Category Archives: America

NEW ESSAY: ISRAEL: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law

America, Crime, Europe, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Law, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, UN, War

Over and above industrial-scale mass murder of individual people—Israel is engaged in the eradication of Gazans as a People ~ilana

NEW ESSAY in its totality is on The Unz Review: “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law.”

AND serialized on the Mises Institute’s Power & Market:

The State of Israel Abandons Law and Morality in Its War on Gaza,” Part I, April 2
“The US Vetoes International Action on Gaza,” Part II, April 3
Why Genocide?: Every Law of War Has Been Violated in Gaza,” Part III, April 4
Gaza: What If America Were the Good Guy?” Part IV, April 5

The title is self-explanatory. In this new essay I comprehensively show Israel to be In violation of all laws of war and much of Customary International Humanitarian Law. God’s Law and
Natural Justice are close corollaries.

I go through the US ceasefire farce and lies—the ceasefire is BINDING!–I exposit the laws of war all violated, and expound on at least four laws that make up the genocide standard, flouted by Israel. Rafah appears to be a Final Solution of sorts.

I visualize what a Super Power could and should do. The visual of the essay’s coda is that of a patriot. Alas, and sadly, there is not much to be patriotic about.

Please share, for truth-tellers on Israel’s war of annihilation against Gaza’s Palestinians are being banned and excommunicated.  Go figure: WE CANNOT BE BOUGHT OR SILENCED.

Short excerpt:

 AMERICA’S CEASEFIRE DECEPTION

 America has conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that right ~ilana

For throwing-up clouds of obfuscating sepia over its abstention vote on  the United Nations Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, March 25, the Biden Administration and its UN representative must be exposed.

“Ceasefire” in previous U.S. drafts amounted to Orwellian News Speak. Having never once called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, the U.S. had perfunctorily predicated temporary ceasefire resolutions on the return of Israeli hostages.

Whereas it was obligated morally to compel Israel to forthwith cease and desist its systematic and sustained onslaught on Gaza’s civilians; the US had opted, until March 25, to merely condition the temporary cessation of immoral and illegal mass murder of innocent Palestinians on the release of Israeli hostages, in effect tethering a “ceasefire” to the return of the Israeli hostages.

Against the wishes of citizens of our country and the world, America has deployed its veto power, repeatedly and reliably, in previous United Nations Security Council votes, so as to prevent an immediate, unconditional cease-fire in Gaza.

By so doing, America had conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that inalienable right.

Recognizing that the right to life of innocent men, women and children is unconditional; Security Council member states, aside the United States and its protégé Israel, had refused to tether the fate of Gaza to hostage negotiations.

With pellucid logic, Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N and the Arab bloc’s current Security Council member, had stated, February 20, 2024, that, “A vote in favor of [an unconditional ceasefire] is a support to the Palestinians’ right to life.” With its prior vetoes and current abstention, the US had nullified Palestinian right to life independent of the rights of Israeli hostages to the same.

You can say that Gaza’s innocent civilians are being held hostage by Israel enablers Blinken, Biden and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

The general run of people around the world, however, are having none of this. We have been chanting “ceasefire” with catechetical promptness. The West’s “smart” set is belatedly getting the message that their constituents, decent citizens, are revolted by Israel’s acts and are in-revolt against supporting it.

In response, and oh-so cynically, all Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield did on March 25 was to abstain from using American veto power to stop the good guys—China, Russia, Algeria and the rest of the 15-member UN Security Council—from demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. That’s all.

Expect the Biden Administration and its bi-partisan backers to keep gently cajoling brief lulls—conditional breaks—in the IDF’s bloodletting of a helpless, cornered civilian population.

Covering its wretchedness with sanctimony; the US had not vetoed the last ceasefire resolution; but had, nevertheless, worked to water it down. In its abstention vote, the US has “blocked action in the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution, where you could have seen some real meaningful action.”

For moral compass scrambled; it’s hard to beat former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. In this protracted foreign-policy mirage, Blinken, Biden, Thomas-Greenfield and their political posse do Nikki Haley, a Republican, proud, for Trump’s appointee to the UN would have done nothing different.

CEASE AND DESIST! WHERE’S THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT?

