Tip: Haveil Havalim #95

Haveil Havalim #95, for November 26, 2006, is hosted by Smooth Stone, to whose blog I put a link to on the sidebar way back, in August (the first month of my blog).

I’d heard of Haveil Havalim briefly in the course of surfing the Jewish blogosphere, without really knowing details about it. I’d supposed it was some kind of blogger custom. This morning I got an e-mail notifying me of the current edition of Haveil Havalim, which I promptly looked at and saw it was a collection of links to posts on the Jewish blogosphere.

Having read the above, please pardon my ignorance. I’m not one of the cognoscenti; I know just about enough to operate a blog, but I’m not well versed in the ins and outs of blog culture. I used to think blogs were for bored teenagers who wanted to put up a diary for the whole uninterested world to see. It was only during the last years, picking up special-interest blogs like Little Green Footballs and Jihad Watch, that I realized a blog was interesting according as its subject matter interested me. Finally, during the last Lebanon War, I realized the value of blogs as the New Media countering the Old Media, the majority of which can now be seen to be serve enemy interests, and so I launched a blog of my own.

I learn more about blogging jargon every day, though I’m still not into having a blog for more than what I believe to be its purpose: a channel for information and opinion unshackled to most rules and limitation of the mainstream media outlets. In that context, I have little patience with some of the notions concerning “blogging etiquette”. This once led to a scuffle between me and another blogger when I left a link to a post of mine on her blog; she saw it as spamming her blog, while I saw it as strengthening the Jewish blogosphere by passing [ideological] ammunition. No animus meant by either side, I’m sure, but that goes to show a difference between my blogging philosophy and that of most other bloggers.

The post of mine Smooth Stone linked to is Yes, They Exist. No, They Aren’t The Solution, from November 19. Of the linked posts I’ve checked so far and liked best:

• Exasperation, by Banagor. The post expresses a lot of ideas which, on my blog, are spread upon various posts. Banagor is an atheist, but unlike so many of them, a true heir of Voltaire.
• Louise Arbour, Louise Arbour, GO HOME!, by Carl in Jerusalem, on his blog Israel Matzav. Good refutation of a UN “High Commisioner for Human Rights” on her judicial pontifications.
• “Peace activists” for terrorism, by Elder of Ziyon, showing an egregious example of the moral bankruptcy of the “Peace Left”. For anyone who still had doubts about the equation, “anti-war = pro-terrorism”.

A Decision To Be Unhappy

In one of my posts, I said the tears of the “Palestinians” were manufactured. I hold that many of their displays of grief we see on the TV screen are manufactured; I did not say “all”, for I do not have enough information to say such a thing—information that usually lies hidden with a man’s heart, or at best divulged only to insiders, and in Arabic.

That a great deal of their emotions are for Western Leftist eyes’ consumption is a reasonable assumption from their track record: there’s no reason why those who put children’s toys in the rubble of Hizbullah’s strongholds in Beirut (or real live children before said strongholds are reduced to rubble) should be above staging their emotions for a self-hating Western media that rewards them so richly with worldwide sympathy. Certainly there is something to be said about people supposedly lacking the bare necessities of life coming out in front of the cameras with quite nicely prepared placards in intelligible (if sometimes colored by the idiom of the area—“Jihad is the Hump of Islam”, for example) English, or throwing eggs at a building. It’s, to make an understatement, a little fishy.

However, as I said, I can’t know what goes in the hearts of people, nor am I (or ever could be) an insider in their societies. For this post I will assume that, beyond the blatant shows and stagings, there is in the Muslims a core of a real feeling of being wronged. I will take their word for it that they remember “the glorious days of the Caliphate and its prosperity”, and are grieved by the comparison of those days to the present, and dream of restoring those happy days. And I will say, frankly, that I think the resultant picture is even worse than if all of their sadness is staged.

Allow me to begin with a few analogies. No one would look down on a new programmer at a small software company who expressed a desire to become its Chief Executive Officer. In fact, such ambition, so long as no foul play is carried out in furthering it, is the lifeblood of economic progress. But if that programmer expressed a desire to become the CEO and make his company as successful as Microsoft, most people would tell him to fly a little lower. And even if that programmer expressed the desire to become the CEO of that currently small company but not bring it to the level of Microsoft thereafter, yet predicated his happiness upon being CEO, most people would tell him to change that attitude, perhaps to get professional help. For he is indeed a pitiful person who puts the fulfillment of high-flying future dreams as the condition sine qua non of his happiness!

The Muslims of today are like that programmer, only with both irrational decisions: they have decided that they could not be happy until they achieve a worldwide Islamic state (the Caliphate)—the political equivalent of the programmer deciding he could not possibly be happy until he becomes CEO of a software company of Microsoftian stature. That’s the situation we have if we assume a core of sincerity to the Muslims’ cries of oppression. Yet instead of doing what anyone would do to that over-ambitious programmer—tell him that even Napoleon wasn’t in his state before he became Emperor—the world reaches out to them in sympathy, calling theirs “legitimate grievances”, even speaking of ending their “humiliation”.

57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, with some of them sitting on barrels of liquid gold—prosperity gained with minimal effort—and they’re still unhappy. Not just their poor, but even their affluent and well-educated, such as the 19 Saudis who flew the planes into the towers. Or perhaps their affluent and well-educated are even more unhappy, because they’re educated enough to know of their religion’s supremacist doctrines and of the non-Muslim world’s current state of still not being under Islam’s rule. It stands to reason: the Marxist narrative of “the haves versus the have-nots” makes no sense when contemplating rich, intelligent Muslims taking part in jihad, but the psychological explanation, made clear by the analogy I have given, most certainly does.

It’s all about being programmed to a feeling of entitlement, as the following Dhimmi Watch post, from November 21, shows:

A Muslim lawmaker on Monday night raged at a catering crewmember of a Chinese restaurant for serving her food with pork.

Rep. Faysah Dumarpa of Lanao del Sur reportedly slapped the crewmember, Virginia Fernando Altamirano, and held a bread knife at her.

[…]

Dumarpa even demanded that Sy fire the crewmen, and that only halal foods be made available in the South Lounge.

That was about pork. Whenever the issue of pork comes out, the Politically Correct are quick to point out that Jews too are prohibited from eating pork, so Muslims should be given the same consideration. It is not mentioned, however, that an observant Orthodox Jew would never go to eat at a non-kosher restaurant in the first place. An Orthodox Jew, if required to eat with non-Jews, would bring his own food from home, together with disposable utensils with which to eat it. He would never think of, let alone say aloud, the idea of requiring the hosts to turn their place into a kosher one. Other religionists find their own ways to accommodate their practices to the rest of society. It’s only the Muslims who think they are entitled, nay, obliged, to make the rest of the world conform to their laws. And when the others dare to resist, they regard it as “oppression”, and go crying, whether in front of the cameras or within their circles, about it all.

I’ve heard the argument that the corrupt dictators ruling most of the Muslim world are to blame for their grievances, and if they were removed, the citizens of those countries would turn them into just and prosperous places, without the grandiose dreams of the worldwide Caliphate. This argument is, ultimately, behind the Bush Doctrine of the democratization of the Muslim world. President George W. Bush set out to make that experiment on Iraq, and the results are plain for all of us to see. Were the argument true, then after the removal of the corrupt autocrat from power in Iraq, the Iraqis would have embraced the newly-installed democracy and started on the way to making Babylon as prosperous as it was in its heyday. Some, perhaps even many, but certainly not a majority, of Iraqis wanted to do that. But for most of them, democracy and the prosperity of merely one state wasn’t on their agenda at all—the religion demanded the installation of Empire, Empire, Empire all over the world, not those small-scale, near-sighted, provincial ideas of those filthy infidels from the USA, daring to tell us what’s best for us.

On the same vein, the hunger of the “Palestinians” is such that the evacuation of all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, or of all the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (G-d forfend), cannot possibly sate, and to believe otherwise is to go against the evidence in front of one’s eyes. Do non-Muslims not understand how insulting it is for Muslims to be told to build homes for themselves and cultivate their existing lands when not all of “Palestine”, and then not all of the world the god of Islam has given to the Muslims, is yet liberated from infidel occupation? Oh, where are all those kind hearts who pride themselves on listening to and being able to understand the other side?

During the Danish Cartoons Affair there were many non-Muslims, even avowed Leftists, who expressed such taboo thoughts as, “Why can’t those people grow up?!” Precisely: that’s the same thing we would say to that programmer who predicated his happiness on becoming the CEO of Microsoft. He is childish and must be told to grow up, to be more mature in his mind as well as body. Instead, we give the political kids of the world nuclear weapons to play with. Victor David Hanson wrote an article called, “The Brink of Madness”. A good read, but I’m not sure about the “brink” part. It’s not yet too late, but we need to snap out of the self-immolating PC narrative if we’re to put an effective resistance before it is.

The Roots of the Mistake

During the last Lebanon War, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen called the state of Israel a mistake. The full quote is:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

The outrage from Jewish quarters was swift, and refutations also followed, such as the one by Carl of Israel Matzav. The outrage was natural and justified, and the refutations praiseworthy; but I bring this issue from more than four months ago because of the meta-issue that hovers above it all.

From my blogging point of view, the view of this war as being a Clash of Narratives first and a Clash of Civilizations second, I find Richard Cohen’s words far preferable to the pap about “Palestinian self-determination” and “the two-state solution” that comes out from our enemies in the West. I view all those specifics, all those platitudes, as masks hiding the real issue: the question of truth. And by “truth”, again I don’t mean specifics (in the sense of, for example, “9/11 Truth”—“the towers show such and such signs of controlled explosion…” etc.), but overarching worldviews. I mean the glasses through which one interprets the barrage of information coming to our mailboxes, radio speakers, TV screens and computer monitors nowadays. From that point of view, Cohen’s categorical comment, “Israel is a mistake”, is a refreshing change.

