Eternal Obsessions

Although Richard Hoste seems to be the polar opposite of Larry Auster, both of them are equally  driven by Jewish fixations. Auster considers anyone who fails to meet his fastidious standards of Jewish nationalism and anti-anti-Semitism to be a closet Nazi. Hoste by contrast can’t rein in his hatred for Israel and for anyone who sympathizes with that country’s geopolitical plight. If this is our choice of allies, then the non-aligned Right should be ready to close shop.

Fortunately I don’t think these our only alternatives. Richard Spencer urged contributors to drop any further discussion of what is a needlessly divisive issue, but Hoste’s positions are so intemperate that I can’t resist the impulse to exercise my privlege as a contributing editor and address them, before moving on. His views illustrate the silliness to which Israel-haters can be driven in their determination not to be associated with what Arab Muslims call “the Zionist entity.”

I most definitely do not have the impression that Richard Hoste is simply interested in disengaging from Middle Eastern affairs. Nor is he merely following the counsels of Ron Paul, who wishes to end giving foreign aid to any country anywhere. He also seems oblivious to an obvious point that Richard Spencer brings up, namely that the Palestinians, like the Israelis, are being flooded with American foreign aid. And it’s not just Israelis and Palestinians who are the beneficiaries of American largess: Palestinians, Egyptians and other Arabs are also receiving U.S. aid. And by the way, one of our most favored, aid-receiving nations is Egypt, whose Muslim population has been viciously attacking and even murdering Coptic Christians, with only sporadic attempts by the government to control this practice.

This brings up the problem of Hoste’s highly selective indignation against the Israelis, for expelling Palestinians just before the Jewish state was established. In this respect Hoste seems to be imitating the example of the one Jew he seems to like, Murray Rothbard, who, as Fate would have it, was my close friend. Unfortunately Murray was so rabidly anti-Israeli (I suspect because of the wars he waged with neocons and Jewish liberals) that he deplored the fact that the PLO would even negotiate with the Jewish occupants of their land. Murray hoped the Palestinians would drive out the Zionist interlopers and thereby end an occupation that pained him more than I would have been able to understand, were it not for the fact that Murray and I shared the same predominantly Jewish enemies. And these enemies were, not incidentally, fanatical Zionists as well as fans of a “moderate” federal welfare state and enthusiasts for the civil rights revolution, minus a few frills.

From reading Hoste, one would think that if only the American delegation to the UN stopped vetoing anti-Israeli resolutions, moral order would return to the universe. If only we lined up against Israel with leftist European countries, which are welcoming Muslim Fundamentalists and showering them with cultural funds, with assorted Third World thugocrats, and with such fine tolerant Muslim powers as Iran and Saudi Arabia, then we could fight for justice together. Presumably Israel is such a world-class offender against human decency that Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi, and other anti-Israeli spokesmen are still agonizing over the Israeli expulsion of Palestinians in 1947.

And for Hoste, this was the kind of evil act that should be etched in our memories forever. It was, indeed, far worse that what the American government did to Indians, when it starved and dispossessed them in the 19th century, or what befell millions of Volksdeutsche, who were murdered or expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia after the Second World War. Perhaps we should encourage the UN to pass resolutions against other countries that have expelled unwelcome populations. The trouble with implementing such a policy is that no one’s hands are clean. Every country came into existence by expelling or suppressing someone.

Moreover, unlike other countries in the UN, whose persecutions are entirely one-sided, for example the horrendous treatment accorded to Zoroastrians by the Iranian Islamic Republic, Israel grants the almost one million Palestinians within its borders civil and religious rights. The Palestinians on the West Bank are clearly not treated as well, but this population has been engaged in terrorist acts against the Israeli populations and supports political movements dedicated to the destruction of the Israeli state.

At some point the Israelis will to have to unload this Albatross around their necks, but it is foolish to compare their treatment of the Palestinians on the West Bank to Hitler’s brutalization and extermination of the Jews. Far worse persecutions than the Israeli occupation of the West Bank go on daily in African tribal warfare and through the efforts of Muslim governments to impose Sharia on their unwilling or disobedient subjects. Further, while the Israelis were kicking out Palestinians, at least some of whom had taken up arms against them, the Arab countries were treating their Jewish minorities so wretchedly that many of them left and went to Israel. And so a population exchange occurred in which the Israelis had to take in and pay for Arab Jews while the adjacent Arab states got stuck with Palestinian refugees. Needless to say, the Israelis have done better with their refugees than those Arab states to which the Palestinians came in large numbers. Unlike the Palestinians in Syria and Jordan, Jewish refugees do not live in ghastly refugee camps.

Note we’re not arguing that Israel came into existence in accordance with the Beatitudes. It does not exist as an earthly representation of the Kingdom of God. It is also clearly not the kind of global democracy that the neocons and ADL pretend it is. It is an ethnic nation, like other ethnic nations. But I can’t imagine why we on the right would find this disgraceful. It is the Left and the neocons who want countries to practice “diversity.” The lack of this quality in Israel should not be driving the real Right up the wall. It is foolish to blame the Israelis because they do not follow the dubious model propounded by American Jews, and millions of American Christians, for Western societies.

It also seems to me that Israel behaves a lot better than most of the countries that denounced it in UN ritualistically. One could only imagine (but perhaps one shouldn’t) what Arab Muslim or sub-Saharan governments would do if faced by the same insurrectionary forces. Unlike Hoste, I do not feel any inclination to be identified with most of these anti-Israeli regimes; and one must wonder why a rightwing Westerner would feel differently. If Hoste doesn’t like Israel, then no one is forcing him to visit it. Equally relevant: if he thinks Israel, and our other clients, should not be receiving American foreign aid, then he is expressing a reasonable position. But when he starts beating up on Israel as a country that is even less just than its UN critics, then I suspect something else must be going on in his head. Hoste may be driven by the same anger that I notice among those who specialize in unveiling Jewish conspiracies or unmasking “the eternal Jew.” One would hope that a serious Right could get beyond such peeves and fantasies.

Rumors of World War III

Yes, anarcho-capitalists like Doug Casey frequently claim that "The State" is just about to send its hapless population marching off into World War III ... but there's good reason to beleive that Caesy is right this time. It's difficult to gainsay most of his points. In my estimation, the odds are around 25 percent that Israel and/or the U.S. will attack Iran before the new year; if the economy suffers a major downturn, I'd up the odds to 70 percent.    

Doug: [I think] there is a very significant chance that we are headed for something that might vaguely resemble WWIII.

Louis James: That's going to be a pretty shocking statement to a lot of people – too much cognitive dissonance for most to let themselves think about it. Many readers might say that folks in the Middle East have been squabbling for years without the world going up in flames. Did you have a guru moment while there? Why now?

Doug: Well, people, especially Americans, forget that war, far from being an alien experience only read about in books, is actually a commonplace occurrence. Major powers have had major wars periodically throughout history. There's no reason to imagine mankind has kicked the habit. It may not be the conflagration people once expected from a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but it could still happen, and I suspect that the Middle East, Israel in particular, will be the epicenter.

One thing that drew my attention to this possibility again at this time is not what's going on in Gaza but a friend of mine who had just been to a conference with an ex-director of the CIA, some high FBI officials, a whole bunch of defense department wonks, and similar types from Israel. He reports that all those spooks and military types really think Israel is going to attack Iran. The situation looks very serious to them. And one of Obama's top military advisors has just said the U.S. itself has plans formulated, and they would be put into effect should the Iranians be proved to have nukes.

You add that to all you see in the news, including Iran's new reactor plans and so forth, and we could be pretty close to the edge.

L: So, if Israel attacks Iran, presumably to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, I can see the region going up in flames, but how does that become WWIII? I don't think the U.S., Russia, and China are bound by treaty to enter the fray…

Doug: It may not. But the logic goes like this: Israel is just a tiny sliver of a country, about the size of New Jersey. It's the kind of place that would be totally wiped out with just two or three nukes. And due to the nature of the place, those weapons could be delivered by yacht, or a cargo ship, or an airliner, or even a truck, for that matter. So Israel is very concerned about any hostile countries gaining nuclear capability – any of them that could produce just two or three such weapons could completely obliterate all of Israel. The spooks at the conference my friend went to all thought Israel would simply not allow any of its hostile neighbors to achieve that capability.

