Israel hasn’t changed; the world has *UPDATED*

[Prepare yourself; this is a long one.  Long-time readers may also recognize that I’ve cannibalized old posts in the service of a new point.]

A friend sent me a link to a 1951 video, showing a popular American singing group celebrating the creation of the State of Israel, something that had happened only three years before:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ5v651bQ1o[/youtube]

The affection a mainstream entertainment group felt for Israel was not anomalous back in 1951.  In the eyes of the American public, Israel — and the Jews — were starting what was to be a pretty good run for a number of decades.  This was not a historical accident but was, rather, the confluence of myriad social and geopolitical events.

On the home front, Jews had gone from being alien immigrants clogging New York’s Lower East Side, to becoming middle-class citizens who fully embraced every aspect of American life.  Sure, they might do their worshiping on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and sure the men wore those funny little skull caps, and absolutely you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry one, but they were still — and quite obviously — solid Americans who embraced the same values as their goyish next-door neighbors.  In other words, for those who liked to justify the irrational, American Jews in the post-war era were not “deserving” of active antisemitism.

It helped that the post-WWII generation had seen exactly what active antisemitism looked like.  Active antisemitism wasn’t the American habit of barring Jews from neighborhoods, banks and law firms.  Nope.  Active antisemitism was serious stuff:

Lager Nordhausen, a Gestapo run concentration camp
Child dying on streets of Warsaw Ghetto
Mass grave at Bergen-Belsen

For the first time ever, Americans understood precisely how far insane, irrational race hated — and, especially, antisemitism — could lead.  The notion of Jews having their own country, a place from which they could defend themselves, made perfect sense to Americans who, less than 200 years before, had also created their own country.

When the nations of the world, in the form of a vaguely philo-semitic and pretty damn guilty UN, voted the State of Israel into existence, Americans cheered.  And when the surrounding Arab nations immediately declared war, intent upon creating a second Holocaust, public sympathy lay with the State of Israel.

This public sympathy was not just a post-War flash in the pan.  Twenty years later, when the Arab nations manifestly intended a second Holocaust, American sympathy again lay with Israel.

A perfect example of the American affinity for Israel is a 100-page 1967 commemorative issue of Life magazine entitled “Israel’s Swift Victory” — referring to the Six Day War in 1967.  What makes the magazine so distinct from today’s media  coverage of Israel is the tone. The Life editors admired Israel tremendously for standing up to the overwhelming odds the Arab nations presented, and for triumphing against those odds. The very first page identifies Israel as a minute, beleaguered haven for Jewish refugees, surrounded by an ocean of hostile Arab nations:

The state of Israel, no bigger than Massachusetts, was established in 1948 in Palestine as a haven for the war-ravaged Jewish communities of Europe. Bitter fighting attended her birth and fixed her boundaries against the surrounding phalanx of hostile Arab states: Jordan cut into her narrow wasp waist and through the holy city of Jerusalem; Egypt along her western desert flank was entrenched in the coastal strip of Gaza. At Israel’s southern tip is the strategic port of Elath, against which Egypt made the play that brought on the war and unhinged the entire Middle East.

Life‘s editors were unsympathetic to Egyptian President Abdel Gamel Nasser’s conduct, which the editors understood presented an existential threat that left Israel with no option but to react. After describing how Nasser, speaking from Cairo, demanded Israel’s extermination, Life editorializes thusly:

The world had grown accustomed to such shows [of destructive hatred towards Israel] through a decade of Arab-Israeli face-offs that seasonally blew as hot as a desert sirocco. Since 1948, when Israel defeated the Arabs and won the right to exist as a nation, anti-Zionist diatribes had been the Arab world’s only official recognition of Israel. Indeed, in the 19 years since the state was founded, the surrounding Arab states have never wavered from their claim that they were in a state of war with Israel.

But now there was an alarming difference in Nasser’s buildup. He demanded that the U.N. withdraw the 3,400-man truce-keeping force that had camped in Egypt’s Sinai desert and in the Gaza Strip ever since Egypt’s defeat in the Suez campaign of 1956 as a buffer between Egyptians and Israelis. A worried United Nations Secretary-General U Thant agreed to the withdrawal, then winged to Cairo to caution Nasser.

He found him adamant. Plagued by economic difficulties at home and bogged down in the war in Yemen, Nasser had lately been criticized by Syrians for hiding behind the U.N. truce-keeping force. With brinksmanship as his weapon, Nasser had moved to bolster his shaky claim to leadership of the divided Arab world.

