Caroline Glick on the escalating international war against Israel
The [UN] Human Rights Council’s decision to form its new permanent inquisition constitutes an unprecedented escalation of the political war the UN has been waging against Israel for the past fifty years. To grasp the danger, it is necessary to understand how Israel’s foes operate at the UN and how their partners in Europe and Israel itself operate…
Shortly after the Human Rights Council was established [2006], it determined that demonizing Israel would be a permanent agenda item. Item Number 7 is the only permanent agenda item that deals with a specific country…since 2006, the council has convened nine special sessions to expand its focus on attacking the Jews. To get a sense of just how overwhelming the council’s focus on Israel is, in the same period, the council has convened just 19 special sessions to deal with every other country on the planet.
The council’s template for demonizing Israel has been fairly consistent through the years. Immediately after each Palestinian terror campaign against Israel comes to an end, the Holocaust denying, terror sponsoring PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas has his UN representatives ask for a special session to discuss the “war crimes,” and “crimes against humanity” Israel supposedly carried out against the Palestinians. No one ever mentions that ever single missile launched against Israel from the Hamas terror regime in Gaza constitutes a separate war crime. No one ever mentions Hamas at all…
At the end of its “in-depth investigation,” the commission issues a report which determines that Israel conducted war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Glick goes on to describe much more UN history and future plans in that vein, including major European participation involving – among other things – economic boycotts and lawfare.
And then of course there’s Iran and its nuclear program. Glick has some recommendations here. Let’s just say she doesn’t think the Biden administration has a clue what to do. I will add that I don’t think they care any more than the Obama administration did. Perhaps less.
And of course this is not just about Israel. The entire Middle East balance of power, as well as nuclear proliferation, are all threatened by the nuclear ambitions of Iran, and this affects the US as well:
…[A] nuclear-armed Iran would end all gains the U.S. has made over the past 75 years in preventing nuclear proliferation and arms races. Not only would Russia and China massively increase their nuclear arsenals. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and other regional states would follow Iran in developing or purchasing nuclear arsenals of their own. And, following hot on the heels of America’s humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, a nuclear-armed Iran would destroy the vestiges of U.S. superpower credibility in the region and the world.
Given the danger a nuclear-armed Iran represents for U.S. national security and America’s global position and interests, it behooves the administration to consider new policy options now that its nuclear diplomacy has failed.
Dream on. Even if they wanted to, they are so incompetent they couldn’t carry it out properly. Granted, it’s very challenging.
The war on Israel is another indication, in case you needed one, that (as a general rule) diplomatic corps are a collecting pool of liberally-educated dung in high priced tailored clothing. It has, by the way, been a feature of the organizational life of the United Nations since 1974, 47 years in all. Note, the lapse in time between the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the end of the 1st World War was of similar duration, as was the lapse of time between V-E Day and the end of the Soviet Union. As was the lapse in time from the foundation of the Mandate of Palestine and the end of the Six-Day War. You could ask from Glick what appreciable injury outfits like the Human Rights Council have been able to inflict on Israel and the answer would have to be a rather involved one. What they do is emit noxious gas.
Note, it’s possible to belong to nearly every consequential UN affiliate without belonging to the organization itself. (I think UNICEF might be an exception here). There are about three-dozen international agencies that might perform some useful functions. We should stick to those and leave the United Nations.
One big step taken by Trump that has been thrown away by Biden handlers is energy independence. The spectacle of Biden begging for help from the Saudis now is nauseating. I have been a strong supporter of Israel since Entebbe. I haven’t visited and wish I could but I am too old. Aside from Israel, depending on that cockpit for a basic energy source when it could be avoided is diplomatic malpractice.
I want to visit Israel before it’s not there.
Guess I need to start packing.
The Dems actions against Israel is also among the most vile things they have done. I just do not understand how Jews in this country still support the Dems. Well, I guess I have an idea. Politics is the overall concern to them, since they are Secular Jews, not Religious Jews. They learned nothing from the Holocaust.
Nuclear Armed to the Teeth (did the article happen to mention that minor detail? :P) Israel is perfectly capable of doing anything and everything to defend itself.
And has done so in the past. And will do so in the future.
This topic is of great interest to Jews everywhere in the way that the Tamil immigrants in USA and Canada might have been interested in the fate of Tamils in Sri Lanka or the latest movies coming out of Madras. Perfectly understandable. Possibly even more so for Jews given that they’ve had a very recent in historical terms Racial Wake Up Call.
All cool.