L: Okay, but isn't "military intelligence" usually an oxymoron? They got 9/11 completely wrong (unless you believe the conspiracy theories).

Doug: It usually is. With failures like Pearl Harbor, the Chinese invasion of Korea, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Tet offensive to its credit… I've long held the president of the U.S. would do just as well reading the New York Times for intelligence. And the fact that the U.S. now has a literal army of people in intelligence – about 854,000 with Top Secret clearances, according to a recent Washington Post series – doesn't mean the situation is going to get better. It means it's going to get worse, because none of these people know who's on first, and they all have competing agendas.

The U.S. government is far more out of control and byzantine than the Byzantines themselves could even have imagined.

Of course some of those guys are very good at what they do. But people rise in bureaucracies because of political infighting skills, not competence. What's needed for sound decisions is a wise man in command, not hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats. And we don't have a wise man in command, we have a glib ward healer from Chicago. If anything, he may be worse than Bush, which I didn't think was possible.

But to get back to Iran: It's important to recognize what has happened before. People forget that back in 1981, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in central Iraq, just weeks before it was to be loaded with fuel. And in 2007, they did the same with Syria's secret al-Kibar reactor.

But Iran is much further away, and they are building their reactors in hardened facilities – the jets that bombed Osirak barely had enough fuel to make it back to Israel – so Israel will probably need some help if it's going to pull it off this time. And since Israel is practically the 51st U.S. state, the feeling is that the U.S. would get sucked into helping them. Or, even if the U.S. doesn't help, it would still be blamed for not having kept its dog on a leash.

This is all compounded by the fact that the U.S. has been engaged in an unspoken War on Islam for close to three decades now, although it's styled the War on Terror.

L: And if the U.S. gets dragged into it, it becomes WWIII. I get it. It's interesting that Iran actually attacked the Iraqi reactor first, for much the same reason Israel did. Even more striking to me is that the UN boldly responded to Israel's actions with… strong words. And those words included the assertion that self-defense did not justify preemptive strikes – but that's exactly the excuse the U.S. used when its turn came to bomb Iraq.

Doug: I know – you can't make this stuff up. Although Iran attacked the Osirak during the nasty war between Saddam and the Ayatollah, shortly after the Shah fell in 1981. But these things do happen. They can be hard to predict. Still, the evidence is building – the latest press reports have a new carrier group joining the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf. It's the type of thing that's considered provocative by a neutral observer.

But the fact is that nuclear weapons have been around now for over 60 years. The technology for making them is well known and getting cheaper, easier, and better all the time. North Korea can make them; even a rich individual can. But why not buy them from a Pakistani general or even a Russian supply sergeant? Rogue regimes now recognize, based on Saddam's experience, that having some nukes is the best way to prevent an invasion by the U.S., or someone else. Therefore, they will proliferate.

L: I wonder how the peace activists who voted for Obama feel about that… Pretty scary stuff.

Doug: It is. You know, historically, the U.S. typically picks entirely too many fights with little nothing nowhere countries – rabbit- and squirrel-size game in Central America or the Caribbean. All it's ever done is foster the next generation of rebels; at best it puts in a right-wing strong man who's recognized as a stooge and who makes the U.S. a lot of new enemies.

Anyway, Iraq was a country with only 20 million people, and even Viet Nam was not a large country at the time – and desperately poor. But Iran is genuine big game.

L: I just looked it up in the CIA World Factbook, and they say it has 67 million people as of an estimate last month, and is the 19th largest country in the world.

Doug: Yes. It's a theocratic police state, with a highly regulated, state-managed economy. Everything is either subsidized or price controlled. The government gets 80% of its income from oil, but the fields are so badly run that production is going into decline. The fact is, if the U.S. just waits, economic collapse or revolt from the kids, or both, will bring the regime down. Instead, the U.S. may act as a catalyst to unify the people behind their goofy government. It's completely perverse.

If this spins out of control, it could do some very, very serious damage. It's not like the Iranian army isn't expecting something. They're an old civilization, they're not stupid, and I'm sure they have contingency plans if they're attacked.

L: I see. But even if the U.S. is drawn in, that makes the conflict one of global scope, but it doesn't really plunge most of the world into war. I doubt China or Russia would attack the U.S. in retaliation. But I could see Muslim countries around the world deciding to go to war. This could become an open War on Islam – is that what you mean by WWIII?

Doug: Well, let's just suppose that Israel, or Israel and the U.S., attack Iran before Iran can become a nuclear power. Now, what would the Iranians do? They could do nothing, which is what the Iraqis and the Syrians did when Israel bombed them…

L: Somehow, that doesn't seem likely. They are a proud people. And their military had to have learned some lessons from the Iraqi experience with the U.S.…

Doug: I agree. A likely response would be to close the Strait of Hormuz, by way of punishing America through a denial of a large part of its oil supply. About 40% of all seaborne oil shipments pass through that strait – 20% of all the global oil supply. Its closure would be a major disruption to the whole world.

Of course, Obama would thump on his chest and say that Iran can't be allowed to close international waters. Iran would likely say, "We just did. What do you expect after launching an unprovoked attack?"

It's well known that sea-skimming missiles go 2,000 miles per hour. They have hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and they can be launched from small, fast boats. Even in the U.S.' own war games conducted a few years ago, the U.S. Navy lost against these things. If the U.S. tries to open the Strait of Hormuz by force against Iran, I think it's likely that most of the fleet will soon be turned into an artificial reef that divers in future decades will explore with morbid fascination. Militaries always fight the last war, and that's precisely what the U.S. is doing with its carriers and B-2s.

L: Here's a map. And then what?

Doug: Remember that WWI started with the assassination of one archduke. These things are chaotic and unpredictable, but one thing leads to another, drawing all sorts of parties into the fight as it spins out of control. The trouble is that the ante has gone up considerably since those days. The only way to win a game with nuclear weapons is not to play.

L: What if everyone who could help Israel attack Iran realizes this and refuses to help? Does peace have a chance?

Doug: Anything's possible, but this is not the only flashpoint. The war in Iraq could heat up in all sorts of ways. Pakistan could boil over. There are probably 50 other combinations that could be as serious as the U.S. and Israel picking a fight with Iran. The global stage is a powder keg with many fuses. The situation with Israel is just one of them.

L: But that's long been the case, what makes it more likely to blow now?

Doug: The economic crisis is just getting going. It's important to remember that the whole world has been in a long boom, punctuated by relatively minor recessions, since 1946. What's happening now is not just another cyclical recession. As it gets worse, and I'm quite confident it will, people will look for others to blame, and politicians will look for distractions to appease the masses. These factors are actively fanning the flames.

L: Nothing like a good war to distract people from their own misery – and their own responsibility for their individual circumstances.

Doug: That's right, at least until their house gets blown up or their son gets killed. Nothing like a good foreign war against an invariably evil and subhuman enemy to distract people from local problems. And, of course, there are actually fools out there that believe war stimulates economies.

L: Yes… Can't tell you how many times I've heard that WWII ended the Great Depression – they told me so in school, so it must be so. Alas, the dumb masses.

Doug: Indeed. If that were true, the best prescription for prosperity would be to make every city look like Berlin in 1945, so the economy would be restimulated as the starving masses rebuilt them with their bare hands. But I do think the conflict between Israel and Iran has high odds of happening. Whatever they say about peaceful uses – and, actually, Iran should have a massive nuclear program since it beats burning valuable oil for electricity – Iran is going to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea has shown that it's the best thing they can do to protect themselves from the bigger kids on the block. And of course Israel can't let them do that. These countries are on a clear collision course.

L: Grim.

Hat tip: LRC.

Anti-Zionism for Dummies

Richard Hoste has presented us with another shrill call to embrace unconditional anti-Zionism. I don’t know where to begin in addressing him.

I’ll start with the point of easiest access.

It seems that some paleoconservatives and white nationalists have internalized the Left’s worst stereotypes about themselves. “We basically want the same thing as Zionists, so we can work with them.” I believe most WNs and traditionalists simply want to be left alone, not to seize some land in the third world, slaughter/expel the natives, and form an ethno-state there and then for the next 60 years continue living in a never ending state of war in order to expand in a sea of one billion hostile and aggressive Muslims in search of some all elusive “security,” all the while being financed and protected by foreign taxpayers and soldiers. Western Rightists shouldn’t be comparing themselves to Israelis, but pointing out how reasonable, humane and moderate their goals are compared to those of mainstream Zionists.