A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed! ~ilana

IDF soldiers vaporize young men picking their way through rubble as though in a video game; they mock their victims, invade their homes; filch from their businesses, and rummage through the piteous intimate effects of people dead and dispossessed ~ilana

In the world of patronage, it doesn’t get much worse. The United States is at Israel’s elbow—it is a cobelligerent: In actively sustaining Israel’s armed forces, and running diplomatic interference for its politicians; America is acting as Israel’s “principal sponsor,” complicit in war crimes, signaling  to the Jewish State that it will let it continue to its evil endgame.

As I ventured in January, the issuance of the equivalent of a legal cease-and-desist or a restraining order against a violent offender, Israel, is urgent and long overdue. It’s already too late for Gaza as a habitable landmass.

While progressives lauded the International Court of Justice (ICJ), my perspective about the Court’s indecision, some months back, was dimmer. (Disgust, actually.) Unfocused as I was on legalistic definitions of genocide; it was obvious to me that, what was indubitably mass murder and ethnic cleansing—crimes that are in process and ongoing—had to be stopped right away. A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed!

Were the International Court of Justice an effective and just organization it would have issued some sort of binding cease and desist order, some manner of restraining order, if you will, instructing the Israel Defense Forces, the Devil’s emissaries on earth, to stop its depredations.

Another international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), had “issued, in March of 2023, warrants of arrest, no less “for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine,” one of whom was Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, who was being sought for war crimes.

With respect to Israel, the inept International Court of Justice appears compromised.

For in a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also extend to the collective. Immoral acts that are forbidden severally cannot be sanctioned collectively. If the citizen must not murder; neither should The State, any state.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL CEASEFIRE IS BINDING

A Security Council resolution not defanged by the US could have included a call for diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution ~ilana

In its uncontested superiority, the United States has asserted, moreover, that the UN ceasefire resolution is “non-binding.” “Completely false,” fumes international law expert Graig Mokhiber, in an interview, March 26, with Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” And I paraphrase Mr. Mokhiber:

It is black-letter law in the U.N. Charter that all members of the United Nations are bound to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. The Charter, in Article 25, and in subsequent decisions of the International Court of Justice, has made it indisputable that Security Council resolutions are binding for all member states.

Not only is the last ceasefire resolution binding, but it opens up an opportunity, given that Israel is in breach of it, to table a resolution for enforcement under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which “empowers the Security Council to orchestrate … collective actions … through a Military Staff Committee.”

A Security Council resolution not defanged by the United States could include a call for corporeal action: diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution. …

... READ THE COMPLETE ESSAY:  “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law.”

NEW PODCAST (1/25): Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Reason, South-Africa

If you know in advance that your actions will cause the deaths of thousands-upon-thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. ~ilana

IN THE HARD TRUTH podcast, “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza,” David Vance and myself hammer-out the truth together about Gaza, which is, in my opinion, not a hard thing.

Drawing on the essay, “Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” I say that it is inarguable:

The case against Israel’s murder spree in Gaza is ethically simple, and not within the realm of opinion. It is immutable, eternal truth that, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses. Thus, like gentiles, Jews are prohibited from mass murder. The Sixth Commandment (“Thou shalt not murder”) is neither opinion, nor is it optional.

Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” IS A WIDE-RANGING ESSAY, an intellectual and spiritual purge of sorts. It spans, by necessity, past and present, the personal and the political, the philosophical and the factual.

It “hermetically seals the indictment of the Jewish Taliban’s mass murder in Gaza.”

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

Published by The New American, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and The Mises Institute, Power & Market—the essay is a First Principles deconstruction of Israel’s orgiastic murder spree in Gaza opinion.

It is thus, I propose, not opinion, but truth.

For, like the laws of logic, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses—Jews, like gentiles, are prohibited from mass murder. “Thou shalt not murder” (you can “kill,” but you cannot murder—read about the Biblical difference in the essay) is neither opinion, nor is it optional. That’s why the Sixth Commandment is called a … commandment. Immutable natural law is truth, not opinion.

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a blitzkrieg wherein the civilian population has been bombed, buried—dead and alive—then evicted for life.

Eviction is in accordance with an Israeli government policy plan, cited in my essay, but, alas, omitted, I believe, from the South African brief to the International Court Of Justice. I read the Jewish State’s population-eviction document in Hebrew, in English, and in incredulity.

