Political Realism- Kill the Jews

Hagyan, a reader of this blog has written me an email that has some very disquieting implications. He referenced a Palestine Post article from 1933 that mentions the thoughts of a prominent British Jew of the time. Hagyan is right, the article is redolent of the the Breath of the Beast. His message reads, in part:

What shocked me was the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph: "It was his [Lord Melchett's] impression that anti-semitism in Germany was on
the wane, as Hitler was beginning to realize that it was his anti-semitism that was keeping him from power."

I found Hagyan's message very interesting and all too apropos to our current situation. Lord Melchett's circular formulation that anti-semitism in Germany was decreasing because Hitler was moderating his Jew Hatred because it was (somehow) political liability succeeds only in dancing around the hard fact that anti-semitism was at the very core of the National Socialist movement and the even more disheartening evidence that he would eventually have his way with the enthusiastically compliant Germans.

Notwithstanding that their variety of antisemitism (or is it Jew Hatred) is smoother, less vociferously murderous and not so scabrous, Obama and his progressive elitists never could have risen to power without taking advantage of the willingness of the preponderance of Jewish Americans (along with other intellectuals and liberals) to participate in a similar soothing delusion. They sedate their consciences with the idea that Obama is a "political realist" and a reliable friend.

So many liberals, Jews and intellectuals, after all, have made a self-conscious show of their contempt for the mountains of evidence, offered on my blog and in many other places, that the Progressive elitists, Black Liberation theologians, former terrorists and assorted social activists with whom he consorts viscerally despise the middle class ideals, Judeo-Christian morals and self-reliant entrepreneurial American spirit. They practice an intentional and fatuous ignorance of the fact that it is that very set of ideals,morals and spirit that have protected and enabled Jews to become successful and even powerful members of American society in a way we have never achieved in any other country. They turn their backs on the obvious signs because, like Melchette they believe that political success depends on political correctness and it is incorrect to identify the flaws and contradictions in a coalition of ignorance once you have signed on as a member.

So, here we are, Israel is facing a perfect storm of bloody-minded terror from her neighbors while her natural supporters- Jews and political liberals are numbed to inaction by the pathetic idea that Obama is really a subtle and nuanced friend who, while he is hard on Israel to prove to the world that he is an "honest broker", would never allow Israel's destruction. We need, they think, only let him wield his subtle "soft power" unhindered by our own attempts to support or protect Israel. It is in this vein that Dershowitz can write that "Israel's Actions Were Entirely Lawful Though Probably Unwise"

Dershowitz appears to be an effective defender of Israel because he makes his legal case brilliantly. Morally and strategically, though, the wistful longing for Obama to be the benevolent but covert protector of his liberal imagination conceals from him and his readers the truth that Obama cares nothing for Dershowitz, Israel or "The Jews".

For Obama we are, at best, an irascible and untrustworthy member of the coalition of dupes and fellow travelers that got him elected and are now abandoning him in droves as he has begun to show his true colors. At worst he recognizes us better than we do ourselves as a stubborn (if still slumbering) reservoir of bourgeois dedication to the traditional values of enterprise, intellectual skepticism and sound investment that are the bedrock of America's past achievements and the single most hopeful obstacle to the progressive one-world socialism that he calls "Hope and Change". This is the hard fact that is at the core of the Progressive movement. Jews (as well as conservatives, classical liberals, religious people and small business people) are "in the way". The correctness is so bad now that in Dershowitz's circle one may not even use the word socialism as a description. In this sense Dershowitz and other liberal supporters of Obama are complicit with the Progressive agenda and, by extension, a dupe for Israel's (and all Jew's) enemies.

Since when is it not wise for a sovereign country to stop bon fide supporters of terrorists on the high seas? Since when is it not permissible for soldiers of that country to defend their own lives? Only since they are Jewish. The Jewish blood spilt by the "protesters" on the boat ( who are on record singing songs about killing Jews) as they attacked the soldiers carrying paintball guns, like the blood of the children of Sderot killed and maimed by the very "freedom fighters" the protesters are supporting must no longer be considered barter for a corrupt system of political dealing- it cheapens Jewish life and makes it expendable. Or, rather, it agrees with Obama and the rest of the world that it is expendable.

It is time for Jews everywhere to recognize and speak the truth: political realism, like political correctness cuts both ways and we are as vulnerable as we have ever been. If you do not pay attention now, if you make the mistake of Melchette in 1933, there is hell to pay down the road. Jews do not have the luxury anymore to ignore (let alone support!) the Obama administration and its Progressive agenda.

Note: My friend Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret has another similar take on this in a very important post.

Jew Hatred Howls in the Streets of Germany- Again

Both Israel Matzav and Jewish Odysseus have linked to Muqata's report on the German police choosing to suppress the Israeli flag rather than face down Germany's own "Arab Street". Whatever toxic combination of anti-Semitism and dhimmi cowardice inspired the choice, it clearly has pushed Germany one giant step closer to conquest by The Caliphate. Play the video- Jew hatred howls in German streets once again. I left the following comment on both Israel Matzav and Jewish Odysseus:

Hmmm, A knock at the door, German police, confiscating Jewish property, preventing Jews from participating in national discourse, Sounds somehow familiar... can't quite...

Update:
One commenter at Jewish Oysseus offerd an opinion that the police were acting "logically" to "deescalate" the situation- to which I replied:

Oh, right, "deescalate"- another word for "Jews keep taking abuse, qassams, suicide bombs and the threat of mob violence so that infantile Moslem thugs can destroy western civilization one brick at a time - without there ever being a showdown".
Germany is being swallowed up while concerning herself only with keeping things quiet enough so that they can pretend there is no problem.

Have you learned nothing?

Deescalate my Zionist ass!
Stand up for civilization, rout the thugs from the streets before they come after you too!

A Very Distorted Vision of Humanity

Judith Apter Klinghoffer has an insightful post about a diabolically disingenuous study produced by Vision of Humanity, an Australian NGO. Judith, who is one of the clearest thinkers I know, calls the thing hilarious and I agree that the design of the study and the claim for its validity is laughable but my sense of humor about this travesty is overcome when I consider the damage it does.
In a comment I made to her post I say:

Tyranny- It Always Quickens the Progressive Pulse
Tyrannies always have an eerie kind of menacing quiet to them. When the government is opaque and supplies the statistics there is never any problem that cannot be minimized. Ahmadinejad says that there is no homosexuality in Iran and so the killing of homosexuals does not disturb the peacefulness index. Lets not forget that Progressives like these Australian twits are just the modern form of collectivist ideologues who created the most peaceful "workers paradises" on earth- places where you could starve to death - or disappear into the Gulag, concentration camp or reeducation camp without ever being recorded in such a way as to blemish the peaceful image of the "People's Republic or Soviet Union or Third Reich" in which you live. Leftists always admire tyrannies (from afar, of course) for it. They seem to be saying, "If only we can regain the power again, with all these new rationalizations, we would be much better equipped to denature the human spirit next time around."

One of the prime ironies of the study is that Iran is, according to this very Astigmatic Vision of Humanity, a much more peaceful country than Israel. With that in mind let’s take a look at a few of the scoring points on which Iran that peaceful land of Mullahs, nuclear ambition and Bhurkas did so much better than Israel. Their quoted points are in black and my comments are in red.


Relations with neighbouring countries Let’s see, if you’re Israel, everybody around you hates you and tries to kill you because you’re Jewish- That’s going to hurt your score. If you are Iran, you are the world’s most active sponsor of terror by proxy- you hire train and supply outsiders and your own army officers dressed as civilians to commit murder outside your own borders- none of which hurts your standing as a “peaceful country”.

Level of distrust in other citizens Hmmm, if a guy from a "certain group" grabs a bulldozer and crushes a few of your people that is no reason to be suspicious. Then when another guy from that same group does the same thing it would hurt you Peace Index if you thought that there might be a pattern emerging here… Then again in Iran the only people you have to distrust are the government’s moral police.

Level of disrespect for human rights (Political Terror Scale) It is absolutely unfathomable how it has been possible to formulate an index in which Iran (where religious intolerance is endemic and violent, where slavery is still practiced openly, where women are beaten by officers of the government for wearing western style clothing and where homosexuals are subject to capitol punishment) has a better score on this category than Israel (where all citizens can vote, where religious tolerance is absolute where there are open gay pride parades, Arabs have a better standard of living, are better educated and experience lower infant mortality and all styles of clothing are worn including the hijab)- someone please explain this to me!

Potential for terrorist acts This one is priceless! Iranian trained, controlled and supplied terrorists maraud inside Israel and fire rockets on an hourly basis and these count against Israel not Iran!

