‘Palestinianism’, not Iran, is the greatest threat to Israel. The answer is not geopolitics of regional accords, it’s the defense of the land and its borders against an enemy that lies within them.
Daniel Greenfield |
“And a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” Exodus 1:8
Every country fights Islamic terrorism alone. What should have been a world war against a common enemy has become a lonely battle in which each country strives separately against a global threat. And within each country, individuals have been abandoned by their governments to face sudden death.
This is not just Israel’s story. It is all our stories. But it is most clearly seen in Israel.
Jews tend to view this as antisemitism and it’s often in the mix. But it’s not just antisemitism. It’s cowardice. The world powers, old and new, recruit their own Jihadists, form their dirty deals for oil and blood, and sell each other out. That they sell out Israel is a given. What else would you expect of people who sell out their own children to grooming gangs and let mosques rise in every one of their cities?
The blood was hardly dry on the streets of the French Quarter before we had all officially moved on for the hundredth time. And there is every reason to think that we will go on moving on for the foreseeable future. People wait for some fundamental wake-up call that will break with the old corrupt blindness.
For now at least they have waited in vain.
Insurgent politicians arise, talking big, but offer only differences of style not substance.
The Surrender to Hamas Deal is a bipartisan betrayal of Israel in which the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration got together to throttle Israel and demand that it accept a Hamas deal, overseen by its state sponsor Qatar, trading thousands of terrorists for hostages, live or dead, abandoning Gaza, and allowing Hamas under a fake ‘technocratic’ government to take it over again. Followed by an extended reconstruction that the United States will be paying for.
This is not “peace through strength”, it’s “war through weakness”. It demonstrates once again that if Islamic terrorists take hostages, keep fighting and have their allies run information campaigns, they will win even if they lose. The Surrender to Hamas Deal sells out American interests along with Israeli ones. The next step is the Hamas-PLO unity government put together under Chinese and Russian aegis in Beijing and Moscow since Oct 7 which the United States will now have to arm, fund and recognize.
America has once again sold out allies and empowered enemies. The message once more is that it’s better to be our enemies than our friends. And that the best possible strategy is to be a terrorist.
The old boys and the new boys in D.C. got together to carry out the same policy. When it came down to it, the only differences were style, not substance. And the policy is surrendering to Islamic terrorism. That has implications beyond Israel. And those implications are catastrophically bad for America.
“Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim/That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him/’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back/And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac,” Bob Dylan sang a long time ago in Neighborhood Bully.
That may have been the old Israel. The one that dismissed the UN as ‘Oom Shmoom.’ The new Israel, the one of Netanyahu and Start-Up Nation. The one that sees Hasbara as an existential strategy cares very much. It waits around for someone to take its side and to see that truth that Dylan sang. It spends so much time arguing with the world that eventually it loses its belief in its own rightness. And gives in.
Then it waits once more for global support that will never come.
The old Israel understood that leaders who sell out their own countries to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and that ilk can hardly be expected not sell out Israel. It isn’t that they’re antisemites. They can hardly be expected to do for Israel what they will not do for America, England and France.
The old Israel understood that it had to stand alone because no one would stand with it. Knew that it had to believe in itself because no government, whatever promises were made during election campaigns at rubber chicken dinners, would stand with it.
The new Israel keeps winning wars and losing faith. It waits for a better day, but no better day is coming. And unless the world wakes up and fights back, the demographic trends and political radicalization will not make the western world any friendlier to Israel.
The early days of January should have made it finally clear that there is nothing to wait for. Perhaps the day will come when an American government wakes up and takes a stand against Islamic terrorism.
And perhaps the L-rd and all His angels will sweep the enemy from the field.
It is difficult to know which day will come sooner.
This Shabbat, Jews all over the world will read the story of Exodus or Shemos which begins with the rise of a new Pharaoh who does not know Joseph. That Pharaoh dies and the Jews welcome the news of a new ruler. But when their enslavement does not change, they cry out to G-d as they never had before because now they know not to put their trust in any prince. Now they know that their one king is G-d.
