John B. Judis of The New Republic Joins the Israel-Bashers
Judis then argues that the case against a Palestinian state is the very same that could have been made in 1947 against those arguing on behalf of creating a Jewish state in the former Mandate Palestine. Here, he confuses “UN membership” for Palestine with the issue of the right of establishing statehood. The truth is that the UN did not give the Jews a state. They created a very real one on their own, before its existence was recognized by the UN. Those who have read the book my wife and I wrote, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, will find a thorough discussion that shows that everyone, from U.S. diplomats in the Middle East to journalists, made that point over and over. The Arabs began fighting the Haganah (later the Israel Defense Forces) before a state was proclaimed, and after it was announced in May of 1948, various Arab nations invaded Israel in an attempt to destroy it at the start. The areas in which Palestinians lived were occupied by Egypt and Jordan, and no Palestinians then asked for an equivalent state of their own.
Next, Judis argues that just as some Palestinians today do not accept recognition of Israel, in 1947 many Zionists in the Revisionist movement “denied the right of the Palestinians to a state.” As Jeffrey Herf, Paul Berman and others have shown, the head of the Palestinian community in the Mandate was a notorious pro-Nazi, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin-Al Husseini. And he was adamant about one thing: there could never be any Jewish state in Palestine, or indeed, any Jews at all in Palestine.
Moreover, when Judis writes that the Revisionists of the Irgun denied the rights of the Palestinians to a state and “wanted all of Palestine and even Jordan for a Jewish state,” and that they “were willing to use terror and assassination to achieve their ends,” he is descending to total fabrication. First, the so-called Jewish extremists were a minority of the Zionists in Palestine. And they disbanded their military, united their forces with the official Haganah, and when they first ran for the Knesset and formed a political party, they received less than 10 percent of the Israeli vote. And today, if Israel pulled out of the West Bank in advance of negotiations the way Judis would prefer, Hamas might be able to do precisely what it did in Gaza: take the area over as soon as Israel withdrew, making the territory they inhabited a center of terror aimed at Israel.
Finally, Judis argues that J Street, “which began as a bold alternative to AIPAC,” has now “ended up mimicking its subservience to Israeli aims.” So even J Street is seen by Judis as too pro-Israeli, and not tough enough. Here, he completely misreads what J Street is all about. It was not formed for the purposes he suggests, but as a stalking horse for the Obama administration in the Jewish community so the administration could argue that AIPAC was not a representative group and that the real Jewish community supported the concessions to the Palestinians that hard-liners were not willing to accept.
Judis also is angry that what he calls “right-wing Christian groups” support “a greater Israel,” and are attacking compromise. He does not like it that “Republican presidential candidates” argue that Obama “threw Israel under a bus” and is guilty of “appeasement.” But as for Ed Koch, who, until his sudden change a few days ago, made the very same arguments about Obama’s policy, Judis ignores the reasons for the charge, simply saying it is a “right-wing” campaign. As for the evangelical Christians who support Israel, like Reverend Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI), why shouldn’t they have the right to do so? Indeed, CUFI has become a large and powerful lobby supporting Israel, and uniting Christians to support the existence of a Jewish state. Israel needs all the support it can get, and as Ed Koch also pointed out at his speech last week at the anti-Durban III conference, Jews who are upset about this are “simply crazy.”
I hope that your article is broadly disseminated. Of all my pieces on the same subject, I think this is the most apt to link, as it discusses some of your research into the Truman recognition of Israel: http://clarespark.com/2009/07/11/multiculturalists-and-wilsonians-cant-diagnose-the-new-antisemitism/. The fact that TNR has taken the position that you decry does not surprise me. I have stopped reading it long ago.
Excellent, informative piece, Mr. Radosh. The reason there is no peace in the Middle East is because Abbas won’t recognize the State of Israel under any circumstance. Even if he had the courage to do so, he would likely be shot by the extremist elements of his supporters. He remembers what happened to Sadat in Egypt.
The Middle East has thorny complications, but the bottom line is that Israel is fighting for its life, while the Arabs fight to repair perceived wounds to their collective pride.
The good thing about Judis and Sullivan, both fine writers trying to tackle this issue, is that it shows the analytical and moral limits of their minds. They just don’t get it and won’t get it.
The Arabs’ claim to be “Palestinian” and the demand for a “Palestine” is a lie, concocted by Gamal Nasser and the Soviet Union, both haters of Jews, in Cairo in 1964 when they invented the “Palestine Liberation Organization.”
The phony history and propaganda followed.
“Palestine” meant “land of the Jews” and “Palestinian” meant “Jew” from the time that the Roman Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea to Palestina in 135 A.D. after defeating the last Jewish uprising under Bar Kochba. His purpose was to eradicate all memory of Judea, and he also outlawed Judaism and renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina,” “Aelius” being his gens name. Great Britain was awarded the Palestine Mandate after World War I, to be the “homeland of the Jews.”
So Netanyahu should not accept any “two-state” solution to the war with the Arabs, a war which Arabs wage for religious reasons against Jews.
