“With the president’s intervention,” writes Pat Buchanan, “the issue [of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero] has metastasized into a major clash in America’s religious and culture war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.” Dah.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.
“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC. “We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

B. Hussein is seconded by Hamas. The mega-mosque affairs has gone from farce to burlesque. What next in the theater of the absurd?

UPDATE I: SHALOM SHARIA. Writes Diana West:

“Since 2006, Rauf ["of the ground zero mosque"] has coordinated a series of international meetings with Shariah experts ranging from Muslim Brotherhood associates to Iran’s Mohammad Javad Larijani, ‘who,’ as Brim reports, ‘has justified torture of Iranian dissidents as legal punishments under Shariah law.’”

“That’s not all Larijani, who heads Iran’s Human Rights Council (for real), has justified. He has also justified Shariah-sanctioned stoning. As Anne Bayefsky recently reported, Rauf’s picture with Larijani (and former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Sada Cumber) disappeared from the Cordoba Initiative Web site, too.”

“So much to hide – but the Shariah is out of the bag.

What would expanding Shariah mean here? More halal-butchered livestock leading, as in Europe, to halal-only menus?

More midnight football practice during Ramadan? More sex-segregated swimming pools?

More incitement to jihad in ‘radical’ mosques? More ‘apostates’ living in fear? More self-censorship, I mean ‘respect,’ when it comes to discussing Islam?

An excellent benchmark of Shariah’s remarkable and, think of it, post-9/11 progress is that none of the above manifestations of Islamic law – all designed to synchronize society with Islamic practice – are shocking to us.” …

UPDATE II (Aug. 23): No Faith In Islam. Another community, this time in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, does not wish to see a mosque rise up in its midst.

“The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida,” writes WaPo correspondent, Ann Gowen.

“So many things about Islam are disconcerting,” [another resident] said. “As they get bigger, there will be concerns about the ideology, what they preach and what they believe.”

And it is as I said in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?” “It’s in the faith of Islam and its adherents that Americans have no faith.”

If Christians raised a cathedral at Liberty St. and Church St., most Americans would not mind. If the Hari Krishna set up a place of worship in the vicinity, and bobbed up and down the exact complex in Lower Manhattan, Americans would smile benignly. Ditto if a Jewish tabernacle were to be erected around the corner; this reaction would not have occurred.

I’ve had it with the incoherent, emotional, asinine refrains I keep hearing from Ground-Zero activists: “I love Muslims; it’s just this one mosque I hate.” Come out with what you mean, already.

Enlightened, realistic, intelligent people (western, left-liberal intellectuals are precluded by definition) who visit or come to know Israel—the place, the people, the purpose of it all—abandon the easy, destructive, fashionable path of the Palestinians.

Such a man is Mosab Yousef, a “Son of Hamas”—also the title of his book—interviewed extensively by CNN’s Christian Amanpour.

This extremely bright young man’s central conversion is religious—once he embraced Christianity, his political change of heart followed. (How ironic, then, that western “intellectuals,” claiming to bear christian witness, routinely root for savagery as against civilization?!)

Amanpour, a fan of that authentic, ever-elusive, tame Islam, was shocked to hear these two stupendously courageous statements from Mosab Yousef:

1. The gangster of the world is the God of the Qu’ran.

2. Shin Bet has rules; is committed to a constitution, is not thirsty to kill Palestinians. Hamas’s goal, on the other hand, is to kill civilians, plain and simple.

Amanpour—who finds herself unable to abide Yousef’s admission that Shin Bet has a moral code, Hamas does not—then spent the rest of the admittedly penetrating interview trying to discredit Israel and the convert.

“Who turned you to working for the Israelis,” she demanded of Yousef.

Tellingly, the Hamas gangster she entertained to that end had a fit about being pitted against an Israeli expert on espionage, Yossi Melman of the leftist Haaretz.

An enlightened young man, with a fidelity to what’s infront of his eyes, turning against Hamas? This, to the western woman hot for the Hamas hottie, his bombs and his “causes”, is incredible.

Amanpour and the other Muslim academic she herded in for the occasion are, seemingly, quite invested in discrediting a born-again Christian whose conversion has seen him reject barbarism.

Regulars on the pro-Palestinian libertarian/left sides of the ideological spectrum might be warned of a major contradiction they risk committing, as they gather to slander Mosab Yousef, “Son of Hamas”:

Boy-oh-boy, has this man hungrily embraced civilization both from the depths of his being and in his actions. Yousef is risking his life to court the ways of the West: speaking, writing, arguing; having fun and making money while doing it all.

