Category Archives: Israel

Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Military, Palestinian Authority, Terrorism, War

The following is from “Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards,” now on RT.

“In ‘Letters from Iceland,’ W. H. Auden reflected on ‘the cold controlled ferocity of the human species.’ The latest flare-up in the cold war between Hamas and Israel is ‘an extraordinary vision’ of that ferocity. …

…The locking of horns between Hamas and Israel cost 150 Palestinians and five Israelis their lives. The fight was started by Hamas. Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities.

This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally.

Besides, murder is not ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable.

… Israeli commandos such as the ‘Sayeret Matkal’ are trained in surgical strikes, including modern urban counterterrorism operations. ‘Sayeret’ soldiers can trace and neutralize the source of an attack against Israeli civilians sans ‘collateral damage.’

Yes, what’s the matter with Israel’s Special Operations capabilities? Where are Israel’s precision Pac Men?

Did the Israel Defense Forces rain bombs, willy-nilly, on the civilians at the Entebbe Airport—in Uganda, on July 4, 1976—where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine held 100 hijacked Jews and Israelis hostage?

Not on your life.

Led by Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyau’s late great brother, 100 members of the ‘Sayeret’ traversed 2,500 miles to rescue their brethren. They killed only those who needed killing….”

The complete column is “Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards,” now on RT.

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Modern, Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Palestinian Authority, Terrorism, War

Although Hillary Clinton would like the world to think of her as indispensable in negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, she arrived in the region well after rumors had spread that an agreement was being brokered by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy.

If regional players know they will ultimately have to face one another, only, they are more likely to reconcile.

Hamas is a rib of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ribcage. Let Morsy assume a lead in the negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

CNN: “Hamas listens to Mohamed Morsy,” Gerges said. “Hamas looks up to Egypt now, at this particular stage, and that is why Egypt has emerged as the most important state vis-a-vis Hamas and Gaza.”

Yes, let Morsy man up.

If I understand the events of the last few days, Hamas aggressed from Gaza, which it now controls. Israel responded with disproportionate force. The result: Gazan civilians are dying in disproportionate numbers. These people have no siren systems to warn them of an impending attack, no bomb shelters, no nothing. They just die. Or their meager homes are destroyed.

The abiding problem for the libertarian is justifying killing of innocents. One cannot.

Yes, Hamas started the fight. Hamas hides among unwitting civilians. But this does not give Israel the right to kill these innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally.

Where are Israel’s precision pac men? What’s wrong with their Special Operations capabilities?

After the Lebanon fiasco, I proposed that “the state of Israel should consider stationing on the borders the best of its special-operations units such as the ‘Sayeret.’ It’s trained in surgical strikes, including modern urban counterterrorism operations.”

“Sayeret” soldiers can go door-to-door to trace the source of the attacks on Israeli civilians and take them out.

But no, modern, standing armies are commandeered by cowards. It used to be that generals led their men into battle. Now they issue orders to bomb innocents from above. And the soldiers sit in armored cars and fire away indiscriminately.

What Do Paris Hilton And A-Jad Have In Common?

Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, Homosexuality, Iran, Islam, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Correctness

The following is from the current column, “What Do Paris Hilton And A-Jad Have In Common?”, now on WND:

“Gay Paree” refers to Paris, the capital of France, after which socialite Paris Hilton must have been named—that is, unless her parents are even more provincial (and pretentious) than they appear, and named their ditz of a daughter for the Texas city, northeast of Dallas–Fort Worth.

A-Jad is American English—and the perfect nickname—for Ahmadinejad, first name: Mahmoud. Residence: Iran. Occupation: Iranian president, alleged dictator, and general fall guy for the West.

What do Paris Hilton and A-Jad have in common?

OMG! Don’t tell me that Paris too has disrespected Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—a dissing that has hardened into a handy political tool with which to whip any enemy of the neoconservative political faith.

Baying for the blood of Iran, the warbots are now bouncing off the walls. Why? Because the UN—whose moral and intellectual heft is on par with Hillary Clinton’s and that of Hollywood’s Idiocracy—invited A-Jad to speak on a day sacred to 13.4 million (count this writer among them) of the world’s population.

One tenet of the Jacobin orthodoxy concerns Iranian nuclear installations. These must be hit, and now. The neoconservative faction is unperturbed by the fact that Iran has been crippled economically. Consider, for example, its SWIFT eviction from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Consequently—and since Barack Obama’s reign of terror abroad began—the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value.

But no. American men and matériel should be allowed to reach all corners of the world, so move in for the kill we must.