Palestinian did not mean Jew from 135 AD, but is a corruption of Philistine, a long-extinct Indo-European people known from the Bible. It is during the Mandatory period that the Jews living in Mandatory Palestine were called Palestinians, chiefly by other Jews. Of course, Arabs should not be allowed to get away with calling themselves Palestinians, since that implies that Palestine is rightfully theirs: something Israel’s well-wishers surely cannot intend.
Palestinian was the insult hurled by Romans at Judea- tha land was cut into three provinces after the 135CE BarKochba revolt – Palestina Prima, Secunda and Tertia. The real name is Judea, now Israel.
Romans had a big influence here. Arabs stole the name for themselves, like most other things in this world.
Go figure…..
The poor writers at the TNR. None of their friends on the Left would talk to them because they worked for the last liberal/left journal that was pro-Israel. But since pro-Israel sentiment is poison among that crowd, they were isolated and suffered from being identified with evil Zionists, especially Marty Peretz. Keep in mind that TNR wasn’t exactly pro-Israel before Marty took it over. So now they want to return home back into the arms of of the liberal/left Israel bashers. But then, who will be there to read the new TNR? Certainly not the self-hating crowd of Sidney Blumenthal’s little child. They already have The Nation and The Progressive, and the New York Review of Books, and the daddy of all Israel-bashing media, the editorial pages of the New York Times. So I guess we will all just wait till the TNR bites the dust knowing that it’s writers found peace and acceptance at least.
Excellent takedown of Judis at TNR. It is the sole thread still going of the four you mentioned. I linked Krauthammer’s excellent piece in one of my comments today, but we seem to be veering off into a side discussion of “The Debt” since I mentioned it on Thursday.
I only started subscribing to TNR after Obama’s campaign confirmed the Israel-bashing of the left. They are not liberals- they are the most condescending intolerant bullies on the web when one strays outside any of their echo-choruses.
Those of us who remain at TNR since Peretz’s blog was cancelled (and he did it to himself with what many of us thought to be posts in need of several edits), we do so to comment with each other, often veering away from the writer’s point of view after our initial critique. It remains the only place where a dew of us can actually find a tiny community on the web.
But, TNR has revealed the hollowness of Obama-worship that keeps descending into less than serious discourse on most other issues.
Anyway, The New Yorker has been my favorite read of the week since 1978, except for the Tina Brown years. So, Mr. Radosh, could you PLEASE tackle Hertzberg – if he wants to express his Netanyahu-Derangement-Syndrome (NDS), then he should start a separate editorial page so that I can go back to reading “Talk of the Town” without dread.
BTW, it is not just the NDS, but Cast Lead seemed to be the tipping point for Israel-bashing to become trendy and respectable on the illiberal left.
Sounds like the usual drivel. Arab Muslim imperialists and colonialists have about as much right to a state in Eretz Israel as British Imperialists and colonialists have to a state in India…namely none.
The Pals do have a right to return, though. They have a right to return to Arabia, which is where Arab Muslim imperialists and colonialists came from, and the sooner they’re returned there, the better.
Dave S I agree. Islam is a danger. Not a problem, a danger. We are witnessing a coalescing of islamic might. It is on the path to war. War with Israel. War with the west. War with China would follow were they to succeed.
Offer them peace, but prepare for war. As Israel discovered to it’s dismay, peace has been rejected. When will it begin? I cannot predict. How will it begin? Again I do not know. It may be by design. It may be by accident. It is coming.
When it does, Israel will succeed. After succeeding, Israel must administer harsh medicine. It needs to clear all the arabs out of sinai, the west bank and Gaza. Only after this can peace be accomplished. Half measures bring trouble later. Israel will be whole, or it will cease to be.
First, the Arabs are not all Arabians – there is a difference but I would not expect anyone on this site to understand the difference. Second, by your logic, Abraham came from Ur so all his descendants should go leave Israel/Palestine and go back whence they came – Iraq.
“First, the Arabs are not all Arabians”
Obviously. Gobs of Arab Muslims (not just Arabs…the Muslim part is real important) are currently camped out on lands stolen by Arab Muslims centuries ago.
According to Arab Muslims the fact that their fellow Arab Muslims stole those lands by naked force way back when gives them some sort of right to maintain political control over them.
I say not. Jews and Christians have an earlier and more legitimate claim to places like Israel, Syria, Egypt (as well as a claim to lands we’ve already recovered from Muslim imperialists and colonialists, like Spain for example).
It’s our land, not theirs…and, we’re going to take it all back if it takes 10,000 years.
That’s my logic.
Let us remember the list that was published after the fall of Saddam Hussein (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068890/posts) that showed all the people he was bribing. Keep in mind that these bribes were paid all the while Saddam was operating under world-wide sanctions. “Oil For Peace”…remember?
Now, flash forward to today. Can you even imagine the bribes the Saudis are paying? Their wealth is an order of magnitude larger than Saddam’s and, unlike Saddam, the Saudis are operating without legal restrictions.
How much do you think they paid the editors at the New Republic to run this article? Et tu, Judis? As usual, follow the money.