Now this is a hero in the Randian mold. May he stay safe.

THE PLIGHT THAT DOESN’T SHUT UP. The Palestinians are throwing rocks again and threatening a religious war, for a change. This time, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had the audacity to place “the second holiest place for the Jewish people, after Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” “on a list of 150 national heritage sites.”

The Cave of the Machpelah, or the Tomb of the Patriarchs, “and the adjoining field were purchased—at full market price—by Abraham some 3700 years ago. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are all later buried in the same Cave of Machpelah. These are considered the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people. The only one who is missing is Rachel, who was buried near Bethlehem where she died in childbirth.” [Jewish Virtual Library]

CNSNews.com:

Although a predominantly Arab city today, Hebron’s importance to Jews goes back to the foundation of their faith. According to the Old Testament (Genesis 49), Abraham bought a cave known as Machpela at the site to bury his wife, Sarah and was himself also buried there, along with Isaac and Jacob, as well as Isaac’s wife Rebecca, and Jacob’s first wife, Leah.

The Old Testament also records that Hebron was the capital of the kingdom of Israel for seven years before King David moved to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5). Rabbis consider the Cave of the Patriarchs the second holiest site in Judaism, after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Hebron as a city is also one of Judaism’s four holy cities, the others being Jerusalem, Tiberias and Tzfat.

Historians say Hebron had a small, almost continuous Jewish presence for thousands of years until 1929, when it ended abruptly after 67 members of the then 800-strong Jewish community were killed during three days of Arab riots.

The Obama Administration and the UN have condemned Israel. Scum all.

Muslims have no historical claim to this site except that they have conducted a kind of theological and historical Jihad—or national identity theft—claiming Jewish and Christian formative biblical figures and sites as their own.

This from my “The Final Solution to the Jewish State” touches on the grand Muslim scheme to appropriate the annals of the Jews as their own:

“This Palestinian theology … strips away Jesus’ Jewishness and turns him into a sui generis Arab-Palestinian Jesus, a twin of the Muslim Jesus. Christianity, thus liberated from its Jewish roots, can be transplanted in Arab-Islamism. This would place Palestine, and not Israel, at the origin of Christianity, making Israelis usurpers of the Islamic-Christian-Palestinian homeland. This theory denies the historical continuity between modern Israel and its biblical ancestor, the locus of nascent Christianity.”

So when proponents of the increasingly popular Palestinian replacement theology … speak of the existence of Israel as a sin, and then smuggle in the concept of the Palestinian Jesus—know that they’re pirating ancient Jewish history by superimposing Palestinian fiction on it.

Know that these archetype Amalekites are engaged in the ultimate identity theft so as to bring about the end of the Jewish state as we know it.”

RELATED READING: “‘Jerusalem Is Not a Settlement,’ Netanyahu Reminds Obama Administration.”

Mainstream media and the community of documentarians have “explained” ad nauseam the vexing nuances of the “Palestinian problem.” We know why jobs are unavailable in that otherwise economically viable anarcho-terrorist territory, why government consists of competing terrorist gangs (rather than only one), and why civil society, such as it is, canonizes killers. Israel; it’s all Israel’s fault! [Plagiarized from "The Plight That Never Shuts Up"]

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s watch a professional victim get creative. In this LiveLeak video, our young cherub—what is she, all of 15?—is driven to stab a checkpoint guard. Why do I use the passive form of the verb for a premeditated act of savagery? Read “Coddling Killers” for the framework you need.

Such aggression is an every day occurrence at these checkpoints; alas, it’s not as common on the Internet, which is festooned with ahistoric, fact-challenged “documentaries” such as this one. For one, the crawl text begins with stock propaganda, calling Gaza and the West Bank “occupied territories.” Let me dispel that factoid herewith:

“Prior to 1967,” explains palestinefacts.org., “Jordan had occupied the West Bank and Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip; their presence in those territories was the result of their illegal invasion in 1948. Jordan’s 1950 annexation of the West Bank was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan and rejected by the vast majority of the international community, including the Arab states.”

“International jurists generally draw a distinction between situations of ‘aggressive conquest’ and territorial disputes that arise after a war of self-defense. Former US State Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel, who later headed the International Court of Justice in the Hague, wrote in 1970 regarding Israel’s case:

* Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.

