REPOST: Why Israel is Right and the Palestinians are WRONG

This is a repost of an article I ran in May 2006. It links to an important article that describes the history and reasons for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
   
With all the Leftist crap about Israel and the history of the Middle East, it is no wonder that Israel is so often portrayed as the "occupiers" and oppressors of the poor, pathetic and pitiable Palestinians, who only want to live in peace, have their own homeland, have jobs, and murder as many Jews as possible.

One of the best articles on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was written by David Horowitz in 2002. It clears up a lot of the absurd fairy tales that pass for truth these days, and if you don't really understand the conflict's history, you owe it to yourself to read it. The article is entitled Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East, by David Horowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com, January 11, 2002.

I stand with Israel and frankly, don't give a damn about the so-called Palestinians, a violent and depraved culture of of murder and mayhem who have resisted enormous efforts to find a just peace in the area and have continued to murder Israelis instead. It's time we stopped wasting our time on pursuing "peace" when these Muslims are religiously committed to murder.

The American University: a Marxist Cesspool of Intellectual Repression

There is a part of America that is solidly under Marxist control, where the populace is brainwashed, freedom of inquiry shut off, and competing ideas eradicated. That part of America is the American University.  In Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, David Horowitz writes:

Graduation ceremonies on America's college campuses have become occasions to reflect on the near total domination of the left over the institutions of higher learning, a politicization of academic life unprecedented in the history of our democracy.

This deplorable situation did not happen by accident. It is the result of a McCarthyism operating inside these academic institutions, fueled by the atmosphere of "political correctness" that has enveloped the academy since the ascension of the tenured left. The hegemony of this left has resulted in politicized hiring practices, systematic exclusion of dissenting voices, and an atmosphere of political intimidation to a degree seen only in countries ruled by communist or fascist or theocratic dictatorships.

College administrators regularly invite far left extremists to speak at graduation ceremonies, but conservatives are generally excluded.   Faculties are almost entirely comprised of Democrats, Marxists and other species of leftists.  The University of Colorado, for example, had a ratio of 30 to 1 in favor of Democrat professors over Republican ones.  There was not a single Republican or conservative in the English, psychology, journalism, philosophy, women's studies, ethnic studies, and lesbian and gay studies departments.  One college professor was eventually outed as a Republican, and was told by a department colleague "we would never have hired you if we'd known you were a Republican."

The university is an intellectual bubble where diversity of thought and opinion is heavily repressed through social pressure, politicized hiring, and the need for students to "go along" to get good grades.  In summary, the left has turned the University into a cesspool of Marxist, totalitarian brainwashing through the following means:
1.  Hiring only leftist, Marxist and Democrat faculty, though a heavily politicized hiring process;
2.  Inviting only leftists, liberals or radicals to be guest speakers or commencement speakers;
3.  Exerting strong social pressure on students and faculty to conform to, and support, the leftist agenda.

David Horowitz concludes:

The politicization of the university and the debasement of scholarship are a national tragedy of incalculable dimensions. If the situation is to be remedied, it can only be by a restoration of the integrity of these institutions parallel in magnitude and scope.

Source:  Horowitz, David (1999-09-01). Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (Kindle Locations 1807-1808). Spence Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

Quote of the Day -- or Why the Left Hates White People

The goals of the white-hating, leftist academics are described by David Horowitz in Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes:

Their goal remains the destruction of America's national identity and, in particular, of the moral, political, and economic institutions that form its social foundation.

Moving On -- the David Swindle Resolution

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was banned from commenting at David Horowitz's Newsreal site, not by Horowitz, but by one of his foot soldiers, one David Swindle, former liberal and Obama supporter.  Swindle was upset with me for my criticisms of him and one of his columnists, due to an unfair article impugning the integrity of Robert Stacy McCain.  We had a vigorous debate on Newsreal, and at the time I opined that neither Swindle nor his columnist (a "pagan conservative") were fit to represent Newsreal.  I still stand by that opinion.

Swindle disingenuously claims that he banned me for "being uncivil," this after his columnist insulted McCain, then his readers and me personally, likening us to the mindless followers of Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.  Pagan stated that I was the "Kilgore Trout" of McCain, using insult rather than facts or logic to justify his hit piece on McCain.  Who was being uncivil to whom?

I sent a complaint to David Horowitz via a comment form at his major website, telling him that I was disappointed in David Swindle, with a short summary of the facts (including the sliming of R.S. McCain), and Swindle's vengeance by banning me.  The next morning I received an email from Swindle stating that I would be given "a second chance" at commenting, but if I were again uncivil (that is, by his subjective definition of the term), the ban would be reinstated.