Why it should be a pressing matter for anyone else one way or the other is utterly beyond me. No Man is an Island is a lovely theory, but I won’t get worked up about some pesky Tamils in Jaffna Peninsula anymore than I will about a bunch of nuclear-armed Israelis. Or Iranians. Let them sort it out amongst themselves.
And let us not permit them to drag the rest of us into their ancient hatreds.
After all, Who am I to Judge?
Zaphod:
You certainly are predictable. I knew you would chime in exactly and precisely as you have.
The last part of my post deals with the ramifications for the US and the world. But it was also entirely predictable that you would ignore or deny it.
“Dream on. Even if they wanted to, they are so incompetent they couldn’t carry it out properly. Granted, it’s very challenging.” neo
Cant dispute the incompetence but it’s only challenging because of the refusal to identify the source of the problem, which is Islam itself. And then, to directly address that source.
Israel needs to publicize it’s rumored Samson option. Declare in the UN, that the day Israel ceases to exist is the day that Mecca and the city of Qom cease to exist. Islam has never lost a ‘holy’ site and the Imams and Mullahs won’t risk them once they are persuaded that Israel is deadly serious and committed to that policy. Of course committment is the problem, given Israel’s traitorous left. A condition we here can easily relate to… though if consensus ever emerges, eliminating the Dome of the Rock ought to bring the message home to Islam’s jihadists.
The UN cesspool will be a problem until the US pulls out and tells the UN that they have 24 hours to evacuate the building before its razed to the ground. But the rel problem isn’t what to do about ‘the problem’, it’s what to do about the people preventing the solution from being applied.
@Neo:
No more predictable than Cato at the end of his speeches on public sanitation or anything else.
And still correct.
Ramifications Shmamifications…. We’ll just have to continue to differ on the need for everyone to be sniffing everyone else’s emanations whether or not they happen to be on the same or the other side of the same planet.
From a purely systems theoretical viewpoint, Decoupling is more likely to increase global stability than barging in everywhere on the specious precautionary principle.
Why is there never any coverage of the Twelver variant of Islam? It makes Iran different from almost all the rest of the Islamic world, and many times more dangerous.
Notice that it is the same political party in the U.S. that is simultaneously growing more anti-Israel, more anti-white, more anti-straight ( they are waging war on the very concept of boy OR girl or “ binary” sexual orientation, trying to convince vast swaths of vulnerable children that maybe they are not “ binary”), more anti-western civilization, more anti-capitalism, more anti-fossil fuel, more anti hydroelectric energy, more anti-Christian, more anti-nation state, more anti-law and order while advocating for anarchy-tyranny.
@GB:
There’s nothing rumoured about it and the Mullah’s and all the other neighbours will have been told unofficially.
You do realise I hope, that your greatest ally if push came to shove and was going down for the ages would likely lob one at DC just for shits and giggles if it was thought that US foreign policy had helped to bring about the Untergang.
Just a thought for all those Patriots out there. No sweat off my back. And not much to miss if DC gets glassed. Certainly not many denizens would be regretted.
Not all choices of launch packages will dump everything on the Arabs or the Persians. Once you have the kit, you don’t need a PhD in game theory to know that you are compelled to plan for *every* contingency.
Just like Realpolitik requires the occasional sacrifice of a village here or there or of a USS Liberty or the blowing up of British officials or the killing of British Mandate soldiers and police. All in a good cause. And frankly good luck to them. I’m the resident Machiavellian.. They did the needful and created a mythos to back it up. Nice work.
People here with thin skins think I’ve got an axe to grind. I’m just a realist. They did everything and everything to get their country and to have and hold… To think they need more help to learn how to walk and chew gum on their ownsome is childishly stupidly naive.
Zaphod of the island of Hong Kong. Has no country so cares about no one else’s. But he cares ever so much about Isreal and the Jews. Nuclear armed to the teeth he said, I wonder why that would be, braniac?
Ah, yes, I remember there is a certain part of European recent history you only remember as an article of derision.
What a piece of work. Chime in, defenders of Z.
Not sorry to disagree on Neo’s comment about Biden & Democrats when she writes, “Even if they wanted to, they are so incompetent they couldn’t carry it out properly.”
They are not incompetent at all, They mean us harm, seek to oppress us, and for insane reasons wish Israel to fail and give the Shia Muslims in Iran a free pass.
Look at all of the policy decisions, national and foreign, made by Biden and his troops. Is there even one that passes the smell test? No.
Shal Om.
For the rest, I would have thought the USA has sufficient pressing domestic problems of its own. Enough to occupy everyone for at least the next three generations.