“Israel only entered the West Bank in 1967 after repeated Jordanian artillery fire and ground movements across the previous armistice lines; additionally, Iraqi forces crossed Jordanian territory and were poised to enter the West Bank. Under such circumstances, even the United Nations rejected Soviet efforts to have Israel branded as the aggressor in the Six-Day War.

Regardless of how many times the Palestinian Arabs claim otherwise, Israel cannot be characterized as a ‘foreign occupier’ with respect to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

[SNIP]

Predictably, and like Swiss clockwork, a RIOT erupted after this, or another, “victim” (the aggressor/stabber, naturally) was arrested. The audacity! I urge you to read “Rah-Rah For Rioters” for the anatomy of a victim in-riot and his enablers.

ERGO: Roadblocks or checkpoints, the quintessential pacifist form of self-defense—akin to lifting your hand in front of your face to shield it from a blow—must be dismantled. And that goes for The wall, which has cut deaths by homicidal bombers by 80 percent.

Don’t you know that Palestinians sans medical care and jobs have a natural right to Israeli markets and manpower (hospitals)? Yeah, that’s the progressive definition of a right.

You say you’re all for shielding girls like the exquisite Sgt. Ma’ayan Na’im, 19, of Bat Yam, who “was murdered (33 others were wounded) when a bomb exploded at a bus stop in downtown Tel Aviv at about 7 a.m., July 11, 2004.

Hmmm. That’s a tough one. I’ll have to think on that…

Update: WALLING. It’s hard to get over the audacity of those Israelis. Their intention to screen and secure ports of entry is just so … UnAmerican. What are they afraid of? Terrorists? A surplus of cheap labor in a recession? Both? C’mon. The duty of a government is to always work against its own people. Have the Israelis learned nothing from the American ship of state?

Apparently so. We now learn that “Israel will Build Barrier Along its Egyptian Border”:

Israel will build a barrier along the entire length of its southern border with Egypt, the Prime Minister’s Office said today in a statement posted on its Web site.
The barrier is meant to keep out “intruders and terrorists,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the statement, including “illegal workers who try to enter Israel by way of its southern border.”
The barrier will cost at least a billion shekels and take several years to construct, the statement said.

From my new WND column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza”:

“When introducing Judge Goldstone, Fareed Zakaria described the judge as having made his name, among other acts of greatness, in pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid in his home country of South Africa.

Ostracized for his convictions, this writer’s father – Rabbi Ben Isaacson – was a leading anti-apartheid activist. Goldstone had no such history of protest, father assures me. The roaming judge attached himself like a limpet mine to the anti-apartheid cause only once it became fashionable, safe and professionally expedient.

Goldstone’s Wiki biography corroborates father’s recollection. The judge joined the cause du jour in ‘the latter years of apartheid in South Africa.’ Goldstone’s “courageous” judicial decisions in the cause of freedom, moreover, comported with what South Africa’s Western system of Dutch-Roman law provided – a system currently being replaced, by the African National Congress, with a blend of tribal and totalitarian laws.

To this expatriate South African, the most anodyne assertion Goldstone made to zombie Zakaria was this one…”

Read the complete column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Jan. 9): A few readers, some via my WND mail box, have told me I’ve erred as far as the meaning of Golem goes. I’m relatively confident that my commonplace use of the term is accurate (if perhaps not true to the original meaning), so I’ve left it. Usually, I hurry to correct blatant errors.

So why am I comfortable with the column’s usage?

I’m an ex-Israeli. My first language is Hebrew. Although I once spoke and wrote a sharp Hebrew (much like my English), slang has since (as in the US and the UK) changed older, popular usage. As old-timers like myself are in the habit of saying, no one speaks Yerushalmic Hebrew on the news any longer as the wonderful Haim Yavin used to. Yavin was the most elegant anchorman in looks and language.

Back to the topic. “Golem” in popular, modern usage is a derogatory term. Call an Israeli of my age group (still way younger than Yavin, of course) a Golem, and, while you’ve not wounded him mortally, you have, in good humor, berated him.

THE EXCERPT is from “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, my new WND.COM column, now (Sept. 12) on Taki’s:

“Given the perpetual parade of ‘intellectuals’ who are not intelligent in our media — Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the ‘parrot press’ — I don’t expect you to be familiar with political philosopher Paul E. Gottfried. Nevertheless, Paul (he’s a friend) is one of the most important intellectuals in America.”