The essay was variously titled elsewhere as follows: “Jewish Supremacism, Like American Exceptionalism, Breeds Barbarism,” “Israel’s Hamas Made Me Do It Claim Doesn’t Excuse Tel-Aviv’s Barbarism,” and an “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder And Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza.”

It “hermetically seals,” the case against the prosecutors and defenders of a war, “70 percent of whose casualties are women and children.” After following the contours of argument and facts, herein, not a sentient soul can say that the war on Gazans qualifies as a just war. It doesn’t even remotely abide by Saint Augustine’s “Just War Theory,” which, while imperfect, is also closer to truth than opinion. Gazans are owed reparations in perpetuity for that which is irreparable.

Brief excerpt: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

“…. In truth, Israel owns the killing field that is Gaza, circa 2023/2024. The offensive it has waged on Gaza is as close to Total Warfare (a term reserved for war against any and all), as modern war has gotten.

And war against civilians is war on civilization.

Yet, all Israel has to do to make world leaders turn tail is intone psychopathically that ‘Hamas made me do it. Hamas ate my homework; I mean my conscience.’

The ‘Hamas made me murder 25,700 souls (at least) and displace two million men, women and children’ excuse-making ‘argument’ will not wash as an argument for mass murder. For one, he who offends against innocents is responsible for his offenses; not a third party. For another, …whether it is committed by decree of the one or by the will of the many; by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’—murder of innocents is still murder. Murder by ‘democratic’ approval is also still murder, however many approve of it.

Besides, mass murder is never ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable and incidental to your ‘mission.’

Annoying as they are, neither do the pitiful caches of arms, ostensibly located in hospitals, begin to justify the grotesquely disproportionate sallies against Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital and all other hospitals, murdering patients and refugees. A hospital should never be demolished. Instead, demolish we must the demented ‘argument’ that claims for Israel a right to drop dumb bombs on Gaza’s doctors and patients. The former, apparently, are expected not only to palliate their imperiled patients, but also account for Hamas’ whereabouts.”….

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a barbaric blitzkrieg whereby the civilian population has been bombed, buried dead and alive, then evicted for life.

David pushes back by saying that Hamas are a terror group that should be wiped off the face of the earth. But he also emphasizes that collective punishment is always wrong. David does agree that Israel has a right to self defense but it has to be carried out with concern for the civilian Gazan population.

We appreciate a Follow at Hard Truth.

RELATED READING:

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-dock-hague/

UPDATED (12/17): NEW COLUMN: Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?

America, Constitution, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come ~ilana

To refuse to bear witness to the war on Gazansalso the defining event of 2023 and the decade, twinned with COVID—is to be inhuman, insane, incoherent. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in such contradiction was to be less than human, less than coherent, less than sane ~ilana

NEW COLUMN IS “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority“. Or, “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?It was featured on The New American, at The Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity,” and the Mises Institute’s Power & Market.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

I thank all my publishers.

I did some simple math—whose core truth obtains, although the numbers are already out of date, given the scale of the carnage. My editor provided another ratio, at the end, here  https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/ , which speaks to the proportionality imperative of Just War Theory, sundered by Israel.

Please consider that my last four tracts on Gaza, and that scroll of a blog, “Constantly UPDATED (12/13): ‘Total Warfare’ On GAZA: War Against Civilians Is War On Civilization“—all anatomizing the war on Gazans: These are tremendously painful to write, as a Jew and a former fierce defender of Israel.

But to refuse to bear witness to the war on Gazans—also the defining event of 2023 and the decade, twinned with COVID—is to be inhuman, insane, incoherent. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in such contradiction was to be less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.

Excerpt:

“… Force-fed the fiction of the IDF as the most ethical fighting force in the universe; I set about to conduct a proportional, if limited, comparison. I compare like with like, albeit in limited but significant theatres of war: Israel’s offensive in Gaza against “Hamas,” in late 2023, to America’s onslaught in Fallujah against the Iraqi resistance, in 2004.

