Category Archives: South-Africa

‘A’ For Al Jazeera

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Media, Middle East, South-Africa, The West, War

I’ve said it before: The Al Jazeera news network practices better journalism than its American cable counterparts. Al Jazeera is as partisan as the local cable cretins, however, it does know news–the art of reporting.

Writes Eric Calderwood, for the Boston Globe:

[I]n a larger sense, Al-Jazeera’s graphic response to CNN-style “bloodless war journalism” is a stinging rebuke to the way we now see and talk about war in the United States. It suggests that bloodless coverage of war is the privilege of a country far from conflict. Al-Jazeera’s brand of news – you could call it “blood journalism” – takes war for what it is: a brutal loss of human life. The images they show put you in visceral contact with the violence of war in a way statistics never could.

For an American, to watch Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza is to realize that you’ve become alienated not just from war, but even from the representation of war as a real thing. As Americans, we’re used to hearing the sound of heavy artillery, machine guns, and bombs in action films and video games. Yet here on the news, they seem strangely out of place. You could argue that Al-Jazeera uses images of civilian violence to foment public outrage against Israel. This might well be true. At the same time, these images acknowledge human suffering and civilian death and stand strongly against them – and in doing so, foment outrage against war itself.

The complete essay is well-worth reading.

Worth watching is Al Jazeera’s “Saving Soweto”, a superb report detailing the heroic work of Christian and Jewish medical men in ministering to the multitudes. What would South Africa do without such people?! (Scroll down to “DESPERATELY SEEKING BOLLYWOOD’S BRANGELINA”)

Update XI: Paleos Must Defend the West, And That Means Israel Too

Christianity, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Old Right, Palestinian Authority, Political Philosophy, South-Africa, The West

The thread in response to my VDARE.com column, “Paleos Must Defend the West, And That Means Israel Too,” grew so long, that I am carrying it over in this new blog post.

The original, heated discussion began here. We are now on Update VII (Jan 16):

So did I really say what Richard Spencer of Taki’s Magazine alleges I said? Why, the excerpt Mr. Spencer provides from my VDARE.com to back his contention contradicts it.

Contra Mr. Spencer, a philosophical defense of Israel can include a support for Israel’s incursion into Gaza, but, it doesn’t have to.

Richard Spencer’s colleague, Razib Khan (why can’t Americans spell “ILANA”?), objects to the term “The Judeo-Christian West.” I’ve heard this objection before from paleos put in far more sinister terms, the aim being to disinherit Judaism. Or deny the continuity between it and Christianity. An absurdity, of course.

So polite disagreement is a nice change.

Once again, Mr. Khan’s claim that between 500 and 1800 Jews were not major players in Western Civilization is not nearly enough to render hollow the term Judeo-Christian. Ditto the fact that most Israelis are descended from the Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497. (From their exile in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, they fled to Israel as refugees after 1948.)

Consider: Under the Afrikaner National Party, South Africa’s institutions were eminently western, although Europeans formed a minority in that country. Should any paleo visit Israel, rather than just theorize platonically about the place, he will see the relevance of the SA example.

I am no theologian, nor am I remotely religious. I am, however, as Jewish as … Jesus was.

Yeah, it’s almost as though some Christians forget Jesus was as Jewish as they come.

While he was a radical, Jesus was not an alien from Deep Space, but was steeped in the Hebrew (“Old”) Testament’s ethics. Knowledge and wisdom don’t arise in a vacuum; like so many greats, Jesus stood on the shoulders of giants, and was very much in the mold of the classical prophets, some of whom had to sleep out in the fields to escape the people’s wrath.

Deuteronomy, an early book—the fifth of 39—showcases an advanced concept of Jewish social justice, and is replete with instructions to protect the poor, the weak, the defenseless, the widows, the orphans, the aliens, etc.

