A come-to-Moses moment at hand, by Wesley Pruden

The State Department, which has never been particularly friendly to Jews, is getting a little cover for its unrelenting deference to the enemies of Israel. The Jews eager to cover for the diplomats are the weak, the naive and, alas, the familiar.

They’re the liberal, mostly Democratic, Jews offended by the “aggressive” Israelis who understand what’s at stake in the Middle East. They’re embarrassed by and resentful of the “righteous Gentiles” eager to help Israel prevent a second Holocaust, this one in the Middle East, rather than to contribute to building another Holocaust museum later. Israel once united the contentious factions of American Jews, but now the mere existence of Israel exacerbates tension between the realists and the deaf, blind dreamers.

Nevertheless, a “come-to-Moses” moment is approaching. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, fresh from his kiss-and-make up session with the terrorists of Hamas, is coming to New York City in September to press the United Nations to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in Washington next week to address a joint session of Congress and to meet President Barack Obama. Maybe they’ll talk about that. The occasion will give Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu, in diplo-speak, “an opportunity for the United States and Israel to review the full range of issues, from Iran to the regional change to the peace process.”

If the past is the usual reliable guide, the White House and the State Department will actually see this as an opportunity to pressure Israel to submit to further accommodation to those who want to “wipe Israel off the map,” in the vow of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran and the chief enabler of Hamas. Mr. Obama himself is all aquiver working on his speech, probably to be delivered next week, eager to speak softly and carry small convictions made of strawberry Jell-O. The Wall Street Journal reports that he will urge Muslims to “reject Islamic militancy in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and embrace a new era of relations with the United States.” Ah, if only.

But it’s not just the Jews who get the back of his hand. There hasn’t been a peep out of the White House since a dozen Egyptian Christians were killed and scores injured by violent Muslims last weekend. Christian homes and businesses were trashed and burned. The pope condemned it; Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned it. Nothing from the president, though there’s White House precedent for condemning burning churches. (Bill Clinton once condemned the burning of black churches in Arkansas even when nobody had burned any churches in Arkansas.)

Some American Jews who are fed up with the passivity, or worse, of well-established advocacy groups are splitting to establish new organizations with an appetite for the red meat that is the diet of everyone else in the Middle East. One particular target is the confederation of local Jewish Federations that, no doubt well-meaning, offer aid and comfort to those who mean Israel nothing but ill. In New York City, writes Jonathan Rosenblum, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and the Hebrew daily Maariv, a Jewish Federation affiliate on the Upper West Side supports organizations promoting boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel. In Washington, the Federation funds an anti-Jewish theater troupe called Theater J, whose recent offerings include a play about Israelis as modern Nazis. A Southern California chapter contributes money to send students to Israel to be treated to scolding lectures by Hamas speakers.

This Jewish cover for anti-Israel initiatives is no doubt welcomed by Arabists in Foggy Bottom, where skepticism of Jews is part of the established old order. In his biography of Harry S Truman, David McCullough tells of the fierce and bitter State Department resistance to recognizing the state of Israel at its founding in 1948. “The striped-pants conspirators,” Mr. Truman called the men just below George C. Marshall, the secretary who the president regarded as something of a saint. “Some White House men . . . believe that a number of positions taken by career men on this matter were based on anti-Semitism, not diplomacy,” wrote one prominent pundit. Men at the State Department accused the president’s men of being more concerned about Israel than American security.

Six decades later, some things have changed, but not all. One thing that has changed is that there’s no one remotely like Harry S Truman, a president fully at ease with the true character of the country he leads, in charge at the White House.

Palestinian Brutally Murders Family in Israel

A family of five, mother father and three children were brutally murdered in Israel. This act of savagery was greeted with celebration in Gaza, where Palestinians distributed candy in celebration. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the murders with the usual qualifiers noting that he condemns the attacks “just as I have denounced crimes against Palestinians.”

The mainstream media, busy with the Japanese earthquake has barely mentioned this event, and no emergency meeting of the UN Security Council has taken place. The reports keep hammering the fact that the victims were settlers in the West Bank, as if this somehow mitigates the crime. A reminder to all of them; these type of brutality has taken place in settlements and in Israel proper for decades.

Click here to read Reuters report

Israel’s Conflict as Game Theory

Israel's Conflict as Game Theory
By By Prof. Yisrael Aumann, Nobel Prize Laureate (Aumann received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2005 for his work on conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.)

Two men—let us call them Rick and Steve— are put in a small room containing a suitcase filled with bills totaling $100,000. The owner of the suitcase announces the following:

“I will give you the money in the suitcase under one condition…you have to negotiate an agreement on how to divide it. That is the only way I will agree to give you the money.”

Rick is a rational person and realizes the golden opportunity that has fallen his way. He turns to Steve with the obvious suggestion: “You take half and I’ll take half, that way each of us will have $50,000.”

To his surprise, Steve frowns at him and says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt: “Look here, I don’t know what your plans are for the money, but I don’t intend to leave this room with less than $90,000. If you accept that, fine. If not, we can both go home without any of the money.”

Rick can hardly believe his ears. “What has happened to Steve” he asks himself. “Why should he get 90% of the money and I just 10%?” He decides to try to convince Steve to accept his view. “Let’s be logical,” he urges him, “We are in the same situation, we both want the money. Let’s divide the money equally and both of us will profit.”

Steve, however, doesn’t seem perturbed by his friend’s logic. He listens attentively, but when Rick is finished he says, even more emphatically than before: “90-10 or nothing. That is my last offer.”
Rick’s face turns red with anger. He is about to punch Steve in the nose, but he steps back. He realizes that Steve is not going to relent, and that the only way he can leave the room with any money is to give in to him. He straightens his clothes, takes $10,000 from the suitcase, shakes Steve’s hand and leaves the room humiliated.