Mr. Radosh leaves out the biggest of the big lies — that Israel is the cause of all the problems in the Middle East. The truth is just the opposite. The Israel- Palestinian conflict is a sideshow used by others in the region to further their hegemonistic ambitions. For the first time in modern history all four players have emerged at the same time. There is a battle being waged by the Persians, Ottomans, Wahabists and Pan-Arab Nationalists for control of the region each using the centuries old hatred of the Jews to rally regional public opinion in their favor. It is only the anti-Semites in the West who really believe that the elimination of Israel is the key to peace and I suspect that they don’t believe their own propaganda either. It is just moral preening to cover their lust for a second Holocaust.
The “Anti’s” are merely one component of a globalized neo-Fascist movement that has emerged in the post-communist world that combines tenets of all the 20th Century collectivist movements into one generic Fascist ideology. It is a veritable “Rainbow Coalition” of Black, Brown, Red and Green. Somewhere Mussolini is smiling.
In a way the Judis article is the foreign policy equivalent of the Peter Orzeg attack on elected government published in the same issue of TNR. These people thing they are intellectually and morally superior to the rest of us but they are cut from the same cloth as the SS, KGB or the Stasi. So I close with a hearty Sieg Heil to all my “friends” in the movement and their Jewish lackeys.
Until the Arabs and Palestinians understand that the rock solid position of the United States is unconditional support for the state of Israel, they will continue to push for compromise followed by more compromise followed by eventual annihilation. The only way to accomplish this is to remain silent about any, yes ANY criticism of Israel under ANY circumstances for at LEAST ten years.
Judis, hmm,
Isn’t that the name applied to the goat leading all the others into the slaughterhouse?
Judis, Judas. You say tomayto, the Arabs say, “I want to exterminate you!”
What’s in a word?
And it didn’t even take 30 pieces of silver.
Geez. You Jews get so touchy about this “wiped off the map” thing.
LOL and well said. I know…those irritating Israelis, always whining about their kids’schoolbuses being under rocket attack and their pizza parlors bombed and stuff. and they complain every time some Palestinian terrorist breaks into a house and slaughters an entire Jewish family as they sleep (coming back to murder the baby when he heard her crying).
I mean, man up, ya know?
With regard to Krauthammer’s “opinion piece” you linked to,
he wrote, Land for peace produced the Israel-Egypt peace of 1979 and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. but unfortunately did not extrapolate on the Arab Spring and the possible consequences for Israel if those treaties should fall apart, which seems to have a high probability given the extremists in the race for power.
This report shows succinctly why Judis, Mearsheimer, et al, are essentially sociopaths completely out of touch with reality.
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=240109
Very informative, a very fine article, Mr. Radosh.
——–
On a minor point – since TNR also ran two other articles opposed to Judis, how much can TNR be faulted for Judis’s piece? It’s not uncommon for publications to carry articles by authors that disagree with the publications’ own positions. For example, the liberal Washington Post carries conservative Jennifer Rubin and the liberal Boston Globe carries conservative Jeff Jacoby. Isn’t that a good thing?
My favorite magazine was The American Enterprise, a solidly conservative publication. One thing I liked about it was that it often carried commentary from liberal authors – there were very good debates.
It is immoral and profoundly evil to support a Muslim terror state implant in tiny Israel. It is immoral and profoundly evil to give one single dollar of American tax dollars to the Muslim terrorist organization, PLO/Palestinian Authority.
Financed by the US/EU/UK, global jihadists, Murder Incorporated, Palestinian Authority call for the Murder of All Jews and the Murder of Americans:
Broadcast from Gaza mosque, Oct 13 2000, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, on Palestinian Authority TV (transcribed by Memri): “Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them…”
U.S. leaders must immediately explain to Americans and Jews, why the Palestinian Authority, whose goal is the murder of all Jews and the murder of Americans, are heavily financed, armed, and continually given the most advanced military training by the U.S. and inform Americans how many U.S. trained terrorists are now in America. And explain why U.S. leaders demand that Muslim terrorists are given a terror state inside tiny, vulnerable Israel.
In a massive victory for Islam, against their will, Arab Christians were cruelly placed under brutal occupation of PLO/Palestinian Authority.
In the filthy Islamic Invasion of Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, Judea, Muslims tore up Bibles for toilet paper.
Christian majority towns, Bethlehem & Nazareth are now majority Muslim – terrified Christians were driven out by cruel Islamic persecution. Many Bethlehem Christians’ homes and land were stolen by Muslims. The Christians who remain, live in constant fear.
Non-Muslim world leaders and media elites despise and HATE both Jews and Christians. A Muslim terror state implant in the Holy Land is the means to inflict maximum harm on both Jews and Christians.
Sadly, the Arab situation will be solved only by the destruction of the PLO state in another war.
There’s a point in the course of events when lesser minds point their wet fingers up to the heavens and decide that the winds of public opinion are going against them. They rapidly capitulate to the crowd.
