Thursday, September 15, 2022
From Ian:
Statistics show Israel haters are wrong
Statistics show Israel haters are wrong
Anti-Israel commentators also usually neglect to acknowledge that Palestinians have been waging a terrorist war against Israel's existence since the state's birth in 1948. Much of Palestinian suffering results from Israel defending itself against these unrelenting attacks, as well as the Palestinian refusal to accept offers of land for peace and a state of their own.Before criticizing Israel, US should clean up at home
Israel is often also faulted for passage of its "nation-state law" in 2018 – which declares that the country exists to fulfill the Jewish people's "right to self-determination." This attack, however, is a red herring, attempting to discredit a statute that in no way limits Israel's democratic liberties.
Note that this law does not infringe on the rights of individual Israelis, including its two million Arab citizens. Like many other nation states, it merely formalizes symbols of its people – in this case the Jewish people – such as the flag, national anthem and holidays.
Note, too, that while the nation-state law declares Hebrew to be the national language, this is not different than in the United States, in which English is the mother tongue. Nor does Israel's nation-state law establish any official religion – unlike some seven European countries that declare state religions in their very constitutions.
All of this is to point out that Israel can be a proud nation of the Jewish people while still cherishing and implementing one of the most diverse and freest democracies on earth. In fact, some would argue that it is precisely Jewish values that fortify and help guarantee Israel's robust democracy.
In short, no matter what slanderous accusations Israel's enemies employ, the Jewish state objectively remains one of the strongest and most successful democracies on earth. Tiny Israel provides political freedoms and economic opportunities unmatched by the overwhelming majority of the world's nations.
Note finally that the suffering and political plight of the Palestinians has little to do with Israel and is in fact almost entirely the result of authoritarian governance by its terrorist dictatorial regimes and their obstinate refusal to make peace.
Israel has one of the highest numbers of foreign journalists per capita in the world. Many are critical, some outwardly hostile towards Israel; nevertheless, they are not banned from covering the news in Israel or the disputed territories. If Israel wanted to kill reporters who write negative things about the country, dozens would be dead. The idea that the government would intentionally target journalists is preposterous.Clifford D. May: Fascism for dummies
Imagine Israel's Foreign Ministry releasing statements calling for the United States to review its rules of engagement considering the casualties caused by its armed forces. It would never happen.
It was good to see Prime Minister Yair Lapid stand up for his nation's sovereignty by stating: "No one will dictate our open-fire policies to us when we are fighting for our lives. Our soldiers have the full backing of the government of Israel and the people of Israel." He added, "I will not allow an IDF soldier that was protecting himself from terrorist fire to be prosecuted just to receive applause from abroad."
Similarly, Gantz rightly said, "The chief of staff, and he alone determines and will continue to determine the open-fire policies, in accordance with the operational need and the values of the IDF, including the purity of arms. … There was and will be no political involvement in the matter."
Notably, in 2014, after the war in Gaza, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talked about how "Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties." The Pentagon, he said, sent a team of officers to Israel to learn lessons from the fighting, including "the measures they took to prevent civilian casualties."
The United States is Israel's most important ally. Still, America's leaders sometimes need to be reminded that Israel is a sovereign nation, as Menachem Begin did after the Reagan administration took a series of measures to punish Israel for annexing the Golan Heights. "Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic?" he asked the US ambassador to Israel. "We have enough strength," Begin declared, "to defend our independence and to defend our rights."
Would the United States ever deign to tell Britain, Germany or France how its military should perform its duties?
No, which makes the approach towards Israel a double standard, one of the examples of anti-Semitism in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition used by the State Department.
Before Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt takes another trip abroad, she should clean up her own house.
Fascism, Nazism and other "national socialisms," he writes, "had their roots in the 19th century and even earlier," in ideas promulgated by such philosophers as Rousseau, Hegel and Nietzsche.
The term derives from fascio, Italian for a bundle or sheath, conveying "strength through unity," the unifying force being the government and its supreme leader. As Mussolini put it: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
In common with communism, fascism in its diverse forms opposes liberalism, defined as "individualism and the apparently chaotic conclusions of private enterprise."
Also akin to communism, fascism has had a "passion for science" that often turns out to be pseudo-science. The Soviet Communists had Lysenkoism. Nazis believed, as Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg wrote, that "history must be judged from the point of view of race."
The poet Ezra Pound, a well-known American fascist, moved to Italy in 1924, where he wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Oswald Moseley (whose street fighters also were called Blackshirts). Pound supported Hitler's rise, including in paid radio broadcasts attacking the United States, the United Kingdom, Roosevelt, Churchill and Jews. Among the ideas he championed: "race pride."
As George Mosse notes in "Fascist Aesthetics and Society: Some Considerations," the "human body indicates the structure of the mind."
Another attribute of fascism is hyper-nationalism. The Axis powers all invaded neighbors and folded them into their expanding empires.
Neither Trump nor Biden has displayed any interest in foreign conquests, as far as I'm aware. On the contrary, I see too many Republicans and Democrats succumbing to the siren song of isolationism.
This is an opinion column and I'll close with this one: A serious argument can be made that Vladmir Putin, Xi Jinping, Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong-un exemplify 21st century varieties of fascism. Had President Biden addressed the increasing national security threats they pose, he might have helped unite us against those who hate us – Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, the woke and the unwoke. He chose not to.
I think that's because he wants to win in the worst way. And it's hard to imagine any way worse than this: slandering his political opponents as fascists while posing as a modern Mussolini in the City of Brotherly Love.
Tel Aviv, September 15 - A political faction struggling to approach, let alone restore, the legislative clout it held more than twenty years ago has followed the evidence to the only tenable explanation for its collapse in the interim: the electorate hasn't the intelligence necessary to cast the correct ballot and return the faction to its former glory.
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