This case is called ‘The Blackmailer’s Paradox” in game theory. The paradox is that Rick the rational is forced to behave irrationally by definition, in order to achieve maximum results in the face of the situation that has evolved. What brings about this bizarre outcome is the fact Steve is sure of himself and doesn’t flinch when making his exorbitant demand. This convinces Rick that he must give in so as to make the best of the situation.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

The relationship between Israel and the Arab countries is conducted along the lines of this paradox. At each stage of negotiation, the Arabs present impossible, unacceptable starting positions. They act sure of themselves and as if they totally believe in what they are asking for, and make it clear to Israel that there is no chance of their backing down.

Invariably, Israel agrees to their blackmailing demands because otherwise she will leave the room empty handed. The most blatant example of this is the negotiations with Syria that have been taking place with different levels of negotiators for years. The Syrians made sure that it was clear from the beginning that they would not compromise on one millimeter of the Golan Heights.

The Israeli side, eager to have a peace agreement with Syria, internalized the Syrian position so well, that the Israeli public is sure that the starting point for future negotiations with Syria has to include complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, this despite its critical strategic importance in ensuring secure borders for Israel.

The Losing Solution
According to game theory, Israel has to change certain basic perceptions in order to improve her chances in the negotiations game with the Arabs and win the long term political struggle:

a. Willingness to forego agreements

Israel’s political stand is based on the principle that agreements must be reached with the Arabs at any price, that the lack of agreements is untenable. In the Blackmailer’s Paradox, Rick’s behavior is the result of his feeling that he must leave the room with some money, no matter how little. Because Rick cannot imagine himself leaving the room with empty hands, he is easy prey for Steve, and ends up leaving with a certain amount of money, but in the role of the humiliated loser. This is similar to the way Israel handles negotiations, her mental state making her unable to reject suggestions that do not advance her interests.

b. Taking repetition into account

Game theory relates to onetime situations differently than to situations that repeat themselves. A situation that repeats itself over any length of time, creates, paradoxically, strategic parity that leads to cooperation between the opposing sides. This cooperation occurs when both sides realize that the game is going to repeat itself, and that since they must weigh the influence present moves will have on future games, there is a balancing factor at play.

Rick saw his problem as a onetime event, and behaved accordingly. Had he told Steve instead that he would not forego the amount he deserves even if he sustains a total loss, he would have changed the game results for an indefinite period. It is probably true that he would still have left the game empty handed, but at the next meeting with Steve, the latter would remember Rick’s original suggestion and would try to reach a compromise.

That is how Israel has to behave, looking at the long term in order to improve her position in future negotiations, even if it means continuing a state of war and fore going an agreement.

c. Faith in your opinions

Another element that crates the “Blackmailer’s Paradox” is the unwavering belief of one side in its opinion. Steve exemplifies that. This faith gives a contender inner confidence in his cause at the start and eventually convinces his rival as well. The result is that the opposing side wants to reach an agreement, even at the expense of irrational surrender that is considerably distanced from his opening position.

Several years ago, I spoke to a senior officer who claimed that Israel must withdraw from the Golan Heights in the framework of a peace treaty, because the Golan is holy land to the Syrians and they will never give it up. I explained to him that first the Syrians convinced themselves that the Golan is holy land to them, and then proceeded to convince you as well. The Syrians’ unflinching belief that they are in the right convinces us to give in to their dictates. The only solution to that is for us to believe unwaveringly in the righteousness of our cause. Only complete faith in our demands can succeed in convincing our Syrian opponent to take our opinion into account.

As in all of science, game theory does not take sides in moral and value judgments. It analyzes strategically the behavior of opposing sides in a game they play against one another. The State of Israel is in the midst of one such game opposite its enemies. As in every game, the Arab-Israeli game involves interests that create the framework of the game and its rules.

Sadly, Israel ignores the basic principles of game theory. If Israel would be wise enough to behave according to those principles, her political status and de facto, her security status, would improve substantially.

Copyright Yisrael Aumann

Time to Declare War on Israel

This article was written by A. Barton Hinkle and published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on September 10, 2010.

The latest issue of Time purports to explain "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace." (Hint: Blame the money-grubbing Jews!) There will be earnest efforts to point out why this is nonsense, but they will fall on deaf ears. These days a defense of Israel requires stronger measures. And perhaps nothing could do Israel more good than for the United States to declare war on it.

After all, if you want to win the support of American academics, journalists, and movie stars -- if you pine for the approbation of the U.N. Security Council and NGOs the world over -- then you should get on the wrong side of U.S. foreign policy.

This has been true at least since 1933, when The New York Times' chief Stalinist, Walter Duranty, called reports of famine in Russia "malignant propaganda." Throughout the Cold War, Americans were instructed that communism was "fundamentally a more uplifting idea than capitalism" (Andy Rooney). That "most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy" (Dan Rather). That Fidel Castro was a "dashing," "larger-than-life personality" who not only "delivered the most to those who had the least" but who turned his nation into "paradise," a "peaceable society that treasures its children" (Diane Sawyer, Peter Jennings, Rather again, CBS' Giselle Fernandez, and Newsweek).

When the Iron Curtain began to fall, Americans were told that "the transition from communism to capitalism is making more people more miserable every day" (CBS News). That "in the old Soviet Union, you never saw faces like these: the poor, the homeless . . . .[I]s this what democracy does? . . . [T]he price of freedom can be painfully high" (Barbara Walters). And so on, ad nauseam.

If you wanted agitprop about the evils of anti-communism, Hollywood was happy to oblige. If you wanted to learn about the horrors of the gulag or Soviet psychiatric prisons, Hollywood was happy to change the subject. And while you would be hard-pressed to find much regard for Ronald ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!") Reagan in academic circles, admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev was so high that it required the coining of a new word, Gorbasm.