You’ll see that happening with purported Jews and Christians in the near future, as those who are lukewarm, those who need to conform, and those who are just plain scared, cast their lots in with the prevailing anti-semitic/anti-Christian wave. It happened in Germany in the 20th century, and it will happen here.
Decide who you are and prepare yourself–either for hypocrisy or for suffering.
Why is The New Republic still in business? It’s a magazine of fiction and fraud.
This reminds me of Dateline, which liked to blow cars up with explosives to “prove” that they blow up all by themselves when in minor accidents. And yet, Dateline continued on air for YEARS afterwards.
It is a real shame that Americans allow such fraudulent practices to continue. It’s even worse, though, when the rest of the media allow it.
Frankly, I’d rather have lying idiots – like the slime who write for the New Republic – to be on the other side. It is better to have the disingenuous, disgusting, repulsive liars on the other side.
What’s the moral basis for the foundation of the USA?
What’s the moral basis for the foundation of the Netherlands?
What’s the moral basis for the foundation of Venezuela?
The will of the people, no more. No less.
Is it Judis, or Judas? My point there should be clear enough.
Here’s a solution to the 2 state problem: Give the Palestinians their “statehood”. We all know they will then attack Israel in very short order. Isreal can then defend itself, which they will do decisively, after which they can even have Gaza and the West Bank back in their possession and control. Abbas, the puppet of Hamas, will have gambled with the lives of his people and lost. The result will be a strong healthy Israel.
Maybe then the media elites can return their focus to other “real” important issues, such as “global warming” and a person’s “carbon footprint”, which by the way, should be taxed, right?
JUDIS (JUDAS) perfect name for a jewhater isn’t it?
from the LEFT and from the RIGHT everyone hates the JEWS- the oldest hate never dies….but TRUTH did die & the LIE lives and grows
Tom Lehrer put it more than 40 years ago:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.
If Palestine has a reason to exist then so does Kurdistan. When is the UN going to declare s Kurdish State?
None of the apologists for the Palestinians get it. Arabfat and, now Abbas, and eventually some other kleptocrat can never agree to a peace treaty. They will end up with a poor country full of fractious people who only have learned to hate, fight, and blame others for their failings. Not unlike most other Arab countries, but without any oil. So how can a future ruler satisfy such a populace? And how many retired Arab heads of state are living in comfort on the Riviera, Switzerland, or anywhere else? In fact, how many retired Arab heads of state are living?
Blame Israel all you want, but the facts are that the Israeli’s can’t make peace with people who are more scared of peace than war.
I’m in total agreement with you. The only bit I would say is:
“They will end up with a poor country full of fractious people”
You mean “two small countries”. Everyone knows that Gaza and the West Bank will never be under the same government, not even if they take Israel’s contiguity (already hanging by a thread, as it’s only a handful of miles wide at the center) to make the two new pali states a contiguous bloc. This has always been, of course, one of the more ridiculous fantasies of the “two state solution” that everyone has always known about but is rarely mentioned … even though it is the reality on the ground even now!
Other than that, great comment, conchrepublican.
“…Sullivan continues with the dual loyalty canard…”
Sullivan is Irish Catholic. Not all Catholics are Jew haters, of course, but whenever you hear a charge of dual loyalty against the Jews, the source is inevitably Catholic. Reminds you that the “Know Nothings” of yeteryear actually knew quite a bit.
Papism and Popery were once genuinely, and with good reason, feared by Americans. Catholics were loyal to a foreign power in Rome and that loyalty superseded their loyalty to the United States.
This charge against Catholics was proved during the Civil War Draft Riots when Irish Catholics, 70,000 strong, raised Confederate flags over New York and for three days, tortured, lynched, burned and mutilated any African American they could lay their murderous hands on. And it wasn’t merely the Catholic men who participated in the racist mayhem. The sexually twisted necrophile horrors visited on the corpses of hanging black men by drunken and depraved Irish colleens is worthy of another chapter in Kraft-Ebbing. The fact that most Americans don’t know that the single worst racist incident in the nation’s history occurred in New York and not in Georgia or Mississippi is testament to the cover-up and propaganda powers of the Church.
Research the Draft Riots and you find yourself immediately assailed by excuses for the behavior of the Catholics. The Catholics were immigrants recently arrived and they were immediately being drafted into the Union Army. The draft was corrupt, allowing those with means to buy their way out of serving but the poor Irish Catholic immigrants, alas, didn’t have the wherewithal to shirk their duty to their new homeland.
To read the Jesuitries mounted in defense of the racist Catholics, you might forget that the Irish served for centuries as Europe’s premier mercenaries. Irish Catholic blood was freely spilled in the cause of every gangster in Europe wearing a miter or a crown. The difference in America was that the Individual Irish Catholic draftee received his full pay. In Europe he was lucky to receive a uniform and a musket and a meal once a day. Payment for his fighting and dying went to his parasitical Irish lord.
The Draft Riots were not the only indication of Irish racism toward blacks. Sugar planters in the Caribbean specified “Irish preferred” in their advertising for overseers. The Irish were infamous for their cruelty to black slaves and could be counted on to maintain discipline and squeeze a good day’s work out of each and every one of their charges. It is also a fact that no Negro was welcome in an American Catholic Church until the Twentieth Century.