As a caveat to my post caption (“Israel hasn’t changed; the world has”), I’ll note here that a few things in the world actually haven’t changed:  First, aside from its brief flirtation with decency in 1948, the UN has always been craven. Egypt demands that it withdraws and, voila, it withdraws. The other thing that hasn’t changed, although it’s no longer spoken of in polite MSM company, is the fact that the Arab nations have always used anti-Israeli rhetoric and conduct to deflect attention from their failures and as a vehicle to establish dominance over other Arab nations in the region. In other words, if there weren’t an Israel, the Arab nations would have had to invent one.

In contrast to the fevered, irrational hatred Life describes on the Arab side of the battle line, the Life editors are impressed by the Israelis. Under the bold heading “Israel’s cool readiness,” and accompanied by photographs of smiling Israeli soldiers taking a cooling shower in the desert, listening to their commander, and attending to their tanks, Life has this to say:

With the elan and precision of a practiced drill team, Israel’s largely civilian army — 71,000 regulars and 205,000 reservists — began its swift mobilization to face, if necessary, 14 Arab nations and their 110 million people. As Premier Levi Eshkol was to put it, “The Jewish people has had to fight unceasingly to keep itself alive…. We acted from an instinct to save the soul of a people.

Again, can you imagine a modern publication pointing out the vast disparity in landmass and population between Israel and the Arabs, or even acknowledging in the opening paragraph of any article that Israel has a right to exist? The text about Israel’s readiness is followed by more photographs of reservists preparing their weapons and of a casually seated Moshe Dayan, drinking a soda, and conferring with his men. Under the last photograph, you get to read this:

The Israelis, Dayan said, threw themselves into their hard tasks with “something that is a combination of love, belief and country.”

After using almost reverent tones to describe the Israelis’ offensive strike against the Arab air-forces, which gave Israel the decisive advantage in the War, Life addresses Israel’s first incursion into Gaza. I’m sure you’ll appreciate how the Gaza area is depicted:

Minutes after the first air strike, a full division of Israeli armor and mechanized infantry . . . was slashing into the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip. A tiny wasteland, the strip had been given up by Israel in the 1956 settlement and was now a festering splinter — the barren harbor for 315,000 refugees bent on returning to their Palestinian homes and the base for Arab saboteurs.

Wow! Those clueless (by today’s standards) Life writers actually seem to imply that Egypt, which controlled Gaza for eleven years, had some responsibility for this “festering,” dangerous area.

The Life editors are agog about Israeli military tactics:

The Israeli plan was so flexible that its architects at the last minute switched strategy to avoid a new deployment of enemy forces in southern Sinai. After the air strikes that wiped out the Arab air forces, Israeli armor and infantry swept westward across the waist of Sinai, parallel to the path of the Gaza breakthrough. A smaller column cut south from El Kuntilla, then raced toward Suez. Patrol boats and paratroops were sent to Sharm el Sheikh to break the blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba, but the airborne troops were able to land at the abandoned airfield because the Egyptians had fled. Meanwhile, fighting erupted on another front — the divided city of Jerusalem, where an Israeli pincer column encircled the old, Jordanian section. Yet another Israeli force moved against Jenin, north of Jerusalem. The final Israeli attacked, at the end of the week, was mounted against Syria, which had been shelling border settlements.

The Life editor’s tactical admiration emerges again when speaking about Israel’s successful taking of the Sinai Peninsula:

Stabbing into the Sinai desert, the Israelis stuck to the same strategy that in 1956 had carried them to the Suez Canal in 100 hours: never stop. Although outnumbered more than two to one — by an Egyptian force of almost 100,000 men grouped in seven divisions and supported by 900 tanks — they smashed ahead day and night, outracing the foe, encircling him time and again and trapping thousands of prisoners as Egyptian discipline collapsed. *** The battle — one of the epic armored engagements in history — lasted 24 hours and involved some 1,000 tanks.

Two things occur to me as I read the above descriptions of Israeli strategy in 1967: First, during the 2006 Israeli/Hezbollah war, if press reports are to be believed (and that’s always a leap of faith) Israel did not demonstrate either flexibility or speed. She remained rigidly fixated on using air power, despite the fact that (a) this hadn’t served the Americans that well in Iraq and (b) it didn’t appear to be achieving her objectives.

