Republicans Win Midterms

Michael L.

Writing in the Washington Post, Dan Balz tells us:

Campaign 2014 surpassed its advance billing, as an electorate that was deeply unhappy with all its leaders handed the biggest rebuke to President Obama and the Democrats by giving Republicans control of the Senate. For Democrats, election night turned out far worse than any of them had feared.

At every turn in almost every state, the Republicans proved superior. They won nearly every competitive contest in states held by Democrats and held on to the states that had looked like they might go to the Democrats. Instead of slipping into the majority, the GOP stormed to power in the Senate.

I have no particular love for the Republican Party, but the Democrats, in my not so humble opinion, deserve a good ass-kicking if for no other reason then they provide milk and cookies to political anti-Zionists.

"Palestinian-Jews"

Michael L.

The terminology within which we describe politics usually pre-determines our political conclusions.

There is nothing the least bit controversial about this bland, but much under-appreciated, truth.

In fact, since 1973 the very heart of the Arab-Israel conflict has been discursive.  Once the Arab majority realized that they could not stomp out the Jewish remnant in the Middle East through violence they simply - with a little friendly guidance from the Soviet Union - turned increasingly to propaganda.

The '73 Yom Kippur War represents a turning point in how the Arab world approached the conflict.

Israel almost lost that war and Moshe Dayan feared the destruction of the "Third Temple."  The Jewish state may have kicked ass in 1967, but Jewish autonomy and self-defense almost died in the autumn of 1973.  It was none other than anti-Semitic United States president Richard Nixon who rode to the rescue with an emergency influx of military assistance, known as Operation Nickel Grass - for no good reason, whatsoever - which allowed Israeli tank battalions to surround the Egyptian Third Army and ultimately win that war.

Since Arab military violence consistently failed against Israel, after the Yom Kippur War the Arabs turned to propaganda means, via the United Nations and through diplomacy and university fundings, and so forth, to isolate the Jews of the Middle East and criminalize our presence on our own land.  The emphasis turned to the delegitimization of Israel through its defamation as a racist, colonial, imperialist, militarist, apartheid, racist state before the world community -  thus the infamous and overturned UN "Zionism is racism" resolution of 1975.

This tactic, as part of the larger strategy, to the extent that there is a strategy, is working brilliantly.  

Propaganda, quite obviously, functions through language and images.  The words that we use to describe a political situation make all the difference in the world.  Many people who care about politics are more than willing to distort the conversation for the purpose of advancing their political agenda.  

Those of us who write about politics of any sort are susceptible to this, including myself.

{Shocking, I know.}

But this gives us all the more reason to question the dominant language that we use to discuss the conflict.  This is why I challenge terms like "Occupation" particularly when it shows up with the Big O to suggest that it is the Big Daddy of all other occupations around the world.

Words like "settler" or "settlement" have taken on implications of illegitimacy because people like Barack Obama, not to mention Alan Dershowitz, have made it so.

And the word "Zionist"?  Fuggedaboutit.  In the ears of many, many well-meaning liberal-left white people it sounds like "the enemy of all that is good, decent, and true" because over the decades the hatred and contempt have done their work.

So, let us examine the word "Palestinian" for a moment.

It clearly refers to the ancient Philistines and the very word "Philistine" is derived from various words in various languages including the Hebrew, Plištim, which means "invader" in the English.

The Philistines, of course, were an Aegean sea-faring people who sought to establish a foothold in Israel, around Gaza, during the biblical period, long before the Arabs showed up and proved to be such a remarkable pain in the neck.

After Roman Emperor Hadrian put down the Jewish uprising under Bar Kochba he renamed the land of Judea "Syria-Palestina," in 132 CE, in order to erase thousands of years of Jewish history from Jewish land and rename that land after the decimated Aegean invaders as a kick in the head to the indigenous Jews.

"Palestine," in recent centuries, is thus the terminology that much of the west used as a reference for the region, when they did not call it the Holy Land.  But whether they called it Palestine or whether they called it the Holy Land it always referred to the historical homeland of the Jewish people, the People of the Book.

Through until 1948, when the Jewish State reclaimed the name Israel which refers both to the people and to the country, "Palestinian" almost always meant the Jews of the region.  "Palestinian" was never considered a distinct ethnicity, but simply the people of a region in the way that, say, the Amazon is a region in South America, but there is no separate and distinct "Amazonian" ethnicity in just the way that there is no such thing as a distinct "Californian" ethnicity.