During the First World War, American Irish and German Catholics sided largely with the Kaiser and Germany against Britain and the US. During the Second World War German Catholics and their Irish fellow travelers made up the overwhelming bulk of the seditious pro-Hitler American-German Bund. After Pearl Harbor, the ringleaders of the Bund were arrested but large numbers of Catholic Nazi sympathisers got off without punishment. The fact that loyal American Japanese were interned while overtly and covertly seditious Irish and German Catholics went free speaks volumes about the true nature of racism in America.
With so glaring a history of sedition and disloyalty, you might think that national loyalty and the lack thereof is a subject Catholics would avoid. Think again. Catholics believe themselves patriots every one and they believe it as firmly as they believe in Papal infallibility. A bemused George Orwell remarked on this odd Catholic delusion during the Second World War. “The only people in England who believe that the Vatican is opposed to Hitler are the Catholics,” Orwell remarked.
Are contemporary American Catholics conflicted in their loyalties? Do they clannishly favor their own kind? Consider the grossly disproportionate representation of Catholics in the nation’s police and prosecutorial machinery. Does the Church instill in its adherents a natural affinity for policing and prosecuting their fellow citizens? Is such an impulse consonant with the American democratic spirit?
Certainly, the overrepresentation of Catholics in law enforcement is not without negative consequences. The Knapp Commission hearings in New York revealed that virtually 100% of the NYPD was on the take. From precinct captains down to foot patrolmen the whole police force was corrupt. In a politically correct age, the Commission couldn’t plainly specify “overwhelmingly Catholic” as a major cause of the NYPD’s corruption. But vigorously diversifying the ethnic makeup of the NYPD was a major recommendation of the Commissioners.
During the first investigation into corruption in the New York police force seventy years earlier, honesty and plain speaking rather than political correctness was the American fashion. That investigation also demonstrated that 100% of the force was corrupt. Indeed, it demonstrated that criminal activity in New York was largely run by the Police. In the following election, Tammany was thrown out and Theodore Roosevelt was appointed Police Commissioner.
TR had no problem plainly twinning the words Catholic and corrupt. His antidote was equally plain. He set about recruiting hundreds of Jews (“I’m looking for strong Jews of the Maccabee type,” TR famously declared) to replace the almost exclusively Catholic police force.
Still not convinced that disproportionate representation of Catholics in American law enforcement is a corrosive influence? Consider the fact that the Church has in case after case managed to buy its way out of criminal prosecution for sexual crimes. To paraphrase Orwell, only American Catholics believe that the protection of pedophile priests and their relocation from one Church to another represents anything less than a vast criminal conspiracy. The fact that the American Catholic Church survives is an insult to justice in America.
A lesser known aspect of the pedophile priest scandal are the nationwide statistics demonstrating that a Protestant minister charged with molesting an underage female suffers considerably harsher penalties than a Catholic Priest caught molesting pubescent boys. Not a case of Catholic cops and Catholic prosecutors and Catholic judges protecting their own?
Bottom line, Jewish Americans have historically been more loyal than Catholic Americans. No American Jew need ever worry about a Catholic questioning his love of Zion. Patriotism is a subject about which Catholics are deeply deluded. That they reflexively project their own character failings on Jews is the inevitable prejudice of a faith founded on the wholesale theft of Jewish religion and Roman culture. (New whiskey into old casks.) As every Jew who reads history knows, if he was resurrected tomorrow, neither Joshua of Galilee nor Julius Caesar would give the Catholic Pope wandering around Caesar’s palace in priestly Levite linen anything but a great big horselaugh.
Naming names and clearly identifying one’s enemies is important. American Jews must remember that this blessed nation was founded by Deists, Freemasons and Purist Christians. Were it founded by Catholics, the United States would be no different than any other corrupt and dictatorial nation on the American continent.
The best way to defend Israel is to tell the truth about the Palestinians.
One would be hard pressed to find a more bloodthirsty, hate filled, demonic society on the face of the earth.
There are simply no excuses good enough to support the barbarity of Palestinian culture. A culture that when given land and the freedom to vote sends missiles at those who have reached out to help them. Whose leaders proudly proclaim they intend to ethically cleanse the land of Jews when they get what they want.
From promoting the murder of children, the indiscriminate attacks against civilians, the preaching of hatred against both Christians and Jews, the question for the the likes of Judis is not HOW he can he support giving such filth a state but how DARE he ?
Why should Israel make ” generous offers at the negotiating table”? Why would Israel support even in abstract the idea of a Palestinian “state”?
These are the same people (the Palestinians) who have for decades carried out terrorist activities against CIVILIAN targets. They are also the same people whose stated goal is to wipe Israel off the map. They can’t live in peace because they WON”T live in peace. The only peace they will accept is the one where all Jews are dead or at least dispersed around the world and their filthy presence is erased from the land. Of course in all of this the Palestinians pristine reputation for “peace”, “tolerance” and “equanimity” is legendary. Not since the election of Jimma’ Carter II have we seen a greater example of hypocrisy, mendacity, and incompetence masquerading as leadership.