One might wish that the various non-Jewish usual suspects would get as worked up about the living conditions of poor rural Whites in Rust Belt America as they do about the security of Israel. Jews get free pass to pile on the Israel Bandwagon. The natural interests of X’s of course must involve X’s — unless you belong to a suicidal decaying race. Which the Jews do not. Something for the rest of us to consider.
Not really knowing anything about your upbringing, in about the same position as anyone else not raised in a bible believing American family.
And grasping what you surmise the result even of the Christianization of China would portend, it is not hard to weigh what value you would personally place on so called “spiritual” and moral considerations.
Nonetheless, whatever the out-sized political influence the Israel lobby is supposed by many to have in the United States, I think that foreigners underestimate the wholly gratuitous and uncoerced sympathy many middle Americans who know no Jews, have for the people whom they imagine “the Jews” to be.
I think that you underestimate the impact which Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel have on the minds of Evangelical Americans; and to some extent on bible knowledgeable Roman Catholics.
As historians have pointed out, frontier American Christianity had a good deal of the Old Testament in it; and the fate of the Jews – or better, Israel – has always been a featured aspect of the larger Protestant eschatology. In fact both Roman Catholics and the Puritans (before the latter evaporated) saw themselves as the New Israel.
Now I am not saying that that extends to modern Mainline Protestants and their tepid universalism and comical Social Gospel theology, but then Mainline Cuck Protestantism is not main-street Protestantism by a long shot; anymore, at least.
And for better or worse, most naive American Christians have no idea what Talmudic Jews believe: imagining them to be strict and sincere students of the Old Testament. Likely imagining, if they ever thought about it, that “Talmud” is a Jewish word for the same Torah we call “The Old Testament”.
They think “Jews”, and they see Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, or racing a chariot around the Circus Maximus; or at least some version of the guys in “Munich”, and not the fat little dancing semi-divine Rabbis in fur hats who think that they know better than and can fool God himself.
And then there are these guys too, as we all know …https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQDc5idYQE2T6IYKT3bUN7A
Compare how they are doing vis-a-vis the government in Israel, with how a certain “faith tradition” is doing in China, or Iran, or , or , or …
Zaphod on January 3, 2022 at 7:18 pm said:
Well, now that we have gotten to this point, I’m all for letting the cities burn and the druggies drug, and the neurotic self-destruct; because it looks to me that saving them is clasping a viper to your breast.
The tough part will be preserving an effective rump state once the pathetic come whining to the border, pretending to have been libertarian Republicans and Stoics all their lives, and your sister-in-law is willing to lie to get them in.
Z throws down the poor rural white American smoke screen. But yet is curiously facinated with Israel.
What a tool.
Not your country,remember?
@DNW:
According to my shallow dabblings, there’s this thing called the Scofield Reference Bible which has planted in now several generations of American Evangelicals the notion that Jews and Israel are intimately associated with Eschatology and therefore must be indulged, if not outright worshiped.
As I’ve said elsewhere, were I more Jewish, I’d be bemused by the poor quality of the approval and appreciation I was getting. Shades of Groucho there, so perhaps there’s hope for me yet 😛
Certainly there’s also an element of having watched too many post-War biblical epics, too, and assuming that that’s all she wrote. What your average Holy Roller would make of Alexandrian Jews or Josephus or Maimonides we’ll never know because they’ll never know. I’ve always maintained that a critical viewing of (to pick one) The Graduate ought to balance things out. But compare and contrast is not everyone’s strong point.
Zaphod on January 3, 2022 at 8:15 pm said:
The more anyone is exposed to Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand interacting as “official cultural representatives” the less likely they are to think well of officially represented Jewish culture.
But then lucky for us all, George Segal has shown us that that’s “No Way to Treat a Lady”
Well, they might know that the first mentioned were the motive for creating the Septuagint. Copies of which scriptures predate any extant Masoretic texts and were used by the New Testament authors. But then if they are literally Holly Rollers, then maybe they would not know much about the Septuagint and the Alexandrian Jews thanks to Luther and his assumptions.
Speaking of Alexandrians, I did my ‘Jewish Cultural and Intellectual History’ coursework paper on Philo Judaeus.
Flavius Josephus, is an interesting case. I think that as an historical source he is somewhat undervalued because he may be viewed by some as a trimmer.
As for Maimonides, I think that some discretion is in order. Some rather unflattering passages have come into broader circulation in recent years which don’t quite comport with the image of him as that broadminded intellectual and moral paragon to which he was elevated in the mid 20th century by secular historians celebrating the “golden age” of Muslim conquered Spain..
@DNW:
That’s what I was delicately alluding to re Moses M.