“Historian Eugene Genovese calls Paul incorruptible, ‘an American intellectual of superior talent.’ Author and historian John Lukacs praises Professor Gottfried as ‘a very profound thinker.’ And L. Brent Bozell III salutes his ‘amazing intellectual courage’ — courage in the face of the malign, philistine forces of the liberal and neoconservative mainstream.”

Over the years, I’ve interviewed Professor Gottfried pursuant to the publication of his many books. I do so again on the occasion of the publication of “Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.”

READ THE interview, “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, now on WND.COM. And on Taki’s Magazine on the weekend.

Update I (Sept. 11): Please note that the always-genial and brutally candid Paul Gottfried has replied to his detractors in the Comments Section. Some of the critics have been quite harsh (and this forum is moderated).

Update II: Randy, the war on Iraq is not going to be adjudicated again here, not ever. I chronicled the invasion of Iraq at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce that war crime. The case is closed! Neoconservative ideologues stand in the dock for aiding and abetting a war crime. Any reader is welcome to read my article archive on the topic (search the blog archives too). I can well imagine that many ideologues who supported the war urgently need to make peace with their maker, or consciences, for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude.

Update III (Sept. 12): Hayim, one doesn’t have to endorse everything Paul Gottfried writes or espouses to appreciate his contribution and steadfast principles. As someone who is ostracized by even more factions than Paul, I recognize the strength of character it takes to resist group pressure to conform and compromise one’s notion of right and wrong.

As to the article you cited, and which I skimmed: I have quoted Dershowitz on Israel and find his commentary worthwhile. I do not appreciate the dichotomy—or hypocrisy—the likes of Dershowitz evince in that they are hard-core rightists when it comes to Israel’s right to preserve its ethnic identity. But anyone arguing that the preservation of the historical America is essential to the preservation of freedom itself is a racist in Dershowitz’ books. That aspect of the Jewish Diaspora sickens me. Israelis are nothing like these American Jews.

In “Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians,” I expressed exactly what I thought of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Norman Finkelstein I include among “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of Jewish giants. Noam Chomsky (‘The Godfather’), Steven and Hillary Rose … Joel Kovel, Tanya Reinhart in Tel Aviv, and Michael Cohen in Swansea—these are but a few of the new anti-Semitism’s leading Jewish lights.”

Where I agree with Paul is in his assertion that there is among the anointed Jewish leadership a crass abuse of “the Holocaust for propagandistic purposes.” No doubt about it. And it’s repulsive. To the extend Finkelstein exposes this, to that extent he makes a valid point. The Holocaust industry makes even me turn away from a catastrophe that has truncated my own family tree.

I also find the premise of the Daniel Goldhagen book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, appalling.

I think that on the whole Joan Peterson’s book is pretty good. If there are a few factual problems—and I don’t know that there are—they serve in this context as a fig leaf for those who would deny the central truth about the Jewish settlement of Israel:

“The territory within which the State of Israel was established did not form part of any larger state that opposed its creation. The territory was, moreover, one where Jews formed a majority on land they had purchased legitimately.”

Unanimously, this Jewish majority issued a declaration of independence promising that ‘the State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,’ not for the benefit of mankind. They promised that the country would ‘be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel”; that it would ‘ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,’ and ‘safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

It is a joke to claim, as the anti-Israel right does, that Israel doesn’t respect the rights of all its inhabitants, Arabs included. Let the Raimondos of this world—hopefully there is only one of his kind—go live/or vacation in the Palestinian Authority.

Above all, it is undeniable that Arabs had trashed the Holy Land throughout their occupation of the place. It took Jews to dry the swamps—they died in droves of malaria doing so—to plant orchards, start industries, and generally build from a howling wilderness a prosperous country.

You won’t find me lamenting that wonderful achievement.

“Oy vey, or just oy,” writes Wikipedia, is a [Yiddish] exclamation of dismay or exasperation meaning ‘woe.” Woe indeed. The Uyghurs, as far as I know, are to China as the Chechens are to Russia: fractious Muslims, with mayhem on their minds, a state-of-being also described as a quest for “self-determinism,” when used by left-liberals vis-à-vis the acting-out Palestinians, Uyghurs and Chechens do.

Yet, for the life of me, I cannot locate on Wikipedia a reference to the Muslim faith of the estimable Uyghurs, now rioting in China’s Xinjiang region.

Wikipedia does note, without elaborating, that China sympathized with the US after 9/11, but leaves hanging the reaction of the Uyghurs. Did they dance in the streets as their Palestinian coreligionists did?