I politely told David Swindle to shove it.  I will not be reading or commenting at Newsreal, as long as Swindle is involved with the site.  The reasons are these:

1.  Swindle is dishonest and in denial about his culpability in the dispute that he and his columnist created;
2.  I was not "uncivil" by any reasonable definition of the term, though I was probably not terribly polite after being called names by the columnist (e.g. "Kilgore Trout").
3.  Swindle banned me, not for "incivility," but for disagreeing with his position on the columnist's article and for opining that neither he nor the columnist should represent Newsreal, for the reason that they start ruinous blog wars with prominent pundits on the right, merely so they can posture as enlightened "liberal conservatives."
4.  My commenting at any of Horowitz's sites is more valuable to Horowitz than it is to me -- it is a way of supporting the site by offering informed commentary and opinion on the articles posted there.  By taking away my commenting rights, Swindle is merely removing a voice of support for David Horowitz.
5.  If commenting is a "privilege," then is my favorable reviews of Horowitz books at Amazon also a "privilege," or is it moral and strategic support of Horowitz and his operations?  And if it is the latter, who is hurt by taking it away, me or Horowitz?  The same analogy applies to my links and articles supporting Horowitz and my rebuttals of unfavorable book reviews and anti-Horowitz comments at various online forums.

Allowing people to comment is a necessary feature that proves people actually visit and read the site.  It is not the website that bestows favor on the commenters, but the opposite.  Comments are evidence of interest, visitors and support.  And that is why Swindle's myopic view is back asswards:  by arbitrarily suspending comments from Horowitz supporters who reasonably disagree on a particular article or position, he erodes the credibility of the site and destroys both reader loyalty and reader support.

In summary, my disagreement with David Swindle is not about commenting rights at Newsreal or any other site -- it is over Swindle's tactless immaturity and disrespect for other conservatives, his unwelcoming and inhospitable attitude at Newsreal, and his inability to admit his errors and to apologize for them.

Now I'm done.

The Palestinian Wall of Lies

Someone sent me the link to this website, which refutes popular propaganda on college campuses today, in support of the "Palestinians" against the Israelis.  The website was created by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and here I am once again supporting Horowitz while one of his employees insults me and bans me from his site.

The points made are reprinted below.

THE PALESTINIAN WALL OF LIES

LIE 1: JEWS HAVE LITTLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

LIE 2: THE KORAN DESCRIBES JERUSALEM AS HOLY TO ISLAM

The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.

LIE 3: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON IS NOT JEWISH

This lie is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered. This is the same imperialistic tradition that prompts jihadists today to build a mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attack.

LIE 4: ISRAEL OCCUPIES ARAB PALESTINE

This is a genocidal claim made by the Muslim Students Association and other pro-Arab groups. It is genocidal because it obliterates the Jewish state. If Israel is actually “Occupied Palestine” then there is no legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East.

In fact, there never was an Arab state called “Palestine” and no one even claimed there was until well after the United Nations created Israel in 1948. The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even Arabs.

There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.

LIE 5: ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE

“Apartheid” refers to the system created by South Africans in which “non-white” residents of that nation were denied citizenship and basic civil rights, and were forced to live in separate residential areas with segregated and inferior educational and medical services. Those wishing to demonize and destroy Israel now falsely call it “an Apartheid state.” But the only true Apartheid states in the Middle East are Islamic states in which Jews are not allowed to live and where Christians, Baha’is and other religious minorities are objects of discrimination and persecution.

There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world. Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.

LIE 6: THE ARABS WANT PEACE AND A STATE ON THE WEST BANK

The Arabs rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arabs and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.

LIE 7: THE HOLOCAUST IS EUROPE’S PROBLEM; PALESTINIANS HAD NO ROLE IN IT

The Arabs generally and the “Palestinians” specifically were supporters of Hitler in the 1930s. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted Nazi who spent the war in Berlin and worked with members of the Third Reich to plan death camps for the Jews of the Middle East. Today he is revered by the Palestinians as the George Washington of their cause. The Muslim Brotherhood translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth. Today Arab leaders call for the destruction of the Jewish state and routinely deny that the Holocaust with which their forbears collaborated actually took place.

LIE 8: ISRAEL’S SECURITY FENCE IS AN “APARTHEID WALL”

This is two lies in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.

In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.

LIE 9: ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arabs have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.

LIE 10: ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES BY KILLING CIVILIANS

This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.

The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

"Ron Paul is a Vicious Anti-Semite" -- David Horowitz

I have never liked Ron Paul, due mainly to his anti-American rhetoric.  Like the far left, Paul blames America first, for every war and conflagration.  I thought Ron Paul was nuts before I ever heard the term "neo-con," a term used for every conservative who doesn't hate his own country.

Ron Paul blames the United States for the Muslim attack of 9/11 and states that he does not blame Islam for it. Paul believes America is an imperialist empire.  On foreign policy, Paul is probably closer to Code Pink than to Ronald Reagan.  This is unfortunate, because on economic matters Paul is generally spot-on, i.e., he believes in laissez-fair capitalism.  This is the strange dichotomy of the paleconservatives, who seem to be political schizophrenics:  far left on some issues, far right on others.

