More Fake Hate Crimes

Once again, a person associated with a university has been caught faking a hate crime, in this case a Jewish student placing swastikas on her door.

This phenomenon is truly strange. Some people prefer being victims, even imaginary ones, to being themselves. It's a weak version of faking one's own death.

In Dubious Barack

Steve Sailer, bête noire of the Politically Correct, is on a roll.

Here he dissects the would-be Messiah Obama's racial persona, as reflected in is first biography.

Here he ponders the dubious Barack at greater length.

And here he provides a lucid and cant-free take on Jimmy Carter's Israel book. This last post has attracted some commenters (example here) who dwell in the dank cellars of paranoid antisemitism. Were I a cynic (perish the thought!) I'd say that given the penchant of reflexive defenders of Israel to accuse that sorry country's critics of antisemitism instead of engaging their argument, these chthonic beings are sockpuppets of the AIPAC publicity machine. Alas, I think they are the genuine article.

Couch Potato Warmongers

I have explained elsewhere why the emptiness of other measures to stop Iran’s bomb and the terrible consequences that would ensue from a nuclear-armed Iran lead to only one conclusion: military action.

--Joshua Muravchik

Whether the US arrives at its showdown with Iran from a position of weakness or strength, willingly or unwillingly, there is no doubt that the confrontation is approaching. And the difference between initiating the confrontation and allowing Iran to initiate it with a nuclear first strike is not a trivial question. It will make a difference of millions of lives. The question of the hour is therefore whether the little time left before the war is being used wisely.

--Caroline Glick

So, according to The New York Sun (and the sources it cites): (1) financial support from groups like AIPAC is indispensable for presidential candidates; (2) the New York Jewish community of "influential" donors is a key part of the "ATM for American politicians"; (3) the issue which they care about most is Iran; and (4) they want a hawkish, hard-line position taken against Iran. And the presidential candidates -- such as Clinton and Edwards -- are embracing AIPAC's anti-Iran position in order to curry favor with that group.

--Glen Greenwald, citing the New York Sun

Meanwhile, the U.S. has placed a naval commander in overall charge of its operations in the Middle East, and is sending another carrier group to the area. Official chatter points to Iranian involvement in the placement of IEDs in Iraq (as if Iranian support for the Shi'a movements and their militias was some radical new departure). So long as we're in Iran, seizing or killing Iranian elements who are actually fighting us in Iraq, sealing the border and the like, come with the territory, but that's not the issue here.

There is substantial private agitation for an attack on Iran, official justification is being created, and the military groundwork is being laid.

If the naval movements and leaks are part of an elaborate scheme to pressure the Iranians to slow down their nuclear program, well and good. The downside would come if the U.S. actually attacked Iran. Aside from the illegality and injustice of such a move, it would be folly.

Iran has serious economic and political problems, but it's also a proud country with a Great Tradition. An attack would very likely provoke a reaction of national solidarity, and strengthen a régime that's showing signs of weakness. It would also further embroil the U.S. in a region it has shown it understands very little, and where it lacks the will for long-term military involvement. Whether the Iranians could retaliate, interfering with oil shipments and initiating worldwide terror attacks, is uncertain. Indeed, although opponents of an assault on Iran tend to emphasize the risks, the U.S. might just get away with it.

Does the possibility that Iran might acquire a nuclear capacity pose a risk to Israel? To some extent, yes, especially when first-strike capacity will at least initially outweigh second-strike capabilities, thus giving an advantage to the nuclear offense. Does it pose a risk to the United States? Not particularly.

Is the Iranian régime the moral equivalent of Saddam Hussein's tyranny? No way. It's a strange mixture of authoritarian republic and theocracy, with many repressive aspects that are repugnant to us, even disgusting. But it's no worse than dozens of dictatorships in the world today. It's peculiarly Shiite, and does not threaten to expand beyond the Gulf region and Lebanon at the improbable worst.

The U.S. alliance with Israel, whatever one may think of it, exists, but it hardly obliges us to fight an unprovoked aggressive war. The interests of the United States and those of Israel (at least as seen by its most hawkish defenders such as the bloodthirsty Ms. Glick and couch-potato warmongers such as Muravchik) diverge on this point, as on others. Israel, contrary to popular belief, is not the 51st state.

In an election season (one can no longer say "year"), that's something most candidates won't say. To point out the reason, apparently, would be antisemitic, or at least "scurrilous."

Scurrilous?

Obama, the first black candidate with a real chance at the Democratic nomination, intends to present his policy regarding Israel soon, and his staff has been drafting a speech on the subject.

In his speech, Obama intends to remove any doubts that the Democratic Party's donors and constituents, many of whom are Jewish, may have about his support for Israel.

--Shmuel Rosner in Ha'aretz.

Oh yes, where were we?

In their scurrilous polemic “The Israel Lobby,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, professors at the University of Chicago and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government respectively, claim that “the Lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy.”

--Daniel Johnson

Although Sen. Obama will criticize Bush on Iraq in the midst of his platitudinous discourse, he's not dumb enough to criticize U.S. Israel policy.

America First Redux?

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.

No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.

We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.

--Charles Lindbergh, 1941

Larison points to Lindbergh's speech as evidence against the unjust anathematization of a historical figure in order to bash present-day opponents.

Examination of the question of interventionism must bring us sooner or later to the question of World War II and those who opposed American entry before Pearl Harbor. Chief among these opponents was the America First organization and its spokesman Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh today is remembered as the first to fly solo across the Atlantic, as the victim of a notorious kidnapping, and as the leader of America First.

