January 04, 2009
Having already received several frantic notes about Taki’s comments concerning Israel’s campaign against armed Hamas members and other targets in the Gaza region, perhaps I should go public before these mounting inquiries get out of hand. In the case of Taki’s sworn enemy Larry Auster, there may be nothing that I could possibly say to placate his Achilles-like wrath. Larry scolds even the Israeli Right for their timid Zionism. In his oft-stated view, the Jewish state should have already expelled or killed all of the Arabs under its control, but their own politicians have held it back. Moreover, Larry has told me more than once, that, if I were indeed a friend of Israel, I would keep my distance from this website. The fact that I have been professionally marginalized at an advanced age by both Lefts, that is, the neocon and the less obnoxious Left, should not even matter. If I were acting properly, I would happily write just for myself (or perhaps for myself, my two pet dogs, my grandson, and our cleaning lady). At the very least I should have cut off my ties to that evil Greek socialite who funds our website. He is an anti-Semite who foams at the mouth, the proof of which is that he dared to compare the Israeli attack on Gaza to the Nazis” assault on the Warsaw Ghetto.
Although my sympathies in the current military confrontation are generally with the Israelis (my son-in-law’s parents, who live near Ashdod, are in Hamas’s missile range), I find nothing appalling about the offending observation. The Israeli Left routinely makes the same charge against Israeli hawks, and my wife, after having read Taki’s screed, confessed she was “entirely in agreement.” The first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, repeatedly invoked the Nazi comparison in his remarks about Menachem Begin. It seems that Begin’s rightwing Zionist faction (to which Rahm Emmanuel’s father belonged) took aid from the Nazis against the British during World War Two.
My older son drew the same comparison that Auster slammed Taki for making in a phone conversation with me yesterday. And he seemed equally steamed up over Middle Eastern affairs. But my middle daughter, who is married to the Israeli officer whose parents live within Hamas’s missile range, naturally takes a very different view. To give my own two cents: The Israelis are justified in going after an enemy that broke a cease-fire by showering Israel’s inhabitants with missiles. On this general point I can”t blame them. Unfortunately the residents of Gaza live in squalid, impoverished conditions, and neither the Israelis nor the Egyptians want them to leave that squalor, if they intend to go to either country. I fully sympathize with those who are reluctant to take in a population rife with terrorists and violent agitators, but I”ve no idea how this situation can be improved as long as the people who are now being pounded remain isolated, without employment, electricity or running water.
But the major problem I and others have with Israel is its American well-wishers, that is, the neocons and “movement conservatives” who are defending it. The pro-Israeli propaganda emanating from the usual shriekers and sycophants has become so nauseating that my stomach turns every time that my wife turns on FOX (I no longer take the initiative in doing so) or every time that I am foolish enough to open up the New York Post. I can”t imagine how even Rahm Emmanuel’s terrorist father could sound more bellicose than that patrician-looking equivalent of John Podhoretz, John Bolton (yes I know that Bolton’s dad was a Baltimore fireman), or that moronic imitator of minicon ranting Sean Hannity.
But the ones who never fail to take the cake for Zionist hysteria are the columnists Ralph Peters and Victor Davis Hanson, noise-polluters for whom any critic of any Israeli action at any time is showing the “usual anti-Semitism.” Peters and Hanson are into their customary practice of inspiring the Israelis with examples of other democracy-boosting in the past, such as the unloading of atomic weapons on the “Japanese militarists.” Hanson, as Tom Piatak reported yesterday, already has the Israelis locked in mortal combat with “religious fascists.” Can the invocation of Sherman’s march to the sea, the incarceration of Japanese-Americans or the war against Kaiser Bill be close behind?
If these should be my allies in a campaign against Taki, I”ll leave them to Larry Auster, as people whom he should get to know better. From my observations it seems that the “conservative movement” has ostracized him as much as they have me. For all of his invectives against Israel’s enemies, the most impassioned Zionist war-hawks in the US, next to himself, will have nothing to do with poor Larry. This should send him a message (but I doubt that it will) that it is better to disagree amicably with Taki than to try to please our real enemies. Those enemies lead zombie armies that are not allowed to think for themselves on issues that matter.
