Soft anti-Semitism and the Anatomy of a War
Soft Anti-Semitism
I call it "soft" because the person who wrote it doesn't even think he is anti-Semitic. In fact, based on his last name, he is probably at least part Jewish. And yet, the article he wrote is in fact anti-Semitic. I know, this sounds so "mean green", the closeted conservative who is "racist" but doesn't realize it. But, just for a few moments, stay with me and then decide for yourself
...................
The other day, the Washington Post ran a piece of “soft anti-Semitism”. It portrayed the decades of conflict in the Middle East as being all Israel’s fault.
Not because of anything Israel had knowingly done.
Oh, no, the problem goes deeper than that. The actual reason is the very existence of Israel itself.
It turns out the cause of the conflict is that Jews don’t belong in the region at all !
Yes, the writer explained, the whole problem is that there should never have been a Jewish state in the Middle East. Echoing it seems the message of the Iranians that any Jewish state should have been carved out of some European state like Germany or Austria.
This mistake, no ones fault we are told, is the reason for all of the conflict. The mere presence of Jews in the area is such a insult to Arabs that war is inevitable.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Hunker Down With History
Richard Cohen at the Washington Post
July 18, 2005
The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers.
There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason. And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas. It is a fetid, anti-Semitic outfit whose organizing principle is hatred of Israel. There is, though, a point in cautioning Israel to exercise restraint -- not for the sake of its enemies but for itself.
The smart choice is to pull back to defensible -- but hardly impervious -- borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank -- and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
So the war is not the fault of Islamic Theo-Fascists, but rather of the poor judgement of Jews for living in their historic homeland in the first place.
Therefore, the proper solution is for Israel to simply “hunker down”, accept that they are going to be subject to a 100 rocket attacks a day. Get used to living in bomb shelters, as some 70,00 are doing now. Make peace with the idea that an Iranian nuclear bomb may one day return the land of Palestine to it’s proper condition; a Jew-free zone.
There is a slight flaw in this argument, of course. It relates to the idea that Arabs and Jews just simply can’t co-exist. That would seem to be, shall we say slightly questionable, based on the fact that the population of Israel itself is 20% Arab. Nearly all of whom are Moslems. Living within the Security Fence, without any apparent problems.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Anatomy of a War
Knowing that, as discussed in a recent post, many people are incapable of hearing facts that do not fit their preconceptions, still I’m going to try this summary of why this war is going on now.
This is what WAS in the process of happening:
Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution was reducing the influence of Syria in Lebanon’s affairs.
Iraq’s government, despite the efforts of International Jihadists and local insurgents alike, was increasingly functioning, and extending Iraqi Army control over ever larger areas of the country.
Israel had totally withdrawn from Gaza, and its new security fence had stopped most terrorist attacks in Israel, ending its need to intervene in the West Bank. Plans were being formulated to unilaterally withdraw from much of the West Bank.
Palestinian President Abbas was pushing for a vote on a two state peace agreement with Israel, and polls showed most Palestinians supported it, but Hamas staunchly opposed it.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a violation of non-proliferation agreements they had signed, was about to be the main topic of discussion at the Group of Eight.
In the face of this outbreak of peace and international law, all of the anti-democratic forces in the region decided enough was enough. The Syrians wanted to regain control of Lebanon. The Iranians wanted to avoid the influence of the Group of Eight. Hamas wanted to derail elections they were likely to lose. Hizbullah wanted to stop the democratization of Lebanon. al Qaeda and the other Sunni Jihadists wanted an end to democracy in Iraq and to stop its spread to neighboring countries.
From an article in the Australian:
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
This fits a long pattern. For decades, first under a secular leadership and now under a more Islamicised one, every chance for peace has been scotched by a new atrocity committed by a Palestinian or Arab group determined to instead make war.
This is the long and complex story Israel's enemies do not want told, instead preferring the narrative of displacement and victimisation that is so commonly heard in the West.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
So behind all of the stories about Israel’s overreacting, and the damage being done to Lebanese infrastructure, is the barely noticed reason all of this is happening now.