And then G-d hears. And then G-d acts.
For now Israel stands alone. It stands faced with a crisis caused by a generation of giving in to pressure from D.C. politicians. The process that began with Prime Minister Shamir agreeing to take back Hamas terrorists and negotiate, however indirectly, with the PLO over a Palestinian State, that continued with the Oslo Accords, the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, negotiation after negotiation, that has nurtured, armed and created an enemy state inside Israel is the greatest threat to its survival.
‘Palestinianism’, not Iran, is the greatest threat to Israel. The answer is not geopolitics of regional accords, it’s the defense of the land and its borders against an enemy that lies within them.
Israel, like America and Europe, has fallen for the absurd internationalist nonsense that the primary problem is to cope with international affairs in international forums rather than to clean house.
In America and Europe that means mobs of migrants flooding across the border while their governments are concerned about geopolitical problems. In Israel that meant treating the Abraham Accords like the greatest thing since Sinai while ignoring the enemy armies preparing across the border in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have spent too long looking to America for hope when they should have looked to their own people. The future of Israel does not lie in making apps or in lobbying D.C., but in the communities where armed family men stand watch against the enemy, backed up by the IDF and Border Police. And if there is any hope to be found for confronting Islamic terror, it will not be in D.C., but in those small communities.
And perhaps out of those small villages will come the hope of not only Israel, but the world.
https://www.jns.org/before-after/
Trump shared that video to signal his important supporters that he is not subservient to Netanyahu or to the “Jewish lobby”.
Collect 2 sets of photos from the Web – Trump with Netanyahu and Trump with the Arabs (or anyone else he has to please) this will show you whether Trump likes Netanyahu.
How important Israel is to the US:
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/henry-kissinger-to-iraq-in-1975-we-can-reduce
Why does everyone talk about American presidents as though they are Roman emperors – Titus does this, Caracalla does that?
“Presidents are selected, not elected” FDR – it is all agreed upon beforehand.
Personally, I think that the Government of Israel is in on it – meaning – there is an agreement at the very top to destroy the Jewish State by boiling the frog slowly – by slow deceit.
This is the only way I can understand the RAH-RAH-RAH!!! We will not stop until the enemy is defeated! attitude changing 180 degrees in a couple of days into a shameful and, likely, irreversible defeat.
Let’s see whether Netanyahu will be called to testify again in court.
Dreuveni
“Coming back to the article, we should remember the reports from the Gaza envelope, which reported that those villages, kibutzim, etc were left defenseless before 10.07 because they could not be trusted with small-arms which could have made a big difference. Those safety rooms which are a requirement everywhere could have been defended with similar means to the protection provided to the Merkava personal transporter. These people were sitting ducks.”
That says it all
It shows me that the Israeli people were thrust into war operations with so many obvious questions ignored
At best that’s mental torture
You could have had the phone lines opened to consult the public
And a quick report after a month including proof of the deed to draw the lessons by saying five good brains
That done and dusted in three weeks max
The main things listed
Here a stones throw from Gaza and arms banned
While the judiciary hounded Netanyahu…for accepting a gift of CIGARS
Trying to get across the evil unreality of the hounding of Netanyahu
The main conclusions max 20
Printed copy to every citizen
That’s what Trotsky did… prepared the ground for the war
And who would be fighting to risk their life…all responsible…I have a list including Fergal Keane of the Irish Times. Keane in the tunnels
@peloni
My comment posted (thank you) but it is awaiting moderation.
Why is my comment awaiting moderation?
What’s wrong with it?
I forgot to avoid certain words but other people are allowed to use them.
@Reader
Done.
@peloni
My comments quit posting.
Please print them.
@Sebastian Zorn
Israel is not a socialist country, in fact, every country that tried “building socialism” has failed.
