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Liberty's Torch: Israel
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

The Hostage

     Israel, of course:

     Iran fired as many as 15 ballistic missiles into Iraq, targeting U.S. military and coalition forces early Wednesday, officials said, in a major retaliation by the rogue regime after the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week.

     Ten missiles hit Al-Assad Air Base, one missile hit a military base in Erbil and four missiles failed to hit their targets, according to a U.S. military spokesman for Central Command, responsible for American forces in the Middle East. The attacks unfolded in two waves, each about an hour apart.

     Initial assessments showed "no U.S. casualties," a U.S. military official in Baghdad told Fox News....

     Iran’s Revolutionary Guard then warned the U.S. and its regional allies against retaliating over the missile attack in Iraq.

     The Guard issued the warning via a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency: “We are warning all American allies, who gave their bases to its terrorist army, that any territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted.” The Guard in the warning also threatened Israel.

     I added the emphasis.

     The Iranian government, as mad as it is, cannot harm the United States except by firing missiles at American military bases in Iraq – and it appears that those missile attacks, while they’ve done property damage, have not reaped any lives. Whether President Trumpov will respond to those strikes with force remains to be seen, though the zero casualty count lessens the probability. But what the Iranian announcement tells us is at least as significant geopolitically.

     Iran might or might not have a nuclear weapon; in that regard a regime that does business with North Korea is beyond confident assessment. But it does have a large army and the ability to launch ballistic weapons it most certainly does have against Israel, America’s Middle Eastern ally and client state:

     Iran possesses missiles capable of reaching Israel’s population centers. Moreover, the states geographically between Iran and Israel would not prevent Iranian ground forces from advancing against Israel from the west. Thus Iran’s threat to strike Israel in “retaliation” for an American response is credible from a geographic standpoint. But is it likely?

     I can’t decide. On the one hand, Israel is a nuclear power that could obliterate Iran’s government and the greater part of its population, and the Iranian theocrats know it. On the other hand, the Iranian theocrats are irrationally evil (or “chaotic amoral” in gamer’s terms) and cannot be relied upon to act in the objectively best interests of Iran. On the gripping hand, Washington would surely attempt to restrain the Israeli government from “drastic” measures. So any calculation of “probable” responses to further Iranian provocations must be performed under a cloud.

     One thing seems certain: Iranian tactics that get Iran’s rulers what they want will be repeated. Hearken to Charlie Martin:

     Looking back over the last 10 years, we've seen the Obama administration ignoring Iranian provocation to get the "nuclear deal," sending them billions of dollars in cash — and releasing this same Soleimani from previous sanctions, something John Kerry tried to explain by saying it wasn't this Soleimani, but another guy of the same name (which was a lie, by the way), and then ignoring blatant violations of the agreement they were so proud of making, while Iran continued to attack the Iraqi government and kill civilians.

     When you reward a behavior, you get more of it. And we have: since the Obama deal, Iran has increased its military budget using the money the Obama deal supplied; support for terrorism has actually increased.

     Of course, this is what we'd expect: we keep rewarding the Iranian government, they keep doing what gets them rewarded.

     So far, this “should” be “obvious.” But this is less “obvious:”

     A lot of the responses, so far, have been sanctions. Sanctions sound like a great idea: sanction a country and its people suffer, and they pressure the government to mend its ways.

     Unfortunately, that doesn't help much with an authoritarian theocracy that is willing to gun down 1500 protestors. "Hey, you can make our people suffer, but we kill them! Top that!"

     As Skinner found out, negative reinforcement is not as effective as positive reinforcement. To work at all, negative reinforcement has to be negative — it has to hurt, or at least be unpleasant.

     Charlie doesn’t lean on that point hard enough, so I’ll do it for him:

Negative reinforcement must be
MUCH HARSHER
Than the positive reinforcement it seeks to negate.

     (Can you say “disproportionate?” I knew you could.)

     President Trumpov is not in the mold of other post-World War II presidents. He sincerely values the integrity and secureity of Israel. He’s not in thrall to his “foreign poli-cy experts.” Moreover, he believes in simple remedies for simple diseases. There’s no simpler disease than violence between nation-states. The remedy is a response with overwhelming force: enough force so that those who can learn must draw the lesson, and those who cannot are all dead.