Still at least he didn’t burn down the Venice Arsenal when a war with the Turks was looming. That was someone else at a later date.
Certainly true that even some very unreconstructed Holy Rollers can rock the Hebrew and the Koine impressively. But I get impression that they don’t delve deeply or widely outside a very narrow canon — especially with the Greek where there must be lots of fun scuttlebutt pickings for the curious.
Issue is that Israel fights against and destroys what might be called its enemies’ interest. Expendable young men with no place in their society and a portion of their GDP less than their oil revenues or aid from other nations or NGO.
And, you can’t win a war with a country which has a sanctuary. See Viet Nam, Afghanistan. North Korea.
The enemies can continue indefinitely.
Zaphod,
“There’s nothing rumoured about it and the Mullah’s and all the other neighbours will have been told unofficially.”
Ah, that explains why the Mullahs are determined to attain nuclear ICBM capability. So that they can activate Israel’s Samson option. Go out in a blaze of fire while leaving the Great Satan unchallenged. Thanks for that insight. Sigh.
“You do realise I hope, that your greatest ally if push came to shove and was going down for the ages would likely lob one at DC”
You forgot NYC. If they had that capability perhaps but… they don’t.
“They did everything and everything to get their country and to have and hold…
That the “palestinians” still have the capability to attack such that Israel needs walls and a defensive mindset, argues otherwise.
“To think they need more help to learn how to walk and chew gum on their ownsome is childishly stupidly naive.”
It’s not help they need, in fact relying on the US for ‘help’ has given US Presidents a veto agaist Israel pursuing decisive victories. It’s not Israel that’s “childishly stupidly naive” it’s the West, especially the USA. Israel is however unwilling to tell the West to go pound sand because the erroneous lesson the Israeli establishment drew for the 76 Yom Kipper War was that she couldn’t survive without US support.
Cicero,
“They mean us harm, seek to oppress us, and for insane reasons wish Israel to fail and give the Shia Muslims in Iran a free pass.”
It’s not possible to reject fundamental aspects of reality and retain competence.
They absolutely mean us harm and seek to disenfranchise us from having any say in governance whatsoever.
They wish for Israel to fail because Israel’s nationalism insults (proves!) the theory of transnationalism, which posits that nationhood itself is the fundamental causal factor in wars.
They give Iran’s Shia Muslims a pass because when met with murderous aggression, appeasement is their default position.
Israel isn’t your country either. Funny that you have so much wisdom for all parts of the world that aren’t your own. Except Xi land.
Also funny that you side with any and all who oppose Israel. Now it’s the Persians (aka The Mad Mullahs), those fine upstanding members of the international community. Sympathy for Gerald Bull, builder of super guns, artillery engineer? Tears for the Iranian Sulamini (poet and austere General of the Revolutionary Guards that President Trump droned) too?
How low will you go Z?
Incorrect, Om.
I support the right of Israel to slaughter and otherwise chastise its Arab and Persian enemies and its own domestic non-Jews to its heart’s content.
No sweat off my back. If Israel survives and thrives, I’ll raise a mildly congratulatory glass to them.
But where is it written that the survival of Israel is YOUR business or mine? And why should it be?
You seem to love Israeli Jews more than you do West Virginian coal miners. You’d best hope it’s not unrequited love. Because as far as I know, you’re not high priority on the Aliyah List when the USA goes down the toilet. In fact you’re not on the list. No bolt hole for you. Best carve out a country of your own, no? 😛 A bit of Living Space. There’s a blueprint for that. And the Irony of all Ironies.
Z, the poor white, insert West Virginia coal miners, smoke screen has nothing to do with your fixation on Israel. You are the one without a country. Own goal, sonny.
Ever been in a coal mine, worked for a coal company, or been to West Virginia? Or is this just another example ot things you “know?”
Zaphod:
Not only are you obsessed with Jews, but you continue with the strawmen. No one is telling you to care about Israel. But other people do care about Israel, for various reasons that have been described, plus other reasons as well. So when you write, “But where is it written that the survival of Israel is YOUR business or mine?” you are being obtuse. I suppose to a devout Christian, it IS written in the Bible. Otherwise, it’s written nowhere, but it makes moral sense and strategic sense to many people.
Not to you – but lots of things that make sense to other people don’t make sense to the self-appointed Machiavelli of the blogosphere, Zaphod.
And the fate of US coal miners is not really related to the question of Israel, although my strong guess would be that the majority of US coal miners actually support Israel. But Zaphod knows better, right?
If you insist on denuclearizing Iran, you must also denuclearize Israel.