Israel no longer has a safety net, their fund (forgot the name of it – the equivalent of the US Social Security) is exhausted, their medical care expenses increasingly depend on private insurance companies which often have limits on age and preexisting conditions, the rents are sky high, the real estate is very expensive, its politicians wish to bring in huge European supermarkets “to increase competition and to cut prices” (and, logically, to run the local store owners out of business), the kibbutzim are all privatized, the farmers export their best produce, a Jew cannot hope to get a medical degree in Israel, etc., etc.
You didn’t have to lecture me on Netanyahu’s biography and on how the poor darling makes no money (except, in case you don’t know, the government spends tens of millions of $$ on his two villas in Israel called Prime Minister’s residences, on the Netanyahu family’s travels, and on taking care of his son in Miami, Florida).
I also have his father’s book The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain and I have read all of its 1,385 pages.
I also know that his father said that Bibi will make a good Finance Minister but not a Prime Minister, and that Netanyahu wrote a letter to Arafat a couple of weeks after his father died.
@fquigley
Greenfield may be a neocon – I don’t follow his writings, and I agree with you about some things in his article but the rest of the article is right, and this is the most important part of it.
And this part is something that every Jew must understand ASAP.
Coming back to the article, we should remember the reports from the Gaza envelope, which reported that those villages, kibutzim, etc were left defenseless before 10.07 because they could not be trusted with small-arms which could have made a big difference. Those safety rooms which are a requirement everywhere could have been defended with similar means to the protection provided to the Merkava personal transporter. These people were sitting ducks.
@Peloni Logged in with my NY Public library credentials but blank pages after 206. Got the other one recommended in its entirety about mysteris of 67 war? Both argued that it as all a misunderstanding and Nasser was blameless. Gee, I seemto recall something about his threat to push the Jews in to the sea. The disingenuous Pals in the U.S. in the ’80s said it as Nasser who said that,not them, heaven forfend!
Footnotes include father and son writers Alex and Leslie Cockburn, famous Marxsts.
I remain skeptical.
When you analyse carefully your last statement nothing is true in it.
It is in particular devoid of history.
The whole long process of the Chinese Revolution was always inspired by the Russian Revolution, as it did to the poor of the whole world
Even to Ireland
Certainly to America which is lamentably hidden but seen in the film Reds. A wonderful film with much detail.
It is in the interest of the capitalist class to lie and distort the revolution which destroyed them.
But everything becomes distorted by Stalinism including ALSO regarding china
The MAGA an ignorant movement of ignorant people never talks about such things
Tucker and Candice are examples of very huge ignorance
@fquigley
Russia and China have a long and unfriendly relationship going back centuries. This is a simple fact.
As to my dislike of China, I will note that China is to be admired for its ability to corrupt great nations, even those far greater than itself, to do its bidding, leveraging undue influence upon key figures to hollow out those corrupted nations, as China rises high on the shoulders of giants which it leaves disfigured and deformed in its wake.
While it is better to get along with China than to go to war with it, it stands as a rising threat which must be checked, and this is a key point which Trump will be faced with achieving. Is it any mystery as to why Trump is threatening Panama and Greenland, while coercing Canada? It is to rid these lands of Chinese infiltration, for which I strongly applaud him for doing.
Peloni
Your hatred shown very often to China is the essence of being a Neocon
You are a Neocon
To put it more graphically would Lenin and Trotsky have seen unity with China as a “bitter pill” !!!
Whether you like it or not those two leaders are present in these discussions on Israpundit and they are relevant for all time in Jewish discussions and in the future for Jews.
@Sebastien
Politics.
There is a political cost to US leaders being perceived to be the bad guy, and Israel rather than the likes of Sadam Hussein, for instance, was understood to be the good guys in Operation Opera back in 1981.
Notably, this is why Bibi has always remained such a threat to the American political establishment, because he has the means by which to reach the American public like perhaps no other, just as he has the chutzpah to exercise this ability as well.
Of course, with the advent of wholesale election fraud, which is still taking place in the US, such things as public perception fails to provide any deterrent.
By the way, after giving Israel the red light regarding the 6 day war, Johnson gave them a yellow light.
Lyndon Johnson and the June 1967 War: What Color Was the Light?
