Category Archives: Israel

UPDATED: Timing Iran Offensive for Nov. 2012? (FB Cyber-ejaculate)

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iran, Israel, War

“Four Iranian missiles can destroy tiny Israel,” blared Fars, The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) news agency. DEBKAFile counters as follows:

[these] sources point [to the fact] that the experiences of the Gulf war show that this number of ordinary missiles could not cause anything like the damage calculated by the writer. What Zarey may be referring to are the stubborn rumors going around Western intelligence circles since early 2005 that during the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tehran laid hands on black market nuclear cruise missiles form the Ukraine and 3 to 5 more from Belarus.

THE SAME SOURCE cites “Western intelligence as suspecting that Tehran obtained those warheads from Belarus or from unconventional arms traffickers based in the Muslim Republics which were part of the USSR up until the 1990s. And indeed the Fars report did not specify what warheads the ‘conventional’ missiles would carry.”

Equally disconcerting: War president extraordinaire Barack Hussein Obama knows too well that his waning popularity rises when he kills people abroad. DEBKAFile predicts that “Obama is set to attack Iran’s nuclear sites by the fall of 2012.”

Indeed, Iran apologists have framed Iran’s nuclear belligerence as the “ultimate safeguard against an American attack.” The reference is, presumably, to Iran’s legitimate quest to defend against an American army that advanced on a neighbor—Iraq—and conquered it in the absence of provocation. I agree. But this is not Iran’s sole reason for arming itself with nuclear capability.

Iran’s leaders have made no bones about the need to solve the Jewish Question for once and for all. (In case you’re a public school graduate, this is code for liquidation.)

That Iran fears an out-of-control, aggressive U.S. is likely—and understandable. However, Iran’s madman-in-chief hasn’t threatened the United States; he has threatened Israel. Yet Iranophiles seldom depict Israel’s nuclear program as an equally legitimate, last-ditch defense. Instead, they contort like Cirque du Soleil contortionists to downplay the real threat Iran poses to Israel.

UPDATE: Via PBS’s FrontLine: “At the same time, it is not just Israel that may attack Iran. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that the British military is rapidly developing contingency plans to aid the United States in case it attacks Iran, based on the belief that “the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities.” Efforts are evidently underway to determine the optimal location for deployment of the Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles to participate in such strikes.

Apparently, Iran’s resilience in the face of economic sanctions, as well as the cyberspace attacks on its nuclear facilities last year, has surprised Western observers. They believe that within a year, Iran will be moving all of its nuclear materials and more advanced centrifuges to the Fordow enrichment facility, built under a mountain near Qom. There they will be protected from most missiles and bombs, even though the Obama administration has quietly supplied Israel with bunker-buster bombs, something that even the George W. Bush administration refused to do.”

Read more.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/11/news-rhetoric-suggesting-potential-israeli-attack-on-iran-escalates.html#ixzz1czfsz4Dp

As I pointed out in 2002/2003, when Bush was circling Saddam Hussein like a shark his prey: bluster has been a large part of the Islamic culture. It is possibly that Iran’s regime is putting on a show. But if Iran doesn’t intend to attack Israel, why does A-Jad (short for Ahmadinejad) not stop the threats? The Iranian leadership has never allayed Israel’s legitimate fears.

UPDATE II (Nov. 7): FACEBOOK CYBER-EJACULATE. I am interrupting this frivolous topic with news of the most “urgent” of facebook posts. I have been forced to post the following in response to “The white noise, the inability and unwillingness of Facebook participants to focus the mind on the topic of a post—their shameless habit of posting about every bowel movement experienced during the day to my Wall; the utter cyber-ejaculate spewed with confidence. I am expected (I have a life) to “moderate” what amounts to a meaningless stream of, “I hate Israel; I love Israel; Israelis should die; Israelis may live.”

What does it say about debate (at least on my FB thread)? I’m clearly permitting the wrong “friends” on the Wall, although FB has now made it near-impossible to be more selective in the posts allowed on a Wall.

I hinted at it before, here, but the more I am forced to interact online in the course of doing my thankless job; the more it repulses me. (And after experiencing this Cesspool of anti-Semitism and irrationality, my “professional” day of reckoning is closer.)

If you have a half a brain, you won’t enjoy this.

Springtime in Israel

Economy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Technology, Terrorism

The crazies are threatening it on the north (Lebanon & Syria), the south (the lovely Egyptian revolutionaries), and the east (the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and beyond), but, as the US and most of Europe decline, Israel’s economy flourishes. Here are Israel’s fiscal fundamentals, courtesy of Bloomberg.com:

GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year
A raised credit rating of A+
Very low unemployment
“60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside North America after China.”
“The largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.”
A ranking of “third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI’s list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.”
“Israel’s exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology”: This means the stuff the Israelis make adds real value and jobs, unlike Obama’s state-manufactured jobs, which are a result of moving money around.

