dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

The Mindset of Our Anti-Semites
Why does the world apply a special standard of conduct to Israel?

By Victor Davis Hanson

November 6, 2023
Peruse campus literature. Watch clips from university protests. Scan interviews with pro-Hamas protestors. Read the chalk propaganda sketched on campus sidewalks. Talk to raging students in the free speech area. And the one common denominator— besides their arrogance—is their abject ignorance. Take their following tired talking points:

“Refugees”

We are told that the Palestinians after more than 75 years of residence in the West Bank and Gaza are “refugees.” If that definition were currently true, then, are the 900,000 Jews who were forcibly exiled from Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia after the 1947, 1956, 1967 wars still “refugees?”

Most fled to Israel. Do they now live in “refugee” camps administrated by the UN? Are they protesting to recover their confiscated homes and wealth in Damascus, Cairo, or Baghdad? Do Jews on Western television dangle their keys to lost homes in Damascus a half-century after they were expelled?

How about the 150,000-200,000 Greek Cypriots who in 1974 were brutally driven out of their ancient homes in Northern Cyprus? Are they today living in “refugee” camps in southern Cyprus? Are Cypriot terrorists blowing themselves up in “occupied” Nicosia to recover what was stolen from them by Turkey?

Turkish president Recep Erdogan lectures the world on Palestinian “refugees,” but does he mention Turkey’s role in the brutal expulsion of 40 percent of the residents of Cyprus?

Are there campus groups organizing against Turkey on behalf of the displaced Cypriots? After being slaughtered and expelled, are the Cypriots a cause celebre in academia? Do the “refugee” cities of southern Cyprus resemble Jenin or Jericho?

For that matter, how about the 12 million German civilians who between 1945-50 were expelled, and mostly walked back from, East Prussia and parts of Eastern Europe, some with Prussian roots going back a millennium and more. Perhaps 1 million died during the expulsions.

Are any current survivors still “refugees?” If so, are they organizing for war to get back “occupied” “Danzig” and “Königsberg” for Germany? So why does the world damn Israel and romanticize the Palestinians in a way it does not with any other “refugee” group?

“Apartheid”

Israel is said to practice “apartheid,” although since 2005-06 Gaza has been autonomous. Mahmoud Abbas runs in his fashion the West Bank. Like the Hamas clique, he held elections one time in 2005, and then after his election, of course, cancelled any free election in the fashion of the one election, one time Middle East. Who forced him to do that? Zionists? Americans?

At any time, Gaza could have taken its vast wealth in annual foreign aid and become completely independent in fuel, food, and energy, without need of any such help form the “Zionist entity.”

Gaza could have capitalized on its strategic location, the world’s eagerness to help, and the natural beauty of its Mediterranean beaches. Instead, it squandered its income on a labyrinth of terrorist tunnels and rockets. Today, it snidely snickers at any mention of following the Singapore model of prosperity–a former colonial city whose World War II death count vastly surpassed that of the various wars over Gaza.

Are the Israeli Arabs—21 percent of the Israeli population—living under apartheid?

If so, it is a funny sort of oppression when they vote, hold office, form parties, and enjoy more freedom and prosperity than almost anywhere else in the Middle East under Arab autocracies. Are those in sympathy with Hamas fleeing from Israel into Gaza or the West Bank or other Arab countries to live with kindred Muslims under an autocratic and theocratic dictatorship, or do they prefer to stay in the “Zionist entity” under “apartheid?”

Where then is real apartheid?

The Uyghurs in China, fellow Muslims to Middle Easterners, who are ignored by Israel’s Islamic enemies, but who reside in China’s segregated work camps to the silence of the usually loud UN, EU, and Muslim world?

How about the Muslim Kurds? Are they second- or third-class citizens in Muslim Turkey? And how about the tens of thousands of foreign workers from India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries who labor under the kafala system in the Arab Muslim Gulf countries, and are subject to apartheid protocols that allow them no free will about how they live, travel, or the conditions of their labor?

Are campuses erupting to champion the Uyghurs, the Kurds, or the subjugated workers of the Gulf?

“Disproportionate”

Israel is now damned as “disproportionally” bombing Gaza. The campus subtext is that because Gaza’s 7,000-8,000 rockets launched at Israeli civilians have not killed enough Jews, then Israel should not retaliate for October 7 by bombing Hamas targets–shielded by impressed civilians— because it is too effective.