Level of violent crime Of course when the Morality Police beat up a woman on the streets of Iran because she isn’t sufficiently covered up this is not considered a violent crime- just the police "keeping the peace" does this make sense?

Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP With Iran, Syria and several other much larger countries dedicated to destroying her, Does it make sense for Israel to cut her defense spending?
Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people Israel is a tiny country, out numbered (more than 100 to 1) by nations all around her that have sworn to eliminate her do you think she might want to have a higher portion of people ready to fight? Oh, and that doesn’t even take into account the difference between the citizen soldiery and reserve system of Israel and the professional military caste/establishment in the countries that have kept her under siege for sixty years.

Volume of transfers (imports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people. Not counting the traffic of weaponry flooding across Iran’s northern borders from the former Soviet Union.

Volume of transfers (exports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people Not, of course taking into consideration the massive shipments of arms from China and North Korea that are smuggled and trans-shipped to the Iranian proxy armies in Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people Why would you need heavy weapons- Oh, maybe because your neighbors are trying to annihilate you… So if you intend to put up a fight you are a “problem child in the community”

Ease of access to small arms and light weapons In all totalitarian societies the first move is to disarm the populace- It cuts down on civil strife for better or worse.

Military capability/sophistication Heaven forbid you should study was to be able to protect your citizens efficiently with the least collateral damage. You’re going to look very un-peaceful.

That’s just a few of them- But you get the picture. The whole thing reminds me of my posts on the battered woman syndrome- Making it look like Israel brings it on herself. Then you punch her in the nose and yell at her for bleed ing on the rug. There it is a Vision of Humanity that only a Progressive could love.

Great name for a Progressive NGO By the way- They Love Humanity its People they Hate.

Mattot: A Warning From the Past

I try not to post on Friday and I have never posted anything about my religious feelings before so this is a bit of a departure for Breath of the Beast but I think this is an important exception to make. I have been asked to deliver this week's gloss on the Bible portion in my synagogue and It relates directly to the usual subject matter on this blog. So here is the draft of what I will be saying on Saturday morning.

This is a difficult time of year for D’var Torahs. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the parshas at this time of year are particularly troublesome. Last week was Pinchas the week before was Balak and now this- Mattot. Here is a rough outline:



Moses is near the end of his life. He has led the people out of slavery and been their shepherd for forty years of transitional wandering. They are on the threshold of the promised land and are in the final stages of preparation to go forward and claim their right to that promise. It is not clear if they know that Moses will no longer lead them but Moses knows. The parsha begins with a detailed treatment of the importance and legal implications of vows and oaths. It goes into fine distinctions about the vows and oaths of women and how they are subject to intervention, under certain circumstances, by the men folk (husbands and fathers) in the woman’s life. This is an irritant too- it certainly does not reflect modern Jewish practice. Then there is an abrupt switch to a narrative in which God commands Moses that the people must take vengeance on the Midianites and tells him explicitly that after that is done, that he (Moses) will “tayasafe al-ha-amecha” “be gathered to his kinspeople”. The Israelites go out into battle, return victorious only to find that the slaughter of the Midianites was not complete enough they- have killed only the Midianite men. The Midianite women and children have been spared. Moses then orders them to kill all the women “who have known men” and all of the male children. This done, the parsha closes with the story of how the tribes of Ruvane, Menashe and Gad begin to settle down on the eastern bank of the Jordan, showing a reluctance to continue on to help settle the rest of the people in “the Land” proper. Moses gets angry with them and insists that if they want the right to settle east of the Jordan river, the men of those tribes must agree to first go with the rest of the people and, in fact, become the “shock troops” (the word used is Chalootz also used as “pioneer” and, today, as “conscript”) of the battles to come. They agree to this and the parsha ends with them consolidating their positions and the stage set for the momentous crossing of the river.



I am going to talk about the war on the Midianites first. The vows section and the agreement with Reuvan, Menashe and Gad, can only be fully appreciated in the light of this major event. As it often happens, sections that seem unrelated, when you study them together, often reveal new and deeper ways of looking at things. There is always something sublime and laden with meaning about the way that sections that seem disjointed at first, the way these do, elucidate and clarify each other. 



So, God commanded the massacre of the Midianites and Moses orders it done. It seems irredeemably ugly and cruel to us but there is, no way to ignore it. Many, much wiser readers and interpreters than I, have tried to gloss over, minimize, rationalize or even evade it, because it is so harsh. Plaut, Alter and others say that it is “a story”, hinting that the completion of the murder is just as much of an exaggeration as the claim that not a single Israelite was lost in the initial battle. Plaut makes the point that the Midianites reappear as a people in the book of Joshua and while that might just be a people who have resettled the original land of Midian, it certainly gives an opening for those who would like to believe that there is a more “complex” event here than simple annihilation of innocents. 



Even so, the text is clear. When the battle is over and the killing is not as thorough as required, there is a frank and detailed discussion of who shall be killed. While the killing is never confirmed explicitly, it is never denied either. So, we are left having to accommodate this ancient savagery to our modern sensibility.


I struggled with this too; eventually it came to me, I was not looking at the story in context. Those Jews are not the Jews of today. They are not a group of educated professional people who have grown up in the peace and security of an American childhood. They live in an ancient world where the only way to insure that a defeated enemy’s sons and kin would not continue the cycle of revenge after a battle was to render them permanently incapable of it. The parents of these Jews were brutalized as slaves in Egypt. In Forty years of homeless wandering, they have been under constant threat of attack by every group around them. It was so bad that their movements and encampments in the wilderness had to be organized and carried out as military maneuvers with armed guards on all sides- with orders of march enforced. 

This was the ancient world where there were only three kinds of people- the conquered, the too tough to be conquered and the conquerors. There was no such thing as the UN or World Court- no higher authority- no concept of conflict resolution, there was only the struggle for survival. It is true that you could starve to death easily enough in a famine but the struggle against nature was nothing compared to the need to protect yourself against the depredations of other people.



And what other people! The context on this is even tougher. The vengeance we are talking about here is in response to the Midianite participation in the Baal Pe’or attempt to destroy the Jewish people from within. You will remember that in the parsha Balak, two weeks ago, the Midianites and Moabites conspired to use their own women - to literally prostitute their wives, sisters and daughters in an attempt to subvert and destroy the vitality, cohesion and morality of Israelite culture. 



The attempt had some initial success- many Israelites succumbed to temptation and made sacrifices to Baal. Then there came a plague and internal strife that resulted, we are told, in 24,000 Israelite deaths. 

What a contrast there is between Israel and her neighbors. Given that, in the ancient world, women were not the equals of men and were often treated as chattel, how can there be any comparison between these two cultures? And this is where the relationship between the section on vows and oaths takes on a deeper significance. Here we have Israel, on the one hand, which gives careful consideration and legal respect to the independent vows and oaths of women, compared to Midian, so degraded and underhanded that they use the bodies and souls of their own women as weapons of war. It is abuse of the vilest kind. Midian sacrifices the most intimate relationships and highly charged devotions of the human heart and soul as objects as tools of destruction.
In the history of the Jewish people, we have had to survive all kinds of threats. We have sometimes been able to repel them. At other times we have not. If you are dead, if your culture is conquered by a foreign one, there is no court of higher appeal; moral outrage will buy you nothing at all. I prefer to be able to repel the threat and that is what we see happening in this story; and it is what is happening in Israel today.
Israel the Jewish people (and the Western Judeo-Christian culture which we helped found) face a continuing (a spiraling!) campaign of terror in which the most vulnerable members of both our’s and our enemy’s society are being used as weapons against us. Pre-school children in Gaza, the West Bank and in Madrassas all over the world (even in places in the U.S.) are being taught that it is a sacred duty to kill infidels- especially Jews. Children, women, easily duped young men- even the clinically mentally challenged are turned into walking bombs. Innocent Jewish civilians, women, children the elderly, whose only crime is that they are on the streets of Jerusalem, in a synagogue in Turkey, on an airplane, on a cruise ship, an Olympic athlete or just working in a Jewish Community building in Buenos Aires or Seattle are targeted because they are Jews. Excuse me, let me correct that, Because We Are Jews. 


As the stewards and guardians of the Torah and the progenitors of the Judeo-Christian civilization of the west, we Jews have preserved this Torah- kernel of the most positive and moral culture that has ever existed. The things we have had to do have not always been pretty- or even easily defended but they have brought us to this point. 

