Category Archives: Israel

Updated: Karzai Crazy, Or So The US Says

Foreign Policy, Israel, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Old Right, Terrorism, War

Afghan President Hamid Karzai must be crazy, or at least hopping high, to kick back at the empire that created him. These are what supposedly serious pundits are saying in response to Karzai’s allegation that Western governments and the United Nations committed electoral fraud in last year’s Afghani presidential election.

The Hill: “Over the weekend, Karzai reportedly told members of his parliament that he would consider leaving the political process to join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure.”

The last threat was so obviously tongue in cheek, but Americans didn’t find it amusing. Peter Galbraith, “the US diplomat who worked for the UN in Kabul until last year,” went on Smear TV accusing the leader of our Afghan satellite state of being unstable and toking it up too.

It’s a “bad trip” indeed.

I haven’t searched out reactions on the far- Left and Right to this hint from Kabul that the US has overstayed its welcome. These political factions, however, generally treat shows of Israeli sovereignty with fury and demands for Obama to crush Israel.

My guess is that you should look for the exact opposite reaction from said elements when it comes to our “Muslim allies.”

Since consistency is the touchstone of truth, this scribe is pleased about both Afghani and Israeli resistance to US meddling:

“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.”

Update (April 8): Meanwhile back in the trenches on the side of the righteous, a US “Special Forces team gunned down an Afghan police chief, a prosecutor, and three unarmed women, infuriating locals and drawing a sharp rebuke from politicians in Kabul.”

AND (via the CSM):

In a video conference taking questions from troops earlier this year, McChrystal said with some frustration “we’ve shot an amazing number of people” who were not, in fact, threats. In February, McChrystal apologized to the Afghan people after a NATO airstrike killed 27 civilians.

A scene of “Sulcha” unflods in which an animal is sacrificed and American slobber, and the only words that are sensible and honorable come from a local man, Mr. Sharabuddin:

“… justice would only be served when the Americans gave up the informant who sent the Special Forces squad to raid a house full of civilians and government officials. ‘We want that spy who gave the false information to the Americans,’ Mr. Sharabuddin said. ‘I don’t want the spy for myself, I want him to face justice or be handed over to the commander of the [Afghan army] corps.”

Updated: Netanyahu Wants To Retain Israel’s National Character

America, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Nationhood

Benjamin Netanayu doesn’t suffer any blind spots when it comes to the very real potential of Third-World refugees flooding Israel and transforming his country for the worse, for ever (Via VDARE.COM):

“Infiltrators cause cultural, social and economic damage, and pull us towards the Third World,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Manufacturers Association assembly, reports Tani Goldstein of YNet News:

“We suffer from a problem that actually stems from Israel’s economic success,” he said, explaining the problems that arise from the breached border with Egypt.

“We have become almost the only First World country that can be reached by foot from the Third World. We are flooded with surge of refugees who threaten to wash away our achievements and damage our existence as a Jewish democratic state.”

He went on to say, “Anyone walking around Arad, Eilat, or even south Tel Aviv today, can see this wave, and the change it is creating, with their own eyes. They are causing socio-economic and cultural damage and threaten to take us back down to the level of the Third World. They take the jobs of the weakest Israelis.”

Netanyahu noted that the government plans to work to construct a physical barrier between Israel and Egypt to prevent this “flood” of migrants.

Addressing the members of the Manufacturers Association, he said, “You will not like this, but we plan to legislate strict laws and enforce them with a firm hand against the illegal employment of infiltrators and foreign workers.”

The Hotline for Migrant Workers was enraged by the prime minister’s remarks, and issued a response saying: “The danger to the Jewish state is not the refugees, but the many Jews in key positions who have forgotten that their parents were refugees, and who besmirch the persecuted in order to whitewash their submission to the manpower corporations.”

As first reported on Ynet, the prime minister made similar statements in the session in which it was decided to build a stronger barrier at the Egypt border.

“This is a strategic decision, that will ensure the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel,” he said at the time, while promising that, “Israel will remain open to war refugees, but will not allow its borders to be used to flood it will illegal foreign workers.”

The prime minister has been extensively addressing the problem of the breached border in recent weeks. A number of plans to properly close the border to infiltrators have been raised in the past, but have not been executed, mainly due to budgetary reasons.

Besides the construction of the fence, the defense minister was tasked with pushing a bill calling for harsher penalties for Israelis who transport and accommodate illegal immigrants.

This bill, which calls for aggravating the sentence of offenders from two years to a minimum of three years imprisonment and heavy fines, is already in legislation phases.