If Richard think that advocates of Traditionalism and occidental consciousness are going to get anywhere by claiming “But look, at least we’re not Zionists!” then he must have forgotten everything he and others at this website have written about the civic religion of political correctness and multicuturalism.

In turn, it is, in my mind, still highly legitimate -- and philosophically powerful, if not yet politically effective -- to inform people like Abe Foxman, and others who are as fanatical in their Zionism as their anti-racism, that the Traditionalist Right and White Nationalists desire things that aren’t unlike the stated goals of the Israeli government: an ethno-state for one’s own, and respect for the aspirations of other nations.

My sense is that paragraphs like the one quoted above derive not from any rational recognition of American Jews’ hypocrisy on the issue of the ethno-state but from Richard’s infantile wish that Zionsim never happened (hence his reiteration of Israel’s well known misdeed against Arabs.)

From our perspective, one could certainly say that it would have been better if the Western powers had never gotten involved in the creation of the Jewish homeland. (I’m sure many British administrators in the 1940s felt this way after they suffered through the political violence of Zionist independence groups like the Irgun, most spectacularly with the bombing of King David Hotel in 1946.) But the fact remains that Jews would very likely have sought a homeland in Palestine regardless of the Balfour Declaration and Woodrow Wilson’s mandates in Paris in 1919. (Zionists certainly had other patrons, including the immensely powerful Rothschild family.) It might feel good for one to pretend that Israel could just disappear, but those of us in the reality-based community might want to deal with this powerful entity rationally.

Richard then informs us that Zionism is on the verge of extinction anyway, so we shouldn’t waste our time reaching out to the soon-irrelevant Israeli nationalists:

Zionism is a sinking ship, both demographically and in its relations with the rest of the world. Their only friends are those that make up the American establishment, who just happen to be our main adversaries.

In my estimation, the Jewish homeland isn’t anywhere close to being as doomed as Richard thinks (or hopes) it is. (Though he is certainly correct that Israel faces serious demographic and geopolitical challenges, many of which it brought upon itself.)

At any rate, the coming collapse of the American Empire -- which is ineluctable due to the country’s finances -- might end up being a very good thing for the survival of Jewish state in the long run, in that it will force it to engage with other Middle Eastern states with realism and the sly, deal-making spirit for which Jews are renowned and reviled.

Washington funds Israel’s occupation, but it is also a major source of aid to the Palestinians. This arrangement is, indeed, typical of Washington’s uncanny inability to sustain states of conflict around the world indefinitely. (The Iraq and Afghanistan wars come immediately to mind, but one shouldn’t forget that hostilities haven’t officially concluded between Washington and Communist North Korea!) Again, there is good reason to believe that America’s meddling and foreign aid is preventing Israel from finally drawing a line in the sand and reaching a final settlement with the Palestinians. (I recognize that such a denouement wouldn’t likely be pretty.)

In some ways, Richard presents us with a mirror image of the hysteric neocon vision of Israel surrounded by angry Muslims who are on the verge of gobbling it up if Team America doesn’t come to its aid. The reality is, that, as analysts like Trita Parsi has detailed, Israel has been quite willing to deal with most countries in the region, Egypt most obviously but even the neocons’ Great Satans, Saddam’s Iraq and the Ayatollahs’ Iran. Israel alone would likely act far more sanely than do its passionate devotees -- Gentile and Jew -- in Washington, DC.

But let’s say Richard is right: Israel is doomed, and its leaders are psychologically incapable of dealing sensibly with their neighbors. Then let’s ask what would happen if Israel collapsed -- if television screens began flashing images of, say, marauding Muslim hoards flooding the streets or Jerusalem and ransacking the Knesset, or the rubble of Tel Aviv after a nuclear attack?

No doubt, such an event would be considered by Muslims in Europe, and the non-White Third World, as a great strike against White Supremacy. And in no time, New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles would likely absorb a whole new generation of Jewish refugees who would demand both violent military attacks against Arabs and new programs to combat "anti-Semitism" in their adopted homes.

What can be said for sure is that Traditionalist and White Nationalists wouldn’t be seen by anyone as any more legitimate due to their anti-Zionist stance.

Now, I don’t say any of this to imply that the West’s and Israel’s interests are identical, as so many neocons and movement conservatives like to imagine, and I would expect Israel to defend itself without the West’s help. What I am saying is that although Middle Eastern Muslims would likely be better off if Israel went up in smoke, the real Right in Europe and North would most definitely not be. (And it’s the Right that I care about.)

Let’s now turn to Richard’s superficially plausible claim that it’s simply not worth it to make friends with Israel, when one could align with 99 percent of the world on the basis of anti-Zionism.

Such a claim falls apart when one recognizes that the non-American Great Powers that matter don’t really care about the poor Palestinians nearly as much as does Richard Hoste. Anti-Zionism is a cheap and easy way of scoring points with the “international community” and criticizing American power. That’s it. (And note that the PC Left accepts criticism of the Israel Lobby, but would send critics of Jewish influence like Kevin MacDonald to prison on thought-crime violations.)

Anyway, I actually got a good laugh out of simply imaging the idea of someone in Tokyo or Beijing giving a you-know-what about the plight of the Palestinians. (There are probably many in the West, mostly Leftists, global do-gooders, and women, whose hearts genuinely bleed for Israel’s victims, but this is a sign of Whites’ sentimentality and misunderstanding of priorities.)

Countries like Japan and China will go on being themselves regardless of what happens in Zion. China is, in fact, the worst possible example of an “anti-Zionist Great Power” for Hoste to cite in support of his argument. Despite Beijing’s anti-Israel noises (which are probably made to keep up Marxist appearances), it has engaged in the most elaborate diplomatic-financial alignment -- “Chimerica” -- with the world’s foremost patron of Zionism!

Richard Hoste (much like the soft Left) seems to imagine that geopolitics and diplomacy amount to a global popularity contest, whereby it’s a good idea to be anti-Zionist so that one and half billion Muslims will “like” you. But who cares what the world’s Muslims ultimately think of us? I sure don’t. It’s probably beneficial to stay on fairly good terms with oil-producing countries, but due to their export-driven economies and the reality of the global market, they’ll sell us crude no matter what they think of us -- certainly their resistance to selling billions of barrels to Zionist America has been mild considering the circumstances.

Taking a step back, Traditionalists and the Alternative Right are, at the moment, so far away from political power that talking about what kind of diplomatic relations we’d have with various states has about as many real-world consequences as a game of Risk. That said, it behooves us to act like a shadow government, as if we are on the verge of taking to the world stage.

With this in mind, we must begin with a realistic assessment of the world and present ourselves to other countries as reasonable actors who are willing to deal rationally with them. Nothing can be gained by approaching any country under the assumption that it is existentially illegitimate and that we would look kindly upon its destruction. (That is how Trotskyites, neocons, leftists, and movement conservative make foreign policy. It shouldn’t be how we do it.)

I say all this not because I love Israel or Zionism (which I don’t), or because I care about the fate of the Palestinians (which I don’t). I say this because I love the West and the European race of man and desire that both survive.

"Alliance" Addendum

Via email, a friend has criticized my recent piece for the fact that it “sounds like the status quo refurbished for the purpose of ‘Western survival,’ especially when Russia is already practically aligned with Iran (and Turkey).” The criticism hits the mark in that I omit the pressing matters of foreign policy. If the far Right and Israeli nationalists were to come to some kind of understanding, would we then stand by if Israel attacked Iran, knowing that such an action might set off a global conflict, involve Russia, and generally be a negative-sum game for all around?

I would be interested to hear whether AltRight readers and contributors think Israeli nationalists or their slobbering devotees in the conservative movement are more eager to bomb Iran. My sense is that John Bolton & Co. are significantly crazier than those making policy in Jerusalem, for the simple reason that if Israel really wanted to attack Iran, it has already had ample opportunity to do so, and hasn’t. (Sadly, over the next year, I’m afraid we’re going to find out just how lunatic Washington and/or Jerusalem really is/are.) The fact remains that the primary enemy of the real Right in Europe and North America is Washington, DC, and the American financial-political-media establishment; it’s not Israel.

