Category Archives: Israel

The Palestinian Appetite For Destruction

Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East

“Societies are only as good as the individuals they comprise. And individuals are only as good as their actions. Overall, Israeli society is superior to Palestinian society because, like America, it is peopled by individuals who make possible a thriving civil society. Yet to Bush, the latest chaotic chapter in the annals of the M.O.P.E (Most Oppressed People Ever) is an ‘exciting moment.’ It has inspired in him visions (or hallucinations) of “two states living side by side in peace.” Bush’s appetite for destruction must be even healthier than that of the Palestinians.”

In this week’s WND essay, which led the Commentary Page, “The Palestinian Appetite For Destruction,” you can read about how Abbas intends to consolidating his street cred with the Palestinians, why Carter has a point; Bush ought not to be favoring any of the Palestinian Black Shirts. There is also a juxtaposition of Israeli society and the savage society adjacent to it, and the manner in which the two Palestinians and Jews have responded to historical challenges.

South African Jews: If Desperate, Go to Israel

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Israel, South-Africa

Israel’s overall death rate from crime is very low; lower than that of the US, which is, overall, about 6 in 100,000. Of course, in our ghettoes it rises to about 40 per 100,000, and thus closely approximates the rates I’ve documented for South Africa.

As readers of this blog (and of my columns) know, South Africa jostles with Iraq (but beats Columbia, I am told) for the title of the most violent place on earth: “The last statistics available, courtesy of the CBS, showed that between April 2004 and March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa (population 47 million). In comparison, the ‘high crime’ United States (population 297 million) suffered 16,692 murders. Put differently, South Africa has 60 homicides per 100,000 people; the US approximately 6. And these are the official, filtered figures. According to Robert McCafferty of the United Christian Action, the South African Medical Research Council tallies 89 daily deaths, or 32,000 a year. Interpol’s statistics are also double those released by the South African Police Service.”

Remarkably, in 2004, Israel’s death by murder was 3.7 per 100,000 for civilians only; 4.3 when soldiers were included. (“Homicide rates in 2004 in a number of major U.S. cities, including the nation’s capital, exceeded rates of Palestinian fatalities at the hands of Israel’s army in the past year.”)

Ergo, if South African Jews are unable to immigrate to the US or Europe, they ought to consider Israel. They are far less likely to die there than in South Africa.

Updated: If Americans Were More Like Israelis…

Bush, Israel, War

If Americans were more like Israelis, Bush’s popularity at the polls would be at…0 percent. That’s where Ehud Olmert’s approval rate is among Israelis, said CNN today. Olmert’s position at the polls had hovered between 2 and 3 percent, before bottoming out.

The anger is over the Second Lebanon War last year. Israelis are furious not only over the execution of the war, but over the fact that it had been prosecuted at all. Whereas large segments of the fantasy-based community in the US see great benefits to the destabilization of Iraq, or at least so they say—Israelis in overwhelming numbers believe leveling Lebanon was a horrible thing to do. Oddly enough, here at home, harpies for Bush continue to talk up the Second Lebanon War, even though Israelis have long since disowned it and the president who prosecuted it. “You’ve failed; go home” is the rallying cry across Israel.

The Winograd Report on that war, unparalleled in the US, has placed “the primary responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. All three made a decisive personal contribution to these decisions and the way in which they were made.” What simple, clear truths, the kind that evade us in the US.

The preamble to the Winograd Report states:

“We believe Israeli society has great strength and resilience, with a robust sense of the justice of its being and of its achievements.”

I have to agree—all the more so given that four years hence and most Americans still refuse to process what Bush wrought by invading Iraq and how corrupt that endeavor was.

Update: Bush vetoed the Iraq War Supplemental today. I think it’s his first veto in office. He blamed “members of the House and the Senate” for passing “a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders. Contrast that with the Israeli Winograd Report which accused Olmert of “acting in effect as a rubber stamp for the army.” Funny that. In Israel they think the people, represented (allegedly) by the government and parliament, ought to make decisions; in the US we think it’s the generals (who, face it, give dumb a new meaning, if to judge by their acumen thus far).

Update II: The footage of 100,000 Israelis—of the left, right and center; religious and irreligious—gathered at Rabin Square to call on the government to resign warms the cockles. Author Meir Shalev derided the government thus:

“We do not seek compensation, not even remorse for your sins of lack of judgment, your arrogance. You ran headfirst into battle with the gaiety of fresh recruits, without a plan or an objective. You squandered Israel’s power of deterrence, you squandered our chances of bringing back the captives and worst of all – you squandered the lives of soldiers and civilians.”

They mention civilians! What will it take for conservative in this country to mention the poor, dying people of Iraq, upon which we’ve unleashed death and destruction, and who will probably never know peace again.

Anyone who has lived in, or visited, Israel knows that it is a country of independent-minded, anti-authoritarian, critical and demanding people. What can I say? Jews! Anyone who conflates the common American neocon with the regular Israeli has never encountered that odd creature, the Sabra, that prickly pair.

The assorted Hebrew signs read: “Failures, Go Home!”, “Elections Now!” These are all very tame, but things are sure to heat up…if I know Israel.

Updated Again: Is Hirsi Ali the Only Lionheart In America?!

America, Islam, Israel

That blithering idiot Glenn Beck interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali (transcripts are here). In contrast to the slobbering incoherence of her host —my father has recently ventured that ours is The Age of the Idiot —Hirsi Ali was a model of lucidity. It helps that she looks like a model too. However, when asked by the hyperbolic host whether anyone in the USA was warning of the dangers of “radical Islam” —a redundancy Beck adheres to religiously —Hirsi Ali took full credit for being The Only One.

How did she do so? I repeat, when Beck asked her if anyone in the US was warning of “radical Islam,” she conceded only that we were slightly more aware of the dangers than were the Europeans, but not much.

Now that the transcripts are up, I can excerpt from the exchange:

BECK: Have you met with anyone here in the United States that you thinks — that you think really gets it and is willing to stand up next to you? Is there — is there anybody here? Is there a woman’s organization? Is there a Muslim organization that says, we’re with you?

ALI: I’ve met several individuals, several organizations and all very concerned. To be honest, I think vigilance in the United States seems to me to be today better than the one in Europe. What I haven’t seen in the United States is people who are aware of the problem here today in the U.S. Most Islam, as a foreign policy (ph), jihad in this country.

She clearly failed to acknowledge some heroic scholars-cum-warriors I’m proud to call friends: Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom. (Spencer has even been addressed by an al Qaida emissary in a propaganda broadcast.) Nor was there any mention of Bat Ye’or, who was the first to expose the Islamization of Europe, and whose terminology we all use. Hirsi Ali cannot claim ignorance of another European woman on whose shoulders she stands.
Nor did Hirsi Ali offer a nod to Daniel Pipes’ efforts (he departs from the rest, and myself, in holding to a belief in a moderate Islam). The host is too dim to know much about anything, so he just effused and gawked and demonstrated that the force of his intellect matches his social etiquette: Beck told his guest that she was “not going to die of natural causes.”

Updated: I clean forgot Paul Sperry. He has done his share of courageous reporting and has received little TV time. Read my review of his Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.
My sources also confirm that Hirsi Ali knows a number of the aforementioned individuals. That they were not credited for their indefatigable efforts was no innocent mistake. In any case, intellectual dishonestly is inexcusable and ought to be exposed.