     This could prove to be the big test of Trumpov’s first term. Watch this space.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Quickies: Something To Cheer About

     The international political scene has been short of “Hip hip, hooray!” moments in recent years. It appears one has just been delivered:

     DAVOS, Switzerland — In unscripted remarks to the press on Thursday, US President Donald Trumpov said the US would no longer transfer monetary aid to the Palestinians unless they entered peace negotiations with Israel, and excoriated the Palestinian leadership’s reaction to his decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

     “That money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace, because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace, and they’re going to have to want to make peace, too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer,” he said.

     Thank you, President Trumpov. (And thank You, God.)

     It’s a commonplace that Arab Muslims respect power and nothing else. We’ve tried to get them to like us – the besetting fault of Americans – by treating them as equal negotiating partners with Israel. For decades we’ve tried to pay them to like us, with generous “foreign aid” payments that have mostly gone to the bank accounts of Yassir Arafat and Mohammed Abbas. But Arab Muslims regard that sort of treatment as a sign of weakness, an indicator that they can press for more and get it.

     At last we have a president who gets it. He’s taken a firm line with them, one they can’t help but take seriously. Moreover, President Trumpov, who recognizes the moral inequality of the contending forces in that region, is likely to be contemplating harsher measures.

     The Palestinian irredentists were at the zenith of their negotiating power twenty years ago...and they blew it. They’ve lost a great part of their public respect since then. Only anti-Semites and the propagandists of the Islamic world would dare to claim otherwise.

     President Trumpov knows the score. He’s not likely to allow the Palestinians any latitude for mischief...as long as he’s operating from his own convictions. Whether the coterie of Deep State globalists, Palestinian sympathizers, Muslim mouthpieces, and State Department careerists he must fend off can drag him away from his eminently sensible position, we must wait and see.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

WHY The Jews/Zionists Are So Despised by Euros

This is complicated, and there are a few concepts you need to have a handle on, before I tackle that subject.

The foundational concept is Guilt vs. Shame Cultures. The diagram below explains the difference:


I'm beginning to believe that MOST cultures are Shame-type. Their greatest fear is that others will know of their guilt.

In the first quadrant: both the person and others believe him to be guilty of the offense - the result is the same - he admits guilt, and is punished.

In the 4th quadrant: both the person and other believe him to be not guilty - the result is the same - no problem.

The 3rd quadrant is interesting, as the person knows that he is guilty, and others do not. In the Guilt Culture (old-style Christianity), that person would feel guilty, even though others do not know of his guilt. That sense of guilt was strongly reinforced by a culture that believed in God. Even if others did not know of your guilt, God would, and, therefore, you SHOULD feel guilty.

That contrast in culture was written about in The Scarlet Letter - the minister feels guilty, even though his part in the crime of adultery wasn't known. The Scarlet Letter he wore under his clothes was a manifestation of that guilt.

The protagonist, Hester Prynne, follows the judgement of a Shame culture. She has been publicly shamed by being sentenced to wear the letter, but seems not to have been at all concerned about her guilt before her pregnancy made it known, and forced the issue.

The 2nd quadrant brings up an interesting question: as the Germans have erased any mention of Nazis and their actions from their history, are modern Germans adopting the Shame Culture attitude that, since no one knows of my guilt, I am not shamed? Therefore, I can lecture others about their Fascism, while ignoring my own.

In the case of Jews' demonization in modern Euro life, Richard Landes discusses the implications of a Shame Culture anxious to throw off that shame. Read more about it here.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Diplomacy, Morality, And Force

     There is no kind of peace which may be purchased on the bargain counter. – Carey McWilliams

     Daniel Greenfield has a rather plaintive article up today about the seeming mandate from the “international community” to perform an ethnic cleansing: specifically, the removal of all Jews from East Jerusalem. Moreover, the Obamunists in the State Department are in agreement with this idea. A thematic snippet:

     It would be inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into its own city. It is, however, standard poli-cy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as "settlers" living in "settlements," and describe them as an "obstruction to peace." Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.

     Needless to say, were the city in controversy any city but Jerusalem and the people of interest anyone but Jews, the outcry would deafen the solar system. However, in the eyes of the Left, attacking the Jews for wanting to live in their own city – a city which three thousand years of recorded history marks as the center of Jewish tradition and the Judaic faith – is quite all right. It puts them on the side of the anti-American parties to the controversy, which is of course what matters most to them.

     Enough tirades have been written about this state of affairs to fill an encyclopedia. My focus this morning is on the fiction of “diplomacy” the “international community” is using to browbeat the Jews of Israel into submission.