A second point. Part of me regrets using “alliance” in the title and “coalition” elsewhere in the piece, for this has led a number of commenters to misunderstand my main thesis. Just for the record, I do not believe that American and Israel’s interests are identical (as do so many neocons and movement conservatives.) Nor am I, Bill Buckley-like, inviting all sorts of Israel Firsters to come masquerade as “American conservatives.” (Moreover, Jews in America who make up a large component of the power elite will, no doubt, view the real Right as a threat.) What I am arguing is that Israel nationalists’ and the Alt Right’s interests are compatible, and that we need not be enemies. (“Working relationship” and “mutual understanding” might be better terms than “alliance” and “coalition.”)

An Alliance with the Jews

In his contribution to our recent symposium, “Is the Far Right Anti-Semitic?” Srdja Trifkovic suggests an improbable alliance,

To put it bluntly, the survival of the West, which is recognizably Christian in spirit and European in genes, is "objectively" becoming the optimal survival strategy for the Jewish community as a whole, Israel included. (I've known several Jews who understand, notably my late friend Sir Alfred Sherman.) In the postmodern mélange of races, cultures and cults still desired by the likes of Abraham Foxman, the narrative of victimhood and its associated claims will carry little weight with the brown, black, and yellow multitudes blissfully devoid of European self-loathing, guilt and shame. The results may easily exceed in ferocity and magnitude the events of 1942-45.

It’s true that Africans and Chinese are less likely to erect Holocaust museums in their hometowns, though I’d hope European identity could be advertised on something other than self-loathing and white guilt.

Srdja continues,

It is essential for the Jews to grasp that the survival of European gentile identity and institutions is a sine qua non of their own survival. It is desirable for the traditional Right to overcome its instinctive impulses, historically justified as they are, and to consider this possibility and its implications.

Srdja’s proposition is reasonable, and, no doubt, attractive to many, but when such an alliance is examined in the cold, hard light of reality, it appears highly unlikely. The least of its problems is the fact that American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and multiculti, whereas traditionalists are decidedly neither.

The people Srdja seems to be offering to the Jews as coalition partners are American “paleoconservatives” (and related groups), some of the few who would openly define themselves as guardians of Christendom. However right their cause may be, the paleos and their ilk wield little in the way of influence in contemporary American society, and quite less in Europe. Their readership base is small, shrinking, and graying, and it’s difficult to imagine a major breakthrough occurring anytime soon.

More important, even if Jewish leaders were to take an interest in this band of cultural and literary critics, such people have developed ways of thinking that wouldn’t be particularly attractive to Jews in positions of leadership: the paleos are marked by their frequent announcements of the total futility of political or national struggles, their quasi-ideology of local attachment and participation in small-town governance, and their manifest grumpiness.

This doesn’t mean Jews aren’t interested in working with the Right. What Srdja leaves out of his essay (though he’s certainly aware of it) is that Jews already have engaged in a “Nixon goes to China” alignment with another group of Christian “traditionalists.” Indeed, Jews display great deference to this group, shower them with gifts, fly them to the Holy Land, and invite them to sumptuous junkets.

I’m, of course, referring to the “Christian Zionist.” Pastors Hagee, Robertson & Co. are out in front of this demographic, but it includes millions of Evangelical Protestants who don’t get carried away with “the rapture” and Dispensationalism but are strong backers of Israel nonetheless.

It’s worth noting that Jews haven’t “subverted” this group of mostly White Christians, or infected them with any anti-Western ideology, so much as they’ve latched on to a certain American messianism and sense of “chosen-ness” that was present long before their arrival.

In The War For Righteousness, his history of the American home front during the First World War, Richard Gamble describes well the ways in which American Protestants imagined their country as a “light to the nations” and tasked with spreading democracy and “Americanism” to benighted Europe. This spirit could be traced back much further, of course, to Governor Winthrop and his image of “New Jerusalem.” And it’s not hard to see how the “Americanism” Geist could be summoned to support Old Jerusalem as well.

Sad to say, from my point of view at least, this phantasm of a global democratic mission represents a much more powerful component of American national identity than any connection with European Tradition.  At any rate, there’s simply no reason why Israel-minded Jews would go looking for new Useful Idiots when the current ones are working out so splendidly.

But there will come a time, perhaps soon, when Jews will need new partners. And the fact that Allan Dershowitz and Norman Podhoretz have teamed up with Pat Robertson and John Hagee proves that anything is possible.

At the moment, American Jews generally support politicians like Barack Obama, as well as all sorts of multiculti, open-borders, and affirmative-action legislation, with the assumption that their current status won’t be affected much by it, and might be improved. But much as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice discovered, after a spell is cast, it can take on a life of its own -- and turn against its originator. The next generation of Latino politicians will likely make Obama seem like Eisenhower. And Srdja is right to point out that political multiculturalism will tend to get out of hand and become very bad for the Jews, who will be viewed by Black and Brown as a particularly annoying version of Whitey.

And here’s where a coalition could take shape. World Jewry isn’t as monolithic as some anti-Semites and philo-Semites like to imagine; and indeed, the fractions within it can be extremely mutually hostile. Speaking to the Jewish Federation in the late ‘90s, Bibi Netanyahu called America the “crematorium” of the Jews. He was referring to the tendency of Jews to migrate to the States, pick up on its ways, and never make it to Jerusalem. He could have been referring as well to the documented tendency of Americanized Jews to have a greatly attenuated connection with the Holy Land (despite efforts of outfits like Birthright Israel) and essentially become typical American liberals: childless, urban, postmodern souls who are more likely to criticize Israel for human rights violations than make aliyah. This is a trend lauded by the New York Review of Books and greeted with dismay and anger by nationalist Israelis.

Your average eastern seaboard liberal Jew, who takes his marching orders from the New York Times and reads Phillip Roth in his spare time, will likely never want to have anything to do with the far Right -- even if his life depended on it. Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are a different story.

With the prospect of American politics slipping out of control, and non-Whites commanding nuclear weapons and a massive military arsenal, Israeli hardliners might much prefer that the extreme Right were in charge of things.

Unlike the neocons and the Holy Rollers, this new group would be willing to radically reconstitute the American social order. It would extricate the U.S. military from the Middle East, and wouldn’t likely express strong opinions about who wins or who looses in various land disputes in the region. Israelis might learn to prefer such an isolationist regime, which would give them a free hand, as opposed to the ever-meddling Democrats and Republicans.

Alliances aren’t about liking your allies, or imaging that you share a common destiny or bond. Alliances are about ensuring your survival and defeating your enemies. Israel’s fruitful relationship with the South African Apartheid government, which included the sharing of nuclear intelligence and material, should serve as a model in this regard. Who knows? Israeli nationalists might want to help finance the far Right in Europe and North America. Certainly, if the two camps could grasp that their interests are complimentary, an improbable grand alliance might be in the cards.

Stranger things have happened.

The Israel Question

A question I’ve been thinking about for some time is as follows: Where on the American political spectrum would it be proper to place strong supporters of Israel, including American partisans of Israel’s present nationalist government? What complicate this question are the support patterns for the Israelis and the Palestinians. They cut across conventional ideological divisions.

While the Republican Party and the media-promoted conservative movement are unconditionally pro-Israel and lean heavily toward Israel’s now ruling, hard-line Likud coalition, the overwhelming majority of American Jews are Democrats, but emotionally attached to the Jewish state. Despite the tensions between the Obama government and Premier Netanyahu’s coalition, American Jews show greater fondness for the Obama administration than does any other ethnic group, save for blacks. Obama’s reduced popularity among Jews, which fell from 83 percent in January 2009 to 64 percent last month, doesn’t change the relative standing of his Jewish supporters. His popularity among Hispanic voters, another group with which he did well in 2008, has dipped to below 60 percent.

With the exception of the Orthodox, most American Jews combine their financial and other forms of assistance to Israel with unmistakably left-of-center views about American politics. Despite the attempts by some Jewish groups to be more “even-handed” in the Middle Eastern conflict, most American Jews find no contradiction between being on the social and cultural left in the U.S. and remaining ardent Zionists and, in effect, Israeli nationalists.