The battle in Fallujah is considered “the deadliest battle involving U.S. Marines since Vietnam.” “Eighty-two U.S. servicemembers died during the street-by-street, house-by-house effort to clear Al Qaeda from the city.” Officially, it is described as a “battle to retake the key city of Fallujah from a violent insurgency that was taking root across Iraq after the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein.”

Before the American invasion of Iraq, Fallujah was a compact city of about 400,000 people. “Around 700 Iraqi civilians were killed over the course of the 2004 fight for Fallujah.”

Gaza’s population is about 2.4 million strong. The administrative chaos in war-time Gaza would hamper accurate records-keeping. That considered—and not counting individuals buried beneath the rubble—approximately 15,000 Gazans have been killed by Israel. (Haaretz, Israel News, Friday, December 2, 2023)

Let’s extrapolate:

Were Fallujah as populated as Gaza (2.4 million), the United States Marines would have killed approximately 4,200 Iraqi souls. This is a far cry from the Israel Defense Forces’ butcher’s bill of 15,000 civilians dead in Gaza—and climbing.

Were Gaza as small as Fallujah (400,000); the Israelis, befitting their butcher’s bill so far, would still have killed at least 2,500 souls to our Marines’ 700. Ceteris paribus, naturally.

Let that sink in.

On the numbers, I have been exceedingly charitable to the Israelis, given that their victims, buried beneath the rubble, are still mostly unaccounted for, and considering that the IDF resumed hostilities against civilians on December 1.

Both the Israeli and the U.S. militaries come in here for rough treatment. The fulminations of the Israel Firsters stateside aside, however, some American patriotism is owed amid the sorrow over Israel’s barbaric blitzkrieg.

Damning with faint praise though this may be, Americans, in the persons of our U.S. Marines in Fallujah—in the dubious theater of another unjust war—were righteous, compared to the monstrous Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. …

… THE REST is here: “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority.” Or, “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

The complete column is always posted eventually at IlanaMercer’s Weekly Column Archive.

UPDATE (December 17, 023):

These people at ZeroHedge, December 17, 2023, are, well, dishonest. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/4th-generation-devastation-west-has-been-targeted-cowardly-globalist-mind-war

Over the pages of The New American, first, this column mocked the Fourth Generation Warfare categorization—and ostensible benevolence. On December 4, 2023, I applied this the 4th Generation Warfare vs. 3rd Generation Warfare analysis to the current global woke military.

In an intellectually honest America, my iteration of the idea would have been credited on Zero Hedge:

In their recent military campaigns, America and Israel have waged what to the inexpert, keen observer is largely old-fashioned, Third-Generation Warfare—a blitzkrieg, by any other name, against civilian populations.
The ostensible use of “tanks, mechanized infantry, and close air support” to “collapse an enemy’s defenses” are really unthinking, disproportionate shows of brute military force, reliant on massive amounts of materiel.
Yet when military mavens predicted and depicted the next form of warfare; it was the contours Fourth-Generation Warfare that they were tracing. Fourth-Generation Warfare was to be the distinguishing characteristic of the modern military. Boosted by technology, “advanced” armies would be relying on “small, highly mobile elements, composed of very intelligent soldiers, armed with high technology weapons.” These precision units and attendant weapons were expected “to range over wide areas seeking critical targets.”
In addition to technology; predicted and depicted was a military whose central impetus was augmented by ideas. In America, the controversial changing of hearts and minds, historically, has included fomenting coups around the world with the connivance afforded by psychological operations.
Near as I can tell, Fourth-Generation war was meant to be smart; to see Mind dominate and direct materiel.
What is underway in Gaza, at 2023’s end, however, is the very opposite. I see madness for what it is. Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come. The razing and ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden, his Uniparty accomplices and a complicit West: This appears to capture the kind of Third-Gen “capability” delivered by the modern, standing, Woke military.

https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/  (December 4, 2023)

* Screen pic of Gazans reduced to pre-industrial life, scrounging.

Australian Jews: Productive Merchant Class, Mostly. Maimonides Would Have Approved.

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Business, Canada, Capitalism, Communism, Judaism & Jews, Neoconservatism, The West

Via Rob Stove, PhD., Australian author, editor extraordinaire and accomplished organist, come a few reflections, “stray remarks,” about Jews and Judaism in Australia. This little contextual analysis undermines the pat, crude, crass theorizing, regarding the immutable characteristics of the Global Jew, spewed by provincial ignoramuses like the American Andrew Uglin.