Ever consistent (NOT), expect neocons to weigh-in on the side of Uyghur independence (forgetting that they just bemoaned the release from Gitmo of a couple of Uyghurs), as liberals like Obama, on a Disney-like tour to Russia, imperiously counter with calls for Georgian and Chechen independence. Idiots all.

The thread in response to my VDARE.com column, “Paleos Must Defend the West, And That Means Israel Too,” grew so long, that I am carrying it over in this new blog post.

The original, heated discussion began here. We are now on Update VII (Jan 16):

So did I really say what Richard Spencer of Taki’s Magazine alleges I said? Why, the excerpt Mr. Spencer provides from my VDARE.com to back his contention contradicts it.

Contra Mr. Spencer, a philosophical defense of Israel can include a support for Israel’s incursion into Gaza, but, it doesn’t have to.

Richard Spencer’s colleague, Razib Khan (why can’t Americans spell “ILANA”?), objects to the term “The Judeo-Christian West.” I’ve heard this objection before from paleos put in far more sinister terms, the aim being to disinherit Judaism. Or deny the continuity between it and Christianity. An absurdity, of course.

So polite disagreement is a nice change.

Once again, Mr. Khan’s claim that between 500 and 1800 Jews were not major players in Western Civilization is not nearly enough to render hollow the term Judeo-Christian. Ditto the fact that most Israelis are descended from the Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497. (From their exile in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, they fled to Israel as refugees after 1948.)

Consider: Under the Afrikaner National Party, South Africa’s institutions were eminently western, although Europeans formed a minority in that country. Should any paleo visit Israel, rather than just theorize platonically about the place, he will see the relevance of the SA example.

I am no theologian, nor am I remotely religious. I am, however, as Jewish as … Jesus was.

Yeah, it’s almost as though some Christians forget Jesus was as Jewish as they come.

While he was a radical, Jesus was not an alien from Deep Space, but was steeped in the Hebrew (“Old”) Testament’s ethics. Knowledge and wisdom don’t arise in a vacuum; like so many greats, Jesus stood on the shoulders of giants, and was very much in the mold of the classical prophets, some of whom had to sleep out in the fields to escape the people’s wrath.

Deuteronomy, an early book—the fifth of 39—showcases an advanced concept of Jewish social justice, and is replete with instructions to protect the poor, the weak, the defenseless, the widows, the orphans, the aliens, etc.

This ethical monotheism, developed centuries before classical Greek philosophy, is echoed throughout the Hebrew Bible (Exodus), and expounded upon by the classical prophets, who railed against power and cultural corruption so magnificently:

“There is blood on you hands; wash yourself and be clean. Put away the evil of your deeds, away out of my sight. Cease to do evil and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed; give the orphan his rights, plead the widow’s cause.”—Isaiah 1:11-17

The claim, made by the dazzling Catholic controversialist Clare Boothe Luce, that “New Testament universalism superseded Old Testament particularism” can be dispatched with a reminder that the Ten Commandments preceded the Epistle of St. John.

My knowledge of Judaism, and its influence on Christianity, is superficial at best (my father is the scholar of Judaism), but even more superficial is it to deny the philosophical continuity between Judaism and Christianity.

Update VII (Jan 16): AN ASIDE. Apropos my comment above with resepct to Sephardi Jews, who “fled to Israel as refugees after 1948.” Note to paleos: these Jews are NOT in refugee camps.

The approximately 1.5 million Jewish refugees from Arab lands could have become a considerable obstacle to the Palestinian propaganda machine had Israel been as conniving as her enemies. Imagine the kind of trump card Israel might have wielded had she, like her uncivilized neighbors, kept these legitimate Jewish refugees in camps, refused to settle them, fomented hate among them for the Arab, and turned the fugitives into political pawns—as Arab nations have so masterfully done to their so-called refugees.

Update VIII: PAUL GOTTFRIED. Paul is the complete intellectual package, packing both scholarship and analytical prowess into his response to my “spirited polemic.”

Paul, Larry Auster, and Serge Trifkovic are, however, the only heavy-weight traditionalists I can think of right now, who’re both vocal about Israel and have not embraced the Palestinian cause.

THE ALL-ROUND REPULSIVENESS OF THE CRYPTO-LEFTIST NEOCONSERVATIVES: I don’t buy this excuse for the venom directed at Israel from the paleoconservative and libertarian factions. If I accept this lame excuse, I must also accept that paleos are incapable of intellectual honesty and consistency.