We see the same thing shaping up today with regard to radical Islamic extremism. Thanks to the debate over the Park51 mosque in Manhattan, the news media suddenly are full of stories about America the Intolerant -- reporting on a "torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism," as The New York Times put it, not long before its front-page story, "American Muslims Ask: Will We Ever Belong?" "Protesters Use 'Sharia' as a Slur and Rallying Cry Against Islam," reports The Washington Post. "Is America Islamophobic?" asks a Time cover story.

Three decades after Jimmy Carter lectured Americans about their "inordinate fear of communism," his intellectual heirs are lecturing the public about their inordinate fear of radical Islam.

"Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s," an American Muslim tells The Times. Such as? Oh, maybe this: "There is indeed a belief . . . among most Jews that they are right. So it's not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is happening in the Middle East." Whoops! That wasn't from the 1930s -- it was from last week. The speaker was Karel De Gucht, the chief trade negotiator for the European Union. Never mind.

A single whackjob in Florida decides to burn the Quran, and everybody from the president to the pope to Gen. David Petraeus to Sarah Palin to the nearest blogger in Starbucks lines up to denounce the deed. And rightly so. Yet from all the furor you would scarcely know that for every bias crime against a Muslim in the U.S., there are 10 bias crimes against Jews. (E.g., in 2008 the FBI logged 7,783 hate crimes; 105 of them targeted Muslims, and 1,013 targeted Jews.)

Likewise in academia, one simply cannot be considered right-thinking if one does not deem Israel -- America's staunchest Mideast ally -- an imperialist, racist, illegitimate state that terrorizes innocent Palestinians. Hence, inter much alia, the move at Harvard to divest from Israeli companies. As for the thousands of Qassam rockets lobbed at Israeli civilians by Hamas "activists," or the fact that the Palestinian Authority's "moderate" Fatah government recently named a square in Ramallah after an infamous terrorist -- well, best not to speak of those things. Not if you want tenure, anyway.

So you can easily see what Israel would gain from a formal American declaration of war. Ideally, the declaration should come from a Republican Congress -- preferably introduced by a Tea Party insurgent, at the behest of Glenn Beck -- but that's icing on the cake. The main thing is to put the Jewish state in the same position vis-à-vis the United States as Fidel Castro or the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

Overnight, violent pro-Israel demonstrations would break out in San Francisco and New York. The press would term them "mostly peaceful." Counter-demonstrations would be described as angry mobs. Sean Penn and Michael Moore would collaborate on a movie glorifying the Israeli Defense Forces' raid of the "Freedom Flotilla's" Mavi Marmara. Campus centers of Middle Eastern studies would discover the virulent anti-Semitism of the official Arabic press, catalogued with depressing thoroughness at Memri.org. In English departments across the land, Zionist literary criticism would become the hot new thing. Posters of Che Guevara would come off college dorm walls, to be replaced by images of David Ben-Gurion.

Who knows? If the war dragged on for a few years, maybe Time might even come to its senses.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.--Robert Nozick.

If it's a victim it must be Palestinian

The AP reported that this was the picture of a Palestinian man in fear of the Israeli army. 
The picture was taken by Nasser Shiyoukhi, an Arab photographer working for AP.

Below we have the eventual correction.  As you can read in the caption, there was tiny mistake,  The person in fear is an Israeli.  For most news organizations, the initial reaction to seeing a victim in the Middle East, is to identify him as a Palestinian.

The Radicalism of Obama

Dr. Richard L. Rubinstein, author of "Jihad and Genocide", Harvard Phd, Yale fellow, "Distinguished Professor of the Year", and Harvard Phd, states that president Obama's intention is to "correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel." Dr. Rubenstein states that president Obama due to his family heritage is extremely pro Muslim - to the point of "wanting to see the destruction of Israel."

If Israel goes down, we all go down

Former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, has written an article for The Times of London in support of Israel. 

For those of you who have forgotten, Aznar lost the 2004 election when the cowardly Spanish elected Zapatero after the Madrid bombings.  Zapatero, as most members of the international left, has been a critic of Israel, while anti-Semitism is again becoming quite virulent in the land of Torquemada and the Inquisition.

Here is Aznar's article:

 If Israel goes down, we all go down

For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion. In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.

Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.

Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.

For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.

The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.

The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.

Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down. To defend Israel’s right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe. The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Motivated by the need to rebuild our own Western values, expressing deep concern about the wave of aggression against Israel, and mindful that Israel’s strength is our strength and Israel’s weakness is our weakness, I have decided to promote a new Friends of Israel initiative with the help of some prominent people, including David Trimble, Andrew Roberts, John Bolton, Alejandro Toledo (the former President of Peru), Marcello Pera (philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate), Fiamma Nirenstein (the Italian author and politician), the financier Robert Agostinelli and the Catholic intellectual George Weigel.

It is not our intention to defend any specific policy or any particular Israeli government. The sponsors of this initiative are certain to disagree at times with decisions taken by Jerusalem. We are democrats, and we believe in diversity.

What binds us, however, is our unyielding support for Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. For Western countries to side with those who question Israel’s legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel’s vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude.

Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.

The Lesson of a Jewish Cemetery

Mark Steyn has once again managed to distill in an article the essence of the problems Jews are facing, and the way the world at large is reacting to Israel and Jews.

Reading this column made me remember the axiom "Not all critics of Israel are anti Semites, but all anti Semites are critics of Israel.

The article was published in the Canadian magazine Maclean's.

The lesson of a Jewish cemetery, by Mark Steyn

Jewish cemetery in Cracow

Thanks to the wonders of globalization, I’m writing this in a fairly decrepit salon de thé off the rue de la Liberté in Tangiers, enjoying a coffee and a stale croissant grilled and flattened into a panini. What could be more authentically Moroccan? For some reason, the napkins are emblazoned with “Gracias por su visita.”

