Take It From The Rabbi’s Mouth

Every so often we come across a secular Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist’  who argues that Zionism is not Judaism and vice versa. Interestingly enough, I have just come across an invaluable text that illuminates this question from a rabbinical perspective. Apparently back in 1942, 757 American Rabbis added their names to a public pronouncement titled ‘Zionism an Affirmation of Judaism’. This Rabbinical rally for Zionism was declared at the time “the largest public pronouncement in all Jewish history.”

Today, we tend to believe that world Jewry’s transition towards support for Israel followed the 1967 war though some might  argue that already in 1948, American Jews manifested a growing support for Zionism. However, this rabbinical pronouncement proves that as early as 1942, the American Jewish religious establishment was already deeply Zionist. And if this is not enough, the rabbis also regarded Zionism as the ‘implementation’ of Judaism. Seemingly, already then, the peak of World War two, the overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regarded Zionism, not only as fully consistent with Judaism, but as a “logical expression and implementation of it.”

In spite of the fact that early Zionist leaders were largely secular and the East European Jewish settler waves were driven by Jewish socialist ideology, the rabbis contend that “Zionism is not a secularist movement. It has its origins and roots in the authoritative religious texts of Judaism.

Those rabbis were not a bunch of ignoramuses. They were patriotic and nationalistic and they grasped that “universalism is not a contradiction of nationalism.” The rabbis tried to differentiate between contemporaneous German Nationalism and other national movements and they definitely wanted to believe that Zionism was categorically different to Nazism. “Nationalism as such, whether it be English, French, American or Jewish, is not in itself evil. It is only militaristic and chauvinistic nationalism, that nationalism which shamelessly flouts all mandates of international morality, which is evil.” But as we know, just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz the new Jewish State launched a devastating racially driven ethnic-cleansing campaign. Zionism has proven to be militaristic and chauvinistic.

Shockingly enough, back in 1942 as many as 757 American rabbis were able to predict the outcome of the war and they realised that the suffering of European Jewry would be translated into a Jewish State . “We are not so bold as to predict the nature of the international order which will emerge from the present war. It is altogether likely, and indeed it may be desirable, that all sovereign states shall under the coming peace surrender some of their sovereignty to achieve a just and peaceful world society (a Jewish State).”

Some American patriots today are concerned with Israeli-American dual nationality and the dual aspirations of American Jews. Apparently our rabbis addressed this topic too. According to them, there is no such conflict whatsoever. All American Jews are American patriots and all American decision makers are Zionists. “Every fair-minded American knows that American Jews have only one political allegiance–and that is to America. There is nothing in Zionism to impair this loyalty. Zionism has been endorsed in our generation by every President from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has been approved by the Congress of the United States. The noblest spirits in American life, statesmen, scholars, writers, ministers and leaders of labor and industry, have lent their sympathy and encouragement to the movement.”

Back in 1942 our American rabbis were bold enough to state that defeating Hitler was far from sufficient. For them, a full solution of the Jewish question could only take place in Palestine. “Jews, and all non-Jews who are sympathetically interested in the plight of Jewry, should bear in mind that the defeat of Hitler will not of itself normalize Jewish life in Europe. “

But there was one thing the American rabbis failed to mention – the Palestinian people. For some reason, those rabbis who knew much about ‘universalism’ and in particular Jewish ‘universalism’ showed very little concern to the people of the land. I guess that after all, chosennss is a form of blindness and rabbis probably know more about this than anyone else.

Zionism: An Affirmation of Judaism

http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2008/03/zionism-affirmation-of-judaism.html

ZIONISM AN AFFIRMATION OF JUDAISM A Reply by 757 Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Rabbis of America to a Statement Issued by Ninety Members of the Reform Rabbinate Charging That Zionism Is Incompatible with the Teachings of Judaism

THE SUBJOINED REPLY was prepared at the initiative of the following Rabbis who submitted it to their colleagues throughout the country for signature: Philip S. Bernstein, Barnett R. Brickner, Israel Goldstein, James G. Heller, Mordecai M. Kaplan, B. L. Levinthal, Israel H. Levinthal, Louis M. Levitsky, Joshua Loth Liebman, Joseph H. Lookstein, Jacob R. Marcus, Abraham A. Neuman, Louis I. Newman, David de Sola Pool, Abba Hillel Silver, Milton Steinberg, and Stephen S. Wise.

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RABBIS of all elements in American Jewish religious life, have noted with concern a statement by ninety of our colleagues in which they repudiate Zionism on the ground that it is inconsistent with Jewish religious and moral doctrine.This statement misrepresents Zionism and misinterprets historic Jewish religious teaching, and we should be derelict in our duty if we did not correct the misapprehensions which it is likely to foster.

We call attention in the first place to the fact that the signatories to this statement, for whom as fellow-Rabbis we have a high regard, represent no more than a very small fraction of the American rabbinate. They constitute a minority even of the rabbinate of Reform Judaism with which they are associated. The overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regard Zionism not only as fully consistent with Judaism but as a logical expression and implementation of it.

Our colleagues concede the need for Jewish immigration into Palestine as contributing towards a solution of the vast tragedy of Jewish homelessness. They profess themselves ready to encourage such settlement. They are aware of the important achievements, social and spiritual, of the Palestinian Jewish community and they pledge to it their unstinted support. And yet, subscribing to every practical accomplishment of Zionism, they have embarked upon a public criticism of it. In explanation of their opposition they advance the consideration that Zionism is nationalistic and secularistic. On both scores they maintain it is incompatible with the Jewish religion and its universalistic outlook. They protest against the political emphasis which, they say, is now paramount in the Zionist program and which, according to them, tends to confuse both Jews and Christians as to the place and function of the Jewish group in American society. They appeal to the prophets of ancient Israel for substantiation of their views.

TREASURING the doctrines and moral principles of our faith no less than they, devoted equally to America and its democratic processes and spirit, we nonetheless find every one of their contentions totally without foundation.

Zionism is not a secularist movement. It has its origins and roots in the authoritative religious texts of Judaism. Scripture and rabbinical literature alike are replete with the promise of the restoration of Israel to its ancestral home. Anti-Zionism, not Zionism, is a departure from the Jewish religion. Nothing in the entire pronouncement of our colleagues is more painful than their appeal to the prophets of Israel—to those very prophets whose inspired and recorded words of national rebirth and restoration nurtured and sustained the hope of Israel throughout the ages.

Nor is Zionism a denial of the universalistic teachings of Judaism. Universalism is not a contradiction of nationalism. Nationalism as such, whether it be English, French, American or Jewish, is not in itself evil. It is only militaristic and chauvinistic nationalism, that nationalism which shamelessly flouts all mandates of international morality, which is evil. The prophets of Israel looked forward to the time not when all national entities would be obliterated, but when all nations would walk in the light of the Lord, live by His law and learn war no more.

Our colleagues find themselves unable to subscribe to the political emphasis “now paramount in the Zionist program.” We fail to perceive what it is to which they object. Is it to the fact that there are a regularly constituted Zionist organization and a Jewish Agency which deal with the mandatory government, the Colonial office, the League of Nations and other recognized political bodies? But obviously, even immigration and colonization are practical matters which require political action. The settlement of a half million Jews in Palestine since the last war was made possible by political action which culminated in the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate. There can be little hope of opening the doors of Palestine for mass Jewish immigration after the war without effective political action. Or is it that they object to the ultimate achievement by the Jewish community of Palestine of some form of Jewish statehood? We are not so bold as to predict the nature of the international order which will emerge from the present war. It is altogether likely, and indeed it may be desirable, that all sovereign states shall under the coming peace surrender some of their sovereignty to achieve a just and peaceful world society.

Certainly our colleagues will allow to the Jews of Palestine the same rights that are allowed to all other peoples resident on their own land. If Jews should ultimately come to constitute a majority of the population of Palestine, would our colleagues suggest that all other peoples in the post-war world shall be entitled to political self-determination, whatever form that may take, but the Jewish people in Palestine shall not have such a right? Or do they mean to suggest that the Jews in Palestine shall forever remain a minority in order not to achieve such political self-determination?

PROTESTING their sympathy both for the homeless Jews of the world and for their brethren in Palestine, our colleagues have by their pronouncement done all these a grave disservice. It may well be that to the degree to which their efforts arc at all effective, Jews who might otherwise have found a haven in Palestine will be denied one. The enemies of the Jewish homeland will be strengthened in their propaganda as a result of the aid which these Rabbis have given them. To the Jews of Palestine, facing the gravest danger in their history and fighting hard to maintain morale and hope in the teeth of the totalitarian menace, this pronouncement comes as a cruel blow.

We do not mean to imply that our colleagues intended it as such. We have no doubt that they are earnest about their fine spun theoretical objections to Zionism. We hold, however, that these objections have no merit, and further that voicing them at this time has been unwise and unkind.

We have not the least fear that our fellow Americans will be led to misconstrue the attitudes of American Jews to America because of their interest in Zionism. Every fair-minded American knows that American Jews have only one political allegiance–and that is to America. There is nothing in Zionism to impair this loyalty. Zionism has been endorsed in our generation by every President from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has been approved by the Congress of the United States. The noblest spirits in American life, statesmen, scholars, writers, ministers and leaders of labor and industry, have lent their sympathy and encouragement to the movement.

Jews, and all non-Jews who are sympathetically interested in the plight of Jewry, should bear in mind that the defeat of Hitler will not of itself normalize Jewish life in Europe.

An Allied peace which will not frankly face the problem of the national homelessness of the Jewish people will leave the age-old tragic status of European Jewry unchanged. The Jewish people is in danger of emerging from this war not only more torn and broken than any other people, but also without any prospects of a better and more secure future and without the hope that such tragedies will not recur again, and again. Following an Allied victory, the Jews of Europe, we are confident, will be restored to their political rights and to equality of citizenship. But they possessed these rights after the last war and yet the past twenty-five years have witnessed a rapid and appalling deterioration in their position. In any case, even after peace is restored Europe will be so ravaged and war-torn that large masses of Jews will elect migration to Palestine as a solution of their personal problems.

 Indeed, for most of these there may be no other substantial hope of economic, social and spiritual rehabilitation.

THE freedom which, we have faith, will come to all men and nations after this war, must come not only to Jews as individuals wherever they live, permitting them to share freedom on a plane of equality with all other men, but also to the Jewish people, as such, restored in its homeland, where at long last it will be a free people within a world federation of free peoples.

Of the 757 Rabbis listed below, 214 are members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform); 247 are members of the Rabbinical Assembly of America (Conservative); and the rest are affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox) or the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. The total represents the largest number of rabbis whose signatures are attached to a public pronouncement in all Jewish history.

To see the scanned image in PDF format with the list of signers, click here

Note: A version of the above statement was released to the press on November 20, 1942. By that time 818 rabbis had signed on. It appears in Samuel Halperin’s The Political World of American Zionism. (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1961) 333.

Judeocentric Supremacy And Pappe’s Discomfort

Ilan Pappe is an important voice. One of those courageous historians, brave enough to open the Pandora box of 1948.  Back in the 1990s Pappe, amongst a few other Israeli post-Zionists, reminded Israelis of their original sin – the orchestrated, racially-driven ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine – the Nakba.

But like many historians, Pappe, though familiar with the facts of history, seems either unable to grasp or reluctant to address the ideological and cultural meaning of those facts.

In his recent article, When Israeli Denial of Palestinian Existence Becomes Genocidal, Pappe attempts to explain the ongoing Israeli dismissal of the Palestinian plight. Like Shlomo Sand, Pappe points out that Israeli President Shimon Peres’ take on history is a “fabricated narrative.”

So far so good, but Pappe then misses the point. For some reason, he believes that Peres’ denial of the Palestinian’s suffering is a result of a ‘cognitive dissonance.’ i.e. a discomfort experienced when two or more conflicting ideas, values or beliefs are held at the same time.

But what are those conflicting ideas or values upheld by Israelis and their President which cause them so much ‘discomfort’? Pappe does not tell us. Nor does he explain how Peres has sustained such ‘discomfort’ for more than six decades. Now, I agree that Peres, Netanyahu and many Israelis often exhibit clear psychotic symptoms, but one thing I cannot detect in Peres’ utterances or behavior is any ‘discomfort’.

I obviously believe that Pappe is wrong here – expulsion, ethnic cleansing as well as the ongoing abuse of human right in Palestine, are actually consistent with Jewish nationalist supremacist culture and also with a strict interpretation of Jewish Biblical heritage.

Pappe writes, “The perpetrators of the 1948 ethnic cleansing were the Zionist settlers who came to Palestine, like Polish-born Shimon Peres, before the Second World War. They denied the existence of the native people they encountered, who lived there for hundreds of years, if not more.” Here Pappe is correct, but then he continues: “The Zionists did not possess the power at the time to settle the cognitive dissonance they experienced: their conviction that the land was people-less despite the presence of so many native people there.”  But Pappe fails to point at any symptom of such a dissonance. Could it be that the Director of the Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter is just ignorant?

Certainly not, Pappe is far from being ignorant.  Pappe knows the history of Zionism and Israel better than most people. He knows that ‘Zionist settlers’ like ‘Polish-born Shimon Peres’ were ideologically and culturally driven. But then why would a professor of history attempt to turn a blind eye to the ‘ideology’ and the ‘culture’ of those early Zionists?

The early Zionists, were neither blind nor were they stupid. They saw the Arabs in the land of Palestine – in the fields, in the villages and in the towns – but, being driven by a racial, supremacist and expansionist philosophy, they probably regarded the Arab as sub-human and so easily dismissed their rights, their culture, their heritage and indeed, their humanity.[1]

But, even though a cultural and ideological analysis resolves the proposed alleged ‘dissonance’ and illuminates the historical complexity, Ilan Pappe avoids elaborating on those issues. I have a good reason to believe that the truth is just too offensive for Pappe’s audience to digest. So instead, Pappe continues with his psychological model: “They (the Zionist) almost solved the dissonance when they expelled as many Palestinians as they could in 1948 — and were left with only a small minority of Palestinians within the Jewish state.”

Yet again, it could be helpful if Pappe provided the necessary ‘historical’ evidence that would prove that the Nakba, was indeed an attempt to ‘resolve an internal Zionist collective cognitive dissonance’. I assume that Pappe knows very well that it is actually that lack of such a “cognitive dissonance” that drives a few Israeli individuals such as Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy and Pappe himself towards universalism, humanism and pro-Palestinian activism.

I guess that Pappe’s new cognitive analytical model is telling us very little about Zionism, Israel or Shimon Peres but it actually tells us a lot about Pappe and the grave state of the Palestinian solidarity intellectual discourse. The discomfort he talks about is in fact his own: the clash between known and accepted facts and logical conclusions and the task he has accepted of squaring the circle, of wrapping up a racist, supremacist project in psychobabble wrapping and presenting it as nothing less than a pandemic of ‘cognitive dissonance.’

For some reason many of us insist on producing ‘inoffensive’ chronicles of Israeli barbarism and Jewish nationalism that attempt to mask and deflect from rather than pointing to the obvious cultural and ideological kernel of the problem.

