With Friends Like These...

Michael L.

Since the start of Operation Protective Edge I have returned to monitoring Daily Kos' conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict.

What I am seeing this time around - as I am sure that pro-Israel Daily Kos members (and former members) would likely agree - is the near total domination of the discussion by anti-Israel voices.

There are a few random pro-Israel Jews still participating, but sometimes they do their part to spread contempt toward Israel, as well.

One example is an individual who goes by the moniker "Red Sox" who I remember from my own time there.

Red Sox says this:

Israel's actions against Gaza defy even the slightest sense of respect for human life...

Do they really?

This is a progressive-left pro-Israel person suggesting that Israel has no respect for human life and doing so in an anti-Israel, and increasingly anti-Jewish, political environment.

Either Red Sox believes this is true, in which case he is ignorant, or he is so dependent upon progressive-left group approval that he would spit at Israel in order to gain credence as a voice to be listened to.

Whatever the reason, the IDF demonstrably does more than any army in human history to prevent civilian casualties when it conducts military operations.  Since when are armies in the habit of alerting the enemy civilian population of incoming strikes onto enemy installations in order to limit collateral damage?  This was invented by Israel as a general policy and one can argue about the effectiveness or wisdom of the policy, but it clearly shows a respect for human life.

Here is a video of an IDF aircraft calling off a strike on a military target because of the presence of civilians during the current Gaza operation.




So, how is it possible that someone like Red Sox, a supporter of Israel, could defame the Jewish State in front of a hostile non-Jewish audience?

I do not have a definitive answer, but I certainly have my suspicions.

The main one being that when we swim with a school of fish we tend to share their diet.

Egyptian doctor: stop exploiting Palestine as wedge against Jewish Israel

Michael L.



If the local Arabs would cease their attempts to murder Jews they would find that things would go much better for them.

If they insist upon the centuries-old, time-honored tradition of Arabs smacking around Jews without any Jewish recourse, then they will learn, as they are learning now, that... as we say... the day of the dhimmi done.

Fun with Numbers!

Michael L.

Heya, kids, here are some numbers that I find interesting and that you might find interesting, too.

Daily Kos Israel-related pieces thus far in 2014:  385

Daily Kos Syria-related pieces thus far in 2014:   143

Thus a 2.7 to 1 greater interest in the Arab-Israel conflict among "Kossacks" than in the Syrian civil war during the current year.

Estimated casualties in current Gaza-Israel conflict:  1,500

Estimated casualties in current Syrian civil war: 150,000

Thus the catastrophe in human lives in Syria is approximately 100 times more devastating than in the Gazan conflict.

100 x 2.7 = 270.

This means - in a crude, but nonetheless ethically significant calculus - that "Kossacks" demonstrate 270 times more interest for every Gazan life than they do for every Syrian life.

That is a rather large disparity, don't you think?  If it had worked out to, say, 3 or 4 times more interest in Gazan lives than Syrian lives it might have made some sense, given the media play that the Arab-Israel conflict generates.

But 270 to 1?

That seems rather... disproportionate.

Don't you think?

Professor Beeson Replies

geoffff

Recently this blog posted on an article at the Conversation by Prof Mark Beeson of Murdoch University about the IDF operations in Gaza.

geoffff

Human Rights Activist and Animal Protector

"John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s important book may not have earned them many friends, but it did a valuable service in revealing just how powerful and influential the Jewish lobby is in the US."

Actually Mearsheimer and Walt's thoroughly discredited book has earned them an enormous number of friends. This always does. They took the well trodden path from obscure academia to global celebrity by the time honoured method of attacking Israel and the Jews.

American Jews are probably overrepresented in neo conservative and centre or centre right intellectual discourse. Certainly they are in pro-Israel and Zionist activity of all kinds but only the blinkered and worse would draw M and W's conclusions from that. Jews are also over represented among Democrats, charity workers, left wing and revolutionary politics, the professions, universities, British conservatives, those who show up to vote in elections, until recently the ALP, Animal Liberation and for all I know the RSPCA.

So what. What exactly is your point? That a disproportionate number of Jews are activists? You really don't need to write a book to prove that.

People complaining about Jews being "over represented" and therefore having disproportionate influence is the oldest trope in antisemitism. Of course pro-Israel voices in the US are strong, there are many, but only the ignorant think of this as a monolith and only the bigoted see some kind of a conspiracy in this.

