Category Archives: War Commentary

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Why Are They Surprised?

53 Comments

Now Lanny Davis is joining in the chorus of Those From Whose Eyes The Scales Have Fallen:

Helen Thomas, who I used to consider a close friend and who I used to respect, has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot. This not about her disagreement about her criticisms of Israel. She has a right to criticize Israel and that is not the same as being an anti-Semite.

However, her statement that Jews in Israel should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany is an ancient and well-known anti-Semitic stereotype of the Alien Jew not belonging in the “land of Israel” — one that began 2,600 years with the first tragic and violent diaspora of the Jews at the hands of the Romans.

If she had asked all Blacks to go back to Africa, what would White House Correspondents Association position be as to whether she deserved White House press room credentials — much less a privileged honorary seat?

Two points. OK, three. First, and this is a general point, not just to Lanny, but all those who thought that Helen Thomas was a friend. With all due respect, if you (and all the others who profess shock) are surprised at this, you are an idiot. I was completely unshocked. Of course, I was also completely unshocked that the president has proven to be both a massive redistributor and destroyer of wealth , indifferent to the interests of our friends and solicitous to those of our enemies, and (fortunately) utterly incompetent at carrying out his ultimate goals.

Second (or first point and a half). If Lanny thought that Helen was his friend, it was only because she was a Democrat, and generally (with a few interesting exceptions) carried the water for the Clinton administration, for which he was one of the chief butt boys.

Third point. There is a bizarre flaw in his logic. If one wants to draw an analogy with blacks, it would certainly not be a call for the latter to go back to Africa. Africa, is, after all, whence the blacks (for the most part, ignoring Australian aborigines, etc) actually came. A similar call for Jews to go to their homeland would be for them to go to…wait for it…Israel. Last time I checked, neither Poland or Germany were their ancestral homelands. Those were places to which they were forced to go to be oppressed, and then murdered en masse, after the Diaspora.

First Markos, and now this. Does no one on the left understand anything about history or geography? Even about their own people?

[Monday morning update]

Some Muslims are more equal than others:

I realize that nine Islamist activists who love to sing the evergreen “Death to Jews” — really, innocent folklore in those regions — killed by Israeli soldiers is an act without comparison in the world. It is the lowest and vilest thing that happened since the Holocaust. How dare they kill peace-loving Islamists who sing innocent lyrics like “Death to Jews”?

Still, think about what happened there in China. An astonishing 140 Muslims killed by the Chinese police. Okay, it’s not like nine killed by Jews, but it’s pretty bad.

Nah, it’s no big deal. Chinese, after all, are not Jews.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Don’t Know Much About Geography

16 Comments

Did anyone else notice this morning on This Week that Markos thinks that Turks are Arabs? He said that in alienating Turkey, Israel was “turning a major Arab ally against us.” I was waiting for George Will to give him the Maher treatment, but I guess he was too polite. Or else he didn’t notice, either. Anyway, no one, including Liz Cheney, called him on it.

[looking…]

Here’s the transcript:

MOULITSAS: Well, you know, first of all, the with us or against us approach which is what got us in a lot of the trouble that we are in today. I mean the fact is whether Israel had the right to do what it did or not, they handled it so poorly that they basically alienated much of the world. They alienated an important Arab ally in Turkey, and they put the United States in a really difficult position.

Yes, a very difficult position indeed, given the impossibility of having Turkey as an Arab ally.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

It’s The Thirties Again

4 Comments

Time to blame the Jews. You know the old saying that beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the bone? Whoever came up with that had Helen Thomas in mind. The doddering moron should have been put to pasture years ago.

[Update a while later]

A story of two Rachels:

Rachel Thaler was a British subject. Yet not a single British journalist has ever mentioned her, profiled her, interviewed her parents or other British relatives, or published her diary in a Fleet Street newspaper – except for a single solitary mention by the great (Jewish) comedienne Maureen Lipman noting that nobody ever mentioned her, or the other victims of Palestinian terrorism.

Ah, but Israel is an “apartheid state”, and the Palestinians are the Europeans’ unending adopt-a-Third-World-pet project. I write in the new National Review (on sale now-ish) that, if old-school judenhass was a by-product of more or less traditional racism and conventional nationalism, the new judenhass advances under the cover of “anti-racism” and “multiculturalism”. The oldest hatred didn’t get that way without the ability to adapt.

What’s really frightening is how many useful Jewish idiots they have.

[Update a few minutes later]

So, should the Jews apologize to Turkey, or go back to Germany and Poland?

[Early afternoon update]

The most ancient virus to infect the soul:

Flare-ups of the virus have been common across Europe throughout the last 2 millennia, but an overwhelming series of eruptions in Europe from England through the lands controlled by the USSR, required a global intervention before the conflagration was deemed to be put out. This, of course was an illusion, since like the root burns engendered by forest fires, it only smoldered underground in the human and social hosts for decades before erupting once again in the vast Petri dish of the Middle East.