I don’t have a free access link for this article, but it is very informative.
@Peloni
Ben Gurion declaring independence despite threat of arms embargo and Israel refusing to withdraw from Beersheeva . as the first of the threats ignored with no consequences. Except the first one. My point was that the U.S. did not follow through on mosf its threats. How do you explain the U.S. backing down. The Johnson administration also warned Levi-Eshkol against attacking Egypt pre-emptively in 1967. Ironically it was Senator Johnson who stopped Eisenhower in 1956 as majority leader.
I was responding to your conclusion which seemingly implied Israel must cave to the U.S. or be destroyed by U.S. sanctions. If that were the case what hope would there be?
fquigley
Sorry, but I have no idea what you are asking me to explain.
@Sebastien
In none of these situations did the US bring sanctions against Israel. Eisenhower threatened Israel with sanctions, and Israel withdrew from the Sinai. No one else did prior to Biden. The US used other means by which they threatened and punished Israel, but not with sanctions, and certainly not with severe sanctions, which is what we I was referencing.
Greenfield is reducing it to the Islamic menace.
The story of the war in Ukraine superceded that thesis.
Yes islam is a menace.
But Greenfield used that true fact in order to hide his support for Fascism in the Ukraine War
He is most deceitful.
Why do these Neocons have hatred for Russia?
The only answer…the SUCCESSFUL RUSSIAN BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. The roots of their hatred.
The renegade to social revolution Putin denies that
Sebastien Zorn…this is remarkable that you can still be advancing the false thesis that there was socialism in Israel.
It was a form of Stalinism.
Peloni explain this neocon rubbish and falsification
The Stalinists of Mao and the Stalinists of Russia (Are you aware of their murder of Trotsky and other Trotsky followers by STALINISM?) engaged in division when unity was necessary.
They had every reason to be united.
But their revolutions were different in content. But how do you back up it was a “bitter pill”? It was simply necessary for survival against Neocons of Europe and America.
Peloni explain this neocon rubbish and falsification
The Stalinists of Mao and the Stalinists of Russia (Are you aware of their murder of Trotsky and other Trotsky followers by STALINISM?) engaged in division when unity was necessary.
They had every reason to be united.
But their revolutions were different in content. But how do you back up it was a “bitter pill”? It was simply necessary for survival against Neocons of Europe and America.
PS
Note how they were so different
Mao’s was a peasant revolution. But the revolution of the Bolsheviks was socialist and based on the working class AND on the working class LEADING the peasants
Steven writes the following remarkable analysis
All else is obviously superfluous
In fact the role of trump is so out in the open, also in Israel using Jews to fight to the last Jew. To avenge the murderers and kidnappers of Americans. Worse than NATO in Ukraine.
Good contribution Steven. What would Jews do without geniuses like you!
@Peloni
Nonetheless, from Ben-Gurion to the under-appreciated Levi-Eshkol to Bibi before now, when Israel said,”no” to the U.S., Israel prevailed. How would you explain that?
@Sebastien
True enough. Still, an important lesson to be learned from Russia was that even with its economic preparations which aided its survival of the Neocon Sanctions War waged against it, Russia’s dependency on China, which was a historically bitter pill for it to swallow, was a necessary element which made Russia’s preparations useful. Had it not been successful in finding and organizing with significant trading partners, its economic preparations would have likely failed to save it from the Neocon designs of sewing chaos on the streets of Moscow. Honestly, I don’t know how Israel could long survive a real economic broadside from the US, though developing strong currency policy could help.
By the way, I have always found Bryan to be a fascinating character. The funny thing is that his role in the Monkey Scopes trial was likely the least important role of the various political fights which he took on. In truth, his Free Silver advocacy was his undoing, but he remained a very influential character despite the toxicity which that position tainted him, even playing an important role in delaying US involvement in WWI.