I would simply point out that no nation has crossed the existing lines of Israeli control since they developed their nuclear arsenal. How many lives on both sides have been saved by this deterrent? How many lives have been saved by our deterrent. As a famous professor chose as a title for one of his books “Thank G-d for the Atomic Bomb”, so do my fellow Jews who reside in Israel. We as a people have survived longer than any known clan outside of the Orient and I am confident that notwithstanding the anti-Semitism that will always be with us, we will continue as before.
Well said Stu.
If you insist on denuclearizing Iran, you must also denuclearize Israel.
Why?
You know, you’d be up at least a good 6M Jews had the USA not butted in to WWI in 1917 and stopped the Germans from winning (or at least getting an Armistice that wasn’t a rank betrayal) for no good reason at all and plenty of manufactured from whole cloth bloodthirsty warmongering war profiteering Wilsonian Bullshit reasons.
Whole bunch of other geopolitical shit wouldn’t have gone sideways, too.
You might all want to think on the idea that masterful inactivity might more often be the smart way for the USA to go.
Having spent the latter chunk of C20 gloriously ‘fixing’ the problems created in WWI and at Versailles was the least you could do. But You Did Make That doesn’t quite mean what you think.
Just. Stop. Shit will take care of itself.
I think Zaphod has a problem of reconciliation with immutable human nature.
“Why?”
For the very same reason that if one insists on dismantling the Soviet Union, one must insist on dismantling the United States.
IOW, fairness, consistency, symmetry, aesthetics, justice. Morality.
(Cue “Imagine”…that stirring anthem of emptiness…)
You know, you’d be up at least a good 6M Jews had the USA not butted in to WWI in 1917 and stopped the Germans from winning (or at least getting an Armistice that wasn’t a rank betrayal) for no good reason at all and plenty of manufactured from whole cloth bloodthirsty warmongering war profiteering Wilsonian Bullshit reasons
1. Anglo-American co-operation for raisons d’etat has been a feature of international relations for 200 years and did not at the time even require a formal treaty.
2. ‘War profiteering’ is, of course, a nonsense phrase. All wars require plant and equipment. You’re not going to find a historical example of a war declared in order to benefit those whose business is to provide plant and equipment.
3. There was no ‘rank betrayal’. They were out of gas and Marshall v. Hindenberg and Gen. Ludendorff knew it even if you don’t. They got bad terms at Versailles (though, perhaps, more congenial terms than they might have imposed had they won), then exacerbated matters with perverse behavior. (See German monetary policy, 1922-23).
4. Please note, the median performance of the volkisch parties during the Weimar Republic was 6.5% of the vote. The German electorate wasn’t buying their stock-in-trade until the German economy began to implode in 1929. Had the Mueller or Bruenig ministries had the sense to devalue the currency, expand the money supply, provide liquidity to their distressed banks, and not bother about the budget deficit, the Nazi Party might have been no more consquential than their counterparts in Finland in that era.
5. Note also, Germany successfully stiffed the Allies on the reparations during the inter-war period, was able after 1935 to ignore provisions of the Versailles treaty limiting the census of their armed services, and was able by the end of 1938 to game the Allies into allowing them to absorb Austria and the Germanophone borderlands in Bohemia and Moravia. Danzig was a German dependency de facto from 1935 onward. The allies, push came to shove, couldn’t be bothered to enforce the Versailles Treaty.
6. The other Germanophone territories in Europe at the time were scattered bits of former Hapsburg and Tsarist territory (not practicable to integrate given all the non-Germans there), Switzerland (an area difficult to conquer and bereft of pan-German sentiment), Alsace-Lorraine (an area never reconciled to the German Empire and loyal to France), the South Tyrol borderlands (take it up with Mussolini) and Memelland (population < 100,000). They didn't get their overseas dependencies back, but those were mostly money holes and the 1st World War had demonstrated they didn't have the naval capacity to hold them. Hitler actually believed all that hooey about lebensraum and Joo conspiracies. Teh Crazy wasn’t a function of what the Allies did do or did not do; it also extended to his domestic life. See, for example, his medical and dental care. (Or have a gander at his job history).
I assume the chaps at Unz (whose contributors include Eric Striker, Laurent Gueymont, Andrew Anglin, and Philip Giraldi) can consult their server logs to discover from where Zaphod actually posts.
Awaiting a reposting of Patrick Buchanan’s “remarkable” article on how Churchill was responsible for WWII…
…But why read the article when you can read the book!
https://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Hitler-Unnecessary-War-Britain/dp/0307405168
Me? I blame those persnickety Weimar art critics (alas, had they only shown a bit more broadmindedness)…though to be fair, Schicklgruber’s art professors also have a lot to answer for.