Through a blizzard of flies, I can just about make out the plasma TV up in the corner on which Jimmy Carter, dubbed into Arabic, is denouncing Israel. Al Jazeera doesn’t so much cover the Zionist Entity as feast on it, hour after hour, without end. So here, at the western frontier of the Muslim world (if you don’t include Yorkshire), the only news that matters is from a tiny strip of land barely wider at its narrowest point than a rural Canadian township way down the other end of the Mediterranean.

Notwithstanding saturation coverage of the “Massacre In The Med” (as the front page headline in Britain’s Daily Mirror put it), there are other Jewish stories in the news. This one caught my eye in Canada’s Shalom Life: “No danger to the Jewish cemeteries in Tangiers.” Apparently, the old Jewish hospital in this ancient port city was torn down a couple of months back, and the Moroccan Jewish diaspora back in Toronto worried that their graveyards might be next on the list. Not to worry, Abraham Azancot assured Shalom Life readers. The Jewish cemetery on the rue du Portugal is perfectly safe. “Its sanctity has consistently been respected by the local government that is actually providing the community with resources to assist in its current grooming.”

Sounds great. Being in the neighbourhood, I thought I’d swing by and check out the “current grooming.” It’s kind of hard to spot unless you’re consciously looking for it: two solid black metal gates off a steep, narrow street where the rue du Portugal crosses the rue Salah Dine, and only the smallest of signs to indicate what lies behind. On pushing open the gate and squeezing through, I was greeted by a pair of long underwear, flapping in the breeze. In Haiti, this would be some voodoo ritual, alerting one to go no further. But in Tangiers it was merely wash day, and laundry lines dangled over the nearest graves. If you happen to be Ysaac Benzaquen (died 1921) or Samuel Maman (died 1925), it is your lot to spend eternity with the groundskeeper’s long johns. Pace Mr. Azancot, there is no sense of “sanctity” or “community”: as the underwear advertises, this is no longer a public place, merely a backyard that happens to have a ton of gravestones in it. I use the term “groundskeeper” but keeping the grounds doesn’t seem to be a priority: another row of graves was propping up piles of logs he was busy chopping out of hefty tree trunks. Beyond that, chickens roamed amidst burial plots strewn with garbage bags, dozens of old shoes, and hundreds of broken bottles.

It’s prime real estate, with a magnificent view of the Mediterranean, if you don’t mind the trash and the stench and the chickenshit, and you tiptoe cautiously around the broken glass. I wandered past the graves: Jacob Cohen, Samuel J. Cohen, Samuel M. Cohen . . . Lot of Cohens here over the years. Not anymore. In one isolated corner, six young men—des musulmans, naturellement—watched a seventh lightly scrub a tombstone, as part of a make-work project “providing the community with resources to assist in its current grooming.”

What “community”? By 2005, there were fewer than 150 Jews in Tangiers, almost all of them very old. By 2015, it is estimated that there will be precisely none. Whenever I mention such statistics to people, the reaction is a shrug: why would Jews live in Morocco anyway? But in 1945 there were some 300,000 in this country. Today some 3,000 Jews remain—i.e., about one per cent of what was once a large and significant population. That would be an unusual demographic reconfiguration in most countries: imagine if Canada’s francophone population or Inuit population were today one per cent of what it was in 1945. But it’s not unusual for Jews. There are cemeteries like that on the rue du Portugal all over the world, places where once were Jews and now are none. I mentioned only last week that in the twenties, Baghdad was 40 per cent Jewish. But you could just as easily cite Czernowitz in the Bukovina, now part of Ukraine. “There is not a shop that has not a Jewish name painted above its windows,” wrote Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, visiting the city in 1937. Not today. As in Tangiers, the “community” resides in the cemetery.

You can sense the same process already under way in, say, London, the 13th-biggest Jewish city in the world, but one with an aging population; and in Malmö, Sweden, where a surge in anti-Semitism from, ahem, certain quarters has led Jewish residents to abandon the city for Stockholm and beyond; and in Odense, Denmark, where last year superintendent Olav Nielsen announced he would no longer admit Jewish children to the local school. The Jewish presence almost anywhere on the map is as precarious as, to coin a phrase, a fiddler on the roof. And Israel’s enemies are determined that the biggest Jewish community of all should be just as precarious and prove just as impermanent.

In 1936, during the Cable Street riots, the British Union of Fascists jeered at London Jews, “Go back to Palestine!”, “Palestine” being in those days the designation for the Jewish homeland. Last week, Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, jeered at today’s Jews, “Get the hell out of Palestine,” “Palestine” being now the designation for the land illegally occupied by the Jewish apartheid state. “Go home,” advised Miss Thomas, “to Poland and Germany.” Wherever a Jew is, whatever a Jew is, he should be something else somewhere else. And then he can be hated for that, too.

North Korea sinks a South Korean ship; hundreds of thousands of people die in the Sudan; millions die in the Congo. But 10 men die at the hands of Israeli commandos and it dominates the news day in, day out for weeks, with UN resolutions, international investigations, calls for boycotts, and every Western prime minister and foreign minister expected to rise in parliament and express the outrage of the international community.
Odd. But why?

Because Israel is supposed to be up for grabs in a way that the Congo, Sudan or even North Korea aren’t. Only the Jewish state attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence, and insisting that, after 62 years of independence, that issue is still not resolved. Let’s take a nation that came into existence at precisely the same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of postwar British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift, and in Canada a “human rights” complaint or three.

The “Palestinian question” is a land dispute, but not in the sense of a boundary-line argument between two Ontario farmers. Rather, it represents the coming together of two psychoses. Islam is a one-way street. Once you’re in the Dar al-Islam, that’s it; there’s no checkout desk. They take land, they hold it, forever.

