Rogel Alpher’s ticket to Switzerland

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Rogel Alpher has had it with Israel. Let's buy him a ticket!

Rogel Alpher has had it with Israel. Let’s buy him a ticket!

Veteran Israeli journalist and media personality Rogel Alpher published a piece in Ha’aretz a few days ago explaining why he no longer feels that he belongs here. Please read it all — it’s short — because it’s a perfect representation of post-Zionism. Here is a sample:

Like every cosmopolitan person, strictly secular and with a universalist worldview, well-steeped in the global culture and speaking fluent English, I can have many other homes. There are quite a few countries where I could settle, make a living and feel comfortable. Like anyone who believes strongly that he lives only once and has a right to fulfill his personal desires and flourish with a minimum of sacrifice required for the country where he pays taxes and receives educational, welfare and other services, it is clear to me that Israel offers me a bum deal and there are far better deals out there in the world. Like any parents who believe that their children have no patriotic duty toward the Israel of today, and they do not need to risk their lives or die serving it, I have no doubt that I am doing them wrong by raising them here.

At first I thought that I was reading a work of satire. Now, I thought, he is going to say something about the intangible spiritual benefits of living in the Jewish state, or the importance of preserving the Jewish people, something that demands the sacrifices required to keep a Jewish state.

But no, he is serious! Alpher really does place his “right to fulfill his personal desires” first:

My fate and the fate of my children will be determined here by people who have a God whom they talk to and in whose name they act. I think they are crazy. …

If you identify with me you will certainly admit that you will encourage your children to seek their future elsewhere in the world, for the sake of their personal security, psychological and economic wellbeing. Israel is not worth the price it is exacting from us. There is a nationalist-religious-ultra-Orthodox majority, and our lifestyle will not survive in our homeland. We have a much better chance of maintaining it elsewhere. That’s the truth.

His main concern — apart from his visceral dislike of tacky religious people — seems to be that the majority here opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, which he sees as the only alternative to the “hell” of  a binational state.

This is the well-worn ‘demographic argument’ of the Left, and it ignores the fact that the fantastic ‘solution’ they propose to the demographic issues inherent in keeping the territories is equivalent to suicide. The majority that he so despises understands the security consequences of giving up the high ground that overlooks Israel’s population centers and the Jordan Valley that is the only natural barrier to invasion from the east, regardless of their religious views. They understand that the various technical solutions proposed are just window-dressing. They know a Palestinian state to the east would be another Gaza, or worse — much worse.

But I think the political argument is an excuse. I think that Alpher is tired of reserve duty, tired of sending his kids to the army and worrying about them, and — most of all — embarrassed to be associated with a country that isn’t of, by and for sheer hedonism and materialism.

I think he belongs in Europe, perhaps Switzerland (there’s way too much religion in the US). Switzerland has a draft, but their army never has to fight anyone, so his kids will be safe. And who understands materialism better than the Swiss? No “bum deal” there!

They must be very happy with their deal, because — oops — the fertility rate in Switzerland is about 1.55 children per woman, a rate that will soon see the Swiss extinct. Among Israeli Jews it is about 3.0  (if you exclude Haredim, it’s still in high 2’s). This is by far the highest in the OECD (34 developed and democratic nations), whose average is only 1.7.

Why is this so? Could it be that the very characteristics of Israel that Alpher dislikes — the prevalence of religion, and the existence of a reason for being other than the gratification of personal desires — make it a place that people want to bring children into?

Posted in Post-Zionism | 1 Comment

History counts

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

Melanie Phillips spoke in Jerusalem last week. In 55 minutes, she dealt with the relationship between anti-Zionism and Jew hatred, media bias, Israel’s poor performance in the global information war, and the future of Europe, and more. Watch and you will agree that it was 55 minutes well spent. And then I want to discuss just one of the things she said.

Phillips pointed out that history is important, particularly in this case, where a massive distortion of Jewish history provides the underpinning to the delegitimization of Israel so rampant in Europe (and to a lesser extent in the US).