With the advent of the “Palestinian cause” becoming chic in Western, European, and Liberal circles — driven at first by Socialist Progressive romanticism in the late 1960s and early 1970s — being infected by virus has once more become acceptable to exhibit socially in certain ways. Indeed, in many circles and societies, having the virus has lately become a highly prized fashion accessory to popular academic, media, and state ideologies. It is now actually a badge of pride in many Western circles to appear at various events wearing gold-plated buboes inset with multi-faceted Kaposi’s sarcoma that contain the virus at their core. Many now believe this intellectual adornment to actually be beautiful.

In a recent mutation, the virus has shown that it can leap the blood/brain barrier and actually infect Jews — if they feel safe within their “advanced” society. The current term for this mutation is “Juicebox Mafia” in which self-styled “intellectuals” of Jewish lineage actually feel it is “intelligent” to call for a world in which it is easier for Arabs and other Islamic groups to kill Jews wholesale. This sort of strange host to the virus is replacing the previous host termed “the self-hating Jew.” The reason for the rise of the Juicebox Mafia is unclear, but it may well have to do with desires for celebrity and paychecks that exceed the desire to live.

Or maybe “intellectuals” aren’t very smart.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Bad News In The Mediterranean

9 Comments

From a scholar of the classics:

…we should pay attention to a growing concern in the southeastern Mediterranean: A bankrupt Greece has alienated its patrons in northern Europe, has alienated the U.S. through years of anti-American rhetoric, has little or no financial resources, and will be facing cutbacks in its military — and a newly assertive Turkey is carving out a position of influence in the region as the real, and far more serious, representative of Islamic government, perhaps in the fashion of the old Ottomans.

Though actually, the old Ottomans would be a preferable (though not good) alternative to the new Wahhibist fundamentalists. At the least, it’s bad news for the Greeks on Cyprus, but allowing Turkey into NATO is making less and less sense.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Ass Clown Alert

66 Comments

Glenn Greenwald and Gaza:

Putting aside the obvious strawmen (no one was arguing that there would “be no more Hamas,” or not a single rocket), what history has shown is that 3,000 rockets, missiles, and mortars landed in Israel in 2008 before the Gaza incursion, and that includes a lengthy cease-fire period. Since the end of the Gaza incursion, only about 200 projectiles have fallen in Israel from Gaza, and, I believe, none have caused physical injuries. Other commentators (but not Greenwald) have acknowledged that they were wrong about the efficacy of Israel’s military action.

But let’s repeat the initial point: Greenwald thinks that ANY military action that Israel may take against Hamas is illegitimate, and that Israel’s only proper response to whatever violence Hamas unleashes is diplomacy. If Hamas decides to adhere to its stated policy that its goal is the destruction of Israel and the exile of its inhabitants, and acts accordingly, Israel’s only resort is apparently to surrender.

And while we’re on the subject of Greenwald, here’s an interview with Greenwald in which he (a) claims that Israel’s boarding of a blockade-running ship violates international law because the ship was in international waters. Ruth Wedgwood, an actual expert in international law, then comes on to rebut him. I’m not an international law expert, and it’s not my cup of tea, but if you’re going to cite international law, you might as well get it right, and my understanding is that Greenwald is simply wrong here.

As was pointed out in the previous thread, if a ship is declaring an intention to run a blockade, it doesn’t matter where it is boarded. And the notion that this was piracy is ludicrous. Yes, this may have been a PR blunder of the first magnitude for Israel, but it wasn’t “illegal,” “piracy,” or a “massacre.” And of course, Israel is in the position of Caesar’s wife, and no matter what it does, other than surrender, it will be criticized.

[Update in the afternoon]

It’s Jenin all over again. As Mark Twain said, a lie will travel all the way around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

[Update a few minutes later]

Stopped clock alert. Joe Biden says that (unlike health care) the Israeli boarding was no big f’ing deal:

“[The Israelis have] said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people,'” Biden said.

Between this, and the comments of the Secretary of State, it looks like the administration finally realizes that they went overboard on their own recent Israel bashing. This won’t make their leftist base happy.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

They’re Not Against War

114 Comments

They’re just on the other side:

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Al Jazeera on Monday broadcasted footage from the Gaza flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showing Israeli Navy commandos boarding the ship. Helicopters could also be seen flying overhead.

“It was like a well-planned lynch,” one IDF officer said. “These people were anything but peace activists.”

As Claudia Rossett notes, this isn’t about peace, or freedom, or humanitarian aid. It’s about making a terrorist-supporting political statement, with the added frisson of killing Jews.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more:

In a later search aboard the Marmara, soldiers found caches of bats, clubs, knives, and slingshots used by the rioters ahead of the IDF takeover. It appeared the activists were well prepared for a fight…

…It appears that the error in planning the operation was the estimate that passengers were indeed political activists and members of humanitarian groups who seek a political provocation, but would not resort to brutal violence.

They won’t make that mistake again.

[Late evening update]

A photomontage of “peace” activists.

And it’s time for Israel to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy.

It certainly hasn’t bought them much.