That’s why, in his first post-9/11 message to the troops, Osama droned on about the fall of Andalusia: it’s been half a millennium, but he still hasn’t gotten over it, and so, a couple of years ago, when I was at the Pentagon being shown some of the maps found in al-Qaeda safe houses, “the new caliphate” had Spain and India being re-incorporated within the Muslim world. If that’s how you think, no wonder a tiny little sliver of a Jewish state smack dab in the heart of the Dar al-Islam drives you nuts: to accept Israel’s “right to exist” would be as unthinkable as accepting a re-Christianized Constantinople.

To this fierce Islamic imperialism, the new Europeans, post-Christian, post-nationalist and postmodern as they are, nevertheless bring one of their oldest prejudices—that in the modern world as much as in medieval Christendom Jews can never be accorded full property rights. On a patch of the Holy Land, they are certainly the current leaseholders, but they will never have recognized legal title. To be sure, there are a lot of them there right now. But then there were a lot of them in Tangiers and Baghdad and the Bukovina and Germany and Poland, for a while. Why shouldn’t Tel Aviv one day be just another city with some crumbling cemeteries and a few elderly Jews?

That’s the reason the “Palestinian question” is never settled. Because, as long as it’s unresolved, then Israel’s legitimacy is unsettled, too.

Still, the impatience of the new globalized Judenhass is now palpable. I used to think that, when Iran got the bomb, it wouldn’t use it. I wouldn’t take that bet now. The new anti-Semitism is a Euro-Islamic fusion so universal, so irrational and so fevered that it’s foolish to assume any limits.

Israel: Pioneering Technological Development

This is an interesting video that explains Israel's contributions to the world of science and technology. I wonder if boycotters of Israel have given up the many tools developed in Israel with which they communicate and propagate their hateful messages. 

Elvis Costello and Carlos Santana: Cowards!

Elvis Costello and Carlos Santana have decided to boycott Israel over their treatment of Palestinians and settlement policies.  What a hero! 

But why did they sign contracts to perform in Israel to begin with?  Were they not aware of the Middle East conflict prior to signing the contract?

I have the suspicion that they signed because they couldn't care less about settlements, Palestinians or Gaza.  Once the announcement of their trips took place, they must have gotten the usual threats from the members of the peace loving religion and their ignorant counterparts in the West.  Being as courageous as cheap cameras, they folded as one.

Something to Read This Weekend

Professor Victor David Hanson on U.S.-Israel relations.  Is Obama enagering the Jewish State by pandering to the Muslim world?

Read Article

If you love baseball, or for that matter, any sport, and if your team is a consisten loser, reat this article by Dr. Charles Krauthammer. 

Read Article

Are you feeling guilty because you were opposed to the government bailout of GM, and now you you read that GM has repaid billions? Well, take it easy. You were right.

What you weren’t told was that GM was able to repay the money by drawing down on a line of credit that it had from TARP! In other words, GM took funds still available to it through TARP and used those funds to repay the loan it received from the government. Of course, it now owes $4.7 billion on its line of credit with TARP, but, that doesn’t make for good news, so it wasn’t reported.

**********

So what were the employees at the SEC doing while the economy imploded or exploded?  Well, surfing the Internet.  Read more about it.

Read Article about the SEC or perhaps the SEX

Jury Duty

I have jury duty. I will return to blogging in a few days. Please stay tuned. In the meantime here is an interesting commentary on Hillary

Hillary Tries to Spin the Jews — Again
Jennifer Rubin

Hillary Clinton gave a speech last night at the Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. Although at the time of this writing a full transcript was not available, it seems to be one part backpedal and one part recycled AIPAC talking points. As to the first, she insisted, “We know that we cannot force a solution. The parties themselves must resolve their differences.” This seemed to suggest that no “imposed” peace deal is in the offing — at least for now. But who knows with this crowd? Hillary Clinton’s definition of “forcing” a solution may be different from Bibi’s.

As to the second, she repeated the pablum first heard at AIPAC last month that the current situation is not sustainable. (”Israelis and Palestinians alike must confront the reality that the status quo has not produced long-term security or served their interests, and accept their share of responsibility for reaching a comprehensive peace that will benefit both sides.”) She says these things, I suppose, so we will conclude that the “only” sustainable option is a peace deal, and therefore a peace deal is the way to go. Yes, it does appear that simplistic. And, yes, it does seem to ignore the underlying reality: there is no peace deal in sight and there won’t be for quite a while. Although the status quo, with some significant improvements in the lives of West Bank inhabitants, is not ideal, it’s the only realistic option in the short term — and given the Palestinians’ predilection for victimology and rejectionism, which has been mightily encouraged by the Obami, it might be what we are going to see for a very long time.

Hillary Clinton at AIPAC last month was clearly in a defensive mode, trying to burnish her own credentials as a friend of Israel. At that time, the American Jewish community was nervous but persuadable. So she tried to assuage them with a jaw-droppingly disingenuous recitation of Obama policy and assurance that the relationship was “rock solid.” We are way beyond that now, and virtually none of the 7,000-plus people in that convention hall would today buy her spin. One wonders how she feels being the errand girl for a president who has thrown overboard the intimate U.S.-Israel relationship and seemingly done the impossible — rile up American Jewry against a liberal president. Does she worry her legacy will bear the scars of Obama’s Israel animus? Does she care? Or like Scarlett, she’ll worry about it another day? After all, the potential Obama legacy — a nuclear-armed Iran and serious damage to the U.S.-Israel relationship — will be hers as well.

Worth Reading!

Norman Podhoretz has written in the Wall Street Journal an excellent defense of Sarah Palin. The article compares attacks on Palin with attacks on Ronald Reagan. The accusations of her lack of expertise in foreign affairs is looked upon while comparing her to Biden, who despite being an expert in the field has been wrong on his conclusions on major issues for most of his career in the Senate. The comparisons and contrasts are terrific and illustrate the irrational hatred of Sarah Palin’s opponents.

