Maintained Fiction

“I will concede your point,” say some of the more moderate pro-“Palestinian” debaters (invariably two-staters, and regarding themselves “both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine”), “that the Palestinians as a nation are no older than 60 years; however, after 60 years, don’t you think they now are a real nation, if only because of the circumstances, and deserve to be treated as one, if only because they self-identify as such?” This position is slightly charitable, though naïve (it glosses over the totality of the “Palestinian” demand, viz., their unwillingness to settle for the 1967 territories) as well as parochial (viewing the Israel/“Palestine” conflict for itself, instead of the particular part of the global Islamic jihad that it is). To its holders’ credit, they are merely wrong, and not malicious as are the advocates of the Binational Solution.

There are two arguments here as to what makes nationhood:

1. Circumstance: that has made the “Palestinians” a nation just as the aftermath of the Korean War has given rise to two new nations, the South Korean nation and the North Korean nation, from a single Korean one.
2. Self-identification: if a group of people call themselves a nation, then they are one.

The first argument is a pragmatic argument. Because it is such, it has a pragmatic counter-argument: circumstances can be changed, reversed, undone and otherwise rendered irrelevant. More than 40 years of a Germany divided into West and East, similar to the situation of Korea, may well have created two new German nations, but no one ever argued that that state was to be continued after the unification. After such a long time, it is inevitable that there should be difficulties in healing the rifts, yet no one has said, “Because of the great difficulties in turning the West Germans and East Germans back into a unified German nation, the two will have to be considered two separate nations, permanently”.

One of the hallmarks of the crisis of our age is the allowance for pragmatic concerns to enshrine such an explosive issue as nationality. In countries ruled by the regime of Multiculturalism, the effect of this is the most sharp: the pragmatic argument (bolstered by the ideological one, see later) holds such sway that all attempts at assimilating immigrants are forestalled. For Mexicans crossing the US border as well as for Muslims in Britain, the pragmatic argument is a shield against the common-sense but maligned demand that they adopt the culture of their host country: “It would be so difficult, and they are in such great numbers, that they had better be recognized as separate”. Even if that means being a nation within a nation, with all the strife that that entails. Once again, we see how the Left perpetuates the very hatreds it claims to be the solution to.

In short: if the circumstances are what made the “Palestinians” into a real nation, then new circumstances can unmake them. It’s “Might Makes Right” either way you look at it, though the anti-Israel Leftists call only the other way (away from “Palestinian” nationhood) that name, for some odd reason. The pragmatic argument is like a chain—as strong as its weakest link.

Now to the ideological argument, that of self-identification. I wish to bring a frequently quoted anti-Zionist quote by the leftist Jew Erich Fromm, one of so many estranged Jews who, because of that, wished to express his Jewishness by joining the bad causes of his day (think of Noam Chomsky). The quote is this:

If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived 2,000 years ago, this world would be a madhouse.

That quote is beloved of all those who dispute the legitimacy of the Zionist project—of the idea that the Jewish nation can be sovereigns of their land, the Land of Israel. I have brought it before, and also refuted. I said, that this argument is a purely hypothetical one, there being almost no nation today that is both 2,000 years old and outside its original homeland. The Iranians and the Chinese are ancient nations, more than 2,000 years old, but they have never been exiled en masse from Persia and China, and therefore never posed that scenario. The Welsh may be descendants of refugees from the Anglo-Saxon invasion, but neither they nor their Irish and Scots brothers have called for ridding the OCTs (Occupied Celtic Territories) of the Sassenach colonials, for they have and are interesting in keeping their self-determination, unlike the “Palestinians”, who are interested in taking away the self-determination of another nation.

Indeed, today such revanchism, invariably for the sake of furthering an imperialistic goal, a greedy end, is the monopoly of obscure, recently-formed “nations”, all propped up by the Marxists as part of their anti-Western agenda. We have the “Gagauzian nation”, of which my dad claimed, when he first heard of it, that it was as if a city in Israel were to be declared a nation-state all its own. We have the multitude of new “nations” in Africa, all the artifacts of lines arbitrarily drawn on the map by European colonials in the 19th century, supported by the Left, with no regard to the question whether the individuals in them have the minimal cohesion required of a nation. It is time for me to revise Fromm’s quote, turning it into something more truthful:

If all groups would suddenly claim to be nations and be granted that status on the basis of their mere claim, this world would be a madhouse.

Only this time the sentence is not a hypothetical: because of the credence given to every small group that claims to be a nation (or an ethnicity, or a minority, or a religion, or what have you), and the automatic ear given to their “legitimate grievances” by virtue of that, the world is a madhouse: a madhouse of grievance-mongering, of gratuitous hatred, of aggressive litigation and of intrusive “hate-speech” laws. And all that is aided and abetted by the ostensibly internationalist (“Nations must be done away with in favor of the Brotherhood of Man”) Left!

In the past, nationhood was a given, flowing from a common heritage, but those standards are too stringent, too discriminating for modern tastes; now nationalism requires the satisfaction of only two conditions: 1) Self-identification; 2) External acknowledgment given by those who have an ax to grind. The “Palestinian nation” is an excellent case in point, for it is not only in the past, before 60 years ago, but even now as well, that they have never been a real nation; they self-identify, and since they serve as handy platform for denying the Jews their nation-state and (for the Leftists) an altar to sacrifice the Zionist scapegoat on in order to appease the wrath of the Muslims, they are given credence. But the facts on the ground are not changed by that: they do not have the minimal requirements of a nation. They do not cohere in either religion (Muslims, Christians, Druzes), language (the “Palestinian” of the Galilee and the “Palestinian” of the Negev scarcely understand each other), race (white-skinned, blue-eyed “Palestinians” in the Galilee, dark brown-skinned, black-eyed “Palestinians” of the Negev) or values (“Palestinians” of the cities, the villages and the desert are three different value systems). Contrast the ability of a European (Ashkenazi) Jew and a Yemenite Jew to sit together before a Daf G’marah (page of the Talmud) and debate it as if the Jewish nation had never left the Land of Israel! (Thanks be to God. Thanks always be to Him Who created this nation to be His forever.)

The “Palestinian nation” is as authentic as the invented African-American festival of Kwanzaa. This, the brain-child of black Marxist Ron Karenga in 1966 (Marxism? Check. Sixties? Check. All you need to know is there), is there for “serving as heritage for Americans of African descent”. To be fair, unlike the “Palestinians”, Kwanzaa is admitted to be an invention by its own practitioners; and also, it is not necessarily celebrated instead of Hanukkah or Christmas. But over 40 years have not made this festival anything beyond its original purpose, the purpose of furthering identity politics. It remains a Marxist tool for needlessly separating between fellow Americans according to their race, and for inflaming gratuitous hatred between them. That has always been the modus operandi of the Left, with the sowing of cultural strife being the method advocated by Antonio Gramsci (one of the major influences on, among other, the late and unlamented intellectual terrorist Edward Said).

Here is the answer to those who argue, “If self-determination for the Jews, then self-determination for the Palestinians also”: self-determination is for real nations—for those that have stood the tests of cohesion and heritage. To support self-determination for nations that are no real nations at all, for front-groups for an ulterior agenda that are dressed up as nations, is to support hatred, unending hostilities, total war, unremitting bloodshed and incessant strife. If one is aware of the true nature of such “nations”, including the “Palestinian” nation, but still chooses to support them, then he has chosen to support evil. Nationalism in its proper and good sense is the desire of a nation for self-determination in well-defined borders, as indeed Jewish nationalism is, following from the Torah itself, which gives the Jewish nation a specific land, not promising it the whole world. That latter is imperialism, and it can be found that most fictive nations of today are really wrappers for an imperialistic agenda, whether it be Islamic imperialism or the Marxist vision for the world.

The “Palestinians” are not even now a real nation, but are, as they were in the days of Hitler’s Mufti, the front-end for the Islamic jihad in the Land of Israel. That they have not expended any serious efforts in building their nationality is because that has never been their purpose—the same reason that, after the expulsion of all the Jews from the Gaza Strip, they chose to destroy the greenhouses rather than make good use of them. The purpose of the fictive “Palestinian nation” has always been to usurp the real and authentic claim of the real and authentic Jewish nation to the Land of Israel. They are not for their own self-determination, but against the Jews’; conversely, to fight them is not to “crush the spirit of a nation under the colonial jackboot”, but to preserve the life of a nation from the encroachment of an imperialist onslaught.

They are part of the worldwide Islamic jihad. Expel them all.

Selling Expulsionism to the Public

Two years after the uprooting of the Jewish inhabitations in the Gaza region, bringing us Kassam rockets and not bringing us the “legitimacy in the eyes of the world” that had been hoped for, and one year after the war with Hizbullah in Lebanon, again the aftermath of withdrawing for the sake of peace, and again a case of an unsympathetic world (“Disproportionate response!”), the Jewish public, in Israel at least, and I presume much of it in the Diaspora also, is marked by a change: disbelief in the capability of concessions and treaties to secure peace for Israel. Only those who put the blindfolds of kumbayism and self-flagellation on their eyes refuse to change their view.