The fact remains, though, that we have always done our best to make it as decent as possible. When faced with two very close enemies, Midian and Moab who used their closeness against us; and who, moreover, were willing to prostitute their wives and daughters in order to dissipate and defeat us, the instincts of our people were actually merciful in the context. That ancient army, with the firebrand Pinchas in command, initially reacted, not by total annihilation as is often the custom in modern and ancient wars but by killing only the guilty- the men who had perverted their own lives and those of their women in order to destroy us. Only when the army returned victorious, did Moses in his anger inform them that the women who had allowed themselves to be so used and their sons would have to be killed also. The female children were still to be spared.

With all the trouble and sacrifice our forefathers have had to keep this book and to preserve its teachings, we owe it to ourselves to get over our trepidations and look honestly and openly at this story which has such a relevance for us today.

We need to realize that context works in both directions. If Pinchas and Moses were to come back to life today, they would have as great a problem understanding why Israel does not, today, end the Palestinian problem the same way as they ended the Midianite problem back then as we do understanding how they did what they did to the Midianites.

The times are different. We have evolved but, we are still faced with an enemy who dehumanizes his children, abuses his women and has declared his intention to destroy us- to kill us wherever he finds us. We must stop trying to fit the conflict into our preconceived modern notions of how a conflict “should” be fought. We have to fight the war that is being thrust upon us by an enemy who still lives and fights by ancient rules.
We must stop bewailing or denying the perversion of the other side as Golda Meir famously did when she said, “Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us” and protect ourselves from it with positive action. Otherwise, every Israeli child whose leg is blown off by a qassam in Sderot or whose head is bashed in on the beach only to have her killer set free to become a hero to those who want us dead is on your conscience; as is every Palestinian child who is used as a suicide bomber, human shield or just taught to idealize hatred and killing.

If we pay attention to the lessons of this parsha we will see that peace will not come easily when our enemies learn to love their children- they must first be taught that hate and violence is absolutely not going to work. Only Israel and Jews can teach them this and we are failing in our responsibility and as a result violence and hatred are working.

We here in America, like the tribes of Reuvane, Menashe and Gad are settled outside the land and this is where that part of today’s parsha comes in. Mattot means tribes and it means we have to participate. We need to renew the pledge to be in the vanguard of the battle line for our people. Not just for Israel but for ourselves and our children and for America. The Jihadis are not kidding when they chant “Death to the Jews!” and “Death to America!” and our first responsibility is to figure out how to stop the killing- not to understand why they feel so strongly. Midian and Moab had their “reasons” for hating and fearing too. It has always been there.

This parsha has been read every year in every synagogue for thousands of years but it has never been more important for us to really look at it and confront the reality it is showing us. That is the first step- just look at it and recognize what it is- and what is at stake. Then commit to some kind of action, at least learn about what is going on and be an outspoken defender of Israel’s right to exist in security.

For now, there is good news- We still have the power and the opportunity to exercise as much mercy as they allow us to. If we show resolve and willingness to assert our right to safety and security and they make an effort to act in their own best interest, it won’t be so bad. But the window will not stay open forever- Our two millennia of diaspora should have taught us that.

UPDATE
Because of the mixing of religion and politics and because I am fortunate to have a number of people of real depth and intelligence whom I respect and trust to fall back on when I feel I am on the edge, I sent the draft of this post to a few of those people as I was rushing to get it ready before sundown on Friday. It was a last minute cry for help and I got three very helpful responses. Here is a quote from my most Seraphic Friend screenwriter, and blogger Robert Avrech who's blog Seraphic Secret is smart, touching, interesting, informative and witty- any one of which would be enough for most people to achieve. Robert has given me permission to use this from his reply to my SOS email:

I have pondered the Midian slaughter, learned the glosses, and always came to the most simple conclusion—which you do too, in a manner—that this was the way warfare was conducted in the ancient world. If it was not carried out in this manner, you could be sure that the clan survivors would eventually return to extract savage vengeance.

There you have it- I took 2200 words and he says it in 60.

Nablus- Trashed or Staged?

Second Draft is working on a big story involving a report filed by CNN's Ben Wedeman a few days ago. His report was on Israel's efforts to deprive Hamas of the wherewithal to continue their assault on the PA and expand their terror campaign to the West Bank.

Wedeman's whole report (see it here) is disjointed and confused. There are good reasons why this veteran reporter has turned out such a shoddy report- more on that later- Second Draft's team is working on all aspects of this. I want to concentrate, for now, on a less spectacular aspect of this piece.

It starts with video filmed in an office. Here is the narration:

Offices ransacked. Shops welded shut, schools and clinics turned upsidedown,
This is the aftermath of an Israeli crackdown in the West Bank – on institutions Israel claims are linked to Hamas.
They raided this office of the Palestinian Authority responsible, among other things, fo managing the Mosques of Nablus.

Sounds innocent enough but Google that office up and you find that it is a key in the battle between Fatah and Hamas. Hassan Hilali who heads up the office and who Wedeman interviewed is major player in the effort by Fatah to deny Hamas access to the mosques- which, as we know, is how they recruit and organize. Its very cute of Wedeman to try to portray the office as a simple office that “manages” mosques” It makes it sound so harmless and religious.

According to Wedeman’s translation - “At 6:30 in the morning, recalls director Hassan Hilali, we came and were surprised to find the doors had been knocked down – files had been opened. “

This mild statement is not in line with the usual over the top hysteria with which most Palestinian accusations against Israel are delivered nor does it seem to square with the disorder that is pictured- desks in disarray and the floor strewn with debris. A closer look at the footage makes me more suspicious. One shot is of a small room with two desks. The two desks displayed about 14 seconds into the report appear to be undisturbed under a layer of loose stuff thrown on top of them. For instance, you can see in the photo below that there is an "in basket" in the corner of the desk in the right hand side of the frame and all the papers are still stacked "neat and tidy"- obviously either inspected carefully and put back in good order -or entirely untouched. The loose-leaf binders and other debris thrown on top of the desks are not torn apart or even opened- as as might be expected in a search where so much material is thrown around. It is as if someone is tried to make it appear as though a ransacking had occurred without too seriously disturbing the next day’s work on those papers.


Looking around that room a little more we see that only the very bottom doors of the wall cabinets are open. The upper doors and their contents seem to be undisturbed. We can see very clearly through the glass doors on one of the upper cabinets that the neatly stored books and papers on the shelves are still orderly and undisturbed. I don’t know about you but when I arrange my storage, the things that I use the most and are the most important are the ones up at eye-level not stuck away underneath in floor-level cabinets. If I were looking for something interesting/incriminating in someone’s office, I wouldn’t be looking exclusively down with the leftover stationary and ancient party decorations in the lower cabinets.

The larger room shown at :20 of the report shows that same odd way of searching for incriminating evidence. Only the lower, less accessible cabinets in the room have been opened and rifled. The floor is littered with what look like large tablecloths, shopping bags and boxes that might be the contianers that calculators and software might have come in even while books and files which might have been holding a trove of information are still visible and neatly stored in the glass-front cabinets above.


So, what is it? Trashed or Self-destructed?

Can't say for sure at this point but- These are the same happy folks who brought us al Durah, Jenin, Kfar Qana and Gaza Beach...

Case In Point- The Abuser Hits and Deflects- The Abused Says "He didn't mean it"

My last post points out how closely the behavior of the terrorists resembles that of abusive domestic partners. Even as I was putting the post up they were busy proving my point. Richard Landes has forwarded me these incredible pictures, taken by his daughter Noa Landes in the immediate aftermath of today's so called "bulldozer attack" in Jerusalem.

With every sly attempt, as today’s, to kill more jews without breaching the “ceasefire” so obviously that we have to admit it- it becomes more apparent that they only want to kill. Then, if the Israeli government has the spine to take measures to prevent murderers from East Jerusalem from getting jobs where they can get equipment like this to kill innocent people with, the helpful advice givers will say, "You are oppressing them and depriving them of their livelihood". Just like the fools who condemn a battered woman by telling her to go back to her husband rather than "tear apart the family" or "deprive the children of their father."

Some Father. Some Livelihood.

Even as the pusillanimous Israeli government began to try to put off any action by floating the theory that it was "an isolated act, the Palestinian Leader, Abbas, in the most cynical of ironic deceptions, called the attack an attempt to derail the peace process. So much deception and denial- you need a bulldozer to clear it away.

We have to stop the madness and suffering now. If you can see that it is fruitless to dialog and negotiate with a domestic abuser why can't you see that the Jihadis will never stop finding ways to do this.

For the good of Western Civilization and of the Palestinian people who suffer because of their ruthless leaders, defeat them!

What Do Israel and the US Have in Common with Battered Women?

...A lot more than you might think...