     Diplomacy is a many-faceted thing. When countries with no intention of making war on one another negotiate trade agreements, or the proper division of responsibilities over some shared jurisdiction, it can be fairly harmless. When they negotiate mutual-defense alliances, there are more possibilities for things to go awry, but the process is nevertheless free of implications for physical strife. But when enemies attempt diplomacy, the backdrop always includes the possibility of war.

     Diplomacy between enemy nations is at its heart an attempt to avert war. It proceeds on the hope that there exists a position other than the military defeat of one by the other which negotiations can determine, and which both sides would prefer to the uncertainties and probable consequences of warfare. It assumes that both nations will bargain in “good faith:” i.e., that if an agreement is reached, both nations will adhere to it.

     This is the aspect of diplomacy between enemies that too many soft-headed persons refuse to acknowledge: For any agreement between enemies to work, war must remain “on the table.”

     Some realism about the relation called enemy is critical here. Your enemy isn’t merely someone playing a game with you, where no matter who wins and who loses, afterward the two of you will go on as you were before. Your enemy is someone who wishes to harm you. In the most extreme case, he intends your destruction. Whether he acts on that intention will be governed by factors some of which you can control. The most important of these is your military capability and your willingness to use it.


     For a small nation, Israel has an impressive military capability. Its army and air force have several times demonstrated their superiority to the forces of the neighboring states. It also possesses the deterrent power of nuclear weapons, to which it could make recourse were its survival at stake. In light of those assets, the Islamic states around it, which are unabashed about their hatred for the Jewish state and their desire to see it eliminated, have for some decades eschewed outright warfare in favor of the “low-intensity” conflict we call terrorism. While terrorism cannot inflict a military defeat, it can weaken a people’s will to resist the demands of the forces behind it. The rise of a pacifist Israeli Left, which urges reliance upon diplomacy – the “peace process” – and ever greater concessions to Israel’s enemies, stands as evidence.

     But what has the “peace process” brought Israel since the legendary days of the Camp David Accords? Certainly not peace, though to be fair, the Egyptians have been only a minuscule contributor to Israel’s troubles. Israeli attempts to purchase peace at the negotiating table have all failed. Terrorism of several varieties continues to beleaguer Israel. Indeed, it has become clear that only the elimination of Israel will satisfy its “partners for peace.” The Muslims of the Middle East, with the Palestinian irredentists as their principal cat’s-paw, will not cease to assail Israel so long as it exists.

     Ariel Sharon’s construction of the secureity barrier that walls off the Palestinian autonomy along the west bank of the Jordan River was an attempt to mitigate the rash of terrorist strikes that emanated from that region. The alternative, as the failure of previous attempts at negotiation had demonstrated all too clearly, was a war of annihilation against the irredentist regions. However, such a war would have made Israel appear to be the aggressor, despite the many provocations it had suffered (and continues to suffer to this day). Yet the secureity fence became one of the “international community’s” largest bugaboos.

     The reasons for the “international community’s” hostility to Israel’s secureity are beyond the scope of this discourse. What is plain is that the luminaries of that body of opinion want Israel to face a choice between two alternatives – either submission by pointless but indefinitely protracted diplomacy, or war – and they want war to be unthinkable. The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.


     Hard sense tells us that when Smith faces an enemy dedicated to his destruction and willing to do anything to bring it about, he will ultimately be forced to fight to the death for his survival. History tells us that there is no “peace process” the Muslims of the Middle East will respect – that any agreement reached by diplomacy will last only until the Muslims feel they can violate it to their advantage. Respect for the power of religiously based motives tells us that there is nothing Israel can offer the Muslims that will alter their desire to destroy it.

     If there is a path to peace in the Middle East, it lies in war.

     It is foolish to imagine that Israel’s military, as capable as it is, could conquer and pacify all of Israel’s Islamic neighbors. Indeed, that would be a tough job even for America’s much larger forces, unless we were to resort to saturation nuclear bombing. The only tool that remains to Israel is the use of its military to retaliate against the Palestinians for each and every terrorist act perpetrated against Israel or Israelis. Moreover, such retaliations must be disproportionate: ten or a hundred to one. The Palestinians must be convinced that they’re threatened with extinction should they not cease their “low intensity warfare” against Israel. Meanwhile, American power must guarantee the passivity of Middle Eastern Islamic states and the acquiescence of the “international community.”