However, the change, for most Jews, has not been complete. Thanks be to God, they are now clear of the irrational belief in the magical properties of pieces of paper, but they have not yet come to the solution; they are stuck in the limbo of knowing what the way is not but not knowing what the way is.

Such has been my experience of talking with old friends of mine, good and feeling Jews who, like me, have let reality be their guide and left the unfounded belief that the other side wants peace other than on its own, Israel-free (God forbid), terms. “What’s going to happen, then?” I ask. The answer is the same every time: “I don’t know. We’ll just have to fight it on, slogging it for years and years, indefinitely, until something gives”. That reply saddens me no end. The Torah-based view goes against such thinking, and offers the way out. Those friends of mine, still secular Jews, have gotten out of the mindset of moonbattery that breeds irrational pacifism—God be thanked for that! But without the traditional Jewish view (a view that even among religious Jews has been dimmed by the long years of exile and its thought-imprints), the only alternative to Leftist irrationality they have is the non-alternative of, “War Without End”.

That is an un-Jewish view. “War Without End”, or in God’s phrasing, “And by thy sword shalt thou live” (Genesis 27:40), is the “blessing” given to the wayward sons, to Ishmael and Esau, while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (peace be upon them) were promised peace. For the descendants of Ishmael and Esau, war is the end; for the descendants of Jacob, war is but the means, for defending themselves and for claiming that which HaShem has given them, while a peaceful existence is the end. HaShem did not lead our forefathers out of Egypt in order to be at war without end against the Canaanites and other indigenous peoples of the Land of Israel; and now neither, it is not our fate to be deadlocked with war against the Muslims, the spiritual descendants of Ishmael, but to enjoy lasting peace in the Land of Israel. Then as now, the way to that peace is simple: the threat to Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel must be physically removed, by driving it away, by expelling them all, en masse. The failure of any prospect of reaching a negotiated peace agreement with the Muslims means war, but not war without end, but war just until there is no contest to the idea that the Land of Israel is under Jewish rule.

But I talked of my secular Jewish friends. Having friends and family who are not yet religious, even though—thanks be to God, again and again—much more sympathetic toward religion than they ever were in the post-Zionist, postmodern 1990’s, I know that it is prudent, for the sake of averting all possibility of internecine warfare, to go with HaShem’s pace in reaching out to them, and not to alienate our brothers and sisters by any form of pushiness. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook (ZT"L) foretold that the holiness of the Land of Israel would bring all the Jews back to the Torah; it is wonderfully happening right now, so let us not ruin it by the mean-spirited disparagement that characterized that ugly decade. For myself, I take it as a call to sell expulsionism to the Jewish public with a slightly more secular appearance. Quoting Numbers 33:50–56 may be enough for me, but I will for the time being avoid it when addressing our secular Jewish brothers and sisters (with one exception which I will come to later). The key point is to show that expulsionism is by no means the exclusive idea of a few religious fanatics—to show that expulsionism makes a tremendous amount of pragmatic sense, as well as sense even from a secular-idealistic point of view.

I will now address the most common objections to expulsionism, and after that, lay out the clearest benefits. The objections are:

• It is inhumane.
• It will wreak psychological havoc on our soldiers.
• It is contrary to international law, constituting a war crime.
• It will make Israel a pariah in the world.
• It will confirm the allegation of our enemies that we are robbers.
• It is racism, or ethnocratic action at the very least.
• It is contrary to Jewish values.

The benefits are:

• A clean, non-genocidal solution.
• It will free all or nearly all the huge resources Israel currently devotes to defense, both internal and external.
• The resultant permanent peace will attract foreign investors in droves.
• It will be the first step toward world peace, by being a dazzling show to the Muslims worldwide that jihad doesn’t pay.

And now the elaborations. On the objections:

“It is inhumane.” It is inhumane, from the secular-idealistic point of view, to force more than a million men, women and children to move en masse. For the contention that is not a thing to be wished upon anyone, there is no argument here; but as with the dentist’s infliction of some (indisputably real) pain in order to prevent more pain later, this is a step that has to be taken, for we live in the real world. The real world, the reality before our eyes, which so many Jews have in the course of the last seven years commendably acknowledged, shows that it would infinitely more inhumane to leave the “Palestinians” where they are.

Reality bears witness that the “Palestinians” are a failed society: with their poisoning of their children’s minds with the heritage of suicide-“martyrdom”, with such role models as a Mickey Mouse lookalike preaching Islamic supremacism, a killer bee that engages in cruelty toward animals in the zoo and the routine use of children’s cartoons in the service of hateful agendas, their society goes beyond the vaunted, Left-admired resistance and into the Nazi-style territory of nurturing hatred toward the enemy for the purpose of liquidation. To enable the staying of this failed society on this soil, whether by giving them what they want (concessions) or through endless war, is inhumane—it is to condemn countless children to a life of education to death.

“Palestinian” demonstrators showing support of Saddam Hussein, on November 6, 2006. Note the egg-thrower at the front.

This is a society that does not want to improve itself; a society that prefers to destroy greenhouses rather than use them productively, a society that drowns in excrement because it has used its sewage pipes for making Kassam rockets, a society that keeps living in “refugee camps” just to gain propaganda benefits against the Jews. There can be no crueler act than to let them stay here. Driving them away could prompt soul-searching, leading to self-improvement; the status quo, in contrast, means a reward for their self-destructive mode of living, and an incentive to continue their death-worshiping way.

From a Hamas summer camp activity for children, on July 5, 2007. Note the egg-thrower with the Carlsberg t-shirt on the right. If the self-portrait they sell to the world, of them as “starving, crushed under the Zionist occupation”, is a fraud, what else could they be fabricating?

Mass expulsion would be unpleasant, just as disciplining a spoiled child who loves to wallow in self-pity, does nothing to improve himself and conditions his happiness on being top of the class is unpleasant. Unpleasant, and the most humane and loving thing to do.

Second objection: “It will wreak psychological havoc on our soldiers.” Possibly, but that would be a one-time event, instead of the current, continuous state. Anti-“occupation” Israeli Leftist activists say the assignment of our boys to the checkpoints and to “Palestinian” centers of population is having a deleterious effect on their psyche. They say the necessity of being callous toward pregnant women at the checkpoints, for example, or being brutal toward children, take their toll on Israeli Jewish society later when those soldiers finish their army service. Granting that for the sake of the argument: this is one of the best pragmatic arguments for expelling all the Muslims from the Land of Israel. It does away both with the old concessionism, for conceding our lands to the Muslims will only move the “brutality” further inside (there were no checkpoints until the suicide-bombings within the 1949 Armistice Line borders took place), and with the newer “War Without End” view, which is a hopeless vision of psychological deterioration.

Mass expulsion may or may not damage our soldiers’ psyche, but no more so than the damage they are already undergoing under the present regime. Any damage done will be offset by the fact of having ended the status quo of necessary callousness, thus restoring the mental health that our would-be Freuds so crave.

Third objection: “It is contrary to international law, constituting a war crime.” This is a valid objection, but it assumes a priori that international law is the highest standard. Even without reference to the Torah (which I take to be the highest standard), international law is nothing such—survival trumps international law every time. Just as states have no moral right to exist if they do not stand up to their job of providing protection to their citizens, so too international law is null and void if it opens the gates of victory to our enemies.

International law, as currently written, has the effect that the enemy need only hide among its women and children in order to be victorious, for it criminalizes retaliation when such a situation arises. This enables a ragtag bunch of guerrillas like Al Qaeda in Iraq to do serious damage to US troops, and more importantly to US public opinion, despite the US being the best army in the world.

Of which Captain Mifune (of The Matrix) would say, “You just handed them their victory on a silver platter”.

Either international law is substantially rewritten, so as not to serve as an enabler of Islamic imperialism, or there is no choice but to ignore it. For the issue of mass expulsion, the chief relevance here is that such war crimes as are often decried by the Mainstream Media, foremostly collateral damage, can be brought to an end by expelling all potential sources of insurgency and terrorism. Since there is no way of distinguishing between active jihadists and Muslims who are just supporters, the only clean way to end this is by expelling them all.

Fourth objection: “It will make Israel a pariah in the world.” It already is one, and becoming more so with each concession, each humanitarian act and each reprieve we make. If the world is capable of regarding the painful uprooting of all Jewish inhabitants from the Gaza region as “a ploy to make Gaza a free-fire zone” or “a move to strengthen the West Bank settlements”, then it ought to be perfectly clear that its attitude toward us is independent of our actions. Whatever we do, the intransigence of our Muslim enemies always means we would have to maintain our peaceful lives, even survival, by actions that cannot end with just a few stones shifted slightly. We can learn from the Lebanon War of 2006 that even our clearly defensive actions can be turned to be acts of aggression in world opinion, thanks in no small part to the lack of compunction the Muslims have against using the lives of their own women and children as propaganda-money. From that, we can conclude that even a last-ditch defensive war of the Tel-Aviv region against an attack by all 57 Muslim states (God forbid) could be turned into aggression on our part. The Jew is always called to fight fair, as we all know.