Read Article in The Wall Street Journal.

The following article by Ronen Berman, correspondent for Yediot Aharonot, offers three scenarion for the outbreak of hostilities in the Midddle East:

How the Next Middle East War Could Start
By Ronen Bergman

The three most plausible scenarios all involve Iran.


This May, Israel will celebrate its 62nd Independence Day. And barring the unexpected, the country will have good reason to celebrate. This will have been the safest year in a decade and a half for Israeli civilians—the year with the fewest fatalities in acts of war or terror.

Ironically, Israel’s most bitter foes are responsible for this achievement. The leadership of both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza have imposed a temporary policy of nonconfrontation on their respective followers, as well as on other armed groups operating within the territories they control. They are now part of the administration and don’t want to be blamed for igniting another war in the region. As a result, the once almost daily rocket attacks on civilian targets in the north and south of Israel have been reduced to a trickle.

This is as good as it gets in this part of the world. But the truth is that the Middle East remains as ever on the brink of war. One careless move by any party, and the now dormant volcano could erupt once again.

Israel is certainly aware of this volatility, and it is preparing for the worst. In late February the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a secret war game, code-named Firestone 12, which simulated a general conflict in the region. Under the scenario used in the exercise, Iran instructs its Hezbollah proxies to initiate military action against Israel in order to divert attention from the Iranian nuclear project. Israel responds with massive force against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which draws Syria and Hamas into the conflict.

The exercise was supposed to conclude with the mobilization of a large number of reserves. But because military and political tensions were running high, the army decided not to call up the additional units.

Until recently, the most plausible scenario for the outbreak of the next war would have begun with an Israeli aerial assault on Iranian nuclear installations. This would lead to a response by members of the group that the Israeli intelligence community refers to as the “radical front”: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But for now, this scenario is regarded as somewhat less likely, since it appears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go along with the U.S. demand that Israel allow time for sanctions to achieve their purpose.

Yet there are other scenarios that create a very real danger of war breaking out.

Scenario I: Hamas attacks in order to break the impasse. These are hard times for Hamas. It sustained a military defeat at the hands of Israel in late 2008 and is now engaged in a bitter confrontation with Egypt over a barrier Egypt is constructing to prevent smuggling from the Sinai Peninsula into Gaza. Various sources, including IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who briefed parliament on Tuesday, have suggested that Hamas may try to break the impasse by instigating a military operation to upset the balance of forces in the region. In addition, the organization’s desire to avenge the assassination of senior commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last January in Dubai has only increased its motivation to act.

Scenario II: Hezbollah avenges Imad Mughniyeh’s assassination. Hezbollah believes that the Mossad was behind the assassination of the organization’s military commander two years ago. Mughniyeh was the most wanted terrorist on the FBI’s list before Sept. 11, 2001, and he was in charge of the suicide attacks on the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1982/1983. Mossad and the CIA tried to catch or kill him numerous times in the past.

In order to avenge Mughniyeh’s death, Hezbollah attempted to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, attack Israeli tourists in the Sinai, and abduct Israeli businessmen in Africa. Yet these failures have not blunted its resolve. Any successful act of revenge—especially if it is a spectacular operation such as killing a large number of Israelis or Jews outside Israel, or assassinating a prominent figure inside Israel—would lead to considerable public pressure on the Israeli government to take action against Hezbollah inside Lebanon.

***

Scenario III: Syria supplies Hezbollah with “equilibrium-breaking” weapons. Today Syria is Hezbollah’s chief supplier of arms. Many Iranian-developed weapons are manufactured in Syria and transported to Lebanon where they are delivered to the Shiite organization. Syria possesses a number of weapons systems, mainly various types of long-range missiles and anti-aircraft and antinaval missiles, that Israel regards as “equilibrium-breaking” (i.e., systems that in the hands of Hezbollah would threaten Israel’s ability to operate with impunity in Lebanon’s airspace and along its coastline).

The Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Mustafa, was recently summoned to the State Department, where he was informed that the U.S. expects Syria to cease arming Hezbollah because of the very real risk of war. This meeting took place after Israel came close to attacking a Syrian arms convoy, deciding not to at the last moment.

This final scenario is perhaps the most dangerous. Syrian President Bashar Assad has taken significant risks in the past, most recently when he embarked on the joint Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear project knowing full well that Israel would not be able to allow it to reach completion. If Mr. Netanyahu shows less restraint than he has so far and orders an attack on a Syrian military convoy, the high number of Syrian casualties that would likely ensue could force Mr. Assad’s hand.

What these three scenarios all have in common is the centrality of Iran: It is arming Hamas, it effectively controls Hezbollah, and it is doing its best to involve Syria in open confrontation with Israel. To date, these attempts have been unsuccessful. But only the U.S. has the ability to take decisive steps to prevent a general conflagration in the region.

Mr. Bergman, senior military and intelligence analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily, is the author of “The Secret War With Iran” (Free Press, 2008).

Bibi had to make this statement. Did he really mean it?

In the news...

Israel's air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and could fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range.

Read article

Federal agents have arrested three South Florida businessmen accused of exporting video games and other electronic products to a shopping mall in Paraguay that allegedly served as a front to finance the terrorist group Hezbollah, according to federal authorities.

Read article

Two former high-level Bush administration officials who provided legal justification for harsh interrogations of overseas terror suspects are likely to escape any formal punishment now that the Justice Department has concluded they should not be held legally responsible.

Read article

Middle Ages Redux

This is incredible.

A video is circulating in blogs and YouTube placed by a black man named T. West, head of AfriSynergy Productions.

In this video the antisemitic imbecile shows a CNN report about a field hospital in Haiti that was set up by the Israel Defense Forces and is saving lives. However, at the end of the report T. West warns viewers that Israelis have been known to harvest organs, and might be in Haiti for this purpose.