Would a “proportionate” response be counting up all the Israelis murdered, categorizing the horrific manner of their deaths, and then sending Israeli commandoes into Gaza during a “pause” in the fighting to murder an equal number of Gazans in the same satanic fashion?

Does the U.S. lecture Ukraine not to use to the full extent its lethal U.S. imported weaponry since the result is often simply too deadly? After all, perhaps twice as many Russians have been killed, wounded, or are missing than Ukrainian casualties. Should Ukraine have been more “proportionate?” Has President Biden ordered President Zelensky to offer the Russian aggressors a “pause” in the fighting to end the “cycle of violence?”

Or did U.S.-supplied artillery, anti-armor weapons, drones, and missiles “disproportionally” kill too many Russians? Or does the U.S. assume that since Russia attacked Ukraine at a time of peace, it deserves such a “disproportionate” response that alone will lose it the war?

For that matter, the U.S. certainly disproportionately paid back Japan for Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese brutal take-over of the Pacific, much of Asia, and China—and the barbarous way the Japanese military slaughtered millions of civilians, executed prisoners, and mass raped women. Should the U.S. have simply done a one-off retaliatory attack on the imperial fleet at Yokohama, declared a “cease-fire,” and thus ended the “cycle of violence?”

Civilian casualties

Campus activists scream that Israel has slaughtered “civilians” and is careless about “collateral damage.” They equate retaliating against mass murderers who use civilians to shield them from injury, while warning any Gazans in the region of the targeted response to leave, as the moral equivalent of deliberately butchering civilians in a surprise attack.

So did protestors mass in the second term of Barrack Obama when he focused on Predator drone missions inside Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen to go after Islamic terrorists who deliberately target civilians?

At the time, the hard-left New York Times found the ensuing “collateral damage” in civilian deaths merely “troubling.” No matter—Obama persisted, insisting as he put it, “Let’s kill the people who are trying to kill us.” Note Obama did not expressly say the terrorists in Pakistan or Yemen were killing Americans, but “trying” to kill Americans. For him, that was, quite properly, enough reason “to kill” the potential assassins of Americans.

What would the Harvard President today say of Benjamin Netanyahu saying just that about Hamas?

We have no idea how many women, children, and elderly were in the general vicinity of a targeted terrorist in Pakistan or Yemen when an American drone missile struck. Then CIA Director John Brennan later admitted that he had lied under oath (with zero repercussions), when he testified to Congress that there was no collateral damage in drone targeted assassinations.

Obama was proud of his preemptive assassination program. Indeed, in lighthearted fashion he joked at the White House Correspondence Dinner about his preference for lethal drone missions, when he “warned” celebrities not to date his daughters: “But boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you, ‘predator drones.’ You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking.”

Did the campuses erupt and scream “Not in my name” when their president laughed about his assassination program? After all, Obama had also admitted, “There is no doubt that civilians were killed who shouldn’t have been.” Did he then stop the targeted killings due to collateral damage—as critics now demand a cease fire from Israel?

“Genocide”

Genocide is now the most popular charge in the general damnation of Israel, a false smear aimed at calling off the Israeli response to Hamas, burrowed beneath civilians in Gaza City.

But how strange a charge! Pro-Hamas demonstrators the world over chant “From the River to the Sea,” unambiguously calling for the utter destruction of Israel and its 9 million population. Are the Hamas supporters then “genocidal?”

Is genocide the aim of Hamas that launched over 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities without warning? What is the purpose of the purportedly 120,000 rockets in the hands of Hezbollah if not to target Israeli noncombatants? Is all that a genocidal impulse?

Do Hamas and Hezbollah drop leaflets to civilians, as does Israel, to flee the area of a planned missile attack—or is that against their respective charters?

Hamas leaders in Qatar and Beirut continue to give interviews bragging about their October 7 surprise mass murdering of civilians. They even promise more such missions that likewise will be aimed at beheading, torturing, executing, incinerating, and desecrating the bodies of hundreds of Jewish civilians, perhaps again in the early morning during a holiday and a time of peace.

Is that planned continuation of mass killing genocidal? Does the amoral UN recall any other mass murdering spree when the killers beheaded infants, cooked them in ovens, and raped the dead?

