Racists Branded, Nazis Ignored

The use of the tactic had gotten so blatant that even commenters on his own side called him on it. “Jon the Anti-Zionist Jew”, a regular poster of the vilest anti-Israel diaries on Daily Kos, had the habit of calling “racist” anyone who disagreed with his opinions—anyone who showed the slightest hint of siding with Israel.

Jon was (or still is?) extreme in his employment of that ruse, hence even his komrades (sic) no longer being able to stand it, but that tactic, of using the stigmatizing term in order to brand perceived opponents as diabolical, has been a staple of the Marxists, and in the mode of operation prescribed by Antonio Gramsci, the word “racist” is the magic wand that anathematizes any desired target.

“Racist” is what Arab members of the Israeli parliament are now calling the law banning membership in it of any citizen of Israel who has visited enemy states. A sensible law, a law which would never have been contested in the past, is now being assaulted by that curse-word, that all-powerful, all-catching, damning whisper: “Racism”. The law specifically says, “Israelis”, not “Arabs”, yet the Arab Knesset Members know full well who would be on its receiving end—“The hat burns on the thief’s head”, as we say in Israel—and they know the best way of countering it: a blackmail tactic, a ploy that appeals not to reason but to the knee-jerk reaction today’s world displays upon the word, “racism”.

Today is also the 17th anniversary of the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, may HaShem avenge his blood. This man, the closest the nation of Israel has had to a prophet as could be after the destruction of the Temple (most of the events in Israel from 1993 to this day were foretold in his writings and speeches), was vilifed by the Israeli Left for… you guessed it: “Racism”. In 1988, when he was getting too powerful politically for comfort, the “Anti-Racist Law” was passed in order to bar him from Israeli politics. As regards world opinion, I don’t think this has helped much. Israel is now so basking in its anti-racist veneer, so much that our Dear World has given us a place of honor as the successor of South Africa. But there is something else notable about the Anti-Racist Law: it was passed by unanimous vote on part of both Left and Right in Israel. The Israeli Right was so anxious to be “with it”, so caring for its “moral purity”, that it joined hands with the Left to silence the one leader who had the only non-miraculous way of bringing lasting peace to the Jewish State. Five years later, we got the Oslo Accords, which brought to Israel the Jew-murderer Arafat and his gang from Tunis. In October 2000, we got a mini-redux of 1947 with the uprising of Arabs within our 1949 Armistice Line territories. And now, more and more of our towns are coming within rocket range. Ah, but we just had to be “Not Racists”!

Rabbi Kahane of blessed memory knew, from both the Torah and common sense, that there could be no peace for the Jewish nation in Israel if a rival nationalism were allowed to become a majority within it. The Torah says, in many places (Numbers 33:50–56 being the example I frequently quote), that the Israelites must not occupy another nation in their land, for that occupation would spell enduring trouble; but must, instead, drive out the other nations, expel anyone who does not agree with the idea that the Land of Israel is under Jewish sovereignty, under the rule of Jewish Law. The Beneš Decree, by which all the Germans of the Sudetenland were expelled in 1945, is a historical example of the necessity of insisting on national sovereignty: the region that served as the catalyst for World War II has not been on the news ever since the execution of that decree. But any discussion of expulsion or deportation gets you the boot not just from Daily Kos, but now even from ostensibly right-wing sites like Little Green Footballs and Hot Air. Because, as we all know, it’s (drum roll, please) “racist”.

And there is the word, “Nazi”, which is the same, just on steroids. The right-wing blogosphere is, in part, awash in Nazimania—in the craze of proving how the Counter-Jihad movement in Europe is being hijacked by Nazis. Yes, Nazis, as if this were still the 1930’s in a literal sense! You see, we’re now so done, so finished with the job of neutralizing the Leftists and repulsing the Muslims that we can now concentrate on the Next Big Thing™: ghosts from the past. The impulsive boss of LGF and his like-minded commenters (because the others have all been banned) did not stop to think whether the branding of certain European parties as “racist” and “white supremacist” and even “Nazi” might, just might, have something to do with the Left-Wing Spin Machine. You know, the same propaganda mill that brands LGF itself as a “fascist, racist, hate-mongering site”, and which is behind the move to criminalize all criticism of Islam as “racism”, “Western imperialism” and “Islamophobia”. So now the budding anti-Islamization movement in Europe, in the continent that is in a far worse state than the USA (and in many ways Israel too), has to contend not only with the concerted effort of the Gramscian Left and the Islamic colonialist enemy, but with smears from the American Right as well. Great, just great.

“Are there no Neo-Nazis? Are there still no Ku Klux Klan members? Are there no people in real life behind the screen names you see on Stormfront?” Yes to all, there are all those. But in this fiesta of finding Nazis everywhere, the sense of proportion has been lost: the preference of focusing on classical racists and Jew-haters rather than on the new imperialists and anti-Zionists may be compelling, especially when propped up by a treasonous media and academe managed entirely by people who have been brought up on the Marxist “dialectic”, but it is wrong. Plainly wrong. It’s about as wrong as worrying about “freedoms curtailed by wiretapping and other measures” while turning a blind eye to the real loss of freedom resultant of Politically Correct and pro-Islamic pressure and legislation (or put it this way: How many of those “brave, courageous” artists who’ve displayed unflattering depictions of Jesus are willing to do as Lars Vilks, of Modoggies fame, has done?). Yes, there are some of the scum from the 1930’s, or re-enactors of them, around, but the danger from them is by far eclipsed by the menace of today’s true heirs of the Nazis and their equally nefarious enablers: the Muslims and the Marxists, respectively.

You worry about the Jews of Europe? The Diaspora is on the way out. So our prophets foretold us. Even those of the USA are not guaranteed to stay there for long. In the meantime, there is a state full of Jews on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, surrounded by those who follow the same religion as Hitler’s ally, Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the religion founded by the one who ordered a mass grave dug and the Jews of the town murdered and thrown into it, thus predating the Einsatzgruppen by about 1,300 years. Hitler was on the march to the British-ruled Land of Israel; he was stopped at Al-Alamein, but no matter, the Muslims are perfectly intent on finishing what he failed to complete (God forbid). All aided and abetted, by the way, by the European Union.

The European Union. That part of the Caliphate-in-the-making, with its open borders and unrestricted immigration policies serving as an irresistible honey-pot for Muslims from all over the world. Marching, under the regime of Multiculturalism, to the abyss of Islamization, of full subsumption into the House of Islam, day after day. And do you know what would fall to the Muslims if Europe fell to them? Not just lands and culture, which would be a tragic loss in itself (remember the Bamiyan Buddhas? The treasures of Florence could meet the same fate), but also technology, and worse, weaponry. We are rightly worried about the prospect of Iran making nuclear weapons, but the threat of the whole European arsenal (or even the arsenal of just one European state is bad enough) falling into the Muslims’ hand like a ripe fruit has to take a back seat to ideological purity, to doing a search-and-destroy of Nazis within the Counter-Jihad Movement. Real smart, people.

Israel gained nothing for its “anti-racist” push to ostracize Rabbi Kahane. The non-Muslim resistance to the Islamic invasion can only stand to lose from taking the Leftist bait. One of our sages was once cursed by a witch, and then replied to her, “Go away; your words have no power over me, for to God alone is the power”. This magic word, “racism”, needs to be treated like the empty curse it is, not given such great consideration. As Baron Bodissey concludes, in the moral of a story:

Ladies and gentlemen, the handcuffs labeling you as “racists”, “Nazis”, and “Islamophobes” are simple to remove and discard.

The door of the PC Multicultural bus unlocks easily, and invites you to jump off and escape.

“In addition”, said Cato the Youngster, “I think the Muslims must be expelled”.

Standing for Nationalism

The right-wing blogosphere is now awash in the issue of racialism and ties to Nazi and Nazi-like movements, the greatest salvo being the LGF thread about Vlaams Belang and the Swedish Democrats. By sheer coincidence (or maybe not; an Orthodox Jew ought to believe there is no coincidence, only HaShem’s hand), this started just a few days after my spat with the racialists on Gates of Vienna. I didn’t have anything to do with the LGF thread; it was part of Charles’ reaction to a post on Atlas Shrugs. But this topic looks like staying on for a few weeks at the very least.

On that last LGF thread, in a discussion with Fjordman, I tried to outline both the agreements and disagreements I had with the European branch of the resistance to Islamization. I wrote (comment #257):

[…] Let me try to draw a few common, undisputed arguments:

1. Islam is a mortal threat to all non-Muslim host states.
2. National sovereignty should be defended from the encroachment of superstates.
3. The governments are no longer in any synchrony with the people they are supposed to represent.
4. Uncontrolled immigration is disastrous and should be done away with.

To contrast, the disagreements:

1. The role of race in shaping human cultural differences.
2. The idea that each culture fits its race of origin best.

It appears to me that the greatest agreement we have (in general, and between Fjordman and me in particular) is #2: national sovereignty is a must, and superstates like the European Union are to be fought until they are toppled (or nipped in the bud if they are in their formative stages). I may disagree with the guys of The Brussels Journal on some or even many things, but I agree 100% with their overarching goal: the protection of the sovereignty of individual European nations from the absorption into the EUSSR Borg. I can identify with that goal fully, because I am a doctrinaire, self-conscious nationalist. And, because my nationalism, Jewish nationalism, also known as Zionism, isn’t entangled with the consideration of race as in the European case, I can offer a defense of nationalism against the Leftist device of conflating it with racism.