SADLY, that thing we in the US celebrate and anticipate—the Arab spring—threatens commence, innovation and economic prosperity in the region’s most productive oasis. Some “spring” …

UPDATED: ‘To Save One Life Is Like Saving the World’ (Republicans Disagree)

Individual Rights, Islam, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Liberty, Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Religion, Republicans

This may sound chauvinistic, but when nations are consumed with safekeeping their own, by default (and in self interest), they are more careful with the lives of their enemies.

Israel has demonstrated once again its commitment to that Talmudic verse, “To Save One Life Is Like Saving the World.” (The verse was ‘appropriated,” or ripped off, by Islam, and an exclusionary clause written into the equivalent Quranic ayah. Islam’s borrowed version, needless to say, is considerably less humanistic and universal.)

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir expressed bewilderment at the news that,

Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and hundreds of Palestinians crossed Israel’s borders in opposite directions on Tuesday as a thousand-for-one prisoner exchange brought joy to families but did little to ease decades of conflict. …In all, Israel is setting free 1,027 Palestinians in return for the liberty of Shalit. Some have spent 30 years behind bars for violent attacks against Israel and its occupation of land taken in the 1967 Middle East War.
Over 100 of the 477 prisoners released in the first phase of the exchange were taken to the West Bank. The rest were coming into Gaza, apart from 41 who were due to fly out from Cairo to exile in Turkey, Syria or Qatar.

Bashir, a neocon-cum-liberal, is in good company here in the US. The following is from a 2004, Antiwar.com column:

… the neoconservatives at National Review have grumbled about Israel’s “lopsided prisoner exchanges” over the years. One “sofa samurai,” Eric Leskly, [once noted] the startling disparity of exchanging 5,500 Egyptian soldiers, following the Sinai campaign of 1956, “for the lives of the four Israeli soldiers captured in the fighting,” and over 8,000 Egyptians, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in exchange for 240 Israeli soldiers.
Its official policy notwithstanding, Israel has also negotiated with terrorists for the lives and bodies of its soldiers. As Dr. Boaz Ganor, executive director of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, told the Jerusalem Post: “Israeli governments are more prone to the influence of public opinion.”

I remember thinking just that when, years back, I watched demonstrators heckle Ariel Sharon after yet another suicide bombing. One man yelled, “If you don’t sort this mess out, I’ll personally pay you a visit.”

UPDATE II: Bar Ron Paul, the debaters at the CNN Western Republican Presidential Debate related not at all to the Israeli position—a consistent preference for doing what it takes to save a life, even if not always strategic.

UPDATED: Author Replies to Amazon Reviews of ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’

Anti-Semitism, Fascism, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Literature, Race, Racism, Reason, South-Africa

“Compassionate Fascist” has reviewed Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa on Amazon. Here is my reply:

AUTHOR REPLIES TO A REVIEW BY A SELF-PROFESSED RACIST AND ANTI-SEMITE. “Compassionate Fascist” was indeed expelled from this author’s moderated weblog, after a long “tenure” as the resident racist and anti-Semite. That’s how much I value free speech. This character openly admits to hating Jews qua Jews and blacks qua blacks, in opposition to the philosophy of individualism. On 09.24.11, “Compassionate Fascist” wrote on Barely a Blog: “I intend to live long enough to see the power of organized Jewry broken, and Israel off the map. Have a nice day.” He was forthwith expelled for advocating the eradication of Jewish Israelis.

Up until his expulsion from Barely a Blog’s comments section, I had imagined, naïvely, that by extending my hospitality in cyberspace to “Compassionate Fascist,” and letting him vent his disdain for Jews openly, he would come to see the error of his collectivist, contemptuous ways. After all, did not his “theorizing” about the evil of Jews as a group fly in the face of the generosity and hospitality this frustrated man was receiving from a Jewish individual (me)? Of course it did.

Historian Alan Charles Kors once observed that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth; being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.” Malevolent, irrational individuals like “Compassionate Fascist” have no qualms about falling into self- contradiction, and being “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

THE FASCIST’S LIES. “Mercer,” writes “Compassionate Fascist,” above, “does make a few admissions about the leading role of Jews-including, not to put too fine a point on it, her father and herself-in bringing down the White regime.” This is a ridiculous claim; it is simply untrue. This so-called admission is nowhere in the book under review. Read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” to see for yourself.