Perhaps students at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Stanford will protest the real genocide in Darfur where some half-million black African Sudanese have been slaughtered by mostly Muslim Arab Sudanese. Did the Cornell professor who claimed he was “exhilarated” on news of beheaded Jewish babies protest the slaughter of the Sudanese? Did the current campus protestors ever assemble to scream about the Islamists who slaughtered the indigenous Africans of Sudan?

Are professors at Stanford organizing to refuse all grants and donations that originate from communist China? Remember, the Chinese communist Party has never apologized for the party’s genocidal murder of some 60-80 millions of its own during the Maoist Cultural Revolution, much less its systematic efforts to eliminate the Uyghur Muslim population?

These examples could easily be expanded. But they suffice to remind us that the Middle-East and Western leftist attacks on Israel for responding to the October 7 mass murdering are neither based on any consistent moral logic nor similarly extended to other nations who really do practice apartheid, genocide, and kill without much worry about collateral damage.

So why does the world apply a special standard to Israel?

To the leftist and Islamist, Israel is guilty of being:

1) Jewish;

2) Too prosperous, secure, and free;

3) Sufficiently Western to meet the boilerplate smears of colonialist, imperialist, and blah, blah, blah.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

All the other "refugees" mentioned are in recognized nations...
Perhaps Palestine should also be recognized and given membership on the international stage...

Until then, yes, refugees they remain..

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

75 years later refugees from where? No sympathy from me.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

From their occupied Land on the other side of the wall...

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

What wall? Your short terse statements leave to much not stated to understand what you're saying.
What occupied land?

As I recall, Israel removed all its settlers from the Gaza and turned the land over to the PA who couldn't manage it. The people in Gaza voted for Hamas. They turned it into a shithole, not the Israelis. So, Israel is to blame? Thousands or Arabs work inside Israel every day. So, what is your point? You won't find sympathy from me for this war.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

The wall surrounding Gaza..
Are you thinking of the West Bank?

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

No. Nor the Golan Heights.

What about the wall surrounding Gaza????? You point is what?

Countries need borders.

That doesn't stop Hamas from tunneling into Israel. The USA would be better off if we had a wall. But the Cartels still tunnel into the USA and smuggle their drugs and human trafficking. What good are walls? China, Soviet Union, N. Korea, etc., used to rely on walls to keep their people in. No one was beating a path to go to these places, nor are they to Gaza. It's a shithole that no one wants to live there. But it wasn't that way 20 years ago before the Israeli settlers left. You break it, you own it. Nope, no sympathy from this side.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

My point was they are walled in...
You asked which wall...

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

How does this make them refugees? They have a city they could have turned into the Singapore of the Mediterranean. They are not being persecuted by Israel. They're treated better by the Israelis than they are by Hamas. It's their own neighboring Arab countries that are treating them as second-class persona non gratis. They are not escaping war, they're making it. The natural disaster is of their own making. They get no sympathy from me.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Sort of like the Indians on the reservations...

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Not much of a parallel there. The Jews were the original inhabitants of the region. Indians are free to leave the reservations if they want to assimilate.

If Palestinians Wanted Peace And Prosperity, They’d Already Have It
BY: DAVID HARSANYI
NOVEMBER 08, 2023
6 MIN READ

They chose violence. Over and over again.

In 2005, Palestinian Arabs were given autonomy over the Gaza Strip for the first time in their history. To make it happen, the Israeli government forcibly removed thousands of Israelis from the area. Without military protection, Jews would be murdered by Palestinians, who prefer their land Judenfrei.

As Jews were being evicted from their homes, some began to dismantle the farms and hothouses they’d built, reluctant to hand over years of hard work. In the name of peace, however, American Jewish donors purchased the 3,000 remaining greenhouses that stood over 1,000 acres for $14 million and gave it to the Palestinian Authority, gratis. A large portion of the donations were earmarked for “crucial equipment like computerized irrigation systems” and other modern farming systems for Palestinians.

As soon as the Jews were gone, mobs of Palestinians showed up and broke windows, stole irrigation hoses, water pumps, and everything else they could get their hands on, destroying everything they could, as “police” stood by and watched. This happened before Hamas came to power. Before any blockades.

By 2007, the unity government between the PLO and Hamas had fallen apart after the latter won a landslide election in 2006 and began defenestrating its political opponents. It was a warning. There has not been a real election in the West Bank since. And it’s a good thing because Islamists would surely grab power there as they had in Gaza. Joe Biden likes to say that Hamas doesn’t speak for Palestinians, but the ugly truth is that Hamas is a far better ambassador of the Palestinian people than the “moderate” Fatah party, which we prop up with billions of dollars.