I would normally ignore such a post, where it not for the fact that they tend to metastasize and propagate through the Internet.

Memo to Israel: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

Click here to view video

Not vastly reported by the mainstream media

Al Aqsa TV, the mouthpiece of Hamas in Gaza and a tool for the indoctrination of children has new cartoon series. In this picture from the cartoon we see the stereotypical Jew with a machine gun, the Palestinian victims, and a new villain is added; the Palestinian Authority security service which is represented by the officer who does nothing while the children are murdered.

The West is sending millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians. Much of these funds are diverted to produce these type of propaganda.

Thank God for the Internet which prevents the mainstream media from hiding this type news. The only newspaper where I saw this reported was the New York Post.

The Tel Aviv Cluster, by David Brooks

David Brooks, whom I hate or admire, depending on his staements and columns, has written a great article about Israel. Rather than place the link, here is the column:

The Tel Aviv Cluster

By

David Brooks

Published: January 11, 2010

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

In his book, "The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement," Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.

Most Jews gave up or were forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages; their descendants have been living off of their wits ever since. They have often migrated, with a migrant's ambition and drive. They have congregated around global crossroads and have benefited from the creative tension endemic in such places.

No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement. The odd thing is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest. Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.

Milton Friedman used to joke that Israel disproved every Jewish stereotype. People used to think Jews were good cooks, good economic managers and bad soldiers; Israel proved them wrong.

But that has changed. Benjamin Netanyahu's economic reforms, the arrival of a million Russian immigrants and the stagnation of the peace process have produced a historic shift. The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation's public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.

Tel Aviv has become one of the world's foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.

As Dan Senor and Saul Singer write in "Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle," Israel now has a classic innovation cluster, a place where tech obsessives work in close proximity and feed off each other's ideas.

Because of the strength of the economy, Israel has weathered the global recession reasonably well. The government did not have to bail out its banks or set off an explosion in short-term spending. Instead, it used the crisis to solidify the economy's long-term future by investing in research and development and infrastructure, raising some consumption taxes, promising to cut other taxes in the medium to long term. Analysts at Barclays write that Israel is "the strongest recovery story" in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Israel's technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.

This shift in the Israeli identity has long-term implications. Netanyahu preaches the optimistic view: that Israel will become the Hong Kong of the Middle East, with economic benefits spilling over into the Arab world. And, in fact, there are strands of evidence to support that view in places like the West Bank and Jordan.

But it's more likely that Israel's economic leap forward will widen the gap between it and its neighbors. All the countries in the region talk about encouraging innovation. Some oil-rich states spend billions trying to build science centers. But places like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv are created by a confluence of cultural forces, not money. The surrounding nations do not have the tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity.

For example, between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652.

The tech boom also creates a new vulnerability. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has argued, these innovators are the most mobile people on earth. To destroy Israel's economy, Iran doesn't actually have to lob a nuclear weapon into the country. It just has to foment enough instability so the entrepreneurs decide they had better move to Palo Alto, where many of them already have contacts and homes. American Jews used to keep a foothold in Israel in case things got bad here. Now Israelis keep a foothold in the U.S.

During a decade of grim foreboding, Israel has become an astonishing success story, but also a highly mobile one.

Vintage Pilar Rahola: Jews of Six Arms

As I have done before, I am reprinting here a speech given by Pilar Rahola at the Conference in the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism. For those of you not familiar with Dr. Rahola, she is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament.

Pilar Rahola has published several books in Spanish and Catalan and is a columnist in La Vanguardia, Spain; La Nación, Argentina; and Diario de América, USA. Rahola appears frequently on television and has taken part in several university lectures. From 1987 to 1990, she was director of the Catalan publishing house Pòrtic, and as a journalist, she covered the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, the Balkan Wars, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a politician, Rahola was the only member of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in the Spanish Congress of Deputies in 5th and 6th Spanish legislatures. She also served as vice-mayor of Barcelona. Rahola also participated in several committees of investigation, especially those related to political corruption such as the comisión Roldán. In 1996, she left Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya to join Àngel Colom and Joan Laporta in a new political group, the "Partit per la Independència", but after this failed, she concentrated on journalism and writing. Her areas of interest include women's rights, international human rights, and animal rights. In recent years she has attracted controversy in Spain for her critical support of Israel and Zionism.

Jews of Six Arms, speech by Pilar Rahola

A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.

They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.

They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking against Israel is free. And so, cultured people when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts of outrageous things.

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that those of us, who do not demonize Israel have, is that there exists no debate on the conflict. All that exists is the banner; there’s no exchange of ideas. We throw slogans at each other; we don’t have serious information, we suffer from the “burger journalism” syndrome, full of prejudices, propaganda and simplification. Intellectual thinkers and international journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn't exist exist. That is why, when someone tries to go beyond the “single thought” of criticizing Israel, he becomes suspect and unfaithful, and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel, reduced to a simple mass of murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel.

For example, the Medieval Jew accused of killing Christian children to drink their blood connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which has created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the DNA of the Western anti-Semite, which produces an efficient cultural medium. But what beats in the conscious? Why does a renewed intolerance surge with such virulence, centered now, not against the Jewish people, but against the Jewish state? From my point of view, this has historical and geopolitical motives, among others, the decades long bloody Soviet role , the European Anti-Americanism, the West’s energy dependency and the growing Islamist phenomenon.

But it also emerges from a set of defeats which we suffer as free societies, leading to a strong ethical relativism.

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom wherever there was injustice. It was the depositary of the utopian hopes of society. It was the great builder of the future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking these utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out good and evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.

This historic treason to freedom is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like the Israeli singer Noa, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, the left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Israeli Defense Forces, but applauds Hamas’s terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis.