Indeed, it’s gotten to the point where it’s difficult to imagine the modern Israeli military ever acting with the type of decisiveness and flexibility it showed during the 1967 War.  In the 40+ years since the Six Day War, Israel’s military, like an old man, has become calcified and risk-averse.

The dynamism that characterized its strategy in 1967 was nowhere to be found in 2006, during the Hezbollah War, and its 100% commitment to the worthiness of its own cause seems to have collapsed completely now that Turkey and Iran — two sovereign nations that sit with Israel in the UN — are actively colluding with terrorists to bring weapons into a small neighboring nation-state (that would be Gaza), in order to pave the way for Israel’s destruction.  Only a nation that cares more about world opinion than its own existence would board a terrorist ship armed with paint balls.  Israel’s caving on the blockade is also symptomatic of a loss of faith in itself.

The second thing that occurred to me reading the above was the fact that the Life writers are describing a traditional war: army versus army. Under those circumstances, there’s a tremendous virtue in cheering for the underdog who routs the larger force.

Nowadays, where asymmetrical warfare means that there’s a traditional army on one side and terrorists hiding amongst and targeting civilians on the other side, the battle lines, the tactical lines, and the victory lines can easily be confusing.  This is especially true when you have those, like members of MSM, who don’t understand the nature of the war (one side wants peaceful coexistence; one side wants genocide); who don’t understand that the terrorists are, in fact, well-funded soldiers of Islamic nations, such as Iran and Syria; and who focus on the minutiae of the daily casualty reports without any understanding of the larger dynamics involved (hint:  Iran, Syria and, now, Turkey).

When confronted with the traditional army versus army conflict, as opposed to the illusory “army versus little guy” conflict, the 1967 press could easily distinguish the forest from the trees, as demonstrated in this paragraph:

The Sinai victory had cost the Israelis heavier casualties than the 1956 Suez campaign, 275 dead and 800 wounded. . . . The Egyptian losses were staggering — 20,000 dead by Israeli estimates and perhaps a billion-dollar lost in war materiel. But the objective was gained. Israeli troops took up positions on the east bank of the Suez Canal — and trained their guns on Egypt’s homeland. [Emphasis mine.]

The Life editors also take on what they perceive as the canard that the U.S. blindly allies itself with Israel — a canard that persists to this day, and one that Barack Obama has taken wholly to heart.  Indeed, I have no doubt but that Obama is seriously considering as solid strategic advice the message he received today from Al Qaeda:

Al Qaeda’s American-born spokesman has repeated the terror group’s conditions for peace with America in a video released Sunday.

Adam Gadahn called on President Barack Obama to withdraw his troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, end support for Israel, stop intervening in the affairs of Muslims, and free Muslim prisoners.

If I remember correctly, that was pretty much the same deal (albeit with different nations and another kind of totalitarianism involved) that Hitler offered Chamberlain back in 1938.  And we know how well that turned out.

Back in 1967, the intelligentsia that controlled the MSM wasn’t as easily deceived as the Ivory Tower crowd and media heads are now.  In discussing UN proceedings and, specifically Soviet behavior, the magazine’s editors demonstrated that they understood that Israel was then, as it is now, a pawn in a larger game.  Because this is an extraordinarily important point, and one manifestly ignored on the Left (and often misunderstood in the non-ideological middle), I’m reprinting in its entirety the magazine section focusing on the Cold War aspect of Israel’s travails:

As the Arab soldiers and refugees made their sad and painful way from the scenes of their defeat, the Soviet Union threw its heaviest oratorical gun into the United Nations in an effort to salvage some of what it had lost in the Mideast. Premier Aleksei Kosygin arrived at the General Assembly with an arsenal of invective.

Kosygin put all the blame on Israel and its “imperialist” backers (i.e., the U.S. and Britain). As he saw it, Israel’s “atrocities and violence” brought to mind “the heinous crimes perpetrated by the fascists during World War II.” He demanded the Assembly’s approval for a resolution — rejected earlier by the Security Council — that would condemn Israel as sole aggressor in the conflict, and he proposed that Israel not only be made to pull back to her prewar borders but also to pay reparations to the Arabs for their losses.