Instead of viewing the Israelies as fellow landless peoples whose desire it is to have a place where they are free from the threats and derision of other nations, they listen to others whose religious envy knows no bounds. These other religious zealots seek to change the history of the Bible, something they claim they do not believe, nevertheless constantly harp on. They seek to redress wrongs perpetrated centuries ago by people long dead. They refuse,
by clinging to a dangerous, violent, intolerant religious doctrine to step out of the past.
If their god is so great why does he continue to throw away the lives of his followers and chain them with the shackles of ignorance and compliance to an arcane doctrine that ties them to a past which only promised more death, more misery and more destruction? One would wonder just what or who is behind such a arbitrary and insane ideology. Unfortunately there have always been those who “seek to make others miserable, like unto themselves”. Hence the settling of the United States in the 17th century, in order to escape just such peoples and entities. What is saddest about this entire discussion is, we should know better. We shouldn’t have to make these arguments. If people were honest, logical and clear thinking no one would have to defend another’s right to live in peace and safety. Nor would we argue another’s right to defend themselves against those who would take those goals away from them.
But we do. Doesn’t say much for “civilization” does it?
Does anyone think Judis, or NYR or any leftist is going to be influential vis-a-vis the Arab-Israel conflict? It should be noted that President Obama’s call for the 1967 lines, allowing for mutual swaps, is a rehash of Jimmy Carter’s call for the 1967 lines allowing for minor modifications. Hmm — this seems but one of a number of Carter-Obama policy similarities, which does not preclude the possibility that President Obama will serve no more presidential terms than did President Carter.
Hamas insists that Israel must go. I guess leftists have no problem that a state is not peace-loving, if they have no difficulty with the aims of such a state.Will the UN admit to membership a state that seeks the destruction of a UN member-state?
Good job Radosh, unfortunately I’ve been reading, hearing and participating in anti anti-Israel propaganda since I went to college in the 1970s. There seems to be two main differences between then and now: the evidence that the goal of the Palis is not peace but the destruction of Israel is clear and irrefutable and two the palis appear to be winning. Few people are willing to stand up and say that giving the Palestinians a state, a people whose main form of political expression is terrorism, is an insane and destructive idea. That it would lead to more violence and that even if Israel did disappear the Palis would simply look for a new target to hate and attack.
Judis is merely the latest TNR protege of Martin Peretz to show his true colors. Who is next? Leon Wieseltier?
Peretz is in Israel today, cherrypicking among his likes and dislikes in the Jewish State and still insisting on telling us all about it. After the damage he has done, mentoring and nurturing Jew-hating scribblers at TNR, you would think this spectacularly poor judge of character would crawl under the porch like a whipped dog and stay there.
Not Marty. Marty is a rich, gay, Zionist and he wants all the world to know it. Well, not the gay part. Promoting the gay agenda Marty leaves to his (once) cute goyishe tsatskele, Andrew Sullivan. Marty is a specialist. Zionism, not homosexuality, is Marty’s stock in trade. Zionism is Marty’s main schtick. His thing, dude. His bag.
With Zionist like Marty Peretz, who needs Palestinians?
It is a continuum:
Judis-Walt-Mearsheimer (who just endorsed a book by Gilad Atzmon claiming Passover blood libels are true)-Atzmon-David Irving-Ahmadinejad
His name is really Judis? That’s just too good.
You’re exposing your Christian ignorance W, L. Judas (Judah; Yehudah; Jew) was the fourth son of the Patriarch Jacob (Israel) by his wife, the Matriarch Leah. The royal house of the King Messiah is rooted in descent from Judas. The anonymous Jewish author of the “Gospel” of “Mark” (a fictitious name assigned to the anonymous document by the Church to keep the ignorant faithful like you from asking uncomfortable questions) makes great effort to connect Jesus (Joshua the Galilean) to the Royal house of David and the tribe of Judas. The geneology presented in “Mark” is plainly spurious, of course. Just like the rest of the childish morality tale that anchors the faith of weak minds like yours.
John Judis is scum but Judis at the very least knows who his ancestors were and what they believed in two thousand years ago. Do you, W.L? Of course not. Sometime in the last two thousand years the Church obliterated the natural and legitimate religion of your ancestors, destroyed their altars and killed the Shamans who were their best and brightest. All of which leaves you an orphan in history worshiping a Jew crucified by the Romans and following the “Roman” (Christianity was anathema to a Roman patriot) Church’s perverted version of John Judis’ ancestral faith. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be funny.
After that article, Judis will have to change his name’s spelling.
IF ANYONE NEEDS PROOF OF WHAT A BLOW HARD, MISGUIDED DUMBASS JOHN B JUDIS IS PLEASE READ HIS FLOWERY PREDICTION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION HE WROTE BACK IN 2002. THIS GUY IS A FIRST RATE IDIOT.