THE FASCIST’S LITERARY RECOMMENDATIONS. I don’t know much about the unfortunately named Revilo P. Oliver, except that he was, according to Wikipedia, “an editorial advisor for the Institute for Historical Review, an organization devoted primarily to … Holocaust denial.” In promoting myth and conspiracy under the guise of scholarship, “the nutball Institute for Hysterical Review” is hostile to the truth. And I care a great deal about standards of truth and honest inquiry. Of course, it is quite possible to deny the historic truth about the Holocaust and, at the same time, write well on other issues.

KEVIN MACDONALD. Profound? I doubt it. You’ll get more truth about Jews from watching Woody Allen films than from MacDonald’s Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum Science of Jews and their intellectual habits. For example, MacDonald claims somewhere in his elusory analysis that Jewish women are oppressed. He has clearly not met many Jewish women. I refuted some of his silly, discursive stuff in a column called “BLAME THE JEWS.”

*****

Get a glimpse into another not-so-Wonderful Mind by reading my response to Avery Morrow’s review of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa:

ILANA MERCER (Author) replies: This is a baffling review as it impugns the scientific method. In other words, according to the reviewer (Avery Morrow), the book’s deductions, drawn as they are from a critical mass of data, are unreliable–even iffy–because the author (me) has not divulged more about herself. The claim is that I ought to have introduced more personal bias into the data for these to be believable. This is how bad the miseducation of America has become! OFFERING PROOF IN SUPPORT OF ONE’S CASE IS TAKEN AS EVIDENCE AGAINST THAT CASE! The truth is the exact opposite of this reviewer’s gripe. A one-case study does not a rule make. The point about the scientific method is to prove your case beyond doubt. Of course, as was stated subtly in the Introduction, “In the interstices of this polemic, the reader will find my story and the story of those I love and had to leave behind” (p. 10). And more about crime vis-à-vis my family is on pp. 12-13. Like almost every other member of South Africa’s minority, so have they been brutalized by barbarians. The book is studded with the personal stories of South Africans, some my own. But no, the reviewer wants the author on Oprah’s couch; writhing in a vulgar, uniquely American display. Good schools once taught that good writing was understated, not hysterical or excessively personal, and that using the “me, me,” imperial “I” was plain self-indulgent, piss-poor prose. The bumper crops of ignoramuses our educational institutions now disgorge are ignorant of these eternal verities-and are, in fact, taught the exact opposite.

Next: The evidence the reader doubts comes from the painfully politically correct “Bureau of Justice statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United states, `Victims and Offenders,'” report of 2005. (And, contrary to the reviewer’s assertion, blacks are not 20 percent of the US’s population.) Read about “Sexual Subjugation” on p. 37: “Every year, approximately 37,460 white women are raped by blacks. As the BJS’s 2005 `Criminal Victimization Statistical Tables’ reveal, blacks, at 12.3 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION [emphasis added], were responsible for thirty-six percent of the 111,490 incidents in which whites were raped. And blacks committed 100 percent of the 36,620 incidents in which blacks were raped. …” But, for reporting these facts, the author is maligned!

Finally, the reader fails to offer a citation in support of his claim that I implied, “East Asians don’t volunteer at African hospitals in large numbers.” On page 181 I addressed a South African hospital only. “Baragwanath,” I wrote, is “the only hospital in South Africa’s biggest township. Now as then, the staff members ministering to the multitudes in Soweto are supervised and mentored by selfless Christian and Jewish medical men and women.”

UPDATE (Oct 18): Contemplationist: For someone whose name often appears in BAB’s Comments Section your question shows laziness or a lack of retention. Ad nauseam have I moderated and indulged discussion on what you and your ilk refer to as the “Jewish Question.” Apparently, you are unwilling or unable to search this blog’s archives (sidebar, under “Categories,” dah), especially, and those of the mother site under the relevant search categories. (Gosh, let me see: neoconservatism, Jews & Judaism, ilana mercer, South Africa, etc., get the drift?)

The following mental exercise is probably beyond the ken of our typical “gritty” Jew-focused “thinker.” How about we discuss the role of Jews in the freedom movement, the disease-conquering (or medicine) movement, the invention sphere, or the general-beneficiaries-of-humanity cabal? Hmmm: What might we conclude from that small exercise? (Insert Beavis and Butthead grunts here.) That a lot of Jews rise to to the top in society, and that many do untold good and many a good deal of harm, as individuals. Like a lot of other left-liberals, progressive Jews can do things we hard rightists view as bad. (I know one thing; most Jewish parents would never feed their kids fairy tales so that they come within an inch of losing their lives, as in the example in “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism.”

A Jewish parent, liberal or conservative, would have taught the kid as follows: “I don’t care what you learn at school, you klutz; but If I ever catch you jogging through THAT neighborhood again, I’ll … I’ll … Forget about the allowance and inheritance. Get that?” You get the drift.