Mon ami’ Mahmoud is not. But neither does this (Jewish) writer imagine that the seven billion (minus 13.4 million) people of the planet are obliged to respect Yom Kippur. Such an impossible standard would damn many a Jew to eternal punishment.

Back to the original question. The insufferably pompous Piers Morgan would have no problem answering it. Both Paris and A-Jad have been caught in flagrante delicto. …

Read on. The complete column, “What Do Paris Hilton And A-Jad Have In Common?”, is now on WND.COM.

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UPDATE II: Why I Am So Sad (It’s not About Libya, Israel or 9/11)

Democracy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Israel, libertarianism, Middle East, Private Property, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry

The current column, now on WND, is “Why I Am So Sad.” An excerpt:

“I AM SO SAD—and it is not because a justifiably angry crowd of Libyans in Benghazi stormed an embassy that represents the brute force that destabilized their lives for decades to come.

I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in leveling Libya. And by so doing, they invited into that country the very lynch-mob that took their lives. The Americans targeted had become an irritant to the long-suffering Libyans, who will use any US provocation, real or imagined, to expel the people who “came, saw, and conquered.”

To those who imagine the death of our diplomats in Libya turns on American free-speech, I say this: You have no right to deliver your disquisition in my living room. You have only the right to request permission to so do from this (armed) private-property owner.

By extension, you have no universal right to “free speech” on another man’s land. More so than to America’s diplomats—Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran.

I AM SO SAD—and it is not because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen a most inopportune time to insert himself into the middle of a rancorous American election season, and by so doing, make Mitt Romney’s foreign policy bellicosity look good to a war-weary people that can ill-afford it.

Now is not a good time, Bibi. Israel is a wedge issue in the coming election. If Israelis love Americans as Americans love Israel, they need to understand that, “The Titan is Tired”:

We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.

I AM SO SAD—and it is not because another 9/11 has come and gone. The polls indicate that Americans want to move on; have moved on. Perhaps Americans have realized that it behooves our “overlords who art in DC” to keep them stuck in grief. By stunning us like cattle to the slaughter, the statists have been able to perpetrate in our name crimes way worse than 9/11.

I AM SO SAD because … ”

The complete column, “Why I Am So Sad,” can be read now on WND.

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UPDATE I: In answer to a Facebook reader, my saying that, “More so than to America’s diplomats – Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran” is not collectivist. It is, overall, correct, not least as a just sentiment intended to discourage interventionism.

Moreover, as a libertarian thinker, I choose to offer meaningful insights that comport with reality, rather than score reductive, pedantic points for the sake of theoretical purity. Tell the Arabs rioting that YOU are one of them b/c you, an American, bought the city their ancestors inhabited for centuries. I’m a private property absolutist, but the institution of private property has a cultural and historical dimension and context.

UPDATE II (Sept. 14): For describing a reality the US brought on itself with its Lawrence of Arabia complex, I am accused by a reader of “sympathizing with these al Qaeda people.”

For one, how in logic do you arrive at sympathy for savages from this:

I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in leveling Libya. And by so doing, they invited into that country the very lynch-mob that took their lives. The Americans targeted had become an irritant to the long-suffering Libyans, who will use any US provocation, real or imagined, to expel the people who “came, saw, and conquered.”

Force breeds force; nation building where you have no business imposing your will—will results in what transpired in Libya. Fact: Those idiotic and arrogant interventions have a price. These are the people our diplomats were working with in a patronizing foolish way. I just heard Hillary say as much. This was, in part, a reaction to imposed authority. Yes, Hillary is trying to separate the attackers from her lovely rebels. Our reader is buying what Hillary is selling because it feeds into a storyline neocons simply can’t resist.

I suggest the reader mine the Archives here. I’ve documented this vehement hate for the US—beginning in our decade long expeditions to the region—that have seen the US remain over there indefinitely.

Americans do not understand the culture. The writer actually grew up in the region, so I have a better inkling. I hear Hillary declare that the ambassador was working with the “rebels” and that they had come to love him. Oh yes? That’s Lawrence-of- Arabia type romantic rot. And can you be that dumb? A smile and outward charm don’t mean they like you! But our navel-gazing, patronizing (unarmed) diplomats think that everyone should love the US despite its actions in the region, in general, and in Libya, in particular.

I suggest the reader reconsider the logic of his accusation. Calling reality as it is does not imply sympathy for the offending parties on my part. I suppose the reader would prefer that I fulminate irrationally like some of the neoconservative Jihadi and Sharia trackers whom he probably follows. (And who never even mention the possibility that we should, as true patriots, defend our own porous borders, before we violate and then presume to “defend” the boundaries of other nations.)