The anti-democratic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western forces are determined to stop this unprecedented outbreak of peace and democracy before it irrevocably takes hold of the entire Middle East. It’s not an Israeli-Arab war, nor an Israeli-Moslem war, it’s a Red/Blue meme dictatorship, terrorism, and theocracy vs. Orange/Green meme Democracy war.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide which side of that you want to be on……
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Now for the articles I quoted above:
Israel Must Win the War of Ideas
The Australian
July 21, 2006
Israel, despite being a tiny country surrounded by Arab states who would happily – and on more than one occasion have tried – to push it into the sea, has historically sought peace with its neighbours and only fought to defend itself. The present conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon was not a fight of Israel's choosing; in fact, Israel had pulled out from Lebanon in 2000 only to see the Iranian and Syrian-backed terrorist group regroup on its northern border.
Certainly anyone with a heart will have compassion for the civilians killed in the current conflict with Hezbollah on both sides. Yet the outrage about the accidental wartime deaths of Lebanese children seems to far outweigh that felt for Israeli youth deliberately targeted by suicide bombers in calculated acts of murder. Likewise in the occupied territories, Israel has repeatedly sought to arrive at some sort of accomodation with the Palestinians. Yet it was Israel's reputation that was sullied during the first Intifada of 1987 to 1993 when images of Arab youths hurling stones at tanks were beamed around the world.
Since its founding in 1948 Israel has repeatedly faced down hostile enemies who still view its founding as a naqba, or catastrophe. This was shown most dramatically during 1967's Six Day War.
Having been subjected to weeks of threats and surrounded by the mobilised armies of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan, Israel took the initiative and decimated its enemies' military capabilities. And even though every honest accounting of the war acknowledges Israel was facing overwhelming odds, many in the West see it as an act of Jewish aggression.
Israel only occupied land to the east of the cease fire line of 1949 because it was in the process of fighting a defensive war. But the obligation to seek peace is not an obligation to commit national suicide. Who could reasonably expect Israel, a country that is at places just nine miles wide, to withdraw from such defensive buffers in the face of states that have already proven their desire to do it harm?
In any case, Arab countries have proved more than happy to delay solutions to the problem of the occupied territories to provide them with a continuing source of propaganda.
By the mid- to late-1990s suicide bomb belts had replaced rocks as the Palestinian weapon of choice. And Yasser Arafat would prove to be nothing but a disaster. Through all of this the Israelis explicitly voted to give land back to the Palestinians in a quest to acheive peace – a very rare act in the history of the world. Events would come to a head with the start of the second Intifada in late 2000.
Yet in 2004 Mr Sharon, the most hawkish of Israeli hawks, finally saw a way to make peace by evacuating the Gaza Strip and withdrawing from parts of the West Bank and leaving the Palestinians to run both areas. But once again the hope of peace was betrayed when the Hamas terrorist militia kidnapped an Israeli soldier last month. The terrorists acted in an attempt to derail the possibility of a Palestinian vote on peace with Israel that could have gone against them.
However many battles the Israelis win their sixty year struggle for survival will never end unless they achieve their objectives in the war of ideas.
Israel's foes have become adept at working the press and releasing footage of dead civilians. The assumption of many in the media that there is something suspicious about a democracy that fights, rather than appeases its enemies, makes it easy for the ignorant and the anti-Semitic to paint Israel as an aggressor.
To counter this…all who support Israel's right to exist, need to make the case with calm reason and lay out the facts, from the 1967 war through the Camp David and Oslo accords and Yasser Arafat's benighted and corrupt leadership.
Also worth mentioning are Ehud Barak's eagerness to sign a peace deal that would have given the Palestinians 95 per cent of their stated desires and which was still rejected by Mr Arafat
The Islamic terrorists….hate Hindus and Christians_ and also Muslims who adhere to different doctrines – as much as they do Jews. And by indiscriminately targeting transport in cities all over the world terrorists demonstrate they do not care who they kill.