Survival trumps world opinion just as it trumps international law. To be a global pariah but alive is better than to be a slaughtered sheep eulogized by that same world. In addition to this obvious truth, it is reasonable to believe that the worldwide condemnation, though strong, will be relatively short, to be replaced by praise at showing all the non-Muslim world the right way forward (see elaboration on that later, under “Benefits”).

Fifth objection: “It will confirm the allegation of our enemies that we are robbers.” Again, we already are such in their eyes. The idea that not just the taking of territories in the 1967 Six-Day War, but the very founding of the State of Israel in 1947–9 “on expense of the indigenous Palestinian population”, is a grievous wrong that needs righting has taken a strong foothold in the West over the last seven years, and it can only get worse, no matter what we do to improve our image. In enquiring for the answer to the question (an exilic question, a question that goes against everything that the founders of Secular Zionism, Herzl and Pinsker of blessed memory, stood for), “What can we do in order that the world may be pleased with us?”, we increasingly find out that the answer is, “Give up everything”. Increasingly, the world can be seen to demand nothing less than the transformation of Israel into “a state of all its citizens”, in which an influx of millions of “Palestinians” by the application of their hereditary “Right of Return” would give them the majority they need to turn Jewish life in the Land of Israel to be like Jewish life has been in the Diaspora (both Christian and Islamic) for 2,000 years. (And that is the best-case scenario.)

No Jew who has bowed to the reality of the failure of negotiated peace could possibly agree to the vision of Israel being turned into “a state of all its citizens”, that which Steven Plaut calls “The Rwanda Solution”. Even Uri Avnery, moonbatty as he may be, likens the proposal of the One-State Solution to a swimmer wishing to try his hand at crossing the Atlantic after repeated failures at crossing the La Manche channel. Since the One-State Solution is the demand that is taking hold in the world, a demand that is fast becoming the only way to “get right” with the world, to “atone for our primal sin”, then it follows that we will stay robbers in the eyes of the world no matter what we do. Again, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Robbers though we may well be considered after the mass expulsion, we will be alive and enjoying lasting peace, while currently we are both considered robbers (because of the “primal sin” of “robbing the lands of the indigenous Palestinians in 1947–9”, see above) and suffering under the yoke of the Islamic terrorist threat.

Sixth objection: “It is racism, or ethnocratic action at the very least.” It is not racism, because Judaism is not based on race. Judaism is an ethnicity that spans multiple races (compare an Ashkenazi with a Yemenite Jew for proof). It is an ethnocratic action; assumed a priori here is that ethnocratic controls are automatically a bad thing. As the situation in the whole world shows, the lack of ethnocratic controls is the cause of the deterioration of conditions in formerly peaceful countries, by virtue of cultural breakdown. Even in a melting-pot society like that of the USA, policy had always been ethnocratic, because the immigrants were strongly encouraged to assimilate to the norms of the host society; now, on the US–Mexico border, the abandonment of that demand has led to the situation of anarchy there. An ethnicity, unlike a race, does not demand conformity of inborn traits; it demands only homogeneity in cultural and social values. Today’s lack of insistence on that homogeneity, which is comparable to letting cannibals into a Western country without demanding that they leave their dietary habits, is the source of havoc in the Western world.

Israel, as the Jewish state, is founded on Jewish values (far stronger than the connection of the USA to Christian values). The demand is not that all people in Israel be Jewish; the demand is, however, that they not undermine the Jewish character of the state, just as cannibals cannot (in a normal world) stay in a Western country if they keep to their traditional cuisine from the homeland. The Muslims, even within the 1949 Armistice Line territories, refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, therefore cannot be allowed to stay. Any self-respecting nation would think that way—ethnocratic controls are not “the fruit of bigotry”, they are the stop-gap of a healthy society against the multicultural slide toward anarchy! Cultural homogeneity is not based on “hatred of the other”, but on the simple human observation that, without shared cultural values, a society cannot stand. Immigration is a privilege, predicated on acceptance of the host culture; once accepted, it would be wrong not to naturalize the immigrant. But if the immigrant refuses to accept the host culture, then he should be deported. Mass expulsion stems from the same issue.

Seventh objection: “It is contrary to Jewish values.” Here it is that I can bring passages from the Torah, such as the oft-mentioned Numbers 33:50–56; for, once the question of Jewish values is brought up, what is better than verses from the Torah in order to make the point? As the passage shows, mass expulsion is not contrary to Jewish values. It applies only to the Land of Israel, not to the whole world (thus refuting the charge that Judaism is a Nazi-like supremacist ideology), and it is definitely not contrary to Jewish values, not “a blot on Jewishness” as detractors say. Beyond the specifics, there is a more general point here, that Jewish values are much more down-to-earth than many people think. The high-flown doctrines of “not hurting any living being, not even a fly” belong to other religions; Judaism, while being most vehemently against violence for the sake of violence and cruelty for the sake of cruelty, commands doing the utmost for the sake of self-defense. It is a Jewish value to be merciful to those who deserve mercy; to be merciful to those who do not, such as those who raise their children to be suicide-bombers, is contrary to Jewish values. Among Jewish values is to withhold all mercy from those who you know will not show mercy to you.

Judaism raises peace above all else, even saying that Peace (“Shalom”) is one of God’s names, but Judaism does not necessarily agree with the methods of attaining peace that certain non-Jewish ideologies hold. Once it has been clearly understood that concessions to the enemy’s demands only lead to a state of less peace, it is contrary to Jewish values to do anything but wage war on that enemy. Mass expulsion, because it brings the promise of lasting peace, is currently the most Jewish thing to do.

Here end the answers to the objections. Now to the benefits:

A clean, non-genocidal solution. The problem is the massive support that the active jihadists enjoy among the Muslim populace. Some have wrung their hands in despair, saying, “So what are we going to do—kill them all?” Mass expulsion is the alternative that both takes care of the problem and solves it in the most humane way possible under such circumstances. No atrocities, no Killing Fields, no sliding to the abyss of World War II days.

Second benefit: It will free all or nearly all the huge resources Israel currently devotes to defense, both internal and external. One of the objections Israeli Jews used to have (and a small number still have) to the settlements in the 1967 territories was the allocation of resources for defending them. Land concessions do not free those resources, they just move them to tighter borders. With our without the 1967 territories, the reality of having to open your bag and pass through a metal detector at the entrance to every public place in all of Israel is there. With all the Muslims expelled, all these costly and intrusive defense measures will be rendered needless, for there would then be no terrorist threat. The money could then really be used for better things, just as the former advocates of withdrawal had called for.

Third benefit: The resultant permanent peace will attract foreign investors in droves. The dreamer Shimon Peres had always envisioned how Israel, when in a state of peace resulting from conceding lands to all its neighbors, would become the Monaco of the Middle East, a magnet for foreign investors. He was right in the sense that investors are attracted by a state of peace and repelled by the prospect of impending war. It follows, then, that the lasting peace achieved through mass expulsion would bring about the vision which Peres, because of his misconceived means, could not fulfill.

Fourth benefit: It will be the first step toward world peace, by being a dazzling show to the Muslims worldwide that jihad doesn’t pay. After the initial cries of condemnation have subsided, the world will see that, despite all reservations, mass expulsion works. The world has forgotten how the mass expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in 1945 has made that region a non-news region ever since, and has to be reminded of it. In all the world, our actions could well spark a flurry of second thoughts about mass expulsion or deportation. Finally, there is a chance that a reformation of Islam for the better could be kick-started, for there is nothing that fuels the worldwide jihad more than the conviction that jihad pays, a conviction currently fed daily by acts of concession, whether in land or in culture, toward the Muslims on the part of non-Muslim leaders everywhere.

Here end the benefits as well. As you can see, this whole exposition has been sparing and pointed in its use of religion-based arguments; the pragmatic arguments for mass expulsion are strong enough as they are. I hope this will lead people to reconsider their stance, despite years of cultural-Marxist indoctrination to regard such a proposal as the most heinous crime. In any case, some years from now there might not be a choice in the matter.

Between Golus and Joluth

I explained (in my post from last Passover, Out of the Galut) how the Jewish concept of galut comprised the state of spiritual exile from HaShem, a state which may be accompanied by the physical state of being in the golah, i.e. outside the Land of Israel. Golus is the Ashkenazi way of pronouncing it, while joluth is the Yemenite way. But whichever way one pronounces it, the reality behind it is the same, whether the Jew lives in Poland or in Yemen—or even in the Land of Israel, for that matter. The denial of the sameness of this reality everywhere is one of the staples of the anti-Zionists today.