He was answered by the Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban [his speech is here], whose detailed documentation and eloquence told how the Arabs had given his country the choice of defending its national existence or forfeiting it for all time. Then he put Kosygin himself in the defendant’s dock. Russia, he charged, was guilty of inflaming passions in a region “already too hot with tension” by feeding the arms race and spreading false propaganda. He called Kosygin’s reference to the Nazis “an obscene comparison . . . a flagrant breach of international morality and human decency.” As for the Russian demand that Israel pull back to her prewar lines, that, he said, was totally unacceptable until durable and just solutions are reached “in free negotiations with each of our neighbors.” The Arab states “have come face to face with us in conflict; let them now come face to face with us in peace.” Israel was determined not be deprived of her victory.

I assume you caught that the Soviet speaker used precisely the same rhetoric about Israel that has become normative throughout Europe and in most Leftist publications.  He castigated Israel as an imperialist entity and claimed that her tactics were “atrocities” that were identical to those the Nazis used. Unlike today’s MSM, Life‘s 1967 editorial team appears appalled by the tenor and falsity of those accusations.

Back in 1967, the American media was apparently also better able to deal with the fallacious argument stating that Israel is an anchor around America’s neck, dragging her down in her dealings with whomever she happens to be dealing with (whether the Soviet bloc or the Islamists).  The Life editors, some of whom probably were alive, and perhaps fighting, during WWII, understood that an ally’s moral stance is a significant factor in choosing that ally, and that an enemy’s moral deficits are equally important:

The error [the belief that the U.S. unthinkingly supports Israel] arises out of the fact that in most disputes the U.S. has been found on Israel’s side.  That’s because it is the Arabs who challenge the existence of Israel, and not vice versa.

There you have it, in a 1967 nutshell.  The U.S. sides with Israel not because of any hostility to Arabs, but because it recognizes the right of a sovereign nation to defend itself against annihilation — a principle that should be as operative today as it was 40+ years ago.  To the extent that Israel is a mere pawn in larger wars, if America abandons Israel, she is playing right into the hands, not just of Israel’s enemies, but of America’s own.

Because the editors understood the Cold War dynamics at work in the Middle East, they were also clear-headed about the implications of the refugee problem that was arising from the war, a problem that dwarfed the first round of refugees that the Muslim world had begun to use as propaganda tools after the 1948 war, and that the world’s useful idiots funded.  Keep in mind that, in no other place, at no other time, have refugees been kept in stasis in perpetuity.  They have always been resettled, and gone on either to create new communities or to be assimilated within the larger community to which they have relocated.  This would have made especially good sense with the Gaza refugees, who had been simply Ottomans, Jordanians, or Egyptians, depending on the century at issue, the Muslim nation that had regional dominance at the time, and the fellahin‘s geographic proximity to a given Muslim overlord.

Again, because the Life editorial is both clear-headed and prescient, I’m reprinting it here in its entirety (emphasis mine):

The 20th Century’s excellence — and its horrid defects — find some of their most vivid monuments in the hate-filled camps of Arab refugees. The refugees have been supported by the voluntary U.N. contributions of some 75 governments, not to mention the Inner Wheel Club of Hobart, Australia, the Boy Scout Union of Finland, the Women’s Club of Nes, Iceland, the Girls High School of Burton-on-Trend, England, and (for some reason) a number of automobile companies including Chrysler, Ford, G.M. and Volkswagen.

The philanthropy, governmental and private, that has aided these displaced Arabs is genuine — and admirable. The stupidity and political selfishness that have perpetuated the problem are appalling.

Down the ages, there have been thousands of episodes in which whole peoples fled their homes. Most were assimilated in the lands to which they fled. Brutally or beneficently, previous refugee groups were liquidated. Not until our time have there been the money, the philanthropy, the administrative skill, the hygienic know-how and the peculiar kind of nationalism which, in combination, could take a wave of refugees and freeze it into a permanent and festering institution.

In the wake of Israeli victories, the refugee camps received thousands of new recruits, and there may be more if, as seems likely, Israel successfully insists on some enlargement of its boundaries. Thus the refugee problem, one of the main causes of Middle East instability, is about to be magnified.

The early Zionists, looking toward a binational state, never thought they would, could or should replace the Arabs in Palestine.  When terrorism and fighting mounted in 1947-48, Arab leaders urged Palestinian Arabs to flee, promising that the country would soon be liberated.  Israelis tried to induce the Arabs to stay.  For this reason, the Israelis do not now accept responsibility for the Arab exodus.  Often quoted is the statement of a Palestinian Arab writer that the Arab leaders “told us:  ‘Get out so that we can get in.’  We got out but they did not get in.”

