What Difference Does It Make?

The problem Israel has with a good part of the world can be highlighted in these remarks made by outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attempting to defend herself in the Senate Committee reviewing the Administration's behavior after the Benghazi attack:

“It is, from my perspective, less important today looking backward as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice,” she said.

Wait, history, background, the past has little or less or perhaps no importance?

“It is, from my perspective, less important today looking backward..."

Well, if Arabs conquered and occupied  the Land of Israel in 638 CE coming from the Arabian Peninsula (and not being the descendants of Canaanites or Jebusites), if the League of Nations decided, due to the Jewish people's historic connection to our homeland that we should reconstitute it, that the Arabs refused all compromises from 1920 on but we yielded up Transjordan and then accepted a further partition, that they ethnically cleansed Jews from locations of residency where they had been for many centuries before 1948, that the PLO was founded in 1964 and it was Israel in its pre-1967 borders that was slated for "liberation", and on and on...that is an impugning immoral philosophical, political, legal and cultural position to take (Peter Whener terms it: "What a perfectly post-modern approach to things").

Of course, for America, I feel sorry.  If it leading politicians and policy makers really don't care about looking backward, I can assure that country's citizens that you'll never know what could be coming at you even if you are looking at it front and forward.

And that has implications for us, too.

______________

Barry Rubin just sent me his thoughts:

...the motive of an attack is always important...the motive is somewhat different and extraordinarily important:

--To promote Islamist revolution by hitting at the United States, thus showing America is weak and can be defeated as a way to inspire more to engage in violence and revolutionary activity...

 --To show that terrorism works in injuring the enemy and thus is superior to what others do, including the political maneuvering and mass base building...

...The Obama Administration wants to bury this analysis because it calls attention to the threat of revolutionary Islamism and, in the last case, to the negative aspects of its own Libya policy...

....apologies and concessions will only persuade the Islamists and a large sector of the local population that the United States is weak, can be defeated, and therefore attacks should be escalated.

 

^

Throw Out 'Left-Right'; Let The Patient Die

Haaretz hosted a piece by one of the regular guest columnists, Dr. Lev Grinberg, a political analyst and senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University in sociology and currently at Berkley, which I haven't seen in translation yet, if ever He has been a troublemaker for sometime and more.

Here is a section in the Hebrew:

את המחנות הפוליטיים החדשים צריך להקים לא על פי ההנגדה השבטית של "שמאל-ימין", של תומכי השלום מול מתנגדיו. השדה הפוליטי היום צריך להיות מוגדר כמאבק בין תומכי הדמוקרטיה למתנגדיה. יש בו מקום לוויכוחים בתוך המחנה וייתכנו כמה מפלגות.

Which should be:

The new political camps that need be set up should not be done in the model of tribal "left - right" opposition, of the supporters of peace vs. its opponents. Today the political field should be defined as a struggle between the supporters of democracy and its opponents. There is room for debate within the camp and there could be several parties.

That comes on the background of his antithesis to the Israeli Left which he views so:

בהקשר המקומי "השמאל" הוא חוד החנית של ההתיישבות, המתבססת על גזל הקרקעות הפלסטיניות, הוא אחראי למיסוד הכיבוש ולעידוד ההתנחלות. בדרך נרמסה הדמוקרטיה והתמסדה "דמוקרטיה כובשת", מודל קולוניאלי מקורי תוצרת הארץ.

In the local context, "Left" is the cutting edge of settlement that is based on theft of Palestinian land, is responsible for formalizing the occupation and the encouragement of settlement. On the way, democracy has been trodden under and "occupying democracy", an original colonial model made-​​in-Israel, has been institutionalized.

He speaks of:

ושני עקרונות יסוד של הדמוקרטיה: ריבונות המדינה והשוויון בין האזרחים. כך נוסד משטר הפריווילגיות המכונה מדינה יהודית ודמוקרטית. "השמאל" הוא זה שהפלה, ניצל והשפיל את היהודים שעלו מארצות ערב בשל נחיתותם התרבותית "הערבית". "השמאל" המודרני המערבי מתנשא כלפי כל מה שנתפש בעיניו כפרימיטיבי, כלומר, לא מודרני "כמונו": הדת והאיסלאם, המזרחים, הערבים והחרדים.

...two fundamental principles of democracy: state sovereignty and equality among citizens. Thus was established a regime of privileges known as a Jewish and democratic state. "Left" is what discriminated, exploited and humiliated the Jews who emigrated from Arab countries because of their "Arab" cultural inferiority. The modern Western "Left" holds itself superior to everything perceived as primitive, i.e., not modern "like us": religion and Islam, Orientals, Arabs and Haredim.

His solution?

צריך לתת לחולה הזה למות.

We but need let this patient die.

and

לא צריך לא "שמאל" ולא "ימין", מושגים המטשטשים את כל הוויכוחים הענייניים על כלכלה, על חברה, על תרבות, על זכויות אזרח ועל הפרדת דת ממדינה.

We need neither "left" nor "right", concepts which blur the core arguments about economics, society, culture, civil rights and the separation of religion from the state.

Have you a child or relative or friend at Ben-Gurion U. or Berkley who may have this person as a lecturer?

^

The Deconstruction That Is Dangerous

The movie Bulworth is hilarious. Warren Beatty plays it with aplomb and obvious inside comprehension.  In it, the Bullworth character says:

All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep f*ckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color.

Now, with my comprehension, that applies to the philosophy of our post-modern, progressive, radical humanist forces.

And Israel, with all its Zionist roots as the modern expression of a 3000+ year old Jewish nationalism, stands in the way of their plan, more than any other religion and ethnic uniqueness.

Think about that.

^