Read the rest at:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19856161-7583,00.html
Abbas will call for Palestinian vote on two-state plan
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=13029&topicID=28
Hunker Down With History
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701154.html
I call it "soft" because the person who wrote it doesn't even think he is anti-Semitic. In fact, based on his last name, he is probably at least part Jewish. And yet, the article he wrote is in fact anti-Semitic. I know, this sounds so "mean green", the closeted conservative who is "racist" but doesn't realize it. But, just for a few moments, stay with me and then decide for yourself
...................
The other day, the Washington Post ran a piece of “soft anti-Semitism”. It portrayed the decades of conflict in the Middle East as being all Israel’s fault.
Not because of anything Israel had knowingly done.
Oh, no, the problem goes deeper than that. The actual reason is the very existence of Israel itself.
It turns out the cause of the conflict is that Jews don’t belong in the region at all !
Yes, the writer explained, the whole problem is that there should never have been a Jewish state in the Middle East. Echoing it seems the message of the Iranians that any Jewish state should have been carved out of some European state like Germany or Austria.
This mistake, no ones fault we are told, is the reason for all of the conflict. The mere presence of Jews in the area is such a insult to Arabs that war is inevitable.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Hunker Down With History
Richard Cohen at the Washington Post
July 18, 2005
The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers.
There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason. And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas. It is a fetid, anti-Semitic outfit whose organizing principle is hatred of Israel. There is, though, a point in cautioning Israel to exercise restraint -- not for the sake of its enemies but for itself.
The smart choice is to pull back to defensible -- but hardly impervious -- borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank -- and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
So the war is not the fault of Islamic Theo-Fascists, but rather of the poor judgement of Jews for living in their historic homeland in the first place.
Therefore, the proper solution is for Israel to simply “hunker down”, accept that they are going to be subject to a 100 rocket attacks a day. Get used to living in bomb shelters, as some 70,00 are doing now. Make peace with the idea that an Iranian nuclear bomb may one day return the land of Palestine to it’s proper condition; a Jew-free zone.
There is a slight flaw in this argument, of course. It relates to the idea that Arabs and Jews just simply can’t co-exist. That would seem to be, shall we say slightly questionable, based on the fact that the population of Israel itself is 20% Arab. Nearly all of whom are Moslems. Living within the Security Fence, without any apparent problems.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Anatomy of a War
Knowing that, as discussed in a recent post, many people are incapable of hearing facts that do not fit their preconceptions, still I’m going to try this summary of why this war is going on now.
This is what WAS in the process of happening:
Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution was reducing the influence of Syria in Lebanon’s affairs.
Iraq’s government, despite the efforts of International Jihadists and local insurgents alike, was increasingly functioning, and extending Iraqi Army control over ever larger areas of the country.
Israel had totally withdrawn from Gaza, and its new security fence had stopped most terrorist attacks in Israel, ending its need to intervene in the West Bank. Plans were being formulated to unilaterally withdraw from much of the West Bank.
Palestinian President Abbas was pushing for a vote on a two state peace agreement with Israel, and polls showed most Palestinians supported it, but Hamas staunchly opposed it.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a violation of non-proliferation agreements they had signed, was about to be the main topic of discussion at the Group of Eight.
In the face of this outbreak of peace and international law, all of the anti-democratic forces in the region decided enough was enough. The Syrians wanted to regain control of Lebanon. The Iranians wanted to avoid the influence of the Group of Eight. Hamas wanted to derail elections they were likely to lose. Hizbullah wanted to stop the democratization of Lebanon. al Qaeda and the other Sunni Jihadists wanted an end to democracy in Iraq and to stop its spread to neighboring countries.
From an article in the Australian:
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
This fits a long pattern. For decades, first under a secular leadership and now under a more Islamicised one, every chance for peace has been scotched by a new atrocity committed by a Palestinian or Arab group determined to instead make war.
This is the long and complex story Israel's enemies do not want told, instead preferring the narrative of displacement and victimisation that is so commonly heard in the West.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
So behind all of the stories about Israel’s overreacting, and the damage being done to Lebanese infrastructure, is the barely noticed reason all of this is happening now.