Yet, the question that bothers me is how is it possible that a leading academic exhibits such a problematic understanding of a conflict after studying it for three decades.

The answer is pretty embarrassing. Pappe is actually a serious scholar and a gracious human being.  However, in the current intellectual climate, Pappe, like many others cannot freely explore the truth of Zionism and the Jewish State. The shocking truth is that Pappe was much more provocative and intellectually intriguing while teaching in Haifa University than now when he directs the institute of Palestinian Studies at Exeter University.  It is a fair assumption that telling the truth about the culture that drives the Jewish State would cost Pappe his UK academic career and obviously the support within the Jewish so-called ‘left’, let alone the Soros funded Palestinian collaborators.

So instead of searching for the truth, Pappe and others end up searching for some ‘inoffensive’ models – anything to sustain the image of ‘solidarity.’

I do not have any doubt that Pappe knows by now that Israelis are far from being tormented by the Palestinian plight. They are not exactly regretting the Nakba either, they certainly do not sob over their past racist assault on the people of the land of Palestine. And as Israeli polls reveal time after time, most Israelis would support a second Nakba as much as they supported the criminal carpet bombardment of civilian population at the time of operation Cast Lead.  Pappe knows very well that Israeli racist policies and collective attitudes are culturally and ideologically, rather than politically driven. Israel is the Jewish State and its politics is dictated by a new Hebraic interpretation of Jewish culture and Judaic heritage.

Pappe is a humanist and I want to believe that in the small hours, he himself feels some discomfort. Deep down, Pappe must know the truth. He knows what drives Zionism and Israeli militarism. He knows it all but, for obvious reasons, he must keep silent and wraps the conflict up with faulty terminology and ‘inoffensive’ cognitive models.

Instead of engaging in an open discourse and digging into the truth of the conflict, we see our leading scholars actively engaged in concealment of the truth. This is actually a tragedy, for the Palestinian Solidarity discourse is now an intellectual desert. We have murdered and buried our most inspirational thinkers[2] and poets. We replaced them with rigid slogans and banal Herem[3] culture.

Interestingly enough, by the time Pappe finished writing his paper, he himself was no longer so convinced by his own model. He writes, “It is bewildering to learn that the early Zionists denied the existence of Palestinians in 1882 when they arrived; it is even more shocking to find out that they deny their existence — beyond sporadic ghettoized communities — in 2013.”

The meaning of this is clear: we are dealing here with a total and categorical dismissal of otherness. This is not a symptom of ‘cognitive dissonance’ but rather a historical continuum of a psychopathological condition that is inherent to the politics of the chosen. It is the direct outcome of Judeocentric supremacy – the very domain Pappe and others prefer not to tackle.

At the end of his paper, Pappe claims that Peres is a ‘madman’ who ignores “millions and millions of people, many of them under his military or apartheid rule while he actively and ruthlessly disallows the return of the rest to their homeland.”  But if Peres is a ‘madman’, he is unlikely to be riddled with discomfort. If Peres is mad he is not in a state of ‘dissonance’, struggling to integrate conflicting ideas. On the contrary, Peres is, in his awfulness, entirely at peace with himself.

As far as I am concerned, Shimon Peres is not mad at all. He is evil, coherent and consistent. He is the president of the Jewish State and it’s high time that Ilan Pappe openly faced up to this – and to what it means.

Notes

[1] Interestingly enough, it was actually the notorious right-winger Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky who was amongst the first to deal with the necessity to address the complexity of dealing with the indigenous population within the context of the Zionist dream. It was the rabid ultra-nationalist Jabotinsky, rather than the Zionist ‘left’ who regarded the Arabs as proud, highly cultural people that must be confronted militarily. In that regard, I would recommend reading Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall.

[2] Just in the last year we have seen the BDS campaigning against Prof Norman Finkelstein, Greta Berlin, MP George Galloway and many others.

[3] Hebrew word for Excommunication and Boycott

How Zionists Manage To Get Away With Their Myths And Lies

Jewish power is the unique capacity to stop us from discussing or even contemplating Jewish power. It is the capacity to determine the boundaries of the political discourse and criticism in particular.

In his new book, “The Invention Of The Land of Israel”, Israeli academic Shlomo Sand, manages to present conclusive evidence of the far fetched nature of the Zionist historical narrative – that the Jewish Exile is a myth as is the Jewish people and even the Land of Israel.

Yet, Sand and many others fail to address the most important question: If Zionism is based on myth, how do the Zionists manage to get away with their lies, and for so long?

If the Jewish ‘homecoming’ and the demand for a Jewish national homeland cannot be historically substantiated, why has it been supported by both Jews and the West for so long? How does the Jewish state manage for so long to celebrate its racist expansionist ideology and at the expense of the Palestinian and Arab peoples?

Jewish power is obviously one answer, but, what is Jewish power? Can we ask this question without being accused of being Anti Semitic? Can we ever discuss its meaning and scrutinize its politics? Is Jewish Power a dark force, managed and maneuvered by some conspiratorial power? Is it something of which Jews themselves are shy? Quite the opposite – Jewish power, in most cases, is celebrated right in front of our eyes. As we know, AIPAC is far from being quiet about its agenda, its practices or its achievements. AIPAC, CFI in the UK and CRIF in France are operating in the most open manner and often openly brag about their success.

Furthermore, we are by now accustomed to watch our democratically elected leaders shamelessly queuing to kneel before their pay-masters. Neocons certainly didn’t seem to feel the need to hide their close Zionist affiliations. Abe Foxman’s Anti Defamation League (ADL) works openly towards the Judification of the Western discourse, chasing and harassing anyone who dares voice any kind of criticism of Israel or even of Jewish choseness. And of course, the same applies to the media, banking and Hollywood. We know about the many powerful Jews who are not in the slightest bit shy about their bond with Israel and their commitment to Israeli security, the Zionist ideology, the primacy of Jewish suffering, Israeli expansionism and even outright Jewish exceptionalism.

But, as ubiquitous as they are, AIPAC, CFI, ADL, Bernie Madoff, ‘liberator’ Bernard Henri Levy, war-advocate David Aaronovitch, free market prophet Milton Friedman, Steven Spielberg, Haim Saban, Lord Levy and many other Zionist enthusiasts and Hasbara advocates are not necessarily the core or the driving force behind Jewish Power, but are merely symptoms. Jewish power is actually far more sophisticated than simply a list of Jewish lobbies or individuals performing highly developed manipulative skills. Jewish power is the unique capacity to stop us from discussing or even contemplating Jewish power. It is the capacity to determine the boundaries of the political discourse and criticism in particular.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not ‘right wing’ Zionists who facilitate Jewish power, It is actually the ‘good’, the ‘enlightened’ and the ‘progressive’ who make Jewish power the most effective and forceful power in the land. It is the ‘progressives’ who confound our ability to identify the Judeocentric tribal politics at the heart of Neoconservatism, American contemporary imperialism and foreign policy. It is the so-called ‘anti’ Zionist who goes out of his or her way to divert our attention from the fact that Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and blinds us to the fact that its tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols. It was the Jewish Left intellectuals who rushed to denounce Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, Jeff Blankfort and James Petras’ work on the Jewish Lobby. And it is no secret that Occupy AIPAC, the campaign against the most dangerous political Lobby in America, is dominated by a few righteous members of the chosen tribe. We need to face up to the fact that our dissident voice is far from being free. Quite the opposite, we are dealing here with an institutional case of controlled opposition.

In George Orwell’s 1984, it is perhaps Emmanuel Goldstein who is the pivotal character. Orwell’s Goldstein is a Jewish revolutionary, a fictional Leon Trotsky. He is depicted as the head of a mysterious anti-party organization called “The Brotherhood” and is also the author of the most subversive revolutionary text (The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism). Goldstein is the ‘dissenting voice’, the one who actually tells the truth. Yet, as we delve into Orwell’s text, we find out from Party’s ‘Inner Circle’ O’Brien that Goldstein was actually invented by Big Brother in a clear attempt to control the opposition and the possible boundaries of dissidence.

Orwell’s personal account of the Spanish Civil War “Homage To Catalonia” clearly presaged the creation of Emmanuel Goldstein. It was what Orwell witnessed in Spain that, a decade later, matured into a profound understanding of dissent as a form of controlled opposition. My guess is that, by the late 1940’s, Orwell had understood the depth of intolerance, and tyrannical and conspiratorial tendencies that lay at the heart of ‘Big Brother-ish’ Left politics and praxis.

Surprisingly enough, an attempt to examine our contemporaneous controlled opposition within the Left and the Progressive reveal that it is far from being a conspiratorial. Like in the case of the Jewish Lobby, the so-called ‘opposition’ hardly attempts to disguise its ethno-centric tribal interests, spiritual and ideological orientation and affiliation.

A brief examination of the list of organisations founded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) presents a grim picture – pretty much the entire American progressive network is funded, partially or largely by a liberal Zionist, philanthropic billionaire who supports very many good and important causes that are also very good for the Jews. And yet, like staunch Zionist Haim Saban, Soros does not operate clandestinely. His Open Society Institute proudly provides all the necessary information regarding the vast amount of shekels it spreads on its good and important causes.

So one can’t accuse Soros or the Open Society Institute of any sinister vetting the political discourse, stifling of free speech or even to ‘controlling the opposition’. All Soros does is to support a wide variety of ‘humanitarian causes’: Human Rights, Women’s Rights. Gay Rights, equality, democracy, Arab ‘Spring’, Arab Winter, the oppressed, the oppressor, tolerance, intolerance, Palestine, Israel, anti war, pro-war (only when really needed), and so on.

As with Orwell’s Big Brother that frames the boundaries of dissent by means of control opposition, Soros’ Open Society also determines, either consciously or unconsciously, the limits of critical thought. Yet, unlike in 1984, where it is the Party that invents its own opposition and write its texts, within our ‘progressive’ discourse, it is our own voices of dissent, willingly and consciously, that are compromising their principles.

Soros may have read Orwell – he clearly believes his message – because from time to time he even supports opposing forces. For instance, he funds the Zionist-lite J Street as well as Palestinian NGO organisations. And guess what? It never takes long for the Palestinian beneficiaries to, compromise their own, most precious principles so they fit nicely into their paymaster’s worldview.

The Visible Hand

The invisible hand of the market is a metaphor coined by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behaviour of the marketplace. In contemporary politics. The visible hand is a similar metaphor which describes the self-regulating tendency of the political-fund beneficiary, to fully integrate the world view of its benefactor into its political agenda.

Democracy Now, the most important American dissident outlet has never discussed the Jewish Lobby with Mearsheimer, Walt, Petras or Blankfort – the four leading experts who could have informed the American people about the USA’s foreign policy domination by the Jewish Lobby. For the same reasons, Democracy Now wouldn’t explore the Neocon’s Judeo-centric agenda nor would it ever discuss Jewish Identity politics with yours truly. Democracy Now will host Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein, it may even let Finkelstein chew up Zionist caricature Alan Dershowitz – all very good, but not good enough.

Is the fact that Democracy Now is heavily funded by Soros relevant? I’ll let you judge.

If I’m correct (and I think I am) we have a serious problem here. As things stand, it is actually the progressive discourse, or at least large part of it. that sustains Jewish Power. If this is indeed the case, and I am convinced it is, then the occupied progressive discourse, rather than Zionism, is the primary obstacle that must be confronted.

It is no coincidence that the ‘progressive’ take on ‘antisemitism’ is suspiciously similar to the Zionist one. Like Zionists, many progressive institutes and activists adhere to the bizarre suggestion that opposition to Jewish power is ‘racially motivated’ and embedded in some ‘reactionary’ Goyish tendency. Consequently, Zionists are often supported by some ‘progressives’ in their crusade against critics of Israel and Jewish power. Is this peculiar alliance between these allegedly opposing schools of thoughts, the outcome of a possible ideological continuum between these two seemingly opposed political ideologies? Maybe, after all, progressiveness like Zionism is driven by a peculiar inclination towards ‘choseness’. After all, being progressive somehow implies that someone else must be ‘reactionary’. It is those self-centric elements of exceptionalism and choseness that have made progressiveness so attractive to secular and emancipated Jews. But the main reason the ‘progressive’ adopted the Zionist take on antisemitism, may well be because of the work of that visible hand that miraculously shapes the progressive take on race, racism and the primacy of Jewish suffering.

We may have to face up to the fact that the progressive discourse effectively operates as Israel’s longest arm – it certainly acts as a gatekeeper and as protection for Zionism and Jewish tribal interests. If Israel and its supporters would ever be confronted with real opposition it might lead to some long-overdue self-reflection. But at the moment, Israel and Zionist lobbies meet only insipid, watered-down, progressively-vetted resistance that, in practice, sustains Israeli occupation, oppression and an endless list of human rights abuses.

Instead of mass opposition to the Jewish State and its aggressive lobby, our ‘resistance’ is reduced into a chain of badge-wearing, keffiyeh-clad, placard-waving mini-gatherings with the occasional tantrum from some neurotic Jewess while being videoed by another good Jew. If anyone believes that a few badges, a load of amateur Youtube clips celebrating Jewish righteousness are going to evolve into a mass anti-Israel global movement, they are either naïve or stupid.

In fact, a recent Gallup poll revealed that current Americans’ sympathy for Israel has reached an All-Time High. 64% of Americans sympathise with the Jewish State, while only 12% feel for the Palestinians. This is no surprise and our conclusion should be clear. As far as Palestine is concerned, ‘progressive’ ideology and praxis have led us precisely nowhere. Rather than advance the Palestinian cause, it only locates the ‘good’ Jew at the centre of the solidarity discourse.

When was the last time a Palestinian freedom fighter appeared on your TV screen? Twenty years ago the Palestinian were set to become the new Che Guevaras. Okay, so the Palestinian freedom fighter didn’t necessarily speak perfect English and wasn’t a graduate of an English public school, but he was free, authentic and determined. He or she spoke about their land being taken and of their willingness to give what it takes to get it back. But now, the Palestinian has been ‘saved’, he or she doesn’t have to fight for his or her their land, the ‘progressive’ is taking care of it all.

This ‘progressive’ voice speaks on behalf of the Palestinian and, at the same time, takes the opportunity to also push marginal politics, fight ‘Islamism’ and ‘religious radicalisation’ and occasionally even supports the odd interventionst war and, of course, always, always, always fights antisemitism. The controlled opposition has turned the Palestinian plight into just one more ‘progressive’ commodity, lying on the back shelf of its ever-growing ‘good-cause’ campaign store.

For the Jewish progressive discourse, the purpose behind pro-Palestinian support is clear. It is to present an impression of pluralism within the Jewish community. It is there to suggest that not all Jews are bad Zionists. Philip Weiss, the founder of the most popular progressive pro-Palestinian blog was even brave enough to admit to me that it is Jewish self -interests that stood at the core of his pro Palestinian activity.

Jewish self-love is a fascinating topic. But even more fascinating is Jewish progressives loving themselves at the expense of the Palestinians. With billionaires such as Soros maintaining the discourse, solidarity is now an industry, concerned with profit and power rather than ethics or values and it is a spectacle both amusing and tragic as the Palestinians become a side issue within their own solidarity discourse.