What would you say if you visited your sister or daughter in her first apartment and found that she had a boyfriend living there. Lets just say that he is half her height, uneducated, stays home all day living on the proceeds of a family inheritance, he is domineering, ignorant and a religious fanatic. What if you witnessed this roommate ordering her around like a slave and screaming at her- calling her every vile name in the book and telling her that she didn’t deserve to be alive. You might, at the very least, want her to take him to a counselor who could mediate a better relationship for them.

“Oh, yeah”, she says to you, “he doesn’t like to talk about it. When I ask him to talk to me, he just agrees with me until I’m done talking and promises he’ll act better from now on. So, then I agree to do whatever he wants me to do and he agrees to be nicer to me. But that never lasts long, I just wind up giving in more every time and he just gets worse and worse.

Then, the next time you see her she has a black eye and a missing tooth. When you ask her what happened, she says, “Oh, uh, Mr. X did that, but it wasn’t his fault. I deserved it.”

When you ask her what she means, she says, “I guess I was bad, Mr. X doesn’t like the way I behave, He says I am a devil woman and that he should kill me- But there’s nothing to worry about because I know, deep down, he really respects me as an individual and loves me and wants to live with me. Besides he promised he won’t do it again”

My guess is that this would not seem right to you.

What would you do? I can’t imagine that, in this day and age, any clear thinking person would not want to make sure that their loved one got out of that situation right away. Most, I think, would also like to see Mr. X arrested by the authorities and punished for his behavior. A good-sized majority would even consider making some kind of intervention themselves.

We know from the accumulated, important work done by the social sciences and publicized so effectively by the Media, that this is a very dangerous situation and one in which the abused party is sometimes powerless to extricate herself from the peril.

How many times have we heard of abused women staying in this kind of relationship against all advice and in the face of increasingly terrifying behavior?

So, then, what would you do the next time you visit and find her on crutches with a crooked and swollen nose. Would you take action then?

What if she called you on the phone one day and whispered to you that she was getting concerned because she had found a receipt on Mr. X’s nightstand- a receipt from the police department for an application he has made- for a license to buy and own firearms? When will you tell her that the time for talking is done- that its time to call the police? When will you insist? When will you intervene physically?

If this all seems self evident, think back. It wasn’t so easy to recognize these patterns only forty years ago. Back when I was in my teens this was all a much murkier territory. A man’s home was his “castle” and there were deep social taboos against “outsiders” meddling in “family matters”. It was the old patriarchal notion, noble and comforting in theory but regrettably undependable in reality, that the family is the one dependable shelter and comfort in life- that a paternal husband and his wife would be each others best and most dedicated guardians and caretakers. Of course, that system put the “man of the house” in a position to be either a brutal despot or, if he chose, a benevolent sovereign in the castle.

Not to minimize the complexity of the issue or the shame and pity of the cases that come to light weekly in the news media, but I think it is safe to say that the severity of this problem is substantially diminished from the time when a young woman in an abusive relationship would have nowhere to go and get no advice but “show him that you can be a good wife and maybe he’ll learn how to be a good husband” or “try to be nicer to him” or “cook him his favorite dinner” or “greet him with a smile and he’ll be happier”. Domestic abuse was always a betrayal of the ideal in our culture. But today it is one of the last vestiges of the decayed honor/shame family style that allowed some minority (albeit much too large a minority) of men to give vent to the violent results of their flawed personalities by battering their families.
People hid their shame much more back then and suffered greatly for it. Women were much more trapped and had far less opportunity to escape situations like this back then. There are many more shelters now, the law enforcement, therapeutic community, social welfare professionals and the society at large are much more sensitive and aware. There are web sites, books, radio shows, movies and even classes in school. Not that the problem is solved, but as a culture we have made a commitment to a fundamental correction of the cultural weaknesses that allow it to go on.

So, it is with a sudden and overwhelming dismay that I realized, only last week, that two of the true loves of my life have allowed themselves to be locked into the horror of a battered woman and I had been missing the warning signs for years. What’s even worse, almost the entire world has responded just exactly the way those unhelpful advice givers used to in the past.

Thinking back, I can see that the signs were there as much as forty years ago. It began to dawn on me as I was reading (for the second time) the Introduction of Michael Ledeen’s excellent book The Iranian Time Bomb. If you have not read this book, it would be very hard to imagine how you could have a full appreciation of the nature of the Iranian threat.

Ledeen cites a long history of violence by Iran and her surrogates (Hizbollah, Hamas, etc…,) against the U.S., Israel and the west. Interspersed with these violent attacks were dozens of pathetic and futile attempts to “engage,” placate and negotiate by all five U.S. presidents to have served since that time.

Carter, whose hopes of reelection were ruined by the hostage crisis, Ledeen writes “…offered to arm the revolutionary regime within days of the fall of the shah”.

Regan’s administration was humiliated and taunted:

“…In the 1980s, Hizbollah operating in tandem with the PLO organized suicide bombing attacks against the French and American Marine barracks (241 U.S. dead and 58 French), and the American Embassy in Beirut, as well as the kidnappings of American missionaries and military and intelligence officers. Two of the latter were then tortured to death.”

Ledeen gives us Reagan’s response:

“…the Reagan Administration secretly sold weapons to Tehran and provided the mullahs with military intelligence to help in their war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq”.

Then there was the Clinton Era and Ledeen continues the list:
In the 1990s, Hizbollah conducted lethal attacks against Jewish targets in Argentina, for which leaders of the Iranian regime have been indicted.”

“The 1998 Embassy bombings in East Africa, for which al Qaeda took full credit, were in large part Iranian operations.”

“…the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 American Air Force personnel were killed and 372 wounded.”

“…the Clinton Administration secretly permitted the Iranians to arm Bosnian Muslim fighters in the Balkans, and secretly permitted the Russians to arm the Iranians and support their nuclear program.”
“Clinton showered largesse on the Iranians, and even dispatched his secretary of state to apologize for real and imagined American sins in decades past. Encouraged by the election reformist Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, we opened a channel of communications to the highest levels of the regime, liberalized our visa policies, expanded cultural exchanges, and removed the Islamic Republic from the State Department s lists of state sponsors of terrorism and narcotrafficking governments. We even eased the trade embargo. Then came Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s open apology. She apologized for the American role in restoring the shah to his throne in the 1950s. She apologized for American support to the shah prior to the revolution, and for regrettably shortsighted help given to Iraq during the war.”

“Clinton’s many gestures, concessions and giveaways, like those of his predecessors, produced a swift kick to a delicate part of our national anatomy. Supreme Leader Ali Khamene summarily rejected the American demarche, and reiterated the Islamic Republic’s passionate hatred for the American Great Satan.”

Under George W. Bush it has taken far too long to recognize long to identify and move against the Iranian source of aid and personnel to the Insurgency in Iraq. Ledeen says of this,
“This latest intelligence failure proved fatal to a considerable number of Americans, Iraqis, British, Italian, Spanish, Polish and other members of the coalition, along with many more Iraqis, in and out of uniform.”
Time after time Iran has bloodied our nose, killed our people and purposely destabilized their part of the world and George W Bush has, at least until recently, behaved as though it is America who owes Iran the apology.

More quotes from The Iranian Time Bomb:

“…following the defenestration of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Indeed, Iran attempted to foment civil war all over Iraq, aiding both sides in every potential conflict, from Sunni vs. Turkemans vs. Kurds, Arabs vs. Kurds, and so on. It was simply a continuation of the mullahs’ war against America, which had been under way for nearly three decades.”

“Even the Bush Administration, which famously placed Iran alongside North Korea and Iraq as a charter member of the Axis of Evil, pursued a grand bargain with the mullahs, and American officials sometimes made statements as when Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage proclaimed that the Islamic Republic was a democracy- that can only be explained as an effort to woo the Iranian leaders.”

“…the Iranians have shown no desire for reconciliation; quite the contrary, unless you think killing Americans on a scale considerably larger than the tempo of murder in the Clinton years represents some odd form of mating dance…The terror war against us now extends to four continents, running from Thailand and Indonesia to India and Pakistan, down the Horn of Africa to Somalia and Yemen and back up to Afghanistan, on to Iraq, Palestine/Israel, and Lebanon, and thence to Europe, the United States and South America. The Iranians are involved in every one of those theaters…They believe they defeated Israel in the summer war of 2006, that they will expand their control over Lebanon in the near future, and in relatively short order destroy the Jewish State. They fully expect to compel us to surrender, and submit to their will.”

Submit to their will! Yes, that is the goal of all abusers. The pathetic, abusive spouse tries to change the all too real failure of his personality and identity by having complete domination of his most intimate partner and if he can’t have domination, he will destroy her. He will never accept that there are limits to his power. The Jihadists are so invested in the supremacy of political Islam that they cannot abide a world in which Jews and Christians are more educated, more productive and, for now at least, still (in spite of their vast oil wealth) more powerful than they are.