The Left is internationalist by doctrine; John Lennon’s “Imagine no countries” is a succinct description of Marxist sentiment. The phrase, “rootless cosmopolitan”, which Stalin (long may he roast in hell) used to depict the Jews of the USSR, is ironically an accurate depiction of what the Marxists wish for all humans to be: citizens of the world, shorn of all nationalistic ties.

It was the main point of contention between Trotsky and Stalin, as it is now among Leftists, even on officially non-Marxist sites like Daily Kos, to what extent the reality of human nationalism should be cut slack. Trotsky wanted to export the Russian Revolution to outside Russia, while Stalin insisted Russia wait with it until more favorable times. In like manner, on one of the Daily Kos Israel/“Palestine” threads, one of the commenters expressed the wish humanity would “grow out of artificial distinctions such as ‘Israelis’ and ‘Palestinians’ and see ‘human’ as their only identity”; to which another commenter grudgingly agreed, but then said humanity was not ready for that yet, so the next best thing was to support “justice for all indigenous peoples” in the meantime. They were both agreed that the final goal, their Messianic vision for the End of Days, was a world without states, countries and national divisions.

So, regardless of the dispute between Trotsky and Stalin as to the tempo, the Marxists have always had their sights on nationalism, and striven to discredit it. They received their golden, unrepeatable chance to do so in the aftermath of World War II, and they did not fail to seize on it: from 1945 to this day, the Marxists (and other Leftists influenced by them—an increasing number since the 1960’s) have not ceased to use Nazism and World War II as “proof” that nationalism is by necessity a force for evil.

Today, however, it is important to defend nationalism, because it is very much the only stop-gap against the encroachment of superstates, whether nanny-state socialist like the European Union or Islamofascist like the planned Caliphate; superstates which, by nature, would spell the death of civil liberties to all those who fall under their jurisdiction. It is necessary, first of all, to clear nationalism’s name from the Marxists’ post-WWII narrative, and then to show how nationalism, when properly done, is the best fit for the human race.

“Nazi” is short for “National-Socialist German Workers’ Party”, a name containing two red herrings one after the other. The “Socialist” part was a relatively standard socialism for the 1930’s, a far cry from Communism: Hitler and FDR had similar programs for responding to the Great Depression. But my subject is nationalism, and here the inaccuracy is of a different nature: not that the Nazi Party’s platform was not nationalistic, but that it went far beyond nationalism. In fact, it went beyond mere racism as well. For all my loathing of the Stormfronters and other such racialists in Europe, they differ from the Nazis in one crucial aspect: their stated platform is only “Defending White Europe from the wave of non-white immigration”, while the Nazis’ goal was to make the Herrenvolk the masters of the whole world. What made Nazism such a force for evil, then, was imperialism. Mere nationalism, even mere racism, would never have driven Germany to opening a world war and exterminating millions (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and more). The idea of entitlement to the whole world was the vital ingredient here. And this—a point that cannot be stressed enough—is something Nazism has in common with the non-nationalist ideologies of both Communism and Islam. Answer to Leftist anti-nationalists: Nazism was imperialism; non-imperialist nationalism is clean of the atrocities Nazi Germany committed.

And now to the explanation why nationalism is the best fit, or perhaps I should say, as it is said regarding democracy, the least bad model for human political organization. The explanation is as follows: human differences become less manageable the more individuals are involved, until there is a level at which the gaps can no longer be bridged; based on history and current events, the nation is the highest level where the differences can still be managed.

Without shared values there can be no cohesive society. That sounds obvious, but so many unifying paradigms have been tried that give no sustainable shared values. For example, the patriotic ideal, according to which two different nations can be united by virtue of sharing history on the same land. This has failed everywhere: Yugoslavia, Rwanda and now Iraq, to name just three examples. It is failing in Lebanon as we speak, and the One-State Solution proposed for the Israel/“Palestine” would, should it ever be implemented, fare just as disastrously (which is why I insist on treating anyone who advocates the Binational Solution as if he had called for a Second Holocaust). In a past post, I cited Belgium as the only example I could find of the success of the patriotic ideal, but since then the secessionist strife between the Flems and the Walloons of Belgium has come to the fore, crossing off Belgium as a success story as well. In all the failed examples, the differences were too great to be reconciled, so that, as soon as the temporary unifying factor vanished (for example, the iron-fisted ruler in the case of Yugoslavia and Iraq), there was nothing to hold the factions any longer. True nations are capable of holding together without such a factor.

Granted, there were supra-national organizations long before the current superstates. The Catholic Church was the one for Western Europe, as it still is for millions of Catholic Christians worldwide. However, the limits of such supra-national structures in motivating political actions have been apparent since the early days; already in 1096, when the pope called for the first crusade, he had to appeal to nationalism (“the acts of God through the Franks”) in order to rally the necessary troops. Organizations like the Catholic Church provide for ideological unity and inspiration, and the Islamic aspiration of the Caliphate shows how potent they can be, but they cannot hold diverse identities together politically. Nations are in enough danger of civil strife themselves, but the reality of national identity means this is not inevitable; whereas Christian Europe and the Islamic Caliphate in the Middle Ages were destined to break up into individual, often warring, states from Day One.

In the modern world there is a possibility for a supra-national state to hold together. The method of doing so was covered most extensively, I think, by George Orwell, especially in his book 1984. The short of it: only by totalitarian rule can a superstate be sustained, be prevented from breaking up into its individual nation-states. Only through the crushing of civil liberties can the consequences of such great differences be contained. Superstates, then, are anti-liberal (the “liberal” part being in the classical sense) by their very nature. Barring a basic change in how humans think, internationalism is a pipe-dream, all attempts at its implementation necessary leading to disaster, such as the 100,000,000 deaths that Marxism has so far left in its wake.

With my talk of human nature, I tread into religious territory. I write from the Torah-based point of view now, so non-religious readers might wish to skip this paragraph. It would seem that only God can truly bring an age of internationalism. That is true, strictly speaking, but we have it on the authority of HaShem’s prophets that He will not do so. Look at all the prophecies regarding the End of Days, i.e. the Messianic Age, and you will see a vision of peace, plenty and brotherhood of man, but not the end of human nationalities. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation”, says the prophet Isaiah (2:4)—no more war between nations, true, but that means there will be nations! For the Bible, being the only authoritative source on human nature, tells us, in its first chapters, how humanity could not hold on to its pristine state of being unified, without national divisions. It does not matter if you take the first eleven chapters of Genesis literally or allegorically (I do the latter); the message about humanity is the same: human beings are too weak to rise above such divisions. Therefore HaShem, in His great favor, gave indulgence to nationalism, and made it an eternal institute for mankind. HaShem will only end wars between the nations (speedily in our days, amen), not the nations themselves. When the Marxists envision an End of Days without nations, they are being, how shall we put it, plus royalist que le roi. And the results, as we all know, have been disastrous.

So I, as a Jew, am totally unfazed by the argument that the Jews were victims of nationalism in 1939–45. This argument only serves as a starting-point for the main thrust: that Zionism, Jewish nationalism, is as equally detrimental to the Jewish people (with the standard “Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them” soon to follow). Nice try, but no: Nazism is not exclusively a member of the set, “nationalism”; it belongs to another set in addition, called “imperialism”, which is what made it so destructive a force. Jewish nationalism is both Biblically-derived and sound from a general human, non-religious point of view. And the struggle of Israel against the Muslim sedition in its midst is one of the best demonstrations of why nationalism must be defended.

The Muslims of Israel (as well as a few non-Muslim Arab useful idiot allies of theirs) demonstrate excellently why nationalism is required for cohesion. One might point out the divisions among the Jews (secular, Modern Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox; in the past the racial divisions were also of importance, but not so now, despite the attempts of Leftists to describe it so), but even in the thick of the sharpest divisions, there has always stayed the constant of the idea of Ha-Am Ha-Yehudi—the Jewish nation; such that, as we saw during the Lebanon War of summer 2006, times of trouble could bring all the factions to set aside their differences. The Muslims of Israel, in contrast, have never been part of this unity. Fear had them lying low in the first decades of the state of Israel, but when that fear dissipated, their typical Muslim insolence surfaced. Not only do they not share the nationality (which is true for non-Muslims in Israel like the Druzes, who do not display those seditious tendency, except for a few who have been Leftoxicated into the Post-Colonial paradigm), they have an active, conscious nationalism of their own, a nationalism rivaling the Jewish one. (A supra-nationalism, to be more accurate—the idea of the Islamic ummah.) There cannot be lasting peace inside a state under such a state of affairs.

So too in Europe, the accumulation of rival nationalisms under the same roof is not making for a peaceful existence. Note that this has little to do with race; this has to do, foremostly, with an uncontrolled flood of immigration that is not beset by any demands upon the immigrants to make steps toward naturalization. In the past, it was unheard of that an immigrant would permanently reside in the host country without learning the language. Nowadays, a call for insisting that Mexicans immigrating to the USA (whether legally or not) speak English earns you the worn-out epithet, “racist” from the self-righteous Leftist establishment. Between today’s extremes of not making any demands upon immigrants and the idea that only people of a particular race can be real citizens, in the past there was the middle road of accepting anyone but on condition that they assimilate themselves to the host culture. This necessarily cut down on immigration, for only those who were serious about it immigrated. And most importantly, it preserved the national cohesion of the state. No “nations inside a nation, rivaling the host nation”—immigrants had to adapt. The Hispanic immigrant did not have to cease speaking Spanish among his family, but he did have to learn English, and totally absent was the situation that he would ask others to speak Spanish to accommodate him. He would find immigration difficult at first, as all immigrants do, but afterward he, or if not he then his children, would be an integral part of the fabric of the American nation. That was until recently, until it became “culturally imperialist” to make such demands of immigrants.