The argument, in concise form: “Throughout history, Muslims have treated Jews far better than Christians did; the present enmity between Jews and Muslims started with Zionism, and is wholly a reaction for stealing the Palestinians’ lands”. A powerful argument, killing two birds with one stone: it both urges Jews to make a negotiated peace with the Muslims in the Land of Israel, and exhorts them to turn their backs on their Christian Zionist supporters. Appealing to historical experience, those who make the argument say the Jews are much better off trusting in a peace treaty with the Muslims, who are (they say) free or nearly free of any anti-Semitic history, while the historically Jew-hating Christians are not a good horse at all to bet on.

An appeal to history is normally a good move; but in order for it to be sound, first the historical facts need to be straight, and then the comparison has to be on target. The latter is the problem with the Leftists’ comparison of today’s conflict (the War Against Islam) with 1972 (the Vietnam era). The former is the problem with the argument here: the difference between golus and joluth that the anti-Zionists are presenting is not true to reality.

The view of Jewish history between Orient and Occident is slanted from the outset: many have heard of the Golden Age of the Jews of Muslim Spain, but few have heard of the Golden Age of the Jews of Christian Poland; conversely, many know of the disruption of the Jewish communities of Poland by the Cossack invasion of 1648–9, but few know of the disruption of the Jewish communities of Spain by the Almohad invasion of the 12th century, from which one of the most famous refugees was Maimonides, in 1148. Sheer ignorance enables the painting of a false picture in which an Occidental Jewry in constant misery is contrasted with an Oriental Jewry in constant comfort.

When the Almohads, fanatical (today one would call them, “radical”) Muslim invaders from Morocco, persecuted Maimonides’ family, they fled to Egypt, where they found a better life. Now the Almohad kings and Saladin of Egypt were both Muslims; it can be pointed out rightly, then, that the experience of Jews in Muslim lands was not uniform. But the same is true of the experience of Jews in Christian lands as well! Jews dispersed throughout Europe for the same reason that Maimonides got from Spain from Egypt: fleeing the land of a Jew-hating ruler for the land of a tolerant one. Thus it was that Jews from Western Europe, during years of persecution and pogroms, from the end of the 11th century to the 15th, moved to Eastern Europe, to Poland, to the invitation of the kings Boleslav III and Boleslav V, who granted them edicts of tolerance in exchange for developing the economy of their kingdom. Jewish autonomy in Christian Poland, epitomized by the Council of Four Lands, was the counterpart of the famed Jewish autonomy in Muslim Spain. All that was while the Jews of Western Europe were being hounded out of the states (England in 1290; France in 1306 and 1394; Christian Spain in 1492). Examples of Jew-hatred and tolerance can be found for the Occidental Diaspora just as for the Oriental one; the dichotomous view of a tranquil Jewry in Islamic states versus a troubled one in Christian states has nothing to stand on.

Indeed, most of the well-known ways and methods of persecution of Jews in Christian countries can be found historically in Islamic countries as well. Dress-codes for Jews in Christian lands, such as pointed hats and the yellow star, are famous; less remembered is that the Jews of Islamic lands, by virtue of the dhimmi laws (which applied to Christians there as well), were subject to similar rules. Unless a tolerant or pragmatic Muslim ruler defended the Jews by personal decree, Islamic law left Jews under a constant protection racket, which, even when adhered to (that is, the poll-tax paid), did not provide any guarantee of protection. (An aside: those who laud the status of dhimmitude as “protected” should know that, in our day, we usually refer to such a status with the word, “apartheid”.) They did not stand a chance in court against a Muslim, because their pleas would not be taken over those of the Muslims; therefore, the danger of false accusation hung over them like the Sword of Damocles. If a synagogue fell into disrepair or was destroyed, they could not rebuild it except with a special dispensation from the ruler. The ghetto, walling off Jews from the Christians in Europe, had its counterpart in the malah in the Islamic world; in both diasporas, its purpose was the physical protection of the Jews from pogroms by the non-Jewish population.

The word, “pogrom” itself is a symbol of the bias: it is a Russian word, therefore cementing the idea that pogroms on Jews were a feature of the Christian world only, from which the Jews of the Islamic world were free. Nothing could be further from the truth: there were pogroms on Jews by Muslims long before the first inkling of the “Palestinian” question, and as in Christian Europe, many were state-sanctioned. In both the 12th and 17th century, fanatical kings of Yemen ordered pogroms, expulsions and obstruction of Jewish religious life in order to force the Jews of Yemen to convert to Islam. In the latter case, king Ahmed Ibn Hassan Al-Mahdi commanded the destruction of all the synagogues in Yemen, and expelled all the Jews of Yemen to the lowlands of Mawza for two years, where many of them died.

Another episode of European Jewry is that of the anusim, crypto-Jews, Jews who observed the Jewish religion in secret for fear of persecution. In Christian Spain until 1492, Jews were forced to convert to Christianity and renounce all Jewish practices under the threat of the Inquisition, so they either had to leave to a more tolerant country, whether Christian or Islamic, or to attempt to keep their Jewish observance secret. This too is well-known, in contrast to the similar episode of the anusim of the Jews of Persia, Shi’a Muslim Persia, from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Jews of Meshed accepted conversion to Islam under duress and continued observing Judaism in secret. Around the same time, the Jews of Tabriz chose a different route, much as did some Jews in Christian Spain: they refused to convert. This was followed by the massacre of the entire Jewry of Tabriz. Here is an answer to those who cite lack of precedence when they argue Muslims would never do a repeat of the Holocaust.

In summary, the state of Jewish exile is the same whether pronounced golus or joluth; whether in Poland or in Yemen; whether within a Christian population or within a Muslim one. Jews of the Diaspora, everywhere, have had an existence between the ups of tolerance and moderation and the downs of persecution and fanaticism. The fickle existence that led Herzl and Pinsker of blessed memory to desire to get out of it all by going back to Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was by no means strange to Jews of Islamic countries. Therefore, the anti-Zionist charge that Zionism is at its heart a “European, Ashkenazi, white colonial settler movement” is nothing but a libel, an outright falsehood concocted for the purpose of recasting Jewish nationalism in the mold of post-colonial discourse, for denying the Jews’ right to have sovereignty over their land and inhabit it without restriction.

In the light of all this, this historical parity between Jewish Diaspora existence everywhere, the concessionist arguments need to be repudiated. The yardstick of friendship toward us should be, instead: the belief in our right to the Land of Israel, meaning also Gaza, Judea and Samaria and not just the territories within the 1949 Armistice Line. He who believes so is our friend; he who makes a distinction between the 1949 and 1967 territories, saying the former is legal while the latter is illegal, is most probably just naïve; and he who believes that all of Israel, including the 1949 territories, is illegitimate, that the “Palestinian Right of Return” is a prerequisite to peace, that Zionism is a colonial enterprise and that Israel as a Jewish state is as unacceptable as Apartheid South Africa—that is our enemy and should be treated as such. For Zionist Jews, that, and not historical misconceptions such as an idyllic Jewish–Muslim relationship until the advent of Zionism, should be the measure of friend and foe.

For the Geographically-Challenged

How many times did I see the comparison of the Zionists to the French colonials, and the “Palestinians” to the Algerians? A lot. How many times did I see that comparison made with absolutely no regard to the fundamental difference between the two places? About as many times. So, beside a post dealing with that, I now bring a visual depiction to show why that analogy doesn’t work.

A map-based reality check. Click to view full size.

Picture yourself living in a major city of your country with the enemy just a simple rocket’s launch away from you, and then you’ll realize what the inhabitants of Sderot have to go through every day. And maybe you’ll realize why the demand that Israel give up its lands is far removed from a call for states like France and Britain to decolonize.

The Algerians, by the way, are now, in one of those fickle twists of history, the colonists in French cities, forming no-go zones neighboring those of their non-Muslim French hosts, complete with shariah law, cousin marriage, mosques where the doctrine of Islamic world domination is preached and quarters where terrorist plots are hatched. Such is true for much of Europe. You tried to appease, but it has come to you nonetheless. Soon you will be faced with a stark choice.

It’s Just Like Seffrica, Trust Me

(Click image to view full size)

It’s really the same. Yeah.

What the AIPAC is going on here?

Flexing our world-embracing tentacles for all to see from 1600 BCE…

(Click image to view full size)

Darth Jimious says: “The dark side of the Oil is a pathway to many statements, some considered to be anti-Semitic”.

How the Land of Israel Was Turned To Be Another’s (Response to Karkar)

Left-wing neo-Nazi site CounterPunch (upper banner as of April 4, 2007: “THE ORIGINS OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY”; “‘It was impossible to hold the line. All we got was a battering from the Jews.’ – John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, 1956”; “Read Harry Clark’s devastating chronicle of how the Lobby humbled Ike, in our new CounterPunch newsletter.”) has the article, “How Palestine Became Israel’s Land”, for March 31, 2007, by Sonja Karkar, the “founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia”. I consider it representative of the historical theft (also called revisionism) committed by our Muslim enemies and their enablers on the Western Left. Here follows my fisking.