And it is apparent that The United States of America has, for some time been caught in a relationship that mirrors the spiraling, escalating violence of domestic abuse. Think about our reactions and compare them with the patterns found in spousal abuse:

• Denial (war is not the answer, they don't really mean they want to kill us)
  
• Guilt (why do they hate us?)
  
• Bargaining (restrict free speech, lowering our standards of behavior and responsibility on the basis of multiculturalism)
  
• Depression and self-hatred (bushitler, code pink) etc…
  

The resemblance is no accident. The Islamic world and Iran in particular does not view the relationships between nations the way we do for the very same reasons that they experience the relationships between individuals differently than we do. In The West we have come to value mutual stability, peace and prosperity above all. In Iran’s world it is about Honor and Shame, about who has power over whom. At the international level it produces terrorism and conquest vs. diplomacy and economic cooperation and at the intimate level it produces submission or honor killing vs. intimacy or divorce. Only in the world of international relations there is no divorce- only war. So while we keep trying to establish a future of intimacy and cooperation, they keep nursing resentment and hatred.

It is not that, in The West, we have perfected our ideal relationship- we obviously have not. It is that we hold the mutual and beneficial as the ideal to strive for. It is why Israel accepted the original partition plan in 1948 and the Arabs did not. It is also why when America was subjected to mass murder, the first reaction of a large proportion of our population was “Why do they hate us?” Was it also the reason why Israel, so much more powerful, organized and accomplished than her tormentors has never used her power to overwhelm and eliminate the Palestinian forces and disperse the refugee camps that support them?

Yes, Israel behaves as a prototypical battered woman too! Actually, Israel even more so! She is subjected to the same pattern- she sustains savage attack after savage attack and her weak, ugly, hate-filled little bed-mate in that narrow little sliver of Israel/Palestine deflects the blame for the violence onto her. All the while the abusive little savage is armed, egged on and supported by the same Iranian fanatics and Saudi plutocrats that have been tormenting America. And a whole world of on-lookers cluck their tongues, tell her to be nice to him, pander to his twisted desires, expect her to submit, placate and even apologize. In the end, even her apology is not enough for them, they will insist that she atone for the miracle blessing of her own rebirth – won out of the ashes of the holocaust and the Arab alliance with Hitler they will not be happy until she admits to their accusation that she does not deserve to live and commits suicide in expiation.

This is the ultimate in what is known as ‘Blaming the Victim” Here is a paragraph from an article on a women’s web site on this issue
“

Victims often go through a period of blaming themselves for their partners’ violence. In reality, we are each responsible for our own behavior. In their efforts to avoid responsibility for their actions, batterers can be quite adept at deflecting blame onto the victim, telling her and others how things she did or failed to do “made” him do it. Unfortunately, there are some traditional cultural ideas that support his reasoning and that are still embraced by some members of our society. That such notions exist in the culture at large, makes it easier for the victim to internalize blame and harder to fight the deflection of responsibility, especially when other people echo the batterer’s excuse-making. Besides being illogical and profoundly unfair, victim blaming traps the victim in a cycle in which she keeps trying (and failing) to avoid abuse by satisfying, and even anticipating, the abuser’s every whim and mood. She fails, of course, because only he is responsible for his behavior.”
In Israel’s case the behavior of the Arab world, even leaving aside that of the Jihadis, has been unforgivable from the start. Every Arab country in the world that was able to field an army, combined forces to try to murder the infant nation of Israel on the very evening of her birth. Even though she was formed in a legal and morally irreproachable way the leaders of the Islamist ad Arab nationalist movements have remained adamant in demanding her destruction ever since. That might have given the world a clue- if they cared about Israel. The fact that the media refers to the violence that results from the warfare to destroy Israel in misleading terms such as “the cycle of violence,” “collective punishment” or “reprisals” shows that they have chosen to ignore the reality of the abusive situation and to “blame the victim”.

Here in the U.S., 1979 should have marked our “consciousness-raising”. The hostage crisis, which began in November of that year, was a grave insult- not just to U.S. interests and prestige but, even more significantly, to the entire civilized process that governs problem resolution and basic relationships between countries. Just like the first time an abuser hauls off and smacks his or her spouse, it was a rupture in the very fabric of the relationship, a rupture that should have told us something fundamental about what we were up against. Diplomatic protocol is a voluntary commitment to live within guideline that foster a civilized approach to living together in a mutually beneficial way. It is, in a way, the inter-national equivalent of “marriage vows” for inter-personal interaction.
There is a war of annihilation declared against the U.S. (and all of Western Civilization) just as there is against Israel. The fact that the nation that wants to annihilate us is not able to do so today is not really relevant.

Here is Ledeen again:

“From the moment of the overthrow of the shah, the leaders of the Islamic Republic have declared, and waged, war against the infidels of the West, above all against Americans and Israelis. The hostage crisis that doomed the Carter presidency was the opening salvo of a long war against America, branded the Great Satan by Khomeini.”

“What are they thinking?” Who cares.
“Why are they attacking us?” Not the right question.
“Why do they hate us”? If you really want to know, listen to what they say. We occupy ourselves with these questions to our own detriment. Condi Rice, as did Albright, Powell, Kissinger and all the others, goes on assuming that she can strike deals based on mutual interests and our respective national priorities. Ledeen gives us a quote from Khomeini that should have disabused us of that folly thirty years ago:

“We do not worship Iran. We worship Allah,” he declared, “For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land (Iran) burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

To me, that sounds like nothing more than a scaled-up, megalomaniacal, religious fanatic version of an abusive husband, so shamed by his life and so committed to preserving his compensatory illusion of complete omnipotence and control by dominating and controlling “his woman\family\world” that he is ready to take her/them/it with him in a murder-suicide.

He couldn’t be more explicit but our diplomats (like our media) ignore his warning. Like the battered spouse, paralyzed by the old fiction of the sacrosanct and unfailingly protective patriarchal family, the soothing but misguided assumptions of multiculturalism and realpolitik have combined to make western civilization into the abused captive of the Islamist Jihad, powerless to use our superior power to defend our civilization.

And now we have the hapless man/infant Obama saying he would sit right down and talk with the mullahs as soon as he is president. He’s pro-dialog. Any part-time social worker in a woman’s shelter can tell you that dialog is just fine when you are negotiating how to share the house work. When violence has happened more than once and is escalating, when that certain someone is declaring an intention to kill you, dialog is a death trap.

And that’s not even the worst news. There is no need for the drama of a whispered phone call about it, they have told us what they plan to do. Ahmadinejad has been crowing about it for a few years now. Don’t look now, but Iran is going out to get The Big Gun. The Iranian nuclear project raises the ante for us just like the gun does for the battered woman in our original example. They have already specifically said they want to use it on Israel. We know they want to destroy all of The West and don’t care if their own country “goes up in smoke” to achieve the ascendance of their brand of Islam. What further question could there be about the gravity of the situation? How many times will we go back to that squalid apartment and try to cook them “just the right dinner”- and get slapped around for our trouble before we get the picture and realize we have to address this as a real threat?
A battered woman can sometimes escape the confrontation by going to a shelter but her abuser is almost always a lost cause. Israel is permanently stuck in the burning bed of “the river to the sea” with the Palestinian abuser and his howling troop of relatives swarm all around her borders. In the U.S. we are still so dependent on Islamist oil that we are forced into a co-dependant, connubial hell. Our options are limited – we have no choice but to find a way to force them to let us live.

Allow me one more Quote from Ledeen:

“We can win or lose, but we cannot escape this confrontation. As Salim Mansur puts it, “To achieve peace and freedom the most bigoted elements within the Muslim world- the Jihadi Muslims and their allies- need to be irrevocably defeated.”

I reached the same conclusion in my series on the erroneous but useful comparison between the American Indian and the Palestinians, conclusive defeat is the only way to resolve the conflict between cultures that are so completely unable to understand each other and whose people have such entirely different desires for their lives.

Welcome to Sderot

Here is a chilling formulation of something you already know to be true. It is from JINSA INFO Report #781.

“For Hamas, the key is to keep the rocket attacks below an understood threshold and Israel's response will be tolerable, precise and produce minimal collateral (Palestinian) damage. The Hamas pattern is to fire one, two or three rockets at Sderot. Wait a few days and do it again. Injure two, three, four Israelis. Kill one or two, but not more than that - this week. Increase the range and accuracy of the rockets incrementally. Hit Ashkelon, but just once. Then wait. Hit a shopping center, but if no one is killed, the Israeli response is unlikely to threaten Hamas rule. If Israel does retaliate, the world will probably be more annoyed by the "disproportionate response" than the original rocket attack.”