No one who lives in California can preclude others who live in California from being considered Californians.  Jewish Californians and Rastafarian Californians and Episcopalian Californians and Rosicrucian Californians are all Californians whether other Californians like it or not.

In much the same way anyone who resides in what was once called the "Mandate of Palestine" is a "Palestinian" if we insist upon using outmoded expressions.  Thus there are Muslim-Palestinians and Arab-Palestinians and Jewish-Palestinians and White-Anglo-Christian-Palestinians and so on and so forth.

The so-called "Palestinians" only came into being as an allegedly distinct ethnicity as a hostile response - largely for religious reasons - to the rise of Jewish autonomy and self-defense after the Holocaust toward the middle-end of the twentieth century.  Prior to that time the majority of local Arabs considered themselves Muslims and Arabs and belonging to this or that tribe and family.

What they did not consider themselves was "Palestinian."  In fact, they often avoided that word with contempt because they associated it with the Jewish people.

If, however, the local Arabs are "Palestinian" so is everyone else who lives in the region.

Anything else is a bigoted or "racist" or exclusivist, and thus unjust and illiberal.

{Political Correctness, after all, can go two ways.}

School Calls For Calm As Nerds Provoke Bullies

I do not know if you guys are familiar with Preoccupied Territory, but you should be.

Whoever runs that joint is doing some very good satire, including this most recent piece concerning tensions at the Temple Mount.

School Calls For Calm As Nerds Provoke Bullies By Entering Library

Cherry Hill, New Jersey, November 3 – Nerds and bullies clashed today at a local school when geek extremists visited the third-most-important bully hangout site without permission.

The clashes began when a Poindexter study group entered the school library with pencils and notebooks. According to agreements already in place, nerds are allowed to visit the library but not use it to study.

I love it.

What's disconcerting is not so much that Mahmoud Abbas and his people think that the mere presence of Jews on Judaism's holiest site represents an invasion of unclean, satanic forces, but that virtually no one in the west - aside from Jews - even bother to take this kind of absolutely over-the-top Arab anti-Jewish racism into account when considering the conflict.

Abbas (like Arafat before him and the Mufti before him) loves to accuse Jews of "invading" the Temple Mount.  So-called "Palestinian nationalists" love to accuse Jews of digging underneath it in order to erode its fundamental structural support.  And, yet, the west absolutely refuses to even acknowledge these never-ending expressions of outright racism, which often takes the form of genocidal racism, from the Arab majority population.

The hypocrisy is so astounding that it becomes impossible to take most left-leaning westerners seriously on this subject... and therefore any subject.

The Democratic Party and the western progressive-left hold the Jews of Israel responsible for Arab-Muslim malice towards us.

It is better to acknowledge painful, but obvious truths, than it is to remain enamored of comforting illusions.

The Children's Intifada

Michael L.

{Originally published at the Elder of Ziyon and cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The Elder has a recent piece entitled, Aw, what a cute little stone thrower, which highlights the work of Reuters' photographer Abed Omar Qusini.

These examples of Qusini's work project the image of a cute, sympathetic and innocent Palestinian-Arab "David" slinging rocks with his little slingshot at... something... with the world blowing up behind him.  What that "something" might be is open to question.  It could be an image of Leon Klinghoffer with a bullseye on the back of his head or it could be a squadron of Kosher Klingon Storm-Troopers preparing to destroy an indigenous village filled with bunny-rabbits strictly for the fun of it... but whatever the child is flinging hatred at, it is Jewish.

Of that much, you can be certain.

This kind of material has at least two effects.  It inspires young Arabs to hate Jews and it inspires young western progressives to sympathize with young Arabs who hate Jews.

The eternal enemy of Jews - in the eyes of Palestinian-Arab anti-Semitic anti-Zionists such as Mr. Qusini - always seems to be innocent children.  This is what Europeans often told one another during the Middle Ages and this is what even allegedly sophisticated westerners sometimes tell one another today.

Jewish Militarist Fascistic Monsters with American-Made Heavy Weaponry versus innocent, thumb-sucking indigenous children with sling-shots.

This is what Abed Omar Qusini peddles to Reuters and what Reuters peddles to consumers of news throughout the world.  If you were an average news consumer - you're not, are you? - you might come to think that the Israeli Occupying Power is murdering perfectly innocent native children who are standing up for their family, friends, and village.