The vast majority of Australian Jews have been traditionally involved in small business. They’ve been quite often chefs, quite often café owners, very often chocolatiers, very often jewelers, watchmakers and pawnbrokers; sometimes accountants, sometimes owners of travel agencies, occasionally owners of bookstores and music stores ~Rob Stove

What they’ve almost never been, are devoted readers of magazines like Commentary. (The almost total lack of Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia could account for this.) There’s no equivalent in Australia to the New York Jewish Intellectuals. Any Australian who maintained that John Howard supported the Iraq invasion because the Chief Rabbi of Australia told him to, would be regarded as a candidate for the nearest mental home ~Rob Stove

From what I can determine, Australian Judaism is as different from American Judaism as it’s possible for two Jewish groups to be who share the English language.

Whenever I happen to read (or read about) Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Norman Podhoretz, I realize that I really am confronted with a foreign country. I get the same feeling when I read Mordechai Richler describing Canada.

One factor separating Australian Jews from American Jews is that there are very few of the former. Of course Australia’s total population – 23 million or so – is itself tiny by American standards. Yet the Jewish proportion of Australia’s total population is a mere 0.4 percent (approximately 100,000 persons).

There were Jews in Australia from the start of white settlement in 1788 (several of the original convicts are known to have been Jewish). At least one synagogue existed in each of the biggest Australian cities from the 1840s onwards (some of these are still used), which suggests that even before the smallish influx of German-Jewish immigrants after the 1848 revolutions’ defeat, the Jewish community had grown to a size making such things viable.

But (and here’s the second big difference between the Australian and the American situation) Australia never had country clubs. Nor did it have the Ivy League. A numerus clausus (Jewish Quota) against Jews – whether it’s established by law, as with Admiral Horthy’s Hungary, or established by “gentlemen’s agreements”, as with Harvard – is scarcely going to be enforceable in a country like Australia, where (a) Jews hardly exist, (b) most of the few Jews who do exist have no discernible desire to enter universities or the professions in the first place.

I don’t wish to suggest that there was no Australian prejudice whatsoever against Jews. Individual Jews were probably given a hard time by individual Gentile malcontents.

But the number of Jews at the highest levels of Australia’s politics, judiciary, and military from the 1880s until now (Sir John Monash is the most famous instance of Jewish military success) implies overall Gentile apathy rather than overall Gentile hostility. A similar conclusion can be inferred from the fact that even though Australia was hit almost as hard by the Great Depression as any other country in the world, and it had the occasional demagogue (in particular Jack Lang, twice Premier of New South Wales), it never had a Father Coughlin.

The vast majority of Australian Jews have been traditionally involved in small business. They’ve been quite often chefs, quite often café owners, very often chocolatiers, very often jewelers, watchmakers and pawnbrokers; sometimes accountants, sometimes owners of travel agencies, occasionally owners of bookstores and music stores.

What they’ve almost never been, are devoted readers of magazines like Commentary. (The almost total lack of Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia could account for this.) There’s no equivalent here to the New York Jewish Intellectuals. Any Australian who maintained that John Howard supported the Iraq invasion because the Chief Rabbi of Australia told him to, would be regarded as a candidate for the nearest mental home.

Nor are Australian Jews particularly prominent in the wider culture industry. As far as I can tell, our movie and theatrical milieux are very largely Gentile. Our communist parties did have occasional Jewish leaders – notably the Aarons dynasty – but the bulk of Australian commie activists were former Catholic altar-boys with Irish names!

These stray remarks demonstrate, I hope, that generalizing about the Australian Jewish experience from the example of the American Jewish experience would be a fool’s errand.

***********

Melbourne-based historian and organist R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times and of a forthcoming book (When We Were Kings, scheduled for 2024) about Europe’s monarchist movements between the two world wars. Dr. Stove’s  innumerable disastrous career decisions include a total refusal to regard Rod Dreher* as the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived.

*Image is of General Sir John Monash

Editor: *Barely A Blog has an archive dishing on Rod Dreary. Read the milder stuff before you broach Juvenal Early‘s “The Dissident Right Has An Idiocracy Problem.” You’ve been warned!