the true extent of the hamas tunnels .... the true extent of the strategic israeli victory in its attack on gaza ....

Some good comments below  from another blogger.  I have retained his aversion to capital letters

a friend sent me an article that caused me to search out an article entitled "stories from the battlefield: hamas tunnels used to target israel's kindergartens," by mordechai ben-menachem, dated 07.27.2014, at  the daily caller

now, maybe i have been inattentive and have simply missed the publication of the facts set forth in this post, but, for the first time i have seen the true scope of the hamas plans involving the use of the tunnels, and understand for the first time the true extent and importance of the israeli victory over hamas.  [as i neared completion of this article, "live links" started to pop out all over about these tunnels.   obviously, this story is known in the blogosphere, even if not reported on abc, nor nbc nor cbs.:jjj.]

and, maybe this article will convince you of the true perfidy of the mass media, and its utter complicity in the goals of destruction hamas intends someday to deliver upon israel.   if this article by mordechai ben-menachem is known by me, it is known by the media types, and they are not coughing it up.   not in america, at least.   the reason is simple.   the facts in ben-menachem's post run counter to the left's meme on the israeli-hamas struggle.

quite simply, the western media is evil.  it is state-sponsored, ideologically driven, evil.

the tunnels were designed to launch attacks on israeli children, the attacks set to attack on sept. 24, 2014.   the tunnels are not little rat holes, but, shored up structures large enough to drive vehicles through.   and, large enough to move a considerable number of troops through, in a hurry.   they went from gaza into israel, and stopped at israeli settlements underneath and near israeli schools.

they were designed to deliver attacks upon israeli children, during the israel high holidays.

they were equipped with explosives, ammunition, and with tranquilizers to subdue any israeli prisoners that might have resulted from their operations.



this tunnel is reinforced w/ steel beams and heavy materials for shoring.   it is also supplied with electricity, and there is considerable conduit for the same, seen in the photo.   it addition, this section of the tunnel is connected by a shaft to some location above ground, for the use of bringing in a lot of material, and presumably, troops.

there are lots of stores in this tunnel.  no provision for civilians to take shelter, but, lots of stores.

but, in a larger sense, this story is very important.   because now, we are being treated to the inevitable spin of the mass media, about how this was not an israeli victory, and that hamas has tricked them and prevailed in the "land war" between hamas and israel.  and, that israel has suffered a "strategic defeat," even if it operated with impunity on a tactical level.

the story of these tunnels renders any such assertion as nonsense.

hamas had planned a major attack on israel.   israel has thwarted that attack, rendered its possibility a nullity, and has destroyed hamas's ability to utilize the tunnels, even as it continues to destroy the tunnels.  israel has dealt to hamas a very crippling blow.

and, israel has exposed the complicity of governments and private concerns related to the digging of these tunnels.  someone came in and showed hamas how to construct them, and supplied the material and stores by which to arm them.  and, someone financed the construction of the tunnels.  (hint: that would be the united nations, the obama administration and the euro leftist behind these bullshit schemes, and, quite obviously, the russians.  in other words, the usual group of thugs intent on israel's destruction.)

in sum, israel suffered no defeat.   israel enjoys, this day, a major victory.   and, you should know about it, and understand it.

SOURCE

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Nanny-State Mindset Leads to Police Brutality

By Scott Rasmussen

In Florida recently, police pulled up to a young boy playing in the park and asked where his mother lived. According to a report on WPTV, the mom was then arrested for "allowing her son to go to the park alone." Her son had a cellphone, and she would check in with him along the way. The mom believes "he's old enough, but Port St. Lucie Police disagree."

There is a tendency to dismiss stories such as this as a silly mistake by an overzealous police officer, but sadly it's part of a larger problem. In fact, a similar story of arresting a mom for not supervising her child 24/7/365 took place a few weeks back in South Carolina. A Washington Post column reported these incidents as part of a series on "the increasing criminalization of everything and the use of the criminal justice system to address problems that were once (and better) handled by families, friends, communities and other institutions."

This abuse of governmental authority is the natural extension of nanny-state efforts such as the crusade to ban large sugary drinks. Once you accept the premise that so-called experts should decide what's best for the rest of us, the only question remaining is how to deal with people who don't comply.

It's the same mindset that believes the National Security Agency should be allowed to read all our emails and monitor our phone calls in the name of national security. Just trust us, they say. We're from the government, and we're here to help.

How's this for help? In Georgia, a SWAT team broke into a house searching for drugs and threw a flash-bang grenade inside a child's crib.

The excessive force was disgusting to begin with. Even worse is the fact that the police had the wrong house and there were no drugs. The child is in critical condition.

Amazingly, the local sherriff and other Georgia authorities said the officers didn't do anything wrong. That's ludicrous. They deployed a grenade developed for war in a private home and sent a child to the hospital fighting for his life. Something is terribly wrong.

It's important to note that most police officers are great public servants. Just a few years ago, a local officer in my hometown literally saved my life and the lives of my family. We called him a hero. He said he was just doing his job. Naturally, we have tremendous respect for the job that such officers do and the courage they display.

However, a National Review article correctly notes that "respecting good police work means being willing to speak out against civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after brutalizing citizens." That means speaking out against stories like this:

"On Thursday in Staten Island, an asthmatic 43-year-old father of six, Eric Garner, died after a group of policemen descended on him, placing him in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him for allegedly selling cigarettes."

Stories like these are not random exceptions. They are the natural result of a governing philosophy that believes government experts should dictate how the rest of us live. If we want to reign in such over-the-top police actions, the first step must be to get rid of the nanny-state mindset. This means recognizing every American has the right to make decisions about how to live his or her own life.

SOURCE

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Nine Things Voters Can Learn From Michelle Nunn's Campaign Strategy

Last week, National Review gave the Washington beltway a juicy tidbit of afternoon reading. Somehow, its reporter Eliana Johnson got her hands on a leaked copy of U.S. Senate Democrat candidate Michelle Nunn’s campaign plan.

The 144-page memo rips the curtain away from the modern campaign. For us writing about Washington outside the beltway, we see this document as a guidebook on political communication. Think of it as the Democrats' strategy to win friends and influence people.

In the next few months, the midterm elections will gear up and candidates all around the country like Michelle Nunn will run television spots, pose for photo-ops and kiss babies. By understanding Nunn’s strategy, we understand more of how the politicians are trying to convince us that they should be the ones going to Congress next year. We also learn how the Left, specifically, targets certain demographics and plays certain groups to accomplish its goals.

Here’s what we learned reading through the document:

The modern campaign takes a lot of science and number crunching. This may be a no-brainer. However, the memo starts off by looking at the history of voter turnout in Georgia and estimates how many votes the Nunn campaign should rake onto their side. The Feldman Group wrote, “[W]e need 1,378,001 votes to win. Rounding up reduces the risk and so 1.4 million is my recommended goal.” For this purpose, the Georgia Democratic Party keeps a massive voter list, probably with data such as voter history and the like. In fact, voter data is big, shadowy business.

The Nunn campaign was researching to find out what voters wanted to hear. When this memo was written in December, Nunn didn’t define much of her message. Only a few months later, when her challenger would be decided in the Republican primary, would she forge the details of her running platform. For us not living in the swamp along the Potomac, this shows a candidate is not motivated by integrity, but by what tickles the ears of the voters during election season. They certainly ride the winds of opinion.

The Nunn campaign said it was looking for groups of Republicans to endorse Nunn. The Nunn campaign created two political groups to help lend some weight to their campaign. The groups, Republicans for Nunn and Independents for Nunn (we’re sure there is no pun intended), would be on call to be quoted in the media. This was an effort to reach demographics that Nunn herself was not comfortable reaching in person – like conservative, rural folks.

The Nunn campaign, in conjunction with Georgia’s Democratic Party, has a Voter Protection Program, which is there to deploy people to monitor the campaign, work the polls, and deal with any “voter protection incidents.” Election law is no joke. Mess with ballots, or manipulate voters, and you are manipulating the democratic process itself. For this reason, the Nunn campaign wanted to recruit lawyers or law students. For the non-law types, it was going to create an outline for those people to bone up on their election law, then turn around to advise the campaign. Go figure.

What kind of voter you are depends on what message you’ll hear. In the memo, there was a PowerPoint slide labeled “CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY” in which it identifies three kinds of audiences. First, there are the “Strong supporters.” In their mailboxes, Facebook accounts and online ads, they see messages reminding them to vote, give money or volunteer. Second, the “Drop-off voters” are probably people who support the candidate but somehow don’t make it to the polls. They need more persuasion when it comes to getting out and voting. Third, “swing voters” need to be persuaded about the candidate.

If the campaign were to get dirty, Nunn would be prepared. Early on, her campaign was compiling books of information about her possible Republican opponents. Her staff would gather all the information the public record had to offer on her opponent. Furthermore, the Democrat Party of Georgia hired a tracker. His or her job is to show up at press conferences, county fairs, fundraisers and videotape the opposition candidate whenever possible. The footage would be transcribed and analyzed for quotes, developments in the opposition’s campaign and for possible attack ads hitting the airwaves. The campaign’s research also went into debate preparation – policy documents refuting the arguments Nunn’s opposition would make.

