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The horrific scenes of missile strikes on residential areas and hospitals in Israel should make us shudder twice: Once for the death and destruction we see in the videos, and again for ourselves, as we catch a glimpse of our own future.
Developments in drone and missile technology have changed the face of warfare and terrorism, and blurred the line between the two. You don’t need a trillion-dollar military budget to afford these weapons. Any Tom, Dick, or Ahmed can acquire and stockpile them. When they are launched in huge quantities, there appears to be no airtight defense. The Arab states and the various terrorist gangs of the Middle East have always enjoyed a number of advantages over Israel that stem from the asymmetrical nature of the conflict. The first is that the Arabs (and the current Iranian regime) make no distinction between military and civilian targets/combatants. They can therefore use drones and missiles as instruments of terror, as they did from Gaza (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hizbollah). And they never have to fear that Israel will turn around and do the same to them. It has never happened, despite the phony mise en scène by the Arabs and their sympathizers in the West. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has assured the Iranian people that the war is being fought against the regime, not against them. Could you imagine an Iranian leader making such a statement? They can’t even bring themselves to acknowledge the Israelis as citizens of a country, or even as human beings. It’s always the “Zionist entity,” populated by the evil Jew infidels. Another key advantage derived from the asymmetrical nature of the conflict is that the Israelis, since 1948, are fighting to survive; the Arabs are fighting to destroy. The Jewish state has always been one defeat away from annihilation, whereas nobody seriously fears that Egypt or Jordan or Iran will be wiped off the face of the earth, their inhabitants massacred. This asymmetry, combined with the overwhelming advantage in land mass and population, means that the Arabs and Iran can expend their resources on terror, without having to worry too much about military effectiveness, strictly speaking. No matter what happens, no matter how irrational and tactically unsound their behavior, they will still be here tomorrow. The Israelis, obviously, do not have that luxury. Throughout the history of the Arab-Israel conflict, after the Israelis conquer a bit of territory, they almost always withdraw. Every instance, such as their relinquishing of the Sinai peninsula as part of the Camp David accords, has proven to be a monumental blunder. In 1982, Israel flushed the PLO out of southern Lebanon, held the territory for a number of years, and then pulled out. Hizbollah, backed by Iran, filled the void. We all know the result. Gaza, the site of numerous wars and operations to stamp out the terror apparatus, was also relinquished, as a key element of the Oslo “peace accords” fiasco. It took about a week to see where that was going. It is impossible to conclude sustainable treaties or “deals” in this environment. Americans, generally having no personal experience of the Middle East, can be excused for considering such folly. But what about the Israelis? Why do they repeatedly fall into the trap, only to get burned every time? I would say it is a combination of unrelenting international pressure; the machinations of their own Leftist Establishment; high sensitivity to casualties; and sheer exhaustion, compounded over decades of confrontation with their violent, fanatical antagonists. Israelis pretend that peace is possible, or else hope to buy a few years worth of quiet with each concession, knowing in the back of their minds that the Arabs will inevitably revert to form. North America and Western Europe are now facing an existential challenge with eerie similarities. On both continents, there is an alarming growth of extraterritoriality for ethnic enclaves within the boundaries of the host countries. In Europe, the Muslim takeover is accelerating. In America, we are inundated with hostile foreign populations; the current flash point is an irredentist movement, La Raza, with its stronghold in southern California. We are rapidly approaching a regime of de facto autonomy. In Los Angeles, an enormous district of illegal aliens has formed, becoming a city-within-a-city in which the nominal civil authority dare not flex its muscles. The inhabitants of this dominion (and their enablers) were shocked that the Trump Administration attempted to enforce American sovereignty on what the separatists consider to be their exclusive territory. In other words, we are seeing the emergence of our own Gaza. Following the playbook of the perpetually seething Palestinian Arabs, the Aztlanistas can transform themselves into a violent mob at the drop of a hat. Moreover, they do not distinguish between random, innocent civilians, and agents of the American government; are supported and funded by the Left and the mainstream propaganda organs; and have a conduit to the world via a nearby sympathetic nation that lies beyond the international border. It is not far-fetched to imagine a Hamas-style invasion of American neighborhoods, and this time around, not just looting of businesses and blocking of highways—disruptive and intolerable as this is—but rather wholesale slaughter of anyone caught in the human wave. It is also not a stretch to imagine drones and light missiles being launched from within the La Raza enclave, or from just across the border in Mexico. The same could easily happen in Europe, where autonomous zones for the savages are even more deeply entrenched. When the escalation arrives, will we negotiate with the terrorists, try to make deals, perhaps formalize some aspect of autonomy, desperately hoping, like the Israelis, to buy a few years of peace and quiet? However the Iran situation plays out, when U.S. involvement winds down, Mr. Trump needs to reconvene his National Security Council in the “situation room,” but this time to supervise a military campaign to clean out southern California. And I don’t mean deployment of the National Guard to protect federal property; I’m talking air strikes and all the rest—a war, a real war, to expel the invaders. Lord, give our leaders strength. When you cede territory to implacable enemies who seek your destruction, the results are predictable. As in Israel, so it is in Europe and America. It can happen here.