This ethical monotheism, developed centuries before classical Greek philosophy, is echoed throughout the Hebrew Bible (Exodus), and expounded upon by the classical prophets, who railed against power and cultural corruption so magnificently:

“There is blood on you hands; wash yourself and be clean. Put away the evil of your deeds, away out of my sight. Cease to do evil and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed; give the orphan his rights, plead the widow’s cause.”—Isaiah 1:11-17

The claim, made by the dazzling Catholic controversialist Clare Boothe Luce, that “New Testament universalism superseded Old Testament particularism” can be dispatched with a reminder that the Ten Commandments preceded the Epistle of St. John.

My knowledge of Judaism, and its influence on Christianity, is superficial at best (my father is the scholar of Judaism), but even more superficial is it to deny the philosophical continuity between Judaism and Christianity.

Update VII (Jan 16): AN ASIDE. Apropos my comment above with resepct to Sephardi Jews, who “fled to Israel as refugees after 1948.” Note to paleos: these Jews are NOT in refugee camps.

The approximately 1.5 million Jewish refugees from Arab lands could have become a considerable obstacle to the Palestinian propaganda machine had Israel been as conniving as her enemies. Imagine the kind of trump card Israel might have wielded had she, like her uncivilized neighbors, kept these legitimate Jewish refugees in camps, refused to settle them, fomented hate among them for the Arab, and turned the fugitives into political pawns—as Arab nations have so masterfully done to their so-called refugees.

Update VIII: PAUL GOTTFRIED. Paul is the complete intellectual package, packing both scholarship and analytical prowess into his response to my “spirited polemic.”

Paul, Larry Auster, and Serge Trifkovic are, however, the only heavy-weight traditionalists I can think of right now, who’re both vocal about Israel and have not embraced the Palestinian cause.

THE ALL-ROUND REPULSIVENESS OF THE CRYPTO-LEFTIST NEOCONSERVATIVES: I don’t buy this excuse for the venom directed at Israel from the paleoconservative and libertarian factions. If I accept this lame excuse, I must also accept that paleos are incapable of intellectual honesty and consistency.

Have the big, bad, neocons damaged the brave Buchanan so that he must betray the truth? I respect Buchanan too much to whittle down his position on Israel in this manner.

I do understand sympathy for the self-inflicted plight of the Palestinians. Good men have a heart. Sympathy is no flaw. But puckering up in prayer for a One-State Solution, or the Right of Return; those are major flaws, when adopted by paleos who oppose the universal right of return (free-for-all immigration) to the United States, and who know only too well what will become of Israel once Muslims gain a majority there. C’mon.

Must I also accept that a gifted gentleman like Jo Sobran dabbles in Holocaust denial because of displaced anger at the neocons? This is too frivolous and insulting for words–to Mr. Sobran.

In my own professional life, such as it is, I have been far less blessed than most big-name paleos I know (even those who’ve been hard done-by). For most of my life I was tucked away in the Third World. Although I’m infinitely glad to be in the US now, the First World has not been terribly kind to me either. I remain the embodiment of an outsider–an untouchable to the Treason-type, libertarians lite, not exactly accepted (read: published) by paleolibertarians; once courted by some influential neocons, they ceased to call on me, starting with this editorial in September of 2002. (I imagine that likening Bush’s grin to that of a patient with end-stage syphilis did not enhance my popularity with the establishment.)

Other than that class act Peter Brimelow (and Paul and Tom DiLorenzo, naturally), unique in his intellectual courage and honesty, who’s helped my career among paleoconservatives?

My publishing woes for the book Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post Apartheid South Africa can’t be exaggerated. My column is forever in Jeopardy.

Have my positions waxed and waned to reflect my deep disappointments and disillusionment with America in the Age of the Idiot? Or with the intellectual honestly and tribalism of my fellow traditionalists? (Like “intellectuals” of the mainstream, so too do libertarians and paleos huddle in atrophying intellectual attics, making sure dissenters are kept away.)

Not on your life.

Similarly, Pat Buchanan has had, and is having, a good run. I could not be happier; I’m a fan. Most other paleo talent did okay until the dawn of the neoconservatives and the tyranny of political correctness.