Purchasing Power
John B. JudisFebruary 11, 2002 | 12:00 am
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The euro’s launch on January first of this year didn’t make the cover of a single major American business magazine. The New Republic’s own Andrew Sullivan summed up the prevailing view on this side of the Atlantic: It was a “substantive non-event.” Those who didn’t ignore the euro altogether predicted its dramatic failure. George Will declared that it “will not `work,’ even understanding that narrowly as producing economic efficiency.” And National Journal columnist Clive Crook compared Europe’s adoption of the euro to Argentina’s “adventures in monetary union.” The ridicule was near unanimous.It was also probably wrong. In fact, the euro’s launch could easily prove the most important economic event of the decade. While it may not invigorate Germany’s slumping service sector or turn Naples into a post-industrial metropolis, it could solve some of the continent’s most deep-seated economic problems and put Europe on a path toward sustained growth. And if it does, the euro’s introduction may dramatically alter the balance of economic power between the United States and Europe. In years to come, Americans could even look back wistfully on the first of this year as the moment when world economic leadership began to pass quietly from the United States of America to the united states of Europe. The euro will benefit Europe’s economies by making cross-border trade and investment a lot easier and a lot more attractive. For centuries, European nations have done much of their trade with each other, but they have been hampered by tolls, tariffs, and competing currencies. And while the formation of the Common Market in 1958 began to knock down trade barriers, it did nothing to eliminate the inefficiencies caused by currency differences: Banks, businesses, and individuals still had to swap currencies–which meant paying transaction costs–to exchange goods and services. In addition, businesses planning investments or contracting for goods in other European nations had to guess whether fluctuating exchange rates would alter the values of their investments or purchases. Every investment entailed a hidden risk. The euro eliminates both that uncertainty and those transaction costs. According to Daniel Gros and Niels Thygesen, authors of European Monetary Integration, the savings could run as high as 2 percent of total GDP–or about $150 billion in 2001. Moreover, Crook’s comparisons notwithstanding, the euro will actually protect the nations of the European Union (EU) from Argentina’s fate. Argentina’s economy went into a tailspin precisely because it fixed its currency inexorably to the U.S. dollar after joining a free-trade zone, Mercosur, with countries whose currencies were not pegged to the dollar. When Brazil, one of the Mercosur countries, devalued its currency, the Brazilian real, against the dollar in 1999, Brazil’s exports became cheaper and Argentina’s more expensive. Argentina’s trade deficit grew, fueling unemployment and setting the stage for last December’s collapse. Thanks to the euro, the same thing can’t happen to the members of the EU’s free-trade zone– because they use the same currency. Italy, in other words, can’t devalue its currency at Spain’s expense (or vice versa). Other critics argue that since the euro countries now share a common interest rate and must limit deficit spending to 3 percent of GDP under EU rules, countries suffering high unemployment during a recession won’t be able to use fiscal or monetary policy to stimulate their economies. This ignores the fact that the EU’s deficit-spending rules contain loopholes for such an eventuality. But more importantly, it ignores the fact that while this may be a problem, it would have been a problem even without the euro. After all, running deficits to fight unemployment has never been a trouble-free proposition: Countries that did so in the pre-euro regime risked sparking a run on their currency. And the adoption of the euro creates a new way for EU nations to fight unemployment, enabling them to do what the New Deal accomplished for the United States in the 1930s. To combat the Great Depression, the U.S. government used unemployment insurance to transfer income (and consumer demand) from low- unemployment states in the North to high-unemployment states in the Deep South. Similarly, EU economists–thanks to the union’s new common currency–are now considering continent-wide unemployment programs that would transfer funds from low-unemployment countries in the North to high-unemployment countries in the South. But the euro’s impact will be felt in the United States as well–because it may come at the expense of the dollar. Through the euro, European countries could come to enjoy the power and economic advantage that the United States gained when the dollar became the world’s currency. In 1944 the Bretton Woods conference fixed the dollar as the official international currency–pegged at $35 for an ounce of gold–and set values for all other currencies in relation to it. And though the United States abandoned the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and let the dollar float in relation to other currencies, the dollar has continued to function as the main international reserve currency, as well as the most common currency for trade and investment. Countries that do not accept escudos or krona as payment usually accept dollars, and keep dollars in their central bank as a reserve fund in case of a financial crisis. The dollar’s unique status has helped lubricate world trade, but it has also bestowed particular advantages on the United States. As long as countries are willing to keep dollars as their reserve currency, the United States can run huge current-account deficits (about $400 billion in 2000) without being subject to the fiscal discipline that other nations must endure. (The “current account” consists of whatever Americans spend on foreign goods and services– including spending by military and other government operations abroad–minus whatever foreigners spend on our goods and services.) If Thailand, for example, runs current-account deficits in its baht, it has to counteract that through some combination of raising its interest rates, devaluing its currency, and cutting its budget–any of which could cause recession. But the United States can run such deficits without its currency coming under attack because the dollar is the world’s currency. Countries don’t want to unload their dollars; they want to hold onto them. So while the United States may occasionally face pressures to raise its interest rates or cut its budget, as it did in the late 1970s, the pressures are much less severe than those faced by other