The Left will never be pleased by anything short of its internationalistic goal. In the meantime, all the efforts to placate the demands of Political Correctness are taking their toll on states worldwide. People of all nations worldwide need to realize that the phasing out of nationalism and the dropping of all national demands can have only two possible results: civil war or superstate tyranny. Two evils to choose from. Nationalism is the only way out, because the national level is the highest in which the differences between individuals can still be managed. The Leftist Big Lie that nationalism was the cause of World War II and its atrocities must be demolished, in order to make room for the truth that nationalism is today’s self-defense measure against both anarchy and totalitarian rule. All who stand for civil liberties must demand national homogeneity; a homogeneity that does not mean ending all immigration and deporting all immigrants, only enforcing the demand that immigrants accommodate themselves to the host state, and deporting all those who refuse to do so.

May peace both within nations and between them arrive soon, amen.

Response to “Clockwork Zionists” (Pantland, ep. 2)

Response to Clockwork Zionists, by Walton Pantland (yes, he of the first response).

I can write about whatever I like - things that interest me, and that I think are important - and no one pays much attention.

Put the words 'Israel' or 'Zion' into the title, and my stats shoot up as defenders of Israel gather to call me an anti-Semite and a neo-Nazi.

I don’t know jack about your site stats, but I don’t single you out for responses. Back when Daily Kos still had new arguments to make against Israel, there were times you could expect a response to them on my blog every day. My goal is to defend Zionism; to expect attacks to go unresponded (just like the state of Israel is expected to take every Kassam rocket lying down) is unreasonable.

So, for the record, and despite claims to the contrary:

I am not advocating genocide against the Jews.

I am not calling for Jews in the Middle East to be displaced or killed.

Few and far between (still…) are left-wingers who openly call for those things. However, as I already said to Pantland in his comments, the demands they make of Israel cannot lead to any other result.

It looks to me as if the challenge I have presented, to advocates of the Binational Solution in general, is being ignored once again. To remind you what the challenge is: To bring a credible binational proposal in which it is guaranteed that the result will not be disastrous. One-Staters have talked plenty of how both the status quo and the Two-State Solution are no good, but they have yet to offer a one-state solution with which we Israeli Jews could even begin to feel comfortable with. They support the One-State Solution with idealistic arguments (“The only possible way to restore justice” and the like), but they have totally neglected to address the pragmatic aspects of their proposition.

It’s almost as if they didn’t care what the final result would be.

I am simply saying that the Zionist dream hasn't worked. It hasn't made the world a safer place for Jews.

That is definitely true, if Zionism is about making the world a safer place for Jews. But that was Herzl’s (the founder of modern, secular Zionism) error: he thought that the Jews having their own state would end all Jew-hatred. The disillusionment from that dream was nailed by Golda Meir’s phrase, “Israel is the Jew among nations”. And yet, that does not mean the alternatives are any better:

Most Jews choose not to live in Israel, because Europe, the US, Canada, Australasia and many other countries have proved to be better places to live.

Of all the places you listed, you had to put Europe first?! Europe is fast becoming the most unsafe place for Jews to reside in, thanks to the growth of its Muslim population. Unlike you Leftists, the Muslims have no reservations about calling for Jewish genocide (God forbid). You Leftists just do your part in saying the Muslims are “venting their frustration over the injustice in Palestine”—justification.

The way of thinking, “Why live in Israel? The rest of the world is much safer”, is so 1970’s. Increasingly, a Jew leaving Israel finds the same threat upon his arrival at the new country.

Israel is such a mess that it has its own, home grown neo-Nazis, who are Jewish enough to be able to immigrate to Israel, […]

The result of inappropriate criteria for determining Jewishness. If that were done according to the traditional yardstick of the halachah (Jewish Law), that problem would be solved; but I’m one with Bin Laden just for proposing that, pace Pantland.

[…] not to mention the American Jewish fundamentalists who settle in places like Hebron.

And pray tell, what is the connection between “homegrown neo-Nazis” and “American Jewish fundamentalists”?! Could it be only that they are equivalent in your eyes? As far as many (and growing) Israeli Jews are concerned, the “American Jewish fundamentalists” are part and parcel of their society, something that could never be said for the non-Jewish hooligans who made the news.

Israel wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for $30 billion of US military aid, […]

Oh yes, the subtle threat: “Better go to the negotiations table before the aid is cut off and then you’re goners!” Thing is, US aid to Israel hasn’t always been a given. Back in 1948, when five Arab armies attacked our nascent state, we didn’t get any US aid; we had to make do with a few Czech leftovers from WWII and some French offerings. How did we survive?

[…] which the Israeli army uses to kill Palestinian children. Are they anti-Semites too?

Where does the link lead? To Jews sans frontieres, which bills itself “An Anti-Zionist blog”. Good start. And the post itself begins by quoting the quisling Gideon Levy. Even better. And the whole of the post is centered around the argument that, even though the “Palestinians” target Jewish children and send their own children to the line of fire, Israel is still guilty of “targeting” children. Again the extraordinary standard: “Take it all lying down, until you have defused it through talks and concessions.”

I am not happy about what is going on in Judea and Samaria. But concessions and capitulations won’t work—they merely bring more Jewish areas (and in the 1949 Armistice Line borders, no less) into rocket range. There is only one way to end the occupation and all its unfortunate results: expel all the Muslims from those areas.

I’m sure Pantland will pounce on my solution as “the height of injustice”. Clockwork. But he might want to ponder on the fact that, ever since the expulsion of the Germans from there in 1945, the Sudetenland has been out of the news. Yep, the same region that was the catalyst for a world war. You can’t argue with facts.

Come on. I really do have a deep respect for people's connection to place, and if Jews want to live in Israel-Palestine, that's fine. But respect other people's rights as well.

Ah. You have deep respect for our connection to the place. Not for the Jewish dream, the ancient dream, of having sovereignty over a state of our own on the Land of Israel.

Walton, I have news for you: we’re done living under the sovereignty of non-Jews. We have a whole history of it to know it’s not a very good deal. In the Diaspora, we had no choice (unlike the Muslims, who think themselves entitled to remake every host state in their image), but on our own land, the Land of Israel, we can’t accept anything less than sovereignty.

As for other people’s rights: No problem, but they are required to recognize the local culture as the law of the land. Would you not require cannibal immigrants to Scotland to leave their dietary habits? It’s the same here: We are not going to put up with any suicide-bombing, sedition, restrictions as to where we are allowed to live in the Land of Israel or worship, or any other sort of nonsense. This is the one and only Jewish state in the world; unlike the Muslims, we do not believe ourselves entitled to any other area of the globe, therefore all those who don’t like the fact of Israel being a Jewish state are free to choose all the rest of the world map.

But even that’s too much to ask, of course…

But at least I am in good company: Desmond Tutu is the latest to be smeared as an anti-Semite, and have a speaking invitation cancelled […]

Contrary to the misconception, I am not trigger-happy on the accusations of anti-Semitism (example: I refuse as of yet to call Richard Dawkins a Jew-hater, despite his recent “Jewish lobby” comment, for I still have no evidence that he made that statement out of a doctrinaire position), but Desmond Tutu most definitely is a Jew-hater. See item #1 on the post for October 9, 2007 by Steven Plaut.

[…] all because the Zionist Organization of America made up a quote comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and attributed it to him, and it was reported without fact checking.

JTA blundered in giving it as direct speech. They should have said, “Tutu compared Israel to Hitler and apartheid”. That distinction does not, at the end of the day, make much of a difference: Tutu is in agreement with Ahmadinejad (as is Pantland) that Israel as a Jewish State has no right to exist and is fated to disappear one day (God forbid).

OK, you don’t need to tell me: Leftist advocacy for the end of Israel as Jewish State stems from the view that a Jewish State is inherently racist; and I’m going to bring my challenge again: present a credible way of putting your proposal into action without the final result being disastrous. You may not call for Jewish genocide, but your call for the dissolution of a Jewish State comes with absolutely no means of preventing that from happening. That’s why I regard you, Tutu and all other proponents of the Binational Solution as threats, not just to Jewish sovereignty in Israel, but to Jewish life in Israel. Threats to our lives should your pressure lead to steps toward the application of the Binational Solution.

Who do you think is more credible? Tutu, or you nuts?

This isn’t about credibility. Credibility is the later stage. This is about the earlier stage, the stage called listening. Neither you nor Tutu nor Ahmadinejad are willing to even give ear, let alone respect, the essential Jewish narrative that we are not “colonial settlers” on the Land of Israel, but its true and rightful inhabitants. The Leftists do not cease talking about how “Israel treats the Palestinians as subhumans”, yet they are guilty of the inability, upon thinking about an Israeli Jew, to see anything other than a land-robber, a racist and a colonial oppressor.

Even at the best case, we only have basic needs in your eyes. The “Palestinians”, they have “dreams”—dreams of self-determination, of justice restored, of cultural significance and so on. But us Jews? All we have, in Leftist eyes, is the basic need of “living in security”. Nearly all the agreements bear that language: “A treaty that will enable the Palestinians to achieve their self-determination while not compromising on the Israeli’s need for security”. This, the denial of the ancient Jewish nationalistic dream, is Zionism Denial and is far worse than Holocaust Denial; the latter concerns only the past, while the former has impact on the present and the future.