Nunn’s memo bluntly goes through several demographics and their use to the campaign. Like a typical liberal, Nunn planned to use blacks and Latinos for their votes, and she targeted Jews, homosexuals, Asian-Americans and CEOs for their money. But these are not the only groups the Nunn campaign targeted. Her campaign viewed religious leaders as “validators” – people that she could leverage to get voters, especially Latino voters. For gun owners, Nunn herself wouldn’t reach the Second Amendment crowd (probably not her type of person). Instead, she would target the group around hunting season, releasing a newspaper ad or two, using people who did own guns as endorsers of her campaign.

When it came to Veterans, Nunn’s campaign had plans for them too, using them as “validators.” In her memo, the campaign wrote: “The veterans community will be organized primarily as validators. The campaign will work to recruit leaders in all areas of the military community and release their support prior to the primary. Following the primary, the campaigns will release their names of a larger number of military supporters, thus showing growing support.” Like many politicians, the Nunn campaign only gives veterans lip service in exchange for more votes. Such respectful treatment for the people who chose to bear the responsibilities of uniform!

Finally, the campaign has a love-hate relationship with the media because much of the outreach to voters is played out in the media, which can write whatever it wants. The campaign’s goal is to stick to a set of campaign talking points and repeat them again and again until Election Day. The media is hounding the campaign for any crack or deviation in the message. “In fact – in 21st century campaigns with wall-to-wall media coverage and super-pacs able to put millions of dollars behind video behind a single cellphone video – a slight deviation from the agreed upon message could end up being very damaging to the campaign,” the memo said. The communications team even rehearses the stump speech. Part of the team’s job is to “push back against negative research hits” using the strategy to “kill or muddy the story.” Remember that the next time you read a political piece on a candidate.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Obama's half-brother writes memoir contradicting 'Dreams from my Father' and exposing their common father's chronic drunken physical abuse

Barack Obama's Ivy-League educated half-brother is publishing his autobiography next month, painting a dramatically different picture of their few meetings from the one the president related in his best-selling 'Dreams from My Father' memoir.

Mark Obama Ndesandjo includes an appendix in his book, cataloguing what he says are factual errors in 'Dreams' – including words falsely attributed to his mother, a Jewish woman named Ruth.

'A lot of the stuff that Barack wrote is wrong in that book, and I can understand that,' he told the Associated Press last year when he planned to self-publish his book.

'To me,' Ndesandjo said then, 'for him the book was a tool for fashioning an identity and he was using composites. I wanted the record to be straight. I wanted to tell my own story, not let people tell it for me.'

His book, 'An Obama's Journey: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery across Three Cultures,' is due in stores September 16 and published by Globe Pequot Press.

Describing a two-day stretch in 1988 when the two half-brothers first met and shared a next-day lunch, Ndesandjo, who bears only a vague family resemblance to the president, writes that 'overall, it was a very awkward, cold meeting.'

Barack Sr., he explains, was someone he tried not to think of since he had divorced Ruth years earlier and descended further into alcoholism and a downward career spiral.

But with Barack Jr. suddenly in his living room, brought for a visit by the future president's aunt, avoiding thoughts about their common father became uncomfortably impossible. It was, he writes, as 'though the skeleton that no one ever talked about had strayed into the middle of a family party.'

Ndesandjo, according to a writer at WND.com who obtained an advance copy of the book, 'described their lunch together during that second day as filled with tension, as Barack struggled to embrace the African heritage of a father Ndesandjo had rejected.'

The author 'had refused even to use the Obama name, unable to forget, as a child, experiencing the alcoholism and brutality of their father.'

The elder Barack was a blithely self-involved alcoholic, once killing a man in a DUI auto accident and dying at age 46 while driving drunk.  His viciousness is largely absent from the president's 'Dreams' – President Obama met Barack Sr. just once after his infancy, at age 10 – and is relegated to Obama quoting his half-brother criticizing Barack Sr.

'You think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots, that sort of thing,' Ndesandjo tells the future president in 'Dreams.'

'Well, you're right. At a certain point, I made a decision not to think about who my real father was. He was dead to me even when he was still alive. I knew that he was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife or children. That was enough.'

In 'Dreams,' Obama casts himself as the all-seeing observer trying to connect himself back to his Kenyan roots. But Ndesandjo now recalls details that never made it into the president's 1995 book.

'My impression at the first meeting,' he writes, 'was that Barack thought that I was too white, and I thought that he was too black.'

'He was an American search for his African roots. ... I'm an American but I was living in Kenya, searching for my white roots.'

'I remember that when I spoke with him about the heroes of Western culture, he rolled his eyes impatiently,' he has told Maariv, an Israeli newspaper.

'My feeling was that, here is an American who in many ways is trying to be a local Kenyan youth. This is something I tried to flee my entire life.'

Ndesandjo says his effort to escape his African cultural roots was furthered in part by a desire to escape the legacy of his violent father.  'His self-hatred and tendency toward self-sabotage was passed down and became part of my identity,' he acknowledges in his new book.

'My mother's lily-white skin and my father's ebony-black visage come to symbolize an eternal incompatibility in my mind's eye. For a long time I hated to have anything to do with what my father represented, whether it was him personally, or even the positive aspects of African culture.'

'In violent reaction to him,' he concludes, 'I turned passionately toward Western culture and music, which brought me a measure of solace.'

After earning degrees in physics from Brown and Stanford Universities, Ndesandjo honed his artistic talents in China where he lives with his wife.  He is an accomplished pianist and recording artist who often gives lessons to orphans in the Chinese boom town of Shenzhen.

More criticisms of Barack Sr. surfaced in 2009 when the new president visited China during his first year in the White House.

That's when Ndesandjo published his first book, an autobiographical novel titled 'Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Tale of Love In The East.' It paints Barack Obama Sr. as an abusive drunk who repeatedly beat him and his mother in episode after rage-filled episode.

'There were some thumps as of someone falling,' reads one passage that Ndesandjo wrote in the third-person.  'His father's angry voice raised itself. ... He didn't remember what they were fighting about, but his stomach felt sick and empty.'  'His mother was being attacked and he couldn't protect her. "You bastard!" he remembered her screaming out. And that was just one night. There were many more.'

One of those nights, Ndesandjo writes in 'An Obama's Journey,' resulted in his blitzed father holding a knife to his mother's throat after she obtained a restraining order against him.

'We Obamas have big hands. They can be used to create or to debase,' reads one portion.  'My hands enable me to comfortably reach across twelve keys and play piano well. My father would use his big hands to knock my mother down when he came home from a night of drinking.'

'I would move protectively toward her and clutch her legs, crying,' writes Ndesandjo. 'I know now why I mostly remember her legs, not her torso, or even her face.'

His parents met when Obama Sr. was a graduate student at Harvard University. They moved to Kenya in 1964, where he and his brother David were born. David later died in a motorcycle accident.

Obama Sr. had earlier divorced President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, following Obama's 1961 birth.

Ndesandjo's mother later divorced the elder Barack Obama and married another man, whose surname both mother and son also took.

SOURCE

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Victory over Operation Choke Point

Gun retailers are no longer on a hit list deemed “high risk” by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. after the banking regulator formally withdrew Monday the list it put together that outlined what merchants may be considered risky for banks to do business with as part of the Obama administration’s “Operation Choke Point.”

The agency said its explanatory warning list “led to misunderstandings” about how it’s supervising banks’ ties to third-party payment providers, according to Bloomberg News. The regulator said it never meant to prevent banks from doing financial transactions with the types of businesses on the list.

“Those that are operating with the appropriate systems and controls will not be criticized for providing payment-processing services to businesses operating in compliance with applicable law,” the FDIC said in its updated industry guidelines, issued Monday.

Richard Osterman, the agency’s acting general counsel, admitted to the American Banker newspaper Monday that the list had been “misinterpreted” by financial institutions.

Republican lawmakers have criticized the FDIC for unfairly targeting legitimate businesses that operated in its so-called high-risk category, including gun retailers and payday lenders. The Washington Times reported in May that many banks were dropping businesses in these high-risk industries as the bankers wanted to avoid higher scrutiny from the federal regulator.

The FDIC has been helping the Department of Justice run “Operation Choke Point,” which is intended to combat online fraud by cutting off fraudsters’ access to payment systems. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, California Republican, has said the effect of the program has been to squeeze out legitimate businesses.

“If you empower the government to pick winners and losers within lawful enterprises, then there’s no place to stop,” Mr. Issa said this month in an appearance at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Industry advocates pushing to repeal Operation Choke Point said the FDIC did not go far enough Monday.

“Altering a website is window dressing and doesn’t end the unjust practices associated with Operation Choke Point,” said Brian Wise, a senior adviser for the U.S. Consumer Coalition, which is seeking an end to Operation Choke Point.

“While we support the FDIC’s decision to remove the list of ‘high-risk merchants’ from the FDIC website, damage has already been done to countless businesses across the country who have already lost their bank accounts,” he added. “Whether the list is published on the FDIC’s website or not, we expect banks will still be fearful of doing business with these lawful industries.”

SOURCE

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GOVERNMENT HAS GROWN OUT OF CONTROL!

Imagine waking up to the sight of armed police officers raiding your house. You know you’ve done nothing wrong, but yet you are terrified just the same.

You look out your window and see an entire column of police cars and Department of Homeland Security vehicles race towards your house with sirens blazing.

When they arrive, they don’t head for the door, nor do they go after any individual. The go right to your car, lift the hood to read the VIN number, and then tow it away.