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“Long after this agreement [1993 Oslo Accords], which is the first step and not more than that, believe me, there is a lot to be done. The jihad will continue. Jerusalem is not for the Palestinian people. It is for all the Muslim nation, all the Muslim nation. You are responsible for Palestine and for Jerusalem before me.”
—Yasir Arafat, 10 May 1994, speech to Muslim leaders in Johannesburg, South Africa In several posts (particularly here and here), I pointed out that the Trump Administration has failed to establish its authority; or, looking at it from a different angle, the President has been unable to seize the power of the presidency.
At this juncture, seizing the power of the presidency might be a nearly insurmountable task. One major reason: too many people are in on the grift that Mr. Trump was elected to dismantle. How can you battle the Leftist Establishment, and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, when such an enormous segment of the population is dependent on it; nay, thrives on it? Let’s face it: America is becoming a Third World country, complete with crumbling infrastructure, banana-republic levels of debt, low trust, and rampant corruption. In years past, when considering the plague of shady dealings in most areas of the globe, I thought: Can’t anything be done about this? Couldn’t a few people be arrested, as an example? Later, as I sojourned in some of these places, it didn’t take long to realize that the corruption was endemic. Everyone was doing it. In many cases, they didn’t have a choice. If bribery is the only way to get things done, you bribe. If using false weights and measures is the only way for your business to survive, you falsify. And so on. In America, the vast majority depend on the “gubmint” gravy train, financed by ever-escalating debt. This applies to almost every sector and social class. Welfare, food stamps, and other direct transfers are just the tip of the iceberg. What appears to be a functioning economy, with real people doing real jobs, is mostly just an enormous charade in which government money is sloshing from trough to trough. Even Bitcoin is now dependent on Uncle Sam. Ditto for the stock market and the banks. Leviathan produces almost nothing of value. In fact, much of its activity involves placing obstacles in the way of value creation. You could chop every single component of the machine in half, and it would make no difference to the production of anything that people actually need. Is it any wonder that so many are apoplectic as DOGE turns over one rock after another, exposing the unbelievable fraud that permeates the system? As Elon Musk and his merry band of detectives must surely have realized, the fraud is the system. They found a house infested with termites, to such an extent that there is almost no wood remaining; the structure has become a stack of termites. Aided by this equivalency (system = fraud), various “empires” have developed within Leviathan. These are independent fiefdoms of grift that sometimes clash, but more often, it’s one hand washes the other. You let me develop an entire charity industry to “help” illegal aliens, and I let you launder billions through Ukraine. I let you expand student loans to finance your neo-Marxist woke university brainwashing factories, and you let me siphon billions from the public purse for my wind-power scam. All the while, the mainstream propaganda outlets grease the wheels. No single entity is in charge of this monstrosity. All the lines are blurred. Function ceases to coincide with offices and titles. Thus we have judges appointing themselves president, and Lindsay Graham appointing himself secretary of state. And they do so with impunity. I have lamented, on several occasions, that none of the Establishment criminals from the Biden regime, or those who currently are engaged in the slow-motion coup d’état, have been arrested or prosecuted. Now I am beginning to understand the dilemma: When everyone is crooked, law enforcement is well-nigh impossible. In our case, we’re talking about the entire Establishment. If you incarcerate a handful of the chief troublemakers, the rest of them will respond with even more sabotage and treason. I am not justifying the limp response of the White House. Rather, I would say that the people and methods employed during Trump 2.0, impressive though they be, have been inadequate to the task. And considering the ball of fire in which the Administration launched its campaign to clean the Augean stables, we may conclude that success would require an even greater force, activated by personnel (and circumstances) that have yet to appear on the scene. This mismatch of task and personnel reminds me of the scene in The Godfather, in which Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) explains to Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) the decision to replace him as top advisor (“consigliere”): “You're not a wartime consigliere, Tom. Things may get rough with the move we're trying.” Our current president also, despite his many talents, is not a wartime consigliere. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump at some point is going to have to put his foot down, and start taking chances. Otherwise, he may find himself impeached, incarcerated, and possibly worse. The brazen usurpation of executive power by the judges and Mr. Graham is bad enough, but the open rebellion by the state and local authorities in California, challenging the legitimacy of American sovereignty in their jurisdictions, crosses all boundaries of tolerance. It is certainly the equivalent of any act that was considered sedition in the runup to the Civil War. The leader of a country cannot allow this type of precedent to stand, and expect longevity, either political or personal. Nothing will change in this country until we see seditious state and local government officials led away in handcuffs. Otherwise, they have no incentive to desist from their subversive activities. They are seen by their supporters as heroes, and championed as such by the propaganda outlets. It’s all fine and good to send in the National Guard and Marines to quell the riots. But the madness will continue, in one form or another, until the Administration gets serious about ending the ongoing insurrection, of which the Los Angeles intifadah is only the most recent and brutal stage. A key part of the needed strategy is the imposition of consequences on the ringleaders. Real, personal, painful consequences. Our national edifice of corruption is not the most evil in the history of the world, but it is certainly in the running for the largest. Is it impossible to fix? I don’t know. Perhaps the termites must complete their job, so that the house can be rebuilt from the ground up, with a wartime consigliere at the helm. All of Mark Steyn’s articles and podcasts are full of incisive analysis and blazing wit. But his Clubland Q&A installment from June 4th is particularly brilliant, as he covers “a range of topics from the dawn of Pride Season to the death of nations.” Worth a listen (audio only).
Something that has irked me of late, while reading or listening to certain elements within the “conservative” (non-Leftist) alternative media, is the assertion that it is somehow courageous to come out of hiding, as it were, and dare to criticize Israel. The Left engages in this exercise all the time, but in recent years the phenomenon has spread to unlikely precincts.
To grasp the full depth of this charade, let us take a step back in time. I spent most of the 1980s and 90s working in the realm of international relations, much of it focused on Middle East affairs. During that era, I began my day by perusing the New York Times, glancing at the headlines, reading full articles as needed. (And yes, I became an expert in the “subway fold.”) This is what everyone did, because the Times really was the newspaper of record. Many collegial conversations began with “did you see the article in the Times….?” What struck me most about that esteemed publication was the constant badgering of Israel, in every way, shape, and form imaginable. Every single day, one could see an article, usually on the front page, decrying some grave transgression committed by the evil Israelis. Because of my work and travels, I knew that the allegations ranged from manipulated half-truth to outright fabrication. This treatment also was the rule for almost the entirety of the American and European media. From John Chancellor and NBC’s scandalous coverage of the 1982 Lebanon war, to the whitewashing of Yasir Arafat’s jihadist rhetoric just after signing the Oslo “peace” accords, to the Muhammed al-Dura affair (2000), and beyond, mainstream media outlets in the West have functioned as the propaganda arm of the Arab world. Then there is the United Nations. With their Israel obsession, one would think that there are no other conflicts anywhere, and no region of any interest other than the Middle East. Israel-bashing developed into a cottage industry, involving many of the infamous NGOs that sponsor mischief and mayhem worldwide. UNRWA is only one of a multitude of corrupt and nefarious actors. Then there is academia. I noticed, back in the day, a pattern emerging in the organization of university panel discussions on the Arab-Israel conflict. Typically, there would be a four-person panel: Someone to take the Israeli side; another for the Arab side; a representative of the clergy or some touchy-feely NGO; and a policy wonk, usually from a think tank, sometimes from the media or State Department. Inevitably, the pro-Israel representative would be alone in arguing his case, as the Arab