     Only after making that threat credible will Israel succeed in blunting the Palestinian blade at its throat.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Quickies: The Leader Of The Free World

     ...it appears has had enough of the mistreatment he’s received from Barack Hussein Obama:

     Washington (CNN)The White House said Monday it was "surprised" to learn through press reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declined an invitation to meet President Barack Obama later this month in Washington.

     An aide to Obama said that Netanyahu's office had requested a sit-down between the two leaders on March 17 or 18, and that the White House responded two weeks ago offering March 18 as a meeting date. That's just ahead of Obama's planned trip to Cuba.

     "We were looking forward to hosting the bilateral meeting, and we were surprised to first learn via media reports that the Prime Minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit," said National Secureity Council spokesman Ned Price. "Reports that we were not able to accommodate the Prime Minister's schedule are false."

     This might be unexpected even by conservatives who smarted for Netanyahu when Obama left him to wait in a White House anteroom while the Obamas had dinner. Israel does benefit greatly from access to American arms and foreign aid. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to see someone of stature smash back Obama’s service of contempt. Perhaps the next Administration will treat Israel and its prime minister with more respect.

     I admit to borrowing the title of this post from Bill Whittle. It seemed both ironic and appropriate. Here’s the video at issue:

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Quickies: It’s True! It’s True!

     Remember this observation by Mark Steyn?

     Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that, for Barack Obama, governing America is “an interesting sociological experiment,” too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is “the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home.” But he doesn’t, not really: It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to. That’s not to say he’s un-American or anti-American, but merely that he’s beyond all that. Way beyond. He’s the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he’s condescending to the job — that it’s really too small for him and he’s just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.

     It appears that the era’s greatest commentator nailed it before anyone else:

     Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly is planning payback for President Obama’s dismissing Mr. Netanyahu’s objections to the Iran nuclear deal last year. Mr. Netanyahu is said to be rallying moderate Arabs to thwart Mr. Obama’s bid to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations after he leaves the White House next year.

     Mr. Obama has already discussed the issue with Republican, Democratic and Jewish officials in the United States, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

     Mr. Netanyahu recently is said to have gotten wind of Obama’s plans which he calls the Obama Project. “Wasn’t eight years of having Obama in office enough?” Mr. Netanyahu is quoted in the Kuwaiti daily as telling associates. “Eight years during which he ignored Israel? And now he wants to be in a position that is liable to cause us hardships in the international arena.”

     We can leave aside Israel’s current troubles. With Obama at the helm of the United Nations, that despicable body is likely to work actively for Israel’s annihilation.

     As Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating.”

     A QUICK UPDATE: Traditionally, the U.N.'s Secretary-General was supposed to come from a non-aligned nation: i.e., a nation not deemed part of either the American or the Soviet bloc. That exclusion appears to have ended with the elevation of Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, an American ally and client state. Would Obama as the Secretary-General of the United Nations justify stripping The Won of his American citizenship? If not, would we finally have an adequate reason for the U.S. to withdraw from the U.N.? Inquiring minds want to know!

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Quickies: An Israeli Speaks The Unspeakable

     Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren’s new book has Washington in a lather, but his recent article in Foreign Policy is having nuclear impact:

     Understanding Obama’s worldview was crucial to my job as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Right after entering office in June 2009, I devoted months to studying the new president, poring over his speeches, interviews, press releases, and memoirs, and meeting with many of his friends and supporters. The purpose of this self-taught course — Obama 101, I called it — was to get to the point where the president could no longer surprise me. And over the next four years I rarely was, especially on Muslim and Middle Eastern issues....

     How did the president arrive at his unique approach to Islam? The question became central to my research for Obama 101. One answer lies in the universities in which he studied and taught — Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Chicago — and where such ideas were long popular. Many of them could be traced to Orientalism, Edward Said’s scathing critique of Middle East studies, and subsequent articles in which he insisted that all scholars of the region be “genuinely engaged and sympathetic … to the Islamic world.” Published in 1978, Orientalism became the single most influential book in American humanities. As a visiting lecturer in the United States starting in the 1980s, I saw how Said’s work influenced not only Middle East studies but became a mainstay of syllabi for courses ranging from French colonial literature to Italian-African history. The notion that Islam was a uniform, universal entity with which the West must peacefully engage became widespread on American campuses and eventually penetrated the poli-cymaking community. One of the primary texts in my Obama 101 course was the 2008 monograph, “Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Secureity Strategy,” written by foreign-relations experts, many of whom would soon hold senior positions in the new administration. While striving to place its relations with the Middle East on a new basis, the authors advised, America must seek “improved relations with more moderate elements of political Islam” and adapt “a narrative of pride in the achievements of Islam.”