The American Right reveals even more interesting fissures, if one looks beyond the semblance of unity created by FOX and other promoters of a center-right party-line. Admittedly both the neoconservatives, who control most of the relevant media resources, and Christian Zionists, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, endorse the Israeli Right, to the point of denying that Palestinians were ever forcibly removed from their homes during the Israeli war for independence! One would be hard pressed to find in Israel such righteous fanatics on the question of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as one encounters in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Weekly Standard, or Commentary or on FOX. I myself reacted with a bored yawn when I saw a column a couple of years ago by Cal Thomas, calling on the Israelis to expel all Arab residents. Thomas, who appeals to Christian Zionists and lives off neoconservative money, found it intolerable that Arabs should be allowed to live in Israel, since presumably they do not accept his ideas about democracy and human rights. Movement conservative websites descend even further into lunacy when they deny that the inhabitants of Gaza are living in straightened circumstances. Pro-Israel activists who write about the Gaza refugees eating gourmet food, frolicking in Olympic-size swimming pools, and visiting luxury hotels have ascended the heights of lunacy.

The Old Right, which FOX and the neoconservatives successfully shoved out of their movement, is at least equally extreme on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether one reads Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, Paul Craig Roberts, or any issue of The American Conservative, the pro-Palestinian stance expressed by these advocates is over the top.

Here the Israelis are to blame for any violence that erupts in their country or on the West Bank, because they are racists and imperialists. The Israelis are imagined to be exclusively at fault whenever a peace initiative fails; and by giving Palestinian organizations what they want, we can supposedly defuse the terrorist threat to the U.S. And, oh yes, our state department only acts with Israeli approval.

What makes both sides annoying is not only their childish partisanship. What the two sides are screaming over has nothing to do with those issues that should be engaging the Right, such as limiting the power of our centralized managerial state and removing bureaucrats and judges from controlling our social relations. Although I confess to having pro-Israeli feelings, this would not keep me from joining with pro-Palestinian Americans, if the two of us shared the same concerns about government overreach or the about the government’s latest attempts to create chaos on our borders. What the polarizing views about the Middle East have done is create phony litmus tests for deciding who is or is not “conservative.”

The American Conservativefeatures writers from the Left, and even from the far left, depicting the Israelis as Western imperialists. The Old Right courts these publicists, providing they are willing to go after the Israelis as “fascists.” Meanwhile the far more powerful and better connected neoconservative press serves up the kind of half truths that one finds coming from AIPAC. Thanks to such advocacy, liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman has been turned into a movement conservative poster boy. After all, as Bill Bennett who supported Lieberman for president, observed: “He is good on the security of Israel.” Having watched the American Right sink into a confrontation over Israel, I wish it would change the broken record. But this may be wishful thinking.

It's Not About Oil

The common themes of Mark Hackard’s informative articles are that the US elites oppose the spirit of the East due to liberal ideology and old school national interests. The former argument I agree with; the latter, on the other hand, seems to imply that those ruling America actually care about its citizens, or at least those which happen to be corporate shareholders. One will search in vain for a “rational”-that is, economic-reason for the Iraq War, which couldn’t be paid for if you stole all the country’s oil for a hundred years.  As for the petroleum companies, The Israel Lobby revealed that they have actually traditionally opposed a bellicose foreign policy in the Middle East, preferring to peacefully conduct business with whoever happens to be in power

Now the website thinkprogress.org puts forth evidence that Big Oil has been lobbying against sanctions on Iran.

The recent revelations about BP’s alleged rolein pressing for the release of convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi in order to secure valuable oil concessions in Libya provides a potent reminder of the influence oil companies and other major corporations exert over foreign policy.  New evidence uncovered by ThinkProgress shows that America’s own oil giants are also trying to shape U.S. foreign policy to protect or enhance their own profits, even if it puts American security at risk.

Lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate this week show that the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Halliburton lobbied the House, Senate, and various executive branch agencies on the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act during the first half of the year as the bill was being debated in the Senate.

Big Oil’s interest in weakening the law is obvious.  Among other things, the new law, signed by President Obama on July 1, imposes significant new sanctions on individuals and corporations “that directly and significantly contribute to Iran’s ability to develop petroleum resources” and that sell more than $200,000 in fuel or other refined petroleum products to Iran.  The new sanctions are important because “although Iran is the second-largest oil producer in the world, it lacks refining capacity and relies on foreign suppliers for nearly 5 million gallons of gasoline a day.”  In addition, the country’s energy industry is “a huge source of revenue for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” which “oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.”…

• ExxonMobil, which spent $2.5 million on lobbying last quarter, currently enjoys $4.9 billion in revenues from federal oil and gas leases and sold fuel additives to Iran until 2006.
• Shell, which spent $4 million on lobbying last quarter, has $11.9 billion in revenues and benefits from the U.S. government, a wide variety of business relationships with Iran, and is alleged to be in violation of the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act—the very law amended by the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Act.
• ConocoPhillips, which spent $5.5 million lobbying last quarter, accrues $1.7 billion in revenue from federal grants and oil and gas leases and still actively profits from selling gasoline to Iranvia Lukoil, in which it holds a minority stake.
• Halliburton has a whopping $27.1 billion in government contracts and, until 2007, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through a foreign subsidiary…

The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Act passed the House 412-12 and the Senate 99-0, so it’s not surprising that Big Oil’s activities in Iran are not very popular. 

Think about that for a moment. The bill passed the Senate 99-0, despite only opposition from big business. There goes the myth of plutocracy.

Not that oil companies are angels; as the article reveals they lobby for subsidies just as hard as they fight for the opening up of foreign markets. In both cases they’re looking out for their interests, as is to be expected. Sometimes this is a good thing (trying to remove sanctions) and sometimes bad (looking for taxpayer funding).

Think Progress wants us to believe that we’re just lucky to have such an altruistic government. A full 100% of the Senate and 97% of the House was able to resist oil company lobbying to instead look out for the national interests and protect us from the menace of Iran. How fortunate we are to have such selfless public servants in office! 

Those of us of a more cynical bent may be forgiven for suspecting that it’s far more likely that there’s actually another lobby out there having a countervailing effect, one that in the minds of Congressmen relegates the wishes of Big Oil and their paltry tens of millions spent a year  to a mere afterthought. If our representatives only cared about the wishes of BP and Exxon Mobile it would actually be an improvement-the interests of these corporations at least sometimes accidentally converge with those of the nation as a whole.

I suspect the same factors are behind policy towards Russia, which opposed the Iraq War and is trying to put the breaks on any kind of similar strike on Iran. To the extent that the US government cares about controlling oil and gas reserves it’s only to be in a better position to spread liberalism and defend Israel. 

In Israel, Miscegenation is Rape

A note to aspiring Palestinian Game Theorists: Bedding Jewesses in the Middle East's only democracy by intimating that you're one of the Chosen can have bad consequences. 

Palestianian Jailed for rape after claiming to be Jewish

The Telegraph

By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
20 Jul 2010

A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with an Israeli woman who believed he was Jewish because he introduced himself as "Daniel".

A court in Jerusalem has made international legal history by jailing Sabbar Kashur, a 30-year-old delivery man from East Jerusalem, for 18 months.

He was convicted of "rape by deception" following a criminal trial that has drawn criticism from across Israel.

The court heard accusations that Mr Kashur misled the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, by introducing himself with the traditionally Jewish name during a chance encounter on a street in central Jerusalem in 2008.

After striking up a conversation, the two went into a top-floor room of a nearby office-block and engaged in a sexual encounter, after which Mr Kashur left before the woman had a chance to get dressed. It was only later that she discovered Mr Kashur's true racial background, lawyers said.

Although conceding that the sex was consensual, district court judge Tzvi Segal concluded that the law had a duty to protect women from "smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price"

"If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have co-operated," Mrs Segal said as she delivered her verdict.

A conviction for rape by deception on the grounds of racial misrepresentation is believed to be internationally unprecedented, according to British legal experts.



Moderates Have a Meeting

The “Moderates” we all love so much recently made a trip to show solidarity with their masters.

 There is wide support in Congress for using all means to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power, “through diplomatic and economic sanctions if we possibly can, through military actions if we must,” visiting US Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said Wednesday in Jerusalem.

