That’s For Starters

Shergald, professional Jew-hater and serial poster of anti-Israel diaries on Daily Kos, accused me of bringing the most far-right Zionist view, and another one of the anti-Zionists on the comments called me, “The mouldering corpse of Golda Meir sitting in front of a computer screen”. No doubt one of my recent posts here, End the Occupation!, could reinforce that view with the last of its maps. That map, showing the territories that Israel could have by rights, is something I could never support inwardly, let alone advocate publicly, in my peacenik days of the 1990’s. It’s not that I’m bullish on those borders now, but today I gladly thumb them in the noses of those who accuse Israel of being imperialistic despite having, for the sake of peace, diminished itself to restricted borders. It is reflective of the general change of position in Israel, in which many former peaceniks, having seen how concessions and civilized behavior have brought Israel no praise, not even legitimacy to defend itself (as the last Lebanon War showed), are now ready to wave with maps hitherto considered to be the exclusive domain of the far right. In other words: due to the Muslim enemy’s intransigence and the unjust opinion of the world, the formerly far right of Israel has gotten closer to the center view. And yes, it’s you Muslim “oppressed peoples” and Leftist “peace activists” who are to blame for that, only you.

As the fact-packed article The Guardian: An Atrocity Created Israel’s Birth by Carol Gould shows, the Zionist state is an oasis of civility in this desert of barbarism (an ever-expanding desert, threatening to take over the whole world, it cannot be stated enough). It is moral inversion, the kind of which I believe can be explained only by divine influence, to regard Israel the cancer and the Muslim states surrounding it the healthy body. Whatever wealth they have is the result of their good fortune (of having oil under their ground) and not of their efforts. Israel, poor in such natural resources, prospers by the brains and the sweat of its people (from the secular point of view; of course, G-d’s blessing to His people is the true key). This setting up of industry, science and culture by the Zionists predates the independence of Israel by decades, whereas the invented nation calling themselves “Palestinians” have been engaged in nothing but internecine warfare (of the violent kind), the setting up of terrorist training camps and the maintenance of a poisonous education system ever since gaining land of their own in 1993. Such is the difference between Israel and its enemies, and on the Guardian and its ilk falls the verdict of Isaiah 5:20.

We could have demanded the Biblical borders for Israel by rights. But we valued Jewish life and culture over borders, in 1947 as in 1993. There were, before Israel’s independence, the right-wingers waving with maps of Israel having the Transjordan (now the state of Jordan) as well—the East Bank and not just the West Bank!—but the UN Partition Plan of 1947 was accepted—anything in order for us Jews to have, after 2,000 years of the Diaspora, a state of our own. That repeated itself in 1993, and the other side’s reaction of 1947 similarly repeated itself in October 2000. In 1947 it was pragmatism, in 1993 it was giving a second chance, surmising that the other side had changed; but today, another repeat of the plan to partition the land between the Jews and the Muslims would have none of those redeeming explanations—it would be stupidity.

I will tell you the tale of the mafioso and the car. A mafia don approached an average Joe and said to him, “Nice car you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it. Pay me a grand each month and it’ll be all OK”. Joe pays. However, a few days afterwards, he comes back home to see his car burned. After the trauma, he saves for buying another one, and finally he does. Then the mafia don comes back and says the same words he did last time.

What is Joe to do? In both instances, paying the protection money would be injustice. However, in the first instance, though it is injustice, it could be considered an act of wisdom—a result of pragmatic calculation of the cost vis-à-vis the value. In the second instance, in contrast, for Joe to pay the mafioso the money would not be even wise. For now that he had seen that paying the protection money had not kept his car safe, now that he had seen that the mafioso was not willing to hold to his side of the deal, Joe would have nothing to lose by refusing to pay and finding some way to fight the mafioso instead. Injustice can be barely tolerated by excusing it as pragmatism; but if there is no pragmatism in the miscarriage of justice, then the excuse of pragmatism should be thrown away, and justice be vehemently pursued, for there is now nothing to lose and everything to gain from that.