You’re probably going to find this hard to believe, but brace for it, it’s true: I too once believed Israel to be a mistake. Yes, back in the 1990’s, when I was a Peace Now member, my living in Israel was based on the thought, “I was born here and I’m here now, so I’ll try to make things as good as I can”. It is clear that, back then, I had no special attachment to the land—back then, if I had the choice to press a button switching me to an alternative life in, say, Europe or the United States, I’d have pressed it. And I thought, I really did, that the world would have been better off if the state of Israel had never been set up.

“You thought that way?! You thought just like the ones you now call, ‘Jewish quislings’?! How? Just how could you think that way? And what changed you?” Am I not right to put such questions in the speech balloon of the reader, especially a reader that has read a few other posts on this blog? The answer usually given by converts, from any worldview to any other worldview, is, “I got some sense knocked into me”. Something along the lines of, “I was mugged by reality”. But this doesn’t make for a deep intellectual case. For that purpose, let me give a snippet out of the article, “Time to Stand Up”, by Richard Dawkins. Before I give the quote, I must tell of its context, which in this case is all-important: Dawkins wrote it a few days after 9/11, as a criticism of religion (specifically theistic religion) in general. The part I’m quoting here, about the Jewish state, is only one of many examples he gives as to why religion is the cause of so much evil in the world (that is his worldview).

The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the ‘historic homeland’ of the Jews (though the horrific stories of how Joshua and others conquered their Lebensraum might have made them wonder). Even if it wasn’t justifiable at the time, no doubt a good case can be made that, since Israel exists now, to try to reverse the status quo would be a worse wrong.

I do not intend to get into that argument. But if it had not been for religion, the very concept of a Jewish state would have had no meaning in the first place. Nor would the very concept of Islamic lands, as something to be invaded and desecrated. In a world without religion, there would have been no Crusades; no Inquisition; no anti-Semitic pogroms (the people of the diaspora would long ago have intermarried and become indistinguishable from their host populations); no Northern Ireland Troubles (no label by which to distinguish the two ‘communities,’ and no sectarian schools to teach the children historic hatreds—they would simply be one community).

The argument here about Israel being a mistake is familiar: George Kamiya made it on Salon.com when the smoke from the Twin Towers was still billowing, Richard Cohen made it during the war with Hizbullah, and Peter Preston repeated it for us this month on the Guardian. But Richard Dawkins, unlike them, deserves a measure of respect, because he clearly states the worldview within which he voices this opinion. His opinion that Israel is a mistake does not stand by itself; it is supported by the infrastructure of a worldview contrary to the traditional Jewish one. That traditional view is a necessary ingredient for anyone to be not just a supporter or well-wisher of Israel (which I was during my peacenik days in the 1990’s) but a believer in its rightness from its very conception.

Richard Dawkins, for those who haven’t heard (I say this because he’s outspoken in his opinions), is a zoologist, an evolutionist (as am I, but Dawkins goes beyond the mere scientific fact of evolution and gives it a pile of atheistic midrashim) and a materialist (from which his atheism naturally follows). He believes that all religions are false, that all deities are figments of human imagination, and that all scriptures are completely human works.

It is easy to see how, within this framework, one would write about Israel what Dawkins wrote. A materialistic worldview holds all of history to be a combination of contingencies, therefore it is impossible for one nation to be special in any qualitative way. He probably attributes Jewish survival to the laws of kashrut, as did I back in the day. He finds it ridiculous that G-d should create such a vast universe in order to give one particular group of primates a small plot of land. And he thinks it both risible and alarming that the Jewish people still believe G-d will save them in the End of Days. His holding those opinions is to be commended, in that he follows that which the evidence he has found to date points to. By the same token, of course, his position can be debated, and changed by the presentation of additional, contrary evidence. That is the essence of intellectual discussion. That is how I’ve come from my Peace Now days, when I thought as Dawkins does, to this point, to Religious Zionism.

So the statement, “Israel is a mistake” is one I regard not as an offense (our age is full to brimming with cries of being offended… one should give it up if only as an exercise in keeping one’s mind independent) but as a starting point for a discussion of worldviews. For one does not come to think that Israel is a mistake unless he holds to a worldview that lends itself to that thought. In Dawkins’ case, “Israel is a mistake” is just a logical part of his worldview that religion is a mistake. For our leftist peacenik neo-hippie flower children in the West, “Israel is a mistake” is a logical part of the worldview, “Indigenous is good, imported is bad”, which, together with the decision that “West, Bible, white man” is the importer and “East, any other tradition, any other race” is indigenous, builds the case against Israel.

Conversely, the only way one could believe Israel to be not just worthy to exist now (what an indictment of our times it is that such a belief must be searched for and complimented), but to have been a right and just thing from the start (and by “from the start” one goes to even before the Holocaust), is to hold the worldview that the Torah is G-d’s word. It is the only worldview that could never get shipwrecked on the shores of circumstance. Many are those who in the past viewed the state of Israel as compensation of the Jews for the Holocaust, but now are all too willing to see it dismantled, G-d forbid, as reparations to the “Palestinians”. Many others say the Jewish homeland in the Middle East comes with too high a price, in the form of disturbing world peace even if the wrongs are perceived rather than real. Certainly, for those who view life a short stay between two eternities of nothingness, or for those who worship Mother Gaia, it is easy for the state of Israel to stick out like a sore thumb. “Shove your bronze-age scriptures!”, is the sentiment, superficially a vent of frustration, but profoundly the essence of a worldview that is at odds with that of the Torah.

What do we do? Judaism does not seek converts, so trying to win people’s minds to the Torah worldview is out (that’s G-d’s privilege). But this most certainly is a war of minds. Our age is not an age of dead hearts, it’s an age of deceived minds. Sincere hearts wishing to help, to make the world a better place, are in no shortage—even the imperialistic vision of an Islamic caliphate stems from the belief that the world would be better that way. But people’s hearts follow their minds, their worldviews, and if those are wrong, then the results can be disastrous. This is an age in which every hand typing at a keyboard counts. Therefore, though we, as Jews, do not seek converts to Judaism, we must press on this war of minds by presenting the case for Israel from the full framework of our sustaining worldview. This means that, though the subjects of the Holocaust past and of the merits of Israel in comparison to her neighbors present can still be brought forth, the worldview-based case for Israel, showing its rightness from the start, needs to be made, day by day, more and more forcefully, in order to counter the statement, “Israel is a mistake”. Because the real mistake would be to regard that statement as being rooted in the specific actions of Israel. The truth is that it is always rooted in a worldview, never separate from it. All the talk about the specifics (“oppression of the Palestinians” et cetera) is nothing but a veil (or perhaps a whole burka) hiding that truth away from sight, and therefore from discussion.

Finally, for those who say an appeal to the Jewish worldview would hurt our credibility by bringing “primitive appeals” to the whole discussion: I take after Yediot Achronot right-wing columnist Uri Elitzur in saying that, contrary to what we believe about Man, even Western Man, being driven by modernity and realpolitik, it’s actually the “primitive” arguments that win their respect most. Or stated in another way: in the match between the “Palestinians’” “primitive” arguments (“This is the land of our fathers” and the like) and our “realistic” willingness to give up our lands, our “modern” readiness to give the “Palestinian” narrative of “stolen land of our fathers” a more than fair hearing, we can now see, if we but open our eyes, which is the winner. Let us state our G-d-given case; it is easy for any Jew to believe in, for the events of the last few years have furnished us with more than enough evidence that His words are true. Or have you not noticed how similar the events foretold in the books of the Prophets sound to those in the daily news?

A Clarification on Term Usage

In my previous post I used the term, “extremist Muslims” in opposition to “moderate Muslim”. For those who have read other posts of mine and seen my admonishment of those who use modifiers with the words, “Islam” or “Muslim”, a clarification is in order as to why I did that myself on that post.

My complaint about those modifiers isn’t necessarily that they’re inaccurate. Some of them are accurate, but their problem is they give a false impression. This is not so much the fault of those modifiers as it is the fault of our PC-polluted environment, but if we’re to wake up people, we have to take such ingrained impressions into account. The term, “extremist Muslims”, for example, is accurate, but gives a false impression because, as I said on that post, people in our day are fixated on thinking extremists to be a minority, always and everywhere. On the other hand, the term, “extreme Islam” is inaccurate, because a moderate Islam, as opposed to moderate Muslims, has not yet come into existence.

Here follow a few terms and their problems:

Radical Islam

Half-truth. In as much as Muslims in previous times may have abstained from some Islamic laws, the return to observance of those laws in our age can be considered “radical”. However, this does not mean the Muslims of previous times practiced a different, more tolerant Islam. Analogy: Jewish women wearing pants instead of dresses doesn’t mean those who wear dresses are practicing “radical Judaism”—it means those who wear pants are ignoring Jewish law on that particular.

Militant Islam

Diversion. Though terrorism is high-profile, lending itself easily to coverage on the news networks, violence is only one way of conducting the jihad against the non-Muslim world. The demographic jihad is another way, and it can be just as effective, if not more so, in furthering the goal of turning a non-Muslim state into a shariah-ruled one. The multicultural jihad is yet another, harnessing the West’s enlightened precepts in the service of neutralizing its resistance to the other forms of jihad. The focus on “militant Islam”, like the focus on specific groups such as Al-Qaeda, blinds the non-Muslims to the big picture.

Political Islam

Inaccurate. There is no apolitical Islam. There may be Muslims who separate their religion from their politics, but they cannot preach that separation, for they would then be branded as apostates.