The report goes on with an interesting analysis of Israel’s military doctrine and how she is currently being forced by world opinion and the demopathic tactics of her enemies (internal and external) to fight outside the comfort level of her defensive doctrine. As I was reading, though, something was bothering me. I was still stuck on the seemingly more limited issue of the terror involved. Who are these people who are being killed by the rockets? How do they live knowing that, only if some, unspecified number of them of them are killed and maimed, will their government be moved to do something about the terror under which they live? This dangerous and painful situation is only partially a product of the Arab/Islamist dream of annihilation of Israel. It is made possible by a combination of ruthless internal enemies (e.g. the far left peace movement), clueless dupes (e.g. Olmert, Livni, et al) and shortsighted erstwhile foreign “friends” who do not understand the reality of the threat. This motley assortment of fools and instigators hold Israel’s defense establishment, her regard for her own citizens and, indeed, her very moral, civic, ethical and intellectual integrity hostage.

When Shirley Jackson's famous short story The Lottery was first published sixty years ago in the June 26, 1948 edition of The New Yorker magazine, it set off the most violent reaction the magazine had ever experienced. In the story, the reader is gradually drawn into a nightmare- as what seems to be a “normal” American farming village gathers for some sort of annual community gathering. There is a lottery involved and little by little it becomes apparent that it is a “selection process”. The reader’s curiosity gives way to bemusement as the author quietly seeds in ominous details that build a sense of foreboding. Then, near the end of the story there is a sudden shift to horror when we realize that the “slightly too” nonchalant dialogue and mysterious references have been leading up to the revelation of a sacrificial rite. One person in the community is chosen by lottery to be stoned to death- sacrificed for “the good of all”.

It is little wonder that the story caused the explosion of controversy that it did. A scant three years after World War II, the cataclysmic battle against totalitarianism, here was a story that hinted that the enemy was not dead, but could lie ever so close beneath the surface in the most unlikely of places. Is this lottery totalitarianism? I think it is. It is a society that holds itself hostage in a suicide pact. The eerily believable rationalization that the lottery must be carried out because the welfare of the group is everything- the individual is nothing- is the brutal signature of fascism.

The weird, unconvincing quality of the “reason” that stoning one member of the community to death is “for the good of all” is also a dead giveaway. It is true that an oblique reference to the sacrifice having a good effect on the corn is made but there is a dispiriting vagueness about it and nobody seems to endorse it convincingly. In fact, the agricultural pretext is really irrelevant. The central drama of The Lottery is the absence of individual human value. In my post about Islamofascism, I quoted Louis Menand (ironically, writing in the New Yorker), “official ideology can be, and usually is, absurd on its face, and known to be absurd by the leaders who preach it.” This is another hallmark of totalitarian systems. These lottery victims are the moral equivalent of suicide bombers, human shields and hostages. They have no power to achieve anything. Their own genuine emotions and aspirations are anathema to the system in which they live. Only their annihilation is of value. Every one of them is a martyr- most of them just aren’t dead yet. They are, in every sense imaginable, dead men walking.

I thought of this when I read JINSA report #781. The people of Sderot listen for the sirens all day and all night 365 days a year and all must wonder if today is the day that a rocket will come through the ceiling in a busy dining hall or a kindergarten classroom or a high school auditorium and finally be “enough” to force the government to use the power it has always had- but may not always retain- to eliminate the threat. They wait for the government to act. They pray for the rest of the world to recoil in horror. They face each day with bravery and hope. Just like the people in Jackson’s story, they are hostages.

Apologists, multiculturalists and advocates who try to convince themselves that the horror and savagery of Jihad is somehow lessened by pointing out the great (mostly ancient) achievements of Islamic culture are fond of pointing out that modern mathematics were made possible by the development of the concept of zero by Muslim mathematicians. This makes sense. It should be no surprise that one of Islam's last real contributions to human progress was the discovery of zero. It appears to me that, at least under the most fundamental application of their religion-as-political-system, zero is the human condition.

JINSA Report #781 concludes with this:

“It is hard to advocate large-scale military action against Hamas (or Hezbollah). The price will be high. But if Israel is waiting until a "Passover Massacre"-type terrorist attack and plans then to do what it knows it has to do, why wait? To wait is to give Hamas more time to import Iranian weapons, train its forces and build defenses - allowing the building a greater deterrent to IDF action out of fear of greater IDF losses completes the inversion of the defensive principles that have served Israel to well until now.”

Why wait, indeed. It is not just defensive principals that are inverted here; it is morality, integrity and simple logic. We know that Hamas has sworn to eradicate Israel. They say so freely.  

If there was outrage in 1948 over the publication of that short story, how could there not be outrage today when an Israeli government dares Hamas to kill one more Israeli and see what happens and when they do, dares them to kill another one. Over and over again the children of Sderot draw lots and when one of them is torn apart by ball bearings or has a leg blown off, what happens? Is it somehow “for the good of all” that they suffer?
Now the Israeli government has arranged a cease-fire insuring, not eventual peace but even more death and suffering. It is not even necessary to believe the predictions of JINSA on what a cease-fire means. Even if you refuse to see the Iranian shipments arriving and the burrowing and trenching of the fortification builders, there is no need to believe the analysts, only recall what has happened to every other cease-fire in that conflict. They have all been broken by the slaughter of innocent Israelis. It is as regular and relentless as the annual lottery in Jackson’s story. Who will be the first one to die when the cease-fire breaks? Is it worth it or is it as futile and empty as the annual sacrifice chosen by lot?

That answer must come from the Israeli government. When suffering appears endless and accelerating and you begin to doubt its value, the answer must provided out of action and dedication. Abraham Lincoln, speaking from Gettysburg a place of great violence and slaughter rededicated himself and his nation to a higher purpose when he said, “…we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The Israeli government must reaffirm their purpose the same way, and they must not shrink from committing themselves to facing the realities and acting accordingly.

Do you believe that it is about The Nakba or The Occupation or The Settlements? Do you allow yourself the fantasy that there is a way to stop the madness- a sacrifice big enough to satisfy this ravenous cult?

Then what did the innocent victims die for on 9/11- or Madrid- or London- the Darfur? This is part of the same grotesque lottery that has been going on for 1500 years. In spite of the sacrifice of the innocent victims of 9/11, it is all too easy for us to deny that we are hostages too, but those “zero beings” from the Islamist void will not be happy to delete only Israel. They have "selected" them for annihilation first but it is nothing personal, you understand, just a sacrifice to prove there is no value to human life. There is no value to anything that does not affirm the spiritual vacuum of Islamism. It is not because they worship Allah, nor is it is that they believe Mohammed was a prophet. It is that they believe that he was the only prophet, that they know the absolute truth and that it is their mission to ignore (and destroy) all evidence to the contrary. If you believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they will not rest until they destroy you too.

The Jihadists are not interested in cease-fires or peace. They are happy to tell you what they want. They want the world to live under Shari’a law. They believe that anyone that doesn’t want that is sub-human and deserves to be killed. This is nothing less than another confrontation with the evil of fascist, totalitarianism, and that is a beast whose hunger cannot be sated with souls, nor can its thirst be slaked with blood. The lottery they are holding is to determine not if you will be destroyed but when you will be destroyed. We are all citizens of Sderot- its just that most of us don’t know it yet.

Dr. Irad ben Zvi Treats the Naked Shame of Arab Bigotry

One year and two days ago, I posted the story of my First Encounter with the Beast. Within twenty-four hours that first post was picked up on by several of the big, established blogs. Soon, my newly minted blog was swamped with traffic. By the time I got Site Meter in place three days later the Initial surge of traffic was starting to taper down but I was still seeing a thousand hits per day for a couple of weeks after. The traffic was not just referrals from other blogs. It was coming in from mail clients as people were emailing it around the world via the Internet.

I began this blog by offering it as a public forum in the hope that more people would step forward and tell their own stories. When the stories came too slowly, I began to write up more of my own thoughts. They've been well received and Breath of the Beast has grown.

I have never given up hope of hearing from others, though, because I believe that the sharing of authentic experience Is the most effective way to spread the awareness of the danger that stalks us all. I have been honored to post the first person accounts of five courageous and insightful men and women who have experienced brushes with the multi-headed beast of Caliphate Islam with its terrorism (Erica Sherman), misogyny (Mark Nelson, Jim Glendenning and Phyllis Chesler), and the insipid multiculturalism (Nancy Coppock) that enables it.