The story is told, Phillips explained, that Israel was created to expiate the guilt of Europeans for the Holocaust and to solve the refugee problem it caused. Millions of European Jews were sent to Palestine where they displaced an indigenous ancient ‘Palestinian’ civilization. So no wonder, the story goes, the ‘Palestinians’ are angry. Why should they pay the price for Hitler’s actions (which, by the way, they will praise in a different context)?

I add to this the idea that the Jews are ‘colonists’ who ‘oppress’ the ‘non-white’ Palestinian Arabs, which opens a whole other reservoir of European guilt. Is it surprising that on the basis of this story even the most liberal (in the non-political sense) fair-minded person will think that while perhaps Hamas is a little indiscriminate in its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, on the whole its behavior is understandable?

The problem is that the story is wholly false.

The indigenous people of the land of Israel are the Jews, who had an empire there for hundreds of years. They suffered invasions and genocides, and were (partially) dispersed throughout the world by a succession of pagan, Christian and Muslim conquerors. But they never wholly abandoned their land and the Diaspora never gave up its yearning to return.

This reality was recognized by the international community when it granted Britain the Palestine Mandate to govern the land in trust for the Jewish people (as we know, Britain betrayed this trust, but that’s another story).

On the other hand, there was never any kind of Palestinian Arab political entity in the land, and very few ‘Palestinians’ can trace their lineage farther back than the 19th century. For years they saw themselves as belonging to a generalized Arab nation, and the land as ‘southern Syria’. It was only in the 20th century when some Palestinian Arabs started to define themselves as a distinct ‘people’, and only in the 1960s that they replaced an ideology of simple ethnic hatred with self-definition as an oppressed indigenous third-world populace.

The foundations of the new Jewish state were laid by the Zionists in the Mandate period, during which time they began to change the land from an unhealthful, unproductive wasteland into the flourishing model of modern agriculture that it is today. They created all the appurtenances of a state: schools, universities, hospitals, roads, a merchant fleet, labor unions, banks, etc.

Meanwhile the Palestinian Arabs fomented anti-Jewish pogroms and their leader conspired with Adolf Hitler in murdering European Jews and planning to murder those in the Middle East. “[T]he only problem is that that we know that General Rommel did not succeed in coming here,” a Palestinian recently told an Israeli reporter posing as a German.

The Arabs lost the war they started to expel the Jews in 1948. Actions have consequences, and starting wars that you lose can have very significant consequences. Many Palestinian Arabs fled as a result of the war. Life is like that.

It was like that for about 800,000 Jews, too, who were kicked out of Muslim countries or fled without their possessions in the aftermath of that war. About half the population of Israel today is descended from those Jewish refugees, who by the way do not fit the description of Israeli Jews as ‘European colonialists’.

Thus the Jewish state of Israel is morally legitimate as the home of its indigenous people, solidly grounded in international law. But if you believe the false story that is told by the Arabs with the complicity of the media, then you wouldn’t know any of this.

Posted in Zionism | 2 Comments

Would Beinart have supported the Klan in 1964?

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Beinart: not just entirely wrong but an obscene inversion of reality.

Beinart: not just entirely wrong but an obscene inversion of reality.

It’s hard to find words to describe Peter Beinart. I’d write that I wonder how he sleeps at night, if it weren’t for the fact that his egotism and self-satisfaction come through so clearly in his writing that I would guess that he sleeps just fine.

Here’s an example from his latest attempt to push the envelope beyond all decency:

It’s time for American Jews who support Israel but oppose the occupation to commit to large-scale, direct action of our own. And the most important place to do so is in the West Bank. Palestinians in villages like Bil’in and Nabi Saleh have been protesting, unarmed, for years against the theft of their land. But their efforts receive little attention in American Jewish circles or in the American press. Few American Jews have any idea that under the military law that governs Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel routinely criminalizes freedom of speech and assembly. Or that peaceful protesters can be held in detention for years without trial.

But if thousands of American Jews joined those protests, American Jews would know. Protesters would return home with videos to show their synagogues; hawkish parents would be appalled by the treatment meted out to their children. And the American media, which covers Jews far more intensively than it covers Palestinians, would follow. The model would be Freedom Summer, Robert Moses’ campaign to bring white college students to help register voters in Mississippi in 1964, and thus draw the nation’s eyes to oppression that garnered little media attention when practiced only against blacks.