It’s not whether Tutu is credible or not. It’s about the fact that Tutu, like you, runs roughshod over us Jews with his high-flown conceptions of “justice”.

Comparing Israel to apartheid also earns the anti-Semite slur - despite the fact that Haaretz, a mainstream Israeli paper, said the same thing in an editorial a few days ago.

An anti-Zionist quoting Haaretz to make his point—so what else is new?

I have news for you, Walton: Haaretz ceased being a mainstream Israeli paper years ago. There are two papers in Israel that can be called mainstream: Yediot Achronot and Maariv. Religious Zionist newspapers like B’Sheva are in the process of becoming mainstream, by virtue of the shifting of right-wing opinions to the center in Israel (a result of, among other things, the Kassam rockets following the evacuation of Gaza in August 2005, and the various proposal for boycotts of Israel worldwide. This ain’t South Africa here, Walton: the more you press against our state, the more the Israeli Jewish public moves to the right). Haaretz, conversely, has been undergoing a process of decline, in lockstep with the wane of concessionism starting with the Second Intifada in October 2000. Except for a decreasing number of disconnected, die-hard left-wing ideologues in Israel, all Israeli Jews regard Haaretz as an irrelevant elitistic rag. To cite Haaretz is only to strengthen the reality of its being in a world of its own, away from the pulse of the public in Israel.

What? Are they anti-Semites too? Or self-hating Jews?

Quislings. Self-hurting Jews. Jews for a Bad Cause. I don’t use the term, “self-hating Jews”, because it shifts the discussion to feelings, which are essentially undebatable. It is sufficient for me to say that Haaretz, just like the New York Times in the USA, is a seditious paper that takes the enemy side far too often, in the guise of “even-handedness” of course.

Like the boy who cried wolf, the anti-Semite slur has lost its power - which is a victory for real anti-Semites everywhere.

It’s not that crying “anti-Semite” ever had much power anyhow, but let’s leave that. A much more relevant point is that what you call “real anti-Semites” (if they are those I think you mean) are of scant significance today, while the real danger is from those who see themselves so far removed from Jew-hatred. If you think I’m going to let someone off the hook even though all his sayings and writings do nothing but serve as moral justification for the “Palestinians” to murder Jewish men, women and children (God forbid), then you’d better think again.

My blog sidebar has a heading, “Abstract”. The text under it is the condensed version of why anti-Zionism is today’s prominent form of anti-Semitism. If you understand this, you will understand all my vehemence.

ZionistYoungster (ZY) claims that my support for one state, with equal rights for all, will lead to the killing of Jews.

Not quite accurate. My claim is that a binational state would enable the influx of millions of “Palestinian refugees” (the well-known “Right of Return”), which will put them in the same position as they were in 1947: in physical proximity to start a war to wipe out all Jewish presence from the Land of Israel (God forbid). In a slightly better scenario, a binational state would enable them legislate anti-Jewish laws by democratic majority vote. Either scenario is not something we Jews are prepared to even contemplate.

But why should it?

White people weren't wiped out in South Africa after the end of apartheid.

There is a slight difference between the ANC and Hamas. The latter’s charter, in addition to their actions right now, should give you a clue. And for a graphic illustration, see my post It’s Just Like Seffrica, Trust Me.

Most Palestinians just want to live, work, study, fall in love, feed their families and enjoy life. It's only when they are prevented from doing this that they are driven into the arms of extremists.

And here we have come to the one great error that has blighted all non-Muslim states in their relations with the Muslims for the past few decades.

Hard truth: the Muslim world has not undergone the process of secularization that most of the rest of the world (especially the Christian West) has. Overwhelmingly, the Muslims take their religion seriously. Overwhelmingly, the masses of Muslims, and not just the poor and uneducated either but also the affluent and intellectuals, think the Islamic imperative, that all the world be governed by shariah law, is binding, in full force. If a secular Jew eats a sandwich in front of religious Jews fasting on Yom Kippur, he gets angry looks, calls to go away at worst. If a lapsed Muslim does the same in front of his coreligionists fasting in the month of Ramadan, he usually ends up with a lot of holes in his body shortly afterward.

There are Muslims who do not want the whole world under shariah law. They keep their opinion to themselves, for they know that if they voice it in public, they will be branded as apostates and killed, often by their own family members.

Cultural understanding demands that you not apply your cultural situation automatically to others. When thinking of the relationship of the rank and file Muslim to religion, don’t think of yours—you’ll get much closer to the truth if you think of the Muslims in analogy with how every Christian related to religion in the Middle Ages. The hard and inconvenient truth is that, for the average Muslim, his religion is a serious and absolutely binding matter. And the desire that the state be governed by shariah law isn’t extremist Islam any more than closing one’s shop on the Sabbath is extremist Judaism.

ZY also says "you won't appease Muslims at our expense".

I am not interested in appeasing anyone. I don't like right wing Islam anymore than you. But it is a symptom of the fact the Muslims are treated unjustly by Israel and the West.

There are 57 official Muslim states in the world (“official” means members of the Organization of Islamic Conference). Furthermore, Muslim immigrants in non-Muslim states, particularly in Europe, are constantly accommodated, with footbaths in universities, halal food in public schools (Jews never demanded kosher food to be prepared for them in public schools) and what not. The non-Muslim world has to suffer their temper tantrums upon the slightest provocation (a few silly cartoons). How, just how, can you talk about Muslims being “treated unjustly by Israel and the West”?!

Working for justice is not appeasement.

Whose idea of justice? I mentioned 57 Muslim states, and there are 22 Arab states; taking lands from the one and only Jewish state in the world in order to set up yet another Arab or Muslim state isn’t any kind of justice in my book.

He [refers to me. —ZY] says our 'zeal' is what exposes us as anti-Semites. Actually,the 'zeal' is to do with the fact that the injustice in Palestine is the fulcrum around which the big conflicts of our age revolve. […]

Way to go, Walton, you just blew your very argument that this isn’t about appeasement. Or how else am I to understand the bit, “[…] the injustice in Palestine is the fulcrum around which the big conflicts of our age revolve”? Implicit in that statement is that, were “the injustice in Palestine” not behind the big conflicts of our age in your eyes, then you would not display such zeal for it. As is evidenced by what follows:

[…] However important Darfur is, it's peripheral to the war on terror and the imperialist strategy of the US and it's allies.

Um… that noise? You heard that noise? It was the sound of my jaw dropping on the desk.

There’s a genocide in Darfur. A genocide, Walton, you know that? Do you care that over two million black Sudanese have been murdered there? Or is there no consideration you find worthy other than “the imperialist strategy of the US and its allies”? That’s what feeds your zeal? “The enemy of my enemy (=US imperialism) is my friend”?

I find your fine talk about “justice” a tad less convincing now.

As I said in my post, I didn't know it was a competition to see which was the worst country in the world.

I don’t see it or put it that way either. The Israel/“Palestine” conflict is a different matter altogether: it’s about whether the Jews have a right to sovereignty over a state of their own on the Land of Israel. To compare Israel’s fight against those who wish to destroy it with all manner of fascist, racist and imperialist forces is a libel.

Also, I put it to you, ZY, that you only notice the issues that interest you. If you were a supporter of the British state, you'd be noticing my 'zeal' for the destruction of Britain, and if you were a neo-Nazi, you'd call me a race traitor. Israel is far from the only thing I comment on, but it appears to be the only thing anyone wants to read about, which is why i keep coming back to it.

This reminds me of a snide question I got on the comments on Left I on the News a while back: “Zionist Youngster, do you read LeftI or do you just troll blogs looking for people bad-mouthing Zionists?” I answered: “Yes, I'm a regular reader, of this blog as well as Daily Kos, CounterPunch and many others”. My focus in undeniably on Israel and anti-Zionism, but I do not confine myself to reading only those topics on left-wing sites.

I talk of zeal in the more general sense. Darfur is again a case in point: as Eyal Rosenberg said in his parting Daily Kos diary:

Barely a word for Darfur - Israel has been in a diary on dkos over 5000 times in the past year, Darfur less then 1000. How many thousands continue to be killed there by Muslims? If I did not know better I would think that on dkos bashing Israel was more important than saving lives. But what has gone in Sudan? Only 2 million dead versus the circa 7 thousand in the I/P conflict in the same period.

Your zeal is placed exactly where it shouldn’t be: against a state that lets its enemies write screeds against it from within it, such as Jonathan Cook, writing his anti-Zionist articles from Nazareth; this while a reporter going to Darfur runs the risk of losing his head, literally, and an activist for Tibet had better not leave his armchair if he values his freedom. You take advantage of Israel being—despite all your allegations of fascism—a Western, democratic state with all the freedoms involved, including the freedom of dissent. You Leftists could have exerted your zeal on far more worthy causes, on true cases of oppression, racism and atrocity, yet you conveniently choose not to.

The state of Israel is not fascistic, not colonial and not imperialistic, therefore undeserving of being criticized as if it were such. You talked of injustice? Now here’s a miscarriage of justice if there ever was one.

And that's [my clarification that I will pray for the rise of the Sanhedrin. —ZY] supposed to make us feel better? He wants to kill Muslims lawfully, as ordered by the Sanhedrin?

My purpose was just to make clear that I do not call for assassination, which is illegal under both Jewish and international law. That’s all.

