A Brief Commentary on l’Affaire ADL

By now, probably everyone has heard about the disgrace wherein the Anti-Defamation League, in order to stay in good terms with Turkish officials, refused to condemn the Armenian Holocaust of 1915–8. The topic, particularly its moral implications, has been covered to the utmost in the Jewish blogosphere, and is one of the very rare occasions where I can agree with the diaries at Daily Kos (though the piggybacking of some of the commenters there in order to score their usual anti-Israel points remains as despicable as always). All I can add from the moral point of view is an analogy: it would be as if I were to cozy up to Stormfront just because of the prospect of them being allies in the resistance to Islam. (In practice, the Stormfronters are more likely to be allied with the Muslims, for the same reason Hitler was: their hatred of the Jews is stronger than their hatred of non-“Aryans”; but I had to bring up the Stormfront example, because their being the scum of the earth is a pretty wide concensus.) I hate Islam intensely, but no so much as to sell my soul.

On August 21 the ADL issued a statement, an feeble attempt at damage control. The closing paragraph of the statement reveals the thought-pattern behind the whole disgraceful affair:

Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

It was upon reading this that I felt the need to write this post. I cannot add much to the slew of criticisms from the moral point of view, but this pragmatic standpoint is right in my ballpark. The ADL’s pragmatic case for supporting Armenian Holocaust Denial is totally lacking.

I will say it forthright: Turkey is a “staff of bruised reed” (Hebrew mish’enet kaneh ratzutz, which the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel called Egypt, in whom the Judeans trusted to save them from Babylon), as is any other Muslim-majority country. Yes, there may be a large portion of secularists loyal to Kemal Atatürk’s original vision, but the recent electoral victory of Islamic theocrats there did not appear from thin air, there had to be an even larger portion of people who are opposed to that vision. Yes, the military can reverse the rise of an Islamic government by a coup, as happened already in the past, but if a military coup is all that stands between a secular, pro-Western regime and a shariah-ruled, jihad-supporting one, then the state cannot be said to be a reliable ally, let alone worthy of making such soul-sacrifices to as the ADL just did.

The transformation of Iran from pro-Western to jihad-supporting in 1979 should be the most instructive example: wherever there is a Muslim majority, there is a push for the implementation of shariah and for making the state a base for the global jihad. Pro-Western puppets like Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Abu Mazen of the “Palestinian Authority” (oxymoron) are no good in countering that, for they are both hated by the Muslim populace for their collaboration with the non-Muslims, and, in an attempt to reduce that hatred, compromise on their aid to their non-Muslim benefactors (witness Musharraf’s gift of Waziristan to the jihadis a few months ago). No Muslim-majority state can ever be relied on for help against “radical Islam”, for the enemy is Islam itself, of which the jihadis are not an aberrant strain but the mainstream (active jihadis may number very few, but their supporters make up the majority of Muslims worldwide).

If it is pragmatic benefits we are discussing, then the best course of action, pragmatic as well as idealistic, is to support the expansion of non-Islamic states and steps toward de-Islamification of new territories taken by them, whether it be mass expulsion or an aggressively maintained system of incentives for leaving Islam and obstacles in the way of practicing it. It is far better pragmatically to support Greece and its retaking of former Greek lands in present-day Turkey, and from the other side, to support Armenia and its expansion. To support Turkey, even if it now seems Turkey can still hold on to Kemalian secularism, is to commit a long-term folly, just as it was Clinton’s folly to intervene in favor of a Muslim state in the Balkans (Bosnia), and the current Bush’s folly to try to democratize Iraq instead of de-Islamifying it. Throughout all the world, it is not in the interests of non-Muslims to support Muslim-majority states. Islam is the enemy, and politically incorrect and culturally imperialistic models are required in order to repulse the threat of subjugation to shariah law.

But don’t expect the ADL to alight upon these truths. The ADL is basking in former glory; it is now irrelevant, or nearly so, because it is trapped in the old view of anti-Semitism, in fighting the same enemies as it did decades ago. The ADL devotes precious little effort to shedding light on (let alone combating) the New Anti-Semitism, Jew-hatred in the form of anti-Zionism, of the Left, and the Left/Islam alliance that is working in tandem to make a repeat of the Holocaust (God forbid). Furthermore, the ADL’s mode of operation is now widely copied, by the enemies of the Jews in particular and of Western civilization in general, one of the most prominent examples being the Council for American–Islamic Relations (CAIR). This is a different age with different realities than when the ADL came to be, and the task of fighting for freedom and against Jew-hatred must be entrusted to those who are cognizant of the present situation. The ADL Affair serves as a demonstration of that truth.

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[UPDATE, August 23, 2007] Seppuku-committing Jew Philip Weiss suggests that the reason for ADL’s stance was to stall the coming into awareness of the expulsion of the “Palestinians” in 1947–9, in the course of Israel’s War of Independence. A grain of salt with everything such people say, but assuming for the sake of argument: genocide and expulsion are not equivalent. Advocating mass expulsion, as I do incessantly, is nothing to be ashamed of when such an enemy is concerned—it wasn’t immoral to expel all the Sudeten Germans in 1945, and it’s not immoral now to expel all the Muslims from within and near non-Muslim states over all the world.

I have no problem with what happened in 1947–9. If anything, the only flaw was it wasn’t done thoroughly enough, and not at all when we took more of the Land of Israel in 1967. HaShem willing, we’ll do it right next time.

And to the Leftards: it’s either mass expulsion of the Muslims or “I for one welcome our new scimitar-wielding overlords”. You may think there are other options, but you’ll find out there aren’t any.