Joe is the Jews, and by extension the whole non-Muslim world. The mafioso is the “Palestinians”, and by extension the whole Muslim world. So far, the proverbial Joe has been paying protection money in the face of the plain fact that the proverbial mafioso has no intention of keeping his part of the deal—not permanently, anyway (pace Robert Spencer, Islamic law stipulates that a peace treaty with non-Muslims can last 10 years at most, and then it’s back to warfare). What, then, is the gain in continuing the concessions of land or culture to the Muslims? It is not only unjust (caving in to intimidation) but also unwise, because any concession merely postpones, not cancels, the enemy’s goal of full takeover. Your car will be burned down, in the end, no matter how much you pay, so it’s better, more pragmatic, to resist than to keep paying.

This exodus of Israelis, then, from the “Give Peace A Chance—At All Costs” mentality into thoughts that were until recently the domain of the far right, is the result of “Palestinian” unwillingness to keep their side of the deal, just like the car-burning mafioso. Or in other words: they started it. The mainstream of Zionism had always been willing to compromise on the borders; the shifting of the far right of Zionism toward the mainstream is the result of the other side’s actions, aided and abetted by the bias and libels of TreasonMedia like the Guardian. There were so many points in modern history in which peace was at hand, only to be foiled because, to paraphrase the Prime Minister whose mouldering corpse I am claimed to digitally represent, the Arabs hated us Jews more than they loved their own children. After years of being an introspective, blame-yourself-first left-wing peacenik, I’ve come to hold that the other side has most of the blame to shore.

Our “reality-based” Leftist apologists will no doubt bristle at the expression, “They started it”. “It’s the childish retort of kids scrapping in the kindergarten!” they’ll say. Well, kids scrapping in the kindergarten do say it often, that much I admit, but the conclusion doesn’t follow from that fact (in other words: the Leftists’ argument is a non sequitur). But I wish to point out a little Leftist hypocrisy in that regard (not a difficult thing to find). Do we dispute the late and unlamented Edward Said as a representative mouthpiece of Leftist thinking? Of course we don’t. Here’s what Said had to say in his article for the Guardian for September 16, 2001, Islam and the West are inadequate banners (the title itself deserves a whole post commenting on it; after Yom Kippur, G-d willing):

“Anti-Americanism in this context is not based on a hatred of modernity or technology-envy: it is based on a narrative of concrete interventions, specific depredations and, in the cases of the Iraqi people’s suffering under US-imposed sanctions and US support for the 34-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.”

First impressions are of great importance, yet it pays to take off the wrappers to see what’s inside. Said’s passage is presented in a colorful wrapper of polysyllabic, intellectual, academic prose, yet once that wrapper is take off, it can be seen to be the same, “They started it!” that the Left decries as immature. I mean, just what is the phrase, “Country X had reprisals from group Y coming because of its abusive foreign policy toward that group” if not a paraphrase of, “They started it”? Whenever the Left blames the USA or Israel for any attacks on its civilians, it’s saying, “The USA/Israel deserved it, because they started it”. That’s the substance of the Leftist message, no matter how elaborate and academic a form they give it.

I am not saying that the phrase, “They started it” ought to be used indiscriminately; but it is certainly warranted when an experience is repeated and must be learned from, such as the repeated experience of Muslim rage at a novel and then at a few cartoons and then at a quote from a medieval emperor. As with everything else, fact-checking and rational judgment must be exercised to find out who really is the culprit, otherwise the roles of victim and perpetrator will be reversed. Leftist logic is so perverse that it can easily bring them to stand before the family of a raped girl and say to them, “She was raped because she was dressed provocatively. She had it coming. She shouldn’t be crying about it, seeing as she made herself a target by her actions”, and thus excuse the rapist, and also blame society and government for driving him toward rape by “neglecting the poor”. Without finding the facts and applying reason, even the most well-meaning stance can degenerate into the most abject heartlessness. That, I believe, is the key to understanding what makes atrocities possible, what makes good people do evil things, even, contra Steven Weinberg, without religion.