update: It has been brought to my attention that I made a factual error in this post. Hillary intervened in 2012, during Operation Pillar of Defense, not Operation Defensive Shield. The essential thesis, however, stands.}

Heya guys,

This is Michael Lumish talking atcha in the Oakland hills this dreary and cool morning, October 11, 2016.

Like many of you, perhaps most, I cannot friggin wait for Nov 9^th to arrive because this has absolutely been the single most excruciating presidential campaign that I have ever subjected myself to.

I mean, it’s just disgusting.

On the one hand, we have a crazed egomaniac that the Democrats have successfully painted as some vile cross between Adolph Hitler and the Marquis de Sade.

On the other hand we have Hillary. Oh, joy. Y’know, there are just certain politicians who simply will not go away. Year after year, decade after decade, there they still are.

These ghostly presences that shadow our lives.

I cannot even begin to tell you the sheer horror  I went through at the conscious realization that from this very moment until the day I die a Clinton is going to be shoved into my face by the media on almost a daily basis.

I don’t know if I can take it.

And don’t get me wrong, I voted for Bill Clinton twice.

Although, when I think about the history of Oslo I get a little nauseated at that fact, but there it is.

But with Hillary we are getting the Sec of State who rushed to the defense of Hamas once Israel finally responded to the hundreds of Kassams and Qatyushas that were damaging the lives of everyone living anywhere near S’derot or Ashkelon and giving the kids post-traumatic stress disorder because they were constantly racing into bomb shelters in the middle of the night.

As soon as Israel stood up to fight back in Operation Protective Edge during the summer of 2014 – bam! – Hillary was on a jet for the purpose of allegedly bringing peace to the region.

Pure bullshit, of course. Peace will come between Israel and Hamas when Israel eliminates Hamas. Period. There is no way around that. I wish that there were, but there isn’t.

All that Hillary did was intervene on the behalf of Hamas so that this heinous, genocidal Jihadi organization did not get the ass kicking that it so richly deserves. She did not intervene to bring peace. She intervened to save Hamas’s butt and thereby, whatever her intentions, to prolong war.

What’s most galling from my perspective, tho, is the absolute inability of Obama or Clinton or anyone in their administration, or virtually anyone within the Democratic Party, as a whole, to seriously acknowledge the significance of the rise of Political Islam.

Most of our friends on the Left would rather have root-canal surgery than honestly discuss the meaning of Political Islam or Jihadism or Islamism or whatever you want to call this fascistic political movement arising from the Middle East and infecting Europe with its love.

What this means, of course, is that after Hillary wins the election we will get 4 to 8 more years of denial and avoidance and deflection on this issue because to do otherwise would be to spit in the face of the kind of progressive-left dogma that to so much as name the unnamable is to court disaster and reveal oneself as a racist of the worst order.

Whatever anybody might want to say about Donald Trump – and boy do people have plenty to say about this guy - he’s right on that score.

I believe Sun Tzu said it about a million years ago. You cannot defeat an enemy that you cannot name. The reasons for this could hardly be more obvious.

If you refuse to name an enemy than you cannot study that enemy because what is there to study? And if you do not know your enemy you are in no position whatsoever to defeat it. Right?

Of course, the Obamabots and Clintonistas don’t care because they tend to support Political Islam, anyway – much to my never ending astonishment – and they don’t really believe in even the concept of enemies.

I tell ya, it must be nice to come from an air so rarified and so cozy and so safe that to even mentally evoke the notion of “enemy” is to make one go queezy with guilt.

Y’know, I was talking to a guy the other day about this kind of thing and at one point he looked me square in the eye and said, "But what is this to you? You’re not an Israeli and the likelihood of you getting blown to smithereens by a terrorist are virtually nil.” I paraphrase, of course, but that was essentially it.

What he failed to understand is that Jewish people throughout the world feel a connection with one another that transcends cultures or borders or politics or, even, religious beliefs.

If someone were to say to me, “Hey man, why do you bother with this crap?” The only answer I could possibly give – aside from all that cool Zionist cash that Israel deposits in my account each month – is that I feel a gut-level connection to my fellow Jews around the world and most particularly those under siege in Israel, but also in Europe.

The rise of Political Islam matters, tho, not only because their ideology is essentially genocidal toward all non-Muslims, most particularly Jews, but because al-Sharia cannot peacefully co-exist with western secular forms of jurisprudence.

These are mutually exclusive legal ideologies and the west is slowly allowing the erosion of fundamental civil liberties, such as rights to freedom speech, in the face of that challenge.

This is not so prominent in the United States where we mainly only face a little self-censorship – for the moment – by elite forms of media.

But aside from the direct threat to Jews by the rising Jihad, there are also the not so small facts of Yazidis buried alive as their twelve year old daughters are sold into sexual slavery. The genocide of the Christian population throughout the Middle East, complete with church burnings, riots, kidnapping and forced conversions.

Just ask Raymond Ibrahim. He may very well have something to say on the matter.

And, finally, there is the matter of what the progressive-left aversion to even discussing Political Islam means to its ideological core.

What it means is that the progressive-left, as a political movement, no longer believes in its core reason to be and that core reason is the promotion of universal human rights.

The Left can redeem itself anytime by simply opening their eyes to an important reality that is staring them directly in the face, but I do not see that happening anytime soon.

Certainly not with Hillary in the White House.