It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder. A year ago, at the AIPAC conference in Washington I asked the following questions:

Why don’t we see demonstrations in Europe against the Islamic dictatorships?

Why are there no demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of Muslim women?

Why are there no declarations against the use of bomb-carrying children in the conflicts in which Islam is involved?

Why is the left only obsessed with fighting against two of the most solid democracies of the planet, those which have suffered the bloodiest terrorist attacks, the United States and Israel?

Because the left no longer has any ideas, only slogans. It no longer defends rights, but prejudices. And the greatest prejudice of all is the one aimed against Israel. I accuse, then, in a formal manner that the main responsibility for the new anti-Semitic hatred disguised as anti-Zionism, comes from those who should have been there to defend freedom, solidarity and progress. Far from it, they defend despots, forget their victims and remain silent before medieval ideologies which aim at the destruction of free societies. The treason of the left is an authentic treason against modernity.

Defeat of Journalism. We have more information in the world than ever before, but we do not have a better informed world. Quite the contrary, the information superhighway connects us anywhere in the planet, but it does not connect us with the truth. Today’s journalists do not need maps, since they have Google Earth, they do not need to know History, since they have Wikipedia. The historical journalists, who knew the roots of a conflict, still exist, but they are an endangered species, devoured by that “fast food” journalism which offers hamburger news, to readers who want fast-food information. Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place. Of course one must keep in mind the pressure of the great petrodollar lobbies, whose influence upon journalism is subtle but deep. Mass media knows that if it speaks against Israel, it will have no problems. But what would happen if it criticized an Islamic country? Without doubt, it would complicate its existence. Certainly part of the press that writes against Israel, would see themselves mirrored in Mark Twain’s ironical sentence: “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please”.

Defeat of critical thinking. To all this one must add the ethical relativism which defines the present times: it is based not on denying the values of civilization, but rather in their most extreme banality. What is modernity?

I explain it with this little tale: If I were lost in an uncharted island, and would want to found a democratic society, I would only need three written documents: The Ten Commandments (which established the first code of modernity. “Thou shalt not murder“ founded modern civilization.); The Roman Penal Code; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And with these three texts we would start again. These principles are relativized daily, even by those who claim to be defending them.

“Thou shalt not murder” ... depending on who is the target, must think those who, like the demonstrators in Europe, shouted in support of Hamas.

“Hurray for Freedom of Speech!”..... , or not. For example, several Spanish left-wing organizations tried to take me to court, accusing me of being a negationist, like the Nazis, because I deny the “Palestinian Holocaust”. They were attempting to prohibit me from writing articles and to send me to prison. And so on... The social critical mass has lost weight and, at the same time ideological dogmatism has gained weight. In this double turn of events, the strong values of modernity have been substituted by a “weak thinking”, vulnerable to manipulation and Manichaeism.

Defeat of the United Nations. And with it, a sound defeat of the international organizations which should protect Human Rights. Instead they have become broken puppets in the hands of despots. The United Nations is only useful to Islamofascists like Ahmadinejad, or dangerous demagogues like Hugo Chavez which offers them a planetary loudspeaker where they can spit their hatred. And, of course, to systematically attack Israel. The UN, too exists to fight Israel.

Finally, defeat of Islam. Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, use youths as human bombs. Let’s not forget: They kill us with cellular phones connected to the Middle Ages. If Stalinism destroyed the left, and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred towards the Jew.

In the crossroads of these defeats, is Israel. Orphan and forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, and rejected by a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? NO. But all present-day anti-Semitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” And Albert Einstein added: “The World is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”. This is the double commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.

Thank you.

2010

2010 has began, and I can prophesize that the more things have changed, the more they will remain the same.

Environmentalists will continue to claim that we have 10 years left to save the planet. Ten years ago they said the same thing. It reminds me of the sign that hang for many years in a store: "We will offer credit tomorrow." One hundred years from now the world will still be away ten years away from extinction, and the scientists who will make these claims will still be high school dropouts that made it in Hollywood or lawyers with a career in politics.

In the meantime, new research shows no evidence of increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last 160 years. Al Gore has offered no comment on this research. Neither has Gorbachev, Leonardo di Caprio or Barak Hussein Obama. It is bad news for those who use the climate change canard for the purpose of redistributing wealth.

Read article about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

On the subject of Israel, the international community and the mainstream media will continue to abuse and hold Israel to a standard higher than any other nation on earth. The New York Times will call Israeli settlers an obstacle to peace, and Muslims who murder will be called anything but terrorists.

While on this topic; Jimmy "I have lust in my heart" Carter has issued an apology to the Jewish people. I take this apology cum grano salis. I remember Jessee Jackson apologizing too. The perfect response to this apology was written the Liberal with Sanity and former mayor of New York Ed Koch.

Read here Ed Koch's response to Jimmy Carter's apology.

Since I and those who hold political views similar to mine want a smaller and less intrusive government we will be called fascists, and since we don't believe in affirmative action we will be called racists. Since we don't like Obama we will be again called racists. Since we demand less taxes we will be called hatemongers, and since we don't like Hillary and Nacy Pelosi we will be called sexists. How do they reconcile this with our affection for Sarah Palin.

Since we don't believe in man made global warming we will be compared to holocaust deniers.

The census will show that states with high taxes lost population and states without income tax have gained population. The democrats will promise to cut the deficit and more vehemently so as November 2010 approaches. It will not help them. The Republicans will make significant gains and once elected will govern like democrats.

At least bloggers like me will have plenty of material to complain about. Happy New Year!

Richard Kemp at the UN

This is a video of the testimony of Colonel Richard Kemp from UNwatch.org, testifying in the United Nations at an Emergency Session on the Goldstone Report. It is a must watch. It is not often that we see men of integrity and valor in the floor of this organization.

Click to watch the video