countries. As a result, the United States can simultaneously be the world’s greatest debtor and its most prosperous country. Since the 1960s, European countries have bristled at the dollar’s privileged position. During the Vietnam War, Europeans worried that the dollars accumulating in their banks were causing inflation and enabling Americans to buy up European firms. Indeed, the United States left the gold standard in 1971, partly in response to French attempts to cash in their dollars for gold. Since then, European nations have gradually taken steps to cushion their national currencies from fluctuations in the dollar. In 1978 German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing proposed a European Monetary System that would fix the value of European currencies in relation to each other; in 1992 the EU countries decided at Maastricht to launch the European Monetary Union and the euro; in 1999 the currencies of all the EU nations became convertible to euros at a fixed rate; and this year those currencies were replaced by the euro. Americans may be oblivious to a threat from the euro, but Europeans envisage it eventually rivaling or even displacing the dollar as the world currency. In a typical article last month heralding the “coming of Europe,” Die Zeit economic columnist Wilfried Von Herz looked forward to the euro becoming the international “key currency.” To be sure, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Today only about 13 percent of international reserves are held in euros, compared with 68 percent for dollars. But if European firms remain competitive, the preconditions do exist for the euro to reach parity eventually. In the three years since it was introduced on a limited basis in 1999, the euro has come to be used in 35 percent of all international transactions (compared to 45 percent for the dollar). It is being widely circulated in Eastern Europe and in the three EU countries–Britain, Sweden, and Denmark–that have yet to join the euro bloc but are under increasing pressure to do so. Assuming they will eventually join, along with Eastern Europe, the euro’s potential strength will lie in the size of its market: In 1999 the GDP of the European Union accounted for 20.3 percent of world output, compared to 21.9 percent for the United States; and its exports accounted for 39.3 percent, compared to 14 percent for the United States. Its population, even before the admission of Eastern Europe, is one-third larger. If the euro does come to rival the dollar, the euro countries would reap the rewards. They, too, could export their capital around the globe and even run trade deficits without fearing the immediate devaluation of their currency. They could insulate themselves from the effects of American fiscal and monetary policy: If, for example, the United States raised interest rates, they might not have to immediately follow suit in order to defend their currencies. And they could persuade countries that now price their goods in dollars–including the Middle Eastern oil producers–to price them in euros. That would not only eliminate transaction costs, but also allow Europe to establish an independent relationship with opec. And these gains for the euro would be losses for the dollar. If the dollar were no longer the universal world currency, the United States would suddenly feel pressure to rein in its foreign debts for fear of suffering a loss in the dollar’s value. And as occurred during the Vietnam War– when American military expenditures abroad caused soaring current-account deficits–the United States might have to worry much more about the cost of military operations overseas. There is, however, a silver lining to this potential cloud on the American horizon. If the euro winds up matching the dollar in international importance, it just might foster a more stable international economy, and that would benefit the United States as much as anyone. During the last two centuries, as the eminent economist historian Charles Kindleberger has argued, global economic stability has depended on the existence of an all-powerful currency. The decline of the English pound, for example, was a factor in the onset and persistence of the Great Depression. And since the United States abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the world’s economy has slowed and has suffered periodic currency crises–Mexico in 1994, Thailand in 1997, Russia in 1998, and Argentina last year–that have threatened political stability in key regions of the globe. There is little chance that the United States will regain the absolute economic supremacy it enjoyed after World War II–when it exported roughly twice as many goods as it imported, and when not just Latin America, but Western Europe and Japan, desperately sought greenbacks. And if the United States is unlikely to ever again enjoy that kind of economic superiority, it’s even less likely that Europe or Japan ever could. But that doesn’t mean the world is condemned to instability. The euro’s rise may actually make it easier to create what former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin has called a new “global financial architecture.” If in the past a system of fixed or managed exchange rates required a single dominant currency, but today no currency can do the job, the best alternative may be two dominant currencies rather than a cacophony of competing ones. The euro’s rise could essentially narrow the field to it and the dollar, with the yen and the Chinese yuan playing supporting roles. If those four parties cooperated, there’s at least a chance the world could return to a fixed exchange-rate regime. In the best-case scenario, a new financial architecture of this kind could rule out the kind of financial crises, precipitated by currency speculation, that have plagued Latin America and Southeast Asia. The euro’s success could also confer one other lasting benefit on the United States and the world. European leaders have always viewed economic integration as a step toward greater democratic political integration–toward what Jean Monnet first called a “United States of Europe.” Political integration (which is slated to include Eastern Europe this decade) could prevent the reemergence of the national rivalries that led to centuries of war, culminating in the world wars of the twentieth century. It would also provide the United States, which has been allied with Western Europe since 1945, with a more powerful democratic partner–one with which Americans would quarrel at times, but which would share an overriding commitment to democracy that, say, China or Russia do not. If a stronger democratic Europe emerges from this avalanche of new bank notes, America’s opinion leaders will not only eventually take notice; they may even smile.