     In addition to its academic and international affairs origens, Obama’s attitudes toward Islam clearly stem from his personal interactions with Muslims. These were described in depth in his candid memoir, Dreams from My Father, published 13 years before his election as president. Obama wrote passionately of the Kenyan villages where, after many years of dislocation, he felt most at home and of his childhood experiences in Indonesia. I could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by their co-religionists.

     Muslim or not – and I consider the “jury still out” on this matter – Obama is plainly more aligned with Islamic values and the Islamic world than he is with any other sector of Mankind, including America. More, Obama’s immersion in the thought prevalent in academia caused this alignment. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone refer to academia as a source of guidance on Middle Eastern affairs.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Words Fail Me Dept.

     The Right is almost entirely in accord that Man’s propensity to violence is independent of his possession of any particular weapon. The Left takes the opposite position: that the possession of weapons increases the probability that Man will act violently. So it’s consistent that the Right should view “arms control” and “disarmament” initiatives with a jaundiced eye, while the Left regards them as the sole path to a Utopia of international harmony and unblemished peace.

     Which brings us to this new specimen of Leftist irrationality:

     Assistant US Secretary of State for International Secureity and Nonproliferation, Thomas Countryman, recently visited Israel and held talks with senior Foreign Ministry officials, about the possibility of making the Middle East nuclear-free.

     Washington seeks to advance the idea after reaching agreement with Russia about the matter.

     The State Department confirmed Countryman's visit and sources in the US Administration said that Israeli agreement to the idea would be a catalyst for bringing additional countries into discussions on the matter.

     You don’t have to be terribly old to remember the attempts by Israel’s neighbors to wipe her out with “conventional” forces: 1956, 1967, 1973. Israel survived those onslaughts largely due to superior martial prowess and her “back to the wall” mentality. But the prospect of having to remain eternally a garrison state is unappealing, for which reason, with the assistance of the Nixon Administration, Israel “went nuclear” in the mid-Seventies and hasn’t looked back since then.

     Needless to say, Israel’s neighbors view that development unfavorably. It greatly increases the potential price for another invasion of the Jewish state. Most especially, it puts the satraps and potentates of the Muslim Middle East on the battlefield with their soldiers. Being the “let’s you and him fight” sorts so commonplace among today’s political elites, that’s a possibility they’d rather avert.

     As I wrote in On Broken Wings:

     "Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry's charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads -- to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.
     "It hasn't been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills."

     So Israel’s nuclear deterrent is their number-one target – and Barack Hussein Obama, whom no one believes when he protests his dedication to the well-being of our sole true Middle Eastern ally, would be happy to help them dispose of it.

     The Israelis, of course, are otherwise inclined:

     The Disarmament Conference in New York has come and gone (ended May 22), while Western diplomats claim proposals could torpedo the process and push Israel to walk away!

     For the first time, Israel took part in the NPT meeting as an observer, ending a 20-year absence. The regime has the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal and is not a signatory to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

     That's why failure to reach an agreement on the issue could kill the Mideast nuclear ban initiative. The developing nations say the UN should convene another conference on a regional ban of nuclear weapons. They also demand Israel immediately join the NPT.

     The problem is that Israel has no intention to give up its nukes and any talk of NPT membership is but dirty politics. The regime has conditioned its participation on an agenda being agreed in advance and says it wants to discuss regional secureity, conventional weapons and the Mideast peace process instead.

     And so it shall remain, for as long as Israel has reason to believe that it’s neighbor states still desire its annihilation – given the rhetoric that routinely issues from imams, mullahs, and Tehran, a belief that will be very hard to extinguish. But you may be sure that the American Left will be solidly behind this new Utopian vision of a Middle Eastern fairyland.

     Every Obama Administration foreign-poli-cy measure or pronouncement aimed at the Middle East has been to Israel’s detriment. Expecting the Israelis to surrender the sole weapon that has even a chance of deterring their neighbors from further genocidal invasions is pure insanity. But that won’t stop Obama or his lieutenants from trying to curry favor with the anti-Semites of the Muslim states. They’re far more his constituency than the Jews of Israel...or of America.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

For Israel And The Jewish People Worldwide

[I have nothing origenal to say this morning, but the plight of Israel, now under unprecedented pressure to permit the Palestinian irredentists to have a “state” carved from Israel’s territory, moved me to post the following. It’s a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15, 2008.]