Lieberman, flanked at a Jerusalem press conference by his senate colleagues John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), used very tough language, saying the words “military action” in regards to stopping Iran’s nuclear program. Most US officials opt to tiptoe around the subject, saying “no options are off the table.”

Lieberman said that “a certain trumpet needs to sounded here for the Iranian regime to hear.”...

Graham was even blunter.

“The Congress has Israel’s back,” he said, “and never misunderstand that. Whatever relationship problems we have had in the past, it has never seeped over into Congress. The Congress has been united in protection of one of our best allies in the world, the State of Israel.”

Graham really likes this particular metaphor.  This isn’t the first time he used it.

Remember when the Russian Czars had to actually fabricate meetings showing Jews controlling the actions of great powers?  

If you have the stomach to actually watch the video, you'll hear something very revealing.  Graham calls the night a "celebration" because it's a meeting with the one group that every member of congress bows before.  To those of us who haven't gained fame and power by being subservient to Jewish interests, it, and all gatherings like it, are symbols of what's gone wrong in the Republic.  

For all their faults, how can not one admire the Iranians and especially Palestinians, when one considers that these poor third worlders stand up to Israel while the leaders of the biggest empire the world has ever seen can't? Best of luck to them in confronting American/Zionist aggression.  

Antiwar Ann Coulter?

Is Ann Coulter going antiwar?

Bill Kristol Must Resign

07/07/2010

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele was absolutely right. Afghanistan is Obama's war and, judging by other recent Democratic ventures in military affairs, isn't likely to turn out well.

It has been idiotically claimed that Steele's statement about Afghanistan being Obama's war is "inaccurate" -- as if Steele is unaware Bush invaded Afghanistan soon after 9/11. (No one can forget that -- even liberals pretended to support that war for three whole weeks.)

Yes, Bush invaded Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Within the first few months we had toppled the Taliban, killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaida fighters and arranged for democratic elections, resulting in an American-friendly government.  […]

Having some vague concept of America's national interest -- unlike liberals -- the Bush administration could see that a country of illiterate peasants living in caves ruled by "warlords" was not a primo target for "nation-building."

It gets better. She seems to have it in for the neocons as well!

But now I hear it is the official policy of the Republican Party to be for all wars, irrespective of our national interest.

What if Obama decides to invade England because he's still ticked off about that Churchill bust? Can Michael Steele and I object to that? Or would that demoralize the troops?

Our troops are the most magnificent in the world, but they're not the ones setting military policy. The president is -- and he's basing his war strategy on the chants of Moveon.org cretins. […]

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.

Of course, if Kristol is writing the rules for being a Republican, we're all going to have to get on board for amnesty and a "National Greatness Project," too – other Kristol ideas for the Republican Party. Also, John McCain. Kristol was an early backer of McCain for president -- and look how great that turned out!

Inasmuch as demanding resignations is another new Republican position, here's mine: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney must resign immediately.

Ann does spoil the piece with her theory about regime change-ready Iraq becoming America’s “Muslim Israel”:

By contrast [to Afghanistan], Iraq had a young, educated, pro-Western populace that was ideal for regime change.

If Saddam Hussein had been a peach, it would still be a major victory in the war on terrorism to have a Muslim Israel in that part of the globe…

If Ann means that Iraq has become a strategic liability and federal-aide black hole, then, yes, Iraq has become our “Muslim Israel.”

The Real Rogue State

Here’s an insane article from some madman at the American Spectator fantasizing about Israel striking Iran. The conclusion is below.

"We apparently have lost four F-15s and three F-16s, all to unknown causes.

"But that is not the worst. Al-Jazeera is already broadcasting reports from Iran. They are saying we haven't done any significant damage to any of the Iranian nuclear facilities, and only killed innocent civilians in towns and cities across Iran. Hizballah will soon launch everything they have in Lebanon at us. Gaza will erupt in missile launches."

Netanyahu closed his eyes briefly. "Avi, how soon can we expect the UN's condemnation, sanctions, and so forth?"

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, shrugged. "Probably later today. I have already received a note from Hillary Clinton condemning the attack. The Americans may sponsor a Security Council resolution condemning us. You can expect a call from Obama himself any minute."

"Will anyone stand with us?"

"No, Prime Minister, we are alone."

Poor Israel!  All they want to do is burn women and children alive and nobody will stand with them!

The paranoia is what’s frightening.  The US has used its veto power at the UN to shield Israel from sanctions 40 times since 1972.  And in the fantasies of Zionists America is getting ready to sponsor resolutions against Israel.  What would neo-cons advocate the Israelis do if the US actually took a balanced position on the Middle East?  Lob a nuke at the East coast?  The author of this article actually worked in the Pentagon! Lunatics like this, not "Islamo-fascism," should keep us up at night.  

It’s not fair to blame Israelis for the nuttiness of American neo-cons but it matters to us as this Jew worship is what passes for conservatism today and may inflame the world.  If the Republicans regain power in 2012, we may or may not see a repeal of Obamacare, tax cuts, lower spending, etc. but we’re guaranteed to see the US do Israel’s bidding (more so than now).  It’s not just another foreign country; it is the master of a movement ostensibly dedicated to defending of the West and therefore if not our enemy, at least a nation whose interests diverge from ours. 

The comments are almost as frightening.

Yes, guys, Yes, you are quite correct and, since BARAK INSANE OBAMA refused to reveal where the vast bulk of the contributions to his campaign came from, it's my guess that they came from ARAB nations.

FURTHER, I AM CALLING FOR THE IMMEDIATE IMPEACHMENT of THIS PRESIDENT and, the COMPLETE REMOVAL OF ALL OF HIS REGIME AND THE OVERTURNING OF EVERY PIECE OF LEGISLATION HE AND HIS REGIME HAVE FORCED THROUGH CONGRESS !! ---- JT ----

Oh yea, all that Arab money in politics.  It’s about time the Jews stopped being so passive and made their voices heard.

Of course Iran will use nuclear weapons against the US; at the first opportunity.

But of course!  Just remember all those wars Iran’s started in the last thousand years or so.

I happen to be one of those Christians who believes we will meet Jesus in the air...and if you belong to Him (saved by grace) you won't be here to for the yucky stuff. Because...first, there is now no condenation to those who are in Christ Jesus Rom 8:1 and lastly, the church is mentioned over and over in Rev. chpts 1-4. No more mention of the church after chpt 4. , and hell doesn't break loose until after chpt 4. However, like you, no matter where I am when those dreadful days begin, I know that Jesus Christ is on my side and I will not be ashamed of Him....

AND GOD BLESS ISRAEL!

This is one of the more reasonable ones.

You Next, Israel

The New York Times has published the polar opposite of Paul Gottfried’s eulogy for the WASP.

FIVE years ago, the Supreme Court, like the United States, had a plurality of white Protestants. If Elena Kagan — whose confirmation hearings begin today — is confirmed, that number will be reduced to zero, and the court will consist of six Catholics and three Jews.

It is cause for celebration that no one much cares about the nominee’s religion. We are fortunate to have left behind the days when there was a so-called “Catholic seat” on the court, or when prominent Jews (including the publisher of this newspaper) urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 not to nominate Felix Frankfurter because they worried that having “too many” Jews on the court might fuel anti-Semitism.

But satisfaction with our national progress should not make us forget its authors: the very Protestant elite that founded and long dominated our nation’s institutions of higher education and government, including the Supreme Court. Unlike almost every other dominant ethnic, racial or religious group in world history, white Protestants have ceded their socioeconomic power by hewing voluntarily to the values of merit and inclusion, values now shared broadly by Americans of different backgrounds. The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.

 I guess everyone likes a gracious winner.

Real Estate in the Holy Land

In the comments section of my last piece, “RonL” has taken exception to my claim (which was ancillary to my argument) that non-Jews are prevented from owning land in Israel. In response, he writes,

Christian Arabs own more private land in Israel than Jews. It is Jews who are not allowed to live in certain areas, not the other way around.

It seems that, if RonL is to believed, even in Israel, Jews are a poor, little persecuted minority.

But this statement is the proverbial half-truth that’s worse than a lie. The real truth is that most all land in Israel -- some 93-94 percent -- is owned by the state. The tiny remainder is, as RonL mentions, fairly evenly distributed between Jews and Arabs, but this inconsequential.