One might have hoped we had got past this sort of thing by now.

There are many lobbies in the US just like here. The "Palestinians", Arab Americans, Muslims, teachers, academics, the oil industry all have lobbies. Big Oil has had a bigger influence on American foreign policy than the Jews and it is not at all benign or pro-Israel.

The "gotcha" thesis of these academics about the Jews (remember that American and Israeli Jews are about 90% of the world's Jews) is risible and deplorable. A generation earlier and they would have been clamouring for quotas in the universities to keep the numbers in "proportion". These days I guess they would target east Asians if they could.

American Jews are pro-Israel for exactly the same reasons as most American are pro-Israel. It is because they are pro-American. It is because of the absolute moral clarity of this issue.

The Jews are a tiny minority in the US, less than 2%. To attribute to them some kind of sinister power over the US and the West should be unacceptable in the West even if it is unquestioned orthodoxy across much of the world and especially in the Muslim world.

It should be unacceptable precisely because of that.

Prof Beeson  posted in reply:

Mark Beeson

Professor of International Politics at Murdoch University

In reply to geoffff

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Geoff. The points about the US political system being open to a variety of influences are good ones and well taken. But do you really think that US policy toward Israel and Palestine is even-handed?

Why does nearly every American leader or politician feel obliged to intone to the ritual declaration about Israel's right to defend itself, with little comment about the means? Why is it that a successful middle-income state is the largest recipient of American aid? Surely you would concede that Israel occupies a place in American foreign policy practise and thinking that no other state does?

The blog replies

geoffff

Human Rights Activist and Animal Protector

In reply to Mark Beeson

All of this is military aid. Much of it must be spent in the US as part of the overall US military and defence investment. .

The glib and simple answer to the question however is that no other successful middle income strategically critical ally of the US faces anything like the existential threat that Israel does

The last time would probably have been 1940. The US did much the same thing then that it does now. Sure Israel receives much energy in Washington but that has little to do with the "Lobby". The "Lobby" sees itself primarily in an educational role and as a counter to a hugely determined and aggressive campaign against Israel out of all proportion to its size or even its relative impact on the Arab world and the "Palestinians".

Nor is it a one way street. Israel projects US influence in the Middle East. It is a major source of intelligence about events in the Arab world, an active partner in anti-terrorist operations and increasingly important economically and as a source of leading edge technology including military technology.

Drones and remote warfare were pioneered in Israel, and if the US funded Iron Dome, the enormous leap in technology it represents is shared.

I do admit to some nerve pain at the constant, and yes, almost ritualistic, affirmations about Israel's right to exist, but not for the reason you infer. I can think of no other state where this needs to be even mentioned, let alone constantly intoned as the root cause of a conflict.

That is the rub with the "Palestinian" cause. At its core it not a genuine national movement, or if it is, it is something new and quite threatening.. Its central drive is not for a state but for the destruction and supercession of a state.

There can be no even handedness between Israel and "Palestine" because "Palestine" is not a state like Israel or any other state.

"Palestine' is an antistate. The first in history. .

And that of course is the end of the conversation.

cross posted Geoffff's Joint

Petition to Defund UNRWA

Michael L.

I received a note from Mets102, of Daily Kos and Progressive Zionist fame, and I promised him that I would do what I can do to alert people to this petition.

Petition to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA):

Terrorist missiles have been found in three separate UNRWA schools in Gaza in three separate instances. It is clear that UNRWA is either unable or uninterested in preventing terrorists from using its schools as rocket warehouses. These rockets have subsequently been returned to the terrorists that are "Gaza authorities."

These missiles are used to terrorize the civilian population of our ally, Israel, where citizens have as little as 15 seconds to flee for shelter when one of those rockets is launched at Israel.

Through its inability and/or disinterest UNRWA is complicit in the use of its facilities as rocket warehouses. The United States is UNRWA's largest contributor. Our government should therefore cease our funding of UNRWA.

I would very much encourage anyone who cares about eventual peace between the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East to sign this petition.  UNRWA is not in the business of ameliorating and ending the ongoing Arab refugee problem, but of continuing it generation upon generation.

The purpose of UNRWA, ultimately, is to maintain the local Arab fighting population who are used against the Jews in that part of the world by the greater Arab and Muslim powers that dominate the United Nations.

To fund UNRWA is to fund the long Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East.

Of course, it should be defunded.