[SNIP]

If only Bibi’s spectacularly stupid American Jewish supporters had his smarts (and marbles). I spoke about this contingent’s characteristics in “Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot.” They never shut up about the horrors of the practice of honor killings and genital infibulation among the American Muslim immigrant population, but are mum about the perils to American society of the thing that brought such deviance to our shores: mass, third-world immigration.

Update (March 31): ISRAELI VS. JEW. Why would rational beings conflate the Jewish-American with the Israeli, unless he was in the habit of reading too many of the revolting Jewish-American columnists/bloggers advocates for Israel, whom Israelis themselves would find as alien as creatures from Deep Space. Never the twain shall meet. I’ll dilate on why this is so at another time.

For now, take it from me: Israelis have little in common with their diaspora American Jews. But on the face of it, why would Bibi, an Israeli PM, have the views of Jews in America? Has not this mistake of collapsing distinctions between Jew and Israel arisen because somehow you don’t think of Israel as a sovereign country like any other?

From the article excerpted, you can glean that Israel even has its open-border organizers who deploy the same emotional, factoids that our “nation-of-immigrants” sophists wield. These people rail against the common-sense pronouncements of the patriot Bibi. Israel, of course, was founded, swamp up, by Ashkenazi Jews (read white), who died in droves at the hands of Arab nomadic marauders and the inhabitants of the abutting Arab states.

Yes, Israel was a desert. Young people, idealists, settled it. They were educated, but abandoned all for the ideal of farming the land of their ancestors. They used to patrol their newly built villages and orchards, but these were raided often nightly by nomad who slit throats and slaughtering women and children.

The pioneering people wanted to become strong and proud. Many lived with mothers or fathers who awoke screaming at night from the memories of the camps, but they wanted to focus on LIFE. They wanted to build, not whine; they resolved to fight back, and they concentrated on actions, not words. (There is a word in Hebrew, “Dugri,” it means direct. You speak bluntly and directly.) This is in stark contrast to the way the American Jew carries on.

Above all, in contrast to the American Jew—the columnists, commentators, bloggers and vulgar vloggers—the sabra (Israeli born) did not wish to indulge in the Holocaustism that you hear non-stop from the American Jewish cohort.

Impressions From Jerusalem

Ancient History, Family, Ilana Mercer, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Religion

THE FOLLOWING EVOCATIVE PIECE was written by a special young woman, my daughter. She traveled to Israel with the common political perspective, imbibed in insulated, privileged, propagandized North America—and shared by left-liberals and paleos alike. Once in Israel, she underwent a transformative experience.

Most individuals who write about Israel, pro and con, should not be doing so, as they have never experienced the place or the people. I’m proud of my girl. Aside a talent for spare, strong writing, she had the heart and the head to rethink received ideology when confronted by something far more powerful and persuasive.

Impressions From Jerusalem
By Nicky

My idea of a militarized society was that of the USA. Soldiers and armed guards are visible only where security is needed. They are stern, unsmiling, erect. They signify danger and command respect, wordlessly and humorlessly.

In Canada, my only experience of the military is the odd soldier in fatigues on the street, perhaps on the bus: an object of casual consideration. I view him with the privileged gaze of a Western pacifist, not obliged to look him in the eye. I think: “Why, friend, what are you doing in that uniform? What are you afraid of? What did the government tell you to make you believe you should don those clothes?” I don’t feel served or protected by this soldier because I don’t need his service or protection. My daily movements are free and unfettered; I am an independent Western woman. I cannot relate to my soldier. It saddens me that all I can summon for him is private condescension and the thought that my tax dollars could be better spent than on his meager salary.

I was certain that this attitude would be seamlessly transplanted to Israel. I was wrong; it simply would not stick. Not because I’m a Jew. I didn’t even consider myself a Zionist when I walked through the streets of Jerusalem: I still did not understand Israel, even then. And even now, after an intensive ten-day tour of the tiny country and its borders, I can barely bring myself to discuss it. There is too much history to learn, to read, too much to experience, to see, to understand with one’s full attention in order to speak of Israel, let alone flippantly as many who haven’t experienced it do.

You cannot fathom 3000 years of history, and yet there is rubble from that time, from the Temple’s first destruction. Here and there soldiers stand amidst the rubble. Jerusalem is beautiful but she is neither grand nor ornate. Even the Western Wall appears fragile. Only the Dome of the Rock shines gold and blue in a city of calcified limestone. A soldier steps graciously out of my camera’s view as I photograph one stretch of wall and rubble. At the Holy City’s entrance, a couple of young soldiers stand between the two opposing flows of traffic. They look into our faces, our eyes, their guns slung low, pointed to the ground. They are at ease, relaxed. One of them smiles warmly. A group of children scampers past, unafraid and wholly indifferent to the soldiers. Already this experience is markedly different from those I’ve had at the US and Canadian borders, or customs at Heathrow, London, where I have been treated like trash more than once. And yet I don’t doubt that these young boys could protect me. I feel safe and relaxed here amongst these soldiers.