For Palestinians, theirs is not the land of conquest, […]

Conquered in 638 by the early Muslims storming from Arabia.

[…] but the land of their roots going back to time immemorial.

As well as a particular riposte at the book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, by Joan Peters, Karkar engages here in the general identity politics pastime of historical one-upmanship, or the game of “More Ancient Than Thou”. It’s a contest the Jewish people can pass with flying colors, thanks be to HaShem, but it’s not to the point. As the Torah describes, the first-born son can be divested of his blessing in favor of a younger son if G-d considers the latter more righteous. The Torah has no qualms saying the Canaanites were in the Land of Israel before the Israelites came back from Egypt; but as they had defiled the land with idolatry and child-sacrifice, they had forfeited it.

Such a lineage does not rely on a biblical promise like the Jewish claim that God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, and is therefore, the historical site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel.

Karkar takes pride in that the “Palestinian” claim does not rely on the Torah. What a foolish pride this is, for there is no stronger claim on a land than one made by the Creator of the entire world.

It seems to me that attacks on the Biblical claim have gotten more frequent lately. They’re still a trickle, but it’s a sign. And I consider it a good sign.

As long as the attacks are confined to the State of Israel, to Zionism and even to Jews themselves (“The Israel Lobby”), there is still room at the Court On High to press on with it. That is because the Jews, like all humans, are free-willed, and the prosecutors can point out their transgressions to G-d and say, “Here you see they are still worthy of chastisement through the hands of the nations”. But the Torah is different. The Torah is not a sin-capable human being, it is G-d’s Word; more, it is the plan according to which G-d has made the world (He “looked at the Torah and created the world”—istekal b’oraita u-v’ra alma). So when our enemies criticize the Biblical claim, calling the Torah “a book of myths and fairy-tales”, they are in effect saying to G-d what they think of His book (and it does not matter that they may deny even the existence of G-d—denial does not a fact make). As our sages say, “The notepad is open and the hand is writing down”. Every word our enemies say against the Torah is recorded, stored for the time of reckoning, to stand accusing all those who have said them.

It belongs to the people of Palestine by the simple fact of their continuous residence repeated through birth and possession going back to the earliest Canaanites and even those people living there before recorded history.

“Palestinians = Canaanites”. Very interesting… Karkar says the “Palestinians” are the descendants of the aforementioned whom G-d ordered vanquished on account of their idolatry and child-sacrifice. If only for that reason, for those practices (child-sacrifice), they could be considered [un]worthy descendants of the Canaanites. But the fact is they are descendants of the 7th-century Arab conquerors, probably mixed with the 7th-century inhabitants like the mestizos of Central and South America, but having no cultural connection to the land. They speak Arabic, and they have always regarded this land as just one part of the Arab and Islamic worlds—always, that is, until recently, when they found out that construing themselves as a distinct nation could win them great dividends in the eyes of self-loathing Westerners. The appearance of this article on a Leftist magazine in America epitomizes that fact.

They were there when the Israelites invaded the land, occupied it, […]

See, it’s not just the current “occupation” that’s wrong, it’s that of 3,000 years ago as well. Notice how the “reality-based community” (that’s how the Leftists call themselves) are willing to drag an issue for three millennia. Rationality would, I’d think, call for letting bygones be bygones after so many years. But the charade of the Left is here exposed for all to see. Just as it is does not matter to them that we Jews, beginning in the late 19th century, made this desolate land bloom—instead, it’s all about “stealing” and “injustice” and “immorality” for them. Worthy matters, but not rational by any stretch of imagination. I said before: the obsession with justice is the figleaf Marxists wear to cover their shame of assaulting the justice of the Torah, the only true justice, coming from the Source of All Justice, on Whom they turn their backs.

[…] and held it intermittently as wave after wave of other conquerors came and went, and they were still there when the Romans put an end to Jewish Palestine by destroying Jerusalem in 135AD.

The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, not 135 CE. The latter date is the date they crushed the Bar Kochba rebellion. A petty point, but it should make Karkar’s entire knowledge of the subject suspect.

If a religious basis is sought, then the Palestinians can lay claim to being the descendants of Abraham's son Ishmael who is regarded the forefather of the Arabs.

So which is it… Canaanites or Ishmaelites? Whichever is expedient, I guess. Neither claim gives the “Palestinians” a right over the Land of Israel, as it is the one part of the world promised by G-d to the Jews (while all the rest is free for the non-Jews to divide as they wish, yet they still covet this particular land. If you can find me a rational, non-theistic, non-Biblical explanation for that, give me a call), but as it is always with Muslims, the end justifies the means.

But actually, Palestinian rights are enshrined in the universally accepted principle that land belongs to its indigenous inhabitants.

Pity, though, that it is not universally accepted how long a people needs to be on a particular land in order to be considered indigenous. Do the Irish, Scots and Welsh have the right to drive those “Sassenach colonial invaders” back to the Danish and North German coast? If not, why not? It was Jewish quisling Erich Fromm said, “If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived 2,000 years ago, this world would be a madhouse”, neatly setting the number so as to coincide with the history of the Jews; but any other number, whether bigger or smaller, is fair and square. G-d’s wrath will be upon you all, that’s a promise!

Thus, the modern day struggle for this land by European Jewish immigrants […]

Please do forgive Mrs. Karkar, CounterPunch wouldn’t have published her article had she not filled the “reverse racism” quota.

How inconvenient the above 50% of Israeli Jews are. Those Sephardim, Jews from Islamic lands, as brown as any Arab, or even darker, if from Yemen, or outright black, if from Ethiopia. Frankly, this subject disgusts me. But I bring it here as a grand show of Leftist hypocrisy: that the problem of racism still exists today (though paling, no pun intended, in comparison to a few decades ago) is only because the Leftists do their darnedest to keep it alive for their political gain.

[…] who have no connection with Palestine other than through their religion […]

Which, even if it were true, is bad… why exactly? And, to recap the above, what connection do the “Palestinians” have with this land? Language? Arabic isn’t indigenous to this land, Hebrew is. Birth? Oh great, so they happened to be born on the Falasteen Sanjak of the Ottoman Empire, which they suddenly “remembered” has always been a country in its own right. Religion? Islam is about globalization, not national aspirations.

[…] is a colonial enterprise that seeks sovereignty for an "external Jewish population" to the exclusion of the indigenous Palestinians who, regardless of faith--Jewish, Christian or Muslim--have lived together for centuries.

This passage is important.

Among the “indigenous Palestinians”, she counts Jews. Meaning the Jews of before the “Zionist invasion”, but Jews nonetheless. But just a few words before that, she divides and conquers: the Jews coming from Europe from the late 19th century onward are “an external Jewish population”.

One frequent anti-Zionist strategy is to decouple Zionism from Judaism. It’s a handy strategy, as it serves to bolster the talking-point, “Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism!” It also wins the hearts and minds of a few Jewish dupes, such as Gilad Atzmon on the one hand and the Naturei Karta traitors on the other. But it won’t work.

What is the difference between the Jewish inhabitants of, say, the Land of Israel in the 16th century and those who came from the late 19th century onward? Only this: the latter framed it as a political movement in the contemporary paradigm (19th-century nationalism) in addition to the religious aspiration. But both knew, and held, the Land of Israel to be their land, their one and only motherland. Zionism as a political movement dates to the 19th century, true; but Zionism as a dream and aspiration and even a call to action is as old as the Babylonian Exile in 538 BCE.

Anti-Zionism necessarily involves an attack on Jewish tenets, just as does, for example, opposition to kosher slaughter. And anti-Zionism is predicated on nothing more than the belief that the Land of Israel does not belong to the Jews.

I now skip a handful of particulars for the next general claim:

Around 170,000 Palestinians remained in what became Israel, the largest number of whom resided in the Galilee area, originally a designated part of the Arab state under the Partition Plan. These Palestinians also became the victims of Israel's land grab policy. Over 438,000 acres, which was more than the total Jewish land holdings at the time, were confiscated and a further 400,000 acres were marked for confiscation.

Note that this whole passage talks about things going on within the 1949 Armistice Line, not in Judea and Samaria; before the war of 1967, which some believe to be “the root of all evil”.

I have repeated the fact that there was an Israeli Jewish majority for land concessions throughout the 1990’s. That majority could be sustained as long as it was believed that this was all about the 1967 territories. Even in the most optimistic years of that period, however, all but the most deranged, self-loathing Israeli Jews knew that the “peace process” would be finished once things started brewing over the business of 1947–9.