Have the big, bad, neocons damaged the brave Buchanan so that he must betray the truth? I respect Buchanan too much to whittle down his position on Israel in this manner.

I do understand sympathy for the self-inflicted plight of the Palestinians. Good men have a heart. Sympathy is no flaw. But puckering up in prayer for a One-State Solution, or the Right of Return; those are major flaws, when adopted by paleos who oppose the universal right of return (free-for-all immigration) to the United States, and who know only too well what will become of Israel once Muslims gain a majority there. C’mon.

Must I also accept that a gifted gentleman like Jo Sobran dabbles in Holocaust denial because of displaced anger at the neocons? This is too frivolous and insulting for words–to Mr. Sobran.

In my own professional life, such as it is, I have been far less blessed than most big-name paleos I know (even those who’ve been hard done-by). For most of my life I was tucked away in the Third World. Although I’m infinitely glad to be in the US now, the First World has not been terribly kind to me either. I remain the embodiment of an outsider–an untouchable to the Treason-type, libertarians lite, not exactly accepted (read: published) by paleolibertarians; once courted by some influential neocons, they ceased to call on me, starting with this editorial in September of 2002. (I imagine that likening Bush’s grin to that of a patient with end-stage syphilis did not enhance my popularity with the establishment.)

Other than that class act Peter Brimelow (and Paul and Tom DiLorenzo, naturally), unique in his intellectual courage and honesty, who’s helped my career among paleoconservatives?

My publishing woes for the book Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post Apartheid South Africa can’t be exaggerated. My column is forever in Jeopardy.

Have my positions waxed and waned to reflect my deep disappointments and disillusionment with America in the Age of the Idiot? Or with the intellectual honestly and tribalism of my fellow traditionalists? (Like “intellectuals” of the mainstream, so too do libertarians and paleos huddle in atrophying intellectual attics, making sure dissenters are kept away.)

Not on your life.

Similarly, Pat Buchanan has had, and is having, a good run. I could not be happier; I’m a fan. Most other paleo talent did okay until the dawn of the neoconservatives and the tyranny of political correctness.

There are no personal excuses for the paleos’ curiously inconsistent positions on Israel (or for Joe Sobran’s Holocaust skepticism, given the historical evidence. Did the big, bad, neocons drive Sobran to abandon history and embrace pseudo-history?).

Suck it up! (We all should.)

Paul writes self-deprecatingly:

“The question is whether I would reason this way about Israel absent certain factors: for example, if I had no Jewish blood, if members of my family had not fled Hitler and gone to Israel, and if my son-in-law were not an Israeli military officer. The answer is probably not.”

Once again, I don’t buy this, especially given that the most vehement critics of Israel and Jews are … Jews. Always have been, always will be. I quote my father here: “If we know anything from Jewish history it is that the very root of our tragedy is our own self-destruction.” Israel against Judea; the two tribes against the ten tribes; in the second temple there was terrible internecine conflict, even with the Romans at the gates. In the Middle Ages rabbis excommunicated each other… Ben Gurion handed over Irgun people to the British.

On and on.

“The story of Jew not lifting up a hand to Jew is a fallacy, an American superficiality,” now parroted by paleos, and “developed” in Kevin MacDonald’s Fee Fi Fo Fum “science” of Jews.

My “tribe” has no bearing on the positions I take, have taken, and will continue to take; justice does; my core beliefs do. Paul does himself and his scrupulous record a disservice to suggest otherwise.

(Update IX): “Ilana, Israel, and I.” (Richard, my writing “Robert” was a typo. But the coupling of Robert and Spencer is intuitive to those who follow Robert as well as Richard.)

Update X (Jan 17): Sigh. In response to the please-allow-me-to-remain-neutral-about-Jihad plea: In the previous thread we rehashed the issue of foreign aid, which I’ve resolutely opposed, always. This is old hat. WE ALL OPPOSE AID TO ALL SIDES. Get off this self-righteous hobby horse.

By now it is abundantly clear what I mean by philosophical affinity. Sadly, many paleos like to play at moral equivalence. They’re afflicted with a leftist malady. With all the lofty pontificating about it being impossible to adjudicate “old conflicts in the Middle East,” etc., ask yourself this: If the Israelis stopped all forms of aggression today, forthwith, would you trust the Palestinians to follow suit?
Yeah, I thought so. So much for the cycle of violence.