THE HOLY CITY IS FULL OF YOUNG ISRAELI SOLDIERS. When they enter a museum together, they leave their guns in a pile at the entrance, guarded by one or two watchful but friendly soldiers who will smile for our cameras and bark no orders on how far to stand from the pile of guns. Many know each other from training and though they walk with different brigades you often see a handful stray for a moment to greet one other. They receive no reprimand for straying. No one barks commands. Gathered in groups, they sit or stand, laugh, smoke cigarettes and talk and text on cell phones. They are unabashedly affectionate: embracing and back-slapping; their faces light up at seeing one another. These are boys and girls in their late teens and early 20s. I doubt I will ever see youngsters this age behaving this way in North America. That would be “like, gay or something.”

Even in a group one can access solitude instantly while walking through Jerusalem. It isn’t unusual to fall silent mid conversation. Her history commands respect and quiet reflection. The closer you get to the Western Wall, the lower the tones, the greater the quiet. Everyone approaches slowly, atheist, agnostic, believer alike. Religious or not, you feel its power. Birds nestle in its crevices. They watch the people below and I feel certain even they know the Wall is special. It is fortified by a band of humans teaming at its base, palms and foreheads flat against the stone, as though holding it up. You approach slowly, your eyes travel through space and time, fixed on the wall. First you touch the wall, then you kiss your fingers. You gently wedge your note in with the rest, hoping it is profound, meaningful enough to be worthy of its stony recipient; worthy of its fallen defenders.

You are not speaking at all now, nobody is. You can only hear the sound of softly praying lips and of children hushed by admonishing parents. You do not turn your back on the Wall, but retreat slowly, facing it. Along the periphery, where the men and women’s sections are segregated, lone individuals, eyes covered, pray silently. Some are crying. Among the crowd, the elderly are seated, reading from Hebrew prayer books, mouthing the words in silence.

THE ISLAMIC CALL TO PRAYER booms through the quiet five times a day, everyday, even at 4am, with militaristic precision and pitch. Several mosques perform the prayer, one after the other. You cannot hear anything else for a full five minutes at a time, for up to thirty minutes a session. The speaker crackles from the distortion of the blaring volume. Secular tourists need to yell to hear one another, helping to shatter the erstwhile calm, easily distracted and pulled from their meditation. Tour guides turn off their mikes patiently and wait.

The worshipers at the wall cover their ears and pray more intensely, still silent. The soldiers, unmoved, stand sentinel at the ancient ruins.

Update III: ‘Jerusalem Is Not A Settlement; It's Our Capital’ (Forthcoming)

Bush, Christianity, Democrats, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Who else?) “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.” (PBS NewsHour)

So said Mr. Netanyahu during a visit to the United States Capitol, following a “two-week old” tiff between his administration and Obama’s over ongoing construction in East Jerusalem. (Refresher is here.)

The WaPo ventures that “Netanyahu believes that a halt to construction represents political suicide for his coalition, so no amount of U.S. pressure will lead him to impose a freeze — at least until he is in the final throes of peace talks.”

For Israeli’s sake, let’s hope there’s more to Bibi’s stand than political expediency.

Update I (March 24): “…in Israel—foibles and frailties notwithstanding—the West has reclaimed a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened western law prevails, and where Christians and Jews and their holy places are safe. (Muslims are always secure in western societies, Arab-Israelis too.)” [From “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.”]

A reminder to relapsed Republicans; Condi Rice was as good a friend to Israel as is Barack Obama.

Update II: Watch this space. Forthcoming on Barely a Blog this weekend “Impressions From Jerusalem,” written by a special young woman who went to Israel with the expected perspectives imbibed in insulated North America—and shared by paleos and liberals alike—but had a transformative experience.

Most individuals who write about Israel, pro and con, should not be doing so, as they have never experienced the place or the people. This young woman had the heart and the head to ditch tinny ideology (she is not your average Millennial, described in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”) her own included, when confronted by something far more powerful and persuasive.

Be sure not to miss BAB’s upcoming weekend feature.

Update III: You’re in luck. I’ve decided to post the promised evocative piece of writing tomorrow. The mystery young woman has real talent for spare, strong writing.