I thought about all this when reading Sen. Rand Paul’s hopelessly naïve piece in The Federalist today. Paul contends that peace between Israel and Arabs is contingent on promised “prosperity” for Palestinians. He mentions the word “prosperity” eight times, in fact, contending that “non-Hamas Palestinians must hear a message of hope of what could come if they renounced violence.” The libertarian senator then unsheathes this pollyannaish suggestion: “[I]nstead of dropping leaflets to a million Palestinians to flee or be bombed, perhaps we might consider leaflets announcing the prosperity and benefits if they choose a government that recognizes Israel and renounces violence.”

Palestinians have been hearing this message nonstop since 1948 — if not since the 1920s. Many of the Arabs who immigrated to British Palestine from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere were lured by the promise of the “prosperity” that was being created by Jewish newcomers. Once there, fueled by the propaganda and lies of their leaders, they created an intractable situation. Before there were any “open-aired prisons” or “occupied territories,” there was terrorism and massacres of Jews. And, still, when offered a state in 1948, with the promise of self-determination and prosperity, they rejected it and tried to annihilate the region’s Jews.

Paul’s belief that Palestinians are itching for “prosperity” is reminiscent of the neocons’ belief that the Islamic world was longing for Western-style “democracy.” No doubt, many innocent civilians are interested in peace and safety. But for most, the frame of thinking about the world and the logic employed to make sense of it are on a different wavelength. If they weren’t, Palestinians would have built a prosperous nation a long time ago. They had every chance to do it.

Palestinian statehood was on the table after the 1967 and 1973 wars, and in the early 1990s and the early 2000s, and a bunch of times in between. It was offered in exchange for the recognition of Israel and the renouncement of violence. Just as it didn’t happen then, it can’t happen now. No Palestinian leader can agree to a deal on statehood because they would surely be deposed and murdered. The Palestinians self-destructively embrace of the “right to return” (an idea tied to the historical myth of “Nakba”) and/or Islamist fundamentalism makes peace virtually impossible.

But what’s stopped the Arabs of Gaza or the “West Bank” from achieving prosperity? There are hundreds of stateless minorities in the world. Very few turn to violence. Many thrive. The Jews and Arabs lived in similarly desolate places before the partition, but in the decades since, Israel’s GDP per capita has risen to be on par with South Korea, Spain, and France. Jordan is on par with El Salvador, Namibia. Egypt is on par with Mongolia and Gabon. Is that also the fault of Zionists?

Indeed, like any free nation, Israel makes mistakes, but the idea that it stands in the way of Palestinian success due to bigotry or colonialist intentions or a racial grudge is a paranoiac conspiracy spread by Middle East leaders and Western intellectuals. They would like nothing more than a peaceful neighbor.

Every Israeli restriction on Gazans has been implemented as a reaction to violence by Gazans. When you send Gaza concrete, they don’t build skyscrapers, they build tunnels and military bases under hospitals. They tear down streetlight poles and dig up water pipes to make casements for rockets. Tens of thousands of them. When you allow shipments of necessities, they smuggle in explosives and weapons from Iran.

Gazans are unwilling to build the basic infrastructure necessary for themselves despite receiving hundreds of millions in aid. Israel can only cut power off in Gaza because Israeli power companies provide that electricity (often for free.) The same goes for clean water. Gaza water comes through pipelines from Israeli desalination plants. The notion that Israel is engaged in “genocide,” as you can see, is preposterous in every conceivable way.

Perhaps the only way to implement hope and “prosperity” for the Palestinians is to tighten the occupation of Gaza and create basic civic institutions that make it possible. If, as many Democrats claim, Hamas is not the true agent of the Palestinian people then Israel would be liberating them from a violent cult. But, of course, this would be met with condemnation from the world — not to mention it would mean Israel putting its own citizens’ lives in danger.

Rather, Israel is asked to create an independent state for a people who are incapable of living in peace with Jews, or anyone else. A Gazan nation would be a place where Iran sends deadlier missiles and, one day, nuclear weapons. At this point, acquiescing to any independent Palestinian state would be suicide for the Jewish state. No responsible nation would do it. And a leaflet isn’t going to change anything.