After the Israeli victory, Arab leaders outside of Palestine reversed their policy and demanded that all the refugees be readmitted to Israel. Israel reversed its policy, [and] refused to repatriate large numbers of Arabs on the ground that they would endanger the state. Nasser, for instance, has said, “If Arabs return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.”

Now 1.3 million Arabs, not counting the recent influx, are listed as refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has an international staff of about a hundred and spends nearly $40 million a year, 60% of it from the U.S. government. UNRWA services are performed by 11,500 Arab employees, most them refugees. Obviously, this group has an interest in not solving the refugee problem.

So have the host governments. Consistently they have refused to go along with any plan or policy for the resettlement or assimilation of the refugees, preferring to use them politically. In 1955 the Arab League scuttled a Jordan Valley development project precisely because it would have reduced, perhaps by 250,000, the number of Arab refugees.

It’s about time this dangerous deadlock ended. The inevitable reshuffle of the Middle East ought to include a plan to phase out the refugee problem in five or 10 years. Israel, to show goodwill, should repatriate a few thousand refugees per year. All of the 1.3 million could be absorbed in underpopulated Iran and Syria, provided their governments would cooperate in internationally supported developments projects. Persuading Arab governments to adopt a policy of resettlement should be central to U.S. policy, and it would be worth putting up quite a lot of A.I.D. money to get the job done. [Bolded emphasis mine.]

History has shown the Life editors to be correct when they believed that UN economic interests and Arab political interests would leave the refugee camps as a permanent blight on the Middle Eastern landscape. They were naive only in believing that anyone had the political will to solve the problem. They also could not have anticipated that, in a very short time, the same situation, with its same causes, would be plunged into a looking-glass world, where the Arab governments and the UN were absolved of their sins, and the blame was placed on Israel for not having engaged in an act of self-immolation by taking in these 1.3 million (and counting, and counting, and counting) hate-filled refugees.

America’s fondness and admiration for Israel extended to a cultural appreciation for the Jews as well.  I came of age during the 1960s and 1970s (and 1973, of course, saw the Yom Kippur War, another triumph of Israel’s dynamism that Americans generally applauded).  These were the high water years of America’s pop culture appreciation for her Jews.

If you were around in those decades, you’ll remember a time when popular culture was awash in successful books, songs, and shows that reflected favorably on American Jewish life and culture. For example, when I was a kid, everyone read and quoted from Dan Greenberg’s incredibly funny book, How to be a Jewish Mother. I had a friend who would just double over with laughter every time she thought of the appropriate Jewish mother response if she comes into the living room and finds her daughter necking on the couch with a boy: “Leave this house and don’t come back until you’re a virgin again.”  Another hugely popular Jewish book of the 1960s was Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish, a book that is a dictionary, a joke book, a cultural history, and a religious history book all rolled into one. (If you haven’t read it yet, you should.)

Anyone over forty also remembers Allan Sherman, the guy who became famous singing “Hello, Muddah; Hello, Faddah” and other ridiculous lyrics to familiar music? His records are still available, but in the 1960s they were a cultural phenomenom.  Sherman’s Ne York Jewishness was an integral part of his humor.  And certainly, no one needs to be reminded of what an enormous hit Fiddler on the Roof was: smash Broadway show, hit movie, and revival after revival. It still does get revived periodically (as was the case in 2004 in New York), but can you imagine it opening as a first run show now, in the same world that lauds a show about about the deranged and pathetic Rachel Corrie?  I certainly can’t.

So much of the entertainment world generally had a Jewish gloss.  Even in the 1960s and 1970s, the Jewish entertainers who hit the big time in Tin Pan Alley, Big Bands, and Broadway from the 1920s through 1940s hadn’t yet been pushed aside.  The American public still recognized and appreciated works from Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rogers, the Gershwin brothers, Moss Hart, George Kaufman, Lerner and Loewe, Dorothy Field, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, etc.  Milton Berle, George Burns, and Jack Benny lived in American’s living rooms during the 1950s, courtesy of their eponymous TV shows.  While none of these entertainers inserted any Jewish doctrine or explicit Jewish references into their work, their Jewishness permeated who they were and what they did — and Americans still loved them.