Islamism

Redundant and misleading. The suffix “-ism” is affixed to a noun to signify an ideology or philosophy based on it, for example, “Taoism” = “Ideology of following the Tao”. “Islam” is already an ideology, so the effect is the same as if someone said, “Taoismism”. The purpose of the term is to distinguish between a tolerant, peaceful Islam and the “hijacked” ideology of the radicals; the problem is the former doesn’t yet exist while the radicals have no difficulty proving that their form is the original, unchanged Islam of Mohammed.

Wahhabist ideology

Diversion. Many sources of current Islamic radicalism (return to strict observance—see “Radical Islam” above) can be pointed out, but this doesn’t mean that if all such sources were to disappear today all of a sudden, there would be no Islamic radicalism. A moderate Islam, as opposed to moderate Muslims, cannot arise unless moderate Muslims manage to challenge their extremist brethren on religious, scriptural, canonical grounds.

Islamic reformist

Incomplete information. “Reform” may be to any direction, not just to that of moderation. Even the Protestant Reformation in Christianity, celebrated as being the harbinger of the Enlightenment, was not intended as such, and brought to it only as an eventual after-effect. Reformism in Islam in the past two centuries was what spawned the radicalism of today—a change for the worse, from the non-Muslim point of view.

These are the main faulty terms and modifiers I’ve encountered on Old (also called, “Mainstream”) Media, but often even on New Media (the blogosphere) too. Since the ideological front is the very first step toward victory in this war, my addressing of the problems of terminology isn’t just hair-splitting, it’s an effort to get people out of the PC frame of mind.

Yes, They Exist. No, They Aren’t The Solution

From time to time I take a peek to see what the other side, particularly the lefties, are saying about the blogging efforts of the wakeful in general, and sometimes I stumble upon things about mine in particular. Most of the sentiments are quite the expected stuff: charges of racism top the list, then warmongering, intolerance, stereotyping and the like. Sometimes the word “bigotry” is used instead of “racism”, and a common refrain is to put the words, “A good Muslim is a dead Muslim” in our side’s mouths. It’s the subject of bigotry, stereotyping and the question of the moderate Muslims that I wish to talk about here.

First, I find charges of bigotry toward me far better than charges of racism. Both charges are meant to smear, but the charge of bigotry has a chance of approaching the truth, and it’s a charge I can address, while the charge of racism can’t be true about me even in theory, nor can I address it any more than I can answer the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Also, when I read the aforementioned phrase they put in my mouth, I’m consoled by the fact they say “Muslim” and not “Arab”. Even a cursory reading of my blog will reveal that my arguments are about Islam and its adherents of any race, not about Arabs. None of my writings apply to Christian Arabs, for example, with the exception of dhimmis like Israeli parliament member Azmi Bisharah who still think pan-Arabism is as influential an ideology as it was 30 years ago; and they apply to Arab Muslims, to slanty-eyed Malay Muslims, to black-skinned Somali Muslims and to blond, blue-eyed Swedish converts to Islam equally. I’m tired of repeating this again and again, but here goes: it’s about religion, not about race.

Now to address the argument that does follow from correct initial assumptions: that I’m a bigot who believes all Muslims are evil and want to offer us the choice between conversion and death (and dhimmitude for some of us). I am charged with disbelieving in the existence of good Muslims: of Muslims who lead their religious lives on the “live and let live” model to which all other religions today adhere; who may think all human beings should keep shariah law, but leave the conversion of the non-Muslims to such observance to their deity rather than to humans; who are ashamed of their brethren of whom we hear about on the news every day, and think they are giving Islam a bad name; and who view clashes like those in Israel or Kashmir as nationalistic land disputes that can be solved through negotiations, and through concessions from both parties. Such Muslims do exist, and I have never hinted otherwise. However, I see four problems that nullify any Leftist argument that proposes the abandonment of the war, on the ideological front against Islam as well as on the physical front against the Muslims, on the grounds of the indisputable existence of such Muslims. These are the problems:

1. They are a minority.
2. They can turn to the extremist majority any moment.
3. Many professing moderates are extremists engaging in dissimulation (taqiya).
4. Even true and stable moderate Muslims are powerless to deal with their extremist brethren.

Each point needs elaboration.

First: extremist Muslims, the ones you hear about on the daily news, are the majority. This is substantiated by numerous surveys, by grassroots actions (such as cab drivers refusing to take passengers carrying wine or accompanied by a guide-dog), by the half-hearted way most Muslims condemn Islamic terrorism, always with “but it was because of oppression in…” appended, and last but not least, in the Muslim states, by the existence of education systems that cannot but bring their students to the way of jihad.

Cartoon by Chuck Asay, September 19, 2006. From Townhall.com.

I think this revelation is the most difficult for people today to accept. There is a widely-held belief nowadays that extremists and evil people are necessarily a minority, usually a tiny one (“tiny but vocal” is the phrase often used), while moderates and good people are necessarily the majority. I don’t know for sure where that belief comes from; I’d hazard a guess that 1960’s humanist psychology, which holds the basic good of mankind as its core assumption, is the source of that common error. It is, like Communism, a purely theoretical construct based on the solid ground of wishful thinking. No reason is offered as to why extremists must be a minority; it’s a given. But reality is something else, and reality knows of the situation of extremists and malicious humans being the majority as well as the opposite. Moderate Muslims, then, far from being able to influence their extremist brethren, are in constant danger of being drowned in their ocean.

Second: the phenomenon of Sudden Jihad Syndrome is well-attested. Christian refugees from massacres by Muslims, Israeli Jewish survivors of the Independence War (1947–9) and Hindu immigrants to India from Pakistan can testify that it’s possible to live alongside Muslims for more than a decade on end and then, suddenly, be attacked by those same neighbors and friends. There’s no knowing when a moderate Muslim might be overcome by the need to go back to serving the god of the Koran—it could be on account of a middle-life crisis, it could be after seeing the news pictures from the Backstabbing Brutus Corporation, it could be anything, but the end result is a few shocked non-Muslim neighbors exclaiming, “But he was such a wonderful boy! You could never have thought him capable of such a thing!”

One may object that the phenomenon of sudden religiosity is common to all humans, especially to the other history-based faiths like Judaism and Christianity. This is true, but it is no objection, because the turn to religious observance manifests itself differently than for Muslims. To put it this way: the next time a Jewish ba’al teshuvah goes blowing himself in Muslim centers of population rather than just keeping kashrut and shabbat, give me a call. The next time a Christian born-again demands all women in his neighborhood cover up rather than just hand out Christian Bibles to passers-by, let me know. The next time a convert to Hindutva goes shooting Pakistani Muslim immigrants in London because of “the Pakistani occupation of Hindu lands” (a valid claim, by the way—Pakistan and Bangladesh are both stolen Hindu lands) rather than just holding more traditional rituals than before, tell me as soon as possible. I’m sorry to say this, but the Muslims are unique in that regard. The truth is offensive.

Third: a lot of Muslims profess being moderate for Western media consumption only. The members of CAIR are the first such that spring to my mind, but there are many more. They are quick to rush in front of the microphones standing with a suit and tie, vehemently exclaiming that suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam, with the added, “but resistance of the oppressor is legitimate”; or explaining how turning a woman into a walking piece of cloth is actually the highest form of feminism! Those same people are reluctant to speak out against their overtly extremist brethren, and rush to scream, “RACISM!!!” every time someone in the West does something or even just proposes something in order to defend non-Muslims from said brethren. They are a fifth column in the West—the rational-looking, sensible-sounding adherents who call the non-Muslims to be cool-headed and pragmatic and enter negotiations and concessions toward the Muslims right after every terrorist attack. Such are the ones that demanded change of British foreign policy and recognition of Muslim holidays in Britain after the 7/7 bus bombings. Extremists in moderate clothing.

Finally, the fourth point is that tiny minority of Muslims who are truly moderate and not dissimulating, and who are stable enough to resist the pull toward extremism. When Western intellectuals and policymakers talk of “appealing to moderate Muslims to fight the extremists”, those are the only ones they could truly rely on. But in reality they can’t—not because of the lack of will on the part of such Muslims, but because they’re in the most dangerous situation possible, and because they’re at a loss to present an Islamic challenge to the extremists.

The first point is, that it is the height of irrationality to expect Muslims to fight against the would-be enforcers of worldwide shariah law when even the non-Muslims of the West endanger themselves when doing so. If French philosopher Robert Redeker, after having written just one article critical of the prophet Mohammed in Le Figaro, has to go into hiding following death threats, why should any Muslim dare to do the same? For a non-Muslim like Redeker or Pope Benedict XVI there might be some leeway for an Islamic cleric to call for moderation; for a Muslim who does the same, there is absolutely no appeal—he will be branded an apostate and executed following that (and rest assured any Islamic cleric who speaks against that will himself be branded an apostate). I think non-Muslims should really let go of their calls for action by moderate Muslims and do the dirty work themselves. The true moderate Muslims will not speak out unless they feel they can—unless criticism of Islam brings about the same response as does The Da Vinci Code. That won’t come true until the non-Muslims, in their own states, while they’re still the majority, enforce such a Muslim reaction with a stern and determined hand.

The second point is one that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch constantly makes: the moderate Muslims are ill-equipped to challenge the extremists on Islamic grounds. That’s because of the observation of apostate Ibn Warraq that, although there are moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam. The sources of the Islamic religion are all on the side of the intolerant, jihadi, shariah-forcing Muslim. The situation is similar to that of homosexuals trying to challenge Orthodox Judaism or Evangelical Christianity on religious grounds: it’s just impossible. Homosexuals today benefit from the fact that the explicit command in Leviticus to execute them is not put into practice by either Jews or Christians (Orthodox Judaism has technically put that command on hold until the reestablishment of the Davidic kingdom, but then it will no longer be needed); but the condemnation of their lifestyle is there, and no amount of sophistry can yank it out of the scriptures or their orthodox commentaries. This is not to say religious change is impossible: after all, the Catholic popes steered their church away from anti-Semitism with a host of declarations after the Holocaust. Yet, as we know, traditionalists like Mel Gibson don’t accept those declarations. In Islam, religious decrees against the extremist way are few, equivalents of Mel Gibson in not following such decrees are many, and all it takes is just a handful of extremist Muslims to make the daily news. Polls often show Muslim support for jihad as being in single-digit percentages, but considering that they’re usually taken in countries having millions of Muslims, that’s no comfort at all.