@Reader Israel was socialist from its inception. I read Bibi’s autobiography. He studied and worked in finance in the U.S. before going into politics because he said that he realized the GDP was too low topay for the massive military expenditures Israel would need to make to survive. His father was Jabotinsky’s secretary and a famous historian. His brother fell leading the rescue at Entebbe and he did the same work and almost died. His income as PM is $50,000 a year and he can’t accept gifts worth more than $1200 which they said the cigars were worth. He’s not an advocate of capitalism to line his own pockets, ironically unlike the many advocated of socialism who do.
Jabotinsky was neutral about economics. Whatever contributed to Jewish statehood. I believe in economic safety net, myself, but so does Shas. Left and Right in Israel aren’t about economics.
@Peloni Israel also needs to work on becoming sanctions-proof the way Russia did when it began stockpiling gold and put the ruble on the gold standard. The Federalist Papers warned of dangerous radical panaceas like paper money which was also the signature issue of Williams Jennings Bryan, a leading democrat who campaigned for socialism as a Democrat though the world only remembers Frederic March’s portrayal of him as a religious opponent of Darwin being taught in the film about the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, “Inherit the Wind.” Spencer Tracy played Clarence Darrow.
There was an article about that aspect of Bryan in a recent Column in Frontpage Magazine. Might have been Greenfield.
Don’t give up on DJT!
Reader
There’s nothing to praise or like for Jews in Greenfield who is a stirrer up of the cold war and for imperial war by America war on Russia and China. As for Adam I’ll deal with him later but I say he’s central in israpundit betraying those Jews murdered in endless Pogroms in Ukraine and surrounding areas. Mostly in the Ukrainian Pogrom when a huge number of Jews were murdered. It has been covered up. Easily the biggest cover up ever. Adam is brown nosing Greenfield for his own end which is to support the Nazis in present day UKRAINE…which Jews cannot escape.
“The next step is the Hamas-PLO unity government put together under Chinese and Russian aegis in Beijing and Moscow since Oct 7 which the United States will now have to arm, fund and recognize.”
Greenfield was, is and will forever be a neocon.
@peloni
SIMPLE! (Just kidding)
All that is needed is to go back to the “old, outdated Zionism” which Israel exchanged for seeking the good life by “building capitalism” through idealizing, copying, and being subservient to the United States, its feudal lord.
Israel also must stop selling its startups to the US or any other foreign countries, especially if some of the startups are important to national security.
Right now the Start-Up Nation benefits mostly the United States.
Strangely(?) enough the US has never had the best interests of Israel in mind, and never will.
Personally, I doubt that Israel’s independence from the US is even possible at this point, the US is incredibly involved with everything Israel does, and it feels entitled to dictate to Israel.
@Adam D
Thanks for the article, there are very few people who are able to see thing the way they are.
@Peloni, Israel needs to be independent that is true. I hope you are correct that day is coming where Israel is not too dependent on the USA.
@Shmuel HaLevi
More than leadership, what is needed is independence from the US. As has been made clear throughout this war, Israel is too tightly bound to the US, and she needs the independence from the US to allow her leaders to put Israeli interests first and foremost, particularly when they are not so aligned with that of the US. This day is of course coming, but it is not yet here, and until it is, the US has an undue influence upon whatever leader might come to lead Israel.
Sorry. We need true leadership. The trash filling in the gaps is not worth it. Israel netanyahu signed a deal…. with Islamic Jihad exchanging 33 Israeli dead or alive hostages for 1000 murderers , etc… ? Signed a new MEGA SHALITAZO? Israel lost 870 soldiers and 3000 wounded in exchange for 33? Plus some 140 before. We do not have leaders.
Reservists must seriously reconsider. Let the kaplanists do some lifting.
Agree with you Adam D, very brilliant article by Daniel! Very glad that you suggested that they publish it!
I had suggested to Ted and Peloni yesterday that they republish this brilliant essay by Daniel Greenfield. Probably many other people alerted them to Daniel’s column. Also, they probably noticed it themselves. Even so, I would like to take credit for its republication in Israpundit. Because I always like to take credit for anything I can plausibly take credit for. It boosts my morale.