Correspondent to LA:

I’m considering writing an article about “At what point is the next chance in terrorism against Israel, the absolute last chance and unforgivable.” One major major incident in America is it, but not in Israel. What do you think?

LA to correspondent:

I see what you’re saying. In the final end, since Israelis’ lives and limbs are just tokens to be paid to satisfy world leftist opinion, only a massive crime against Americans would move the world beyond the leftist spin. Like 9/11. How horrible. But I think you may be right.

Notice that no one seems to be talking about Israel expanding. About a year or so ago, I wrote an e-mail to Daniel Pipes about this. He was kind enough to send a brief reply saying there was indeed a faction in Israel that favored a bigger country (territorially) but they were tiny and politically insignificant, so he hadn’t even mentioned them in the article of his that I was commenting on, which summarized the different political factions there.

To me, the necessity for Israel sooner or later (might as well be sooner) to grow physically is such a no-brainer that listening to discussions which don’t address this inevitability is like listening to endless arguments about how two plus two equals something other than four.

Growing would solve many of Israel’s problems. (Growing territorially is what I’m talking about — not growing industrial-wise, economy-wise, population-wise, or some other wise, though all those will follow the first, of course). Not growing will keep any of her problems from ever being solved.

A billion words of spilled ink since 1948 could have been done away with and replaced with a couple of syllables, given in the form of advice to that country: expand.

When you talk of territorial expansion, the obvious question becomes _how_. The notion of Israel invading surrounding countries, even those that still occupy land that was part of ancient Israel, doesn’t sound likely.

But I wonder if these are the lines that you’re thinking along: The West Bank and Gaza of course were seized as part of _defensive_ operations, after clear warnings by Israel through the U.N. This was entirely legal under long-established international rules of warfare. If a nearby territory is being used as a base from which to launch attacks against your country, you can certainly go and seize that territory. (And in this case especially, where the occupation of each by Jordan and Egypt respectively was arguably illegal itself.)

So what does this mean? Do we conclude that it is in Israel’s best long-term interest for her immediate neighbors to remain hostile toward her? Should she look back toward the Sinai and forget about that Camp David agreement? Should she look for ways to ‘tempt’ or ‘provoke?’ As crazy as this sounds, it seems the most realistic way to effect what you’re suggesting. Frankly, any scenario seems implausible for the present.

However, the prophetic boundaries of Israel certainly are much larger than they are today. And to those who reject the prophetic authority of Scripture, the miraculous rebirth of Israel and her phenomenal military victories against overwhelming odds must already represent quite an embarrassment.

Joel: there are ways. It’s not done overnight. How did we get from Nieuw Amsterdam (about a sixth of Manhattan or whatever it was) and similar specks, to half-a-continent today? Our fairy godmother came and waved her magic wand?

There are lies on the left that are so astoundingly grievous, so unimaginably brazen, that one doesn’t even want to point them out — I don’t know why, one just doesn’t. I don’t, at any rate. It’s as if, in so doing, one’s anger will seethe over or something. In denouncing these lies, one risks losing one’s composure. Just thinking about them and how evil and sickening they are almost turns mild men into the incredible hulk, where he suddenly swells up in sheer anger at outrageous injustice, his indignant bulging body bursting right through his clothes. That’s how sick confronting these lies makes me feel — so I back away from confronting them, they’re so bad.

Here are two of this kind of lie:

1) Anglo-Saxon North America (which is currently rushing willingly — nay, joyously, ecstatically — headlong toward its own everlasting ethno-cultural death solely in order to show it’s not racist) is deeply racist;

2) Israel (which HAS to be world history’s least aggressive nation among those which have actually had enemies, and doesn’t seem to have a clue as to how to assert its strength in its own interest or manipulate friends and enemies both, in its advancement) is a shockingly warlike, cruel, and ruthless aggressor-nation.

I echo Unadorned on the experience of living in a world surrounded by such evil and insane lies.

Since Unadorned mentioned a more positive approach to long-term Israeli survival, here is a systematic plan that was posted as a comment at FrontPage today that offers a very ambitious plan. It does not involve outright expulsion of the Arabs, but totally defeating the PA and terrorist infrastructure, creating new Jewish development in Gaza and other Arab areas, and creating conditions in which the Arabs will start to leave voluntarily. This plan reminds me of what I’ve been saying lately about immigration. The thing is not to aim at, say, the restoration of a 1960 America, but rather to reverse the current momentum, so that non-Western immigrants in the U.S. are decreasing, and the power of the European-American culture is increasing. The change of who is in the ascendancy is the key factor. By the same token, this plan for Israel involves Israel seizing the momentum from the Palestinians.

