You might hope that the occasional Palestinian would ask himself why the Israelis value life so much that they’ll trade hundreds of the enemy for one of their own; or rather, why his own side so little values its members. Unfortunately, the question never seems to be asked; instead, these prisoner exchanges only seem to reinforce Palestinian hopes that Jews don’t have the moxie to prevail.

I can’t help but wonder how much of the Israeli government’s appeasement is at the behest of the two US administrations over the last 12 years, Clinton and Bush II. How much pressure was applied to make Sharon (who was at one time a hawk) go through this ridiculous prisoner exchange? Since the US government basically funds Israel, the Israelis pretty much have to do what Washington tells them to do. Like the rest of the Western world, Israelis must reject this deadly poison of liberalism which has infected them. If they don’t, it will be back to the diaspora.

While Americans can deplore this Israeli fecklessness, we aren’t in a terribly strong position to criticize. Our country was wide open to the sort of people who commit these atrocities. Even after September 11th, it still is. A country that continued to give visas to young Arab men to enter the United States for flight training after 19 such young Arabs killed over 3,000 people here in one morning, whose president’s response to Moslem terror attacks is to babble about how Islam is a religion of peace while he pressures our European kinsmen to invite Moslem Turkey into the EU and keeps inviting Grover Norquist to the White House, is not one to give anybody lessons in tough-mindedness.

The Israeli government lets the real terrorists go, while bombing often-empty buildings and mistakenly killing the occasional bystander. The U.S. government makes a great show of knocking off the secular despot Saddam Hussein and bringing Democracy to Iraq, while coddling the Wahhabist Saudis. Neither government is willing to confront the real enemy or even name him, even to themselves. Our enemies know who we are, and they know what they are. Against foes who refuse to see them as they are, it is an incalculable advantage.

We have to ask the same question about Israelis that VFR posters keep asking about Americans: when will they get fed up enough to demand an end to the suicidal liberalism that leads to murder-bombers in Israel and September 11th and mass immigration here? Israelis once had a reputation for being tough and tough-minded. (Remember 1948, 1956, 1967 and the comeback in 1973, as well as Entebbe and the 89-0 air-to-air box score over the Bekaa in 1982.) Where have those Israelis gone? HRS

Israel’s Peculiar Position

In 1968 the LA times ran this article, written by Eric Hoffer, a former longshoreman and non-Jewish American social philosopher. Born in 1902, Hoffer died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Although written 34 years ago, the following is as timely and applicable today as then.

by Eric Hoffer
May 26, 1968

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.

Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

Other nations — when they are defeated — survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on.

There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we did in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to American and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

Speculative is the premise that if Israel is no longer a state controlled by Jewish people, the rest of the world will suffer a holocaust. The West survived 2000 years without a state for Jewish people.

Indeed, the Diaspora might have been a blessing from God to the Jewish people and the rest of the world, both of whom have certainly benefited. The fixation with preserving a piece of ground, Solomon’s temple, almost resulted in the annialation of the Jewish people. Any military man knows fixed defenses are foolish.

One might look to Scotland to show that a small, relatively weak country can maintain a relative independence because of its steadfastness in protecting its land. Another example is America, which beat enormous odds to emerge victorious. The thing that keeps doubt stirring is the uncommon Jewish people face uncommon, perhaps Biblical forces. It is a small country with a small, unreproductive population surrounded by huge countries with huge, reproductive populations.

America and Israel could be such close friends but for the Israeli radical liberalism. (Paradoxically, American conservatives support Israel much more than American liberals.) America could, and maybe should, help Israel achieve military victory over its Arab neighbors, but Israeli liberals, like non-Jewish liberals, don’t want anything to do with such a venture or with helping America with its own border crisis.

I have no fear Jewish people will survive. I do fear terrible suffering by Jewish people.

Mr. Murgos writes:
“Speculative is the premise that if Israel is no longer a state controlled by Jewish people, the rest of the world will suffer a holocaust. The West survived 2000 years without a state for Jewish people.”

True. But there is a Jewish state now. If it is to go that will only be result of such gigantic loss of the world balance that resulting earthquake will make WWII look small.

Mr. Murgos wrote
“Speculative is the premise that if Israel is no longer a state controlled by Jewish people, the rest of the world will suffer a holocaust. The West survived 2000 years without a state for Jewish people.”

1. The Romans dissolved the client Kingdom of Judea in 135 CE. 135-1948 is not 2000 years.
2. The loss of a significan outpost (one of three birthplaces of the West, the others being Athens and Rome) will not destroy the West. However, it will bea symbolic and real defeat. The Muslim world will unify and spread more ardently in Europe.

First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.

Releasing terrorists will always encourage otherterrorists - no matter what the politicians say. The USA has encouraged Israel to take this immoral approach, just like it has encouraged politicians here in Northern Ireland to empty the jails, overturn the rule of law, and let murderers stroll free - care of “peace.”

Democrats everywhere should oppose any compromise with evil - and when they try to be clever and use sleight of hand to cover the traces, it blows up in their faces. Sometimes literally.