A Sanhedrin is a Jewish religious court. So we're supposed to criticise right wing Muslims who want to impose Sharia as dangerous extremists, but accept the Jewish version?

They're as bad as each other!

No, they’re not as bad as each other, if only because the Jewish religion does not call for instituting Jewish law over the whole world. The Muslims call for worldwide shariah. Judaism doesn’t require any non-Jew to convert to Judaism, let alone live under Jewish law; Islam, in contrast, has it that any part of the world not under Islamic law is the House of War, and needs to be put under Islamic law by any means possible. Also, under Islamic governance, the best a non-Muslim can hope for is the subclass status of dhimmi. In other words: apartheid. Apartheid not just in one state, but all over the world!

ZY, you come across like a Jewish Bin Laden. You and the right wing Islamists are two sides of a coin, and you're making the world more dangerous for all of us.

See above, and also: freedom from religion is not the key to making the world a safe place. The anti-religious ideology of Communism has 100,000,000 dead for its claim to infamy.

He [JP, another commenter on Pantland’s blog. —ZY] points out that Israel is racially diverse - sure it is, and deeply racist, too.

In what sense is Israel racist? In the sense that it has to employ unfortunate measures to defend itself? You Leftists always talk of the “Apartheid Wall” without mentioning that it keeps suicide-terrorists out. Yes, I know you want Israel to be “a state of all its citizens”, and indeed for all cultures to live together in one big, happy global village, but what you don’t realize is the following irony: your vision is cultural imperialism, in that it ignores the diverse identities and cultures of the world in favor of a unified, cosmopolitan vision. The desire of a nation to have a state that acts to preserve its culture and identity is not racism, however much Leftist thinking has made it fashionable to think so.

Even among Jews, the whiter you are the better. Jews of Arab origin have always been cannon fodder in the Zionist dream - so much so that 100 000 Israeli children were poisoned in radioactive tests - 6000 died.

Ah, more proof for my point that the Left, the “anti-racist” Left, is the greatest purveyor of racism in our day and age.

“The whiter you are the better” was true for the first three decades of the state of Israel. It is not true now, not with Jews of Oriental descent enjoying key positions in all areas of life in Israel (including ministers in the government). As for the linked article, whose author, by the way, is the discredited conspiracy theorist Barry Chamish, it talks about things taking place (if they ever took place—extremely doubtful, when you keep the author in mind) in 1952. This is on a par with the Daily Kos diary by “jon the antizionist jew”, Fascists in Israel and the Fiddler on the Roof, in which, as proof of “White Racism” in Israel, he uses the film Sallah Shabati, which (by his own admission) dates from 1965!

Do you take seriously a critic of the Theory of Evolution who addresses Darwin’s original arguments while ignoring all the numerous updates that have come up ever since the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis of the 1930’s? Clearly not, that amounts to building a strawman of the Theory of Evolution to knock down. Here is an analogous situation: all the accusations of institutional European Jewish racism in Israel are built upon ignoring the changes that Israeli Jewish society has undergone since about 1977. This is a compound sin: dishonesty in the service of stoking gratuitous hatred.

Israel does not now have any form of institutional racism among non-whites. As for the Muslims of Israel, they’re a separate matter, because their complaint isn’t racism but the fact that they have to live in a Jewish state at all. Apples and oranges. The attempts to frame this whole conflict (indeed the conflicts over all the world) in the paradigm of “non-white peoples struggling against white colonial racist imperialism” is contemptible as it is erroneous.

He thinks that when we say 'Zionists' we really mean something else. We don't. We mean Zionists. Many of them are fundamentalist Christians who believe the Jews will go to hell, but that we should support Israel because it's part of God's exit strategy for them, the Rapture and all that nonsense. They have a powerful lobby in the US and elsewhere, but they don't control the world. That's a conspiracy theory.

Be the reasons Christian Zionists have for supporting Israel as they may, Zionism is still the idea that Jews should have sovereignty over their state on the Land of Israel. You cannot say, for example, “I’m not anti-Italian, even though I’m opposed to the idea of an Italian state”, therefore you cannot make the same argument for Zionism and the Jews. Now you will probably say you’re against all nation-states, and I commend your consistency, yet the stakes for us Jews are much higher: as I said, once again, no proposal has given as to how the Jewish state can be dissolved (God forbid) without a massacre taking place shortly after that. My vehemence stems from that.

Anyway, it's worth keeping an eye on MuzzleWatch to see who the latest victim of the Zionist lobby is.

MuzzleWatch is an anti-Zionist website. It is has little, if anything at all, to say about attempts to stifle open debate at the other direction, such as the academic boycott proposals. And MuzzleWatch is not quite up to handling free discourse themselves, that’s why they decided to disable comments.

Anyway, it’s worth keeping an eye on Dhimmi Watch to see who the latest victim of the Saudi lobby is.

Here ends my post.

The Banality of Moral Generalities

The title is obviously an allusion to Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, “The Banality of Evil”, which she said regarding Adolf Eichmann after seeing him sit inside the glass box in his trial. Arendt, together with Orwell and a host of others, is one of the post-WWII thinkers on morality whose pronouncements have the distinction of being quoted extensively on political blogs on all areas of the political compass. This fact illustrates two notable points: 1) The practical uselessness of moral generalities; 2) The grip that Nazism, or more accurately its aftereffects, has on people today, particularly on their moral judgments.

A writer whose deep and clear thinking about totalitarianism is invaluable, yet does not guard against the possibility of inverting the good and the evil.

I will begin with the second point. That Nazism was evil is one of the few points of concensus extant between Right and Left today (not the Muslims, however—for much of the Muslim world, Hitler was a divine emissary who didn’t finish his job). But this concensus is of no utility in reaching a concensus in moral judgment, for each side uses Hitler and the Nazis for its portrayal of what is wrong with the other side. Hitler was an atheist, a Christian, a pagan, a homosexual, a vegetarian, a harborer of sympathy with Islam, a scientific fundamentalist, a cloudy-eyed mystic, a corporatist, a socialist, a Luddite, a techno-utopianist—you name it, the allegation has been supported by selected quotes of his and used as ammunition against the other side, as in, “Hitler was X, therefore X is evil”. Much as I loathe Godwin’s Law as an easy pretext for silencing arguments (a feature it has in common with the term, “troll”), it is not difficult for me to understand why there came a need for that law to be formulated: comparison to Nazism and Hitler is such a lazy way to win the argument.

Orwell’s 1984 can be used by conservatives against the creeping socialist totalitarianism of the European Union, but also by the progressives against anti-terrorism measures (foremostly the PATRIOT Act). Pastor Niemöller’s “First they came for the Jews…” is now the paradigm of “speaking against evil, speaking truth to power”—equally useful for supporting cartoonists who draw disparaging images of Mohammed, and for bolstering one’s fiery insistence on comparing Zionists to Nazis. And anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan described the rank and file functionaries sustaining the “capitalist war machine” as “little Eichmanns”, which Ward Churchill, a university professor of honorable Native American pedigree—the ancient and most noble Wannabi Tribe—was only too eager to take in describing the people who jumped to their deaths from the windows of the burning World Trade Center towers. I think the case for the bankruptcy of moral generalities is one of the easiest to make.

Those generalities are the Cliff’s Notes and fast food of morality today: they alleviate people of the hard work of making judgments on a case-by-case basis, by giving them catch-alls. The generalities are conclusively proven to be useless by the fact that they are postdictive rather than predictive—it is not from them that one comes to make his moral pronouncement, but the opposite, one first has his moral conviction and then uses the generalities in order to give weight to them. An anti-Islam activist publishing a book exposing Islam and an anti-Zionist academic publishing a book “exposing the all-pervading influence of the Israel lobby” can both quote Orwell’s, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” to hammer home the moral rectitude of their endeavors, but it was not Orwell’s quote that led them to it. Conversely, moral generalities stemming from the aftereffects of Nazism can be used to nip sane and vital measures in the bud. None other than the branding of activities for stopping the Islamization of Europe as “racism” is the best example of that today. Nazism as a viable force is long gone, but it looks as if ideologues on all locations on the political compass are still in the thick of fighting it.

Analogies as guidelines and aids for clarity are good and useful, and I have made them myself quite a few times. But like wine, they can be harmful unless taken in moderation—morally deleterious if one sinks into them, if one is immersed in them to such an extent that he can no longer distinguish between the analogy and the real. In the view of how so many political bloggers tend to wallow deep in historical comparisons (not necessarily to Nazism—the Left’s favorite is the Vietnam War), I often feel like quoting that classic line from Spaceballs: “We’re at now now”. Yes, there are historical similarities galore (not least of which the repeat of 1930-ish appeasement), but the present, it must not be forgotten, still speaks in a voice of its own, with things that are not exact repetitions of what took place in the past. Even if the Leftist is right in comparing the rhetoric of some right-wingers (for example, my own calls for mass expulsion of the Muslims from within and near all non-Muslim states) to words from 70 years ago, the comparison does not cement his argument, for the situation is not what it was 70 years ago. The Leftist may compare the Israeli security barrier to the Berlin Wall, using the coinage “Apartheid Wall” to make his point, but that entire analogy comes to nothing in the face of the situational reality, the reality that the Berlin Wall was erected to keep people in whereas the Israeli security barrier is there to keep suicide-terrorists out.