The anti-democratic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western forces are determined to stop this unprecedented outbreak of peace and democracy before it irrevocably takes hold of the entire Middle East. It’s not an Israeli-Arab war, nor an Israeli-Moslem war, it’s a Red/Blue meme dictatorship, terrorism, and theocracy vs. Orange/Green meme Democracy war.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide which side of that you want to be on……
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Now for the articles I quoted above:
Israel Must Win the War of Ideas
The Australian
July 21, 2006
Israel, despite being a tiny country surrounded by Arab states who would happily – and on more than one occasion have tried – to push it into the sea, has historically sought peace with its neighbours and only fought to defend itself. The present conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon was not a fight of Israel's choosing; in fact, Israel had pulled out from Lebanon in 2000 only to see the Iranian and Syrian-backed terrorist group regroup on its northern border.
Certainly anyone with a heart will have compassion for the civilians killed in the current conflict with Hezbollah on both sides. Yet the outrage about the accidental wartime deaths of Lebanese children seems to far outweigh that felt for Israeli youth deliberately targeted by suicide bombers in calculated acts of murder. Likewise in the occupied territories, Israel has repeatedly sought to arrive at some sort of accomodation with the Palestinians. Yet it was Israel's reputation that was sullied during the first Intifada of 1987 to 1993 when images of Arab youths hurling stones at tanks were beamed around the world.
Since its founding in 1948 Israel has repeatedly faced down hostile enemies who still view its founding as a naqba, or catastrophe. This was shown most dramatically during 1967's Six Day War.
Having been subjected to weeks of threats and surrounded by the mobilised armies of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan, Israel took the initiative and decimated its enemies' military capabilities. And even though every honest accounting of the war acknowledges Israel was facing overwhelming odds, many in the West see it as an act of Jewish aggression.
Israel only occupied land to the east of the cease fire line of 1949 because it was in the process of fighting a defensive war. But the obligation to seek peace is not an obligation to commit national suicide. Who could reasonably expect Israel, a country that is at places just nine miles wide, to withdraw from such defensive buffers in the face of states that have already proven their desire to do it harm?
In any case, Arab countries have proved more than happy to delay solutions to the problem of the occupied territories to provide them with a continuing source of propaganda.
By the mid- to late-1990s suicide bomb belts had replaced rocks as the Palestinian weapon of choice. And Yasser Arafat would prove to be nothing but a disaster. Through all of this the Israelis explicitly voted to give land back to the Palestinians in a quest to acheive peace – a very rare act in the history of the world. Events would come to a head with the start of the second Intifada in late 2000.
Yet in 2004 Mr Sharon, the most hawkish of Israeli hawks, finally saw a way to make peace by evacuating the Gaza Strip and withdrawing from parts of the West Bank and leaving the Palestinians to run both areas. But once again the hope of peace was betrayed when the Hamas terrorist militia kidnapped an Israeli soldier last month. The terrorists acted in an attempt to derail the possibility of a Palestinian vote on peace with Israel that could have gone against them.
However many battles the Israelis win their sixty year struggle for survival will never end unless they achieve their objectives in the war of ideas.
Israel's foes have become adept at working the press and releasing footage of dead civilians. The assumption of many in the media that there is something suspicious about a democracy that fights, rather than appeases its enemies, makes it easy for the ignorant and the anti-Semitic to paint Israel as an aggressor.
To counter this…all who support Israel's right to exist, need to make the case with calm reason and lay out the facts, from the 1967 war through the Camp David and Oslo accords and Yasser Arafat's benighted and corrupt leadership.
Also worth mentioning are Ehud Barak's eagerness to sign a peace deal that would have given the Palestinians 95 per cent of their stated desires and which was still rejected by Mr Arafat
The Islamic terrorists….hate Hindus and Christians_ and also Muslims who adhere to different doctrines – as much as they do Jews. And by indiscriminately targeting transport in cities all over the world terrorists demonstrate they do not care who they kill.
Read the rest at:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19856161-7583,00.html
Abbas will call for Palestinian vote on two-state plan
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=13029&topicID=28
Hunker Down With History
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701154.html
posted by Colmar at 1:19 AM
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