The winners get to rewrite history, and in the light of Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war against the United States, America First gets tarred as a bunch of ignorant peckerwoods and Lindbergh as a Nazi sympathizer and antisemite. In the view of Lindbergh's critics, Exhibit A for the latter charge is the 1941 Des Moines speech. In the speech, Lindbergh lists the principal forces behind the pro-war faction as Britain, the Jews, and the Roosevelt Administration, and argues that intervention is not in the interest of America taken as a whole.

The section on the Jews, taken above, may not be a model of tact, but it hardly amounts to antisemitic agitation. There are four elements of the speech that some might take as tending that way, but the speech is carefully qualified, so that at most, Lindbergh was infelicitious in his choice of language. These three elements are (a) the references to "the Jews" as if they were a monolith; (b) the claim that Jews are influential in Hollywood and the media; (c) the warning (or threat) that war might bring with it a decline in tolerance; and (d) the contrasting of British and Jewish interests with American interests, as if Jews in this country were not American.

"The Jews," of course, don't agree on much of anything, whether in religion or politics, and they didn't then, as Lindbergh himself acknowledges. On the other hand, there are major Jewish organizations and spokesman. Even if many Jews are driven up the wall by the self-righteousness and self-importance of these groups, they are recognizable and they have influence. Even though there are plenty of Jews nowadays who are critical of Israel and Zionism, for example, it would be a bit crude but not inaccurate to say that "the Jews" favor American support for Israel.

Jews were influential in Hollywood in Lindbergh's day, and they are now; just ask Neil Gabler, who's proud of it. Just how influential Jews were in the 1941 media is not clear to me, but it's fair to say they weren't invisible when the New York Times was the newspaper of record and not a leftist birdcage-liner and Walter Lippman was the foremost political columnist. Did these media folks have a uniform view of politics or the world? Probably not. Were most of them pro-Allied? Probably.

The notion that crisis and conflict brings with it a heightened risk of ethnic and religious conflict of all kinds is familiar enough. Just ask any middle-class refugee from Baghdad. Did Lindbergh intend a threat? That's hardly clear, although there was Nazi propaganda in the era to the effect that if the Jews launch a war in Europe they would pay for it. Of course, they didn't launch the war and ended up paying anyway.

Finally, the old-fashioned reference to British and Jewish "races" advocating intervention for reasons that are "not American" logically implies that the Jewish reasons for wanting to intervene against Germany were not American, and if not close-read, that American Jews themselves were not American. Lindbergh actually didn't say the latter. What he was really saying was that German abuses against Jews were not reason enough for America to go to war.

To summarize, Lindbergh's speech is anything but an antisemitic rant, although it contains some language that in our PC age would be rephrased.

America First was a broad coalition. One could turn Lindbergh on his head and say that pro-German forces in America would favor neutrality for reasons legitimate to them, but that doesn't justify a retroactive anathematization of America First. Given the failure of Wilson's preachments about making the world safe for democracy in World War I, and the contribution of the Versailles settlement to the start of the Second War, the reluctance to intervene was understandable. So was the belief that the Roosevelt Administration was maneuvering to provide maximum help to the Allies, and pressing Japan to the brink as well.

From the perspective of half a century of interventionism/internationalism, the notion that America can survive and prosper without fighting the wars of the Old World may seem as quaint as the Mayor of Chicago threatening to bust the King of England in the snoot if he set foot in the Windy City, but the caution about fighting foreign wars that underlay America First is no longer quaint or outmoded. Neither does noticing that AIPAC is a powerful and effective pro-Israel lobby, or that some Zionist sympathizers are in the forefront of those agitating for war with Iran, an antisemite make.

What If Jimmy Carter Said This?

But unlike other sanction regimes, Israel is setting conditions but not promising anything in return. Thus, even if Haniyeh starts wearing a skullcap and Khaled Meshal begins humming Hatikva, and even if Abbas makes it mandatory to teach the heroic story of Masada in Palestinian schools, Israel does not want and is unable to propose a diplomatic alternative that would lead to the establishment of an independent and democratic Palestinian state. It does not want to - because any such proposal would mean a withdrawal from most of the territories and the dismantling of most of the settlements. It is unable to - because there is no government of Israel. After all, even when it appeared that there was a government in Israel, not a single measly illegal outpost was removed; this is a non-government that has transformed the disengagement from Gaza from a national trauma to a housing trauma; and in Hebron, or in Mount Hebron to be more precise, the sovereign provides free protection to a bunch of hooligans.

Nope, this wasn't Jimmy Carter. It was Zvi Bar'el in Haaretz. Alan Dershowitz--is Zvi an antisemite?

A peaceful and democratic Palestinian state may be an ignis fatuus. Even now, they're busy killing one another rather than Israelis for a change. But at least Israelis seem to discuss things candidly.

The Exterminator's Top Two

Delay started the call by talking about his new organization, GAIN (Grassroots Action and Information Network) and his new blog. He said that his two main priorities now that he is out of office are to push the conservative cause and to support Israel.

--Will Hinton

A strange world the man lives in. I thought the United States had a security problem.

Of course, if you say that Zionists have political influence in this country, you're antisemitic.

If It Quacks Like a Duck, Is It a Canard?

Carter has repeatedly fallen back -- possibly unconsciously -- on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los Angeles Times last month, he declared it "politically suicide" for a politician to advocate a "balanced position" on the crisis.

--Deborah Lipstadt

A canard is "a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor. Lipstadt is mistaken here. A politician who advocated anything less than reflexive obeisance to a pro-Israel line would have an abbreviated political future.

Can any observer doubt that there is an effective pro-Israel political network in the U.S.?

Various ethnic groups have or had their own causes (boycotting South Africa, Cyprus, the Armenian genocide, "captive nations," boycotting Cuba), as the First Amendment permits. Some who point out that the pro-Israel network is effective may be anti-Semites; some aren't. But it's no canard because it's true.

UPDATE: A canard can be hard to kill.