Z shows his … again. This time casting back to those old timey days before the parents of the excreable boomers were born. Who knew he is such an authority, of history too!
I blame the Belgians, then the French Army (fighting in their country for their countries). They should have just laid back and thought of the Kaiser, eh Z? The British and the commonwealth had a bit of dying to do as well. But it was the Americans that cocked it up?
What a tool.
Sowell’s essay, “Are The Jews Unique?” refers to the position of the “minority middleman” in various econcomies. They ae generally not liked and may suffer during times of instability. It includes Indians in parts of Africa, Chinese in parts of southeast Asia, etc.
Still, the industrialized murder of millions is unique.
One wonders why the existence of a small state, under constant threat, should attract so much negative attention. Is there enough anti-Semitism to fuel that? Liberal Protestants may root for Israel’s enemies but are not, afaik, anti-Semitic. I should say, though, that, as with anti-Asian violence, the aforementioned Very Nice Church People are only exercised if a white perp can be found, which is not often.
What else about Israel, whose existence seems to annoy so many, can be the cause for the general wish for it to suicide. GIve up this…. for peace. Just a touch more. The Arabs will like you if you take down that fence.
Not getting it.
Israel does what its enemies oppose and what supposed western liberals approve. Still…..
Still, the industrialized murder of millions is unique.
There was a great deal of antagonism to the Jews during the inter-war period in one country after another. Murderous violence required a perfect storm. Just the wrong person in the right place at the right time. Aside from Nazi Germany, the country in Europe in which law and policy during the inter-war period were most hostile to the Jews was Horthy’s Hungary. Yet, Horthy and his various prime ministers resisted physical violence to Jews all the way up to the point the country was occupied by German troops in 1944. No clue what the trajectory of political life in Hungary would have been absent the war. However, this very anti-semitic society and polity continued late in the game to respect certain basic immunities in re the Jewish population.
“…should attract so much negative attention…”
The basic problem, albeit oft mentioned and thus nothing new, is that the Jewish State has stubbornly—or rather, “intransigently” (the word of choice where Israel is concerned)—refused to allow its enemies to destroy it (at least not yet—this of course may change).
Were Israel to—finally—agree to allow its enemies to destroy it, I assure you the country would be a lot more popular with the usual suspects….
(In fact, the amount of hysterical jubilation demonstrated worldwide would be unprecedented.)
I suppose to a devout Christian, it IS written in the Bible. Otherwise, it’s written nowhere, but it makes moral sense and strategic sense to many people.
Just to point out:
1. Since 1885, there’s been a boatload of political violence in Latin America, but little inter-state war. The most consequential was the Chaco War, fought between Bolivia and Paraguay between 1932 and 1935 over a piece of territory which even today has fewer than 500,000 people in it. Guatemala and Venezuela have territorial claims to neighboring countries, but they’ve never been pressed with arms; Guatemala dropped its maximalist demand 28 years ago and the claims as they stand now are for blocs of rainforest where hardly anyone lives.
2. The political class in Tropical Africa has been very loathe to noodle around with the suboptimal boundaries they inherited. There have been five notable secessionist movements which came to blows and one notable irridentist movement. Three succeeded and three did not. AFAICR, there was only one case of one state claiming the whole of another, and that was never pressed.
3. In South Asia, there have been two notable alterations in boundaries since the war: (1) the two halves of Pakistan separated and (2) there was a juridical change in the status of Sikkim – from protectorate to province. Pakistan was prior to 1972 an unnatural conjoint state. Sikkim doesn’t seem a severely discontented territory as is.
4. In the Far East, there have been six discrete disputes of this nature: the two Koreas, the two VietNams, Taiwan, Hong Kong, East Timor, and the former Dutch New Guinea. The first two involve one country with two distinct governments and modes of political economy. The next two are modest outposts who seek local self-rule due to a history of distinction which includes present-tense political economy. The 4th involves an effort of a large country to stomp flat a small country with a distinct history. The 5th involves the effort of a large country to colonize and dispossess the population of a small country.
5. In the Antipodes, there aren’t any territorial disputes of note bar a secessionist movement in New Caledonia. In North Africa, the most obtrusive dispute has incorporated Algeria subsidizing an insurgency in a piece of trashland annexed by Morocco in 1975.
6. In Central Asia, there’s been a mess of intramural violence in the last century, especially in 1918-22. What there hasn’t been at any time recently is an ambition by one state to swallow another or even a significant portion of another.