When people confine their talk to 1967, it still has the veneer of a solvable land dispute. It looks like: “Israel took this in 1967, the Palestinians want it back, when Israel gives back what it took in 1967 the Palestinians will have their desired state and cease all their hostilities”. As soon as the talk moves to 1947, from “40 Years of Occupation” to “60 Years of Occupation”, then the game is over. For any dispute over 1947, as opposed to 1967, is a dispute over the very State of Israel itself, not just over “some areas taken in a pre-emptive war”; and any call to “right the wrongs of 1947” is an insinuation that the very State of Israel is a wrong. All the talk of the “Palestinian Right of Return”, as it is oriented around 1947 rather than 1967, is unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews, as it delegitimizes the whole Zionist project, from start to finish.

In a way, the swing of the discourse from 1967 to 1947 is a blessing, for it is waking the Jews up. Had the “Palestinians” not fired their Kassam rockets at territories within the 1949 Armistice Line after the evacuation of Gaza, then Judea and Samaria would possibly have already followed suit. Because they have demanded everything, the Israeli Jewish public now demands to give them nothing. The leaders are still clueless, and that is the only reprieve for the “Palestinians”. Beware the day when we vote to replace these dhimmis with true Zionist, Torah-believing leaders!

After Israel won the 1967 war, the total territory of Palestine came under Israel's rule.

So it’s laid out for you plainly and clearly: “Total territory of Palestine” = the territories taken in 1967 plus the territories within the 1949 Armistice Line. Just as the emblem of the “moderate” (read: more deceptive, as opposed to the more honest Hamas, as far as voicing the ultimate goal is concerned) “Palestine Liberation Organization” depicts it:

Those are the desired borders. And green is for Islam. Any questions?

Continues:

It annexed East Jerusalem, despite the Holy City's internationally recognised status and began implementing its Jewish settlement program with a vengeance.

Yeah, pray over 2,000 years for going back to Jerusalem to inhabit it and build it, only to have “international law” declare it to be “everyone’s holy city”—everyone, including those who no claim to it other than the founder of their religion having tied an Arabian Pegasus to a wall there, a wall that happens to be one of those of the Temple whose existence they now deny, having covered it up, literally, with their golden abomination.

G-d’s notepad is going to be very long by the time the day of reckoning comes… good thing He’s G-d, so He can handle it.

The Palestinians in Israel were increasingly aware of their precarious position politically and declared a national strike, known as "Land Day" on 30 March 1976 against Israel's continuing ruthless land expropriation. An affinity was quickly felt between Palestinians everywhere and "Land Day" was adopted as a sort of national Palestinian day which is commemorated by Palestinians and their supporters around the world each year.

And it speaks volumes of our leaders ever since 1976 that we have allowed such a fifth column to operate within us unhindered. The message must be loud, clear and backed up by action: accept this land is ours (the Jews’), or exercise your freedom to move to the 22 existing Arab states or 57 existing Muslim states. They are like rich men sitting at a long, extravagantly-laden table, yet desiring nothing but the portion of the single poor man seated there; or, to make it Biblical, like Achab coveting Naboth’s vineyard.

This awakening of national consciousness had an unequivocal political message: end the occupation and allow self-determination of the Palestinians in a sovereign state living in peace side by side with Israel.

Liar. After you have stated that the total territory of “Palestine” consists of both 1967 and 1949 territories, you cannot speak of “the Palestinians in a sovereign state living in peace side by side with Israel”.

Thirty-one years later, the message is till resonating, but the Palestinians are further away from seeing a solution than ever before.

Indeed… they are drowning in a cesspool of their own making, not willing even to accept the aid of those whom they have sworn to destroy (G-d forbid), preferring that their own children die than take it. HaShem’s meting of poetic justice for those who are too paralyzed by their self-pity and grievance-mongering to do anything constructive.

Daily, Israel is taking a bit of land here and a bit of land there, to make all of Palestine "Israel's Land".

Projection, thy name is “Palestinian”.

The problem then will be, what to do with 5 million Palestinians with no land? There are only a few possible, but criminal solutions - transfer, collective imprisonment, apartheid, and/or ethnic cleansing.

There is, we must admit, no politically correct solution—as it is with the global conflict, the War Against Islam, as a whole. The most humane solution is transfer, both from here and from the West. The Muslim adults are pretty much beyond hope; their children can still be saved from being raised on the “heritage” of suicide-bombing.

I know just about every reaction that a Leftist could display after reading my above passage. To which I respond, pre-emptively, taking a cue from a T-shirt on RightWingStuff: kiss my kumbaya, hippie! Or, less coarsely: we live in a real world, where grown-ups realize not all problems can be solved through flower-power or even diplo-speak. But you’d rather wait until everything gets looking like this:

From America’s “Sodom City” to the ultimate in piety, the Dhimmicrat Party is displayed in all its glory.

Continues:

Alternatively, Israel can disengage from the West Bank to the 1967 borders […]

What good would that do, Sonja? You’ve made it very clear the 1967 territories are only a part of your fictional nation’s land. Forked tongue again.

[…] or agree on a single, democratic state for all.

Ahhhh… because we know what Muslims do with democracy. Yep: they use it to vote shariah law into power (Hamas, Iraq, with eyes to Europe) once they have demographically attained the requisite majority.

I repeat, you Leftist nincompoops, although I know there’s little chance it’ll enter your thick skulls: it’s not about race, not even about ethnicity; it’s about culture. “The Age of Aquarius” will not be permitted to be sung, much less its encompassing musical (Hair) be performed, under shariah law.

Without a just solution, the struggle for Palestine's land will continue.

Having gotten this far, I find it safe to assume everyone knows what Karkar considers a “just solution”. It will continue, then. The struggle for the Land of Israel, for the Jews’ right to inhabit it without restriction, will continue. It’s still too early to abandon Zionism, I guess.

---

Article and fisking ends here. Just something from the Guardian to wrap it up. From Alex Stein’s article The rights and wrongs of return, from March 21, 2007, where he attempts to voice the truth that the “Palestinian Right of Return” is nothing more than a ruse “to destroy Israel through other means”. Comment is free, so the anti-Zionists get plenty to dump, and boy does some of it sound 1930-ish. But the most egregious exemplar belongs to commenter “thetrashheap”:

Ok you want to talk about rights what about a right to attack and resist occupation and land theft? How do you feel about that right?

In your morality an English man has more right to live on land because of his religion than the person whos family lived there for generations. Who decided this? The western imperial powers that gave away the palestinian land to european, american and russian immigrants. What gives them the right to decide what is moral.

Personally if somebody was driving me from my country and colonising it. I'd kill them if I could and it would matter to me if they were civilian or military. (Emphasis mine. —ZY)

A grade of A+ for honesty. For plain-spoken exposition of what an increasing portion of Western Leftists think: all Jews in all of Israel, not just in the 1967 territories but within the 1949 Armistice Line as well, and not just soldiers, not just men either, but even their women and children, deserve to be killed (G-d forbid), as they are all, without exception, colonialist settlers stealing the lands of another people. Game, set and match.

These are our enemies. Expose them. Denounce them. Destroy their credibility. Heap every amount of truthful abuse on them you can. And when wartime comes and they are found aiding the Islamic enemy’s war effort from within our jurisdiction, try them. To those who would see us dead, no quarter is to be given.

Clueless in Kosland

There is plenty of malice to be found on the Left, as the latest bouts of fire and brimstone from the “anti-war” demonstrators show, but the market on malice is pretty much monopolized by the Muslims, while the Leftists are dangerous more because they are stupid, supporting the Muslims in their stupidity. Some of the Daily Kos anti-Israel diaries make me grit my teeth in frustration, at seeing the vicious lies and callous reproaches heaped at Israel from the commenters and even on the diaries themselves, but what malice the Leftists have is quite latent, them being the cowards we know them to be, hence their preference to let their Muslim allies do the dirty anti-Israel (and anti-Western as a whole) work. I tend to forget this, but last night I read something on the Israel/“Palestine” diaries that brought it all before me in clarity.

It is on the diary Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands, by litho, the ever-dependable Israel-bashing Jew, of the type of Jew who has elevated Marx-given justice above all, not realizing that, even if he were right about the Jewish state being a colonialist project from the start, born of “dispossession of another people”, the reparations he suggests would not bring any peace and justice, but the opposite, more rivers of blood (G-d forbid) and more impetus to Islamic imperialism. He is, like all dhimmi Leftists, stupid, in short. But what takes the cake on that thread is a comment from Heathlander, a comment that goes beyond kumbayistic stupidity and into utter, jawdropping cluelessness.

First, for the record, Heathlander is another member of that group of adherents of the “Zionist Original Sin” doctrine. His belief is the standard fare: Zionism a “European white settler colonialist project”, aiming at dispossessing the “indigenous Palestinians”, the state of Israel an injustice from Day One, the only way to correct that being by turning the clock back to 1947 (i.e. not only withdrawing from the territories taken in 1967, but also permitting the application of the “Palestinian Right of Return”). He also sees “Palestinian” terrorism as entirely justified, labeling it “resistance”, thus: “Just as the French had the right to violently resist the Nazi occupation, just as the Algerians had the right to violently resist the French occupation, just as the West Papuans have the right to violently resist the Indonesian occupation, so the Palestinians have the right to violently resist the Israeli occupation.” (screenshot), from his diary The Boycott Continues, where he sheds tears over the boycott of the “Palestinians” preventing them from (my thoughts now, not his) purchasing the weapons they so need to engage in their “resistance”.