So, perhaps before we discuss the ‘liberation of Palestine’, we first may have to liberate ourselves.

No King But Caesar

With the Easter message fresh on my mind, I am again reminded of what the Jewish leaders said to Pilate when they tried to coerce him to crucify Jesus. They said, “We have no king but Caesar.” Remember, these were the Jewish Pharisees, scribes, elders, priests, and high priests. They prided themselves in being scholars of the Torah. They believed themselves to be the sole interpreters of the Mosaic Law. Yet, the very First Commandment of the Decalogue handed down to Moses is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But in order to stay in the good graces of the Roman government, they emphatically proclaimed that they recognized no king but Caesar.

Remember, Caesar insisted that everyone recognize him to be, not only king, but God. To be loyal to Rome, one had to acknowledge the deity of Caesar. One could worship any other god that one wanted to, as long as Caesar was acknowledged as Sovereign. Historians famously say that there were as many gods in Rome as people. Rome prided itself in being religiously pluralistic and tolerant. First Century Christians were not persecuted because they worshipped Jesus; they were persecuted because they refused to worship Caesar; they refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of Caesar. It was for this reason that early Christians were fed to lions and made sport of in the amphitheaters.

In their desire to use the Roman government to advance their own agenda (crucifying Christ and later His disciples and apostles), the Jewish leaders were quite willing to acknowledge the deity and sovereignty of Caesar–even though doing so was a blatant violation of the First Commandment given by Jehovah to Moses. Is it a little more than interesting that after conducting a secret, illegal trial of Jesus and blaspheming God in declaring Caesar king that they immediately afterward sat down to observe the Passover? No wonder Jesus called them “Hypocrites.”

“What does all of this have to do with modern America?” you ask. Everything!

Anytime a pastor or church uses Romans 13 to teach that Christians should submit to government “no matter what,” they are joining the First Century Jewish leaders in saying, “We have no king but Caesar.” Wittingly or unwittingly, they have made a god out of government. And by doing so, they have violated the First Commandment and blasphemed the God they claim to serve. They are like the Jewish leaders who declared unlimited submission to Caesar then sat down to observe the Passover. These modern pastors and church leaders do the same thing: they declare unlimited submission to government and then go through the exercise of conducting a Christian worship service, complete with songs of praise, recitations of scripture, and collecting tithes and offerings. Are they not as guilty of blasphemy and hypocrisy as were the First Century Jewish leaders?

Another statement that leaped out at me as I rehearsed the Easter story last Sunday was spoken by the Lord Jesus. When questioned by Pilate, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.” (John 18:36 KJV)

How many times have I heard some We-have-no-king-but-Caesar-type preacher say that Jesus’ words here mean that Christians have no right to resist or fight against evil government? If government passes a law to register your guns, Christians are bound to register their guns. If government passes a law outlawing your guns, Christians are bound to not resist. If government passes a law prohibiting praying, Christians are bound to not pray. If government passes a law authorizing the killing of unborn babies, Christians are bound to not interfere. If government passes a law requiring pastors to conduct marriage ceremonies for homosexual couples, pastors are bound to conduct marriage ceremonies for homosexual couples. If the government orders military chaplains to not pray in Jesus’ name, they must not pray in Jesus’ name. If the President declares a “national emergency” and asks people to surrender their firearms, Christians are bound to surrender their firearms. I suppose these same preachers believe that if the President wanted to pass an Executive Order initiating the ancient law of Prima Nocta (Right Of The First Night), whereby nobles (governing authorities) could sleep with a man’s bride on the night of her wedding, Christians are bound to submit to that order, too?

Yet, the vast majority of these same Christian leaders who say “don’t resist government” are the first ones to lead the cheer for foreign wars of aggression. They are the loudest and most vocal supporters of military action against governments all over the world. They proudly extol and laud acts of war by our nation’s military. They brag about the young men of their churches joining the military and going off to war. And just what is it that military troops do? They commit acts of violence and resistance against foreign governments.

Am I a pacifist? Am I promoting pacifism? Absolutely not! I am a staunch believer in the Natural, God-given right of self-defense. I believe men have an inalienable right to resist and fight against evil government–even if it sometimes means using violence–such as when America’s founders fought our country’s War for Independence. I’m merely trying to point out the hypocrisy of these modern-day preachers and Christians who try to justify their own refusal to even peacefully resist evil government at home but who then turn around and blatantly justify violent acts of resistance against government overseas.

At least the conscientious pacifist is consistent. A true pacifist would refuse to resist any and all government–regardless of how evil that government is. Of course, this would require that such people refuse to join the military, refuse to become a policeman or sheriff’s deputy, and refuse to defend themselves against any act of criminality committed against them or their family. I have known a small handful of such people. And I always encourage them to pray for those of us in America who are not pacifists–and who believe in defending the liberties of all Americans–so that they will have the freedom to practice their pacifism.

And interestingly enough, as the federal government in Washington, D.C., becomes more and more oppressive, more and more Christian leaders are preaching the doctrine of nonresistance. And when they do, they almost always justify themselves by using Jesus’ words referenced above.

However, Jesus’ words actually teach the opposite of nonresistance. Notice He said, “Then would my servants FIGHT.” That Jesus refused to resist His arrest and crucifixion is not to be construed as Him teaching nonresistance as a duty for Christians of all time.

Remember that Jesus is God’s only begotten Son who came to give His life a sacrifice for man’s sin. No other man, before or since, shares Christ’s nature, character, and mission. There is ONE mediator between God and men: the man Christ Jesus. He was born to die; He came to be crucified. No man took His life from Him: He gave it. None of us can claim such a mission or destiny. None of us!

We Christians might not be “of” this world, but we are most certainly “in” it. And Jesus prayed to keep us “in” this world. (John 17:15) We go to work in this world; we pay our bills in this world; we lock our doors at night in this world; we instruct our children to avoid certain locations and situations in this world; we sit on juries in this world; our taxes support policemen and sheriff’s deputies who arrest criminals and protect society in this world; we join “neighborhood watch” groups in this world; and we install burglar alarms in this world. Jesus did none of that. He didn’t even own a home. Are all of these pious-talking non-resistors going to give up their homes and properties because Jesus didn’t own any? Jesus didn’t marry either. So, should Christians not marry because Jesus didn’t? Again, Jesus’ life and mission were unique; no Christian can claim such a duty or purpose.

Furthermore, Jesus plainly instructed His disciples to buy a sword (Luke 22:36). The Roman sword was the most effective and efficient self-defense tool in the world at the time. The Roman sword was the First Century equivalent of the modern-day AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Realize, too, that when Jesus uttered this command, it was against the law for Hebrews to possess a sword of this type. Yes, Jesus commanded His disciples to break the law of man in order to obey the higher Natural Law of God. So much for the argument that Jesus would endorse Obama’s universal background check proposal.

For Franklin Graham and Richard Land–and other evangelical leaders–to support Barack Obama’s attempt to register and restrict the arms of the American people, is not only blatantly unconstitutional, it is blatantly unscriptural. Here is my column regarding the asinine support of universal background checks by Graham and Land:

Franklin Graham On The Wrong Side Of The Bible And History

Recall, too, that at the time of His arrest in the garden, Jesus protected Simon Peter’s right to keep and bear arms when He literally knocked the soldiers off their feet with the power of His voice, which allowed Simon and the other armed disciple to leave the garden unmolested and fully armed. Yes, Jesus fully protected the disciples’ right to keep and bear arms in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Readers should also be aware that my new book, co-authored by my constitutional attorney son, Tim, entitled, “To Keep or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns,” is at the printers now and will be delivered in the next few weeks. To pre-order this very relevant and powerful book, go to:

Keep Your Arms

Remember, too, that it was Jesus who violently resisted the money changers in the temple, driving them out with the force of whip and fist. This is hardly an act of nonresistance. And it is this same Jesus who will come again in power and glory subduing His enemies with the violence and force of the sword.

Furthermore, if Christ is divine (and all true Christians believe He is), Jehovah of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament are One. There is absolutely no doubt that Jehovah approved of, authorized, and directly ordered the use of violent resistance against myriads of oppressors, dictators, and despots of all kinds. To preach the doctrine of nonresistance, one must ignore the entire Old Testament, not to mention a host of New Testament passages–including Hebrews 11.

At some point, every person on earth has to determine in his or her own mind who is king. Is Christ king, or is Caesar king? This is the spiritual battle that is raging in America’s churches today. And, unfortunately, as did the Jewish leaders at the crucifixion of Jesus, many pastors and church leaders are saying, “We have no king but Caesar.”

As for me and my house, we cast our lots with America’s founders whose battle cry of the Revolutionary War was “No King but Jesus.”

Christian, make up your mind.

Bill O’Reilly vs. The Bible Thumpers

If an argument falls in a forest of confusion and nobody hears it, does it make an impact?

In a segment with Megyn Kelly on the Wednesday edition of the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly lamented how traditionalists don’t have a “compelling argument” on the faux-marriage issue and that all we can do is “thump the Bible.” But if theistic thumping is all O’Reilly hears, he needs an ear for something other than the mainstream media.

O’Reilly’s assertion is, frankly, insulting. Many of us in the Brainstream Media have for years been propounding deep, intellectual, and sometimes novel arguments in defense of marriage. And they’re certainly compelling, yet it is true that they don’t compel. And how could they?

Virtually no one hears them because society’s primary conduits of information — the mainstream media, academia, and popular culture — are all controlled by the left.

The reality is that the above members of the Triumvirate of Evil are like the sentient programs in The Matrix: they guard all the gates and hold all the keys. If they don’t want your message to get out, it won’t. They can make you famous or infamous or keep you anonymous; they can cast angels as demons, truth as lies, and virtue as vice. And they do.

So is it fair to fault traditionalists for not being able to put compelling arguments in the public arena? It’s a bit like putting the onus on the Jews for not having been able to control the narrative used against them in Nazi Germany.

In fact, if anyone would imply that the right has been outshined by the left in intellectual heft, he has it exactly backwards. The right has actually been doing very little Bible thumping, while the left has been doing almost nothing but equality thumping. And this is the left’s advantage.

The person who offers reasoned, intellectual arguments always has an uphill battle against the demagogue, which is why man’s history is one of mainly bad men, not good ones, rising to power. The demagogue is selling vice — in the form of playing on people’s prejudices, envy, covetousness, etc. — whereas the wise leader is stuck peddling that unpopular product called virtue. And, to paraphrase Confucius, “I never met anyone who loved virtue as much as sex” (which could be why no one worries about his adolescent son getting hooked on theology sites).

As for marriage, it doesn’t take much synopsizing to characterize the left’s arguments as “Marriage Equality!” and “Equal Rights!” — with heavy, heavy emphasis on the exclamation points. And it works like a charm. As Adolf Hitler pointed out in Mein Kampf, the common man has a very short memory, so political success requires the use and continual repetition of brief, catchy slogans. Hey, it’s why we hear “Coke is It!” and “Just do it” as opposed to long expositions on the delights of drinking cola or wearing $120 sneakers. It is the technique of effective advertising — and the Way of the Demagogue.

Getting back to O’Reilly, an irony here is that he’s part of the problem. When has he ever had on his show a guest who has put forth those compelling arguments “that don’t exist”? He certainly has found time for fonts of intellectualism such as Marc Lamont Hill, retreads such as Bob Beckel, and a regular “Culture Warriors” segment with news-version Barbie dolls (CNN’s Margaret Hoover was a culture warriorette until recently). Oh, as to the last thing, I know that pretty faces sell in this superficial age of the image. But it’s a little ridiculous to complain about the alleged lack of traditionalist intellectualism when you’re ignoring traditionalist intellectuals in favor of something far closer to Idiocracy’s Hot Naked Chicks & World Report.

So I have some advice for O’Reilly. It you want find a compelling argument on an issue, don’t go to someone who is the leader of an organization devoted to that issue, or who simply has a relevant Ph.D., but who has never penned anything but boilerplate. Go to a person who has actually written something compelling — which, by the way, is just a mouse click in the right direction away. It’s not rocket science.

Anyway, the mainstream media will continue to act as if the Brainstream Media doesn’t exist, because what cannot be refuted must be ignored. But the fact is that we’re here doing the job un-Americans won’t do. And you ought to know that, Mr. O’Reilly. Heck, forget Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy, your next big book could be Killing Our Culture.

The Obama Exodus To The Promised Land

Barak Obama’s journey to the Holy Land hardly resembles the trek of Moses through the wilderness. Nonetheless, his flee from accountability does remind of that often professed transparency. In this case, he cannot hide from his misdeeds. An open question remains, will public outrages banish the POTUS under the weight of his transgressions. Alternatively, will the powers of Pharaoh succeed in suppressing his enemies?

“Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” (NRSV Exodus 　2:14)

This deed is the event that sends Moses on his long journey. The Old Testament is careful to say that Moses killed the Egyptian when no one was around. Yet the implication in the Bible is that you can run, but you cannot hide.　Barry S. Roffman’s Ark Code offers an esoteric, if not bizarre theory that attempts to make a connection with the Hebrew Torah.

Barak OBAMA – REINCARNATION OF PHARAOH, KING OF EGYPT, may be a stretch by most mainstream standards. However, the political point that Obama seeks to dictate to others certainly has the stain of Pharaoh.

“This matrix was originally posted in conjunction with President Obama’s overt hostility toward Israel. When the crisis arose in Egypt where there was widespread opposition to President Mubarak, Obama declared, “What is clear — and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak — is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, and it must begin now.” The demands made by the U.S. President had a tone that made it sound like he was also elected as President of Egypt. There seemed to be no concept of Egyptian sovereignty, or of the need for Egypt to solve its own problems internally. On the matrix, BARACK OBAMA is the axis term. His name is shown at its 6th lowest ELS in wrapped Torah (which requires more than one computer pass through the 304,805 letters of Torah to find). It is directly crossed by one of the Torah’s 8 uses of the term PHARAOH KING OF EGYPT. Perhaps President Obama has a distant memory of being Pharaoh, King of Egypt in a past life. Indeed, there is a statue that backs this idea in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo that was attacked in the rebellion, and which was at the heart of the rebellion in Cairo’s Tahrir Square!

Who will play the role of Pharaoh? As shown above, a statute in the Cairo Museum offers a huge clue. It and the actions of Obama, when combined with the Torah Code matrix above, and the odds below appear to make the answer rather apparent.

The p value of the match of BARACK OBAMA and PHARAOH KING OF EGYPT is just ~0.015. It equates to about one chance in 66 that we could find such a match. By itself this is only of mild interest. However, when the matrix is expanded to just 170 letters, a second occurrence of PHARAOH KING OF EGYPT is seen. With just 7 remaining such terms to match, the p value of the larger matrix is now adjusted to 0.000104, which is about one chance in 9,607 – highly significant.”

Mr. Roffman’s conclusion: “It is not certain who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, butone suspect is Akhenaten. His statue is found in the Cairo Museum, and it is a dead ringer for President Obama.”

 

For an op-ed viewpoint authored by ANDRÉ ACIMAN, in the New York Times, The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention, illustrates the complexity of living together, much less in harmony.