To sum it up: there are moderate Muslims, I have little doubt about that; but, they’re no more relevant to our situation than were Germans who saw Nazism as nothing more but a movement to heal German society internally. Such had no chance of stopping World War II and its atrocities, and the moderate Muslim minority too is not going to help non-Muslims out of the slide toward World War III. It’s up to us alone.

“…With Thousands of Fremen Warriors”

Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint. (Proverbs 29:18)

(Spoiler warning: the post contains book and movie spoilers.)

Frank Herbert published the first Dune book in 1965. Considering that, I would say, in jest but not completely so, that some of the prescience of his main character, Muad’Dib, rubbed off onto his creator. The series handles many subjects, but what I find striking is how it deals with the relations between “sophisticates” and “natives”, with the resultant romanticism and with the fact, still widely overlooked today, that religion can assume a life of its own and cause its adherents to shape reality rather than the other way round.

Besides the book, there’s also the movie Dune, by David Lynch, which, when compared to the books, even just the first alone, does them great disservice. Not that I think Lynch is a bad director—the books contain just too much in the way of word-conveyed matter to be expressed adequately in any movie of reasonable length. The movie, because it needs to focus on actions like most movies do, is simplistic, and on the other hand it adds things not found in the original. Still, it is useful for demonstrating some points—some ideas appear the same in the movie and the first book. What I now engage in is interpretation within the framework of my blog, which means ideological defense of the West in general; creative interpretation, yes, but not that far from the intentions of the author. If anything, his extensive use of Arabic words makes this very relevant to our time.

The setting of the books is essentially the Middle Ages copied and pasted onto a far-future Space Age. Where the Middle Ages had barons, dukes and earls with plots of land as their fiefs, in Dune their fiefs consist of planets. At the center of all this is the desert planet Arrakis, also called Dune, the only source of production for the spice, to which so many in the Imperium are addicted. Through antiquity and medieval times up to the Age of Discovery, Europeans were addicted to the use of spices coming by way of Arabian merchants; and today the modern world is addicted to the oil of Arabia, paying through the nose for it if need be, with the petrodollars providing the lifeblood for Islamic terrorism.

The first book takes places during a transfer of the fiefdom of Arrakis from House Harkonnen to House Atreides, sworn enemies. The Atreides ducal family leaves the comfort of water-soaked Caladan for the desert planet, where every drop must be rationed and taking a shower is out of the question; even then, they’re situated in a relatively isolated form of accommodation, while life just outside, in the desert, is unbearably brutal, and only those who have adapted to it, the natives, the Fremen, know how to survive.

Before House Atreides moves to Arrakis, Baron Harkonnen deviously sets the planet as a final trap for them, and when they’re set he bloodily deposes them and reassumes control of Arrakis. Duke Leto Atreides is captured, but his concubine Jessica and their son Paul escape to the desert and then join the Fremen. Paul subsequently becomes Muad’Dib, leader of the Fremen, and like them in every way. He fights the Harkonnens, and then the Padishah Emperor himself, until his victory and revenge. The books continue with his rule as Emperor and the stories of his children.

Lurking in the background is the constant mention of the Sardaukar. These are the Emperor’s elite troops, described as having been taken as little children to a “hell-world” (Muad’Dib’s phrase) called Salusa Secundus. The few survivors become efficient, remorseless warriors. Muad’Dib relates that the Sardaukar are kept in cohesion by a mystical religion holding them in brotherhood; and although cynicism has started to chip away at that religion by his time, the Sardaukar are still feared, so much so that Baron Harkonnen describes the value of the traitor Dr. Yueh in the words, “…worth more than ten legions of Sardaukar!” It is conventional wisdom that the Sardaukar are nearly impossible to defeat in battle.

Thus much for the introduction. The Fremen are the natives; not actually “sprung from the soil”, yet the first humans there. They recycle their water with the stillsuits they wear. They are scrawny, and contrast themselves with the “water-soft” outsiders. Water is so precious that if one of them dies then his or her water is reclaimed for the tribe. As the most interesting, in my opinion, appendix in the first Dune book, the appendix on religion, says, their customs seem brutal to the outsiders, while to them they are natural, and cause little in the way of a guilty conscience, because their circumstances demand them. When Paul kills one of the Fremen in a duel, his mother asks, reproachfully, “How does it feel like to be a killer?” But for the Fremen this isn’t an issue to philosophize about.

The Fremen are driven by their own mystical religion, planted by the Bene Gesserit, the monastic order to which Jessica Atreides belongs. Paul is regarded as the Mahdi, or Messiah, of which the Bene Gesserit prophesied, much as Hernan Cortez was regarded by the Aztecs as a reincarnation of their chief god. In battle, the Fremen earn the distinction as being the only force able to take upon the Sardaukar and defeat them. That truly spells the death-knell of the current Emperor’s rule.

Paul starts out, in both the first book and the movie, as a well-groomed ducal heir, and ends up in Arrakis as a stillsuit-wearing Fremen. He has “gone native”, much like a certain American who has recently been convicted of treason:

Adam Gadahn dressed up looking the same as the other members of Al Qaeda.

Those individuals can make up a list: “West-soft” heirs of their civilization converted to the ideology of the “Fremen”, and then joining them in every way—the garb, the rhetoric, even the accent, and finally the way of “resisting the injustice of the Harkonnens and the Padishah Emperor” through suicide terrorism.

What drives them to undergo such a total change? The book, and even the movie at one point, hints that Paul Atreides was attracted to the mystic lore of the Fremen on Arrakis, before joining them, before House Atreides had been attacked by the Harkonnens there. The Adam Gadahns of our day begin with a basis of sympathy to “the other”: the post-colonial and multicultural studies that praise “native culture” everywhere and see forcing Western values upon them as the primal sin—the double sin of physical colonialism and cultural imperialism. However, there is more to it than that.

The Atreides family is uprooted from Caladan onto a new location, an entirely different setting. All is changed; the certainty, the guidance, the vision of the past is gone. It could hold as long as House Atreides was safe, but when the Harkonnens took over, the bridges had been burned, and there was no other way for Paul than “going native”.

The West is in a similar plight, of having been uprooted, not physically but ideologically, which is actually worse. Guiding traditions have been eradicated since the 18th century, assuming a frightening rate from the 1960’s onward. John Lennon’s talk about people “living for the day” might be swell for assuaging guilty consciences about wars and overpopulation, but as a vision it is the pits, mainly because it’s not a vision at all. For the beasts there’s no problem in living on carnal drives alone—you never hear them complaining of boredom. For humans, however, such a life could never possibly satisfy. And so, Western man seeks to quell his spiritual hunger in the most brutal ideologies, such as Marxism and Islam. Up to the point of being one of them in all ways, as Adam Gadahn did.

Saad Saadi, a student of the University of Pennsylvania, dressed as a suicide bomber at a Halloween party, posing with the university president, Amy Gutmann. From Michelle Malkin, by way of the Democracy Project.

Nowhere is this plight, this lack of vision, this gloom that leads to such insanity, more apparent than in [much of] Europe. The decision not to have children is taken there for various reasons, with “caring for the earth” the guilt-assuaging excuse, but the end result is the dearth of young people there. Now, this is not to say that old people are worthless. This is to say—and Judeo-Christian tradition holds so too—that there can be no future expectations and dreams for either old or young if there are not enough young people. As Mark Steyn said, given the choice between a small town in the USA with only a few old people left just waiting to die and a teeming city in the Sun Belt with a few old people surrounded by their copious progeny, I know which I wish to set my eyes on. Old age is depressing enough, as King Solomon said; but old age with a tiny future generation is unbearable. Not just for the old, but for the young too, who now feel much as Lot’s daughters did, that “the end of all flesh” has come, and therefore, like them, are willing to do the unthinkable. Like what Gadahn did.

And so it is that small children wearing suicide belts, and little girls dressed in veils, are not seen as an affront to Western values—for these have long been absent—but as something that could satisfy one’s spiritual hunger. In this spiritual desert exemplified by multiculturalist Europe, even carrion makes a good meal.

Scene from the movie Dune: Alia, veiled, waves her knife.

The Fremen are brutal and violent, their customs going against the little of tradition which is still left in our memories, their way of life repugnant; but they are the natives, they are the ones with roots in this cosmopolitan, multicultural world. We who have lost our roots are destined to die the death of the aging, rotting tree with no seeds to bear, unless we re-root ourselves by being like the rooted, ideologically confident Other. And so it is that many Westerners sympathize with the Marxist or Muslim enemy, some even becoming them.

The problem is ideological at its root, so the solution can be only ideological. At the very least, the point of view that Western culture, based in Greek (“Atreides”), Jewish and Christian traditions, is a worthy one, no less than any other, must be allowed. Those who are ideologically confident must show the others why Western tradition offers far more freedom than either the total individualism and taboo-breaking of Sixties Hippiedom or the total collectivism and submission of Communism and Islam. In the next books of Dune, Herbert shows the Fremen in all their frailty: oppressive throughout the Imperium, depopulating whole planets, and riven inwardly by internecine warfare. Westerners sympathize with their “Fremen” because of their current void; were the void to be filled with a reclaiming of Western tradition, the leakage would be stopped, and we might have a chance at stemming the tide. Good luck to us all.