The Hutus (generally uglier and inclined to envy) of Rwanda slaughtered near a million Tutsis (tall and better looking). I condemn the former. I do not draw moral equivalence between the criminals and their victims. Yet one paleo dilettante declared that to him the Israeli and Palestinian conflict is but “Hutus and Tutsis.” He is unable to philosophically distinguish innocent from guilty in the latter case, and clearly is not much better when it comes to the former.

Update X (Jan 18): There, I’ve said it: Afrikaners make the most spectacular paleos. “The modern Boer,” wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the popular British writer of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, is “the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain.”

And the modern paleo Boer is Dan Roodt. Roodt recently paid tribute to his Afrikaner ancestors’ “miraculous victory over the Zulu forces of Dingane during the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838,” when “450 Afrikaners defeated an army of at least 13,000 Zulus without any losses in their ranks.” Roodt’s coda:

“The Day of the Covenant should be internationally celebrated among all those who believe that our Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian civilisation is still worth fighting for.”

No (unmanly) weirdness there.

The excerpt is from my new VDARE.com column, “Paleos Must Defend the West, And That Means Israel Too.”

“The fiery address this heroic European rightist [Geert Wilders] delivered in the Israeli capital got me thinking about the difference between the American and the European Old Right. Wilders is a hardcore man of the latter faction, for whom—in the derisive description of neoconservative Francis Fukuyama—”identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”. It is this earthy instinct, I venture, that accounts for the understanding the European Right evinces for Israel’s life-and-death struggle.” …

“Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front gives the American media a petit mal. Yet, despite all his idiosyncrasies, he identifies with Israel. Even the late Jörg Haider of the Alliance for the Future of Austria, who “exhibit[ed] every sign of anti-Semitism”—Hugh Fitzgerald’s estimation, not mine—was … “not quite so systematically vicious when it [came] to the state of Israel.” Vlaams Belang of Belgium is pro-Israel. Leader Filip Dewinter told a Jewish magazine: “One has to choose sides. Which side are you on in the ‘war on terror,’ “the side of western democracy and western civilization, with its Judeo-Christian roots, or the side of radical Islam?” …

“Most libertarian and conservative American traditionalists, also referred to as paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians, depart from their European counterparts. Like exotic political marsupials, local paleos have developed in geographic isolation and, hence, in a self-referential and self-reverential vacuum. While they have generally—and justly—supported western interests in conflicts such as in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and Cyprus, paleos make an exception of Israel. In fact, some are more devoted to the Palestinian cause than most left-liberals.” …

Read the complete column, “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too,” on VDARE.com.

Update I (Jan 10): THE MCCRAE MEGILLAH. I’ve posted Gus Mccrae’s letter hereunder (write to him at mccraegus@gmail.com), as an example of everything that is rotten in the paleo faction. I can’t say for sure whether he is a paleoconservative, but neither can I vouch that paleos have denounced such creatures and their constructs.

Notwithstanding that Mccrae seems incapable of adhering to Barely a Blog’s posting policy (I guess he thinks the Jew woman’s property is his by birth right), there is nothing worth addressing in this venomous, irrational outpouring.

The Mccrae “thesis” in a nutshell is this: my Vdare.com article was disingenuous and deviant because I’m Jewish. Mccrae believes that as a Jew, I know only too well that Jews are responsible for the West’s woes, in general, and for its immolation by immigration. Qua Jew, I’m well aware that Jews practically control the world, because, being Jewish, I’m in on it. Therefore, my column was a cover and a foil for the shenanigans of my Tribe.

The Mccrae megillah is first, and worst of all, a non sequitur.

Update II (Jan 11): I thank those of you who’ve written well-reasoned and well-mannered comments. I’m still awaiting a comment by “prophet james.” It was deleted by mistake.

If you are going to indulge in conspiracy thinking vis-à-vis Jewish machinations, at the very least, mention the manifest subversion carried out by “moderate” Muslim organizations in this country, against this country. (“Exposing the Muslim Lobby”)

And remember, Jews are highly represented in all spheres. Jews have certainly been among the most individualistic, original, and entrepreneurial members of American society. Think of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the eponymous mastermind of Dell Inc., casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and many more.

As have Jews been among the best defenders of liberty: Think Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman. (Was Frank Chodorov not Jewish? So many significant Jewish rightist, I can’t keep up.)

If Jews shrugged, you’d be without a quarter of your Nobel-Prize winners–cancer curers, scientists, etc. So get a grip, will you?