There are no personal excuses for the paleos’ curiously inconsistent positions on Israel (or for Joe Sobran’s Holocaust skepticism, given the historical evidence. Did the big, bad, neocons drive Sobran to abandon history and embrace pseudo-history?).

Suck it up! (We all should.)

Paul writes self-deprecatingly:

“The question is whether I would reason this way about Israel absent certain factors: for example, if I had no Jewish blood, if members of my family had not fled Hitler and gone to Israel, and if my son-in-law were not an Israeli military officer. The answer is probably not.”

Once again, I don’t buy this, especially given that the most vehement critics of Israel and Jews are … Jews. Always have been, always will be. I quote my father here: “If we know anything from Jewish history it is that the very root of our tragedy is our own self-destruction.” Israel against Judea; the two tribes against the ten tribes; in the second temple there was terrible internecine conflict, even with the Romans at the gates. In the Middle Ages rabbis excommunicated each other… Ben Gurion handed over Irgun people to the British.

On and on.

“The story of Jew not lifting up a hand to Jew is a fallacy, an American superficiality,” now parroted by paleos, and “developed” in Kevin MacDonald’s Fee Fi Fo Fum “science” of Jews.

My “tribe” has no bearing on the positions I take, have taken, and will continue to take; justice does; my core beliefs do. Paul does himself and his scrupulous record a disservice to suggest otherwise.

(Update IX): “Ilana, Israel, and I.” (Richard, my writing “Robert” was a typo. But the coupling of Robert and Spencer is intuitive to those who follow Robert as well as Richard.)

Update X (Jan 17): Sigh. In response to the please-allow-me-to-remain-neutral-about-Jihad plea: In the previous thread we rehashed the issue of foreign aid, which I’ve resolutely opposed, always. This is old hat. WE ALL OPPOSE AID TO ALL SIDES. Get off this self-righteous hobby horse.

By now it is abundantly clear what I mean by philosophical affinity. Sadly, many paleos like to play at moral equivalence. They’re afflicted with a leftist malady. With all the lofty pontificating about it being impossible to adjudicate “old conflicts in the Middle East,” etc., ask yourself this: If the Israelis stopped all forms of aggression today, forthwith, would you trust the Palestinians to follow suit?
Yeah, I thought so. So much for the cycle of violence.

The Hutus (generally uglier and inclined to envy) of Rwanda slaughtered near a million Tutsis (tall and better looking). I condemn the former. I do not draw moral equivalence between the criminals and their victims. Yet one paleo dilettante declared that to him the Israeli and Palestinian conflict is but “Hutus and Tutsis.” He is unable to philosophically distinguish innocent from guilty in the latter case, and clearly is not much better when it comes to the former.

Update X (Jan 18): There, I’ve said it: Afrikaners make the most spectacular paleos. “The modern Boer,” wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the popular British writer of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, is “the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain.”

And the modern paleo Boer is Dan Roodt. Roodt recently paid tribute to his Afrikaner ancestors’ “miraculous victory over the Zulu forces of Dingane during the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838,” when “450 Afrikaners defeated an army of at least 13,000 Zulus without any losses in their ranks.” Roodt’s coda:

“The Day of the Covenant should be internationally celebrated among all those who believe that our Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian civilisation is still worth fighting for.”

No (unmanly) weirdness there.

Update V: Paleos Must Defend the West, And That Means Israel Too

Conspiracy, IMMIGRATION, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Palestinian Authority, South-Africa, The West, War

The excerpt is from my new VDARE.com column, “Paleos Must Defend the West, And That Means Israel Too.”