Sanegoria

We are in need of sanegoria. Internally, externally, secularly, religiously, regionally and globally. A sanegor (a Greek loanword) is a defense attorney, the person whose job in a court of law is to present the case for the defendant.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a secular or religious Jew—the obligation of sanegoria can be shown from both non-theistic and theistic perspectives. You don’t have to believe that the kategoria (accusatory lawyering, representing the plaintiff; also from the Greek) comes from various angels in heaven and is heaped before G-d, although that is true; for there is enough kategoria against G-d’s people that you can see before your very eyes. Israel is earthly evidence for the existence of heavenly things and the decisions that take place up there.

From the religious point of view, accusations of Jews upon other Jews are far more readily received in heaven than those of non-Jews toward them. If the accusations are for the purpose that the Jews should repent, as HaShem’s prophets were sent to do, and in the right spirit, as the same were, then well and good; but if it is for the purpose of self-righteousness, of feeling oh-so-elevated above “this pitiful generation”, or even if well-meant but done from an incorrect, unorthodox point of view, then disaster may ensue. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, may his righteous and blessed memory be in our defense, warned against that. He was sanegoram shel Yisrael—the Defense Attorney of Israel, the one who rushed to their defense even when the surface picture didn’t look very defensible. He said, “No one is permitted to say about Israel anything evil, only to show his good”. (Note: the name “Israel” can mean “an individual Jew”, in which case it takes the singular.) The obvious question raised by this statement is, does that mean the Jews are above all criticism? No, it does not mean that; I’ll come to that in full later, so please bear with me.

There is no cause for a Jew to hate another Jew except for those who have clearly cut themselves off. Are the 613 mitzvot to be kept? Yes, they are, but don’t hate those who still don’t keep them, because, in our day, very few and far between are those who do that out of spite toward G-d (the major reasons of today are unbelief in G-d’s existence, which precludes doing anything purposely spiteful toward Him, and laziness, which, while bad, is not malicious). Should an Orthodox Jew be a [modern, state-supporting] Zionist or not? Obviously I think so, but I don’t care so much about those among the Ultra-Orthodox who don’t, because the Muslim enemy’s threats to destroy us no longer take the political leanings of any Jewish inhabitant of Israel into account, and the Western Left is fast dropping its mask of “anti-Zionism” to reveal the full, dyed-in-the-wool Jew-hatred, so all but the Naturei Karta traitors still think they could save their skin by being anti-Zionist. Many Ultra-Orthodox Jews offered prayers for the IDF during the Lebanon War of last summer, and many secular Jews have expressed discontent about the evacuation of Jewish settlements ever since that of the Gaza Strip brought us nothing but Kassam rockets on Sderot. HaShem be praised for bringing us together, although, unfortunately, through dire circumstances.

You can notice I have called the Naturei Karta people, “traitors”. It’s that way all over my blog. Are they not Jews? Yes, but they have cut themselves off. On what basis can it be said that they have cut themselves off? On the basis that they bear words justifying the murder of Jews (G-d forbid) to non-Jewish enemies of ours. In 2004, following their offering of a prayer vigil for Arafat (may he rot in hell for all eternity), a broad group of Orthodox Jewish factions, including the anti-Zionist Satmar, excommunicated them. Why? Because, even if you think Zionism was contrary to G-d’s commands, there’s absolutely no excuse for supporting those who want all your brothers dead. For a Jew to save his skin by climbing upon the corpses of other Jews (G-d forbid) is, without any argument, treason—a cutting of himself off from the Jewish people. It can be undone, it can be repented, but the unrepentant should be given no benefit of trust.

I have thus gotten back to the present-day political situation. HaShem has blessed us Jews with the assurance of the truth of His word through a unique means: not only historical arguments (other religions have those aplenty), but the sight of His decrees taking place in the present. As Yaakov Kirschen of Dry Bones cartoons fame once put it, the dictum, “In every generation they rise upon us to destroy us” is not just something we read in the past tense, something that happened to other people, but the reality before our very eyes and ears, shown and voiced by the Haman presiding over the nuclear plan of present-day Persia. Therefore, even if you [still] don’t believe in G-d and His Torah (don’t worry, you will soon—the weight of reality just can’t be held off forever. Believe me, I tried), you can easily see the case for sanegoria from a secular perspective too: we have ample kategoria from the “angels” of today, the compassionate, moral souls at the United Nations, at the European Union, in the universities all over the Western world, on the media channels of the West, and now poised to take power over the United States of America as well. But as the worst accusers of Israel spiritually are Jews who point out the faults of other Jews for personal gain or for wrong reasons, so too the greatest accusers of Israel politically are treasonous Jews like Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé. And as the kategoria of Jews against other Jews is much more readily received in the courts of heaven, so too the kategoria of Jews, especially Israeli Jews, is much more readily received among non-Jewish enemies of ours (“Moshe Cohen is an Israeli Jew and he says Israel is an apartheid state; because he is an Israeli Jew, he can’t be biased”).

The Muslims have been carrying out the all-important task of ideological warfare well: they have exploited every postmodern, post-colonial, politically correct, anti-racist sentiment of the West, and presented their cases everywhere in a form palatable to every Baby Boomer. The Israel arm of Islamic jihad against non-Muslims, also called the “Palestinians”, have performed splendidly in presenting their case, that appealing case of an “oppressed people fighting a brutal colonialist regime in order to gain their homeland and self-determination”. The world has swallowed it whole, so that, since right after 9/11, and to this very day, Western Leftists not only think, but now unashamedly say, less than 70 years after the Holocaust, that the fault for all the turmoil in the world rests solely upon the Jews (or their state, which amounts to the same thing, no matter how much they claim anti-Zionism to be different from anti-Semitism).

From a secular, meaning worldly, point of view, what can be done? Counter-warfare on the ideological front, of course (the very purpose of my blog). If our side made our case forcefully before the world, if as much effort as possible were exerted for that important purpose, even buying a few media outlets (but wait, wait… weren’t we—the Israel Lobby, you know—supposed to be in control of all the media?). Bring out the big guns, showing the evil of the “Palestinians” here, and of the Muslims worldwide, without stopping. Hammer on and on about the Danish Cartoons, about Thailand, about the Kassam rockets, and other things that could cause cognitive dissonance when compared to the Leftist theories as to “what we’re doing to make them hate us”. Say, unabashedly, unapologetically, that this land is ours—that there is no occupation, because you can’t occupy what is yours. Show the claim of the “Palestinian” nation for the fiction it is. So many things I’d never have done back when I was a peacenik in the 1990’s, but now have no hesitation doing, because this is war, and an ideological war before everything else. If all of us Jews were united in trumpeting our point of view in opposition to theirs, we could win. Our sanegoria against their kategoria.

But we have too many Jews presenting their point of view: Chomsky, Avnery, Atzmon, and recently David Grossman in his Rabin Memorial address. To the credit of the Israeli Jews, Grossman’s talk about “the necessity of return to the negotiations table with the Palestinians” was received much, much less enthusiastically than it could have been even just two years ago. It’s the problem of those lying eyes of ours, I suppose. But it is far too early to rejoice: Europe is still deep in its slumber, America has chosen appeasement of the Muslim enemy because of the fatigue of Bush’s bungling in Iraq (the cause of which was ideological—see the previous post, from November 9th), and, seeing how 9/11 fanned the flames of appeasement rather than the opposite, I have little faith that another Islamic attack on the West (G-d forbid) would not raise the introspective call of, “What did we do to make them hate us?”, once again. We are more badly in need of sanegoria than ever. This necessity has never been more stark: the less sanegoria we have and the more kategoria heaped upon us, especially by misguided Jews like Chomsky, the more acceptable will a Second Holocaust (G-d forbid) be in the eyes of many in the West. Already, we have reached the scandalous situation that it is perfectly acceptable to say of the state of Israel, and only of the state of Israel, that it would be better for the world if it stopped existing (G-d forbid). The masks are falling rapidly: more and more in the West no longer refer to the territories taken in 1967 (the Six-Day War) when they speak of “The Israeli Occupation”, but of those held by Israel in the armistice of 1949 (the end of the Independence War)! The anti-Semites of the West are not even making an effort to hide their Jew-hatred under the mantle of anti-Zionism anymore. HaShem is readying the stage for the final show.

To recap, the secular Jew should feel no less obliged to be a sanegor of his nation than is the religious Jew, for the physical reality—which no seeing eye can deny—is there to mirror the spiritual reality which he still does not believe in. And for any Jew who has had reservations about Zionism from religious reasons: too late for that now, we’re all in the same boat, and Haniyeh (shr"y), Nasrallah (shr"y) and Ahmadinejad (shr"y) don’t care what your opinions on that matter are. Be a defense attorney for Israel (the nation and the state), because your life depends on it from whichever point of view you look at it.

Now to return to the quote from Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (zt"l). No criticism of the Jews at all? Of course not. He could not go against the words of G-d in His Torah, which command every Jew to rebuke another whom he has caught sinning (Leviticus 19:17). But this rebuke must be private. Private in the sense of not washing the dirty linen in public. Private for the purpose of not shaming the other in public, for our sages say, “He who whitens the face of his neighbor in public has no part in the world to come”. Of course, if a transgression involves a whole community of Jews then the rebuke has to be public as far as the community goes—but not any more than that. More public than it needs to be, and shame is brought upon people, with bitterness following, then gratuitous hatred, and then we suffer heavily (G-d forbid). Besides these objections, the issue has special relevance to our age, more than Rabbi Levi Yitzchak (zt"l) could imagine (he passed away to his heavenly rest in 1810).

I’m talking about the media. The media has made it very difficult, if not impossible, to carry out rebukes in the Torah-true way described above. The media thrives on publicizing everything, especially the dirty linen. In that verse in Leviticus there is the explicit prohibition against gossip; the media has its livelihood on breaking that command. Perhaps, if you have read a goodly part of my blog, you think I’ve painted Israel and the Jews in rosy-colored glasses. My answer is that there is much I could write in internal criticism of what goes on in Israel, but I really cannot, because it would transgress G-d’s prohibition of gossip and of public rebuke. Rest assured I speak in real life, in private settings; other than that would be to sin against G-d.