But back to litho’s thread, where Heathlander’s comment left me speechless (something hard to do after all the DKos diaries I’ve read). He says:

I think anyone who supports the right of the Palestinians to return to Israel (and we all should) must also support the right of those Jews who were expelled/caused to flee from the Arab countries to return to their homes.

“The right of those Jews […] from the Arab countries to return to their homes.” This ranks in cluelessness with the comment of an Arab poster on Richard Silverstein’s blog that the Jews of Israel should return to their pre-Holocaust homes in Europe. This type of comment betrays sheer ignorance of Judaism.

The first question that any Jew with even a modest measure of Jewish education asks himself on reading such a thing is, “Why would the Jews from the Arab countries, having reached Israel, want to return to them?!” In all the long history of the Jewish people, the abandonment of the Land of Israel was always forced, either immediately by foreign conquest and exile (as was the case with the Babylonian exile) or gradually by deteriorating economic conditions (the Romans never exiled the whole Jewish population of the Land of Israel, not even after the Bar Kochba revolt of 132–5 CE; but by the 5th century the economic state of the land had grown so bad that the Diaspora already outnumbered the homeland). Leaving the Land of Israel of their own free will was unheard of for Jews until modern times, when the crisis of Jewish education sapped the self-identity of many Jews. For any Jew throughout the ages properly educated on his heritage, the longing for the return to the Land of Israel was sucked together with his mother’s milk; therefore, Heathlander’s mere suggestion bespeaks a lack of even the beginning of the knowledge necessary to make one an evenhanded commenter on the Israel/“Palestine” conflict.

Except for genealogical tourism, the Jews of Europe have no desire to return to their pre-Holocaust homes in Europe, and the Jews of the Islamic world have no desire to return to their pre-1948 homes. This is because those homes were always transitional homes, never what any educated Jew would call Home; for a self-aware Jew, the Land of Israel is the only land that can be dignified with that title. The prophecies and the prayers all herald the time when the entirety of the exile will be ended, with all the Jews of the Diaspora having returned to their one and only land, the Land of Israel. To suggest a “Jewish Right of Return to their original homes in the Arab lands” is to display raw, unadultered ignorance. Hence my verdict that the Leftists, malicious though they may sometimes seem, or even act, are more victims of their stupidity, naiveté and lack of knowledge. All the more reason, then, to give them short shrift, as regards this particular conflict, and as regards the global conflict as a whole.

When Herzl of blessed memory suggested Uganda, not as permanent home but as temporary shelter, he was shouted down by the members of the Zionist Congress, many of whom even walked out of the room. He had suggested Uganda as a temporary shelter, and many of the members were assimilating Jews like him, yet even a meager Jewish education had branded the recognition onto their brains: No other home than the Land of Israel! It is, therefore, the height of stupidity for Heathlander and his like to suggest moving the Jewish population to any other land, or to “right past wrongs” by exchanging a “Palestinian Right of Return to Palestine” for a “Jewish Right of Return to their former homes”. It may not have to be anti-Semitism behind it all: I think there are quite a few on Daily Kos who are not consciously anti-Zionists, yet believe the solution of the Israel/“Palestine” conflict is the key to world peace. In which case we can chalk up another one for ignorance, naiveté and stupidity: ignorance of the Islamic enemy, the naiveté of Chamberlain’s pacifism and Lenon’s “Imagine”, and the sum of it, the stupidity of punishing the good by rewarding the evil.

Or to summarize it all: if people of this type weren’t in positions of influence, I wouldn’t waste a single second on engaging their clueless thoughts. Because they are, we Zionists must realize we are necessarily at war with them. They are aiding and abetting the dispossession of Jews from their one and only, G-d-given land.

Makdisi

From HonestReporting, March 12, 2007: the Los Angeles Times gave “Palestinian” activist and UCLA professor Saree Makdisi op-ed space to question the right of Israel to exist. Of course this has everything to do with a nationalistic struggle for independence and freedom from oppression, and nothing to do with Jew-hatred—of course, that’s why Israel is the only country in the world whose right to exist it is acceptable to dispute (more on this from Yediot Achronot columnist Uri Elitzur, whose op-ed from last Friday I have already scanned and will, G-d willing, translate and post soon)… But I have not come here to vent my frustration, although I harbor plenty of that; I wish to show how this gentleman refutes his stance, the general “Palestinian” stance that “Israel is a fantasy of the Jews”, before he begins to write even a single word. How he is gainsaid by his very name.

G-d describes Ishmael’s kleptomania from the very beginning, in Genesis 16. Ishmael’s thievery is bad enough in and of itself, but it is compounded with a sense of entitlement, which makes it nearly impossible for him to repent. So it is that the Muslims of Israel (and many Christian useful idiots of theirs) show no shame in visiting countries that are officially at war with Israel, and no pang of conscience in opining that the kidnapping of the three Jewish soldiers that led to the Summer 2006 Lebanon War was justified, and no gratitude for living conditions far more favorable than those of any of their brethren in the entire Arab and Islamic worlds. Ghaleb Majadle is appointed Minister of Science of a state that strictly speaking does not owe him a thing, yet he uses his platform to decry the “racism of the Zionist state from its very inception”. And finally, any seasoned driver in Israel will tell you to be specially careful when driving near the Arab towns and villages (in the north of Israel, for example), because “the Arab drivers drive like they own the country”. Ishmael steals, and steals without regret, for he feels entitled to it all.

Likewise in the spiritual plane: Islam copies very many things from Judaism, looking like a sincere attempt to partake in the holiness, but really being theft, for the Muslims say Judaism is a corruption of the original and Islam the restoration of the original. Judaism has the Torah, Torah readings with cantillation, the Oral Tradition, the Halakhah, dietary laws (kosher food), three daily prayers, the fast on the Day of Atonement and the pilgrimage to the Temple at Jerusalem; Islam has the Koran, Koran readings with cantillation, the Hadith, shariah law, dietary laws (halal food), five daily prayers, the daytime fast in the month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to the shrine at Mecca. The two religions are close enough for Maimonides to have regarded Islam as one of G-d’s tools for spreading the truth of monotheism, and yet he spared no harsh judgment on Islam, and prohibited Jews for posterity to teach the Torah to Muslims (while, on the other hand, permitting Jews to teach the Torah to Christians, for they accept the text as-is, and only their interpretation of it differs). Even the monotheism part of Islam is a marred copy: because the Koran describes the Creator differently than does the Torah, Muslims worship one deity but have the wrong conception of Him. Islam, meaning “submission”, elevates the truth of the kingship and sovereignty of G-d to the detriment of the truth of His fatherhood and love. This may be acceptable to G-d for furthering His plan to rid the world of idolatry, but Jews should not delude themselves that Islamic countries are countries where G-d’s mission—that all men may know Him—is accomplished. The truth is still waiting for the final hour.

Islam, the Muslims believe, supersedes all: Abraham was not a Jew (nor a Christian) but a Muslim; the Torah as given to Moses at Sinai no longer in the possession of the Jews, but rather in the hands of the Muslims, in its restored form, the Koran; the Land of Israel not a special place, but designated to be part of Dar Al Islam like the rest of the world; and, last but not least, the Temple at Jerusalem nothing but a fiction (cursed be they who say this), its site being only the location of the cornerstone of the world, and its remaining wall, the Western Wall, only a post for Mohammad to tie his flying horse that brought him there, to the mosque that now stands on top of Judaism’s one and only holy site, cementing the doctrine of Temple Denial with a fact on the ground. Here it is that I come back to our friend Saree Makdisi.

Makdisi is faithful to Islam’s kleptocratic tradition of denying all that was before. As he believes Israel is a fantasy of the Jews, it is safe to say he displays the same sentiment toward the Temple. It is easy to make that claim: Does there not remain of the Temple only a single wall? Is not a mere wall insufficient evidence? How can you compare a wall to a mosque standing there in full glory? Ah, what an open and shut case. But… Makdisi.

The Arabic name for Jerusalem today is Al Quds. It is already reminiscent enough of the Hebrew word, “kodesh” (holiness) to arouse suspicion, but let it be granted that the name was tagged on to Jerusalem because it is a holy city to the Muslims as well (the third holiest; but don’t tell them first trumps third, because that’d be Islamophobic). But Jerusalem had an earlier Arabic name: Beit El Makdis. This name is so transparent to any Jew of minimal religious upbringing as to be obvious at first glance: beit ha-mikdash, Hebrew for “House of the Temple”; or in the short version: the Temple. From this, dropping the first part, the surname Makdisi is formed.