7. In Europe since 1945, you had the division of the Germanies, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Yugoslav wars. In the first case, you had, again, competing modes of political economy (resolved to their satisfaction). In the latter, you had an extension of self-government as power was devolved on regional capitals. You had much the same in re the different components of Yugoslavia, disfigured by the determination of Serbia to keep control of some of those components contra the wishes of locals.
8. If you look at the Near East itself, you see a mess of insurgencies in the South Arabian states and the Kurdish provinces, intramural violence in Iraq, territorial disputes over Karabakh and Abkhazia, disputes over Cyprus, and, of course, the disputes over the former Mandatory Palestine.
The closest analogues to the disputes Israel has been involved in can be found adjacent to China (in re Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Sinkiang), in East Timor, in western New Guinea; in the historical Bosnia, Herzegovina, Krajina, and Kosovo; in Cyprus, and (in the Caucasus) Abkhazia and Karabakh. None of these have quite the stakes of the last century’s battles over the former Palestine Mandate. Three of these involve disputes over small pieces of a larger whole. Two of these involved instances of great cruelty, but the perpetrating party lost and there do not appear at this time to have plans to ignite more fighting. One case has been dormant for 47 years and has not at yet incorporating the perpetrator party seeking to comprehensively dispossess and expel the disputing population. Another involved a brutal attempt at conquest which failed after which the perpetrator party dropped its territorial claim.
Which leaves the former Dutch New Guinea (about which international agencies care nothing), China’s plans for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Sinkiang (about which international agencies care little if they care at all), and Israel and adjacent territories.
When you ask ‘why should we care’, recall there are only a very small number of places where the state and society as is are under threat or are regarded as a worthy object of destruction by any other party. (And in regard to most of these places, your interlocutor is happy to shill for evil people).
Barry. I kind of get that. My question is why? After all, most of the westerners who want the worst for Israel claim to want–elsewhere–what Israel does internally, and oppose what Israel’s enemies do as a matter of course.
That’s backwards.
Isn’t it?
I would say it’s a question of “framing” the country.
Democracy? So what. (It’s irrelevant and obfuscates the truth of the matter—IOW “democracy washing”)
Gay friendly? So what. (Ditto—“gay washing”)
Make the desert bloom? So what. (Ditto—“environment-washing”)
Women in all (or most) areas of work/production/military/government? So what. (Ditto—“feminist-washing”)
Minorities in all (or most) areas of work/production/military/government? So what. (Ditto—(“Minority-washing”)
Country made peace (of a sort) with Egypt and Jordan? So what? (Ditto—“peace-washing”, etc., etc., etc….)
Country made several offers of peace to the Palestinians? So what?
Country made peace (AKA “normalization”—God forbid “Biden” would call it “peace) with other Arab countries? So what?
Country tries to help out its neighbors near and far when it can? So what.
Country tries to be ecologically conscious (though with several gaps) So what.
Country has a diverse population, of many origins, backgrounds, colors(!)—most of whom are from Arab/Islamic countries? So what.
“So what”…because none of the above MATTERS; because the country is DEFINED as a COLONIAL, OPPRESSIVE, APARTHEID, RACIST, FASCIST, CAPITALIST, ZIONIST outpost monstrosity; a country that stole land from its Palestinian inhabitants and REFUSES to give it all back. A militaristic country that does nothing but attack and kill Palestinians—when it isn’t stealing their land and ruining their lives. A country whose existence is founded on a lie and which commits interminable war crimes on a regular basis.
Because Zionism is DEFINED as Nazism.
A country that does not deserve to exist.
A country that must be destroyed—or at least cut down to size so that it becomes indefensible.
Morality demands this.
And it’s repeated and rebroadcast ad infinitum, ad nauseum, every day (with various embellishments) so that it becomes the Truth.
…Well, you did ask…
I guess I did. But let me go deeper. Why? What is behind, to take one example, “gay washing”?
Doesn’t that take at least a bit of mental energy to reverse, in the case of israel, what is preferred elsewhere?
Why the expenditure?
Because such hatred is sacred.
And the impetus to destroy has become a moral imperative.
And definitions—no matter how absurd—when underpinned by emotion, buttressed by (so-called) “morality” and reinforced by constant propaganda become unquestionable, impregnable truths…and remain so… until these definitions, this “knowledge”, these “truths” hit the brick wall of reality (i.e., if they ever do); reach that “Russians-at-the-gates-of-Berlin” moment of recognition.
But even then, the fantasy may be so strong, the concomitant denial so firmly entrenched, the delusion so deeply rooted, that not even reality will force a reckoning.
After all, as it is said, “the truth” will endure forever and ever. (And besides, God—or whatever your belief system is—is great….)