Reluctantly I return to Barely a Blog’s posting policy, which some rude, self-styled paleos seem to have difficulty with.

Don’t barge onto my private property demanding I explain myself to you, toots (you know who you are). My thoughts have been developed over years, and are archived on the mother site, ilanamercer.com, for your convenience.

Our posting policy states:

“The companion site, BarelyABlog.com, was established to generate debate about the essays on IlanaMercer.com, ILANA MERCER’S work. Readers participating on BarelyABlog.com are cordially asked to familiarize themselves with their host’s arguments. If readers prefer to showcase their ‘argumentation,’ or that of the scribes they favor and patronize, we suggest they pay for their own domain. This site is, after all, paid for by the host and her generous donors.”

The lax, rude individual who demanded I reproduce on the blog, for her edification, my thinking on foreign aid is directed to the two nifty search tools on ilanamercer.com, here, and here. I am sure even she can navigate them.

Update III: Elsewhere on this blog, JP Strauss writes the following:

Heck, if the IDF were my army, I would have invaded weeks ago. Flog the mobs, execute the terrorists and blow up the weapons caches. Israel has shown great levels of restraint up until now.Unfortunately, restraint sometimes leads to losing battles.

Allow me to introduce JP to BAB contributors: JP is an Afrikaner paleoconservative or paleolibertarian. Afrikaners have generally been highly conservative and very pro-Israel. While they’ve rightly been upset at their local, liberal Jews, Afrikaners seem to have been able to resolve the contradiction left-liberal Jews present without turning to support the PA and oppose Israel.

Leave aside the historical deceit paloes and radical leftists attach to Israel’s founding–mostly bogus of course. As something of a Randian, suffice it for me to see what Israel proper is like—skyscrapers, high-tech, high-fashion, friendly, peace-loving people, low crime rate (4 murders per 100,000; and that includes military deaths)—to support the right of the civilized society to hold all the bloody land in that benighted spot.

Update IV (Jan 12): I am not clear why a reader took my last updated comment as an endorsement (by this anti-interventionism) to spread democracy. I really can’t see the logic, especially in the context of my positions, stated, in “Thank You, Nancy Pelosi,” as follows:

“Of course, American interests in the Middle East are not to be conflated with Israeli interests. … Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach. Patriots for a sane American foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends, Israel included, to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours.”

When I say that I identify with Ayn Rand’s strong stand for civilization and against savagery, I mean this:

What do Palestinians do with land they get in return for the elusive peace? Destroy it. What did they do with the Israeli constructed hothouses in Gaza? Blew them up, and took to hothousing Hamasniks.

On what basis does the West, and left-liberal Israel, wish to grant Palestinians more land? Oh, for certain loony paleocons–libertarian and conservative–the notion is that the land is the Palestinians’ to trash. How libertine and licentious. Besides which, the land is disputed.

If you cannot keep your promise and abide by the contracts you sign to respect the negative rights of your neighbors, why do you deserve more land?

I’ll tell you what the logic behind this lunacy is. It is this: Palestinians are driven by forces beyond their control and in the control of Israel alone. Deprivation has caused their depravity. You all know what I think of the post hoc root-causes rot; you know what I think of the “idea” that crime is the fault of everyone but the perp!

Update V (Jan 13): The position of the Afrikaner people, in general, on Israel deserves mention. Afrikaners, “The Puritans of Africa,” are generally conservative. They are attached to their Christian faith even more so than Americans (who’ve imbibed a lot of New Age Christianity).
While Israel opposed apartheid, it was a true friend to South Africa during the years of sanctions and boycotts. Back then, it was South Africa and Israel against the world–and against the forces of liberalism intent on snuffing out civilized outposts at the tip of African and in the Middle East. The US had joined the Suicide of the West, often on the side of the commies, in supporting assorted “national liberation” movements.

In any event, older Afrikaners (and older Israelis) have not forgotten this epoch of their history.

There is some truth to stereotypes. We used to be able to joke about them without shrieking, “racism, Anti-Semitism,” “Occidentalism,” “Orientalism,” “Eurocentrism.”

What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?

The Italian: throws the cup and walks away in a fit of rage.

The Frenchman: takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.

The Chinese: eats the fly and throws away the coffee.

The Russian: drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge.

The Israeli: sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, buys himself a new cup of coffee and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.

The Palestinian: blames the Israeli for the fly falling in his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives, and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian.