Want to Occupy Something? Occupy Gaza!
There’s fighting in Gaza – and at @stevencrowder on Twitter after the Crowder-man weighed in:
Steven’s getting slammed by the Jew-hating left (and oh yes, they are), so you might want to give him your support.
And speaking of Gaza, I’m at the beautiful Breakers hotel in Palm Beach at the David Horowitz Restoration Weekend, where I just listened to a brilliant talk by Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens. As editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, Stephens had supported Israel’s surrender of Gaza, hoping it would force the Palestinians to demonstrate their ability to run a state and garner Israel international cred for its statesmanship and restraint. He now realizes this was wrong in every respect. Gaza became a terrorist outpost. It’s been firing on Israeli civilians since it was let loose in 2005. When Israel took restrained and cautious retaliatory action in 2008, it was slandered in the now-infamous Goldstone Report from the UN – for which the author apologized too late. The Hamas thugs in Gaza went back to hitting Israel and no one said a word. Now Israel is fighting back and we’re hearing the usual whining about how the Jewish nation should behave in such a way as to insure its own destruction, rather than crushing these Islamist villains as they deserve.
For my money? Israel should go in there and just take the place over again. The left likes to Occupy everything, right? Well, Occupy Gaza, baby. It’s got to be an improvement over this.
The best line in Stephens’ speech: “I’m in favor of a two-state solution, if the other state is Canada.” I had my own take on that:
Andrew
Watched your video. A more brilliant suggestion I have not heard.
The part about the US requires some thought also….as long as US Jews are excluded.
This video clip is priceless.
But all of this aside, it is a VERY serious subject, at least to those whose lives hang in the balance.
So, with due seriousness, here are some tips/insights re ‘hasbara’,and how to(or not) convey Israel’s plight/history/message to the world.
There are few voices more important to hear from, other than Professor Paul Eidelberg, Dr Martin Sherman, or Prof Louis Rene Beres.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/11/16/with-israel-at-war-israeli-hasbara-informational-campaigns-how-effectivenecessary-are-they-in-general-prof-paul-eidelberg-enlightens-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
It is important to understand the above, particularly during the ‘fog of war’.
This is a potted history of Israel that conveniently leaves out the ethnic cleansing that it continues to undertake in the West Bank and also ignores the antisemitism shown by the Israelis themselves who denounce liberal Jews for their disloyalty to blood and nation. The current crisis was ginned up by Netanyahu as another one of his cynical political moves. That guy reminds me a lot of Nixon.
Jim:
This “potted history” also leaves out how Israel gave the people of the West Bank and Gaza more freedom than they ever had under any Arab ruler. Gazans now rule themselves, and they can thank Israel for that; Egypt ruled them with an iron fist for twenty years and never gave them any autonomy of any sort.
What you call “ethnic cleansing” is practiced the same way in the United States, too, only here we call it “eminent domain”. It’s legal, and guess what?… Palestinians can appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, and have done so, and have won, many times.
Bottom line: if you like free speech, if you like treating women as equals, if you like the freedom to host the Middle East’s only Gay Pride parades, if you like the commitment to plurality that puts Jews AND Arabs on the Supreme Court, if you like supporting a literate hi-tech society that contributes to the world far out of proportion to its numbers… then Israel is the good guy. Period.
In fact, not only does Israel do all these things; she does so while fending off hundreds of millions of people who want her dead. So not only does Israel support the causes you do, Israel could use your support.
Put down the cognitive dissonance, sir, and just walk away.
Thank you. Excellent post.
Bibi apparently “ginned up” this crisis after 100+ rockets already hit Israel.
In one day.
I don’t think “ethnic cleansing” means what you think it does.
The charge of Israeli ethnic cleansing is more believeable if Arabs were forbidden to vote in Israel, sit in the Israeli parliament, and Israeli Supreme Court. Arab victimhood is more believable if the Christians and the Jews were not already cleansed from the Arab states.
Western leftists are so full of themselves, they imagine they fight for victims against their oppressors. The problem with the Jews is they refuse to be victims. After millions of them were cleansed from the face of the earth, they bounced back within a lifetime. That really irked the do-gooders’ sensibilities. So they recognize a group of self-proclaimed victims to fight against the uppity Jews who refuse the dogooders’ sympathies.
Thanks for that brilliant comment Jim, now get back in the corner and leave that pointy hat on.
There is no “ethnic cleansing” in the “West Bank”; not of Arabs, anyway. Lately the Israeli government jas been destroying the homes of Jews who accidentally forgot to dot the “I”.
Notice how the media are suddenly extremely concerned about Gaza but conveniently ignore the stark contrast between how Israel is responding to a neighbor. Gaza has launched over 800 rockets this year against Israel and as this escalates it is no wonder that they feel obliged to respond. The Syrian government however is bombarding its own people, many who would like a peaceful resolution. How would these critics of Israel like them to adopt the Syrian tactics against the people of Gaza?
How would the U.S. respond to rockets flying over the border from Canada? Rockets landing in Buffalo? I’m thinking we would respond pretty harshly and tell the U.N. to stuff it.
Israel needs to respond the way Syria is responding. Level Gaza and retake it. And tell the U.N. to stuff it.
Indeed. “Stuff it” should have been part of the Israeli vocabulary decades ago. (And not just to the U.N.)
Why the hell would the Canucks lob rockets over to Buffalo?
They are rather busy closing their borders to ward off economic refugees from Obamaland from sneaking in.