The ‘peaceful protests’ that Beinart refers to center around attempts to destroy the security barrier that protects Israel against the infiltration of terrorists, as occurred during the Second Intifada when hundreds of Israelis were murdered by suicide bombers. They have a secondary purpose of trying to provoke police and soldiers into responses that can be used as weapons in the propaganda and legal wars being waged against Israel.

The idea that the Palestinian national movement, whose objective is the destruction of Israel and the murder or expulsion of its Jewish residents, is anything like the US civil rights movements of the 1960s is not just entirely wrong but an obscene inversion of reality.

To Beinart’s rejoinder that I see Palestinians only as “haters and killers” and not as human beings, that is insultingly false. But the political movement and ideology that Beinart wants us to support is one of hating and killing.

On a personal note, a good friend of mine was murdered by racists in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer of 1964. His efforts and those of so many in that movement were not only well-intentioned, but had a profoundly positive effect. Racism is not wholly gone in America, but anyone, black or white, who lived before that period knows what was accomplished.

Beinart, on the other hand, advocates volunteering for exactly the opposite kind of movement, one based on racism and intolerance and which glorifies violence and murder.

Who knows, maybe in 1964 he would have urged American Jews to go to Mississippi to help out the Klan!

Posted in American Jews | 2 Comments

Obama’s anti-Israel extremism

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

Obama enragedNews item:

Nabil Shaath, a senior PLO official and confidante of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said that Israel dropped the demand that Hamas be demilitarized, due to American pressure, in an interview with the Arabic Ma’an News Agency.

Shaath is not a particularly reliable source, but it’s not clear what he would get out of making this up. The PLO is anxious to see Hamas weakened, and wants the US to support the idea of giving it control of the crossings, etc. Why would he want to irritate the US?

Overall, the attitude of the Obama Administration during this conflict has been hard to understand. It took several steps that could even be called hostile: the early demand for an immediate ceasefire, the presentation of a ceasefire proposal crafted by Hamas allies Turkey and Qatar, the FAA order that almost shut down Israel’s international airport, the mysterious hold-up of delivery of Hellfire missiles, etc.

A ceasefire agreement that included disarmament would have been a clear-cut victory for Israel, a humiliation for Hamas, a game-changing development that might have pulled Hamas’ teeth for once and for all. One that allows Hamas to keep its rockets and other weapons is just a timeout during which Hamas can prepare for the next round.

If Shaath’s report is true, then the US intervened to rescue a terrorist organization. Obviously this is bad for Israel, but how is it good for America?

In response to a report that Obama was “enraged” at Israel, Peter Wehner noted that

In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel. That’s right, Israel–our stalwart ally, a lighthouse of liberty, lawfulness, and human rights in a region characterized by despotism, and a nation filled with people who long for peace and have done so much for so long to sacrifice for it (including repeatedly returning and offering to return its land in exchange for peace).

Yet Mr. Obama–a man renowned for his lack of strong feelings, his emotional equanimity, his disengagement and distance from events, who New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to as “Spock” for his Vulcan-like detachment–is not just upset but “enraged” at Israel.

Add to this the fact that the conflict with Hamas in Gaza–a conflict started and escalated by Hamas, and in which Hamas used innocent Palestinians as human shields–had a very negative impact on America’s relationship with Israel. To show you just how absurd this has become, other Arab nations were siding with Israel in its conflict with Hamas. But not America under Obama. He was constantly applying pressure on Israel. Apparently if you’re a nation defending yourself and, in doing so, you wage a war with exquisite care in order to prevent civilian death, it is reason to earn the fury of Mr. Obama.

Wehner concludes that there is “something sinister” in Obama’s attitude toward Israel. I agree, and this time we can’t blame it on the Saudis, who also want to see Hamas crushed.

Many analysts have written that American foreign policy seems wacky, with erstwhile friends being treated as enemies and vice versa. Towards Israel it has been consistently negative, from the period just before Obama’s inauguration when incoming officials pressed Israel to withdraw from Gaza without concluding Operation Cast Lead, through his Cairo speech in which he compared Palestinian statelessness to the Holocaust, and including his various attempts to force Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, his humiliation of Netanyahu at the White House, and on and on. A complete catalog would require several more paragraphs.