The artist is giving you an emotional choice.  You can relate to Jewish Zombie Nazi Murderers or to little, doe-eyed "Palestinian" Davids with slingshots.

You get to choose whether you want to be a good person or a bad person.

If you are a good person you side with the child against the Machine.  If you are a bad person - such as myself, apparently - you side with the Machine against the child.

It is for this reason that, after decades of this kind of stuff, we see pieces in "liberal" venues with titles like Israeli Army Shoot Dead Another Child, This Time A 14 Year-Old US Citizen, with the clear and obvious implication that Jewish Israelis shoot Palestinian-Arab children like they are ducks in an arcade and that this needs to anger Americans against those heinous and cruel Jews, with significant consequences.

It is also for this reason that Hamas and Fatah have launched the Children's Intifada.

Essentially what we are witnessing is the manufacture of hatred, via the blood-libel, just as we see every generation.  Every generation they tell us just why we need a good beating before they go forth to deliver.  In previous generations we allegedly killed Jesus and "the prophets."  We were also apparently greedy and thus invented capitalism, which got us into trouble with a bunch of people who used the fact of capitalism as a reason for murderous rage toward us.  We also invented socialism, apparently, and were therefore responsible for whatever miseries, great and small, that came from that particular economic system.  We were also, of course, condemned for being a rat-like inferior race that feeds off of the blood of the children of the clean, dominant Aryan majority in northern Europe.

What fascinates me is that most western-progressives would agree that previous persecutions of the Jewish minority were unjust... but this time, or so they seem to think, we honestly do have it coming.

It just so happens that while previous generations of Jews were largely innocent and did not deserve the pogroms and expulsions and defenestrations and the throwing of Jews down of wells, but - Ta Da! - this generation we honestly do deserve it for being mean to our former Arab and Muslim masters.

If you follow the link at the top of the piece you will see that it goes to Qusini's Facebook page.

Reuters pays this man.

I wonder what they pay him to do?

Well, Qusini could hardly be more open about what he does because he has it splashed directly on the top of the page:

The man, whatever else he might be, is a "Pallywood" photographer who is so utterly comfortable in his role that he even indicates it on his Facebook page and, yet, is still employed by Reuters.  After all, if you click through to that page - the page through which he promotes his work - the image above is front and center.  The clear and obvious indication is that the photographer is filming a staged rock-throwing incident by a young, righteous Palestinian-Arab child against the vicious Jews who make his mother sad... because they are mean to her.

Here is a little more of his stuff.  It might even be the same kid from the clearly staged shot directly above.  Notice also the photographer in the background snapping photos of the cute, little murderous waif.

{I have to say, there is just nothing in this world like Palestinian-Arab Murderous Cute.  It is an entirely other genre of cute that the makers of Hello Kitty would never have conceived of.  It would be as if during World War II the Japanese turned Hello Kitty into an adorable Kamikaze Kitty.}

And we are supposed to believe that this was a spontaneous act of brave and righteous push-back against an occupying power by an "indigenous" youth?

Is not violence against Jews fun?  It's good to get them into practice at an early age, that way when they are full grown anti-Semites they'll just be so much better at it and, thus, make even greater incitement, greater violence, and greater profits for whatever replaces Hamas in the next generation.

When I was a child we played baseball and sometimes we even played "war" wherein the neighborhood boys would chase one another around with long sticks yelling "BANG!  BANG!"

Of course, we never singled out minorities for pelting with rocks... otherwise I would have been pelted, as would have my old friend Wesley Chang.  It's just not the way that we were raised in good old New England, neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim, nor anybody else.  And, needless to say, if the Palestinian-Arabs want the "occupation" to end the only real thing that they need to do is tell their children that hatred toward Jews is wrong and tell Israel that what they mainly want is trade because what they desire is peace and prosperity for their children and grandchildren.

And voila, I promise you, conflict over.

That is all it would require for a two-state solution to honestly emerge or even an amicable single-state solution.

Sadly that is not what they want and, in truth, it is not up to us.  It is up to them.  What they want is Jews off of Jewish land because they think it violates the Koran and because they think that they have been historically wronged.  They honestly believe that they have been robbed of their heritage and their land because the Palestinian Authority and the PLO and Hamas and the Soviet Union and various Swedes told them this - decade upon decade - and now we have western "liberals" believing it and the facts of history be damned.