For Jennifer Brinkley, this was her reality. What was her crime? She wasn’t a drug dealer and she wasn’t accused of hurting anyone…



No, her crime was that she owned a 1984-5 Land Rover SUV that, according to Homeland Security, violated the Clean Air Act. The above picture shows the model that the government has apparently decided is illegal to own…

This isn’t a joke. Jennifer Brinkley had her North Carolina home raided by Homeland Security because her vintage SUV apparently violated the Clean Air Act.

What the hell is this country coming to???

We have thousands of illegals crossing the border every day, bringing drugs, diseases, and God knows what else into the country. But Obama won’t use Homeland Security resources to seal the border. No, he would rather use the full weight of the Federal Government to shake down a woman for owning an old SUV known for crummy emissions!

Tell Congress to STOP the administration’s wanton targeting of American citizens! Homeland Security should be used to secure the border, not to raid and shakedown citizens!

When police and Homeland Security arrived at Jennifer Brinkley’s home, they compared the VIN on the car to a list they had and determined that the SUV may violate the Clean Air Act.

This is a law that requires all vehicles to maintain a certain emissions standard. But the agents didn’t even test the car’s emissions… they just looked at the VIN and assumed that it wasn’t in compliance.

Not only is this a ridiculous reason to have an armed raid and impound a motor vehicle, but also the officers involved weren’t even sure if the Land Rover did violate the law.

The owner contends that she put $60,000 into restoring the car and that she was close to getting it inspected. Once done, she completely expected it to pass its inspection, including the emissions section of the test.

But before she had a chance to bring her car in to be inspected, Homeland Security swooped in and seized it right out from under her!

Words can’t describe how angry this makes me. This woman had her property seized by government forces sworn to protect her interests. Instead, she had her liberty and property rights trampled on.

To this day, Jennifer Brinkley has no idea where the government has taken her car. According to agents, her car was just one of forty that Homeland Security was seizing on that day alone.

This is what our government has come to… Instead of honoring their oath and defending the American people, government agencies like Homeland Security look for every chance to catch Americans violating some random law or statute.

Why the hell was Homeland Security even involved in the raid? Agents admitted that Jennifer Brinkley had not done anything else wrong, so why was Homeland Security – an agency charged with combatting drug smuggling and terrorism – involved in an EPA raid?

If you look up “out of control government” in a dictionary, this story should show up.

There are so many laws on the books that it is impossible for any average citizen to stay on the right side of the law. Judges will always claim that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But it has gotten to the point that if you actually took the time to read every law on the books, by the time you finished you’d have to start over because laws would have been added and changed!

Ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but it is also inexcusable to have entire government agencies built around fining and penalizing citizens for running afoul of the law!

We have a Homeland Security Agency that leaves the border unsecure while it targets an SUV owner for violating emissions standards!

We have an FDA that uses SWAT teams to go after farmers for selling raw milk and unpasteurized cheese products!

We have an EPA that fines homeowners thousands of dollars for creating unlicensed ponds on their property!

We have a Bureau of Land Management that tries to shakedown cattle ranchers to make them pay grazing fees to use public land!

The DOJ has openly admitted to targeting gun stores and forcing banks to drop them as customers!

The government has grown far too big and too powerful! And it is up to us to right the ship!

For a government agency to use an environmental law to seize a $60,000 car should be a shock. But the sad thing is, this happens every day across America. This is merely the symptom of the larger disease…

If it can happen to Jennifer Brinkley, it can happen to anyone.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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With or Without the Subsidies, Obamacare May Fall Apart

The Obamacare subsidies depend on Halbig’s outcome, and whether millions of Americans can afford their healthcare plans depends on the subsidies. At least, that’s the narrative. Commentators warn of a coming “death spiral” of extraordinary costs and insufficient incoming premiums as people cancel their plans without the subsidies. But what they’re ignoring is that Obamacare is on track to fail regardless of what the court decides.

What people aren’t grappling with is that with or without the subsidies, health insurance under Obamacare is simply too expensive. The hundreds of pills and procedures every insurance plan is now federally required to cover has bloated premiums beyond what most Americans want to, or often can, pay. That’s why Obamacare subsidizes the plans.

The whole point of Obamacare was supposedly to make health insurance more affordable. The problem is that Obama’s promise that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” never squared with his plan to replace so-called catastrophic care plans with comprehensive coverage. Companies can’t cover breast implants and Viagra for the same price as covering cancer and car wrecks only.

Subsidies were the answer for affordable care. The federal government pays up to 100 percent of the premiums for certain insurance plans for people with low incomes. In total, the administration claims 6.7 million people will receive tax credits to pay their premiums and 70 percent, or 4.7 million, are using a federal exchange.

However, even with Medicaid expansion and subsidies, Obamacare still failed spectacularly to reduce premiums. Instead of reducing what every American family pays for health insurance by $2,500 per year, as candidate Obama promised in 2008, insurance premiums increased for millions of Americans once Obamacare made their existing plans illegal. Families can expect to pay 32% more per year to stay covered under Obamacare. And that’s with the subsidies.

Money for subsidies has to come from somewhere. Here’s where things really get tricky for Obamacare. The entire premise is that, even with subsidies, young, healthy people’s premiums will subsidize care for the sick and elderly. Turns out that young people don’t really want to do that. And why should they? The plan hoses young, relatively poor people right when they least need high bills for services they’re not using. And it helps older, relatively rich people who should be able to afford the care they need.

Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy have pointed out for Reason magazine that today’s seniors are far wealthier than today’s young adults. While, 36% of millennials are still living under their parents’ roof, 83% of elderly households own a home. Poverty rates for those over 65 years of age are much lower than most other demographics. Households headed by people 65 or older have 22 times the wealth of households headed by people under 35.

Not only are many young people either unemployed or underemployed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that people under 40 owe 67% of the roughly $1.4 trillion that Americans owe on school loans. That’s on top of an average of several thousand dollars of credit card debt.

Obamacare forces people who can scarcely afford the extra cost to subsidize care for people who absolutely can afford to pay for their own health services. Obamacare’s solvency also requires that people who aren’t eligible for subsidies sign up. That, too, doesn’t really appear to be happening. Shockingly, people aren’t into paying a lot for services other people use more than they do. The plan will fail to reach solvency because it’s too expensive for the very people the plan needs on board in order to stay solvent.

Obamacare only works if many more young, healthy, and wealthy people get insured than were insured previously. Instead, Obamacare has only reduced the percentage of uninsured Americans by 3%, from a peak of 18 percent last year to 15 percent. And most of the signups are sick, poor, old people.

If the Administration prevails, 7.3 million people will continue to get subsidies, according to recent analysis from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, 83% of Obamacare plans are subsidized to some extent. Subsidizing the vast majority of health insurance plans without signing up a lot of new, healthy, unsubsidized payers simply does not work out, mathematically.

The Halbig case is certainly interesting. But even if the Administration gets its way, they’re a long way from out of the woods when it comes to Obamacare.

SOURCE

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Obamacare: Will Mandates for Doctors Come Next?  Central planning is replacing individual choice

John Foust, a Democrat running for the 10th congressional seat in Northern Virginia, is—like Gov. Terry McAuliffe and other state Democrats—gung-ho to expand Medicaid. His wife’s position is, shall we say, a bit more nuanced.

Foust has slammed his opponent, Republican Del. Barbara Comstock, for her opposition to expansion. He has spoken of the need to “make health care available to 400,000 Virginians,” insisting it is “the right thing to do.”

Foust’s wife, Dr. Marilyn Jerome, practices with Foxhall OB/GYN in northwest Washington, D.C. Six of its physicians made Washingtonian magazine’s list of “Top Docs,” and one of them—Nichole Pardo—was featured on the cover. Not too shabby.

The practice is notable for another reason as well: It doesn’t accept Medicaid patients.

This draws attention to an under-covered aspect of the debate over Medicaid expansion. While advocates speak of it as “making health care available” to the needy, what it really does is make coverage, rather than care, available to them. A newly enrolled Medicaid patient can get the money to pay a doctor. But can she get the doctor to take it?

On his website, Foust blasts insurance companies that “hiked insurance premiums and gouged consumers. … Insurance companies denied care to those with pre-existing conditions … and refused coverage to those who needed it most. … We cannot go back to the days when insurance companies could arbitrarily … deny coverage.” In a commentary on the Foxhall practice’s website, Dr. Jerome praises the Affordable Care Act—particularly because now “women cannot be denied insurance” and because the plan’s standards mandate coverage for a wide variety of treatments.

Doctors, however, can operate under a much different set of standards. They can deny care all they want. Statewide, roughly one in five physicians will not accept new Medicaid patients—usually because Medicaid pays only two-thirds as much as private insurance does, on average.

The point here isn’t to shame physicians or to provoke a marital spat. The incongruity goes to a much broader issue—regarding individual responsibility in a system that is becoming increasingly collectivized.

You might have read recently about the blowback some pharmaceutical companies have been getting for charging stratospheric prices for new wonder drugs, such as Sovaldi—a life-saving treatment for Hepatitis C. Two U.S. senators, Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Charles Grassley, are demanding the company that makes Sovaldi justify its $84,000 price tag. Similar questions have been raised about Kalydeco, a life-saving treatment for cystic fibrosis that costs more than $300,000 per year.