Now, just a year into the enterprise, Irad ben Zvi has stepped forward to be the sixth. His is a very serious and subtle account of a few incidents that have made up his beast encounter. It is a unique perspective and his observations are most revealing. Irad ben Zvi is an Israeli physician, working in Chicago. Here is his story:

I have a patient in my medical practice, a very gentle and polite Muslim Egyptian. We became friendly over the years, and he brought in his wife as a new patient. She was a Coptic Christian from a well-to-do family. She had a "liberal" upbringing and she even attended university in Cairo. Before moving to the US, she lived in Gaza and visited Tel-Aviv many times. She told me about her relatives living in London, South America, and the US. She seemed to come from a truly modern, cosmopolitan family. She had a nephew, also a Christian, who moved to Gaza. I asked her if her nephew felt intimidated by the Hamas government in Gaza. She answered that there are only 5,000 Christians in Gaza today, and they have all learned to keep a low profile. When I asked her why her nephew stayed in Gaza despite discrimination against Christians, she replied that he wanted to "fight the Zionists." I asked her why Gazans were still fighting after the Israelis had already left Gaza? She replied that Gazans are defending themselves from the Zionists, who threaten to "shoot every Arab and throw them into the sea!" I told her this is utter nonsense. I reminded her that this quote came from Egyptian president Gamal Nasser in 1967, and originally referred to Arab intentions toward the Jews. I then asked her why the good people of Gaza don't stop the few radical terrorists in their midst from firing rockets into Sderot? She replied that everyone in Gaza supports the rocket attacks. "Why?" I asked incredulously, to which she replied that it was a part of the struggle against the "Zionist occupation." I reminded her that Sderot was over a mile from the border of Gaza and well within the 1949 Armistice Lines that defined the State of Israel until the 1967 War. I also pointed out that Sderot has no military bases, and that the rockets are hurting innocent civilians. She replied melodramatically: "When the people of Gaza look out across the border to Sderot, they see their former homes. They yearn for their land! They just want their homes back!" Her impassioned pleas were worthy of an Oscar®. But this critic doesn't buy such nonsense. Gaza residents would need super-human vision to see their homes from over a mile away, past security barriers and walls. More importantly, if they wanted their homes back so badly, then why are they destroying them with rockets and mortars? Perhaps I was taking her too literally. English is her second language, after all. Perhaps she was speaking metaphorically. So I re-stated the question: "If, for the sake of argument, Sderot was built on the site of a previous Arab village, why then should innocent people living in Sderot today have to suffer for a 60 year old battle they had nothing to do with? If an Arab really had proof of ownership of any land in Israel, then I am certain there are dozens of Israeli lawyers willing to represent them in front of the Israeli Supreme Court. These disputes can be resolved without a single rocket fired." She completely ignored my appeal to judicial conflict resolution, and repeated the hackneyed phrase that "Palestinians are desperate! They have nothing left to loose!" She was clearly unwilling to address the moral implications of terrorism. From her perspective, the displacement of Arabs 60 years ago was a crime that deserves eternal worldwide media attention, and justifies bloody vigilante retribution against innocent bystanders today. In stark contrast, the present-day suffering, displacement, and deaths of completely innocent Israeli civilians is not criminal, and barely deserves acknowledgment in any media reports. If hers was the voice of liberal, educated, and affluent Arabs, then I, too, have felt the breath of the beast.

I eventually told her that I was born in Tel-Aviv, that my father was Ben-Gurion's bodyguard, and that I strongly support preserving Israel as a Jewish state. She was immediately embarrassed for having spoken so ill of Israelis. She realized I had caught her in the act of spreading false propaganda. I had exposed her anti-Semitism. When her husband returned to see me, he brought a box of halvah as a present, and he apologized, not for anything she said specifically, but for her "getting carried away." They both still see me, and they even referred their children as patients. The lesson I learned is that political correctness is not the answer to conflict resolution. Political correctness creates a false veneer of civility that hides deep seated hatred. If the source of the hatred is never addressed, it will never be resolved, especially if the source is misinformation.

I will admit that it doesn't always work out positively. An Iranian patient once visited my office, and, upon learning that I was Israeli, never came back. Yet another Iranian family has returned frequently and brought in their children. I am also friendly with a deeply religious Pakistani family. One of the sons has even taken flying lessons! My family ate at their house. The men and women gathered in separate parts of the house. We watched them pray after the meal, and we even engaged in a lively discussion about Israel. I am certain that I am the only Israeli they have ever met in their lives. Our families still join for social gatherings, and I feel perfectly comfortable in their home. While I would not feel safe visiting Pakistan, here in the United States I feel secure in engaging my would-be enemies in friendly political discussions.

Frank discussions are the most productive. During all my conversations, I never engage in personal attacks, and I never raise my voice. I also never back away from the facts, no matter how inconvenient they may be. By standing my ground, metaphorically speaking, I establish my self dignity. Only then could I confidently extend my hand and affirm my Arab friend's dignity. Middle East debates have the potential of becoming highly emotionally charged. I am cautious in avoiding emotionally labile personalities, in choosing the topic of discussion, and in deciding when to start and stop a discussion. My discussions have also been restricted to individuals with stable careers and at least some Western education.

One consistent observation I made from all of these encounters is that, by gaining the respect of my potential enemies, I could create lasting friendships. I learned that religious Muslims respect Jews who are knowledgeable about Judaism; secular Arabs respect Jews who are knowledgeable about history. Everyone respects a Jew who has a strong sense of his/her own identity, and who doesn't apologize for it. I learned that in Arab culture, rhetoric is a well developed art form. Everything and anything can be used in the service of persuasion, including a combination of facts, fiction, poetry, hyperbole, sweetness, and graphic violence. One moment I may hear a sincere, impassioned plea for Israel to "just give Palestinians a chance to show the goodness in their hearts." Yet, when I point out the inconvenient fact that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel, I am told not to pay any attention to that, "it is all just rhetoric." I am reminded of the haggling that goes on in the Arab markets, where the cost of a rug can start at $1000, and ends up at $20. But I am quick to point out that Hamas not only uses violent rhetoric, they act on it. Sometimes debates become contests of who can recite the most historical facts. If I get the upper hand, the debate will suddenly morph into recitations about international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. If I successfully rebut these arguments, the discussion swerves into poetic sentimentalism about human rights and dignity. If I counter with the need for Jewish rights and dignity, I may get hit with accusations of Jewish racism. If I counter with Arab racism and point out the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands, the conversation can take yet another turn. It can seem frustrating and futile. I often wonder if anything I am saying has any influence on them. If it is nothing more than a chess match, then all I can hope to accomplish is to gain their respect. It may seem like a lot of work for seemingly little effect, but I do believe it lays a foundation from which one can build. At the very least, I show that I am not afraid to talk face-to-face, and that I care enough to argue.

What have I learned from my Christian patients? Regardless of the denomination, the more devout they are in their faith, the friendlier they are toward me as a Jew, and the more sympathetic they are toward Israel. The most fervent Zionist I know is a Messianic Jew. We get along very well and share many of the same concerns about the world. Yes, he did invite me to worship at his church, but I didn't let that bother me. Instead, I suggested that I give his congregation a presentation about "Israel and the New Anti-Semitism." We're still working out the details. To all my Christian friends, I wish you a Very Merry Christmas! (editor's note: see this post- http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2007/12/plea-for-merry-christmas.html ) I am truly overwhelmed by the love and support I have received from all of you.
Finally, to my liberal, secular, self-effacing Jewish friends, I wish you luck. You may think you are building cross-cultural bridges. In reality, you are building a house of cards. While you may show deep and abiding respect to your Arab and Muslim friends, they do not respect you. They see you as traitors to your own people. They see you as weak, immoral and unprincipled. The more you give, in your attempt to buy their friendship, the more they will demand from you, and the less they will respect you.

In his accompanying email Irad added:

My feelings towards my Arab and Muslim friends are mixed. I am fully aware that
they can turn against me at any time. But I try to set aside my feelings while
pursuing a more important goal. The only way to learn about a rival is to stay
close to them. I certainly don't work for any government, but I understand how
Israel excels in human intelligence. I instinctively want to learn as much as I
can about them. I want to know what they think about me, and where they get
their information.
Perhaps I can convince them to seek different sources of
information. As far as changing Islam's attitudes toward dhimmi, that will
probably take a few more centuries, so I don't try to argue about such
fundamental problems in the religion. I am convinced that cautious political
engagement is important. My father told me that during all of Israel's wars, the
Israeli government was in constant contact with its enemies, using back
channels. I see the wisdom in that. Unfortunately, I don't see much wisdom in
the current Israeli government. But, in time, they too shall pass.