“PRESIDENT OBAMA’S speech to the Islamic world was a groundbreaking event. Never before has a young, dynamic American president, beloved both by his countrymen and the nations of the world, extended so timely and eager a hand to a part of the globe that, recently, had seen fewer and fewer reasons to trust us or to wish us well.As important, Mr. Obama did not mince words. Never before has a president gone over to the Arab world and broadcast its flaws so loudly and clearly: extremism, nuclear weapons programs and a faltering record in human rights, education and economic development — the Arab world gets no passing grades in any of these domains. Mr. Obama even found a moment to mention the plight of Egypt’s harassed Coptic community and to criticize the new wave of Holocaust deniers. And to show he was not playing favorites, he put the Israelis on notice: no more settlements in the occupied territories. He spoke about the suffering of Palestinians. This was no wilting olive branch.

It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn’t know, or just thought it wasn’t expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort “to find common ground … and to respect the dignity of all human beings” without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.”

 

Viewing the Ed Show video, from the progressive media, Netanyahu Sets US Conservatives Straight on ‘Anti-Israel’ Obama, attempts to give the impression that playing nice with Bibi Netanyahu implies progress. Just how realistic is this assessment, when examined in light of the record of the administration?

How far the daring darling of the peace process has fallen from grace among the Middle East Semites, should not be a surprise. Even the pro-Israel establishment Daily Beast questions Obama’s ability and commitment to engage the eternal feud in the article, How Obama Became Netanyahu.

“When it comes to the Palestinians, Obama is also governed by political fear. Obama’s own dovish instincts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are clear.

Before he won the Democratic nomination in 2008, Obama spoke openly about Palestinian suffering, about the narrow confines of the Israel debate inside the United States, and about his dim view of Likud. But ever since his bruising, and ultimately futile, conflicts with Netanyahu over settlements in 2009 and the 1967 lines in 2011, Obama has gone to great lengths to avoid Israel-related fights. During the past 18 months, he’s barely uttered a public word about settlements or the 1967 lines. Last year’s Democratic platform excised previous language pledging a “personal” presidential “commitment” to the peace process. And now Obama is traveling to Israel without any specific plans for moving toward a Palestinian state.

Obama is essentially telling Palestinians to keep their heads down until an Israeli leader comes along who wants to create a viable Palestinian state. Or until ordinary Israelis stop worrying about the ultra-Orthodox and the price of cottage cheese and create another peace movement. Or until politics change in Washington. He’s telling Palestinians to relinquish every form of counterpressure they have and put themselves at Israel’s and America’s mercy, even though this trip itself is evidence that without Palestinian counterpressure, America and Israel will do little else except entrench the status quo.”

Woe is I, for the “so called” reincarnated Pharaoh; his pilgrimage to the Promise Land is not exactly a vacation in Eden. No “parting of the waves” on this visit for the Tempter look alike. Even on the home front, ‘The Bible’ viewers: Seeing Obama in Satan gains traction.

“The similarity was seen and commented upon by people hostile to the president by people who because of the their general political opinions, found it quite “obvious” that the Devil and the president should look so much alike.

Plenty of the president’s biggest fans also saw the similarity and went to social media to spread the word about it. Why? Because, according to them, it was all part of the producers’ plan to smear the president and appeal to the “Bible thumpers” who oppose him.

In other words, both groups saw the president in the Devil – one group because they see the Devil in the president, and the other because they see the Devil in those who strongly oppose the president.”

If not a Pharaoh or a Beelzebub, what precisely is Barak Obama? While he surely would like to be the sheikh of the last days, he certainly is no vessel of revealed scripture. The “born again” Netanyahu – Obama love fest, is no transcendental relationship. Only by answering, Who made you a ruler and judge over us?, can serious minded brothers of good will cross over into the promise land of honest accountability.

Obama is a creature of satanic control and implements global Talmudic law. With the abandonment of Mosaic Law and the New Testament gospel, the international community is executing a worldwide inferno of hatred and death. “Let my people go” applies to all of humanity. The exodus from perdition needs universal acceptance that only obedience to God is the path to paradise.

Reckless Apartheid Fighter

Andre Pshenichnikov (24) is a most unusual kid. So unusual that he is languishing in Egyptian jail for crossing the border without proper papers. But his story begins earlier. I  first heard of him when this young programmer from a Tel Aviv suburb stayed in Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. He did not go there to explore Palestinian way of life, or to write for a newspaper; he was not looking for publicity, he did not hide nor emphasize his Israeli identity. He did not act as an activist, marching at demos and enjoying popularity. He just rented a room, worked at a building site or waited tables in a tourist restaurant just like any Palestinian youth of his age in Deheishe, lived with ordinary people on his salary.

Andre did the impossible. He crossed the biggest chasm there is. Imagine a white boy from Philly, picking cotton and living with blacks in a cabin on a Mississippi plantation in the days of Jim Crow. No Freedom Rider went that far. He broke an important taboo: so many Israelis are convinced that the Palestinians would kill them on sight, at first occasion. By his example he refuted this fantasy. He renounced apartheid personally by living with Palestinians.

It did not work out very well:  “I was always under suspicion”, – he says. People were hostile to him, excepting a few brave ones. Palestinians did not understand what he was doing there and subtly hinted at it by seizing him and passing him to Israeli security like a hot potato. Israelis charged him with entering the Palestinian Territories – it is forbidden by Israeli law.

He was not cooled off by this setback. He decided to continue his personal crusade – declared that he gives up his Israeli citizenship and asked for a Palestinian one. He’s got no reply from the PNA. Though there are many Israelis who would like to, the PNA does not position itself as an alternative government for the land.

Andre Pshenichnikov (his long last name can be translated as Wheaten)  was born in the USSR just before its collapse; his parents took him to Israel. He graduated from Israeli school and served in the Israeli army,  but he remained a good, idealistic Russian boy. He failed as a Jew, but passed with honours as a human. It is amazing that such Turgenev-style kids still exist in our pragmatic age, and they still go out to “join the working people”.  And the working people still surrender these good-wishers to the security forces, for they could not understand them.

Some young kids are positively influenced by what they witness in their military service.  The occupation is so brutal, that it comes as a shock – and this shock causes them to reject the Israeli official thinking. After  army service they emigrate or withdraw from public life; some go further. Andre Pshenichnikov, a Soviet-born son of a Russian Christian mother, was unable to understand his Zionist-brainwashed comrades who humiliate Palestinians at checkpoints, arrest the men and insult the women, or shoot Palestinian children for sport. That’s why he went to Deheishe.

His left-wing pro-Palestinian friends invited him to a conference in Cairo. The police took away his passport – the reckless kid hastily stepped over the Egyptian border without documents, with just a few newspaper clippings about himself. If he thought he’d get a hero welcome, he was wrong. The Egyptians arrested him and sentenced him to two years of prison, though such a crime usually is published by a fine, or a week of detention. To them he was just another dubious Israeli. Perhaps the Israeli secret services have requested of their Egyptian colleagues to keep Andre under wraps as long as possible. His sincere idealistic desire to support Palestinians to such a degree was understood neither in Deheishe nor in Sinai. It is tragic that people who cross lines make others extremely suspicious. This was the case with German anti-Nazis in the WWII: people often weren’t sure what to make of them, but they were the bedrock of post-war change.

Such kids are necessary if we want to undo the apartheid in Palestine/Israel. They should be promoted by  Arab governments, not locked up. There are too few Israelis and/or Jews who live amongst native Palestinians. A few Israelis, men (Uri Davis) and women (Neta Golan), got married over the Green line. Amira Haas lived in Gaza and Ramallah, but she wrote for the Haaretz. Bigger part of my life passed in Palestinian seaside town of Jaffa, but it is a traditionally cosmopolitan city under Israeli rule, and many Israelis, artists and writers, live there. Andre did an important step.

Now Andre’s mother country, Russia, has learned of his fate and decided to help her hitherto lost son. The PNA should do more to help him out, and so can our friends and friends of Palestine in Egypt and elsewhere. Let him be free! Though his actions were reckless, his intentions were noble, and we need such people.

We Can Restore America

If We Will Get Understanding…

I have often written about the intractable diversity that results from humanistic forums.  Following is a brief synopsis of three different thinkers.  They are all sincere, smart, thoughtful, and truthful. 

Amy Chua is a Law Professor at Yale University.  She earned her Doctor of Law degree at Harvard and has a resume that includes apogee honors from each of her educational endeavors.  Born to pedagogic Chinese parents she is a winsome women married to Jewish intellectual and fellow Yale Law Professor, Jed Rubinfeld.

Dr. Chua has written three books and published a controversial review in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why Chinese Moms are Superior”.  The review is an excerpt from another book entitled “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”.

“Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it’s probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it’s true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.”

Chua’s writing wears well, it is lucid and readable.  She is critical of American exportation of Free Market Democracy but is enamored with empire and world government.  In “Day of Empire” she writes almost lovingly of the Mongol leader, Khubilai: “(He) was a globalizer, seeking to create one world system.  By synthesizing Arab, Chinese, and Greek expertise, Khubilai’s astronomers and cartographers produced the world’s most sophisticated maps, nautical charts, and terrestrial globes, far outstripping their European counterparts. He embraced international commerce, religious coexistence, free communication and cultural exchange.  Fittingly, two of Khubilai’s most passionate ambitions were to establish a universal alphabet, encompassing all the languages of the world, and a universal calendar unifying the lunar calendar of the Arabs, the solar calendar of the Europeans, and the twelve-year animal cycle of the Chinese.”  

Pat Buchanan   is a writer, television personality, former candidate for President of the United States, and an America First patriot.  In Chapter 11 of his book, “Suicide of a Superpower” he writes, “We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited — the best and greatest country on earth.”

In the final paragraph of his book “The Great Betrayal” Buchanan concludes: “There are many who say there is no turning back, that the Global Economy is inevitable, that the death warrant of the nation-state has be signed, and that there is to be no reprieve.  I do not believe this.  It is vital that we not surrender this fortress of freedom, liberty, and human dignity that our ancestors died creating.  I do not want to live in their brave new world; if it is coming, let us all stand our post.  And if indeed, as James Fitzjames Stephens wrote, ’The waters are out and no human force can turn them back…I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god’ We can take our country back and God willing, we shall.”

In an interview by Thierry Meyssan, Mother Agnès-Mariam of the Cross, mother superior of the monastery of James the Mutilated in Qara, Syria says: “The West is so full of pride that it cannot imagine a different civil order could possibly exist, even though theirs is facing an insoluble social, economical and moral crisis. In traditional societies loyal to the ancestral system inherited from biblical times, there are other ways, other parameters to organize the everyday life of the society. I am thinking about the patriarchal system. I am thinking about the system based on alliances among families, tribes, cities, regions and countries; a federal system based on freedom and the particular interests of the family, the tribe, attached to the land of the ancestors. Unfortunately the West has swept away the concept of belonging to the land, the family, the ethnic group, in short the ontological identity. The Western model is not based on the acknowledgement of the individual but on external interests. It is in the name of what is economically expedient that they sacrifice — for the benefit of the multinationals — the principles of the homeland, the family and personal identity. We don’t realize that we are caught up in a much more unbridled and evil totalitarianism than the small authoritarian regimes which they seek to overthrow. The latter at least have the merit of availing themselves of the social, identity, family, tribal and clan network of our mysterious Orient. I am conscious of the fact that, seen from a distance, our happy life is completely incomprehensible for the West.”  Read the interview here.

Buchanan, Chua, and Mother Agne-Mariam express three different world views.  There are elements of truth in each of the views but there is also conflict and error.  

Although she lives and works in United States Amy Chua remains Chinese.  Her study of empires and “Tiger Mother” seems to indicate an authoritarian bent. She believes China with an authoritarian regime has done better than Russia with a more democratic regime.   Democracy, she contends, may be viable in a homogenous society but tends to create a class struggle in nations that have a large percentage of poor citizens.

Chua’s description of the parent/ child relationship is compatible with Biblical standards and strikes a chord with many Christians.  Children owe their existence to their parents and should endeavor to make them proud.  Many Americans have either lost this Biblical truth or are unwilling to put forth the effort needed to overcome puerile lethargy.   Dr. Chua is not a Christian. Her admiration for Mongol emperor Khubilai stems from his “tolerance” – a concept at odds with the worship of a jealous God and useless against tyranny.  Tolerance is the central theme her book “Day of Empire” and a necessary element for the success of the world government movement she supports.

When Chua champions tolerance she is supporting the religion of Humanism.  Because Humanists have no absolute standard provided by an overarching source they must be tolerant of the individual opinions of the masses.  However, Humanism’s intolerance of intolerance is equal to the intolerance of any other religion. Humanists are busy attempting to eradicate Christianity which is the religion claimed by the majority of the citizens of the United States.  

Pat Buchanan was born into a large Catholic family in Washington, DC.  He received his higher education in Journalism at Columbia University.  He has an active intellect and is an excellent writer with several published books. He pines for the peace and prosperity of yesteryear.  and challenges the cunning dismantling of our nation that has emanated from Talmudist Jewish influences in the press, education, and government.  Ironically, his quest might be compared to the “Israel First” policies of the racial restricted nation of neo-Israel which is diametrically different than what its powerful supporters are foisting on the United States.  Buchanan believes a nation must have common values and common goals.  His latest book “Suicide of a Superpower” contains a Chapter titled “The End of White America” which correctly points to the demographic reality that Zionist forces have helped bring to the United States.  This bit of truth telling resulted in his dismissal from MSNBC owned by the same pernicious power brokers whose policies Buchanan deplores. http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/01/09/pat_buchanan_vs_msnbc_controversial_book_causing_tension.html

Each of these three thinkers brings truth to the table:  Chua in the rearing of children; Buchanan in support of bygone righteousness; and Mother Agnès-Mariam on American hubris.  None, however, provides an consummate  remedy.

Please meet an East Indian Christian intellectual named Vishal Mangalwadi who has addressed one of his several books   to the citizens of United States of America; its title is “The Book That Made Your World”.  There is a tragic side to the need for a Christian from India to inform Americans who are supposedly 70 percent Christian that it was the Bible that made United States a great nation and its people the world’s most prosperous.

In 403 pages Mangalwadi informs us in detail.  He compares the United States to his native country of India and to other non-Christian nations. He tells us of the importance Christians place on reading and education so converts can read the Bible and progress through acquiring knowledge.  He relates the Biblical demand for work and for the wise conduct of one’s affairs.  He points out the unique role of compassion in the Christian religion, the virtue of sharing and the acceptance of political defeat without the riots that characterize many other nations.  He relates the success of billionaires like Bill Gates to the peace and order of our nation and emphasizes the paramount importance of a Christian culture for business success.. 

Mangalwadi finds the ashes of Christianity in American social life long after domestic recognition of their origin has vanished.

Toward the end of the book he reminds us that Harvard was named after Reverend John Harvard and its motto, in the year of our Lord, 1692, was “Truth, for Christ and the Church”.  Every student was “plainly instructed and earnestly pressed” to know God and Jesus Christ, to read the Scripture twice daily and to be ready to give account of his knowledge.  He writes, “Universities like Harvard were institutions that produced leaders who built the greatest nation in history. Yet now they turn out graduates brilliant in abilities but not always great in character….As brilliant but amoral graduates from secular universities such as Harvard gain control of America’s economic and political life, the world has every reason to cease trusting America.  The trust that made the dollar the reserve currency of the world came from the original Harvard created by the Bible.”