The sinful actions of the media have their effect on the physical landscape, of course: the Muslims have their teams of readers of Hebrew newspapers, and they harvest the publicly self-critical items and articles and columns they find in them and employ them as tools of anti-Israel propaganda. For every news item washing Israel’s dirty linen in public, there is a Muslim propagandist waving them in front of Western eyes, saying, “See? They don’t even behave among themselves. They’re as corrupt as any other nation. So why do you think their state deserves to continue existing?” The media is thus another Jewish kategor providing excellent ideological ammunition for those who wish to destroy us. The media shares that blame among the non-Jews in the West also, having, for example, contributed to Bush’s failure in Iraq by ideologically hobbling him against such vital actions as Christianizing that country. But in Israel this issue is much more accute: this kategoria is leaving us without physical allies, until we reach the state in which to G-d alone are our cries for salvation. And then too we will need a lot of sanegoria in order to tip the scales of judgment to our favor.

Be defense attorneys for Israel, following the example of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, may his memory defend us, Sanegoram Shel Yisrael.

Losing Elections and Wars for Fun and Prophet

This isn’t an actual book yet, as you may well have guessed. It’s an idea, and it begins as most ideas do, with a rough sketch, a preliminary outline. That’s what this post is about. The following tips, if applied consistently, can help any non-Muslim group of people cling to the course toward Islamic overlordship. Many, but not all, of the tips here were applied by the US administration from 9/11 onward and, while not so critical as to lead to the whole shebang of shariah law, have cost political power to those involved. Other tips were carried out elsewhere.

1. Don’t identify the enemy. If you really must, wait until at least half a decade after the attacks.
2. If you have to use the I-word and M-word, always qualify them with a modifier such as “radical”, “extremist”, “militant” or “political”.
3. Don’t turn this into a religious war. That’s the stuff of the Middle Ages, a horrible period in history, unlike our age, in which everything always can be and has been solved through negotiations and material concessions.
4. Don’t turn this into a clash of civilizations. Huntington is a crackpot. You’re much better served by following the ideas of Fukuyama, which are still applicable after the demise of the happy Clinton years.
5. Keep in mind that the other side is just like you. They have the same dreams as you have. The fact that affluent, settled members of theirs suddenly went to suicide bombing missions is irrelevant.
6. Know that the other side is as sensible as you are, and amenable to all manner of rational persuasion. Just remember never to wave cartoons of their prophet in front of their eyes, that’s culturally insensitive.
7. Moderate Muslims (the majority of them) should be relied upon to defuse the threat of their extremist brethren (most definitely a tiny minority). They can, of course, be trusted to speak without fear of reprisals, unlike Pope Benedict XVI or Robert Redeker.
8. The main root cause of Arab rage is the immensely huge Jewish Empire threatening to leave them without any lands in the world whatsoever.
9. You should court the other side by using their own language, such as speaking of their “humiliation” under the jackboot of the aforementioned Jewish Empire.
10. Solve all problems by addressing the material cause: the Palestinians are clamoring for a state of their own, and the French immigrant youths are driven to desperate acts by their poverty and the discrimination of the white ruling-class.
11. Work with the other side. If need be, install even a general or Prime Minister from their number to carry out negotiations.
12. Get to know the sacreds of the other side. Mandatory reading: Esposito, Armstrong, Esmay, and anything coming out of CAIR. Stay away from racists like Spencer and Ibn Warraq.
13. Keep in mind that no culture is better than any other, except the oppressive culture of the West, so be ready to allow adulteresses to be stoned anywhere in the world as part of cultural understanding. Don’t be a racist imperialist imposing his values over an innocent world!
14. Upon hearing of another attack, remember: it’s all about self-determination! Every nation wants it, and every nation should have that right (except one nation that was born in sin and is the root cause of all the troubles in the world today). The idea that people could actually be fighting against the self-determination of others is a paranoid thought advanced by the colonialists to justify their imperialistic jingoism.
15. Guerrilla warfare can’t be won. It just can’t. So whenever a people rises against you with acts of insurgency, it’s best to comply with their demands right away.
16. All people want democracy. Once gained, democracy is here to stay. There has never been a case in history where democracy was used by the people to elect leaders completely opposed to it.
17. Democracy is about majority rule. More than 50% of the voters deciding for shariah law means that’s what there’s going to be.
18. When attacked, do not, repeat, do not cave in to righteous anger. Knee-jerk reactions to the attack, even if they look sensible in the passage of time, should always be rejected. Especially if they’re by Ann Coulter.
19. Listen to everything the other side says. When told to change the name, “Operation Infinite Justice” to “Operation Enduring Freedom”, or when called on for racism upon hanging effigies of Osama Bin Laden, that’s the way to go. You don’t want to give people reasons to hate you.
20. World opinion is the ultimate, infallible arbiter of right and wrong. Keep that in mind in all your dealings.

Colonists Of Their Motherland

Anti-Zionist (=anti-Semite) poster Christopher Day on Daily Kos:

“[…] Israel is a settler colony engaged in the ongoing displacement of an indigenous population from their lands.” (screenshot)

To each age, until the End of Days, may they come speedily amen, its own form of Jew-hatred: the 19th century saw the rise of pseudoscientific racial theories when the old “Christ-killer” myth had turned stale, and the end of the 20th century gave rise to anti-Zionism and “opposition to Jewish colonialism” as the acceptable form today, now that racism-based arguments are taboo. For the argument that the Jews are not allowed a state of their own, an argument that sparks outrage when leveled against any other nation, the narrative of “opposition to colonialism” is the most frequent justification given. This is the argument I will now address.

Colonialism necessarily assumes two things: a motherland and its colonies. Settlers emigrate from their motherland into a different land and inhabit areas of it, which are the colonies. The colonies may or may not keep ties with the motherland, but one thing is certain: if the colonies already belonged to another people at the time of colonization, then the colonists will be, at the very least, reminded of their being colonists, of their having arrived from a motherland.

In many cases, the colonists are not accepted by the previous inhabitants, and struggles may ensue to drive them away. If those inhabitants are generous, they would just expel the colonists back to their motherland rather than massacre them. The colonists themselves may, if their toll proves too high, opt to return to the motherland of their own accord. The crucial point is that the colonists have a motherland to fall back onto.

A well-known example is Algeria: it was conquered by France in 1830, and colonized by the French subsequently. By 1960, there were over a million colonists (called pieds-noirs) in Algeria, many of them the third generation of French colonists to be born in Algeria. Algeria was, as far as they were concerned, their native land. But in 1962, Charles de Gaulle granted Algeria independence, and as the Oran Massacre of that year had made it clear that the colonists would not be treated generously if they decided to stay, thousands of pieds-noirs fled to France—to the motherland.

So now world opinion posits Israel as a settler colony and the “Palestinians” in the place of the Algerians. However, analogies should always be checked for reasonable accuracy if they are to be given weight. If Israel, then, is a colony, what is the motherland?

This isn’t an area Leftists like to go; understandably, because if you press them to investigate that issue, they realize the analogy breaks down. There is no motherland for the Jews to return to. That is because (take a deep breath) Israel is the Jews’ motherland!

For 2,000 years the Jews were neither in their motherland nor in colonies—they were in exile. Their hosts rarely approved. In 19th century Europe, it was not just the first Zionists, but also many of the anti-Semites of the age, who called for an exodus of Jews from Europe and “back to Palestine”. You can see it even in German road-signs just before World War II: “Juden nach Palästina!”, say those signs. How ironic, then, that the anti-Semites of our day are screaming, “Jews out of Palestine!” As Yediot Achronot right-wing columnist Uri Elitzur once quipped, commenting on Israel’s having to play the World Cup as a European rather than Asian team, “We’re here in Asia because the Europeans didn’t want us in Europe, and we’re playing there as a European team because the Asians didn’t want us as an Asian team” (by “here in Asia” he was referring to being physically situated in Israel, and by “the Asians didn’t want us” he was referring to the Arab ban of Israel from, among other things, participating in Asian sporting events).

Now the anti-Semites of the world are saying we aren’t entitled to our motherland. The “generous” (or should that be “more naïve”) of them say the Jews ought to accept life under an Arab-ruled “Palestine” (in other words: go back to experiencing the Diaspora, but in our historical land), and the less generous (I would say, “less caring to hide their Jew-hatred under a semblance of consideration”) would say the Jews should go back where their Zionist ancestors came from: Europe, Asia and so on. Repatriation, as if Europe and Asia had ever been our motherlands. As if Europe had never been the site of genocide for us, and as if Moroccan, Iraqi and Yemenite Jews had never suffered the humiliation (true humiliation, not the manufactured tears the “Palestinians” sell to the West’s TreasonMedia!) of life as dhimmis under Muslim rule. A return to exile, that’s what that demand is! But who cares about those facts.

The Leftists do not want to accept that the state of Israel is the Jewish motherland, and that any other place is exile. When the French pieds-noirs felt the pressure in 1962, they had the motherland, France, to flee to. Jews in Israel have nowhere to go. Not to Muslim Asia, not to anti-Semitic, Muslim-accommodating Europe, and even the safety of Jews in the USA cannot be taken for granted (the American Left is becoming bolder and bolder in its displays of anti-Semitism each day, and ready to side with the Muslims, whether out of appeasement or solidarity). Secular Zionism was born of the recognition that there was no future for the Jewish nation in exile, that the line, “Berlin is Jerusalem for us” was wrong-headed (and indeed it was proved to be so in the end). Zionism’s deep roots in the Jewish religion are expressed in the incessant reminders, for example in the three daily prayers, that the Land of Israel (yes, the Land of Israel—not “Palestine”, named for the Philistines by the Romans in 135 CE, in order to eradicate the memory of Judea, of the original Jewish possession) is that which the Jews set their eyes on, with Jerusalem, Zion, as its capital. After 2,000 years, G-d has kept His promise to gather His people back into His land, no matter the means by which it was carried out (secular Zionism—a stumbling-block for the Naturei Karta traitors).