Prices like that provoke a lot of anger. Many people think it’s wrong to charge more than patients can pay. Much of the outrage also comes from insurance-company self-interest. The trade group AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) routinely cranks out diatribes against what it considers unjustified prices and profit margins in the pharmaceutical industry.

This is a sore spot for the insurance industry. Under Obamacare’s medical-loss-ratio rules, insurers must spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars to pay for treatment (rather than, say, for overhead). Drug companies face no such government-imposed caps. Yet.

Indeed, insurance companies now face a whole raft of mandates governing whom they must insure and what treatments they must cover. The rationale for such requirements is that to deny someone insurance because of a previous medical condition, or to decline to pay for certain categories of medical care, is immoral.

Obamacare also imposes obligations on individuals: Everybody must obtain insurance coverage, or pay a hefty fine (or, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts calls it 50 percent of the time, a “tax”). This is partly for people’s own good, but mostly the requirement exists to make Obamacare work. Without the individual mandate, the rules on insurance companies would bankrupt them, and the whole system would collapse.

Abiding by the individual mandate therefore constitutes what President Obama, in another context, recently called “economic patriotism.” He was castigating companies that use overseas mergers to avoid U.S. taxes. “You know,” he said, “some people are calling these companies corporate deserters.”

Ominous language. Treating private enterprise as a conscript in service to the State is a philosophy with an ugly lineage. In liberal democracies, government is supposed to be the servant—not the master. In health care, however, the relationship is growing increasingly inverted. As a result individuals are forced to buy insurance, and insurance companies are forced to accept them. Now many people want to force drug companies to cut prices. And so on.

Forcing doctors to accept Medicaid patients would be an obvious, logical extension of these trends. If insurance companies can’t turn people away, then why should physicians be allowed to? If drug companies can’t charge more than people can afford, then why should doctors? So far, no elected officials have yet proposed reining in the limited liberty that doctors still enjoy. But such proposals could very well come, one of these days. Though probably not from John Foust.

SOURCE

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How the Media Craft Victory for Hamas

On Tuesday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer hosted Hamas spokesman Osama Hamden. The week before, Hamdan labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a new image of Hitler" on the network. But now, for some reason, Blitzer stumbled into a random act of journalism: He asked Hamdan about comments he had made suggesting that Jews used Christian blood in matza. Hamdan stumbled around and blamed the Jews for their action in Gaza.

Blitzer called Hamdan's comments an "awful, awful smear."

The very fact that this represented a unique moment in the media coverage of the Israel-Hamas Gaza war demonstrates the malpractice of the media. The first questions on the media's collective tongue should have been: What does Hamas stand for? What are its goals? Why does it use women and children as human shields? Why does it hide military resources in civilian areas?

But that had to wait for a month.

In the meantime, CNN viewers saw an unending stream of dramatic images from Gaza of Palestinian Arab suffering: heavy blasts from Israeli ordinance, screaming women, bleeding children. Every so often, CNN punctuated its coverage with death toll statistics -- never mentioning that it received those statistics from the Palestinians themselves, and neglecting to mention the Palestinians' regular practice of classifying dead terrorists as civilians. Then CNN asked questions about Israeli "proportionality" and wondered aloud about whether Israeli strikes were sufficiently "targeted."

If you want to know why the conflict between the dramatically overpowering Israeli military and the sadistically brutal Hamas has continued for weeks, look no further than CNN and its like-minded media brethren. Hamas' goals in this conflict did not include military victory; Hamas may be evil, but it is not stupid. Its main goal was to shore up its base by achieving small concessions from Israel and Egypt, as well as the Palestinian Authority; those concessions could only be achieved if Israel could be portrayed as an international aggressor against a terror group.

And that's where the media manipulation came in. Hamas placed heavy restrictions on journalists and even threatened them. Hamas put women and children and mentally ill people in harm's way for the cameras, and as a deterrent to Israeli military action.

And the media went right along with it, proclaiming balance all the way. When I was on CNN this week with Alisyn Camerota, she maintained that CNN provided balance by presenting "both sides," to which I responded that presenting both sides in a battle between Hamas and Israel is not balance, but anti-Israel bias. No Western media member would, in 1944, have assumed that balance meant quoting both Winston Churchill and Julius Streicher. To do so would have been to forward propaganda.

But that is precisely what the media have done. They have turned balance into a synonym for amorality. In doing so, they have handed a propaganda victory to evil.

SOURCE

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New research questions calorie counting

The results of the research, which examines the effects of the balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate on metabolic health, ageing and longevity in mice, were published in March in the prestigious scientific journal Cell Metabolism. Their work showed that:

A high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet resulted in reduced body fat and food intake but also led to a shorter lifespan and poor cardiometabolic health.

A high-carbohydrate, low-protein diet resulted in longer lifespan and better cardiometabolic health, despite also increasing body fat.

A low-protein, high-fat diet provided the worst health outcomes, with fat content showing no negative influence on food intake, leading to obesity.

Food intake is regulated primarily by dietary protein and carbohydrate, and not by the number of calories consumed.

“To the extent that this research on mice reflects the situation in humans, it has enormous implications for how much food we eat, our body fat, our heart and metabolic health, and ultimately the duration of our lives,” said Professor Simpson. “We have shown explicitly why it is that calories aren’t all the same. We need to look at where the calories come from and how they interact.”

Co-author Professor David Le Couteur added: “this represents an enormous leap in our understanding of the impact of diet quality and diet balance on food intake, health, ageing and longevity. We now face a new frontier in nutrition research.”

By examining mice fed a variety of 25 diets, the research team used an innovative state-space nutritional modelling method developed by Professors Simpson and Raubenheimer to measure the interactive effects of dietary energy, protein, fat and carbohydrate on food intake, cardiometabolic health and longevity.

The results suggest that lifespan could be extended in animals by manipulating the ratio of macronutrients in their diet – the first evidence that pharmacology could be used to extend lifespan in normal mammals.

Although mice were the subjects of this study, Le Couteur said the results from the study aligned with previous research in humans, but with a much larger number of dietary treatments and nutritional variables.

“Up until this point, most research has either concentrated on a single nutritional variable, such as fat, carbohydrate or calories, so much of our understanding of energy intake and diet balance is based on one-dimensional single nutrient assessments,” he said.

“The advice we are always given is to eat a healthy balanced diet, but what does that mean? We have some idea, but in relation to nutritional composition we don’t know terribly well. This research represents an important step in finding out.”

In terms of practical advice, the researchers predict that a diet with moderate amounts of high quality protein (15-20 per cent of total calorie intake) that is relatively low in fat and high in good quality complex carbohydrates will yield the best metabolic health and the longest life.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Why we want to be here — a Tisha Be’av message for the Jewish People from Battalion 969

Tisha B'Av is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar so it is sadly fitting to find Jews fighting for their people against a relentless enemy on its occasion this year.  Ari Abramowitz has below an uplifting message from the warzone.  He is a sharpshooter when called up and a media personality in civilian life.  His message is for Jews but I think we can all learn from it.  I will never apologize for it but while war rages in the Holy Land I cannot help posting rather a lot about Israel

Upon learning that we would be released next week – a month after our emergency call-up to fight this war – my reserve unit drafted a petition expressing our willingness and desire to continue in this war effort and defeat those who have been murdering and terrorizing our nation.

As a soldier in Battalion 969 allow me to share why we drafted this petition and why we want to be here.

We want to continue fighting not because we love war, but because we love you.

On a personal level, the paradox of the past month is that in the face of heartbreaking pain and the violence of war, my experience has been one of unparalleled love.

The Hebrew word for “love” is “ahava” – the root of which is “hav,” which means “to give.” When you love someone you desire to give to them – and when you give enough to someone you come to love them.

The love I have felt for my fellow soldiers during this war has transcended anything I have experienced before.

While the bond of “brothers in arms” is a universal phenomenon, I find the love I feel for my fellow soldiers overtaking me like a wave. It is hard to explain as I don’t fully understand it myself. All I know is that I would happily give my life for any one of my fellow soldiers and I don’t doubt for a moment that they would do the same for me. Together we would not hesitate to give our lives for you.

Throughout this war we have felt the love you have showered upon us – you have given us so much. I have never felt so much love from so many. Jews from both Israel and the Diaspora have flooded us with more care packages, clean underwear, dry socks, candy, potato chips and toothpaste then we can use. Jewish communities, federations, missions and individuals have not let the dangers of this war stop them from coming and volunteering. Hospitals have had to issue statements requesting that people refrain from visiting the wounded, for the lines to visit them were clogging the hallways and stairwells.

Tens of thousands comfort the families of the soldiers slain and communities around the world hold solidarity and memorial rallies.

We hang up your children’s letters next to our beds. I know a couple of them by heart. We read the articles, videos and Facebook posts with which you defend us and support us as we fight this just and moral war.

While there will always be exceptions, from here it seems that this wave of solidarity spans the entirety of the religious, ideological and political spectrum. From the Gaza border the unity behind us feels unprecedented.

But why? Why do we love each other so much? Today is Tisha Be’av, the darkest day on the Jewish calendar. It is the day our Temple was destroyed.

Our sages explain that the Temple was destroyed not because we were weak but because there was “baseless hatred” among us. Yet in those times there was rampant corruption and existential ideological rifts within the nation. Nonetheless, our sages have made it clear that regardless of how compelling an argument one can make, hatred within our nation is fatally destructive and never justified.