What happened at Harvard is a microcosm of what has happened to America.  From a nation that honored the God of the Bible we have become a nation that has forgotten Him along with His character and integrity.  The causes of this deterioration are complex and have occurred slowly but some of the seeds were planted very early. In an effort to grow and expand, major Christian educational institutions began to cater to the evil quest for the knowledge of good and evil.   In 1802 Harvard elected Unitarian Henry Ware to a professorship.  Other colleges and Universities followed by introducing secular courses and entertaining humanistic thought.  Righteousness was surrendered to growth in numbers of students and breadth of curriculums.

Churches followed a similar pattern.  As ambitious preachers sought to grow their churches the messages sound Biblical theology and became seeker friendly.  At least in part, the desire to appeal to a larger audience allowed the pernicious doctrine of Dispensationalism to become popular.  This aberrant interpretation of the Bible removed the standard for obedience and made evangelism the final goal of Christianity. As this deterioration took place, in both colleges and churches, true believers split from the parent organization forming separate orthodox organizations.  Yale began in that fashion.  New churches and new colleges were birthed but the heretical originals remained and their numbers continued to grow.

Mangalwadi sees the United States from an immigrant’s perspective.  His book records in detail the Christian doctrines that helped the young nation grow and prosper.   He misses the conspiracy to dominate the world and the moral and cultural deterioration being created by powerful Talmudist Jews. But nevertheless his book buttresses the factual and persuasive argument that a Christian base provides the only proper framework for a free, prosperous and successful nation.

He provides the “who, what, where, and why” but the “how” and “when” are missing. American Christians need to realize that nothing can be changed until we are ready and willing to leave the end times in the Hands of God and begin to obey His Commandments.  If 70 percent of our citizens began demanding that our government obey God and our Constitution (in spite of its errors) we would get major change almost immediately.  

Why Israeli Apartheid Is Worse Than South Africa’s Version

Once involved with Palestinian Solidarity you have to accept that Jews are special and so is their suffering; Jews are like no other people, their Holocaust is like no other genocide and anti Semitism, is the most vile form of racism the world has ever known and so on and so forth.

But when it comes to the Palestinians, the exact opposite is the case. For some reason we are expected to believe that the Palestinians are not special at all -  they are just like everyone else. Palestinians have not been subject to a unique, racist, nationalist and expansionist Jewish nationalist movement, instead, we must all agree that, just like the Indians and the Africans, the Palestinian ordeal results from run-of-the-mill 19^th century colonialism – just more of the same old boring Apartheid.

So, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are exceptional, like no one else, while Palestinians are always somehow, ordinary, always part of some greater political narrative, always just like everyone else. Their suffering is never due to the particularity of Jewish nationalism, or Jewish racism, or even AIPAC dominating USA foreign policy no, the Palestinian is always a victim of a dull, banal dynamic – general, abstract and totally lacking in particularity.

This raises some serious questions.

Can you think of any other liberation or solidarity movement that prides itself in being boring, ordinary and dull? Can you think of any other solidarity movement that downgrades its subject into just one more meaningless exhibit in a museum of materialist historical happenings? I don’t think so! Did the black South Africans see themselves as being like everyone else? Did Martin Luther King believe his brothers and sisters to be inherently undistinguishable?

I don’t think so. So how come Palestinian solidarity has managed to sink so low that their spokespersons and supporters compete against each other to see who can best eliminate the uniqueness of the Palestinian struggle into just part of a general historical trend such as colonialism or Apartheid?

The answer is simple. Palestinian Solidarity is an occupied zone and, like all such occupied zones must dedicate itself to the fight against ‘anti Semitism’. Dutifully united against racism, fully engaged with LGBT issues in Palestine and in the movement itself, but for one reason or another, the movement is almost indifferent towards the fate of millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps and their Right of Return to their homeland.

But all this can change. Palestinians and their supporters could begin to see their cause for what it is, unique and distinctive. Nor need this be all that difficult.  After all, if Jewish nationalism is inherently exceptional as Zionists proclaim, is it not only natural that the victims of such a distinctive racist endeavor are at least, themselves, just as distinctive.

So far, Palestine solidarity has failed to liberate Palestine, but it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in creating a Palestine Solidarity Industry, and one largely funded by liberal Zionists. We have been very productive in schlepping activists around the world promoting ‘boycotts’ and ‘sanctions’ meanwhile Israel trade with Britain is booming  and Hummus Tzabar is clearly apparent in every British grocery store.

All those attempts to reduce Palestinian ordeal into a dated, dull, generalised materialist narrative should be exposed for what they are – an attempt to appease liberal Zionists. Palestinian suffering is actually unique in history at least as unique as the Zionist project.

Yesterday I came across this from South African minister Ronnie Kasrils. In a comment on Israeli Apartheid he said : “This is much worse than Apartheid..Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had Jets attacking our townships; we never had sieges that lasted months after months. We never had tanks destroying houses.”

Kasrils is dead right. It is much worse than Apartheid and far more sophisticated than colonialism. And why? Because what the Zionists did and are doing is neither Apartheid nor is it colonialism. Apartheid wanted to exploit the African, Israel wants the Palestinian gone. Colonialism is an exchange between a mother and a settler state. Israel never had a mother State, though it may well have had a few ‘surrogate mothers’.

Now is the time to look at the unique ordeal of the Palestinian people. Similarly, now is the time to look at the Zionist crime in the light of Jewish culture and identity politics.

Can the solidarity movement meet this challenge? Probably, but like Palestine, it must first, itself, be liberated.

The Lies That Gun Grabbers Tell

When a group or organization seeks to establish any social policy, it helps tremendously if that group remains honest in their endeavor. If its members are forced to lie, tell half-truths or use manipulative tactics in order to fool the masses into accepting its initiative, then the initiative at its very core is not worth consideration. Propaganda is not simply political rhetoric or editorial fervor; it is the art of deceiving people into adopting the ideology you want them to espouse. It is not about convincing people of the truth; it is about convincing people that fallacy is truth.

Nothing embodies this disturbing reality of cultural dialogue more than the ill-conceived movement toward gun control in America.

It isn’t that gun control proponents are impossible to talk to in a rational manner; most gun control activists have an almost fanatical cult-like inability to listen to reason. It isn’t that they are so desperate to paint themselves as “intellectually superior” to 2^nd Amendment advocates; intellectual idiocy is a plague upon many ideological groups. What really strikes me as astonishing is the vast and embarrassing lengths to which gun grabbers in particular will go to in order to deny facts and obfuscate history.

I have seen jaw-dropping acts of journalistic debauchery and blatant disregard for reality since the gun debate exploded in the wake of Sandy Hook. I have seen past precedents rewritten in order to falsely diminish gun rights arguments. I have seen dishonest and volatile tactics used to misdirect discussion and attack the character, rather than the position, of those who defend the 2^nd Amendment. I have seen gun grabbers use unbelievable acts of deception that border on clinically sociopathic in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

A perfect example has been the assertion by gun control proponents that despotic regimes do not disarm their populations before committing genocide. This primarily stems from the rationalization that the Third Reich did not exactly introduce gun control measures, rather it used measures that were already in existence. Gun grabbers are willing to cherry pick historical references in defense of Adolf Hitler in order to get their way. Sadly, they seem to forget that Hitler’s gun control policies of 1938 disarmed the Jewish people as his “Final Solution” was being implemented. Apparently, gun grabbers do not count the Jews as German citizens victimized by disarmament.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/lets-stick-to-the-facts-when-discussing-gun-control.html/

The Nazis did deregulate some firearms as gun grabbers argue, but what they don’t mention is that this deregulation was designed to benefit only those citizens who proved to be loyal to the Nazi Party. Hitler was happy to arm those who swore fealty to the Reich.

In one of the latest instances of gun grabber duplicity and disinformation, I came across an opinion piece by Henry Blodget, the CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider and a regular on Yahoo’s “Daily Ticker,” entitled “Finally A Gun Is Used To Stop A Crime Instead Of Killing Innocent People.”

Blodget is primarily an economic analyst, as I am, and is not exactly an unintelligent louse. He is well aware of the proper methods of research and how to present a debate point with tangible evidence. He should know better than to publish a piece with so many inconsistencies and broken pretenses. However, it presents an important opportunity to examine the cognitive dissonance of media gun grabbers and their attempts to influence the populace.

Blodget is asserting that private firearms ownership is not a practical means of self-defense, that instances of self-defense are rare and that this view diminishes the “need” for 2^ndAmendment protections. He goes on to proclaim:

“In practice, unfortunately, the guns that good guys own to protect themselves from bad guys too often end up killing the good guys’ kids or wives or the good guys themselves (either via suicide, accident, or, in some cases, because they’re grabbed by the bad guys and used against the good guys). Or, as in the case of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, the guns kill people who the good guys think are bad guys but who aren’t actually bad guys…”

Blodget never actually qualifies any of the notions contained in this statement. He never provides any statistics on wives and children of good guys being shot. Also, I was not aware that the Trayvon Martin case had already been decided and that Trayvon was found not to be the aggressor. Does Blodget have a crystal ball?

Blodget starts off his anti-gun tirade very poorly with several unqualified statements that he never answers for. This is highly common among gun grabbers; they feel so righteous (overzealous) in their cause that they feel no regret in spouting baseless conclusions with the presumption that their audience will never question their logic.

Blodget then focuses on a single event as an example of the “rarity” of successful gun defense. This instance involved the death of a teen who held a gun on a reserve police officer and high school basketball coach. The coach pulled his own personal weapon and fired in defense. Blodget uses some strategic omissions in his description of the event. For instance, he fails to mention that the coach was 70 years old, and that perhaps owning a gun was indeed his only practical means of protecting himself and his players against two young thugs, one of whom obtained a firearm illegally (as most criminals do. According to the FBI, only 8 percent of guns used in a crime are purchased legally at a gun store).

Blodget also uses the smiling image of one of the attackers at the top of his article, as if we should feel sorry for him. Perhaps I’m just coldhearted, but the death of a violent offender at the hands of his intended victim does not bring a tear to my eye.

The fact that he uses this particular instance of gun defense was, of course, strategic. A teen died, and both the attacker and the defender were armed with guns. He means us to see the event as a tragedy caused by the very existence of civilian firearms ownership. Blodget somehow overlooks the thousands upon thousands of other self defense stories out there in which gun ownership saved lives…

What about the story of student Chris Boise, who used an AR-15 to ward off two armed assailants breaking into his apartment. The criminals ran at the sight of his weapon:

http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story/Homeowners-Scare-Off-Burglars/7yaLSXAvCUGBkwgAZpGO4g.cspx

What about an Atlanta mother of 9-year-old twins who shot and killed an assailant with a previous record of battery breaking into her home. A police officer on scene after the event noted that “she handled her first shooting better than he did…”

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/mother-of-two-surprises-burglar-with-five-gunshots/nTnGR/

How about the 1997 incident at a High School in Pearl, Mississippi, in which a 16 year old murdered his mother, then went to school with a rifle and opened fire (sound familiar), shooting several and killing two. The student was subdued by the Vice Principle, who had to run to his care to grab his .45 Colt (Note that when a staff member of a school is armed, the body count of these attacks goes way down):

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136736,00.html

And why not mention the man who entered a Golden Food Market in Richmond, Virginia opening fire at employees and customers, only to be shot down by a conceal carrying citizen:

http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/14664/statistics-show-concealed-carry-saves-many-lives-takes-few

These are just a few of the numerous instances of gun defense across the U.S. that the mainstream media likes to ignore. Blodget had all of these examples at his disposal. He could have written a fair and honest editorial, but he didn’t.

After Blodget presents his carefully picked gun defense story, he then makes these three points:

“First, and most importantly, the gun used for protection in this case would be perfectly legal under the proposed new gun-control laws. The proposed laws ban military-grade assault weapons and massive ammo clips, not handguns. And assuming the coach did not have a criminal record, he would still be a legal gun owner.

The bottom line is that no mainstream politician in the current gun control debate is talking about banning the kind of gun used in this incident…”

To which proposed gun law is Blodget referring? Many gun grabbers are suggesting that theNew York SAFE Act model be applied nationwide. The SAFE Act makes any weapon that can hold magazines of more than seven rounds illegal. Some lawmakers, like Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), have openly suggested a total ban of all firearms that includes confiscation. So, depending on which laws are passed, the coach may not have survived the attack unless, like the criminal, he obtained a weapon illegally.

“…Second, the coach was a trained police officer. He knew very well how to carry, handle, and use his handgun. And the fact that he used it effectively under the extreme shock and pressure of being robbed at gunpoint shows how well trained he was.”

The coach was a reserve police officer, but this is irrelevant to the incident. Aspiring police officers qualify in the firearms segment of their training using a mere 50 to 60 rounds during scenarios that are taught in even the most rudimentary civilian courses, which often use hundreds of rounds during qualifications. Police officers do not get magical training. In fact, many officers are forced to attend civilian-run training facilities in order to get more time and more complex experience. Civilian combat weapons enthusiasts are often far better prepared for a violent situation than the average law enforcement official.

The reason Blodget fixates on the police status of the victim is because, like most gun grabbers, he is a statist. In his mind, a designated state official is given credence by the government and is, therefore, somehow a superhero with amazing gun-wielding powers that us poor civilian mortals could never hope to master. This naïve sentiment is displayed by many a gun grabber who has never actually owned or fired a gun in his life.

“Third, this incident could easily have turned out differently–as many similar incidents do. If the coach had been a bit slower or clumsier in pulling his own gun, the attackers could have shot and killed all three of the victims before they had a chance to defend themselves. (In the wild west, when everyone carried guns, it wasn’t always the bad guys that got shot.)”

Yes, and a comet could fall from the sky and roast the Earth. Hypothetically, anything could go wrong at any moment, yet, thousands of Americans defend themselves each year with a firearm without killing innocent bystanders or being too slow or clumsy on the draw. Why should gun owners abandon their rights just because some people cannot control their personal fears?

Finally, how much better are an unarmed victim’s chances of survival? Is Blodget really trying to insinuate being armed does not increase a victim’s ability to defend himself unless he happens to be a cop on a government salary? If faced with a gun- or knife-wielding attacker who threatened him or his family, would Blodget turn down the use of a firearm if available? Would he try to shoot the perpetrator, or would he fall to his knees and beg for mercy?

The only tangible evidence that Blodget uses to buttress his opinion that self-defense is not a viable argument for gun ownership is a single FBI statistic on justifiable homicides. Justifiable homicide is a gray area of law, and the number of instances recorded by the FBI in no way reflects the actual frequency in which guns are used in self-defense.

By exploiting this one statistic, Blodget knowingly disregards the fact that many gun defense situations do not end in the death of the attacker. He also disregards the number of criminals who run at the sight of an armed target, as well as the number of crimes that are prevented completely because the criminal is not certain whether his targets are armed.