Obama is careful and controlled in his public statements about Israel, but his actions suggest that his thinking has more in common with the hysterical anti-Israel demonstrators on campuses and in the streets than with any prior American president.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

It wasn’t a war — it wasn’t even a battle

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
The Battle of the Trench in 627, in which Mohammad successfully defended Medina against the Jews and their Arab allies by digging a trench.

The Battle of the Trench in 627, in which Mohammad successfully defended Medina against the Jews and their Arab allies by digging a trench.

Everyone knows who won WWII. And unfortunately they know who lost the Vietnam war. But Western analysts are arguing over whether Israel or Hamas won the recent conflict in Gaza. Hamas, for its part, is celebrating with so much random gunfire that at least two people have already been accidentally killed.

I look at it differently. I see the 50 days of conflict as a learning experience for both sides. Hamas, for its part, learned that Israel can focus an enormous amount of firepower on its targets, if it wants to. They also learned that no matter how much it is provoked, Israel won’t cross the line into creating mass civilian casualties, the way American or European forces might. Israel learned, if it didn’t already know, how deep the hatred runs in its enemies.

Both sides learned that Israel’s Iron Dome system is effective against rudimentary rockets aimed at targets more than a few miles from their launchers. And both sides learned that there is as yet no solution for mortars at closer ranges. Israel learned that tunnels are dangerous, while Hamas learned that it better keep its commanders underground for the duration of the next war.

Hamas learned that it can count on the media to tell its story with just the tiniest bit of intimidation. Israel is about to learn, yet again, that the “international community” is out to get it with kangaroo courts and hearsay accusations of war crimes, while Hamas, yet again, has had its strategy — the “double war crime” of firing at civilians from within civilian areas — validated.

Israel lost 64 soldiers and a handful of civilians, while Hamas lost about 1000 of each — actual numbers are impossible to get, but that’s close. The terms of the cease-fire do not give Hamas any gains for its trouble, but then they don’t give Israel anything either, except quiet for now.

Both sides’ significant demands will be discussed in the following weeks. Israel would like Gaza to be demilitarized; and Hamas would like all restrictions on imports lifted, prisoners released, a seaport and an airport constructed. My guess is that as a result of international pressure, Hamas will get some of what it wants and of course will not disarm. As always, Israel will have prevailed in the military part of the conflict but lost out in the diplomatic aftermath.

There’s no doubt that the world will immediately open its pockets to Gaza, blessed as it is by its choice of enemy. The double war crimes, the fact that 88.9% of Gazans favor the firing of rockets into Israel, the fact that Hamas was the aggressor that started the conflict and refused or broke some 11 cease-fires will not matter. It will be as though Gaza suffered a massive earthquake or tsunami and needs to be made whole as soon as possible.

With the connivance of its friends, Hamas will divert as much aid as possible to military purposes. And then in some months or years there will be another round. Because, after all, there will still be Jews in ‘Palestine’.

So the correct answer to the pundits who are debating the question “who won?” is “nobody, because it isn’t over.”

It wasn’t a war. It wasn’t even a battle. It was a skirmish in the long war between Islam and the Jews. There will be more of them. And if Israel wants to survive, it had better start seeking victory in these skirmishes, not quiet.

Posted in War | Comments Off on It wasn’t a war — it wasn’t even a battle

Now is the time for escalation, not compromise

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

There’s lots of talk that Israel and Hamas are both near to accepting the latest Egyptian truce proposal. There is also something in the works at the UN Security Council. There’s plenty of frustration in Israel over the way the conflict with Hamas in Gaza seems to be becoming a war of attrition, and PM Netanyahu’s popularity has dropped precipitously, with approval ratings falling from 82% to 38% in a few weeks. The almost continuous rocket and mortar barrage aimed at the kibbutzim close to Gaza has caused most of the residents to flee, and despite assurances that Hamas has few longer-range missiles left, this morning saw the heaviest barrage aimed at the center of the country of the past few weeks.