We love each other because we love Israel. I am not referring merely to the state or the land. Israel was the name of Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes from which we are all descended. We are not a race or a religion – we are a family. We share a home, a father, a future and a fate.

The reason that I and my fellow soldiers want to continue putting our lives in jeopardy, sleeping night after night in the dirt under mortar fire, rocket attacks and the perpetual danger of terrorist attacks via tunnels is because this war is not yet over. Israel is in danger and when Israel is in danger every member of the Jewish family is in danger.

Today Jews around the world are experiencing the greatest fear and insecurity since the Holocaust.

The masks are coming off and it is increasingly clear that this is not a war against Israel, but a war against the Jewish People. This week’s cover of Newsweek was titled “Why Europe’s Jews are fleeing once again.” Scarcely a day goes by when there is not another horrific act of anti-Semitism somewhere in the world. A poll this week indicates that a vast majority of Jews in France are considering leaving. A friend in the army told me that there is not a family in Holland that is not considering leaving. We have seen how quickly the winds can change and we are here fighting this war to protect your home for when you should want – or need – to return.

So to our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world, we are grateful for your love, and we are grateful for the privilege of serving in the IDF and expressing our love for you.

To our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world – thank you for feeling our pain – for crying as we cry.

In the poetic words of King David “He who sows with tears reaps with joy.”

As we cry together this Tisha Be’av as one loving family, may we soon merit the opportunity to laugh together and celebrate with love and joy.

SOURCE

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ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG mocks the Left for their love of Muslims and their hatred of Israel

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Wisconsin anti-union law: state Supreme Court ruling probably the final say

Act 10 essentially ended collective bargaining for most public workers, sparking court challenges and protests. But a ruling Thursday by the Wisconsin Supreme Court leaves opponents with little choice but to move on.

Ever since it became law in 2011, Act 10 in Wisconsin – which essentially ended collective bargaining for most public workers – has sparked countless court challenges, generated angry protests at the State Capitol, and fueled a recall campaign of the governor.

A ruling Thursday by the state Supreme Court indicates the law will stand, leaving opponents with little choice but to move on.

“This is the end of the pending challenges and is unlikely to be replaced by some persuasive new challenge that hasn’t already been attempted,” says Charles Franklin, a law professor and polling director at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

The 5-to-2 decision found that Act 10 does not violate the First Amendment, because collective bargaining powers by labor organizations are a benefit, not an enshrined constitutional right at the federal or state level.

“No matter the limitations or ‘burdens’ a legislative enactment places on the collective bargaining process, collective bargaining remains a creation of legislative grace and not constitutional obligation. The First Amendment cannot be used as a vehicle to expand the parameters of a benefit that it does not itself protect,” Justice Michael Gableman wrote in the ruling.

Act 10 survived multiple legal challenges. One decision late last year overturned a contempt-of-court order by a Dane County circuit judge who had ruled that the law was unconstitutional. A federal court struck down parts of the bill in March 2012, but was overturned by a federal appeals court last year after the state sued.

The issue also catapulted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) into the national spotlight, making him a pariah to Democrats and a hero to Republicans. He survived a 2012 recall election, which emboldened his message that Act 10 will benefit the state economy.

Governor Walker released a statement Thursday saying Act 10 saved taxpayers “more than $3 billion,” calling it “a victory for those hard-working taxpayers.” The majority of savings cited by Walker are accurate, local media report, although they say that morale among state workers has been damaged and recruitment may be difficult.

Act 10 is not necessarily threatened by the upcoming gubernatorial election, either. Mary Burke, a former state secretary of Commerce and Walker’s Democratic opponent in November, has backed away from pledging to overturn the law, even though she says she supports the ability of public workers to collectively bargain. One reason for her position, according to Professor Franklin: Public opinion polls show that most voters agree with elements of the law requiring public workers to contribute more to their retirement and health-care benefits.

Another reason is practical: Ms. Burke would have no power to overturn the law with both legislative chambers expected to remain under Republican control.

“Without Democratic control of both houses, the governor’s prospect of repealing Act 10 is extremely limited,” Franklin says. “We’re looking at more years and more election cycles before it can be plausible to see a substantial change in the law.”

Act 10’s passage has emboldened Republican governors in nearby states like Indiana and Michigan to successfully push through similar bills, although Franklin says those efforts will be sustained only if Republicans have a lock on all branches of government.

“At this point, [collective bargaining] is not an area that lends itself to compromise between Republican governors and Democratic legislatures. Both sides are too influenced by interest groups and core supporters that would make it very unlikely for states to go halfway on this issue,” he says.

SOURCE

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Raymond Blanc praises McDonald's and gives the organic movement a roasting

He has long been known as a fierce critic of factory farming and fast food, and a champion of “le correct” way of cooking – all delivered in a heavy French accent, of course.

But now Raymond Blanc has turned the tables and accused the organic movement of being “elitist”, while at the same time praising McDonald’s – so long regarded as the bête noire of the restaurant world – for its commitment to quality ingredients.

The restaurateur says that while organic is preferable, it is not always practical or realistic, and that the freshness of ingredients is more important to their nutritional value than whether chemicals have been used in their production.

“Organic should be best, but the reality of the world may be different,” he said.

“I used to hate compromise – compromise was evil because it’s the start of devaluing what you’re doing – but sometimes it is the only way. You can compromise without selling out.”

He added: “Freshness is more important. It is a mistake to say organic always tastes better. It depends on parentage. Some organics are simply terrible.”

Blanc, who runs Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire, says that while the original aim of the organic movement was to make good food available to all, it has now become the preserve of the well-off.  “It has shot itself in the foot by creating a movement that has become elitist by being so expensive,” he said.

Blanc now prefers the principles of Linking Environment and Farming (Leaf), a charity founded in a 1991 to promote “sustainable food and farming”.

Leaf gives its marque to growers and farmers who “maintain high standards of food production with minimum environmental impact”. A fifth of agricultural produce in Britain now carries its seal of approval, including fruit and vegetables sold in Waitrose. Leaf methods involve using minimal chemicals, and only when “absolutely necessary”.

Blanc told The Telegraph: “Normally my heart is organic. All of Le Manoir is totally organic. The moment I came in, there were no chemicals.  “But it’s easier on vegetables than it is for fruit. Organic uses lots of copper and sulphates and I don’t like that. I will abandon my principles, and the orchard won’t be organic but Leaf.”

If that might be considered a dramatic turn-around in Blanc’s methods, then his new-found admiration for McDonald’s will come as an even bigger surprise. As he says in the interview, he once felt of their food that “I could break down the chemicals and colourings in my mouth. I felt they killed people by encouraging obesity.”

But he says he has come to recognise the fast-food chain has made huge strides.

Earlier this year, Blanc, president of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, presented McDonald’s UK with a Sustainability Hero award, recognising the chain’s contribution to improving food. He said: “I was amazed. All their eggs are free-range; all their pork is free-range; all their beef is free-range.

“[They show that] the fast-food business could change for the better. They’re supporting thousands of British farms, and saving energy and waste by doing so.  “I was as excited as if you had told me there were 20 new three-star Michelin restaurants in London or Manchester.”

But Blanc warns that Britain still has a long way to go, and that unless we get a grip on our dietary habits, we are heading for disaster.  He said: “We’re still number one in Europe for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. We have a health service that is already so strained, under so much pressure that we cannot go on to create more ill health. It’s an epidemic.”

To help tackle the problem, Blanc’s eldest son, Olivier, 38, has launched a community garden in south-east London with Chris Collins, the former Blue Peter gardener. Local schools will have a plot each, and will use the gardens for science and cooking lessons.

He said: “Gardening will, I hope, be the next thing to go on to the curriculum.”

Blanc said: “We are the spoilt generation who grew up with everything put into our mouths … and didn’t ask a simple question, where our food came from. The biggest revolution is the revolution in the hands of our children.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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"We are all living in Israel"

Prominent atheist, Sam Harris, recognizes the huge and dangerous evil in Muslim practice.  Below is an annotated version of a podcast

The question I’ve now received in many forms goes something like this: Why is it that you never criticize Israel? Why is it that you never criticize Judaism? Why is it that you always take the side of the Israelis over that of the Palestinians?

Now, this is an incredibly boring and depressing question for a variety of reasons. The first, is that I have criticized both Israel and Judaism. What seems to have upset many people is that I’ve kept some sense of proportion. There are something like 15 million Jews on earth at this moment; there are a hundred times as many Muslims.  I’ve debated rabbis who, when I have assumed that they believe in a God that can hear our prayers, they stop me mid-sentence and say, ‘Why would you think that I believe in a God who can hear prayers?’ So there are rabbis—conservative rabbis—who believe in a God so elastic as to exclude every concrete claim about Him—and therefore, nearly every concrete demand upon human behavior. And there are millions of Jews, literally millions among the few million who exist, for whom Judaism is very important, and yet they are atheists. They don’t believe in God at all. This is actually a position you can hold in Judaism, but it’s a total non sequitur in Islam or Christianity.

So, when we’re talking about the consequences of irrational beliefs based on scripture, the Jews are the least of the least offenders. But I have said many critical things about Judaism. Let me remind you that parts of Hebrew Bible—books like Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy—are the most repellent, the most sickeningly unethical documents to be found in any religion. They’re worse than the Koran. They’re worse than any part of the New Testament. But the truth is, most Jews recognize this and don’t take these texts seriously. It’s simply a fact that most Jews and most Israelis are not guided by scripture—and that’s a very good thing.

