Category Archives: Israel

‘Old Right New Wrongs’: Gottfried on Israel & Paleoconservatives

Paul Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, is my guest today on Barely a Blog. He applies his characteristic perspicacity to the incongruity that is the Old Right’s treatment of Israel. Why the Left detests Israel is clear, but what of old-school conservatives and paleolibertarians? Robert Novak and Charlie Reese shake hands with Alexander Cockburn—elements of the American Right meet the Left—in support of their dedicated detestation of Israel. Moreover, the myth of the plucky Palestinian so dear to many on the Right is not in the conservative tradition. In propagating this myth, they resemble those that cried bitter tears (from a safe distance, of course) for the communist ANC in South Africa. And they resemble the Left and the neoconservatives who weep for the Chechens—another aggressive, terrorist people. (You’ll often hear paleoconservatives condemn the administration for leaning on, say, Vladimir Putin, but celebrate when they sunder Israel’s sovereignty.)—ILANA

Over to Professor Gottfried:

It seems to me foolish for members of the Old Right to beat up on any Israeli government, however flexible it seems to be, because they are justifiably disgusted by neoconservative bullying and duplicity. The Israelis did not create our global democratic warmongers; nor is there any reason to assume that the two hold the same views about the surrounding world.
Having just returned from a trip to Israel, I wish to point out that I met in that country lots of Asians, including workers from the Far East, and African Jews, but very few people who bear any resemblance to the editorial boards of Commentary and The Weekly Standard.
The present Israeli government is eager to give back the entire West bank, minus possibly East Jerusalem, if it can achieve a non-violent peace with the Palestinians. There are also almost a million Palestinians living within Israel proper, who enjoy much better treatment and a far higher standard of living than their Arab cousins, who already enjoy the pleasures of Arab autonomy.
I have the distinct impression that my fellow-paleos, who weep over the tyranny of the Jewish state, are really protesting another issue, the bad manners and Stalinist techniques of the neoconservative dictators of the present conservative movement. But those issues are clearly different from the ones that the anti-Israeli Right brings up in its invectives. From what I have observed, it is the cowardice and opportunism of movement conservatives, not Mr. Olmert, which are responsible for the state of the American Right.

Paleos, take the argument up with Bill Buckley, Heritage, and Bill Rusher and not the Israelis.

—Paul Gottfried

Continuously Updated: Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Middle East, Pseudo-history

The real rock stars of the Israeli intelligentsia—Israel’s own Ward Churchills —are the pretentiously self-styled “New Historians.” This is a group of popular far-left fabricators (one of whom facetiously boasted: “We perform at weddings and bar mitzvas”), who’ve cocked a snook at the liberal country in which they’ve thrived, so as to gain admittance into the fashionable Palestinian pantheon…
…the “New Historians'” most flamboyant and fishy associate [is] Benny Morris. In fact, it was Morris’ bowdlerization of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s words that first prompted Karsh to investigate the fraud perpetrated by these hip historians and expose it in his masterful book, “Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians.'”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily column, “Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians.”

Updated continually: Harvard and the University of Chicago have distanced themselves from “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” study, issuing emphatic disclaimers to that effect. The “study” was fraught with logical and factual infelicities and fell foul of minimal scholarly requirements.

“Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians” dealt with a little-discussed aspect of the “study.”

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting writes that

“[E]ven a cursory examination of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy reveals that it is riddled with errors of fact, logic and omission, has inaccurate citations, displays extremely poor judgement regarding sources, and, contrary to basic scholarly standards, ignores previous serious work on the subject. The bottom line: virtually every word and argument is, or ought to be, in ‘serious dispute.'”

Read CAMERA’s detailed analysis of the study here.

Also of interests is “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic” by Eliot A. Cohen, who writes the following about the paper:

Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information–why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

A doff of the hat to Walter Block for sending this along.

Melanie Phillips offers a characteristically superb analysis of a Kafkaesque strategy, whereby, “The enemies of antisemitism are the new McCarthyites’… —anyone who called attention to the outbreak of Judeophobia was a McCarthyite, because they were trying to sanitise the crimes of Israel…”

And from civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz: “Debunking the Newest—and the Oldest—Jewish Conspiracy: A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt “Working Paper’”

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has more on the straw produced by libertarians who are “pretty much indistinguishable from the far left and the far right” in the unenlightened heat they generate. Read “The Ugly Side of Libertarianism.”

Overstating Jewish Power By Christopher Hitchens

Danes and Deniers

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Journalism, Judaism & Jews, Media

Holocaust denier David Irving, whom I’ve defended here, has become the cause celebre for the terminally self-righteous. Some in the West simply refuse to defend the Danes in a meaningful and morally unambiguous manner. So instead, they bang on about the admittedly shabby treatment of Irving. In their eyes, the Danes and their controversial drawings cannot be disentangled from the Irving issue.

At the risk of repeating myself, the need to repeal laws prohibiting hate speech and Holocaust denial cannot be overemphasized; nobody wants to see Irving jailed for being a jerk.

So what of those who say hounding this Holocaust denier makes the West “guilty of the crimes with which we charge the Muslims”? Well, the idea that aggression exists on a continuum is asinine—pure left-liberalism. According to this slippery-slope illogic, the European laws banning Holocaust denial—and they are indefensible—are as distasteful as beheading—or scheming to behead—”heretics.”

Now that’s a howler!

Buchanan of Arabia

Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The following is an excerpt from my new column, Buchanan of Arabia. I’m sure readers will have plenty to say in response.

After conflating the Danes with the most off-putting exemplars of free expression—Larry Flynt the pornographer, the Nazis of Skokie, and the late Robert Mapplethorpe of the bullwhip-bedecked behind—Buchanan allows that we are all entitled to be contemptuous of “the beliefs and values the Islamic faith holds dear, and for the prophet.” “But if we wish to exercise our right to air [these views] in print or broadcast, we should expect to reap what we have sown.”
With these obligatory lines, Mr. Buchanan discharges his duty to the West and its puny freedoms. What follows is an ode to Islam. Buchanan’s paean to this faith’s brute force is crucial in divining why he demands the West’s capitulation, following the cartoon Jihad.

Christian Butterbach quotes my description of Israel in the column as:

…the Middle East’s only true democracy—a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened Western law prevails, and where Christians, Jews and their holy places are safe.

He then adds the following important quip:

Are Muslim holy places in Israel not safe???

My response:

Muslims are always safe in liberal countries. You know that; look around. It’s inherent in the definition of “liberal.” Countries with a liberal tradition make it safe for all people to worship openly. Arabs living in Israel proper are as safe as you and I are in our neighborhoods and places of worship. And very active on Israeli campuses—alongside their fellow Jewish, radical-leftists—in anti-Zionist causes. No different to an American campus, really. It would have been a redundancy on my part to add “Muslims,” when it is Jews and Christians who are imperiled in Muslims countries.

In fact, some of the angry letter writers (I don’t mean Chris) should visit Israel (and I don’t mean rush to the PA and hire a “guide” to show them a staged stone throwing). Visit the suicidally liberal schools and homes of real Israelis. I actually grew up in Israel, and went to school with Israeli-Muslims. Yeah, visit Israel, won’t you, instead of writing propaganda, the only verification for which is Mr. Buchanan and other dedicated saboteurs.