Israel has tried various strategies including a limited ground incursion and targeted killings of Hamas’ military leadership, including Mohammed Deif, commander of Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the Hamas army. Recently rules of engagement for air attacks have been loosened, and Israel has warned residents of Gaza that any site used for military activities is likely to be attacked, including schools, mosques, etc. (warnings are issued before a building is bombed, but such sites will no longer be immune). Nevertheless, Hamas, though on the ropes, continues to fight.

The frustration is understandable, but it is essential that Israel does not agree to a truce that includes any real concessions to Hamas, allows it to retain the ability to fight, or allows it to use future international assistance intended for humanitarian purposes to rebuild its military infrastructure.

Rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are dramatic, but have not (yet) represented much of a threat. On the other hand, the rocket and mortar bombardment of the kibbutzim and towns near the Strip have rendered them uninhabitable. If a relatively permanent solution is not found, then Israel will have effectively ceded the entire western Negev region to the terrorists. Would you agree to bring your children there if you knew that Hamas was certain to resume its bombardment in a year or two?

The truce terms that have been proposed so far do not promise a permanent solution, only a temporary end to the fighting that will allow Hamas to recover. It is essential that Israel does not agree to a truce that is not clearly a Hamas surrender, a humiliation. This is the only way that its grass-roots popularity — already damaged by its summary executions of dissidents, including several women (they are alleged to be collaborators, but this is doubtful) — can be permanently destroyed. This is the only way to ensure that it will not rise again.

I’m not a military expert, so I can’t prescribe the tactics that would be the best way to increase the pressure, but I can say that the path to victory — nothing less is needed — is increased pressure. Such pressure could be applied by multiple limited ground incursions, for example, in addition to continued targeted killings and continued air and artillery bombardment of Hamas targets.

Now isn’t the time to stop fighting, when Hamas is reeling from the deaths of its top commanders. Now is the time to escalate, to push harder until there is no option for Hamas short of surrender.

Posted in War | 1 Comment

Waiting for the barbarians

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Constantine XI Palaiologos (brandishing sword at left) rallies his soldiers in the final battle of the Byzantine Empire, 1453

Constantine XI Palaiologos (brandishing sword at left) rallies his soldiers in the final battle of the Byzantine Empire, 1453

News item:

ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — Gen. Martin Dempsey said that once he determines that the Islamic State militants in Iraq has become a direct threat to the US homeland, he will recommend the US military move directly against the group in Syria.

But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday that right now, he still believes the insurgent group is still more a regional threat and is not plotting or planning attacks against either the US or Europe.

Like Ebola, it’s always easiest to stop an epidemic when it’s small — when it can be isolated, contained and destroyed. It’s too late now to do it cheaply, but it’s still easier than after they’ve pulled off a massive terror attack that gets them even more recruits.

The IS represents the very darkest side of the human psyche. The more destructive they are, the more young men are drawn to them. Look, they say, we are giving you an opportunity to shoot down real people with real automatic weapons, rape all the women you like — much better than video games and internet porn — inspire unimaginable fear and gain respect. Be like a king. And all for the sake of the true religion! Allah gives you a pass to live out your bloody fantasies in the name of his jihad!

President Obama commented on the murder of James Foley a few days ago:

Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims, both Sunni and Shi’a, by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can, for no other reason than they practice a different religion.

They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people. So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.

He is not correct that “they speak for no religion.” They do what they do in the name of a religion, Islam, and part of their ideology is that their jihad is in order to spread the true Islam. The fact that many of their victims are Muslims doesn’t change this. They promulgate a way to be Muslim which is gaining adherents daily, the ones that are attracted by the opportunity to murder and rape, the ones that are afraid of them and the ones who somehow see ‘purity’ in their atavistic behavior.

Waiting for the barbarians to actually be at the gates, as Gen. Dempsey suggests he is doing, may not be the best strategy for dealing with a movement that is mushrooming in size and gaining strength daily as this one is.

The president continued:

People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.

Really? Ask the ghost of Constantine XI Palaiologos, killed by the troops of Mehmed II when they took Constantinople in 1453 and put an end to the almost 1000-year old Byzantine Empire. Sometimes the barbarians win.