However, in the end of this, I did find a Leftist argument addressing mine. It was on the Daily Kos thread “The Problem of Anti-Semitism”, which I responded to a while back but has since been deleted (chalk up another point for having your own blog). It was an excerpt from Evan Jones’ anti-Zionist blog Alert and Alarmed, which is itself slated to shut down soon, according to its November 6th post. And the excerpt itself is part of a series of letters to the editor for the loony-lefty (and anti-Semitic) British newspaper The Independent. The letter is dated to August 18, 2006:

(writer) Colin Readman, Twyford, Berkshire

Sir: I read Alex Swanson’s letter (17 August), which stated that the descendants of the Jews should have the right of return to Palestine, and remarked how relevant it was to my own life, as I had just returned home to find a nice young Welsh couple occupying my house. They claimed that their Celtic ancestors had lived here 1500 years previously, and therefore it now belonged to them.

Naturally I accepted this reasonable argument, and I am now negotiating my move back to the forests of my own ancestral Saxony. Of course, I’d better hurry, before over 200 million “returning” Americans overwhelm the European housing market.

On the original Daily Kos thread, the letter was given under the title, “Your Lease Is Expired!” That’s an apt summary of the argument of that letter, and that issue, the issue of “lease expiry”, is what I wish to address now.

The argument is that, if a long time has passed since a particular nation lost hold of its land, it loses its claim to it in favor of those who have gotten hold of it in the meantime. When pertaining to the Jews and Israel, the argument is somewhat of an improvement (comparatively speaking)—here is an admission that the Jews were indeed first, thus even more deserving of being considered “indigenous” than the Palestinians. But, of course, the argument swiftly defuses that concession with the declaration that the long duration of time has voided the Jews’ claim to possession of the land.

It looks good (and, in all fairness, I have to give Mr. Readman props for the attempt—Leftists usually just regurgitate tired old stuff instead), but it suffers from a fatal flaw: the duration after which “the lease expires” is left hanging at mid-air. Or, to put in another way: how many years are required for a nation’s lease upon their original land to expire?

You see, this “Your Lease Is Expired!” argument can be applied to many more situations than that of Israel. More: it could even be a double-edged sword that cuts at the “Palestinians”. Leftists are all too eager to cry about the “dispossession” of the “Palestinians”. By their own admission, the “Palestinians” left their lands for a duration of time. If we take 1947 to be the year they left, that would be nearly 60 years of not living on their lands (in reality, many areas within Israel’s internationally recognized borders, such as the Galilee, are densely inhabited by Arabs undisturbed by the events of 1947–9. But don’t tell anybody, because it leaves the collateral damage of lots of anti-Israel arguments behind it). Now tell me this: why are 2,000 years of exile enough to void the lease, while 60 years of exile aren’t? Or, again: just give me a number signifying the duration after which a lease expires.

Let’s take this even further, going back to Algeria: as I said, a lot of the French colonists born in Algeria by 1962 had had their families there from as far back as the last quarter of the 19th century. Yet our dear moonbats would say they had to leave Algeria in the name of “decolonial justice”, “reparations”, “giving the lands back to their rightful owners” and all that. But, but… they’d been there for nearly a century! They have their new lease! Or maybe let’s go to the Native Americans: a lot of them have now been absent for more than a century from places they previously inhabited. Are those places theirs or not? The Leftists aren’t settled on that question: some say no, it’s too far back in the past, let bygones be bygones et cetera; some say yes, they were dispossessed just like the “Palestinians”, and just like them they’re still entitled to return to whatever areas they wish.

The fact that the Leftists themselves are divided on this question proves my point: they can’t say what the expiry date of a lease of land is. They can’t because it’s not even a legal point, it’s an ad hoc political device tailored to fit current needs. They don’t want their own homes to be reclaimed by Native Americans, so the Native Americans’ lease is expired; they want to stick it to the USA, so the Native Americans’ lease is still active; they hate Israel and the Jews, so the Jews’ lease is expired and that of the “Palestinians” is still active. That’s all there is to it. As with their off-the-wall alliances (hippie nudists with Muslim burka-pushers), their arguments are fashioned by the conveniences of the day.

They can call us colonialists, but we have G-d’s word and history shouting that Israel is our motherland. And they can argue our lease is expired, but they can never back it up with any consistent principle, and we have G-d’s promise that our “lease” will never expire. If they really want to clear things up, they had better take it to G-d. I do have an idea that He doesn’t particularly like people calling Him a liar. He keeps His promises—always has in the past, always will in the future.

Antiunfalsifiabilitarianism

In my regular trawling of the blogosphere for anti-Israel arguments, I stumbled upon the blog Tikun Olam, belonging to Richard Silverstein. I could fill a post and a half with an account of the outrages I have read there; suffice it here to say that the proprietor is a Jewish kumbayista, a left-wing Jew who still believes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that before us is a land dispute between two nations, solvable by negotiations and concessions (on the part of mainly one of the sides—you guess which), obstructed by “imperialistic aggression” (on the part of one of the sides—you guess which). I posted a few comments on one of the threads, following a link on LGF (Silverstein derives delight from hearing of FBI visits to Charles Johnson), but quickly withdrew, after an act of censorship (same story as on Daily Kos). I still read his blog as part of my monitoring, and the other day I found an entry worth commenting on, called “IDF: Killer of Women and Children—in Cold Blood”. You can see here quite clearly how the outrage begins with the title. But this post is a commentary rather than a fisking, and it is of general anti-Muslim interest and not just from the Jewish outlook. Also, it concerns one of the comments to the post, and Silverstein’s answer to it, rather than the post itself. Commenter “yosef” says:

Now lets look at the facts. Israel withdrew 100% from Gaza but rocket attacks have continued. This operation is an attempt to stop these attacks.

To which Silverstein replies:

Your comment is typical of the bankrupt thinking of many Israelis, I’m sorry to say. Israel “withdrew” from Gaza. How did it withdraw? Did it allow Gaza to maintain commerce, an independent economy, transportation, free government? Of course not. After withdrawal, Gaza was no more “free” of Israel or Israelis than before withdrawal.

Of course rocket attacks continue. As long as Israel does not negotiate a final settlement with the Palestinians in which it agrees to return to 67 boundaries, resistance to Occupation will continue. (All emphases mine —ZY)

Besides a little taste of the outrage of having a fellow Jew—one whom the “Palestinians” would not spare from their sword in distinction to any other—spouting the enemy’s lines, there is here the general dhimmi flaw of unfalsifiability: he does not let the evidence, such as the side-by-side comparison of the greenhouses in the Gaza Strip before and after the Jewish evacuation, change his mind, and worse, he moves the possible point of falsification every time the evidence runs counter to his preconceived notions.

In August 2005, the government of Israel withdrew all Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip—all, with not a single man, woman or child excepted. The end-situation of it was an ironclad case for the “Palestinians” to stop their hostilities against the state of Israel. Yes, there was still the West Bank to evacuate, but that would have been a fait accompli by now if they had used the evacuated Gazan territories for the purposes of building their homeland (the narrative they have peddled to the Western TreasonMedia since the 1960’s). But instead, they destroyed the greenhouses, and they used the evacuated territories for rocket launching grounds and for terrorist training camps. And they’re arming themselves to the teeth with supplies from that successful peace partner of ours, Egypt. Peace for our time indeed.

The destruction of the greenhouses and the continuation of warfare against Israel, even onto Israel’s internationally recognized territories, are the facts. Now comes the question how to take those facts, how to interpret them. For me, those facts were the last (or nearly-last; make the recent Lebanon war the last) nail in the coffin of my reared Leftism: if in the past I had momentary doubts about the willingness of the other side to make permanent peace with the state of Israel, and over the years the doubts grew and grew, now the doubts had become the position which I hold with certainty. It’s very simple: you can’t go yammering for years about how you want a homeland of your own, only to use territories given to you for a homeland as terrorist camps rather than tilling fields, and still maintain your credibility. It’s a matter of walking the walk after you’ve talked the talk. I can’t believe how anyone can see it otherwise.

But they do. People like Richard Silverstein do see things otherwise. He takes the rocket attacks as justified because Israel didn’t “negotiate a final settlement with the Palestinians in which it agrees to return to 67 boundaries”. He has shifted the falsification point to which most Israeli Jews have adhered: to hear tell most Israeli Jews throughout the 1990’s, and up until August 2005 at the latest, the “Palestinian resistance to occupation” was justified as long as we were holding all “their” lands. They (including me) said, let’s give them the beginnings of their homeland—enough to start realizing their state dream of “self-determination” (to use a popular PC-ism). Their self-governance would be verified or falsified. In the first years since the Oslo Accords, it was argued that the mainstream of the other side, represented by Arafat (shr"y), wanted peace but Hamas was trying to torpedo it; but now, with the old fish dead and Hamas in power, and the whole of the Gaza Strip given to the Hamas-led “Palestinian Authority” as concession, all former excuses have turned to wear thin. Except for the likes of Silverstein.

So what would it take, Richard? You say we withdraw completely from all the territories Israel took in 1967 and then we’ll have peace, right? But what if we do that and they still keep on attacking us? What will you say then? Knowing Silverstein’s type, I know there’ll always be another excuse, another moving of the falsifying criterion, until it is clear that their theories do not stem from the facts, but are doctrines that need to be maintained in the face of all odds. And that isn’t rational.