Of course, there are some who are. There are religious extremists among Jews. Now, I consider these people to be truly dangerous, and their religious beliefs are as divisive and as unwarranted as the beliefs of devout Muslims. But there are far fewer such people.

For those of you who worry that I never say anything critical about Israel:  My position on Israel is somewhat paradoxical. There are questions about which I’m genuinely undecided. And there’s something in my position, I think, to offend everyone. So, acknowledging how reckless it is to say anything on this topic, I’m nevertheless going to think out loud about it for a few minutes.

I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible. [Note: Read this paragraph again.]

Though I just said that I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, the justification for such a state is rather easy to find. We need look no further than the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity. So, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state. Now, friends of Israel might consider this a rather tepid defense, but it’s the strongest one I’ve got. I think the idea of a religious state is ultimately untenable. [Note: It is worth observing, however, that Israel isn’t ‘Jewish’ in the sense that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are ‘Muslim.’ As my friend Jerry Coyne points out, Israel is actually less religious than the U.S., and it guarantees freedom of religion to its citizens. Israel is not a theocracy, and one could easily argue that its Jewish identity is more cultural than religious. However, if we ask why the Jews wouldn’t move to British Columbia if offered a home there, we can see the role that religion still plays in their thinking.]

Needless to say, in defending its territory as a Jewish state, the Israeli government and Israelis themselves have had to do terrible things. They have, as they are now, fought wars against the Palestinians that have caused massive losses of innocent life. More civilians have been killed in Gaza in the last few weeks than militants. That’s not a surprise because Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Occupying it, fighting wars in it, is guaranteed to get woman and children and other noncombatants killed. And there’s probably little question over the course of fighting multiple wars that the Israelis have done things that amount to war crimes. They have been brutalized by this process—that is, made brutal by it. But that is largely the due to the character of their enemies. [Note: I was not giving Israel a pass to commit war crimes. I was making a point about the realities of living under the continuous threat of terrorism and of fighting multiple wars in a confined space.]

Whatever terrible things the Israelis have done, it is also true to say that they have used more restraint in their fighting against the Palestinians than we—the Americans, or Western Europeans—have used in any of our wars. They have endured more worldwide public scrutiny than any other society has ever had to while defending itself against aggressors. The Israelis simply are held to a different standard. And the condemnation leveled at them by the rest of the world is completely out of proportion to what they have actually done. [Note: I was not saying that because they are more careful than we have been at our most careless, the Israelis are above criticism. War crimes are war crimes.]

It is clear that Israel is losing the PR war and has been for years now.  One of the most galling things for outside observers about the current war in Gaza is the disproportionate loss of life on the Palestinian side. This doesn’t make a lot of moral sense. Israel built bomb shelters to protect its citizens. The Palestinians built tunnels through which they could carry out terror attacks and kidnap Israelis. Should Israel be blamed for successfully protecting its population in a defensive war? I don’t think so. [Note: I was not suggesting that the deaths of Palestinian noncombatants are anything less than tragic. But if retaliating against Hamas is bound to get innocents killed, and the Israelis manage to protect their own civilians in the meantime, the loss of innocent life on the Palestinian side is guaranteed to be disproportionate.]

But there is no way to look at the images coming out Gaza—especially of infants and toddlers riddled by shrapnel—and think that this is anything other than a monstrous evil. Insofar as the Israelis are the agents of this evil, it seems impossible to support them. And there is no question that the Palestinians have suffered terribly for decades under the occupation. This is where most critics of Israel appear to be stuck. They see these images, and they blame Israel for killing and maiming babies. They see the occupation, and they blame Israel for making Gaza a prison camp. I would argue that this is a kind of moral illusion, borne of a failure to look at the actual causes of this conflict, as well as of a failure to understand the intentions of the people on either side of it. [Note: I was not saying that the horror of slain children is a moral illusion; nor was I minimizing the suffering of the Palestinians under the occupation. I was claiming that Israel is not primarily to blame for all this suffering.]

The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them. The charter of Hamas is explicitly genocidal. It looks forward to a time, based on Koranic prophesy, when the earth itself will cry out for Jewish blood, where the trees and the stones will say ‘O Muslim, there’s a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’ This is a political document. We are talking about a government that was voted into power by a majority of Palestinians. [Note: Yes, I know that not every Palestinian supports Hamas, but enough do to have brought them to power. Hamas is not a fringe group.]

The discourse in the Muslim world about Jews is utterly shocking. Not only is there Holocaust denial—there’s Holocaust denial that then asserts that we will do it for real if given the chance. The only thing more obnoxious than denying the Holocaust is to say that it should have happened; it didn’t happen, but if we get the chance, we will accomplish it. There are children’s shows in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere that teach five-year-olds about the glories of martyrdom and about the necessity of killing Jews.

And this gets to the heart of the moral difference between Israel and her enemies. And this is something I discussed in The End of Faith. To see this moral difference, you have to ask what each side would do if they had the power to do it.

What would the Jews do to the Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted? Well, we know the answer to that question, because they can do more or less anything they want. The Israeli army could kill everyone in Gaza tomorrow. So what does that mean? Well, it means that, when they drop a bomb on a beach and kill four Palestinian children, as happened last week, this is almost certainly an accident. They’re not targeting children. They could target as many children as they want. Every time a Palestinian child dies, Israel edges ever closer to becoming an international pariah. So the Israelis take great pains not to kill children and other noncombatants.  [Note: The word ‘so’ in the previous sentence was regrettable and misleading. I didn’t mean to suggest that safeguarding its reputation abroad would be the only (or even primary) reason for Israel to avoid killing children. However, the point stands: Even if you want to attribute the basest motives to Israel, it is clearly in her self-interest not to kill Palestinian children.]

Now, is it possible that some Israeli soldiers go berserk under pressure and wind up shooting into crowds of rock-throwing children? Of course. You will always find some soldiers acting this way in the middle of a war. But we know that this isn’t the general intent of Israel. We know the Israelis do not want to kill non-combatants, because they could kill as many as they want, and they’re not doing it.

What do we know of the Palestinians? What would the Palestinians do to the Jews in Israel if the power imbalance were reversed? Well, they have told us what they would do. For some reason, Israel’s critics just don’t want to believe the worst about a group like Hamas, even when it declares the worst of itself. We’ve already had a Holocaust and several other genocides in the 20th century. People are capable of committing genocide. When they tell us they intend to commit genocide, we should listen. There is every reason to believe that the Palestinians would kill all the Jews in Israel if they could. Would every Palestinian support genocide? Of course not. But vast numbers of them—and of Muslims throughout the world—would. Needless to say, the Palestinians in general, not just Hamas, have a history of targeting innocent noncombatants in the most shocking ways possible. They’ve blown themselves up on buses and in restaurants. They’ve massacred teenagers. They’ve murdered Olympic athletes. They now shoot rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas. And again, the charter of their government in Gaza explicitly tells us that they want to annihilate the Jews—not just in Israel but everywhere. [Note: Again, I realize that not all Palestinians support Hamas. Nor am I discounting the degree to which the occupation, along with collateral damage suffered in war, has fueled Palestinian rage. But Palestinian terrorism (and Muslim anti-Semitism) is what has made peaceful coexistence thus far impossible.]

The truth is that everything you need to know about the moral imbalance between Israel and her enemies can be understood on the topic of human shields. Who uses human shields? Well, Hamas certainly does. They shoot their rockets from residential neighborhoods, from beside schools, and hospitals, and mosques. Muslims in other recent conflicts, in Iraq and elsewhere, have also used human shields. They have laid their rifles on the shoulders of their own children and shot from behind their bodies.

Consider the moral difference between using human shields and being deterred by them. That is the difference we’re talking about. The Israelis and other Western powers are deterred, however imperfectly, by the Muslim use of human shields in these conflicts, as we should be. It is morally abhorrent to kill noncombatants if you can avoid it. It’s certainly abhorrent to shoot through the bodies of children to get at your adversary. But take a moment to reflect on how contemptible this behavior is. And understand how cynical it is. The Muslims are acting on the assumption—the knowledge, in fact—that the infidels with whom they fight, the very people whom their religion does nothing but vilify, will be deterred by their use of Muslim human shields. They consider the Jews the spawn of apes and pigs—and yet they rely on the fact that they don’t want to kill Muslim noncombatants. [Note: The term ‘Muslims’ in this paragraph means ‘Muslim combatants’ of the sort that Western forces have encountered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The term ‘jihadists’ would have been too narrow, but I was not suggesting that all Muslims support the use of human shields or are anti-Semitic, at war with the West, etc.]

Now imagine reversing the roles here. Imagine how fatuous—indeed comical it would be—for the Israelis to attempt to use human shields to deter the Palestinians. Some claim that they have already done this. There are reports that Israeli soldiers have occasionally put Palestinian civilians in front of them as they’ve advanced into dangerous areas. That’s not the use of human shields we’re talking about. It’s egregious behavior. No doubt it constitutes a war crime. But Imagine the Israelis holding up their own women and children as human shields. Of course, that would be ridiculous. The Palestinians are trying to kill everyone. Killing women and children is part of the plan. Reversing the roles here produces a grotesque Monty Python skit.

