Strange doings at the Israel bashing American Conservative. The September-11 issue follows on the horrible heels of Israel’s war in Lebanon—a war which I repudiated in “Israel Risks Squandering Moral High Ground,” “Call Off the Israeli Air Force!,” and in blogs such as “In Politics, Rubbish Rises to the Top.”
But lo-and-behold, and completely contrary to its traditional chronic anti-Israelism, TAC has published a piece in support of that war by the impressive Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld. As I say, as much as I admire van Creveld and support Israel’s fight for survival against the manifestly savage societies surrounding it, I couldn’t, in good conscience, endorse that war. The Israeli people, as I wrote in “Israel Has Something To Be Proud Of,” appear to tilt in my direction.
I digress. The point here is that never in a million years would I have expected to see this article in TAC after a war “evil” Israel waged on a neighbor.
I expected a counterpoint, correcting the omission, but there was none—not a substantive one, at least. A sappy fellow called Stewart Nusbaumer offered an atmospheric piece, full of fatalism and cliches (“cycle of violence”), that described the pain of war as experienced by ordinary Israelis—Arabs and Jews. He mixes in some subtle TAC theology (read “The Final Solution to the Jewish State” to understand what that is). In this instance, allusions to a dispute that has been plaguing the region for 4000 years. The revisionist implications are that Israel’s local Arabs can be traced to the inhabitants Abraham (Avram then) encountered on arriving from Ur.
Also, when Nusbaumer describes a waitress who expected to be called up, you know he is having another less-than-credible epistolary moment. The reason you didn’t see any Israeli women soldiers on the Lebanese front is because Israel doesn’t allow them in combat. And so it should be! Everyone knows that, bar a few rare amazons, women can’t fight like men, and that they disrupt the essential life-preserving camaraderie among soldiers by eliciting chivalry and introducing sexuality into an already deadly situation. Israelis can’t afford to ignore these factors. Being an ex-US marine, Nusbaumer may not be aware of this politically incorrect reality.
So what, if anything, explains this out-of-the-mold issue? Well, in all likelihood this is a fluke and the magazine will resume its nutty “free Palestine” screeching. On the other hand, if TAC’s readers and mine overlap at all, then they may have heard a thing or two from their subscribers. Most paleos I hear from are profoundly traditional, appreciate the “Hebraic Bond,” and are nowhere-near ready to replace it with the Arabist, pro-Palestinian, radical chic of the hard left, hitherto TAC’s stance. We’ll have to wait and see.

Israelis have a different attitude to their leaders than do Americans. No sooner had our local war harpies lined up to can-can for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, than the Israeli people were calling for his canning. How embarrassing!

Here Gideon Levy complains that his countrymen’s complaints against the Lebanon war and its prosecutors are not sufficiently principled. They’re already at the stage of critiquing the critiques. Kudos!

Back here at home, Bush’s Stepford Wives (new ones have cropped up since that was written) continue to stand by their man, leveling that childish accusation — “Bush hater,” or traitor — at anyone who dares to suggest the king’s in the mental buff.

On a less optimistic note: Israel says it may have to take on Iran alone. Now there’s an idea: After the Israeli Defense Forces defeated Hezbollah with such ease (not!), why not take on those responsible for training that remarkably capable terrorist organization?

In Israel, the reckoning over Lebanon began even before the ceasefire went into effect. Soldiers were questioning the mission. Reserve soldiers are returning home with a kitbag full of complaints,” writesAkiva Eldar of Ha’aretz newspaper. The news media was buzzing with reports about failures of intelligence, funding, and execution at the highest echelons.

As they witnessed rockets and missiles raining down on northern Israel, ordinary Israelis began grumbling about how their prime minister failed to do much more than get their men killed and level Lebanon. Now they’re calling Olmert’s stint a plain failure. Many of Israel’s pointy heads are predicting he won’t last.

Indeed, politicians and military men appear to be fair game in that country. There’s none of this, “It’s treason to criticize the troops and the commander-in-chief during a war.” Why, Israeli soldiers themselves joined in committing treason American style.

Practically nobody in Israel denies the war was a whopping failure (that camp is biggest in the US). There is no attempt, as in the US, to create a parallel universe, a Third Dimension, where reality is reversed to comport with political spin. (We even have a cable channel dedicated to sanitizing Iraq.)

Contrast the atmosphere in Israel with that in the US.

Iraq is a disgrace, a blot. The invasion was unprovoked, conducted in ignorance of Iraqi history and fractious ethnic and religious makeup. (The British fought the identical insurrection in 1920.) America’s actions in Iraq have caused thousands of civilian deaths, destroyed infrastructure, halted oil production, and saddled the American taxpayer with the burden, in perpetuity, it would appear, because to leave is to “cut and run,” say the Treason Twits.
Yet an entire military-media-industrial-congressional-complex has risen to smear anyone who states these facts. The “reality based community” is called “anti-war, anti-America, traitors, Bush-haters.”

A month after the failed war commenced, Israelis are ready to string up their leaders. Three years after the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, a good number of Americans are still quite willing to hang any sensible individual who so much as hints at the need to fire the goons in charge.