Posted in Islam, War | 1 Comment

We can’t satisfy “the world,” so let’s stop trying.

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
The Sisyphean task of the Oslo Syndrome sufferer

The Sisyphean task of the Oslo Syndrome sufferer

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s Justice Minister and the one who more or less carries the flag of the Left in the government, was quoted today saying something like “we need to end this soon, or the world will get tired of the violence and end it in a way that will not be good for Israel” (sorry, I don’t have the exact quote, but this is close).

Why do I mention this? Because it illustrates a certain mindset that we need to leave behind.

It places Israel in the position of supplicant toward “the world.” It suggests that we need to make “the world” like us, or more accurately, not dislike us enough to take action against us. How do we do this? By acting even more ‘morally’ than the US and Europe, by living up to the standards set by the world for Israel alone, standards that no other country comes close to meeting, but that we are expected to exceed.

Do the US and NATO kill 3 civilians per combatant in urban warfare, in wars of choice? Then even if we maintain a 1:1 ratio in a defensive war we have to try harder, or be accused of ‘disproportionate’ actions.

We are expected to provide water, electricity and humanitarian goods to an entity with which we are at war, one that initiated the war and more or less commits continuous war crimes by attacking our civilian population, firing from within its own population. Would even Canada do this?

In our negotiations with the Palestinian authority, we are expected to make greater and greater concessions “to build trust” when the PA has not softened any of its demands since its creation in 1993, and when it continues to incite its population to hate and murder Jewish Israelis.

Today we are enjoined to stop the war while Hamas still has the ability to bombard Israel with rockets at will. We are expected to take our losses but eschew victory, because war is bad.

Livni’s enterprise to be so beyond reproach that the world won’t “get tired of us” may be impossible. It’s a Sisyphean task, and not only because “the world” seems to have a natural tendency toward being fed up with the Jews no matter what they do, but also because our enemies understand the dynamic very well and constantly work to provoke us.

A paradigm case was the Mavi Marmara affair in 2010, when a Turkish Islamist group joined a flotilla of ships sailing to Gaza in defiance of Israel’s blockade. Vladimir Putin probably would have sunk the ship without thinking twice, but the IDF landed naval commandos on its deck armed with paintball guns, who then had to defend themselves against vicious thugs wielding iron bars and knives. The soldiers had to use their sidearms to keep from being murdered, and the resulting deaths were blamed on Israeli ‘brutality’.

As a result, the US demanded that Israel loosen its blockade, and even ‘apologize’ to the Turks and pay compensation to the families of the terrorists that tried to kill our soldiers.

The fact is that “the world” will always find some way that Israel doesn’t measure up to the ideal moral standard that it has set up for us, and if we make heroic efforts to do so, then it will move the goalposts.

Livni’s remark is symptomatic of what historian and psychoanalyst Kenneth Levin calls “the Oslo Syndrome:” the disorder characterized by the tendency of its sufferers to believe that they can overcome Jew-hatred by making themselves better. Someone with Oslo Syndrome internalizes and comes to accept the accusations of Jewish corruption and moral inferiority made by the Jew-haters, but believes that he or she can gain their respect by proving them wrong.

The problem is that Jew-hatred is a characteristic of the hater, not the Jew. A Jew can’t ameliorate it by changing in any way, which is why trying to do so is so frustrating. What a Jew can and should do in the face of Jew-hatred is defend himself. This is both practically and psychologically beneficial to the Jew, and may even act to reduce Jew-hatred.

What is true of the individual Jew is also true of Israel, the Jew among nations. The IDF can go to even greater extremes to protect civilian residents of Gaza, but it will never go far enough to satisfy “the world,” which is insatiable for Jewish self-abnegation.

Israel’s primary responsibility is to protect its citizens against attack. It does not need to try to gain approval by living up to fanciful standards that no other nation has ever met. Today we need to continue the war in Gaza until Hamas has been completely neutralized as a military force, and effective arrangements can be made to keep it that way.

Livni should stop worrying about “the world” and concentrate on that.

Posted in Jew Hatred, War | Comments Off on We can’t satisfy “the world,” so let’s stop trying.