I have emphasized the word, “situational”. This word, especially when part of the term, “situational ethics”, has gotten a bad reputation, and undeservedly. Undeservedly, because that reputation stems from a serious misconception: that “situational ethics” and “moral relativism” are synonymous. Not only are they not synonymous, but also, Jewish law is based on the former while being most emphatically in opposition to the other. I don’t know when the misconception started—it seems to me that the pivotal point for it was when, in the 17th century, King James’ translators committed the error of translating Exodus 20:12 as “Thou shalt not kill”, instead of the correct “Thou shalt not murder”. Did they make that choice because they wanted to prove God speaks only in moral absolutes? Maybe. Whatever the case, that may well have been the beginning of the downward slide of the reputation of situational ethics, ethics that are the mainstay of traditional, orthodox Torah legislation. Ethics which, if they came back to be applied today, could haul us out from the moral quagmire and every-man’s-land of generalities. An antidote to generalities through casuistry.

“Casuistry”. Yet another term whose reputation has declined over the ages. In this case, the decline is partly deserved, but its extension to morality is not. Deriding casuistry in philosophy is appropriate: as philosophy deals in generalities, going into particulars only in attempt to generalize overarching truths from them, the use of casuistry (case-by-case determination and analogical extension) in it is an exercise in futility. Casuistry in philosophy was once as damaging to it as postmodernism is now. But the world of morality is different. It is different because, while philosophy treats the universe as a giant abstraction to be made sense of, morality deals with a multitude of entities and ever-changing realities. Far from being damaging, casuistry in morality is the only sustainable method, for, as my above survey of the effects of confining oneself to moral generalities shows, generalities are useless in capturing all the permutations.

Yes, there are guidelines in Judaism. “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’—that is a great rule in the Torah”, says Rabbi Akiva. I did not say guidelines are useless, only that guidelines alone are such. Guidelines are vital in order to maintain the spirit of the law. Comprised of decrees alone, a system of law could easily degenerate into a bureaucratic code, followed spiritlessly without regard to conscience. The Second Temple, our sages tell us, was destroyed because the Jews ruled according to the Judgment of Torah—according to it alone, the letter of the law alone, turning God’s Law into a technical manual, without ever walking the extra mile to accommodate the calls of conscience. Had they paid heed to the guidelines, that could have been prevented. The guidelines are the watchdog of the spirit of the law.

But that was the problem then, while now we have the opposite problem: moral guidelines are either used alone or, if accompanied by case-by-case laws, the guidelines are invariably used to support the laws rather than to correct them. So the sentiment of the day is either, “Leave out all those laws, all you need in order to lead a clean life is a few guidelines”, or “You should do as this law says, because it is according to the guidelines”. Of the first position I have given many examples in this post. The second position underlies the calls (from the anti-Establishment hippies, no less!) to respect laws when they are in accordance with their principles, such as laws criminalizing “hate speech”. Or witness how the Leftists use the generality, “No peace without justice”, in order to invoke the United Nations and international law when calling for the Jewish State to capitulate to the demands of the “Palestinians”, while castigating the same United Nations and the same international law when they think it is being “subverted by corporate America’s interests”. This is where the death of moral casuistry leads.

Moral generalities are such a pitfall that they can lead even to heresy. Take the aforementioned mistranslation, “Thou shalt not kill”. From even a cursory reading of the first book of the Bible, it is easy to see God has killed, and killed many. Thus, in the name of warding off situational ethics, you get a God who doesn’t keep His own word. With the correct translation, “Thou shalt not murder”, this is rectified. Oh, but you say it makes God’s ethics situational? So what? There is an idea here that many people today are either ignorant or unaccepting of: “Situational ethics” and “moral relativism” are not synonymous terms. When this truth is understood, it changes everything. And I mean everything. It changes your moral view of the world into something saner, and something—dare I say it?—much more reality-based.

For example, if you are shackled to the generality that mass expulsion is an evil act, absolutely, unequivocally, irrevocably, with no room for debate, then you are liable to get into a situation where you cannot employ the only means that could possibly save you from a life of serfdom (at best). But under casuist law, you can evaluate criteria according to which mass expulsion is good or evil. We can thus distinguish between those who wish to keep their fishbowl free of piranha (good) and those who want their fishbowl to have only one type of fish, their own type (bad). This way the moral generality that sweeps both under the rubric of “racism” (“Evil, evil, evil! And don’t you dare to even think otherwise!” /moonbat off) is kept at bay, and in its stead comes a judgment that is much more cognizant of the facts at hand. This is just one example of how the casuist view changes everything.

Jewish law strives to cover everything, just as HaShem is the creator of all things. The Halachah, in contrast to the Aggadah (Jewish lore; of which our sages say, “From reading it, you get to know the One who said and the world came to be”), deals in cases everywhere, from the individual’s first actions upon waking up in the morning to the laws of statecraft, laws which are only now, after 2,000 years of statelessness, in the process of being reactivated. Halachic debate from the Talmud onward is about covering all the possible cases, much as a programmer, even after having designed his program with the best of forethought (“guidelines”), still has to spend time tracking bugs (“cases”). Casuistry does not always lead to a unanimous verdict; however, unlike generalities, even multiple decrees take the facts at hand into account. This has special merit today, in guarding against the misapplication of generalities to situations where they are not appropriate.

(An aside: To the argument, “Halachah, as you describe it, as an all-encompassing law, sounds just like Islamic shariah law”, my answer is, “The original author is not to be blamed for cheap imitations others make of his work”.)

I can still quote Arendt and Orwell if I so wish. However, my political readings of just the past year alone make one thing clear to me: they are not a sound basis for deriving moral decisions. My choice will therefore be the tried, true, traditional Jewish one: the case-by-case morality of the halachah. God created His world complex and full of variations, therefore His law too, though absolute (indeed the only absolute and authoritative source of law there is), is complex, taking into account the situation in front of us.

On Richard Dawkins’ Statement

From Daniel Finkelstein on Times Online blog comments, via Melanie Phillips, a statement by atheism evangelist Richard Dawkins that recently made the waves:

When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.

The comments for that post have focused on the question whether Dawkins is anti-Semitic (=Jew-hating), with many commenters saying on the lines of, “It’s not anti-Semitic to point out the Israel Lobby’s influence on American politics”. What is my take? Is Dawkins a Jew-hater? Is this another example of a “Progressive, rationalist” (the self-styled king of rationalism, no less) succumbing to the irrational tide?

My take consists of two parts:

1. In all honesty, I don’t know. A record of more such statements by Dawkins is necessary in order to determine the truth.
2. It is worse for us Jews if the answer is, “No”. Much, much worse.

If this man Richard Dawkins is not a Jew-hater, but has merely given in to the wind of the age; if this professed paragon of rational thinking has but jumped on a bandwagon; if this writer of numerous essays stressing the importance of believing things on the basis of evidence alone, never on the basis of tradition or revelation or faith, has not seen any problem with voicing a stance that has not been subjected to any kind of rigorous evidential examination; if the flame of anti-Zionism has gripped such an ostensible cedar of sanity—

—then the final hour is upon us!

I cannot cease stressing this point, nor can I emphasize it too much, that the issue is not, and has never been, Jew-hatred per se, but its coming into acceptability. I cannot stop pointing out that the alarm bells should not be sounded over ravings and rantings about “crooked-nose Jews” voiced by speakers at an Aryan Nations convention, but should be sounded over slick, rational-sounding, intellectually-formulated essays, articles and remarks about “Zionists leading the world to war” and “Jewish colonialist settlers perpetrating a genocide of the Palestinians”. Acceptability must always, always be the operative word, the criterion to watch for. Respectability of such sentiments, so that a self-described “guardian of reason” like Dawkins has no qualms about making them, ought to have the Jewish klaxons blaring worldwide.

If Richard Dawkins is not a Jew-hater, then his making of that statement means those sentiments now flow freely in the bloodstream of everyday discourse. What more, then, can now have already embedded itself in the structures of everyday discourse?

Could it be the idea that Israel is a mistake that needs to be corrected is already part of mainstream thought?

Could it be the idea that Zionism is an inherently racist and unjust political movement that needs to be “wiped out from the pages of time” is already part of mainstream thought?

Could it be the idea that every Jewish man, woman and child in Israel is a land-thief and oppressor whose killing (God forbid) is absolutely justified is already a part of mainstream thought?

And could it be the idea that any Jew who supports Israel is a Zionist agent is already a part of mainstream thought?

How much more could be lurking under the surface, beyond the slight hint that Richard Dawkins, if indeed he is not an anti-Semite, has uncovered for us?

How much more evidence do we need against the canard, “Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism”? How much more redressings of sentiments from the 1930’s in anti-Zionist garb, in the clothing of “criticism of Israel”, do we need in order to realize this is the real deal? How much more? How long?

Brothers and sisters, how long do we give a moral blank check to the New Anti-Semitism, this new torch of the old hatred, now carried by the alliance of Crescent with Sickle and Crescent?

How much will some of us try to apologize, in the form, “No, I assure you, I do not support Israel’s policies!”, or worse, even hold competitions with each other as to who is the more pro-“Palestinian”?

When will we all come to the understanding that we are condemned for not accepting the Marxist Cacangelium, which sees all Judaism pre-Marx as naught but a foreshadowing of that Cacangelium, now made null and void (chas v’shalom) by it? That “in Zionism’s fall we Jews fell all”? That, because of what we did in 1947–9, during the war in which the Jewish State was born against all odds (thanks be to God), “their (=the ‘Palestinians’’) blood be upon us and our children”? And that, unless we become “complete Jews” by accepting the all-new, internationalist vision that Marxism preaches, we will be justly condemned to burn in the fires kindled by the proxy enforcers of the Marxists’ wrath—the Muslims? That is the narrative!