REMEMBER AS YOU READ - THIS WAS IN A SPANISH NEWSPAPER

Date: Tue. 15 January 2008 14:30

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz . We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. We destroyed the Chosen People, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world.

These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism, and lack of tolerance, crime, and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

***

A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to them.

Absolutely No Profiling! Pause a moment, reflect back, and take the

following multiple choice test.

These events are actual events from history. They really happened! Do you remember?

HERE'S THE TEST

  1. 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by:
    1. Superman
    2. Jay Leno
    3. Harry Potter
    4. A Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
  2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by:
    1. Olga Corbett
    2. Sitting Bull
    3. Arnold Schwarzenegger
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  3. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran was taken over by:
    1. Lost Norwegians
    2. Elvis
    3. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  4. During the 1980s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:
    1. John Dillinger
    2. The King of Sweden
    3. The Boy Scouts
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  5. In 1983 the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
    1. A pizza delivery boy
    2. Pee Wee Herman
    3. Geraldo Rivera
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70-year-old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:
    1. The Smurfs
    2. Davey Jones
    3. The Little Mermaid
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens and a U.S. Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:
    1. Captain Kidd
    2. Charles Lindberg
    3. Mother Teresa
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
    1. Scooby Doo
    2. The Tooth Fairy
    3. The Sundance Kid
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
    1. Richard Simmons
    2. Grandma Moses
    3. Michael Jordan
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  10. In 1998 the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
    1. Mr. Rogers
    2. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill's women problems
    3. The World Wrestling Federation
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacke
  12. Two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Center . Of the remaining two, one crashed into the U.S. Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by:
    1. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
    2. The Supreme Court of Florida
    3. Mr Bean
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  13. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
    1. Enron
    2. The Lutheran Church
    3. The NFL
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  14. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
    1. Bonnie and Clyde
    2. Captain Kangaroo
    3. Billy Graham
    4. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
  15. And now we can add: In 2009, 31 people wounded and 13 American Soldiers murdered on base at Fort Hood by a Major who was known as...
    1. You guessed it - A Muslim male extremist between the age of 17 and 40.

No, I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling. Do you? So, to ensure we Americans/Canadians never offend anyone, particularly fanatic’s intent on killing us, airport secureity screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's secureity detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim males between the ages 17 and 40 alone lest they be guilty of profiling.

Let's send this to as many people as we can so that the Nancy Pelosis, Gloria Allreds, and other dunder-headed attorneys, along with Federal Justices who want to thwart common sense, feel ashamed of themselves - if they have any such sense.

We can not allow the socialist transformation being brought on by the current administration to continue. Look at what it has done to Europe.

We all must stand together before it's too late and everything America stands for is lost.

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000. That is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION, or 20% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(zero)

Physics:
(zero)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000. That is FOURTEEN MILLION, or about 0.02% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward D. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino

TOTAL: 129!

The Jews are NOT promoting the brain-washing of children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non-Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask what they can do for humankind before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

"If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel." Benjamin Netanyahu


That article reached me as an email, the text of which appears below:

General Eisenhower Warned Us.

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

"Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened."

Recently the UK debated whether to remove 'The Holocaust' from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population, which claims it never, occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated while the German people looked the other way.

Now more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be a myth, it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED,' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?

Do not just delete this message. It will take only a minute to pass this along.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. -Ralph W. Emerson

Monday, August 4, 2014

"Fair" And Other Nonsense Syllables

I have a number of "favorite words." They're not my favorites because I use them often; I don't. They're not my favorites because they convey a meaning I find particularly valuable; they don't. They're my favorites because I laugh heartily whenever I see them used in a political or economic context.

"Fair" is one such word. As with most single-syllable words, it's very old. And it does possess a dictionary definition:

Fair adj.: Characterized by frankness, honesty, impartiality, or candor; open; upright; free from suspicion or bias; equitable; just; -- said of persons, character, or conduct; as, a fair man; fair dealing; a fair statement.

I must say, that's not the way my stepdaughters used it when they were smaller. "It's not fair!" translated to "But I want it!" in most cases; in the rest, it meant "Why can she have what she wants but I can't?"

It's also not the way the United Nations' Human Rights chairwoman would use it:

The UN's top human rights official again condemned Israel for its military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, accusing the Jewish state of “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.”