The Palestinians have taught the Democratic Party much.
Barry. Deeper. I get the process but why even start?
Hatred doesn’t have to have a reason.
om
Maybe not, but in my experience, an object is picked for a reason. Why pick Israel which, objectively, does what is called for by the Just and Righteous elsewhere?
First, you have to hate them, THEN you make up your reasons.
I’m looking for the first. Why?
Zenophobia (spelling intentionally incorrect). Neo has written about this hatred of the Jews and of Israel before. LSS it isn’t rational in any stretch, but it has been “useful” to those who have authority IIRC.
“First, you have to hate them, THEN you make up your reasons.”
Do you?
Did Bismarck hate the Serbs and the Croats and the Montenegrins and the Vlach and the Who Knows What?
He famously stated that the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier.
No. He did not. He loved *his* people and worked for them. Not for others or abstractions.
And he was correct. And wise to be deliberately indifferent to internecine strife ‘Over There’ — having the wit to grasp that getting involved in the mess could do Germany no good and much bad.
After him, the Deluge.
Don’t salivate when they ring the bell. Nut it out first.
The Jews love their people and their country — as is meet and proper. And it is meet and proper for them to see to its security. And they are perfectly capable of doing so by themselves.
Bismarck was dead and gone in 1914, braniac. Other fools were running that train.
Hello Om.
Have a look at this:
https://carolineglick.com/
Just skim the article headings. Do you notice much interest in the fate of the USA and Americans? Or do you get the impression that all she cares about is Israel?
Read some bio details here for more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Glick
I think it’s fair to say that she’s thrown in her chips with Israel.
Now there’s nothing wrong with Jews loving Israel and doing whatever it takes to serve and protect Israel.
The question is… *again*… What business is this of the United States of America and the fates and interests of the predominantly non-Jewish majority? Who supposedly still count for something. Or do they?
There was a general in the US Army that summed up Z’s fixation: ” … stuck on stupid.”
I guess one can’t be awesomely intelligent about everything.
So, I thought, “That doesn’t look right”. But not wanting to “embarrass” you, I figured I’d ignore it.
Then it occurred to me, as I thought of my 1960’s Howard Pyle Golden Book (or whatever it was) reprint of Sir Robin’s adventures in the Greenwood, [ https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10148/10148-h/10148-h.htm%5D that I’d go find my favorite childhood text.
Just for grins, I typed “mete” in the find window, expecting it to show. It did not.
I knew of course that it meant measure or to portion out, but I figured that the spelling connected with “fitting” would be the same and that good old Howard MUST have used it.
No. But I knew I was not dreaming. Though literature is one of any number of things I insufficiently appreciate, I knew that I had seen “meet” as you used it, but spelled “mete”.
I had not spent all that time reading – or trying to – Middle English texts for nothing.
Had to go back further than Pyle’s charming and deliberately anachronistic [with relation to the present day] text.
Enjoy Robin Hood …
If I could find a pristine copy in this godforsaken woke world I’d buy my nephew one.
Maybe if I look diligently, I’ll find it.
@DNW:
And there was I in full-on Hieratic Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch Book of Common Prayer Pastiche Mode….
And you would try to ruin the fun. Drink up your Hemlock please.
I’d compose a paean to the IDF’s Mastery of the Art of Meting Out, but the Metics and Medeizers would pile on, my sincerity notwithstanding.
I’m only interested in Middle English for the smut. How about you?
Did you have Richard’s Topical Encyclopedia when you were young?
Just had quick look at Pyle. Plenty of quothing.
Read ACD’s Sir Nigel and The White Company?
Zaphod on January 4, 2022 at 10:57 pm said:
We have no metics or medeizers per se in this country . We call them Democrat voters, in the first instance; and U.S. Chamber of Commerce policy makers, in the second.
Not since I found out what “lewd” really meant in its earliest uses.
No. I had a depraved childhood … as a result of encyclopedia deprivation. Even the big Catholic families had a set or two. But not us. We got new cars instead. I had to rummage through my father’s college texts as a result. Used to like to laugh at the cases recorded in the psychology books until my mother put an end to it.
Forsooth!
Never heard of it.
@DNW:
“Forsooth!”
This brings up an image of the younger David Niven in tights. Should I be concerned?
“Never heard of it.”
“Then you’re in for a treat,” quoth he.
Sir Nigel – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2845/2845-h/2845-h.htm
The White Company – ACD, too.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/903/903-h/903-h.htm
Had never given etymology of Lewd any thought at all. Now that I have, your issue with Lewdness is obvious.