In the view of the fact that Temple Denial is now a linchpin of the Islamic jihad against the Jewish state (marketed fraudulently as “The Palestinian Struggle for Independence”), how can this surname exist at all?

When the Muslims conquered the Land of Israel in the 7th century CE, it was not Jews they took it from, but Byzantines. The Muslims vied with people for whom the Jewish Temple was no concern, was an artifact of the Old Covenant, done away with when Jesus died on the cross. The concern of Islam back then was to undercut the legitimacy of Christianity, while Judaism was a non-factor. The Muslims had heard the expression, “Beit El Makdis” from their Arabic-speaking Jewish and Christian contemporaries, and had no trouble using it as the name for the whole city, as was customary for the Jews and Christians of the time (“Jerusalem” and “The Temple” are interchanged numerous times in the Jewish prayers). Little did they know that that surname would prove them liars about 1,300 years hence.

Like the 19th-century British photos and literary descriptions (most famously by Mark Twain) of the Land of Israel, giving the lie to the claim that the Zionists ousted a copious people from a teeming land, the surname Makdisi lays naked and bare the truth of this land’s spiritual significance to the Jews: the land which G-d has promised them. It is our land, and our only land; we concede the Arabs their 22 existing states, and the Muslims their 57 existing states, and all the non-Jews the entirety of the rest of the world, but we insist on the ownership of the one and only Land of Israel, and we insist on inhabiting it all, and ruling it according to the law G-d gave us at Sinai, and we dream of being able to observe all the 613 mitzvot of the Torah again, when G-d sees it fit to build the Temple again, speedily in our days, amen.

Thus we also see why any anti-Zionist “peace initiative” is unacceptable. Ricocheting regularly on the walls of the Daily Kos Israel/“Palestine” diaries are proposals to relocate all the Jews from Israel to some other part of the world. “Six million Jews in Israel, just about the population of New York—is it all worth the global turmoil?” say the Kossacks. See, apart from their misguided belief in the ability to appease the Islamic enemy through sacrificial offerings, they are only too eager to do what they despise President Bush for doing in Iraq: interventionism, down to the level of deciding the fates of entire populations. But it goes beyond the normal Leftist hypocrisy—these people, awash in a willingness to concede the entirety of Western culture to the diktats of the Islamic colonial invaders, show no tolerance, no sensitivity, no understanding whatsoever to the needs of Jewish religious believers. Let a Muslim complain that his student life is jeopardized by the lack of ablution fountains and the ACLU will be on his case immediately; but the fact that a generous portion of the mitzvot of the Torah can be observed only on the Land of Israel inspires a yawn from them at best, “Oh, shut up, you with your irrational bronze-age beliefs!” usually, and “Yes, but you have no right to put the whole world in danger on account of your religious beliefs” from those who wish to put on an enlightened, considerate veneer.

The mind of today may not be favorably disposed (and that’s putting it mildly) toward the renewal of Temple worship; then again, today’s “enlightened minds” are trying to redefine marriage, parenting, childhood and the very fabric of society as a totality, so one might not want to take after the zeitgeist in all things. Also, I did not hear many shrieks of horror from the Leftists about the pictures of animals slaughtered by the Muslims on Eid Al Adha, so I guess some “barbaric customs” are more equal than others. Ultimately, the truth is not obliged to agree with our feelings. Anti-Zionist Joseph Massad, in his screed Israel’s Right to Be Racist (courtesy of Al-Ahram, the principal newspaper of Egypt, with whom Israel is “at peace”), rants sarcastically:

God has given this land to the Jews and told them to safeguard themselves against gentiles who hate them. To make Israel a non-Jewish state then would run the risk of challenging God Himself.

I have no doubt it gives you a bad feeling, Mr. Massad. And to you too, Mr. Makdisi. But, Mr. Massad, we Jews are here according to our belief in the truth, the truth that G-d had promised this land to our three patriarchs, and given it to us to inhabit after getting us out from Egypt, a historical truth which we celebrate every year, this very Hebrew month. G-d chose this people to inhabit this land in order to see His glory in His Temple, the temple to which your surname, Mr. Makdisi, bears witness. And although it is in a state of ruin because of our sins, G-d has promised its restoration, speedily in our days, amen. If this is the truth, then there is nothing the uproar of the nations can do against it, for G-d rules all the nations, and it is better for them that they heed His law.

Proving Jew-Hatred Internal

This post builds on my previous, The Tribes, addressing a Jewish matter.

A question I have not yet been personally asked (though I have seen it raised in some form or another in the blogosphere from time to time) is, “How do you know the anti-Zionist critics of Israel are anti-Semitic at heart? With all due respect, singling Israel out for criticism, though a potent demonstration of it, is still not ironclad proof. Do you have any way of showing that their anti-Semitism is an internal, emotional, ingrained matter?” That is a fair question, and I can answer it.

I spoke of the Leftists’ admiration for all manner of exoticism in my previous post, and particularly for tribalism. Conservatives usually, as I described on myself, channel this “feeling that burns in one’s blood and bones” by returning to the heritage that was extant just a few generations before, while Progressives, ironically, let that feeling carry them away to the direction of turning their backs on that same heritage. I talked of myself as being a happy “urban tribesman”; for Leftists, the real, heartfelt dream is to go back to living as non-Western tribesmen do: as villagers or desert nomads.

On all of the left-wing sites I read (linked to at the sidebar, under the heading, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), whenever tribes and tribalism are mentioned, the feeling of admiration, of identification, of desire to be like them, oozes from every letter. Iraqi tribesmen deserve to have their sovereignty recognized, Western capitalism and Christian missionaries are slammed for “destroying indigenous tribal cultures”, and the thought of Native American scholar Vine Deloria is echoed that Western Man must transition to the Native American (i.e. tribal) way of life in order to regain happiness. Again, I agree with the foundation of those sentiments but not with their details, and certainly not with where the Leftists take them. But I digress. My point is that there is only one exception to their feelings toward tribalism: the Jews.

Whenever Israel, Zionism and the Jews are mentioned, all of a sudden tribalism becomes to the Leftists something to be despised, reviled and condemned. Jewish tribalism is, to their minds, a regression, and furthermore a danger to the world and its wellbeing. The Jews, in contrast to any other tribe, are expected to “rise above their tribalism and adopt more universal values”. No other tribal group gets this treatment on sites like CounterPunch and ZNET. Only the Jews.

Think I’m making this up? Here is a fine specimen by Gilad Atzmon, One Hundred Years of Jewish Solitude, displaying the condemnation of Jewish tribalism in full form. And to those who wonder how one article shows the truth regarding all, remember that such sites, particularly CounterPunch, are Stalinist sites, not admitting any article prior to being checked for strict doctrinal conformance. Besides, there’s more where Atzmon’s article comes from—do a search for “tribalism” on CounterPunch and you will find, wherever it is mentioned in connection to Jews, the mention is unfavorable, and favorable everywhere else.

Recall what I said about the Leftists’ attitude toward tribes and tribalism: heartfelt admiration and a desire to be like them, seeping from every word. An internal, emotional thing, without a shadow of doubt. And now, with that in consideration, the question arises: what does it mean that, when the same concept, tribalism, is attached to the modifier, “Jewish”, all of a sudden their words turn from admiration and wistfulness to condemnation and loathing? What it does mean when a deep-seated emotion is overridden by that single modifier?

Yes, it means that we have before us 100 percent, irrefutable proof that the Jew-hatred of the CounterPunch and Common Dreams Marxists and Jimmy “Too Many Jews” Carter and the Daily Kos Kids (not all of them, of course—I’m talking about those like Christopher Day, mattes and litho) and all the rest of left-wingers of those type is an internal matter. It will be no use wrapping it in the nice package of “care for the plight of the Palestinians” and “love of peace and justice”—if tribalism stirs such strong pangs of sympathy when mentioned of Native Americans, of Arab Bedouins, of Uyghurs, et cetera, yet the same concept, tribalism, evokes the opposite of that as soon as the Jews are concerned, then what we have here is Jew-hatred, Judeophobia, anti-Semitism on the internal level, within the heart.

As an indigenous Jewish tribesman, native of my land, I have no less a cause for being sympathized with by the Leftists than do the Native Americans. (But see my post On a Few Comments on DKos, from January 23, 2007, for their typical hypocrisy on that regard.) That I am instead regarded as a colonial invader, and my belonging to The Tribe (always thus capitalized when they speak of “the stranglehold of the Israel Lobby on the USA”) is brought up as a basis for disparagement rather than solidarity, is ironclad proof of ingrained Leftist Jew-hatred, hide as it may under the cover of “criticism of Israel’s policies”. I have proved what I set out to prove; now the burden is on the other side to show otherwise. And for us, members of The Tribe, this is a call to keep the Leftist dogs on the short leash they deserve, and not give them the credence of which they are not worthy.