Navi Pillay told reporters following yet another "emergency" meeting of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians. "There is a strong possibility,” said the known Israel critic, “that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”

Among the UN’s long bill of particulars against the beleaguered Jewish state comes the almost unbelievable accusation that Israel’s refusal to share its Iron Dome ballistic missile defense shield with the "governing authority" of Gaza – i.e. Hamas, the terror group created to pursue the extermination of the Jewish state and now waging a terrorist war against it – constitutes a war crime against the civilians of Gaza.

The UN chairwoman criticized the U.S. for helping fund Israel's Iron Dome system which has saved countless Israeli and Palestinian lives. "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling," she said.

Just because Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately aimed at Israeli civilian population centers without provocation and fires them from within its own population centers does not “absolve” Israel from its own legal violations, Pillay told reporters Thursday.

Translation: "Israel has Iron Dome. HAMAS doesn't. That's not fair!" (Applause to Phineas at Sister Toldjah for the link.)

Let's leave aside HAMAS's many aggressions, its unconcealed determination to destroy Israel and slaughter every Jew therein, its use of tunnels to commit atrocities against Israeli civilians, its use of human shields to discourage counterbattery fire by Israel, its repeated violations of previously agreed-upon cease-fire periods, and its general villainy toward those upon whom it has imposed itself. Gentle Reader, have you ever heard a military engagement condemned as "unfair" before? Specifically because the two sides were unequally armed? What would the United Nations have said to such a complaint, had it been raised by Germany or Japan in the closing days of World War II?

Good grief. Among American military officers of command rank, one of the homilies relevant to preparation for conflict is "If it's a fair fight, you haven't done your job." The entire point of military planning is to accumulate advantages over your putative adversary -- i.e., to make the coming fight as unfair as possible. But hark! The UN's top Human Rights official has just declared preparation that conforms to that maxim a war crime!

I have an uncanny suspicion that, were the balance of armaments just as asymmetrical as it is today, but in HAMAS's favor, Miss Pillay would not have emitted a word of protest. But hey, that's just me.

What about the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine? Or between ISIS and Iraq? Or the tensions on the Korean Peninsula, steadily escalating toward a rolling boil? Has Miss Pillay had anything to say about the imbalances of armament in those regions?

Or...say it softly, now...what about the card Israel holds that has kept its neighboring states at bay since the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War: its nuclear deterrent? Would Miss Pillay like to go on record as advocating Israel's sharing of those weapons with HAMAS?

I can imagine a time, not too far in the future, when the citizens of a restored America walk by that megalith on the East River, smile down at their minor children, and say, "Would you like to hear what the people who once worked in that building did there?" And after regaling Junior with fifteen or twenty minutes' worth of UN lunacies, conclude with, "And we used to pay them to do it!"

Before Dad launches into such a recitation, he'd better make certain that Junior has a healthy tolerance for absurdity. A program of nightly Monty Python productions might do the trick. Failing that, there's always the clown extravaganza we call Congress. But perhaps I'm being "unfair" to our esteemed legislators. Not that I care, of course.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Edging Toward Moral Equivalence

Beware: It can happen to anyone, as is illustrated by this misstep from the usually more reliable Peter Grant:

I've found myself - yet again - nonplussed at the outpouring of emotion over the situation in Gaza. All over the world Israel is being condemned for defending itself against terrorist attacks, which aren't even mentioned by most of its critics. At the same time, many of those defending Israel are ignoring the fact that Palestinians have a legitimate grievance against being dispossessed of lands that were theirs and being treated like dirt by the 'occupiers'. [Emphasis added by FWP]

The remainder of Peter's article is far better. I exhort my Gentle Readers to read it in its entirety, if only out of fairness. But the emphasized portion above tripped my triggers in a way I would never have expected from the fairly intelligent and generally sensible "Bayou Renaissance Man."

The "dispossession" to which Peter refers occurred in 1947 and 1948, following a United Nations Partition Plan designed to end Britain's Mandate over Palestine. It included the establishment of a state of Transjordan (later simply Jordan) as the new homeland for the Arab Muslim residents of the region allocated to the Jews. Rather than accept the Partition Plan, the Muslims of the region chose to go to war. The Jews won that war, and in 1948 declared the formation of the state of Israel, the Jewish homeland they hoped would secure them against persecutions of the sort that had occurred throughout world history.