Since it’s too long to be included in this thread (900 words), I’m putting it in a separate MS Word document at VFR:

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/What%20is%20to%20be%20done.doc

Thanks, Mr. Auster, for that downloadable file. Prof. Paul Eidelberg’s essay is unusual in that it recognizes that Israel will never be allowed to live in peace as long as millions of Arabs live within its borders. Sharon justifies his own perfidy with the excuse that Jews can’t continue ruling over Arabs. Well, the fact is correct, but his policy inference isn’t.

Yet the vast majority of well-meaning commentators can’t bring themselves to look straight-on at the need to encourage Arab emigration. Case in point: David Horowitz (frontpagemag.com) now calls for an expeditionary force of Americans and other foreigners to pacify the Arabs. Among the reasons why this is a bad idea are the following:

1) The countries that are to send soldiers to defend Israelis against the terrorists are the same that are insisting that the terrorists be rewarded by getting their own government a stone’s throw from all of Israel’s population centers. Of course, the “state of Palestine” isn’t described that way. But anyone who believes otherwise might be interested in buying a lovely bridge in my inventory (that includes President Bush).

2) If such an expeditionary force were to do that job, then Israel would be forever beholden to the U. S. and would have to consult our interests when faced with a crisis. It would be even more a protectorate than it is now.

3) Arabs would continue to constitute a large and growing minority of Israel’s population. Would-be mass-murderers would not be discouraged by the chance that Americans and Englishmen would come back and do the job all over again. The taxpayers of the countries sending that expeditionary force wouldn’t stand for it.

Two things are needed if Israel is to survive in peace, and neither seems to have entered into the mind of President Bush, host of Saudi princes at his Texas ranch: first, a total military wipe-out of the terrorist forces in and near Israel, and second, the encouragement of a large minority of the Arab population of Israel (I include Yesha) to emigrate.

It will be pointed out that the surrounding Arab countries have refused to accept the “refugees” of 1948, who continue to live in “refugee camps.” True, but that’s because those countries have used the “refugee” issue to weaken Israel. If Israel takes the two steps summarized above, the Arab countries may finally decide that their old ploy won’t work.

I forgot to add to my previous post that Mr. Horowitz is mistaken in another important respect: Israel itself is perfectly capable of doing the job that he wants a foreign expeditionary force to do. The only reason it hasn’t is American pressure. (The world’s outrage wouldn’t alone deter it.) It’s crucial that Israel’s own force exterminate the terrorists; that would prove Israel’s independence and its ability to protect itself in future without waiting in Washington anterooms for audiences with the ultimate powers, which in the past have proven undependable anyhow.

The Left and other odd-ball animosity toward Israel is never going to disappear — even with all the recent bombings directed at Israeli citizens. This is unfortunate. More unfortunate is the fact that some countries in the West are allowed to go after terrorists while others, like Israel, are not. Does that make sense?

I lived in Israel for about 18 months, and I witnessed a profound culture clash taking place between the Arabs and the Jews. There are a few facts about Israel that go unreported: Israelis love booze, drugs, internet pornography, Feminism, and all things American. Arabs hate these things.

I’m NOT saying that all things American are bad, I’m simply stating that the Arabs have considered what they believe to be the costs and benefits of Western culture, and have decided against it.

There is no doubt that the Arabs will have to change, and to embrace the modern world. At the same time, the Western Press will have to begin reporting the fact that Israel is on the leading edge of what is going to be a long-term culture war.

The fact that so many American children are now self-destructing is a fact that has not gone unnoticed in the Arab world. People love to talk about Islamo-Fascism, (which may be perfectly real), but there are also many millions of moderate Arabs who simply want to protect their children.

Mr. Liebermann brings tidings that are somewhat hard to hear for those, like me, who have tended to picture Israel as a relatively pious country.

The reported clashes between the Orthodox and secular communities in Israel (which apparently have gotten fairly intense, if some of the news reports we’ve seen are an indication) are perhaps easier to understand in light of this post, the more so as an Old-Testament-steeped Orthodox person there might see “love [of] booze, drugs, internet pornography, Feminism, and all things American,” if widespread, as part of the population poisoning the country’s relationship with God for everyone.

I’d be curious to learn what the forces are in that country which would correspond to, let’s say, View From the Right in rejecting those aspects of modernity which are bad, accepting only the others.