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Palestine Can’t Prosper Until It Chooses Peace
BY: RAND PAUL
NOVEMBER 08, 2023
5 MIN READ

We should each day audibly reiterate the hope and prosperity that could occur if the Palestinians opt for peace.


Regardless of whether it is practical, wise, or foolhardy at this moment in time, offering suggestions for peace between Israel and the Palestinians must be done.

We should each day audibly reiterate the hope and prosperity that could occur if the Palestinians opt for peace. One might argue that the prosperity that would come with peace is self-evident, but a people who live in despair and poverty and feel their plight is not only the result of Israel’s policies but actually the desire of Israel need to be reminded and reassured that peace would bring prosperity.

Opting for peace would necessarily mean that Hamas surrenders and is replaced by a Palestinian government that agrees to coexist with Israel.

Of course, such a breakthrough is easier to conceive of than to implement. But such a dream needs elucidation and repetition if Palestinians are to reject Hamas and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not an entity, which can be militarily countered but never really eliminated. It is understandable that any country must and will defend itself against the terrorists’ senseless violence.

But ultimately, the defeat of terrorism requires the aggrieved party to voluntarily lay down its weapons and choose another way. The terrorists themselves are beyond reason and redemption, but the mass of the Palestinian population not yet radicalized might be reached.

When I visited Israel in 2013, I suggested to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that incremental improvements in the lives of Palestinians might lessen their rage and propensity to commit violence. In principle, he didn’t disagree, but in practice, he was not very open to concrete proposals.

When I suggested that Israel allow a modern port to be constructed in Gaza under the joint security of Israel and the Palestinians, Netanyahu responded that Palestinians already had a port — in Israel. Not exactly a recipe for significantly lowering tensions.

When I suggested that the West Bank and Gaza gradually be allowed to assume control of the economic duties paid by commerce crossing their borders, Netanyahu was similarly not eager for change in either the West Bank or Gaza. In Gaza, he saw no opening for negotiations with Hamas. Of course, he is correct that a Palestinian port could only happen when Hamas is gone, but the Palestinians need to hear that a port and prosperity would be the result of them rejecting Hamas.

Even before Hamas took over, construction of a port in Gaza never really was allowed to proceed. Albeit Israel’s opposition did come in response to the Second Intifada and missile attacks from Gaza.

Constant attacks over decades have left many Israeli leaders beleaguered and open only to retrenchment, reprisal, and defense and unable to understand the need to discover and persuade reasonable voices in Gaza. Selling peace and selling Israel as a neighboring country that desires prosperity for Gaza is no easy sale. Hence, the need for continuous voices touting the prosperity that could come with the rejection of Hamas and violence.

The Abraham Accords seem to be an example of some of Israel’s neighbors finally grasping that normalizing peaceful relations with Israel can be a win-win situation.

No one can blame the Israelis for considering Hamas to be incapable of good-faith negotiation. Yet while it is true that Hamas cannot be negotiated with, the non-Hamas Palestinians must hear a message of hope of what could come if they renounce violence.

For a long-term peace to occur, Palestinians must believe they will materially benefit by rejecting Hamas. Palestinians need to hear that rejecting violence and recognizing Israel would make possible the building of a modern port in Gaza, that the blockade will end, that the gulf sheikdoms would be allowed to facilitate regional and international trade, that travel into Israel from Gaza for work would be allowed, that desalinization technology would be shared, and that the benefits of free trade will allow Gaza to finally prosper — but only if and when Palestinians completely reject the violence.

Some will say, “Oh, the Palestinians already know this, and they choose Hamas and violence.” I would argue that the Palestinians need to be told and retold of the benefits of rejecting violence. Sure, the Palestinians are seeing the stick that comes as a result of terrorism, but the tribal world we live in is so polarized and jaded that it’s likely many Palestinians don’t even believe that Hamas has committed the atrocities against civilians including women and children. So, instead of dropping leaflets to a million Palestinians to flee or be bombed, perhaps we might consider leaflets announcing the prosperity and benefits if they choose a government that recognizes Israel and renounces violence.

Perhaps it is naïve to believe that enough Palestinians might choose peace, but the cycle of terrorism, followed by military reprisals, followed by more terrorism is not the answer.

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

Do better! 😏. That’s not even close! LOL!

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Learn history

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

How about the million Israelis on the northern border with Lebanon who have had to leave their homes because of the threat of Hezbollah? They are refugees.