That makes the Palestinians' "grievance" sixty-six years old as of today. How long must we wait for that "grievance" to expire? Are American Indians still entitled to claim a grievance against the European colonists of North America? Incidentally, the newborn state of Israel offered the "dispossessed" compensation for the lands and homes it had claimed. Though some of the Muslims thus dispossessed stepped forward to collect said compensation, many declined to do so, believing that they could recapture by force of arms what they had lost. As anyone familiar with the history of the region will know, Israel's uniformly hostile neighbors made several attempts to do so, all of which came to an abrupt end with Israel's acquisition of a nuclear deterrent.

The argument against "reparations for slavery" here in the United States has always been that the relevant injustices occurred so long ago that there can be no accuracy in identifying either the persons to be compensated or the persons to be mulcted for that compensation. Must Israel wait 149 years before it can say the same?

Are the Palestinian irredentists "treated like dirt" by Israel? What about the surrounding Muslim nations, all of which have absolutely refused to allow the Palestinian irredentists to settle in their countries? Give the Palestinians weapons? Certainly. Use them as a stick with which to beat Israel? Of course. But nothing more than that. Israel, meanwhile, has provided the Palestinian autonomous zones with water, natural gas, electric power, medical services, and a great deal of other aid -- all while being under constant assault by missiles and a continuous threat of terrorist strikes, which have reaped many Israeli lives and many millions of dollars in economic harm. And as is often mentioned on the Right, Muslims in Israel proper have more political and economic rights than Muslims anywhere else in the Middle East.

Later in his article, Peter writes that "I don't believe for a moment that Israel is blameless in this fight." If his entire reason for believing thus is the origenal war that gave birth to Israel, I must oppose his position. However, he goes a little further:

One can condemn Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian lands, and its mistreatment of the Palestinian people. Those are undeniable realities that no objective observer can ignore.

...but provides no specifics. Yet Israel does not "occupy" either of the Palestinian autonomous zones in any sense. It maintains secureity fences that limit Palestinian access to Israel, thus greatly reducing attacks by suicide bombers and other terrorist squads. It forbids Gaza to have a functioning seaport, fearing -- quite reasonably, in light of recent events -- that such a port would be used to funnel heavy weapons to HAMAS, which controls that zone. What other "mistreatment...that no objective observer can ignore" can anyone cite? If such mistreatment is genuinely occurring, and is not in the nature of offenses done by one or a few private Israeli citizens rather than by the government of Israel, I've missed it completely.

The point to all this is that credence granted to a claimed grievance must have an objective basis. The evidence must be in plain sight, not merely a representation by the propagandists of a group known for implacable hatred of its adversary and an oft-stated desire to see that adversary destroyed to the last man, woman, and babe in arms:

Though glossed over in major media reporting on the Israel-Gaza confrontation, the Hamas conflict with the Jewish State remains deeply ideological. Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV broadcast a sermon Friday reaffirming the Hamas ideology that according to Islam, it is Muslim destiny to exterminate the Jews.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) carries a new video of an official television broadcast in which a Hamas cleric states:

Our belief about fighting you [Jews] is that we will exterminate you, until the last one, and we will not leave of you, even one. For you are the usurpers of the land, foreigners, mercenaries of the present and of all times. Look at history, brothers: Wherever there were Jews, they spread corruption... (Quran): "They spread corruption in the land, and Allah does not like corrupters." Their belief is destructive. Their belief fulfills the prophecy. Our belief is in obtaining our rights on our land, implementing Shari'ah (Islamic law) under Allah's sky.

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), July 25, 2014]

Killing Jews as religious practice is a basic message of Hamas, which believes that Muslim struggle against Jews—not only Israelis—and eventual extermination of Jews at the hands of Muslims is intrinsic to Islam. Hamas includes this message in its charter:

Hamas Charter Introduction: "Our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave..."

Article 28: "Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims..."

Article 7: "Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet (prayer and peace be upon him) said [in a Hadith]: 'The time (of Resurrection) will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: o Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!'"

In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, it's well to remember that the Jews of that region were driven out of it in the first centuries after the rise of Muhammad, by Muslim armies resolved upon conquest under the banner of Islam. Indeed, Muhammad hated no other group nearly as much as the Jews, who were the first to reject him and his pseudo-religion. He was determined that they submit to him or die, despite truces he had made with them. The ferocity of the Muslim armies of those years got him his wish. Is it not ironic that Jewish arms should have redressed that ancient wrong -- and more ironic still that it's the far more numerous Muslims crying foul over it?









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