Under Obama the US would likely apologise for not having published accurate enough targeting coordinates and send new rockets preprogrammed to hit true for any miss.
Pure comic genius! Although maybe not in the way intended… But genius in any case. Thanks Andrew. Klaven.
Speaking about videos, just want to share this one, very concise and telling from the blog of Joseph Wouk:
Share in fb!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juNnmoFUq8M
The American CFR government sends billions to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Isn’t Hamas the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza?
Throughout histroy has anyone noticed what has happened to countries supporting the enemies of Israel?
Leatherneck,
They have; “But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing.” Zechariah 7:11 (NASB)
It is so sad to see Israel under such weak leadership who after years of appeasement,retreat and capitulation are now unwilling to deal Hamas and it’s 16,000+ fighters a deathblow.
Israel now pays the price for trusting in America instead of God.
Israel on this 3rd day of the war is still fighting the loser and retreat specialist Dhimmi Minister Ehud Barak’s restrained war which will fail unless the plan is to PERMANENTLY wipe out Hamas.
That is the message Iran and Hezbollah need desperately to hear and see.
Timid and weak Jerusalem leadership and nation which hitched Israel’s wagon to nefarious America’s diabolical peace trap are in for some serious pain and suffering.
Hamas, Egypt and the rest see a retreating, capitulating, appeasing Israel as weak and ready for the kill, and that makes a restrained Israel, too stupid to defeat Hamas,in grave ‘Sampson Option’ danger.
We have become soft and neutered and are tired of war and can’t even defeat Hamas.
Appeasement and retreat is what we do best now.
We decided to listen to our pimps of no peace instead of finishing off Hezbollah in 2006 and did the same again in 2009 by retreating from Gaza before finishing off Hamas. We don’t have the green light from our god of the Potomac to win anymore , so please don’t test us.
I think it would be a good idea if someone (not me — I’m not a writer) would pen a little story about the Middle East, in which they just simply changed the “names” of the groups. Jews would be called Arabs or Muslims, and Arabs/Muslims would be called Jews. Oh, starting from about the time of the European Holocaust of 6 million Arab/Muslims just because they … we’ll just because … and proceeding on to today. All the facts the same — just the words “Jew” and “Muslim or Arab” would be exchanged.
No doubt, in that case, all the “leftists” would “suddenly” side with the Arab/Muslims. It would reveal a lot of what is behind their “opinions.”
I’ve never understood the alliance between the American left and Islam. Just about the only principle they hold in common is their hatred of western civilization. Part of me thinks they do it just because they know how much it pisses off conservatives, kind of like the spoiled rich girl who goes and dates a degenerate gangster who beats her senseless just to get back at her conservative father.
Of course she’s really only hurting herself, and when she’s abandoned broke bloodied and pregnant she comes running home to daddy. Who are the left going to run to when they realize what Islam is really all about? When women are subjected to “honor killings” and stoning for practicing the lifestyle the left extolls now, when gays are lynched, when religious freedom becomes “convert or die”?
If their other actions are not enough to convince you that the left is a suicide cult, just look at their pact with the islamists.
“I’ve never understood the alliance between the American left and Islam.”
It’s mainly because the Soviets aligned with Muslim nations like Egypt, Iraq and Syria back in the good old cold war days. So, lefty scum in the west started to do the same.
Also, lefties will side with pretty much anyone who is anti-American.
Ah, in some ways I miss the cold war days. Provided a nice clear example where we could point to the Soviet bread lines and say: “see, this is why socialism doesn’t work. This is where they are trying to take us” But my generation, who voted overwhelmingly for Obozo, doesn’t remember the cold war or the joys of communism. Their schools never taught them that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, or that the Nazis were socialists, they focused on teaching to hate the evils of capitalism. Communist has lost a lot of the dirty connotations it once had and is growing more accepted. When you point out to a typical young Obama supporter that Obama’s slogan “Forward!” was a rallying cry for radical socialists in the 20th century, they say “So what? What’s wrong with socialism?” Communists killed vastly more people than the fascists, yet almost every college campus in America has some sort of Marxist group, while I’m sure any neo-fascist group would be driven out. As a nation we’ve lost sight of how evil communism really is. The Chinese are hardly real commies, North Korea is a joke, people are no longer forced to see the full evil of communism on display every night in the news. Personally I think this country could do with another red scare, drive out some of the openly avowed commies in positions of power working to subvert this country.
The China is still a cruel Marxist dictatorship. Very dangerous. And North Korea is not a joke, but a threat and a tragedy.
… and with Cuba so near: does the American left not see that this island is nothing but a huge open-air prison. People is kept there like animals in the zoo: they get enough food and basic health care – is this life?
TPM: Your example is not so far off. From what I’ve read, Egypt cannot feed its own people, and is utterly dependent on foreign grain imports — to say nothing of tourist revenues to pay for those food imports.
So now Egypt is alienating the tourists AND the sources of food. Brilliant.
“when they realize” …
but … they never will — their fantasies will just twist and morph —
Want proof? Look at the “left” of Europe — especially the U.K. The worst it gets, the more emphatic in their “beliefs[?]” they become.
The China is still a cruel Marxist dictatorship. Very dangerous. And North Korea is not a joke, but a threat and a tragedy.
It was my response to TPM.
A sight with Hamas Charter. Tell me how do you negotiate with these people?
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
Israel do what you have to do.