If you’re going to talk about the conflict in the Middle East, you have to acknowledge this difference. I don’t think there’s any ethical disparity to be found anywhere that is more shocking or consequential than this.

And the truth is, this isn’t even the worst that jihadists do. Hamas is practically a moderate organization, compared to other jihadist groups. There are Muslims who have blown themselves up in crowds of children—again, Muslim children—just to get at the American soldiers who were handing out candy to them. They have committed suicide bombings, only to send another bomber to the hospital to await the casualities—where they then blow up all the injured along with the doctors and nurses trying to save their lives.

Every day that you could read about an Israeli rocket gone astray or Israeli soldiers beating up an innocent teenager, you could have read about ISIS in Iraq crucifying people on the side of the road, Christians and Muslims. Where is the outrage in the Muslim world and on the Left over these crimes? Where are the demonstrations, 10,000 or 100,000 deep, in the capitals of Europe against ISIS?  If Israel kills a dozen Palestinians by accident, the entire Muslim world is inflamed. God forbid you burn a Koran, or write a novel vaguely critical of the faith. And yet Muslims can destroy their own societies—and seek to destroy the West—and you don’t hear a peep. [Note: Of course, I’m aware that many Muslims condemn groups like ISIS. My point is that we don’t see massive protests against global jihadism—even though it targets Muslims more than anyone else—and we do see such protests over things like the Danish cartoons.]

So, it seems to me, that you have to side with Israel here. You have one side which if it really could accomplish its aims would simply live peacefully with its neighbors, and you have another side which is seeking to implement a seventh century theocracy in the Holy Land. There’s no peace to be found between those incompatible ideas.  That doesn’t mean you can’t condemn specific actions on the part of the Israelis. And, of course, acknowledging the moral disparity between Israel and her enemies doesn’t give us any solution to the problem of Israel’s existence in the Middle East. [Note: I was not suggesting that Israel’s actions are above criticism or that their recent incursion into Gaza was necessarily justified. Nor was I saying that the status quo, wherein the Palestinians remain stateless, should be maintained. And I certainly wasn’t expressing support for the building of settlements on contested land (as I made clear below). By ‘siding with Israel,’ I am simply recognizing that they are not the primary aggressors in this conflict. They are, rather, responding to aggression—and at a terrible cost.]

Again, granted, there’s some percentage of Jews who are animated by their own religious hysteria and their own prophesies. Some are awaiting the Messiah on contested land. Yes, these people are willing to sacrifice the blood of their own children for the glory of God. But, for the most part, they are not representative of the current state of Judaism or the actions of the Israeli government. And it is how Israel deals with these people—their own religious lunatics—that will determine whether they can truly hold the moral high ground. And Israel can do a lot more than it has to disempower them. It can cease to subsidize the delusions of the Ultra-Orthodox, and it can stop building settlements on contested land.  [Note: Read that again. And, yes, I understand that not all settlers are Ultra-Orthodox.]

These incompatible religious attachments to this land have made it impossible for Muslims and Jews to negotiate like rational human beings, and they have made it impossible for them to live in peace. But the onus is still more on the side of the Muslims here. Even on their worst day, the Israelis act with greater care and compassion and self-criticism than Muslim combatants have anywhere, ever.

And again, you have to ask yourself, what do these groups want? What would they accomplish if they could accomplish anything? What would the Israelis do if they could do what they want? They would live in peace with their neighbors, if they had neighbors who would live in peace with them. They would simply continue to build out their high tech sector and thrive. [Note: Some might argue that they would do more than this—e.g. steal more Palestinian land. But apart from the influence of Jewish extremism (which I condemn), Israel’s continued appropriation of land has more than a little to do with her security concerns. Absent Palestinian terrorism and Muslim anti-Semitism, we could be talking about a ‘one-state solution,’ and the settlements would be moot.]

What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.

This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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In defence of Zionists

by Michael Oren

Israelis stand ready to defend their nation. They risk their lives for an idea.

The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Though founded less than 150 years ago, the Zionist movement sprung from a 4,000-year-long bond between the Jewish people and its historic homeland, an attachment sustained throughout 20 centuries of exile. This is why Zionism achieved its goals and remains relevant and rigorous today. It is why citizens of Israel—the state that Zionism created—willingly take up arms. They believe their idea is worth fighting for.

Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. "All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!" declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark. "Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Zionists are not under any circumstances," warned a sign in the window of a Belgian cafe. A Jewish demonstrator in Iceland was accosted and told, "You Zionist pig, I'm going to behead you."

In certain academic and media circles, Zionism is synonymous with colonialism and imperialism. Critics on the radical right and left have likened it to racism or, worse, Nazism. And that is in the West. In the Middle East, Zionism is the ultimate abomination—the product of a Holocaust that many in the region deny ever happened while maintaining nevertheless that the Zionists deserved it.

What is it about Zionism that elicits such loathing? After all, the longing of a dispersed people for a state of their own cannot possibly be so repugnant, especially after that people endured centuries of massacres and expulsions, culminating in history's largest mass murder. Perhaps revulsion toward Zionism stems from its unusual blend of national identity, religion and loyalty to a land. Japan offers the closest parallel, but despite its rapacious past, Japanese nationalism doesn't evoke the abhorrence aroused by Zionism.

Clearly anti-Semitism, of both the European and Muslim varieties, plays a role. Cabals, money grubbing, plots to take over the world and murder babies—all the libels historically leveled at Jews are regularly hurled at Zionists. And like the anti-Semitic capitalists who saw all Jews as communists and the communists who painted capitalism as inherently Jewish, the opponents of Zionism portray it as the abominable Other.

But not all of Zionism's critics are bigoted, and not a few of them are Jewish. For a growing number of progressive Jews, Zionism is too militantly nationalist, while for many ultra-Orthodox Jews, the movement is insufficiently pious—even heretical. How can an idea so universally reviled retain its legitimacy, much less lay claim to success?

The answer is simple: Zionism worked. The chances were infinitesimal that a scattered national group could be assembled from some 70 countries into a sliver-sized territory shorn of resources and rich in adversaries and somehow survive, much less prosper. The odds that those immigrants would forge a national identity capable of producing a vibrant literature, pace-setting arts and six of the world's leading universities approximated zero.

Elsewhere in the world, indigenous languages are dying out, forests are being decimated, and the populations of industrialized nations are plummeting. Yet Zionism revived the Hebrew language, which is now more widely spoken than Danish and Finnish and will soon surpass Swedish. Zionist organizations planted hundreds of forests, enabling the land of Israel to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the end of the 19th. And the family values that Zionism fostered have produced the fastest natural growth rate in the modernized world and history's largest Jewish community. The average secular couple in Israel has at least three children, each a reaffirmation of confidence in Zionism's future.

Indeed, by just about any international criteria, Israel is not only successful but flourishing. The population is annually rated among the happiest, healthiest and most educated in the world. Life expectancy in Israel, reflecting its superb universal health-care system, significantly exceeds America's and that of most European countries. Unemployment is low, the economy robust. A global leader in innovation, Israel is home to R&D centers of some 300 high-tech companies, including Apple, Intel and Motorola. The beaches are teeming, the rock music is awesome, and the food is off the Zagat charts.

The democratic ideals integral to Zionist thought have withstood pressures that have precipitated coups and revolutions in numerous other nations. Today, Israel is one of the few states—along with Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.—that has never known a second of nondemocratic governance.

These accomplishments would be sufficiently astonishing if attained in North America or Northern Europe. But Zionism has prospered in the supremely inhospitable—indeed, lethal—environment of the Middle East. Two hours' drive east of the bustling nightclubs of Tel Aviv—less than the distance between New York and Philadelphia—is Jordan, home to more than a half million refugees from Syria's civil war. Traveling north from Tel Aviv for four hours would bring that driver to war-ravaged Damascus or, heading east, to the carnage in western Iraq. Turning south, in the time it takes to reach San Francisco from Los Angeles, the traveler would find himself in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

In a region reeling with ethnic strife and religious bloodshed, Zionism has engendered a multiethnic, multiracial and religiously diverse society. Arabs serve in the Israel Defense Forces, in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. While Christian communities of the Middle East are steadily eradicated, Israel's continues to grow. Israeli Arab Christians are, in fact, on average better educated and more affluent than Israeli Jews.

In view of these monumental achievements, one might think that Zionism would be admired rather than deplored. But Zionism stands accused of thwarting the national aspirations of Palestine's indigenous inhabitants, of oppressing and dispossessing them.

Never mind that the Jews were natives of the land—its Arabic place names reveal Hebrew palimpsests—millennia before the Palestinians or the rise of Palestinian nationalism. Never mind that in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, the Palestinians received offers to divide the land and rejected them, usually with violence. And never mind that the majority of Zionism's adherents today still stand ready to share their patrimony in return for recognition of Jewish statehood and peace.

The response to date has been, at best, a refusal to remain at the negotiating table or, at worst, war. But Israelis refuse to relinquish the hope of resuming negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. To live in peace and security with our Palestinian neighbors remains the Zionist dream.

Still, for all of its triumphs, its resilience and openness to peace, Zionism fell short of some of its original goals. The agrarian, egalitarian society created by Zionist pioneers has been replaced by a dynamic, largely capitalist economy with yawning gaps between rich and poor. Mostly secular at its inception, Zionism has also spawned a rapidly expanding religious sector, some elements of which eschew the Jewish state.