What they want therefore is to make life so uncomfortable for the Jewish minority in the Middle East that they simply give up on our ancestral home and once again we all live or die according to the whims of non-Jewish majority populations... who have shown themselves to be just so accommodating throughout the centuries.

Kerry and Obama and the EU and the UN can harass the Jews in the Middle East day and night and it will not make a wit of difference.  The reason for this is because the problem here is not the Jewish presence or behavior on Jewish land.  The real problem is highly racist Arab political and religious cultures that too often, for centuries, taught their children to despise Jews and a western media that helps them to spread those messages of hatred for ideological reasons.

It is this that Mr. Qusini does for a living, at least in part, on Reuters' dime.


It becomes difficult, therefore, to consider prominent left notions of "social justice" seriously when so many of the left insist on harping on Israel while almost entirely ignoring the 5.5 million dead in the Congo or the ongoing atrocities in Darfur, not to mention the howling-at-the-moon head-choppers of the Islamic State rampaging throughout Syria and Iraq.

Muslims are killing Muslims throughout the world like its a video game.  Call it Muhammad's Revenge, or something along those lines, and then X-BOX or Playstation can come out with a cool new title for their current platforms.

The contemporary Arab and Muslim war against the Jews, from the middle of the twentieth-century until now, has resulted in around 50,000 dead.  Heck, current Muslim-on-Muslim violence in western Asia and Africa can probably reach that number by a quarter past next Tuesday.  When it comes to war and violence the Jews are absolutely pikers compared to their more excitable neighbors.

Also that whole head-chopping thing never became much of a fad for us.

My friends and I considered giving it a whirl when we were kids, but then along came spring-time and baseball, so we went outside and threw the ball around instead.

Kerry Calls for Re-Opening Temple Mount for Muslim Worship Only

Michael L.

Writing in Arutz Sheva Ben Ariel quotes Kerry directly:

“The Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount must be re-opened to Muslim worshipers and I support the long-standing practices regarding non-Muslim visitors to the site, consistent with respect for the status quo arrangements governing religious observance there,” said Kerry.

Who the hell is the US Secretary of State to demand of Israel that it must open its holiest site to Muslims, but not to Jews?  What kind of obviously bigoted thinking could be behind this?

Kerry’s comments came after Israel temporarily closed the Temple Mount for Jews and Muslims, following the assassination attempt on Glick the night before. His call essentially repeats comments made earlier Thursday by Psaki in a press briefing.

Psaki criticized Israel for closing the compound and urged the Jewish state to reopen the Al-Aqsa Mosque to Muslims, in a show of concern for prayer rights that may seem ironic to many given the lack of criticism on the Jordanian Waqf's (Islamic trust) ban on Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount - the holiest site in Judaism.

This administration is absolutely no friend or ally to the Jewish people.

For Psaki to criticize Israel for closing the Temple Mount - despite the attempted murder of Yehuda Glick by an Arab terrorist racist who put the man into a coma - and then to suggest that Muslims, and only Muslims, be allowed to pray there is highly discriminatory against Jews and all non-Muslims.

It is almost as if this administration believes that Arabs have every right to try to murder Jews and if we Jews do anything whatsoever in our own self-defense, we get condemned for that self-defense which almost inevitably get painted as aggression.

In my opinion, it is long past time that Israel took over full sovereignty of the Temple Mount and liberalized access policy, just as Yehuda Glick wanted and for which he was almost murdered.  Anyone should be allowed on top of the Mount for peaceful purposes, including prayer.

And however critical I might be of the current US administration's unfortunate biases concerning Israel and Jews, it is the Israeli government, itself, which is discriminating against all non-Muslims in its access policy to the Mount.

Have the centuries of diaspora and abuse made us so cringing as a people that we cannot even bring ourselves to protect our rights of access to our own holy places within the Jewish State?  You know, they say that the Temple Mount is the third holiest site in Islam.  Well, whatever that means, exactly, the fact remains that it is the Number One holy site for Jews the world over and it just happens to be in Israel.

Thus Israel can, and should, end the current policy which is discriminatory against all non-Muslims.

From the comments:

George Weiss ·  Top Commenter · Columbia University

But Mr. kerry, the status quo is discriminatory against Jews and Christians. How can you suggest that it be continued? Where are your American values?

Indeed.