“The fiery address this heroic European rightist [Geert Wilders] delivered in the Israeli capital got me thinking about the difference between the American and the European Old Right. Wilders is a hardcore man of the latter faction, for whom—in the derisive description of neoconservative Francis Fukuyama—”identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”. It is this earthy instinct, I venture, that accounts for the understanding the European Right evinces for Israel’s life-and-death struggle.” …

“Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front gives the American media a petit mal. Yet, despite all his idiosyncrasies, he identifies with Israel. Even the late Jörg Haider of the Alliance for the Future of Austria, who “exhibit[ed] every sign of anti-Semitism”—Hugh Fitzgerald’s estimation, not mine—was … “not quite so systematically vicious when it [came] to the state of Israel.” Vlaams Belang of Belgium is pro-Israel. Leader Filip Dewinter told a Jewish magazine: “One has to choose sides. Which side are you on in the ‘war on terror,’ “the side of western democracy and western civilization, with its Judeo-Christian roots, or the side of radical Islam?” …

“Most libertarian and conservative American traditionalists, also referred to as paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians, depart from their European counterparts. Like exotic political marsupials, local paleos have developed in geographic isolation and, hence, in a self-referential and self-reverential vacuum. While they have generally—and justly—supported western interests in conflicts such as in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and Cyprus, paleos make an exception of Israel. In fact, some are more devoted to the Palestinian cause than most left-liberals.” …

Read the complete column, “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too,” on VDARE.com.

Update I (Jan 10): THE MCCRAE MEGILLAH. I’ve posted Gus Mccrae’s letter hereunder (write to him at mccraegus@gmail.com), as an example of everything that is rotten in the paleo faction. I can’t say for sure whether he is a paleoconservative, but neither can I vouch that paleos have denounced such creatures and their constructs.

Notwithstanding that Mccrae seems incapable of adhering to Barely a Blog’s posting policy (I guess he thinks the Jew woman’s property is his by birth right), there is nothing worth addressing in this venomous, irrational outpouring.

The Mccrae “thesis” in a nutshell is this: my Vdare.com article was disingenuous and deviant because I’m Jewish. Mccrae believes that as a Jew, I know only too well that Jews are responsible for the West’s woes, in general, and for its immolation by immigration. Qua Jew, I’m well aware that Jews practically control the world, because, being Jewish, I’m in on it. Therefore, my column was a cover and a foil for the shenanigans of my Tribe.

The Mccrae megillah is first, and worst of all, a non sequitur.

Update II (Jan 11): I thank those of you who’ve written well-reasoned and well-mannered comments. I’m still awaiting a comment by “prophet james.” It was deleted by mistake.

If you are going to indulge in conspiracy thinking vis-à-vis Jewish machinations, at the very least, mention the manifest subversion carried out by “moderate” Muslim organizations in this country, against this country. (“Exposing the Muslim Lobby”)

And remember, Jews are highly represented in all spheres. Jews have certainly been among the most individualistic, original, and entrepreneurial members of American society. Think of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the eponymous mastermind of Dell Inc., casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and many more.

As have Jews been among the best defenders of liberty: Think Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman. (Was Frank Chodorov not Jewish? So many significant Jewish rightist, I can’t keep up.)

If Jews shrugged, you’d be without a quarter of your Nobel-Prize winners–cancer curers, scientists, etc. So get a grip, will you?

Reluctantly I return to Barely a Blog’s posting policy, which some rude, self-styled paleos seem to have difficulty with.

Don’t barge onto my private property demanding I explain myself to you, toots (you know who you are). My thoughts have been developed over years, and are archived on the mother site, ilanamercer.com, for your convenience.

Our posting policy states:

“The companion site, BarelyABlog.com, was established to generate debate about the essays on IlanaMercer.com, ILANA MERCER’S work. Readers participating on BarelyABlog.com are cordially asked to familiarize themselves with their host’s arguments. If readers prefer to showcase their ‘argumentation,’ or that of the scribes they favor and patronize, we suggest they pay for their own domain. This site is, after all, paid for by the host and her generous donors.”

The lax, rude individual who demanded I reproduce on the blog, for her edification, my thinking on foreign aid is directed to the two nifty search tools on ilanamercer.com, here, and here. I am sure even she can navigate them.

Update III: Elsewhere on this blog, JP Strauss writes the following:

Heck, if the IDF were my army, I would have invaded weeks ago. Flog the mobs, execute the terrorists and blow up the weapons caches. Israel has shown great levels of restraint up until now.Unfortunately, restraint sometimes leads to losing battles.