About a fifth of Israel's population is non-Jewish, and though some communities (such as the Druse) are intensely patriotic and often serve in the army, others are much less so, and some even call for Israel's dissolution. And there is the issue of Judea and Samaria—what most of the world calls the West Bank—an area twice used to launch wars of national destruction against Israel but which, since its capture in 1967, has proved painfully divisive.

Many Zionists insist that these territories represent the cradle of Jewish civilization and must, by right, be settled. But others warn that continued rule over the West Bank's Palestinian population erodes Israel's moral foundation and will eventually force it to choose between being Jewish and remaining democratic.

Yet the most searing of Zionism's unfulfilled visions was that of a state in which Jews could be free from the fear of annihilation. The army imagined by Theodor Herzl, Zionism's founding father, marched in parades and saluted flag-waving crowds. The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, with no time for marching, much less saluting, has remained in active combat mode since its founding in 1948. With the exception of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological forebear of today's Likud Party, none of Zionism's early thinkers anticipated circumstances in which Jews would be permanently at arms. Few envisaged a state that would face multiple existential threats on a daily basis just because it is Jewish.

Confronted with such monumental threats, Israelis might be expected to flee abroad and prospective immigrants discouraged. But Israel has one of the lower emigration rates among developed countries while Jews continue to make aliyah—literally, in Hebrew, "to ascend"—to Israel. Surveys show that Israelis remain stubbornly optimistic about their country's future. And Jews keep on arriving, especially from Europe, where their security is swiftly eroding. Last week, thousands of Parisians went on an anti-Semitic rant, looting Jewish shops and attempting to ransack synagogues.

American Jews face no comparable threat, and yet numbers of them continue to make aliyah. They come not in search of refuge but to take up the Zionist challenge—to be, as the Israeli national anthem pledges, "a free people in our land, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem." American Jews have held every high office, from prime minister to Supreme Court chief justice to head of Israel's equivalent of the Fed, and are disproportionately prominent in Israel's civil society.

Hundreds of young Americans serve as "Lone Soldiers," without families in the country, and volunteer for front-line combat units. One of them, Max Steinberg from Los Angeles, fell in the first days of the current Gaza fighting. His funeral, on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, was attended by 30,000 people, most of them strangers, who came out of respect for this intrepid and selfless Zionist.

I also paid my respects to Max, whose Zionist journey was much like mine. After working on a kibbutz—a communal farm—I made aliyah and trained as a paratrooper. I participated in several wars, and my children have served as well, sometimes in battle. Our family has taken shelter from Iraqi Scuds and Hamas M-75s, and a suicide bomber killed one of our closest relatives.

Despite these trials, my Zionist life has been immensely fulfilling. And the reason wasn't Zionism's successes—not the Nobel Prizes gleaned by Israeli scholars, not the Israeli cures for chronic diseases or the breakthroughs in alternative energy. The reason—paradoxically, perhaps—was Zionism's failures.

Failure is the price of sovereignty. Statehood means making hard and often agonizing choices—whether to attack Hamas in Palestinian neighborhoods, for example, or to suffer rocket strikes on our own territory. It requires reconciling our desire to be enlightened with our longing to remain alive. Most onerously, sovereignty involves assuming responsibility. Zionism, in my definition, means Jewish responsibility. It means taking responsibility for our infrastructure, our defense, our society and the soul of our state. It is easy to claim responsibility for victories; setbacks are far harder to embrace.

But that is precisely the lure of Zionism. Growing up in America, I felt grateful to be born in a time when Jews could assume sovereign responsibilities. Statehood is messy, but I regarded that mess as a blessing denied to my forefathers for 2,000 years. I still feel privileged today, even as Israel grapples with circumstances that are at once perilous, painful and unjust. Fighting terrorists who shoot at us from behind their own children, our children in uniform continue to be killed and wounded while much of the world brands them as war criminals.

Zionism, nevertheless, will prevail. Deriving its energy from a people that refuses to disappear and its ethos from historically tested ideas, the Zionist project will thrive. We will be vilified, we will find ourselves increasingly alone, but we will defend the homes that Zionism inspired us to build.

The Israeli media have just reported the call-up of an additional 16,000 reservists. Even as I write, they too are mobilizing for active duty—aware of the dangers, grateful for the honor and ready to bear responsibility.

SOURCE

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Hey, Liberals Who Oppose Israel: You’re All Right-Wingers Now

Imagine a politician ascending to the governorship of a small southern state. Having campaigned on a platform of extreme patriotic fervor and religious zeal—in his stump speech, he thundered that by the grace of God, America will last as long as there exist Heaven and Earth—the governor wasted no time translating his beliefs into law. Because the governor believed that homosexuals were “a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick,” he outlawed them, instructing his police officers to seek, capture, beat up, and imprison every gay individual in the state. Similarly, women were deemed better off tending to their families than wasting their time with such corrupting pursuits as jobs. A special educational program was devised and approved to teach young girls the fundamentals. These future wives and mothers, read the governor’s statement, “must be fully capable of being aware and of grasping the ways to manage their households. Economy and avoiding waste in household expenditures are prerequisites to our ability to pursue our cause in the difficult circumstances surrounding us.” The men of the state reveled in this new way of life, asserting themselves as lords of their manors; before too long, nearly half of them took to regularly battering their wives.

How many of those who define themselves as liberals would support the governor? Very few, if any. More likely, our hypothetical politician would have galvanized the left into action: The cleverly worded emails from progressive organizations, the fiery segments on The Daily Show, the pledges from celebrities to stop the menace—all would have been upon us before too long. And yet when the same politician appears halfway across the world, sporting a beard and proceeding far beyond the relatively tame scenario described above—sacrificing his own nation’s children and eager to murder innocent civilians across the border—all clarity seems to dissipate. All the homicidal zealot has to do is mumble something about justice and disproportionality and self-determination, and he’s transformed into a respectable, not to say sympathetic, figure.

Which boggles the mind. Never mind that Hamas’ charter specifically states that its goal is the utter destruction of Israel—“Israel,” it reads, “by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims”—and never mind that fundamentalist Islamic organizations like it have sprouted from different terrains and under different historical and political circumstances: For Hamas’ liberal apologists, it’s all still about the Israeli occupation. Israel withdrew nearly a decade ago? Please, that’s too confusing—as long as any conflict involving Israel anywhere is unresolved, any and all violence against Israelis, liberals now seem to believe, is justified.

Enthusiasts of nuance may argue that criticizing Israel isn’t the same as supporting Hamas. That is nominally true. It’s also largely irrelevant. Let’s indulge in one more thought exercise and assume for one moment that Israel accepted all the liberal critiques of its behaviors and acted accordingly. The force it was using was disproportionate? It withdrew most of its soldiers, curbed its artillery, and pulled back the deeply unfair advantage of the Iron Dome missile defense system. Gaza is an open-air prison, the responsibility for which lies solely with Israel and not with Gaza’s other neighbor, Egypt? Israel removed its naval and aerial blockade and opened wide its borders. You don’t have to be a three-star General to realize the outcome of such moves. Which leads us back to a terrible observation: wars are so ghastly in part because they crush so much of the ambiguity and nuance that permeates everyday life in times of peace. They’re so awful because often they force us to make stark choices that are scary and absolute, and annihilate so much of the space that exists in between polar opposites. War requires us to choose.

To my former friends on the left who see themselves as champions of progressive values while criticizing Israel’s attempts at self-defense I have this to say: You have already chosen. You’re all right-wingers now. You would probably want to cancel that monthly contribution to Planned Parenthood; the Gazan maniacs you tolerate don’t really go for that kind of stuff. And go ahead and give the membership department of the National Rifle Association a call, as you are now putting up with an organization whose passion for bearing arms at all costs far exceeds even that of the most fervent American survivalist. So please: Stop whining about the Koch brothers or the Tea Party or the Hobby Lobby ruling. In making excuses for Hamas, you’re endorsing a force of religious intolerance and a purveyor of oppression far, far more demonic than those benign forces at home you characterize as the destroyers of civil liberties and human rights.

If this terrifies you, it’s not too late to repent. All you have to do is look at your friends on what was formerly known as the right. They’re busy defending the right of a democratic nation to protect its civilians against mayhem. Like all democratic nations, the one they support is imperfect. The ongoing conflict led some Israelis to make unacceptably hateful statements; but then nearly 10,000 others joined in on a Facebook group called “Racists Who Oppress Me,” publicly shaming the bigots and calling for a civilized discourse even as the fighting continues. And despite substantial efforts to minimize civilian casualties, Palestinian non-combatants were killed; but then Israel set up a military hospital near the border crossing to make sure anyone who needed it received immediate and excellent treatment.

These, dear liberals, are the values you claim to espouse. Before you say one more thing about this conflict, ask yourself which side is fighting for a society most like the one in which you’re likely to want to live, and then support that side passionately and vigorously. And understand, please, that we’re at war, and that philosophical inquiries, existential ponderings, and musings about identity are all welcomed and valued in free societies, but that to entertain such soulful pursuits said free societies must first survive the attacks of their enemies. Unless you’re willing to embrace everything you claim to despise, we’d love to see you joining us in this war; Lord knows we could use all the help we can get.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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