Most police departments do not keep accurate records of attempted crimes which were thwarted by armed citizens. The only sources of such statistics are surveys held by various organizations and institutions. Blodget quickly dismisses the widely disseminated survey by criminology professor Gary Kleck, which shows that there are far more instances of guns used to thwart crime than guns used to perpetrate crime. Blodget claims that the study is “old and highly flawed because it used a small number of people as a test group”, all common assertions by gun control fanatics. The study was held in 1994 (hardly ages ago), and surveyed 5000 households.

A recent Reuter/Ipsos poll used widely by gun grabbers claimed that 74% of Americans support an assault weapons ban, yet their survey only involved 559 people with far less oversight than Kleck’s study.  The hypocritical nature of the anti-gun mindset is revealed again…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gun-poll_n_2498840.html

Vehement gun control advocate and criminologist Marvin Wolfgang made this comment on Kleck’s study:

“What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator.”

He went on to say that a conflicting National Crime Victimization Survey (also used widely by gun grabbers) did not contradict the Kleck study, and that the argument of “too few participants” was unfounded:

“I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well. … The usual criticisms of survey research, such as that done by Kleck and Gertz, also apply to their research. The problems of small numbers and extrapolating from relatively small samples to the universe are common criticisms of all survey research, including theirs. I did not mention this specifically in my printed comments because I thought that this was obvious; within the specific limitations of their research is what I meant by a lack of criticism methodologically.”

According to survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminologyentitled ‘Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment’, U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year. This is a conservative estimate compared to Kleck’s 2.5 million, but it is still a far larger number than the amount of annual homicides by gun. The argument that gun murders outweigh gun defense is a defective one. Blodget knows it, which is why he dances his way around so many viable pieces of evidence. He is not interested in the facts, only promoting his own twisted worldview.

Violent crimes (assault, burglary, rape, etc.) have skyrocketed in countries like the U.K. and Australia where stringent gun control has been enacted, simply because criminals know that because of government controls the odds of running into an armed victim are slim. Gun grabbers like Blodget do not care about this, though. They are not actually interested in saving lives. What they are interested in is imposing their ideologies on the rest of us.

If the only drive of anti-gun advocates was a sincere concern for public safety, they would not feel the need to misrepresent the facts and lie outright in order to convince others. Those who use disinformation to their benefit are acting on much darker emotional impulses and biases, like fear and malevolence. Their goal is not to find the truth, but to “win”. Their goal is not to encourage understanding, but to destroy their political enemies.

The most enticing motive for the average yuppie within the gun control society is not their hatred of guns per say, but their hatred of gun culture. Being worshipers of the establishment, they do not like our defiance of socialization, collectivism, and the corrupt state in general. They do not like our methodologies of decentralization and independence. They do not like that we have the ability to crush their skewed arguments with ease. And, they do not like that we have the physical capability of denying their pursuit of power. Gun control is not just a war on guns; it is a war on traditionally conservative Americans, our heritage, our beliefs, and our principles. It is a war the gun grabbers will lose.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

There’s No Business Like Shoa Business

Yesterday, the Independent reported  “Astonishing new research shows Nazi camp network targeting Jews was twice as big as previously thought.” But The Independent was quick and kind enough to give us an insight into the  implications of this new Shoa affair. “The team behind the research, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told The Independent that they believe the evidence could also be crucial to survivors trying to bring cases for compensation against Germany and other countries for time spent in camps whose existence was hitherto obscure or undocumented.”

Legendary (and very perceptive) Israeli diplomat Abba Eban had already sussed it out in the 1950s when he told us that: “There’s no business like Shoa business”

For years, I’ve been opposing European Holocaust denial laws. Among other things, I believe that those laws are designed primarily to maintain the primacy of Jewish suffering and divert attention from the sins of Zionism and Israel. But now I realise that I could have been wrong. As the Holocaust Industry runs out of steam, some Jewish institutions are engaged in sustaining the Holocaust as the mother and father of all genocides and, as we read above, they certainly know how to convert suffering into shekels. So now I grasp that Holocaust Denial Laws, may actually have been passed to save the Goyim from the inevitable inflation of future demands for further compensation such as reported above.

For now, I would advise the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to adopt a more universal approach and, rather than focusing solely on the suffering of Jews,  to look into the suffering inflicted on Palestinians by the Jewish State because, as far as we can see, the whole of Palestine is now an open air prison.

Oh, and while they’re at it, The Holocaust Memorial Museum can also look into the role Jewish lobbies are playing in the destruction Palestine – a crime taking place before our very eyes.

Israel’s Uncertain Future

President Barack Obama’s Middle Eastern tour, scheduled for the end of March, has triggered a wave of intense speculation about its objectives in recent days. It centers on reports from Israeli sources that Obama will tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a “window of opportunity” for a military strike on Iran will open in June.

The President will allegedly bring the message that Israel should “sit tight” and let the U.S. take the stage—even if that means remaining on the sidelines during an American military operation. It seems improbable, however, that an American president needs to make a 12,000-mile round-trip to provide such reassurance to a difficult partner whom he dislikes, and whose sentiments are fully reciprocated. Last year Obama had no qualms about turning down Netanyahu’s request for a meeting following the latter’s public criticism of the Administration for its reluctance to act against Iran. It is also unlikely that Obama would let Netanyahu know of his strategy so far in advance, even if the ‘window of opportunity’ claim was true.

As for the perennial issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is an even bet that Mr. Obama will not be able to kick-start the stalled ‘peace process.’ At most, notes The Economist, Israel may accept a partial freeze on settlement construction in exchange for a Palestinian pledge not to take Israel’s settlement activity to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Both sides are primarily interested in making the opponent take the blame for the continuing deadlock. Amos Yadlin—former military intelligence chief who now heads the Institute for National Security Studies in Jerusalem—aptly summarized the Israeli position when he said, “We have to submit a proposal to the Palestinians, a decent proposal, a fair proposal. If the Palestinians will accept it, it’s a win of peace. If they refuse—as we think they will—then at least we win the blame game and we can continue to shape our borders by ourselves without the need to wait for the Palestinians to agree.”

It is obvious that the new Israeli government does not envisage a two-state solution as the foundation of a “decent and fair” proposal. Netanyahu’s plans for settlement construction in annexed east Jerusalem would effectively cut the West Bank in two and force a fait accompli on the status of the Holy City that no Palestinian leader would ever accept. Further settlement construction is “the biggest single threat to the two-state solution,” and Netanyahu knows it. His move reflects his strategic vision: a lasting peace with the Arabs is not obtainable; the conflict is structurally irresoluble; and Israel’s security therefore demands open-ended maintenance of military superiority and physical control over as much territory as possible. Meaningless concessions may be made for PR purposes—a few Palestinian prisoners can be released here, further expansion of a few settlements may be suspended there—but Israel needs to manage the conflict by maintain the status quo for many years to come.

An important element of this strategy is the assumption that the United States will continue to support it politically, militarily, and financially. Quite apart from various moral and legal issues involved, the U.S. Government appears increasingly reluctant to condone Netanyahu’s vision—which is just as well, primarily because doing so would not be in the American interest, but also because the strategy of permanent conflict management is not in the interest of Israel’s long-term survival. Israel may seem strong and secure at the moment, but its position vis-à-vis its hostile Arab neighbors is steadily deteriorating.

The wave of political changes in the Arab world over the past two years has changed the security architecture of the Middle East to Israel’s detriment. One of its consequences is that in relation to Israel the new leaders are more representative of the wishes of their people. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s manipulation of the political process has enabled it to concentrate all power in its hands. President Mohamed Morsi’s skill and cunning ensured the Brotherhood’s victory at the forthcoming sham parliamentary election. For the time being, Morsi is paying lip service to the maintenance of the peace treaty with Israel. He knows that this is the precondition for continuing American aid to his country’s depleted coffers, but his long-term intentions are better reflected in his speech made nearly three years ago, in which he urged Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews. In a television interview months later, he blasted “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.” Denying Israel’s right to exist is a key pillar of the Brotherhood’s ideology and its activists murdered President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 for signing that same peace treaty two years earlier. Nothing has changed in its position. Israel’s southwestern frontier is no longer secure; and if Bashar al-Assad falls in Syria, the same will apply to the northeastern frontier in the Golan.

With the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of the geographic, demographic and cultural center of the Arab world well-nigh irreversible, the entire Middle East is in turmoil. Libya is a failed state in which rival tribal militias and terrorist groups run the show outside central Tripoli and use its territory to launch attacks in Algeria. In Syria, the rebel movement is dominated by the Islamic People’s Brigade, the Islamic Dawn Movement, the Battalions of Islam, and many similar groups which share an ideology that includes a relentless hatred of Israel. If victorious, these seasoned foreign and home-grown jihadists will cause Israel to nostalgically remember three decades of peace in the Golan Heights under Bashar al-Assad and his father before him.

If the momentum of the past two years provides pointers for the future, by the end of this decade the Greater Middle East will be more firmly Islamic than at any time since the heyday of the Ottoman Empire under Suleyman, and thus more implacably anti-Israeli than ever. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan heralded the shift four years ago, and Turkey has rapidly morphed from Israel’s key strategic partner in the region into a hostile Islamic power. To take but one example, speaking the the United Nations on February 27 Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called on the international community to “put an end to the Palestinians’ suffering in the occupied territories” and urged the world “to put pressure on Israel to respect human dignity.”

Closer to Israel’s borders, it is only a matter of time before Morsi’s protégé, Hamas, prevails over the more moderate Fatah in the Palestinian power struggle. The precarious stability of Jordan—which has long acted as if it had not merely a nonbelligerency agreement, but a fully-fledged peace treaty with Israel —will be tested by sectarian tensions between East Bank Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin. King Abdullah’s reluctant reforms may create a revolution of rising expectations, and lead to yet another regime change detrimental to Israel’s interests. There will be no “peace process,” of course. With the storm clouds gathering around them, many Israelis will have reason to regret the support that Netanyahu’s friends in Washington had given to the Arab Islamic Winter.

Diplomatically, Israel is more isolated than ever since 1967. The settlement enterprise is not only a security liability, rather than an asset, but also a diplomatic millstone which materially contributed to the overwhelming UN vote in favor of Palestinian de facto statehood last fall. Since then, settlement policies have elicited a chorus of condemnation, including a call for sanctions against Israel by the European union. The unelected elite running the EU is inherently hostile to a state based on the principle of blood and religion, but its antagonism to Israel is further exacerbated by rising influence of the Muslim diaspora in several key EU countries, notably France, Germany and Britain. More significantly still, Chuck Hagel’s swift confirmation has exposed the growing weakness of pro-Israeli lobbying groups in Washington. Two years ago, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.” Following the botched anti-Hagel campaign, increasing numbers of Washingtonian insiders are prone to agree with his assessment.

Demographic trends are another alarming aspect of Israel’s long-term geopolitical position, which has always been shaped by the implacable determinants of land and population. The Palestinians are adamantly insistent on the “right of return” of the descendants of some 700,000 refugees of 1948, and estimates indicate that there are more than four million of them in the PA and elsewhere in the Arab world. Over 90% of them reject the possibility of monetary compensation in lieu of that right. This is anathema to Israelis, as it would signal the end of the Jewish state, and the elusive two-state solution seems to offer the only viable defense from the demographic bomb. Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the Jews are already in a minority. Since birth rates in the West Bank and Gaza remain much higher than in Israel, the Arab population of the Palestinian Authority will exceed the number of Israeli Jews by 2040. On current form, Arabs will account for a quarter of Israel’s population by that time, up from just over a fifth today.

Jewish immigration does not make much difference to the trend. It has oscillated between 15 and 20,000 over the past decade, the massive influx from the former USSR having dried up. It is noteworthy that considerably higher numbers of Jews are leaving—many of them highly skilled professionals. In 2011, the government estimated the number of Israeli citizens living abroad at between 800,000 and one million, representing up to 13% of the population.Consistent with the latter figure is the estimated one million Israelis in the Diaspora reported at the first global conference of Israelis living abroad, held in January 2011. According to the Foundation for the Middle East Peace, about 45 percent of the adult Israeli expatriates have completed at least a university degree, in contrast to 22 percent of the Israeli population. The Israeli emigrants are generally younger than the immigrants to Israel. Significantly, up to 60 percent of Israelis had approached or were intending to approach a foreign embassy to ask for citizenship and a passport. Analysts warn that it will be a challenge for Jewish Israelis to maintain their current dominant majority of approximately 75 percent, primarily due to higher fertility among non-Jewish Israelis — nearly one child per woman greater — the depletion of the large pool of likely potential Jewish immigrants, and large-scale Jewish Israeli emigration: “Consequently, demographic projections expect the Jewish proportion of the country—which peaked at 89 percent in 1957—to continue declining over the coming decades, approaching a figure closer to two-thirds of the population by mid-century.” As a commentator noted in the London Independent noted two years ago (“Will Israel Still Exist in 2048?”), with the early pioneering spirit fading, and even the Holocaust—dare one hazard—less of a unifying force, Israel is not the same country it was 60, 30, even 10 years ago:

And demography means that it will continue to change, with the Arab, Orthodox Jewish and second-generation Russian populations increasing much faster than other groups. The Israel of the next 30 years is likely to be more divided, less productive, more inward-looking and more hawkish than it is today—but without the financial means and unquestioning sense of duty that inspired young people to defend their homeland by force of arms.

The Palestinians believe that time is on their side. The young—one-half of the population—are angry, disillusioned and more radical than their parents. As Professor Menachem Klein of Bar Ilan University wrote last November, they see the ailing Palestinian Authority pegged down at bare subsistence levels, without state authority or geographical contiguity, an undeveloped economy totally dependent on Israel and foreign donors, and a Palestinian elite accorded VIP status in reward for its collaboration in maintaining the status quo:

Today there is no longer a sole Palestinian representative—Hamas is in the game too. Moreover, the talks singularly failed to produce a permanent settlement or end the occupation. On the contrary, the reality on the ground has changed for the worse, to the extent that among the New Palestinians belief in the in the two-state solution is rapidly dwindling. The young generation sees Abbas and his people at a loose end, with no practical program or longer term vision… The young people also hear him talking about non-violent resistance to the occupation, while doing virtually nothing to promote it. But the New Palestinians are already on a different wavelength.

These “New Palestinians,” increasingly drawn to Hamas in preference to the corrupt old Fatah elite, will present a greater threat to Israel’s future than their stone-throwing predecessors. They will never accept Israel’s West Bank barrier as a permanent fact of life. They will also be even more inclined than their elders to view the conflict in ontological terms—as a struggle not only for Palestinian rights and viable statehood, but also for the divinely ordained claims of the Ummah against the usurping unbelievers. It is only a matter of time before the “New Palestinians” start perceiving Israel’s rejection of the two-state model and the expansion of settlements as a welcome lapse of judgment, a single-state trap from which the Jewish state will find it hard to extricate itself. They hope that the expansion of the fortress state will eventually morph into one-state solution by other means.