and the two “non-partisan” speakers united in their condemnations of Israel. It never failed. The universities became incubators for every flavor of anti-Israel agitation, egged on by the neo-Marxist professoriate. Small wonder that recently, “elite” college students took a break from jeremiads about climate change and the Trumphitler to become mouthpieces for the most bloodthirsty organization on the face of the earth. Much of this can be explained by the dominance of the Left. They took their cue from the USSR, which beginning in the 1960s lent its prestige and resources to the Arab campaign. Israel is considered by the Left to be the oppressor par excellence because the state was founded as a European-style parliamentary democracy, with the leadership looking rather “white,” facing off against “people of color” who are particularly degenerate and violent. It would be strange indeed if the latter did not become the darlings of the Left; a poster-child of “oppression.” Despite this massive international campaign lasting decades, we now hear assertions that it is taboo to criticize Israel. It is easy to recognize the classic Leftist playbook. The Palestinian Arabs, in their portrayal as the eternal victim, are analogous to the George Floyd story. They all behave as depraved criminals; when the authorities finally put their foot down, well, it is racism, fascism, Nazis, and all the rest. Parroting the “poor oppressed Palestinians” narrative is tantamount to endorsing the core principles of the Left. In fact, when I hear “our” people doing this, I begin to question their conservative bona fides. Sometimes, you scratch a little, and find a Leftist trapped in a conservative body. The Arab-Israel conflict offers the perfect opportunity to satisfy one’s inner Leftist, to weep for the supposed downtrodden, at little or no cost to one’s overall political image. Even in Israel, it is daunting to be pro-Israel. People in the U.S. are not aware of how influential and nasty the Leftist Establishment is over there. I laugh when I hear that Prime Minister Netanyahu exercises control over various aspects of U.S. foreign policy—he doesn’t even control Israeli foreign policy! The veto power of the American Deep State over the actions of President Trump, acquired through the judiciary and other mechanisms, is child’s play compared to the equivalent game in Israel. Sometimes we hear that “Tel Aviv” (or the “Israel lobby”) controls U.S. foreign policy, or at least Mideast policy. According to this line of thinking, all U.S. wars in the region are fought for the benefit of Israel. Any serious student of U.S. Mideast policy knows that the heavy hitters in this arena are (in no particular order): American defense contractors; the Pentagon; the State Department; Saudi Arabia; the oil industry; and the ideologues of the far Left, embedded everywhere. What Israel or its supporters in the U.S. want or need is an afterthought. It should be mentioned that the pro-Israel movement, especially within the American Jewish community, is famously inept at getting its message across, in part because of the time and money spent fighting off the influence of the woke zeitgeist by which it is surrounded. While the anti-Israel side goes for the jugular with no compunction, the supporters of Israel hem and haw, producing “talking points” that will not “alienate the moderates.” My objection is not to criticism of Israel. Have at it, I say; make your case and present your facts. Love the country, hate it, or be indifferent to its fate. The sticking point is the nauseating spectacle of moral preening, wearing the mantle of “courage” in breaching the alleged wall of censorship. The preening includes bouts of hand-wringing and exaggerated sighs, together with insistence that they have nothing against Jews or Israelis, but “we can no longer be silent.” Well, if the past fifty years have been silent, what does noise look like? If these brave souls were to parade through London, the campus of Harvard University, or Boulder, Colorado, would they feel safer flying the Israeli flag or the Hamas flag? Which takes more guts? And if you worked for the Associated Press, or the BBC, or at the Quai d’Orsay, how long would your employment last if you defended an Israeli military action in Gaza or Lebanon? When it comes to “conservatives,” perhaps all the hand-wringing is the result of their conscience rebelling at the adoption of a stance fundamentally at odds with the core principles of conservatism, and indeed of common sense. Or maybe there is some residual embarrassment over aligning themselves with the most villainous ideological forces of the modern era. |
Dystopian literatureWelcome to the blog! While you're here, check out the six dystopian novels by Gary Wolf. His latest is The Cubist Supremacy. 
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