Real-estate socialization goes back to Israel’s founding; indeed, land that was abandoned by Arabs in 1948 was absorbed by the nascent government. There’s no need to go into bureaucratic minutia, but the public land is broken up between the state itself, the Jewish National Fund, and the Israeli Development Authority. All public land is managed by the Israeli Land Administration (ILA).

Israeli citizens, of course, enjoy something that resembles land ownership for residential and commercial purposes; however, legally, they are taking out long-term leases on public property. Moreover, one of the central purposes of the ILA is to restrict land “ownership” (or semi-ownership or leasing or what have you) to Jews, which is not surprising for a state that has been from its inception ethno-religiously defined. (This might change, of course, if Israel starts to rehearse America’s history of “anti-discrimination,” as the story I linked to suggests.)

Israel’s real-estate policy is rarely mentioned by American Israel enthusiasts, such as Geroge Gilder, who argue that America should support the Jewish state, partly, because it’s a thriving “capitalist,” “secular” hotbed of innovation. The truth is that the Jewish state has nationalized the most basic resource and store of wealth.

My sense is that RonL already knew much of what I’ve explicated above, which is why he so carefully phrased “Christian Arabs own more private land in Israel than Jews” (emphasis added). But he just couldn’t resist posting this bit of squid ink.

As for Larry Auster’s attacks, and his attack dogs, Dennis sums up my feelings exactly.

Desegregation in the Holy Land

Jews have been wildly overrepresented in Left-liberal movements of the 20^th century. One need not agree with Kevin MacDonald’s historical and evolutionary theory of Jewish behavior in the Diaspora to reach such a conclusion.

To take the Civil Rights movement as one example, organization like the NAACP and the Urban League would have languished without the financial and organizational support of prominent Northern Jews such as Jacob Billikopf, Jacob Schiff, and Rabbi Stephen Wise. Black sociologist Kenneth Clark’s (in)famous “doll experiments,” which were cited in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision (and recently reenacted by CNN), were commissioned by the American Jewish Committee. (An interesting discussion of all of this can be found in American Renaissance’s review of Cheryl Greenberg’s Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century.)

Needless to say, such facts have remained a sore spot for White Nationalists and the hard Right -- and a source of pride for Jewish liberals and neocons.

One critical question the former group poses to the latter goes something like this:

Why is it that Israeli Jews are allowed to define their homeland on ethnic and religious grounds -- to the point of forbidding non-Jews to own land! -- but then American and European Jews promote racial integration and multiculturalism?

It’s a legitimate question, with the assumed answer being that in both cases, it’s good for the Jews, who are well equipped to flourish in an America that lacks a strong Anglo-Saxon identity and in an Israel that possesses a strong Jewish one. (With respect to this asymmetry, some in the racialist Right have suggested that America stop trying to mimic Israel’s foreign policies and adopt its domestic ones.)

An important addendum to all this is that Jews often swallow the liberal poison themselves and suffer from the law of unintended consequences (to borrow one of the neocons’ favored phrases.) “Jewish plots” to, say, get the Goyim inured to birth control, abortions, and non-traditional lifestyles have devastated Jewish communities, too. Moreover, many liberal Jews who fear white anti-Semitism might soon learn that Jews fare much better in a WASP culture than in a Latino, black, or multicultural one.

Whatever the case, for the Ulta-Orthodox Israeli Jews, American liberalism has really hit home:

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Protest School Ruling

Associated Press

By KAROUN DEMIRJIAN

JERUSALEM – Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls' school.

Protesters snarled traffic in Jerusalem and another large religious enclave, crowded onto balconies in city squares, and waved posters decrying the court's decision and proclaiming the supremacy of religious law.

There were a few small scuffles, and a police officer emerged from one of them holding his eye, apparently slightly injured.

It was one of the largest protests in Jerusalem's history, and a stark reminder of the ultra-Orthodox minority's refusal to accept the authority of the state.

Also, the throngs of devout Jews showed to which extent the ultra-Orthodox live by their own rules, some of them archaic, while wielding disproportionate power in the modern state of Israel.

Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, descent at a girls' school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel don't want their daughters to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.

The Ashkenazi parents insist they aren't racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls aren't religious enough.

It strikes me as highly unlikely that the Sephardi girls indigenous to the region “aren’t religious enough”… a phrase that seems to be the Levantine equivalent of “state’s rights.” Ashkenazi schools and students are better, no doubt, but the real issue is that the Ashkenazi -- that is, European Jews -- simply want their children to be raised among their own kind. It’d be best for all if they just came out and said it.

The Spanish George W. Bush

Europeans have their own version of George W. Bush.

José Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, published an opinion article with the London Times Thursday saying the world must support Israel because "if it goes down, we all go down".

Aznar, who has joined the 'Friends of Israel' campaign to which David Trimble, a foreign observer taking part in Israel's flotilla raid probe, also belongs, calls on Europe to refuse to put up with cries to eliminate Israel as part of global Christian-Jewish cooperation.

"Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region," Aznar writes of the IDF's calamitous raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza on May 31. 

Actually, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan are by far better allies than Israel.  None of these countries has ever launched an attack killing dozens of Americans, planned to get the US involved in a foreign war by bombing Western interests or had agents caught in a major spy ring.  As a matter of fact, not even Iran or Syria has done those things.

Aznar says the real threat to the region is extreme Islamism, "which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfillment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony".

"Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large," he adds.

Aznar concludes by saying that Israel is the West's first line of defense against the chaos set to erupt in the Middle East, and therefore must be protected.

How does one say “We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” in Spanish?

Is there any stupider argument than the first line of defense one?  This is an immigration issue, not a 19th century land war.  Muslims settlers are legally flying into Western airports and the politicians who facilitate this act as if the only way to Europe is to march through the Levant!  Hold the line Judea!

Perhaps they mean this metaphorically.  Something like “Muslims will be emboldened if they destroy Israel.” But even this is nonsensical.  What act of “appeasement” with regards to Israel lost parts of the Netherlands, Sweden and France to Islam?  

If Aznar was really concerned about Islamization, he could’ve spoken up against Muslim immigration when he was Prime Minister.  In fact, he didn’t and went ahead with European integration.  The only time he bucked the globalist consensus was when he joined Bush’s war on Iraq.  If men this stupid are the defenders of the European peoples and their cultures, we are truly in trouble. 

Please, spare me the talk about the “West” and what we must do to defend it coming from those who are destroying it by mistaking bad metaphors for reality.  We need to ask ourselves why today a “conservative” is one who invokes the “West” when he means Israel and Europe and an "extremist" is one who invokes the “West” when he means Europe only.

The Israel Lobby's Turkish Connection

The fallout from Israel's May 31st seizure of an aid convoy headed for the Gaza Strip is revealing some new dimensions to the incident. Credible information has surfaced that the Turkish NGO organizing the ill-fated Peace Flotilla, Insani Yardim Vakfi (known as IHH), has ties to the international jihad. IHH allegedly raised funds and recruited Muslim fighters for holy war in the Balkans and Chechnya.

In the ongoing crisis in relations between Tel-Aviv and Ankara, Israel’s most fervent supporters in the United States have been quick to seize upon the IHH charity’s jihadist connection. Yet they omit the fact that key figures within the Israel lobby have long encouraged the use of mujahideen in Eurasia to advance U.S. interests. And the very same lobby that now warns of Turkish power has been instrumental in its rise.

It’s inaccurate to claim that the mission to Gaza was just a grand terrorist ploy, but certain activities of its sponsors should not be overlooked, especially in a geopolitical context. If IHH was involved in finance and logistics for past conflicts in Bosnia and the Caucasus, such operations would align with Turkish strategic interests. This is especially relevant since the flotilla had Turkey’s informal support.

AIPAC and the usual array of neoconservatives are currently in overdrive to defend Israel’s botched raid and link the Gaza aid effort to terrorism. The neocons have also quite suddenly begun to express alarm at Turkey’s growing role in the Middle East now that the Jewish state's relationship with Ankara is at an all-time low. So while the IHH-jihadist connection deserves to be publicized, it’s far from the whole story.