Allow me to introduce JP to BAB contributors: JP is an Afrikaner paleoconservative or paleolibertarian. Afrikaners have generally been highly conservative and very pro-Israel. While they’ve rightly been upset at their local, liberal Jews, Afrikaners seem to have been able to resolve the contradiction left-liberal Jews present without turning to support the PA and oppose Israel.

Leave aside the historical deceit paloes and radical leftists attach to Israel’s founding–mostly bogus of course. As something of a Randian, suffice it for me to see what Israel proper is like—skyscrapers, high-tech, high-fashion, friendly, peace-loving people, low crime rate (4 murders per 100,000; and that includes military deaths)—to support the right of the civilized society to hold all the bloody land in that benighted spot.

Update IV (Jan 12): I am not clear why a reader took my last updated comment as an endorsement (by this anti-interventionism) to spread democracy. I really can’t see the logic, especially in the context of my positions, stated, in “Thank You, Nancy Pelosi,” as follows:

“Of course, American interests in the Middle East are not to be conflated with Israeli interests. … 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.”

When I say that I identify with Ayn Rand’s strong stand for civilization and against savagery, I mean this:

What do Palestinians do with land they get in return for the elusive peace? Destroy it. What did they do with the Israeli constructed hothouses in Gaza? Blew them up, and took to hothousing Hamasniks.

On what basis does the West, and left-liberal Israel, wish to grant Palestinians more land? Oh, for certain loony paleocons–libertarian and conservative–the notion is that the land is the Palestinians’ to trash. How libertine and licentious. Besides which, the land is disputed.

If you cannot keep your promise and abide by the contracts you sign to respect the negative rights of your neighbors, why do you deserve more land?

I’ll tell you what the logic behind this lunacy is. It is this: Palestinians are driven by forces beyond their control and in the control of Israel alone. Deprivation has caused their depravity. You all know what I think of the post hoc root-causes rot; you know what I think of the “idea” that crime is the fault of everyone but the perp!

Update V (Jan 13): The position of the Afrikaner people, in general, on Israel deserves mention. Afrikaners, “The Puritans of Africa,” are generally conservative. They are attached to their Christian faith even more so than Americans (who’ve imbibed a lot of New Age Christianity).
While Israel opposed apartheid, it was a true friend to South Africa during the years of sanctions and boycotts. Back then, it was South Africa and Israel against the world–and against the forces of liberalism intent on snuffing out civilized outposts at the tip of African and in the Middle East. The US had joined the Suicide of the West, often on the side of the commies, in supporting assorted “national liberation” movements.

In any event, older Afrikaners (and older Israelis) have not forgotten this epoch of their history.

Updated: Amanpour Omits Genocide Of Boers By British

Britain, Criminal Injustice, History, Justice, Media, South-Africa

I watched Amanpour’s CNN’s program on genocide. No mention was made of the genocide of Boers by the British during the Second Boer War. Fifteen percent of the Afrikaner population was rounded up, interned, and starved to death–27,000 women and children.

Apparently after some controversy, Amanoour even mentioned the poor Armenians whose wholesale slaughter is usually denied because the slaughterers, our “allies” the Turks, demand the denial of that Holocaust. National interest and all that stuff.

Here is a rather common image from the annals of the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The caption follows, below.

“The young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the “undesirables” due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labeled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling for her mother, when a Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance.”

Update: JP’s heartfelt comment hereunder with respect to how Afrikaners were treated warrants mention of another aspect of genocide, salient in the plight of the Afrikaners, then as now: demonization. The British liked the Bantu; and hated the Boer. They demonized the Boers as retarded and stupid and would hang notices around the necks of Afrikaner kids caught speaking Afrikaans at school: “I am a donkey.” (Source: The White Tribe of Africa: South Africa In Perspective by David Harrison, p. 48) Need I mention the Bantu’s “Kill the Boer” slogans?