In typical Israeli fashion, Irad does not speak directly of his feelings but his story may have even more emotional impact because of this reticence. The doctor-patient relationship is an interesting twist on the Beast Encounter in three dimensions. First, because a physician may have a very personal power over his patients. He can tell them that they "must" eat, behave and even live differently; he evaluates and informs them of the state of their body. By the state of their bodies he knows things about them that they may not even admit to themselves. He sees them naked in body and soul. This power relationship is complicated by the Arab honor-shame culture in which it is considered to be acceptable to lie, dissemble and behave dishonorably unless other people know (and verbalize) that you are guilty of those things. The whole situation is redolent of the Court Jews who, down through the centuries, served Caliphs and Sheiks while being treated as dhimmis.

Irad is no dhimmi. He gives as good as he gets and I'll wager he has more of an effect on his Arab patients than he gives himself credit for. His description of the typical Arab debating sequence of wild accusation and mis-representation of historical fact, cynical argumentation of dubious legalisms, and pathetic appeal to shame and emotion, all with the express aim not of getting to a resolution of the problem but of exhausting the resources and resistance of the opposition rings absolutely true. It strips the cynical honor-shame (anyone interested in a very clear explanation of honor-shame should look here) tactics naked and exposes the hypocrisy of it. His goodwill and open-mindedness is combined with exactly the right amounts of knowledge, realism and self-preservation. If we only had more like him!

Indian Guilt and the American View of Islam Part I

Thirty years ago, in a lecture hall at Boston University, I first began to gain an insight into the impenetrable wall of ambiguity that we face when we try to understand other cultures. I was an undergraduate majoring in Anthropology. Our professor had just completed a lecture for the American Indian (I seem to recall they were still called Indians back then) survey course. In that day’s lecture he had made a comment to the effect that it was not possible for an Indian woman of a certain tribe (I can’t remember which one) to leave her husband. A feminist student took exception and approached him after the lecture and I happened to be a bystander as the professor patiently tried a number of ways of explaining to her that there was simply nowhere for a woman to go- no matter what her reason for leaving. In the lives of nomadic peoples there are no homeless shelters and the only survivable economic unit is a traditional family in which every individual played a very specific and confined role. This was clearly not acceptable to my classmate. She put up a vigorous protest, “surely she could go to a friend’s tepee- or set out for another village- even, in a dire circumstance, go back to her parents.” The more the professor smiled and tried to explain that there were simply no resources in such a society to allow for such life choices and that it was a survival issue not a gender-bias one, the more incensed she became. It wasn’t clear to me whether she was arguing in order to get him to admit that he was wrong about his observation or because she somehow felt that putting up a fight about it now could effect some sort of retroactive change for her Indian sisters that lived over a century ago. Then I realized that she was so incensed because like so many students in class she had a finely detailed and impossibly utopian imaginary picture in her mind of what Indian life was like and she simply didn’t want to give up that rosy, personally relevant preconception. This made a very strong impression on me. She was speechless with rage that the professor was accusing her innocent, noble Indians, the people she was convinced were so much closer to truly enlightened and pure beings of being chauvinist, Neanderthal dorks. I was filled with a new appreciation of how prejudiced, ignorant and agenda-driven my fellow intellectuals-in-training were.

Some time later, perhaps as a response, that same professor used the following quote from D.H. Lawrence’s book, Mornings in Mexico. I think it conveys very well the problem of understanding a culture so different from one’s own and it offers an insight into the clash of cultures that is difficult for a westerner to grasp.

“It is impossible for white people to approach the Indian without either sentimentality or dislike. The common, healthy, vulgar white usually feels a certain native dislike of those drumming aboriginals. The highbrow invariably lapses into sentimentalism like the smell of bad eggs. Why? – Both reactions are due to the same feeling in the white man. The Indian is not in line with us. He’s not coming our way. His whole being is going a different way from ours. And the minute you set eyes on him you know it. And then, there are only two things you can do. You can detest the insidious devil for having an utterly different way from our own great way. Or, you can perform the mental trick, and fool yourself and others into believing that the befeathered and bedaubed darling is nearer to the true ideal gods than we are. The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness. Our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indian. The two ways, the two streams are never to be united. They are not even to be reconciled. There is no bridge, no canal of connection. The sooner we realize this, and accept this, the better, and leave off trying with fulsome sentimentalism, to render the Indian in our own terms.”

I want to be clear, I am in no way saying (and Lawrence wasn’t either) that there is anything wrong, defective or inferior about the Native American. I am saying two things:
1. Once exposed to Western Civilization the Indian way of life was doomed.
2. The life and culture of Indians was so vastly different from ours that it is simply impossible for us to understand the magnitude of the difference.

That being understood, Lawrence had it exactly right and his perception is equally valid when applied to the modern confrontation with Arabian Caliphate Islam. The “highbrows” he was referring to correspond precisely to today’s modern liberals and the rest of the progressive left wing. That fulsome sentimentality he identified in the highbrows is more than matched by the guilty/romantic response of today’s left to the idiotic, provocative accusations of humiliation, cultural degradation and imperialism leveled at all of the west by the Caliphatists.

ShrinkWrapped has a true story on his blog of a client of his who had a particularly bad case of this contradiction. ShrinkWrapped generalizes from this patient’s pathology- “New York liberalism consists largely of sympathy for the deprived, guilt over one's affluence and advantages, and anxiety over aggression and competition. It is a political philosophy that rests on a deep well of emotion and a small dollop of rationality.” ShrinkWrapped is exactly right- what he says goes right to the core of the matter.

Guilt is indeed a powerful force and, in America. Liberal illogic and guilt are inextricably tangeled up together in the history of our relationship with the American Indian. The American Indian is the essential starting point (every bit as much as the colonial past and the holocaust are for Europe) for an American discussion of how to understand Islam in the modern world. There are two main strands in that tangle:

1. For many Americans our historic and emotional relationship with the “native” population is our emotional template for our reaction to the Israeli/Arabic drama If we respond only emotionally to it we miss the very real differences between the two situations.
2. The cultural confrontation with the American Indian and the change it effected between two unequal and very different cultures is a very powerful paradigm that can help us to understand the clash with Islam- if we read it carefully.

The mistake of, to paraphrase Lawrence, “rendering the Islamic Arab in their own terms” has caused many a true, reasonable liberal to become a dupe of the Caliphate and an unwitting dhimmi. Because the liberal mind-set predisposes a left-them to view all other cultures through that self-centered prism of guilt and primitivist love, they are almost powerless to see the danger. How else to explain the left’s blindness to the endless, gory catalogue of atrocities that have been committed in the name of Jihad? It makes understandable (if still unforgivable) how fervent feminists and devoted gay rights activists remain blind to the horrors gays and women face in Islamic countries across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

As we face an opponent, who captures unarmed civilians workers and journalists, humiliates them in front of a camera and then hacks their heads off with a butcher knife for a public relations stunt; the cowed and guilt-ridden left can do no better than to find fault with our professional armed forces (that are bound by and enforce an internationally sanctioned code of conduct). The beheaders become cultural heroes while the American prison guards at Abu Ghraib are viewed as getting off with a slap on the wrist even after being tried and punished for their behavior. Notwithstanding Abu Ghraib (where is the comparison?) is there any logic or moral responsibility in that preference?

No- it is entirely based on emotion. That emotional combination of sympathy, guilt, unsupported opinion and dreamy primitivism that lead my classmate so long ago to idealize the less complex culture of the American Indians is very common and disturbing. Among liberals there is a nearly fanatical desire to see other cultures as “nicer, freer and more desirable than ours”. This primitivism is a key feature of the personality of the modern left. It is amplified in practice by the tendency of many on the left to rely too much on emotion and opinion and too little on understanding and fact. The combination of good intentions, sympathy and intellectual laziness is the most dangerous geopolitical force the world has ever seen.

Karl Marx spun his fantastic intellectual web of class warfare and communism from it, basing his proposed paradise of the worker on a kind of pass/fail society where no one is allowed to suffer any more or less than anyone else. It has taken a century and untold millions of lost and shattered lives for the real world to prove that this egalitarian dream was a sham destined to evolve into an unworkable nightmare.

Nevertheless, it keeps popping up and causing the left to take the wrong side in just about any conflict you can name. It causes many feminists and activist gays to speak out in blind support of the Palestinians and Islamic countries where women are little more than abused chattel; and homosexuals, if they are allowed to live at all, are brutalized outcasts. It is threatening Israel’s existence today and it has weakened many western democracies to the point that their survival as true democracies, ruled by law and vote, is in doubt.

The west only has one option; we have to start talking honestly and openly about subjects like the American Indian and learning how to handle the guilt and other raw emotions in a rational way. My next post will expand on the painful subject of the Indians and their fate and how it reflects on our response to Caliphate Islam.