Over the past two decades Israeli and Turkish interests in Washington have enjoyed a cozy partnership of mutual benefit. In 1989, the ever-ambitious Doug Feith and Richard Perle founded International Advisors, Inc. to increase defense technology transfers to Turkey. Since that time, the Israelis and Turks built a noticeably close Beltway alliance, with the Turkish lobby playing sorcerer’s apprentice to AIPAC, JINSA and other Jewish policy organizations.

Throughout the 1990s and up to the present day the Israel lobby has provided groups like the American Turkish Council expertise in managing the cash flows that power K Street and Capitol Hill, as well as access to its networks in government and the defense industry. This assistance has ranged from the relatively overt business of influencing legislation (such as killing Armenian genocide bills) to joint intelligence collection of advanced U.S. weapons technologies. Needless to say, Israeli and Turkish espionage gets little play in the media. The success of both lobbies’ political operations has led to a growing convergence of interests with lawmakers and the foreign policy establishment, so spy scandals are quickly swept under the rug.

Besides Perle and Feith, other prominent partisans for Israel have been instrumental in securing U.S. support for Turkey. These include Paul Wolfowitz, the late Congressman Tom Lantos, and former ambassadors to Ankara Mort Abramowitz and Marc Grossman. According to the former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sybil Edmonds, many of these figures were also under investigation for their close contacts with Israel’s Mossad and MIT, the Turkish intelligence service.

Even when examining the public side of influence campaigns, the intimate links between Israeli and Turkish lobbying organizations in the U.S. are immediately apparent. The Sunlight Foundation’s 2008 record of Turkish embassy contacts is largely a story of meetings and communications with AIPAC, JINSA, the ADL, the American Jewish Council and similar parties. The Israel lobby may rail against Turkey in the aftermath of the flotilla debacle, but this newfound concern belies years of collaboration in manipulating Washington’s power centers.

In addition to snagging lucrative consulting contracts, the neocons fostered the Turkish connection for purposes both ideological and strategic. Drawing inspiration from the thought of scholar Bernard Lewis, the neocons saw Turkey as a model for the development of the Open Society alongside “moderate Islam”[1]. Richard Perle implied that the nation would serve as a platform for U.S. ambitions to transform the “Greater Middle East” after the September 11^th attacks. Neoconservative policy planners have also been consistent advocates for Turkish entry into the EU and Muslim immigration to the Continent.

Alongside its status as a longtime Israeli ally, Turkey has been pivotal to U.S. plans for routing Caspian energy resources from Central Asia into Europe. Oil pipelines like Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the prospective Nabucco natural gas project are intended to create an East-West Corridor under American control. Militarily, the U.S. alliance with Ankara allows the Pentagon to enhance its power-projection capabilities within Eurasia. And while the Turks are proving less cooperative than desired, Washington still looks to harness their regional clout to eventually confront Iran and undermine Russia along its southern periphery.

In its bid to attain a dominant position in the heart of Eurasia, the U.S. runs covert action programs employing Islamic fighters. This has been the case since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the neocons have formed the vanguard in support of this policy. It has been alleged (and it is highly likely) that these operations have been carried out in close coordination with Turkish intelligence and associated paramilitary outfits. Far from being limited to cooperation with the Kemalists, these ventures extend to transnational Islamist networks such as Pennsylvania-based Fethullah Gülen’s organization.

From the conflicts in the Balkans to Chechnya, luminaries of the Israel lobby have been behind initiatives to create U.S.-aligned Muslim states in Europe. In the run-up to Operation Allied Force in 1999, a veritable who’s-who of neoconservatives including Elliott Abrams, John Bolton and William Kristol pressed mightily for the bombardment of Orthodox Serbia and Kosovo’s occupation. They were successful in their entreaties and would go on to sponsor Kosovar Albanian independence in 2007.

The neocons have also played a prominent role in U.S. policy elites’ efforts to exploit instability in Chechnya. Former New York Congressman Stephen Solarz and Abrams, in addition to many of the usual suspects, are active members of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC). The ACPC’s ultimate aim is to detach the Muslim republics of the north Caucasus from Moscow, thereby paving the way for new energy pipelines westward and Russia’s further fragmentation. Organizations such as the ACPC grant the perpetrators of atrocities like the Beslan massacre respectable cover in a wider geopolitical game.

Whatever opinion one might hold regarding the justice or injustice of the May 31st flotilla raid, it has exposed deep contradictions in the Israel lobby’s dealings with Turkey and jihadist groups in Eurasia. The IHH charity has been linked to mujahideen activities in the Balkans and the Caucasus; strangely enough, so have some of Israel’s most influential devotees in America. To top it off, the neocons are issuing fearful proclamations regarding Turkey’s ascent when the movement’s leadership helped facilitate the emergence of a powerful neo-Ottoman state.

The men from Washington’s top foreign lobby may style themselves champions of Israel. Never, though, should they be mistaken as defenders of the West, given their complicity in its dissolution.

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[1] Neoconservatives also look to the Ottoman Empire as an exemplar of tolerance for its time. They hold European Christendom in general contempt as an unenlightened outpost of barbarism.

Double Standards and Anti-Western Bias

Victor Davis Hanson writes on Israel.

The virulent worldwide reaction to Israeli’s handling of the Gaza flotilla has been quite instructive. The bankrupt Greeks, for example, are taking a holiday from railing at the Germans to demonstrate in solidarity with the Turkish-organized Gaza effort, which puts them on the same side as those whose government supports the occupation of much of Greek-speaking Cyprus and its divided capital.

No one in Europe worried much about the constant shower of missiles from Gaza in the past. No one in Europe said a word when North Korea torpedoed and slaughtered South Koreans on the high seas. No one objected when the Iranians hijacked a British ship and humiliated the hostages...

What explains this preexisting hatred, which ensures denunciation of Israel in the most rabid — or, to use the politically correct parlance, “disproportionate” — terms? It is not about “occupied land,” given the millions of square miles worldwide that are presently occupied, from Georgia to Cyprus to Tibet. It is not a divided capital — Nicosia is walled off. It is not an overreaction in the use of force per se — the Russians flattened Grozny and killed tens of thousands while the world snoozed. And it cannot be the scale of violence, given what we see hourly in Pakistan, Darfur, and the Congo. And, given the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish histories (and reactions to them), the currently outraged Turkish government is surely not a credible referent on the topic of disproportionate violence.Perhaps the outrage reflects simple realpolitik — 350 million Arab Muslims versus 7 million Israelis.

Perhaps it is oil: half the world’s reserves versus Israel’s nada. Perhaps it is the fear of terror: Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades. Perhaps it is anti-Semitism, which is as fashionable on the academic Left as it used to be among the neanderthal Right.

Neocons want to have it both ways. On the one hand, we must support Israel because it’s just so unique and Western and civilized.  On the other hand, when the time comes to defend its actions they have nothing better than “It’s no worse than North Korea!”

Of course Israel is judged more harshly than third world dictatorships.  But that’s the price you pay for the mainstream acceptance of Jews as part of Western civilization.  Reading about this story I was surprised to learn that Gaza is also blockaded from the Egyptian side.  I wasn't surprised that nobody cares, the same way there’s a double standard in comparing how America and Mexico treat illegal immigrants. 

But selectively complaining about double standards is itself a double standard.  Unlike white South Africa, Israel participates in the Olympics and academic boycotts against it are rare and sporadic.   In 1986 the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over Ronald Reagan’s veto placing sanctions on the last white ethnostate.  Airplanes from South African Airways weren’t even allowed to land in the United States.  Yes, Hanson, Israel is held to a higher standard than North Korea but it has not been subjected to anything resembling the hate campaign that led to the destruction of the only first world country on the African continent. 

Why should I be talking about South Africa when the topic is Israel?  Because if the neo-cons were consistent in their opposition to or support of racialist states that would be one thing.  But to have those called “conservatives” maintain both that South African apartheid was a moral injustice which needed to be ended and explicitly racialist and anti-miscegenationist Israel is a beacon of freedom and human rights should be enough to make anyone belonging to the real Right nauseous. (I wonder if the equivalent of Hanson exists in Israel: a Jew who's passionate about white natioalism in America but anti-racist at home.  How strange we'd find it if such a person was considered to be on the "Right"!)  And to contribute our voices to the howls against this relatively mild manifestation of an anti-Western bias so ubiquitous in the modern world doesn’t help our cause.