They are no longer deterred or intimidated by Israel’s military superiority. The IDF performed poorly in southern Lebanon in 2006, showing itself poorly prepared for the “fourth generation warfare” against an elusive non-state opponent like Hezbollah. According to a Brookings Institution 2011 report, “The IDF’s poor performance on multiple levels—leadership, coordination, logistics, and fighting capabilities—undermined Israel’s much-prized deterrent factor, and led to the perception of defeat.” The same problem occurred in Gaza in late 2008, where Hamas could be beaten but not defeated, and with the Gaza flotilla raid in 2009, the political costs of which far exceeded the utility of keeping the city under tight naval blockade. The fact that Israel possesses nuclear weapons changes but little in the equation. Of eight other countries possessing the bomb, not one has ever been able to change the status quo in its favor by threatening to use it, let alone by using it. Worryingly for Israel, South Africa had developed its own nuclear arsenal in the 1980s—it has been dismantled since—but this did not enhance its government’s ability to resist the winds of change in the early 1990’s.

Netanyahu’s vision of a Greater Israel and his open-ended strategy of military containment do not take into account the shifting environment and changes within Israel, which make his approach unsustainable in the long term. From its inception Israel has faced numerous threats, but its ability to cope with them in the past does not mean that it will be able to do so indefinitely. The issue is not whether Israel should survive, but whether it has the wherewithal to survive on the basis of the flawed grand strategy to which its ruling political elite subscribes.

Palestinian Prisoners And Israel’s Shin Bet

After a 30-year-old Palestinian died while in custody and a hunger strike by four other inmates sparked a week of West Bank protests, Palestinians are calling for an international investigation of Israel’s treatment of detained Palestinians.

The death of Arafat Jaradat on Saturday raised recurrent questions about Israel’s Shin Bet [Internal Security Service] because Jaradat was healthy at the time of his arrest last week.

Israeli officials claim Jaradat died of an apparent heart attack and has denied he was beaten or subjected to any treatment that could have led to his death.

In protest, several thousand Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons observed a one-day fast on Sunday which is expected to spur more Palestinian demonstrations that will shine a light on Israeli SECURITY and Prison System.

The AP reported that the Shin Bet arrested Jaradat last Monday because residents in his village of Saeer said he was involved in a rock-throwing attack that injured an Israeli. The Shin Bet claim Jaradat admitted to the charge, as well as to another West Bank rock-throwing incident last year.

The Shin Bet also claims that during Jaradat’s interrogation, he was examined several times by a doctor who detected no health problems.

On Saturday, Jaradat was in his cell and after lunch felt unwell and an official statement claims thay “Rescue services and a doctor were alerted and treated him, they didn’t succeed in saving his life.” [1]

Israel’s main forensics institute is to perform an autopsy with a Palestinian physician in attendance.

Issa Karake, a Palestinian official who handles prisoner issues has called for an independent international investigation of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has also demanded an investigation, including how Jaradat was questioned.

The Shin Bet routinely holds detainees in isolation for extended periods during interrogation, keeps them in cells that are lit around the clock and denies them access to lawyers.

Around 700 complaints have been filed about mistreatment by Shin Bet agents over the past decade, but none have led to a criminal investigation.

Current Number of Political Prisoners and Detainees
	0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while4,656 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

 

On January 5, 2006, I traveled to Ramallah to the Headquarters of ADAMEER [Arabic for conscience] and met with spokesmen, Ala Jaradat a slightly built man who delivered a powerful message in a soft spoken voice:

“Since 1967, 650,000 to 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested and detained. That totals 20% of the total population and 80% of all adult Palestinian males have been arrested.

“Most of these arrests occur after midnight when large numbers of IDF storm into neighborhoods or refugee camps, horrifying everyone and arresting anyone 14 years or older. Sometimes they storm into business offices and arrest the breadwinners of the families without any charges.

“These arrests and detentions are based on military orders; we live under a kind of Marshall Law which rules every aspect of Palestinian life: where we live, our license plates that restrict our movement and limited voting rights. Under these military orders the Israeli government is free to hold anyone eight days without accusations or charges. They can hold anyone up to 180 days for interrogation and up to 60 days without benefit of a lawyer.

“The Israeli government never agreed to the Second Geneva Convention, the Knesset never ratified it, and when it comes to the Occupied Territories they totally ignore it. Israel is the only State that approved torture of detainees. I know there are dictators who use torture, but Israel is the only State that supported torture until 1999. That is when International, Israeli and Palestinian pressure groups forced the issue and Barack was confronted about it when he visited the United States.

“The IDF will round up and arrest family members and use threats against their relatives to force confessions. The interrogations lead to Military Trials which is theoretically like court with three Judges presiding but only one is required to have an education and a law degree is not at all necessary. The Military Commander appoints the translators, issues all orders, assigns the judges, and has total control. One appeal is allowed, but if the judges are settlers the Palestinian is in deep SH#T!

“Administrative Detentions are issued by the Military Commander for a period of six months and the reason is always labeled ‘Security’ and the charges can be renewed indefinitely.

“One Palestinian spent eight years under Administrative detention and hundreds have endured four or more years. Today fifty are being held for the past four years. They may be released for a day or two and then they are rearrested because they are social or political activists but reasons are not given by the Israeli government.

“At any given moment 10% of those in prison are under Administrative Detention. There are currently 8,000 prisoners and 800 of them are under Administrative Detention. The government does not have to inform anyone about these arrests except the Red Cross and only if they are imprisoned over two weeks, but most arrests go unreported.

“Any Palestinian under the age of 16 is tried as an adult, but for an Israeli Jew it is 18 years of age. Under 12 years old the child can be arrested but not detained. Over 12 they can be arrested, detained, interrogated, prosecuted and sentenced for throwing stones.

“Most of the Israeli Jews that are imprisoned are in for violent crimes against society and they are mixed in with the Palestinian population. The guards encourage them to do what ever they want to do against the Palestinian population. This is an open invitation by the Israeli government to incite violence and terror in the prison system. We have sworn affidavits from Palestinians claiming it was the guards who encouraged the violence inflicted upon them.

“In August 2004 the Palestinians went on a hunger strike to raise awareness of this problem and the Minister of Health who is responsible for them stated publicly: ‘Our hospitals are off limits to them They can all starve themselves to death.’

“No human rights organizations are allowed access to the prisoners. Only lawyers and the Red Cross can visit them but have no access to the facilities where they are detained.

“The methods and photos from Abu Grahib and Guantanamo were no shock to any Palestinian who had been in prison between 1967 and the ‘80’s. All the methods used in Abu Grahib were normal procedures against Palestinians. In 1999 Internationals, Palestinians and Israelis for human rights threatened a boycott against Israel and that is what forced the Supreme Court to address the torture issue. They did not ban torture and the General Prosecutor can choose not to prosecute those who still use it.” [2]

 

1. http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-call-probe-israeli-prisons-111912052.html

2. THIRD INTIFADA: NONVIOLENT But With Words Sharper Than a Two-Edged Sword by Eileen Fleming

Spielberg v. Tarantino

Hollywood And The Past…

History is commonly regarded as an attempt to produce a structured account of the past. It proclaims to tell us what really happened, but in most cases it fails to do that. Instead it is set to conceal our shame, to hide those various elements, events, incidents and occurrences in our past which we cannot cope with. History, therefore, can be regarded as a system of concealment. Accordingly, the role of the true historian is similar to that of the psychoanalyst: both aim to unveil the repressed. For the psychoanalyst, it is the unconscious mind. For the historian, it is our collective shame.

Yet, one may wonder, how many historians really engage in such a task? How many historians are courageous enough to open the Pandora Box? How many historians are brave enough to challenge Jewish History for real? How many historians dare to ask why Jews? Why do Jews suffer time after time? Is it really the Goyim who are inherently murderous, or is there something unsettling in Jewish culture or collectivism?  But Jewish history is obviously far from being alone here: every people’s past is, in fact, as problematic. Can Palestinians really explain to themselves how is it that after more than a century of struggle, they wake up to find out that their current capital has become a NGO haven largely funded by George Soros’ Open Society? Can the Brits once and for all look in the mirror and explain to themselves why, in their Imperial Wars Museum, they erected a Holocaust exhibition dedicated to the destruction of the Jews? Shouldn’t the Brits be slightly more courageous and look into one of the many Shoas they themselves inflicted on others? Clearly they have an impressive back catalogue to choose from.

The Guardian vs. Athens

The past is dangerous territory; it can induce inconvenient stories. This fact alone may explain why the true Historian is often presented as a public enemy. However, the Left has invented an academic method to tackle the issue. The ‘progressive’ historian functions to produce a ‘politically correct’, ‘inoffensive’ tale of the past. By means of zigzagging, it navigates its way, while paying its dues to the concealed and producing endless ad-hoc deviations that leave the ‘repressed’ untouched. The progressive subject is there to produce a ‘non- essentialist’ and ‘unoffending’ account of the past on the expense of the so-called ‘reactionary’. The Guardian is an emblem of such an approach, it would, for instance, ban any criticism of Jewish culture or Jewishness, yet it provides a televised platform for two rabid Zionist so they can discuss Arab culture and Islamism.  The Guardian wouldn’t mind  offending ‘Islamists’ or British ‘nationalists’  but it would be very careful not to hurt any Jewish sensitivities. Such version of politics or the past is impervious to truthfulness, coherence, consistency or integrity. In fact, the progressive discourse is far from being ‘the guardian of the truth’, it is actually set as  ‘the guardian of the discourse’ and I am referring here to Left discourse in particular.

But surely there is an alternative to the ‘progressive’ attitude to the past. The true historian is actually a philosopher – an essentialist – a thinker who posits the question ‘what does it mean to be in the world and what does it take to live amongst others’? The true historian transcends beyond the singular, the particular and the personal. He or she is searching for the condition of the possibility of that which drives our past, present and future. The true historian dwells on Being and Time, he or she is searching for a humanist lesson and an ethical insight while looking into the poem, the art, the beauty, the reason but also into the fear. The true historian is an essentialist who digs out the concealed, for he or she knows that the repressed is the kernel of the truth.

Leo Strauss provides us with a very useful insight in that regard. Western civilization, he contends, oscillates between two intellectual and spiritual poles – Athens and Jerusalem.  Athens — the birthplace of democracy, home for reason, philosophy, art and science. Jerusalem — the city of God where God’s law prevails. The philosopher, the true historian,  or the essentialist, for that matter, is obviously the Athenian. The Jerusalemite, in that regard, is ‘the guardian of the discourse’, the one who keeps the gate, just to maintain law and order on the expense of ecstasies, poesis, beauty, reason and truth.

Spielberg vs. Tarantino

Hollywood provides us with an insight into this oscillation between Athens and Jerusalem: between the Jerusalemite ‘guardian of the discourse’ and the Athenian contender – the ‘essentialist’  public enemy.  On the Left side of the map we find Steven Spielberg, the ‘progressive’ genius. On his Right we meet peosis itself, Quentin Tarantino, the  ‘essentialist’.

Spielberg, provides us with the ultimate sanitized historical epic. The facts are cherry picked just to produce a pre meditated pseudo ethical tale that maintains the righteous discourse, law and order but, most importantly, the primacy of Jewish suffering (Schindler’s List and Munich). Spielberg brings to life a grand epic with a clear retrospective take on the past. Spielberg tactic is, in most cases, pretty simple. He would juxtapose a vivid transparent binary opposition: Nazis vs. Jews, Israeli vs. Palestinians , North vs. South, Righteousness vs. Slavery. Somehow, we always know, in advance who are the baddies and who are the goodies. We clearly know who to side with.

Binary opposition is indeed a safe route. It provides a clear distinction between the ‘Kosher’ and the ‘forbidden’.  But Spielberg is far from being a banal mind. He also allows a highly calculated and carefully meditated oscillation. In a universalist gesture of courtesy he would let a single Nazi into the family of the kind. He would allow the odd Palestinian to be a victim. It can all happen as long as the main frame of the discourse remains intact.  Spielberg is clearly an arch guardian of discourse – being a master of his art-form, he will certainly maintain your attention for at least 90 minutes of a historic cinematic cocktail made of factual mishmash. All you have to do is to follow the plot to the end. By then the pre-digested ethical message is safely replanted at the hub of your self-loving narcissistic universe.

Unlike Spielberg, Tarantino is not concerned with factuality; he may even repel historicity. Tarantino may as well believe that the notion of ‘the message’ or morality are over rated.  Tarantino is an essentialist, he is interested in human nature, in Being and he seems to be fascinated in particular in vengeance and its universality. For the obvious reasons, his totally farfetched Inglorious Bastards throws light on present Israeli collective blood thirstiness as being detected at the time of Operation Cast lead. The fictional cinematic creation of a revengeful murderous WWII Jewish commando unit is there to throw the light on the devastating contemporary reality of Jewish lobbies’ lust for violence in their relentless push for a world war against Iran and beyond. But Inglorious Bastards may as well have a universal appeal because the Old Testament’s ‘eye for and eye’ has become the Anglo American political driving force in the aftermath of 9/11.

Abe’le vs. Django

What may seem as a spiritual clash between Jerusalemite Spielberg and Athenian Tarantino is more than apparent in their recent works.

The history of slavery in America is indeed a problematic topic and, for obvious reasons, many aspects of this chapter are still kept deeply within the domain of the concealed. Once again Spielberg and Tarantino have produced a distinctively different accounts of this chapter.

In his recent historical epic Lincoln, Spielberg, made Abraham Lincoln into a Neocon ‘moral interventionist’ who against all (political) odds, abolished slavery. I guess that Spielberg knows enough American history to gather that his cinematic account is a crude Zigzag attempt, for the anti slavery political campaign was a mere pretext for a bloody war driven by clear economical objectives.

http://youtu.be/KJVuqYkI2jQ

As one may expect, Spielberg peppers his tale with more than a few genuine historical anecdotes. He is certainly paying the necessary dues just to keep the shame shoved deep under the carpet.  His Lincoln is cherished as a morally driven hero of human brotherhood. And the entire plot carries all the symptoms of contemporary AIPAC lobby assault within the Capitol.  Being one of the arch guardians of the discourse, Spielberg has successfully fulfilled his task. He added a substantial cinematic layer to ensure that America’s true shame remains deeply repressed or shall we say, untouched.

Needles to mention that Spielberg’s take on Lincoln has been cheered by the Jewish press. They called the president Avraham Lincoln Avinu (our father, Hebrew) in The Tablet Magazine.  ‘Avraham’, according to the Tablet, is the definitive good Jew. “As imagined by Spielberg and Kushner, Lincoln’s Lincoln is the ultimate mensch. He is a skilled natural psychologist, an interpreter of dreams, and a man blessed with an extraordinarily clever and subtle legal mind.”  In short, Spielberg’s Lincoln is Abe’le who combines the skills, the gift and the traits of Moses, Freud as well as Alan Dershowitz. However, some Jews complain about the film.   “As an American Jewish historian, writes Lance J. Sussman, “I’m afraid I have to say I am somewhat disappointed with the latest Spielberg film. So much of it is so good, but it would have been even better if he had put at least one Jew in the movie, somewhere.”