Pop culture comes and goes, and I certainly don’t mind — indeed, I think it’s a good thing — that other cultures are getting their moment in the pop culture sun. What I do mind, dreadfully, is how hostile so much of the world is now to things Jewish. Rachel Corrie is a martyr, anti-Semitism is popping up all over, churches boycott Israel, and the New York Times pretends that it was mere coincidence that, back in 2008, the lone Jewish enclave in Mumbai was singled out for an attack that surpassed all the others in sheer brutality.  I miss the time when the Jews were a beloved people, and their culture a thing to be enjoyed and admired.

I’ve now dragged you, higgledy-piggledy, through sixty years of Jewish and Israeli history, as it intersected with American history.  I’ve shown that, pockets of American antisemitism notwithstanding, for most of those sixty years Americans appreciated their Jews, and admired the State of Israel.  More than that, they understood Israel’s role in world geopolitics, seeing it as a proxy for the ugly war the Soviet Bloc was waging against America itself.

Things are completely different now.  Around the world, antisemitism is becoming more blatant and more violent.  Anti-Israel sentiment, which I believe to be an extension of antisemitism, has become de riguer, both abroad and, sadly, somewhat at home.  Our President, whether he is a Muslim or just a sociopath who sympathizes with Islamic goals, has given Israel the cold shoulder and slobbered his way to the feet of every totalitarian Muslim dictator he can find.  Israel has become a pariah nation.

What I find so interesting is that Israel has not changed in the last 60 years.  She is still a small, representative democracy surrounded by dozens of nations that are highly repressive theocratic dictatorships.  Unlike the surrounding nations, she gives equal rights to people of different faiths, colors, creeds, and sexual orientation. (The surrounding nations, in stark contrast, kill and expel people of different faiths, colors, creeds, and sexual orientation, all the while maintaining a brutal war for dominance against the women in the midst.) Israel’s values, in other words, are completely synchronous with those ostensibly espoused by the Western nations that now,  not only despise Israel, but that ally themselves with Islamic dictatorships that practice values completely antithetical to what were, until a few years ago, normative in the West.

Israel also still lives poised on the thin edge of destruction at the hands of those hundreds of millions of citizens who reside in those totalitarian Muslim nations.  She is still the vanguard in a war that both she and the West fight.  Where the enemy was once “Godless Communism,” it’s now Islamic Jihadism, but both enemies have the same goal:  the total destruction of the West and of countries with Western values, and the absorption of those Western nations into political systems that deny individual freedom and that relentlessly destroy their own citizens (in vast numbers) in order to achieve state dominance.

What’s changed, obviously, is the West.  Even though we ostensibly won the Cold War, insofar as we witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, it’s manifest that we also lost the Cold War, in that we lost our self-identity and internalized the values of the Soviet Bloc itself.  As I pointed out above, there is absolutely nothing to distinguish the speech made by the Soviet’s UN ambassador in 1967 from the standard political talk against Israel that routinely emanates today in Europe and (sadly) in America’s Democratic party.

The Left’s war on the West continues unabated and, as it did in 1967, the Left has allied itself with the Islamic jihadists.  What’s different now, is that there are no longer geographic lines, with a nice Iron Curtain neatly delineating the descendants of the Judeo-Christian enlightenment from Marx’s heirs.  Like a fungus, the latter have disseminated themselves through all western societies and are working vigorously on bringing them down.  As was the case in the 1930s, in 1948, in 1956, in 1967, and in 1973, Israel and the Jews are the front line in the battle, only now they fight alone.

Given that our President has clearly put himself on the wrong side of this war, it is imperative that “We, the people” take up moral arms on Israel’s behalf.  We don’t have to board the next plane and enlist in the IDF (although I know many who did in 1973), but we must put political pressure on everyone we know to force America back into the Israeli camp.  Doing so is not some sentimental act on behalf of a nation America once liked and admired.  As the Life editors recognized back in 1967, it is an absolutely necessary step if America wishes to defend herself against statist and theocratic forces that have allied with an eye to America’s ultimate destruction.

UPDATE:  Proving that I am not writing in a vacuum, two things came to my attention just today that emphasize the unholy linkage between the Left and Islam, on the one hand, and Israel and America, on the other hand.  That linkage has always been there, but now it’s not a fringe; it’s part of the dominant culture.  Very scary.  Anyway, the first is a Zombie article about a strike at the Oakland docks that sees Longshoremen, Communists and Islamists joining hands to protest a perfectly innocuous Israeli ship.  The second is Andy McCarthy’s short post commenting on the collusion between the Left and Islam, a running theme in his new book The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.