Bush said a few days ago, quoted by Mark Steyn, “If it’s not the Crusades, it’s the cartoons”. That’s Bush in his true strength. He could have been the Churchill of our generation if he had the nerve to resist paying thought-tax to the PC Police. Alas, the 1960’s hippies are now the powerful Establishment, and they need to be overthrown first. The PC sentiment, like Silverstein, is ever attentive to the “legitimate grievances” of the Muslims, up to the point where none of the common criteria for legitimate grievances are met. The example I quote most is Thailand: none of the Leftist arguments as to the causes of “Arab rage” apply to it. First of all, the jihadis blowing banks up and shooting at monks in Thailand aren’t Arabs, they’re South-East Asians just like their Buddhist victims. There’s no occupation, no “apartheid”, no support for the Iraq War or Israel—it’s a veritable desert for those Leftists accustomed to sustaining their support for “the other” by drinking of the fountain of “legitimate grievances”. What are we going to do with those facts?

What are we going to do with the British Muslims, polled as the most hostile to their country despite having received the best treatment among all Western host states? What are we going to do with the Intifada going on in Paris, the capital of a country that has been kissing Muslim derrière and consistently siding with them against the American and Zionist pig-dogs ever since the late 1960’s? What are we going to do with Rushdie, with Jyllands-Posten, with Pope Benedict XVI, with Neuenfels, with Redeker, with Straw, with Santanchè… and on and on with that list of people who have done nothing but say words, words, words against Islam? Where do we now insert the falsification criterion for the proposition of “reaction to imperialism-driven grievances” or “resistance to colonialist oppression”?

The principle of falsification is central to science, to the endeavor of seeking knowledge about the world. Without the ability to falsify, one’s propositions are statements of mere personal opinion. As a slight digression, skeptics of religion have often said that religions making historical truth claims (such as Judaism) are in a disadvantage compared to experiential religions (such as Gnosticism), because historical scholarship can falsify them; I say that, although it must be admitted to be a risk, it lends greater credibility to the religions in question, because they are ready to take the challenge to prove they are rooted in objective reality rather than subjective feeling. A religion confined to subjective experiences lays no claim to have anything to do with objective reality. Falsification, meaning the ability for anyone to inquire as to the truth of a claim, is the bedrock of gaining knowledge about the reality common to us all.

I know that I once believed as Leftists do, believed in the possibility of defusing all conflicts by listening to the complaints of the other side and addressing them; but I know also that, even in my most convinced days as a Leftist, I posited criteria for falsification, saying, “If the other side does X, then my theory is right; if not, then it’s wrong”. My criteria for falsification were reasonable: those who cry, “Homeland!”, should build a homeland as soon as they get their chance. They didn’t. So I had to rethink my position.

Between the shock of the October 2000 Intifada and the final certainty of the last Lebanon War, my turning-point was the Danish Cartoons. For the Danish Cartoons, very much like the plight of the Buddhist Thais, are a hammer that breaks the glass of the conventional thinking in terms of struggle for material resources. If you were one of those who called for addressing the other side’s grievances after 9/11, then you’re still within the bounds of reason; but those who have stayed untouched by the Danish Cartoon Jihad are—I can’t put it any other way—blind to all reason.

I hope Bush can muster the will to leave all the talk about a “religion of peace”, and turn to fight the “Islamic fascists” with determination. If it is too late for him to become our Churchill, let the way for that person be paved by his insightful, wakeful, rational quote:

“If it’s not the Crusades, it’s the cartoons.”

And let the other side listen to our grievances, our truly legitimate grievances, for a change. Let them know that we resent being oppressed by their imperialistic religion, and that we intend to resist it until they retreat from their plans.

The Legacy of the Assassination

Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, may HaShem avenge his blood, was assassinated eleven years ago (exactly by the Hebrew calender; on November 5, 1995 by the reckoning of the civil calendar). This is my tribute. I will say forthwith that the Oslo Accords of 1993 were a mistake, but that the mistake of 1995 was the expression of that thought with a gun, and with words inciting the use of the gun, instead of intellectual argumentation. That is the concisest summary I can give of my position.

Did the assassination kill the “Peace Process” of those days? Apart from the obvious disclaimer that I am venturing into the territory of counterfactuals, I would say, in hindsight, that I think not. Arafat’s plan to break the treaties was voiced as far back as the same year the Oslo Accords were signed, in a summit conference in Johannesburg where he announced they would have the same weight as the Hudaybiyah Treaty signed by Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, a ten-year treaty with the pagan Meccans which he canceled after less than two years. Had Rabin not been assassinated, he would probably have met the fate of Ehud Barak: ousted by a right-wing candidate in elections soon after the outbreak of enemy violence. The effects of the assassination, then, were internal rather than external: they set the new rules for disagreement, even on hot topics, rules which I stand by and advocate.

This post will now dwell on two points: first, that the pre-assassination error does not turn into a right move because of the assassination, and second, that the disputation with disagreeing Jews, even those who actively aid the enemy, is never again to be done the way Yigal Amir (shr"y) did toward Rabin.

I supported the Oslo Accords back in the day. Rabin won the 1992 elections in a landslide, the great majority of Israeli Jews having gotten tired of war and ready to repeat the success of the Begin–Sadat land-for-peace deal.

The 1993 treaties were a grave mistake. It was possible to know it already then, with the aforementioned speech of Arafat and with the bus bombs starting in 1994. However, there were circumstances which, although they clearly do not excuse those treaties, lighten the culpability of those who supported them: the success of the peace treaty with Egypt, as I said; the passage of time since 1947, which made for the assumption that the other side too had grown the will to agree to a partition of the land; and, most of all, the pre-9/11 innocence, which meant people at that time could not even imagine the Intifada of the “Palestinians” to be just a small part of a great Clash of Civilizations, the war between shariah-enforcers and shariah-resistors. The Oslo Accords were a gamble on the lands of Israel, a gamble because there was no guarantee that the enemy would ever reward Israel’s cold, hard cash (lands) with their airy, lip-blown promises (peace). (Such is the nature of haggling in the Middle Eastern peace souk.) It was only the circumstances of the day, the lack of experience, that made them acceptable to the majority of Israeli Jews, including the writer.

Those relieving circumstances are now absent. The Second Intifada of October 2000 was the first shot in conclusively proving the worthlessness of those treaties; 9/11 showed us the long grasp Muslims are capable of in practicing their religion; the Danish Cartoon Jihad razed to the ground the idea that there was ever a rational, civilized partner for negotiations in front of us; and the firing of Kassam rockets upon Sderot after the full evacuation of Gaza in August 2005, and finally the Lebanon War of July and August 2006, was the final nail in the coffin of belief in the effectiveness of Neville’s art with regard to our enemies. There is no Israeli Jew who has eyes to see but can stay with the same beliefs of 1993. Indeed, the assassination did nothing whatsoever to shift the Israeli Jewish public’s opinion away from the belief in the Oslo Accords, but rather it was—and that is a point that cannot be stated enough—the treachery of the Muslim enemy and the injustice of world opinion that have done, more than a thousand right-wing election campaigns, to move the Israeli Jewish public to the Right en masse. A friendly reminder to all those left-wing kumbayistas who think their actions could force Israel’s hand to “end the occupation” and all that jazz.

But there are, unfortunately, among those left-wing kumbayistas quite a few Jews, even Israeli Jews (who had assumed the ostrich position from October 2000 onward—I can’t think of any other explanation for such intransigence in the face of the facts). Noam Chomsky and George Soros stand at the top (or should that be the bottom) of that group, with Uri Avneri, Gilead Atzmon, Amira Hass, Tanya Reinhart and Yossi Beilin, to name just a few, gracing the anti-Israel, pro-Islamofascism scene frequently. And many more of no such fame (yet), such as Democrat-supporting Jews joining Jimmy Carter in calling Israel an “apartheid state”.

If there is one thing good that has come from this grave sin, the assassination of Rabin, a sin for which G-d decreed the destruction of the First Temple, it is the recognition of all (or, at worst, nearly all) Jews of the need to change the way of disputing such Jews. I have castigated them for engaging in actions that contribute to Jews being killed (G-d forbid), in Israel especially, but even in the Diaspora. It is in deep anger and great frustration that I read their writings, their lies, their sympathy with the enemy, their total weighting of the scales to Israel’s guilt, their lack of responsibility. In view of this, I am quite sure that if Rabin had not been assassinated, with all the national trauma to follow it, I would now be calling for action against them just as surely as Pat Robertson once called for action against Hugo Chávez. But the assassination formed a taboo: even an arch-quisling such as Noam Chomsky is not to be harmed, not to be incited against with violence. After November 5, 1995, all are agreed that intellectual argumentation is the only lawful course for dispute.

I am not in favor of word-policing; it is Orwellian, it is the first step toward a thought-police. There are words that should be watched because they drive some hearers to act, for example, most graphically, the fatwas given out by Muslim leaders in the Rushdie and Danish Cartoons and Papal Quotation affairs. But those are very, very clear cases; in most cases, the cries of “Incitement!” and “Hate crime!” are but ruses to silence an opposing view. When I call Chomsky a quisling, I mean nothing by that but to point out the fact of his siding with the enemy against his Jewish brothers; I do not call to silence him in any way, not even intellectually, let alone by violence. In a similar way, I do not care about being called an Islamophobe; but the charge of “Islamophobia” often carries the threat of intellectual silencing (or worse) after it, therefore it goes beyond a statement of fact or opinion. Anti-defamation activity, though a far cry from the silencing an opposing view with a gun, partakes of the same mistake of ending intellectual disputes the easy way.

But we are in an age in which free speech—the right to say things that may offend people—is vital. Let the mistake of the Oslo Accords be decried, or the wisdom of the Oslo Accords be extolled, on blog posts and not through the barrel of a gun.

Grant Rabin his heavenly rest, O God.