I guess that Spielberg may find it hard to please the entire tribe. Quentin Tarantino, however, doesn’t even try. Tarantino is, in fact, doing the complete opposite. Through a phantasmic epic that confesses zero interest in any form of historicity or factuality whatsoever, he manages, in his latest masterpiece Django Unchained, to dig out the darkest secrets of Slavery. He scratches the concealed and judging by the reaction of another cinematic genius Spike Lee, he has clearly managed to get pretty deep.

http://youtu.be/ztD3mRMdqSw

By putting into play a stylistic spectacle within the Western genre Tarantino manages to dwell on every aspect we are advised to leave untouched. He deals with biological determinism, White supremacy and cruelty. But he also turns his lens onto slaves’ passivity, subservience and collaboration. The Athenian director builds here a set of Greek mythological God like characters; Django (Jamie Fox), is the unruly king of revenge and Schultz (Christoph Waltz) the German dentist turned bounty hunter is the master of wit, kindness and humanity with a giant wisdom tooth shining over his caravan. Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the Hegelian (racist) Master and Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) is the Hegelian Slave, emerging as the personification of social transformation. To a certain extent, the relationships between Candie and Stephen could be seen as one of the most profound yet subversive cinematic takes on Hegel’s master-slave dialectic.

In Hegel’s dialectic two self-consciousness’ are constituted via a process of mirroring. In Django Unchained, Stephen the slave, seems to convey the ultimate form of subservience, yet this is merely on the surface.  In reality Stephen is way more sophisticated and observant than his master Candie. He is on his way up. It is hard to determine whether Stephen is a collaborator or if he really runs the entire show. And yet in Tarantino’s latest, Hegel’s dialectic is, somehow, compartmentalized.  Django, once unchained, is clearly impervious to the Hegelian dialectic spiel. His incidental liberation induces in him a true spirit of relentless resilience. When it comes to it, he kills the Master, the Slave and everyone else who happens to be around, he bends every rule including the ‘rules of nature’ (biological determinism). By the time the epic is over, Django leaves behind a wreckage of the Candie’s plantation, the cinematic symbol of the dying old South and the ‘Master Slave Dialectic’.  Yet, as Django rides on a horse towards the rising sun together with his free wife Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), we are awakened to the far fetched cinematic fantasy. In reality, I mean the world out of the cinema, the Candie’s plantation would, in all likelihood, remain intact and Django would probably be chained up again. In practice, Tarantino cynically juxtaposes the dream (the cinematic reality) and reality (as we know it).  By doing so he manages to illuminate the depth of misery that is entangled with the human condition and in Black reality in America in particular.

Tarantino is certainly not a ‘guardian of the discourse.’ Quite the opposite, he is the bitterest enemy of stagnation. As in his previous works, his latest spectacle is an essentialist assault on correctness and ‘self-love’. Tarantino indeed turns over many stones and unleashes many vipers into the room. Yet being a devout Athenian he doesn’t intend to produce a single answer or a moral lesson. He leaves us perplexed yet cheerful. For Tarantino, I guess, dilemma is the existential essence.  Spielberg, on, the other hand, provides all the necessary answers. After all, within the ‘progressive’ politically-correct discourse, it is the answers that determine, in retrospective, what questions we are entitled to raise.

If Leo Strauss is correct and Western civilization should be seen as an oscillation between Athens and Jerusalem, truth must be said – we can really do with many more Athenians and their essentialist reflections. In short, we are in a desperate need of many more Tarantinos to counter Jerusalem and its ambassadors.

Götterdämmerung, Eight Decades Later

Eighty years ago on January 30th, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Germany’s Chancellor. The old Marshal, a Junker through and through, did so unwillingly. He disliked “that Austrian corporal”—he seldom uttered Hitler’s name—from the moment they first met, in October 1931. The antipathy was mutual, with Hitler often referring to Hindenburg—in private—as “that old fool.” They belonged to two different worlds not only generationally and socially, but above all morally, and they both knew it.

Until the first few weeks of January 1933 Hindenburg repeatedly stated that he would never appoint Hitler as Chancellor, whatever the circumstances. As late as January 26 he declared to a group of friends and associates, “Gentlemen, I hope you will not hold me capable of appointing this Austrian corporal to be Reich Chancellor.” But Chancellor Franz von Papen—ostensibly a master manipulator—thought that if need be he could use Hitler as an expedient tool, a brute who would be kept on a short leash by the forces of the traditional Right.

Having patiently made his way into Hindenburg’s inner circle, Papen kept amusing and flattering the old man. By early 1932 he was considered not only trusted but indispensible. After the November 1932 election, which saw the Nazi vote drop from 37 to 32 percent, and after Papen was forced out of Chancellorship in December, Hindenburg’s importance in resolving the looming crisis grew out of all proportion to his declining faculties and deteriorating health. After another meeting with the Nazi leader, in the final weeks of 1932, Hindenburg declared dryly that “a cabinet led by Hitler would necessarily develop into a single-party dictatorship, with all the attendant consequences for an extreme aggravation of the conflicts within the German people.”

Papen begged to differ, however. He came to believe that he could build up Hitler yet control him from behind the scenes, bring him down at an opportune moment, and take the top post for himself yet again. He then persuaded Hindenburg’s influential son Oskar of the merits of his plan, and spent the last two weeks of January bullying Hindenburg into appointing Hitler Chancellor. On January 30, 1933—eighty years ago today—Hindenburg relented and swore Hitler in as Chancellor at 11 a.m. This was no Machtergreifung, no active seizure of power, no revolution. Hitler’s appointment was the fruit of Papen’s intrigue. Essentially it was theMachtübertragung, handover of power.

The rest, as they say, is history. Two hours after Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, Hitler merged the two offices to become Führer und Reichskanzler. Germany’s head of government became the leader of the Volk, thus removing any remaining checks and balances on his power. The story of Hitler’s rise is nevertheless filled with mystery. The lumpenproletarian failed artist from the periphery of Deutschtum, destined became one of the most powerful men in history, still haunts us, 123 years after his birth.

Hitler is also one of the most relentlessly destructive men in history. The enormity of his subsequent—for Nazi crimes were his own—was breathtaking, and the main victims of Hitler’s obsession with demographic engineering on a grand scale were Slavs and Jews. He could do so because a generation of young Germans had come of age devoid of old certainties, proving that man who does not believe in God will believe in anything. The Successor States’ culture after 1918 inculcated in the young the belief in a theoretically divinely sanctioned and structured sense of the world, but the Faith—thoroughly eroded well before 1914—was no longer present. This enabled Hitler to use the German nation and its highly developed state as a ready-made instrument of his Wille zur Macht.

The twentieth century had witnessed a departure in the conduct of many Europeans away from the concept of natural morality that provided a salutary restraint on their behavior before 1914. The rise of first Bolshevism, then Nazism, marked the end of an era that sought, over the previous century, to break away from the traumatic memory of the Terror in France, and insisted that physical elimination of an adversary was not a legitimate way of resolving a conflict. The decline of the religious impulse among most Europeans who mattered—terminal even before Sarajevo—created a gaping hole that was filled by ideologies uninhibited by religious restraints and motivated by the bloodlust that would make Robespierre recoil. Fore over a century between the Vendée and Lenin and Hitler, it was not mere ‘expediency’ which had prevented states from resorting to outright terrorism and mass extermination as a means to an end. The limitations on the behavior of states derived from an underlying consensus among their leaders that raison d’etat entailed continued membership of the community of civilized nations.

The decisive break came in the midst of the ideological mobilization for Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union, with the decision to wage a war of extermination against the Slavs and to embark on the Final Solution. From September 1939 until June 1941 Germany arguably was waging a traditional European war (ein europäisches Normalkrieg) against Britain and France that only turned exterminationist with the Barbarossa. Until June 1941 the Wehrmacht swept across Europe like a well oiled machine, but the principles of warfare and the treatment of the vanquished did not appear to be fundamentally different from previous attempts at Continental hegemony by Napoleon, or the Kaiserreich. Against the Soviets, both ideological and racial enemies, no laws applied, however: the war aimed at destroying not simply the Soviet government and its ability to wage war, but the rule of law—any law—per se: “there was no true designation between civilian and combatant, Slav and Jew, and Communist and anticommunist. It is here that Hitler’s Kulturkampf (cultural war) burgeoned into a Vernichtungskrieg (war of annihilation) to rid of these aforementioned enemies of the Volk…”

Except for his anti-Slav and anti-Jewish obsession, there was little guidance or consistency in Hitler’s ‘vision’ of the new Europe. It was an apocalyptic Utopia, improvised ad-hoc, which carried the seeds of its own destruction from the outset—and millions of decent, intelligent, educated people followed. This is why January 30 matters: that is when one uncouth autodidact and his followers, organized into a regime, started taking control over an ancient, civilized and powerful nation. Over the ensuing 13 years they devoted extraordinary resources to war and mass murder, destroying their own nation and the rest of Europe in the process.

The Islamic Republic of Egypt

The most important foreign event in the final days of 2012 was the ramming through of Egypt’s new, Sharia-based constitution by President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies. The cultural, demographic and geographic center of the Arab world is now set to become an Islamic Republic. Egypt’s transformation, after 60 years of secularist officers’ dabbling in modernization, will have major consequences for the Greater Middle East.

Only one-third of Egypt’s eligible voters turned out for the two-stage referendum (December 15 and 22), with 64 percent supporting the draft constitution which was swiftly signed into law by Morsi on December 26.  The vote was marred by a host of irregularities, but the demands for a full inquiry have been ignored. The Brotherhood’s victory at parliamentary elections in two months’ time now seems a foregone conclusion.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION consists of an introduction, an 11-part preamble and 236 articles. The 1971 Egyptian constitution also contained a vague reference to the Sharia, but the new one goes much further. Islamic Shariah is now elevated to “the principal source of legislation,” and its principles are defined in Article 219 as “general evidence, foundational rules, rules of jurisprudence, and credible sources accepted in Sunni doctrines and by the larger community.”

The articles dealing with Sharia in the constitution “are very complicated and no one understands them but Islamic scholars,” according to Rafaat Fouda, a law professor at Cairo University. The constitution’s drafters resolved this problem in Article Four, by giving Muslim clerics at al-Azhar University the task of deciding whether Egypt’s laws are Sharia-compliant. Al-Azhar is a bastion of Islamic orthodoxy, and its senior scholars are now authorized to decide on matters of conduct, speech, lifestyle and religion. The manner in which they may act was revealed last June 20 by Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb when he presented The Al-Azhar Document, an 11-point program addressing Egypt’s political future. Al-Tayeb frames democracy as “the modern formula for the Islamic precept of shura (consultation).” He accordingly supports “the people’s representatives endowed with the power of legislation in accordance with the precepts of true Islam.”

It is in this context that the deliberate vagueness of some articles of the new constitution may be more readily understood, e.g. Article 10, which empowers the government to “preserve the genuine character of the Egyptian family, its cohesion and stability and to protect its moral values, all as regulated by law.” The state shall “enable the reconciliation between the duties of a woman toward her family and her work.” Unlike its 1971 predecessor, the constitution does not specifically forbid discrimination against women. Article 11 is also of concern to women. It stipulates that the state should preserve ethics and values, including religious values.Analysts say that such vague wording could be used as a “gateway to imposing garb or freedom restrictions or undoing or abolishing previously enacted laws that allowed women the right to divorce; an age limit on marriage for young girls is also absent.”

The draft guarantees freedom of expression, creativity, assembly etc, but it says those rights “must be practiced in a manner not conflicting with” principles of Shariah or the morals of the family. There is also a ban on insulting “religious messengers and prophets,” which has been used in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to impose strict censorship and policing of the Internet. Christians and Jews are free to practice their rites and establish places of worship, but the new constitution hedges those rights on the condition they do not “violate public order”—another catchall phrase used in the past to prevent the reconstruction or building of churches.

“What has happened in Egypt is an irony of Shakespearean proportion: the jailers are now the prisoners, and the prisoners are now the jailers,” Ayman Nassar commented from Cairo for the BBC. Whereas the old era of the Mubarak regime used to blatantly fake election results, he wrote, the new regime is preying on the illiterate and uneducated: their opinion is easily swayed, whether it be by the preacher at their mosque or the one distributing foodstuffs to them, leading them to believe it was their religious duty to vote in favor of the new constitution: “The persistent and recurring argument against any that seek to deny MB rule is: why are you against Sharia if you are Muslim? Why are you against Islam? … The majority claiming to support the constitution on TV are illiterate and claim they support Islam, further proving the point that they have no idea what machinations exist within the apparently subtle texts of the constitution.”

Last November Morsi issued a decree granting himself unprecedented authority, including immunity to any judicial oversight. His announcement that he could pass any law and take any measure that “advances the Revolution” was revolutionary in itself. It made Mubarak and his two predecessors, Sadat and Nasser, look like scrupulous constitutionalists. It was the Islamist equivalent of the Reich Chancellor’s Enabling Act passed in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire. Secure in the knowledge that the new constitution would be firmly based on Sharia and duly enacted by hook or by crook, Morsi disingenuously claimed that his dictatorial new powers would be temporary, “until a new constitution is approved.” That approval was marred by violence, mass intimidation of Christians and secularists, and many irregularities, but nothing can be done. The protests sparked by Morsi’s decree brought hundreds of thousands of mainly young Egyptians back to Tahrir Square and to the streets of Alexandria and other cities, but this time the regime weathered the storm. The State Department helped by releasing a supine statement urging “all Egyptians to resolve their differences… peacefully and through democratic dialogue.”

Morsi was able to act because in the preceding months the United States had exerted strong pressure on Egypt’s generals not to challenge his assumption of full executive authority. The Administration pretended not to take note of the fact that he came to power because the Muslim Brotherhood broke its pledge to stay out of the presidential race. His first step was to use that authority to reconvene the constitutional assembly previously declared illegal by the courts because it was packed with the Muslim Brotherhood deputies posing as independents.

The game is now over. The rhetoric and tools of “democracy” were adroitly used by the Muslim Brotherhood in line with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dictum that “democracy is a train—you can get off when you reach your destination.” The result is the kind of Egypt very different from what the Obama Administration and its media cohorts had heralded while supporting Morsi’s rise. Lest we forget, last July Hillary Clinton assured him that the United States was doing all it could to “support the democratically elected government and to help make it a success in delivering results for the people of Egypt.” The “results” now include a constitution that makes mockery of Clinton’s feminist slogans.

The theoretical foundation for what Morsi and his team are trying to achieve was provided by Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the ideologue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who was eventually executed by the Nasser regime. Since all non-Islamic states were illegitimate, Qutb wrote, a self-defining Islamic “vanguard”—obviously inspired by the early Bolshevik model—is needed to wage jihad against them. The Muslim Brotherhood, like the Bolsheviks of yore, explicitly denies the legitimacy of any form of social, political, or cultural organization other than itself. Both were happy to use the tools and rhetoric of “democracy” to attain their objectives.

“Even if exporting democracy could be developed into a workable scenario, the end result would be detrimental to U.S. security: Mubaraq would be swept from power and the Muslim Brotherhood would turn Egypt into an Islamic Republic,” I wrote in Defeating Jihad almost seven years ago. “The maturity and consciousness of votersheralds that Egypt has set on a path of democracy with no return,” Morsi declared in a TV address to the nation on December 27. No return, indeed.

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