Neither apologies nor concessions, neither compromises nor capitulation, neither gestures of goodwill nor outright selling of our birthright, neither “showing respect for the other side’s story” nor going into treasonous standing with the other side—nothing will sate the demand of the Jew-haters, which is total: “Leave us alone to ignore the truth you have been bringing for over 3,000 years”, the truth that HaShem is the God.

It was inevitable for anti-Zionism to become the newest form of Jew-hatred, for Zionism represents the last stage in Jewish truth-bringing: the reactivation of Jewish Law. Jewish truth-bringing had hitherto been concerned mainly with the philosophical truth: that there is one deity and not many; that He is a Person and relates to all His creations personally; and that the universe is His creation and not an eternal entity, nor a spontaneous emergence from nothing. But now comes Zionism, the beginning of deliverance, in which all the Jewish laws that had been put on hold for 2,000 years are being reactivated, one by one. Laws which go against the institutional lawlessness of both Marxism and Islam—against immorality enshrined in law just as things were in Sodom and Gomorrah. Now comes the time for the final truth: It is God, not man, who makes the rules.

The United Nations building will be burned to the ground, as were Sodom and Gomorrah back in the day. This corrupt organization, mired in scandals, totally ineffective in stopping true oppression, serving as a platform for the most unjust rulers of the world to legalize their injustices, has no right to exist. Politically Correct “law”, having criminals roaming free on the streets while the innocent have to seclude themselves in their homes in fear, will be abolished, for it has no right to exist. All that which usurps God’s law will vanish, for by nature it has no right to exist.

The UN represents the interests of its constituent members. A bad idea from the start.

If this man Richard Dawkins, this fanatical caller for rationality, can lend his pen to the service of a reworking of an ancient conspiracy theory, then all faith in human-conceived “rationality” needs to be abandoned. The human mind, be it that of even the most sane and balanced person, can always be carried over by the wind of the time like a straw in the wind.

In naught but HaShem and His Torah is there salvation from that predicament.

Repent. For the end looks near.

Sort Our Your Guilt

I have related to the Native Americans numerous times on my blog. From some of those, the reader may have gotten the impression that I hate Native Americans, but that is not so, nor is it exactly the opposite of that. I will say forthright that my attitude toward Native Americans is neither of love nor of hate, but simply, “incapable of having an unbiased opinion on the matter”, the reason for that being, of course, the use of comparisons to Native Americans by the anti-Zionist Left for scoring their points. The usual talking point of the anti-Zionists is that the Pretendestinians are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel just as the Native Americans are of North America, and therefore, by dint of logic, the Jews are colonial invaders and dispossessors of the former just as the Europeans from the Old Word are. As I have shown, this view is utterly false, and of such offense to us Jews that, if we Jews were in the habit of reacting toward offenses the way the Muslims do, we would make the Danish Mohammed Cartoons riots look like a kindergarten playground scrap. We do not, and we leave it mostly to God to scorch the anti-Zionists in His indignation, speedily in our days, amen. But from this brief account alone it can be understood why I could never deliver a fair and reasonably unbiased stance on the Native Americans, and for that I apologize for a likely bad impression.

What is clear, however, is that I am not impressed by the anti-Zionist Leftists’ self-righteous stance which they justify by that comparison. Their claim of “standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples’ rights” does not wash with me, for they are selective as to which indigenous peoples they support, the criteria being, always, appeasement and anti-Americanism. What has the oppression and the dispossession of the Tibetans on and from their native lands by the Chinese colonial invaders won them but a few perfunctory “Free Tibet” stickers? Some maverick (the Kossacks would say, “troll”) had this to say on the Daily Kos diary Jews, Neocons and Democrats, on August 1, 2007:

I will listen to your lament for Palestinians (6+ / 0-)

When you give your own home keys over to a Native American family from among those who are the rightful inhabitants of your little valley of hypocricy [sic]. Like the Sioux, the Comanche and the Iriquis who's [sic] land you have stolen, the Palestinans [sic] will just have to adjust to life among a different people. In land tenure might makes right. Your decision to object to that grim reality only in the case of indiginous [sic] people without a claim to your house and a few thousand miles away makes for exquisite hypocricy [sic].

[…]

by SmithsLastWord on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 05:59:01 PM PDT

Pointful. It appears the anti-Zionists are not overly swept by guilt feelings for what happened—at least not so much that they would bring themselves to take the plane back to the Old Word, for the sake of “Justice, without there is no peace”:

Genocide that occured by my ancestors,,, (0+ / 0-)

not contemporaries. BIG difference.

by theralph on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 06:43:55 PM PDT

And in a little longer formulation:

Such an act of sophistry. The Indian situation... (3+ / 0-)

is what it is. There is still time to stop the same from happening to the Palestinians.

Israel should have a state and Palestine should have a state.

by theralph on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 06:09:16 PM PDT

And even more clearly, in case the reader still didn’t get his point:

They weren't alive and neither was I. The.... (2+ / 0-)

Israelis are actively, even as we speak, taking lands from the Palestinians. Not to mention they almost started WWIII last summer. Oh, don't think about that though. Just blindly defend them with stupid arguments about Native Americans. Man you are pretty stupid huh?

by theralph on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 06:43:09 PM PDT

Now after my caveat that the reality behind the Leftists’ fixation on the “Palestinians” is nothing but appeasement and anti-Americanism, I still wish to go with what they say—their declared feelings on the matter, even though they are lies. I could put their stance this way: “We do feel guilty for the Native Americans, but that is now water under the bridge; we stand with the Palestinians because that’s a repeat happening in real-time, and if we prevent that we’ll have made up for the past wrong”. In this we can find a sentiment that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (may he go to hell soon, amen) has astutely exploited.

His arrival at New York had been protested on account of, among other things, his Holocaust Denial. He came nevertheless, and in his visit he scored a propaganda coup de grace against the Jewish people by cleaning himself of the accusation of Holocaust Denial, which he did by substituting Zionism Denial (the denial of the Jews’ scriptural, ancient and rightful connection to the Land of Israel, and the portrayal of Zionism as a “White European Settler Colonialist Movement”) for it. His question, “Why should the Palestinians pay for something done to the Jews in Europe, by Europeans?”, has found welcoming hearts in the anti-Zionist Left.

In fact, I do not think there is a logical fault with that question. As my blogosphere friend Bar Kochba says, the argument against “setting up a Jewish state on Palestinian lands” as compensation for the Jewish Holocaust in Europe is logically flawless, whereas it is the premise itself that is not only fallacious but totally erroneous—neither the Holocaust nor any of the wrongs suffered by the Jews for the past 2,000 years are justification for a Jewish state on the Land of Israel; it is the scriptural mandate that justifies that. And when the Jews took the Land of Israel for the first time, under Joshua’s command, it was not the 400 years of slavery in Egypt that justified the vanquishment of the Canaanites, but the repeated statements by HaShem that, on condition of following His Torah, the Israelites are entitled to the Land of Israel, even to take it by force from its long-time residents. “Righting past wrongs” and “compensation for past injustices done” never figured into it.

But I find Ahmadinejad’s statement (perfect in logic, flawed only in its premises, as I said) very useful in order to counter the anti-Zionist Leftists who muster comparisons to Native Americans in order to make their point. You saw above how the Leftists are (taking their narrative at face value, ignoring the Machiavellian reality of appeasement and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” for the sake of the argument) intent on assuaging their guilt over the dispossession of the Native Americans by opposing Zionism. In which case we Zionists have a good opportunity to take Ahmadinejad’s good logic and ask, in a loud and clear voice: Why should we Jews be paying for what you did to the Native Americans a long time ago? Why should we bear the burden of compensating for something done to other people far away and at least a century ago? In like manner as Ahmadinejad implied the question, “What has the Holocaust to do with the Palestinians?”, we ask: What has Manifest Destiny to do with us?

Again, going along with their stated feelings of guilt, of overwhelming remorse for past wrongs done on their own continent, in fact very probably where they are standing right now, I offer, as a free gift, two offers for dealing with those feelings of guilt:

The first is the real-world solution: pack your bags and get your hineys where your ancestors came from in the Old World. Leave the Native American lands you’re dispossessing and colonizing in order that their Right of Return may be applied, thus satisfying the requirements of justice, without which, as you do not cease saying, there can be no peace. But of course, as commenter “SmithsLastWord” extracted from them with his probing comments, those are ideals to be preached at others from the comfort of one’s armchair, rather than be followed by oneself.

So I have a second, less demanding solution: therapy. It’s all the rage today, when having guilt feelings, to try to quash them by means of numerous sessions on the shrink’s couch. Sometimes it even works. Call your friendly neighborhood therapist, fix your appointments with him or her, and talk at length about your problem, as in, “My guilt feelings over what my ancestors did to the Native Americans is causing me sleepless nights and a lot of lost productivity at work!” If you’re in competent hands, then in a few months you can expect to feel pretty OK about what happened in North America in the 19th century.

Cynical? Insensitive? Callousness on my part? You could make that case, but as with most of my blog, I’m addressing, reacting to, participating in a battlefield on this war of minds. My form may or may not be the best, but the message ought to be clear: my message is for the Leftists to get off our backs. In the view of their perfunctory tributes to (if not blithe ignorance of) the real and acute ongoing injustices in Tibet and Darfur, my agreement to take their narrative (of guilt over the Native Americans) is an act of generosity. They really do not deserve other than to be called on their hypocrisy and their opportunism for their choosing to elevate the Israel/“Palestine” conflict above all others. But I have done them the courtesy of addressing their guilt complex as is, and I have shown that their argument is thoroughly felled by the logic of none other than their strange bedfellow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “No compensation for a wrong on expense of those who had nothing to do with it”—if that logic is good against Zionism (or more accurately against a strawman thereof), then it’s good against American Leftist anti-Zionism as well. And in fact it is worse for the anti-Zionists, for, as I said, in Ahmadinejad’s case it stands on false premises (the misconception that Zionism is about compensating Jews for past anti-Semitism), while, in the case of the Leftists, the premises are sound by their own admission (see the Daily Kos comments above).

Anti-Zionists on the Western Left, hear now this:

You will not appease the Muslims on our expense. You will not vent your anti-Western, anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-Capitalist or anti-anything-else steam on our expense. And you will not assuage your guilt for past colonial wrongs on our expense. Either repent of your actions completely or at least change to a neutral stance toward the Israel/“Palestine” conflict; if not, then may God destroy you all, speedily in our days, amen.

Introductory Math for Pacifists

The crushing of the revolt of Buddhist monks in Myanmar hammers the hard truth home once again, but the diameter of the Leftist cranium is of such extent that even a visual depiction may not be enough:

An inconvenient truth. The building top right is the Parliament of India. Click image to view full size.

Appease away, ye heirs of Chamberlain. And then, as you always do, come crying to your saner compatriots for help when those attempts have inevitably put you in dire straits. George Santayana’s motion is now sufficient for a whole country-wide power station.

Talmudic Does Not Equal Socratic

On the Leftreasonous rag The Guardian’s online forum, Comment Is Free (which I usually call, “Grauniad Ciff”, as anyone who’s seen my linkfests on LGF knows), Seth Freedman brought another of his anti-Israel articles dressed as “concern for Israel’s future”, No Peace, no prosperity, from September 18, 2007 (subtitle: “All the money spent on war, walls and West Bank expansion is taking its toll on the sectors of Israeli society that badly need state assistance.” The fact of Israel having to spend on defense even within its 1949 Armistice Line borders is conveniently ignored). Once again, the more interesting stuff goes in the comments. Here’s the first, from “TheKingOfDoubt”:

/YAWN/ One more "gig" for Freedman to draw silly moral equivalences between Palestinian terrorists (whom he calls "militias") and Israeli settlers (whom he calls radicals).

Freedman, one of the reasons I would never convert to Judaism is that there are people like you within this prestigious religion, making a mockery of your own heritage, and slandering their own people under the excuse of a phony "objectivity". It's a bitter "gesheft," to be sure.

Shame.

It never ceases to amaze me how non-Jewish pro-Israel commenters tend to be much bolder, and furthermore, much more Jewish in their stance than a lot of Jews. On the later thread Life behind the wire, by Chris Doyle, another piece hammering home the “Israel = Apartheid South Africa” libel, a commenter named “RowdyDragon”, who says of himself that he is “neither a Jew nor an Evangelical”, posted three comments advocating mass expulsion of the Muslims from Israel! (The second comment was deleted—the “free” in “Comment Is Free” obviously refers to price, not to freedom—but as always when I catch them in time, I save them for posterity.)

But back to Freedman’s thread. A commenter named, “figliomedio” answered “TheKingOfDoubt” thus:

[…]

Another reason that you would never convert to Judaism is that you do not appear to know that when two burglars drop down a chimney it is inconceivable that one will be clean and the other covered in soot.

Argument, debate, turning and turning it and turning it again goes to the very essence of Judaism. People like you who would merely stifle debate do not have the necessary qualifications. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

[…]

This point needs addressing, because one of the charges of “Progressives” (in reality, cultural-Marxified religionists) everywhere is that “the true spirit of the religion” is about absolutely open debate, and moreover, is about asking questions for the sake of asking questions.

With all due respect to the Socratic method, which has its uses and might be beneficial in certain situations, it’s not the traditional Jewish way. The Talmudic method asks questions, sure, but that’s just about what it has in common with the Greek philosophical tradition. And if anyone says the Talmud is based on asking questions for the sake of asking questions, he couldn’t be more wrong.

Let me open with the Mishnah, Brachot 2:1:

From when do you say the Sh’ma in the evenings? From the hour that the priests enter to eat in their offering.

“Until the end of the first watch [of the night]”, [those are] the words of Rabbi Eliezer. And [the other] sages say: “Until midnight”. Rabban Gamliel says: “Until the column of dawn rises”.

A story [goes] that his sons came from the house of feasting, and said to him: “We did not call the calling of Sh’ma”. He said to them: “If the column of dawn has not risen, you must call”.

And not just this did they say, but also, in all places where the sages said, “Until dawn”, their mitzvah is until the column of dawn has risen. Incense the fats and the body parts—their mitzvah is until the column of dawn has risen. And all that which is eaten in one day, their mitzvah is until the column of dawn has risen. If so, why did the sages say, “Until midnight”? So as to distance a person from transgression.

This mishnah begins with a question, but there are many things here that go against the “Progressive”, or the Socratic, tradition.

First, far from the Socratic-Progressive tradition of putting everything up for grabs, we can see here an assumption, taken for granted, that a Jew must say the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4) in the evenings. Were that debate along the Progressive lines, there would be the question, “Who says the Sh’ma must be said in the evenings at all?” In fact, the Progressive way of “questioning everything” (everything except for the newly-hatched orthodoxy of Progressivism, that is) would lead to such questions as whether there is any divinity in the Torah, or whether God exists at all, until one is far gone in the depths of estrangement from everything that has defined Judaism for over 3,000 years. No, in the Talmudic method there are some truths that are given and are not to be questioned. Progressives may not like it, but that’s the way traditional religion, as opposed to the New Age deviations, goes.

Second, the questions are not for the sake of asking them—they are for the sake of coming to a conclusive answer. The whole of traditional Jewish discourse is purpose-driven, something that flows from the above fact of buying into the divine assumptions: Talmudic debate is for the purpose of finding the halachah, the religious decree which every believing Jew must follow. The Torah was given in order to be performed; in the Talmud, our rabbis elucidate the details as to how. And though the rabbis may go on wild tangents, the debates often looking like today’s jumps from hyperlink to hyperlink, in the end they come back to the goal: “Halachah k’Rabbi ploni”, meaning, “The religious decree is as Rabbi so-and-so said”, and then the debate is closed.

The aversion to questions for the sake of questions is most illustrated by the Aramaic phrases, “Mai nafkah minah?” (“What goes out from that?”) and “nafkuta hilchatit” (“Halachic consequence”): whenever a question is asked that does not seem to have any consequence to the final verdict, to the religious decree that will be the final outcome of the debate, our sages ask what difference that question makes. The sage who raised the original question is then called to justify it, showing how his question makes a difference as to the final decree. If he does not succeed in doing so, the question is discarded—the Talmud is deeper than the sea in extent, but it has no time to waste on mere philosophy. The purpose stands above all: How to do the Creator’s will.

The New Age, meaning the Primitivist and Cultural-Marxist mindset applied to religion, is about remaking all religions in its obligation-free, faith-free, fluffy and above all heretical image. To be sure, the basic questions that the New Agers ask (mostly concerning the attributes of God) have their place. But not in the Talmud and its tradition, which is beholden to the view that those questions are already behind us, and now the only real question is how to serve God according to His will. And by the way, like all “rebellions against the Establishment™” that have only spawned new orthodoxies, often far worse than the ones they rebelled against, the New Agers are pretty much set on their dogmas: it’s settled for them that, for example, prayer is a means of focusing oneself and does not effect any change in objective reality, or that reward and punishment are systems flowing on a natural, “You reap what you sow” basis rather than meted by God. They display little skepticism for those dogmas.

Beside my encountering of this issue on a forum of the anti-Israel Guardian, this point is important for the defense of Zionism on two counts: because part of the same Progressive tradition is the denial of Jewish nationalism, i.e. of Zionism; and because the Progressive mindset of putting everything up for grabs is the engine that powers the debilitating movement of Post-Zionism, which in the name of “slaughtering sacred cows” has made it fashionable to view the whole Zionist project in doubt, and thus serves as ammunition for those who call for the dissolution of Israel as Jewish state (God forbid). Without that excessive doubt which leads to questioning one’s core assumptions—to sawing the very branch on which one is sitting—and then turning its “skepticism” into the orthodoxy which one must accept or else suffer opprobrium, the preposterous idea that the Jews of Israel are settler-colonialists, rather than a nation returning to its homeland, could never have taken root as such is the situation now. And on the international stage, excessive doubt is the root cause of the pathetic dhimmitude we see all over the non-Muslim world today. Such are the fruits of self-doubt to the point of nihilism.

There are some materials that have to be handled with care, and there are some questions that, if asked at all, must not be asked in a cavalier manner. Doubts and questions are necessary for pruning branches that have not grown the right way; it is when doubts and questions are applied to the roots, to one’s core assumptions, that great caution must be taken, for the results could be disastrous. Many isolated tribes have been blighted by an epidemic of suicide ever since they were first exposed to the changed world outside them. That is because the exposure challenged all the assumptions that they had held until then. Confidence in one’s way, in one’s purpose, is the key to survival. The Muslims have that, and that is why they are able to inflict damages on non-Muslim states way out of proportion to their military capabilities. It is only when we regain our confidence that we will be able to fight back.