Now David Horowitz has an article about Ron Paul at News Real blog.  It appears that Ron Paul wants to end all aid to Israel.  Paulites are loudly arguing that this is not evidence of Paul's anti-semitism, but I just don't buy it.

Read it all here.

If We All Pretend, We Can Alter Reality to Something We Like

Or so many seem to think.  Denial is the way to edit reality.  If we all agree that something unpleasant isn't true, then by God, it isn't.  If we all agree that Nadal Malik Hasan's religion had nothing to do with 13 dead and 30 wounded at Fort Hood, then by gum it didn't.  For those who say that Islam is inherently violent and seditious, we can just put our hands over our ears and say "LA LA LA LA LA - I'M NOT LISTENING!"

David Horowitz says our country is "brain dead" for not seeing the Fort Hood tragedy coming.  He writes:

The Fort Hood massacre is the first of the preventable atrocities we have been warning about on our websites since 9/11 — the atrocities which are apparently necessary for Americans to wake up to the threat that confronts us. We have a vast internal threat in this country in the form of this unholy alliance between the anti-American Left and radical Islam – whose Muslim Brotherhood network extends through our universities, our government and our military. It is “politically incorrect” to recognize this fact. You can be barred — as I have been — from speaking at universities for even talking about it. The embargo of discussion of the Islamo-fascist threat puts every American (including the infidel collaborators) at risk. Hasan had semi-automatic weapons. But they weren’t nuclear. That possibility is just around the corner unless we undergo a sea change in our attitudes and marshal the intelligence and the courage to recognize the threat.

Read it all here.

Yes, intelligence reports have been saying for some time that Al Qaeda wants to acquire nuclear weapons and detonate them in American cities.  Unless America pulls its head out of its ass, that will eventually happen.  Meanwhile, we have smaller fish to fry, like Nadal Malik Hasan and thousands of other potential jihadis in our military, our government and our universities.  But until we actually admit that a problem exists, there will be no solution.

Why Progressives Hate Conservatives (by David Horowitz)

I found this quote from David Horowitz at frontpagemag.com.  It was taken from Horowitz's book "How to Beat the Democrats."

Their [progressives'] cyncism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for noble ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as gods, as having the power — through correct politics — to redeem the world. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their means.

And that is why they hate conservatives. They hate you because you are killers of their dream. You are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause. They hate you because your “reactionary” commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs. They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and stocking political war chests, but as both means and end.

Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will always be blind-sided by the sheer malice of the left — by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on their principles; by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity; by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal; and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the poor on the part of those who preen themselves as their champions.

Conservatives are surprised because they see progressives as merely misguided, when they are, in fact, morally – and ontologically — misdirected. They are the messianists of a false religious faith. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them.

McCain vs. Obama: An Electoral Landslide in the Making?

David Horowitz got out his calculator and figures that McCain-Palin are an electoral landslide in the making. He writes:

Not being a pollster I have little to lose by predicting the race, and of
course there's a lot of water yet to pass under the bridge -- events, debates,
revised strategies etc. But right now I don't see this as a close race. If the
present trend holds, McCain-Palin will win 331 electoral votes to 203 for
Obama-Biden.

I think it's already evident that the current toss-up, lean-McCain
and lean-Obama states likely to fall to McCain include Florida, Nevada, New
Mexico, Pennsylvania, Virgnia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Montana, North
Dakota, Colorado, and Ohio. If you add Michigan, the above total becomes
348-186.

Read it all here.

It's a Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood

There's an old rumor that the late Mr. Rogers of the TV show "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" was formerly a Marine sharpshooter who bagged his quota of Commies. Don't know it's true but I sure hope so. [According to snopes.com, it isn't true. Pity.]

In any case, it is a lovely Fall day. Actually, it's the FIRST day of Fall, as it officially begins today. It feels more like the first day of winter.

So, like Mr. Rogers, I'm singing "It's a lovely day in the neighborhood" and getting ready to go outside with a cup of coffee and a cigar and continue reading my latest book, which, by the way, is "Left Illusions" by David Horowitz.

Horowitz is probably my greatest living political hero. What a mind, what a writer! And what guts. He goes into all those extreme leftwing universities and talks to all the little Marxists. They yell at him, throw pies at him and try to shout him down but he goes anyway. David, you da man.

The Islamic Mein Kampf

David Horowitz has a great film on the Islamic threat, called "The Islamic Mein Kampf." Click here to view it.

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FOLLOW THIS LINK.

"The Professors" Squeal Like Stuck Pigs

A friend of mine wrote this review for Amazon.com and gave me permission to reprint it here.

David Horowitz is one of my favorite writers and favorite people. He was raised by Communist parents and thus became a radical in his early years, leading anti-war demonstrations and other subversive activities in the the 1960's. But David had a brain and a conscience, and it slowly dawned on him that socialism and communism were failures that never worked. They destroyed human productivity and human freedom. There were no exceptions. He began his slow and painful move to the right, a journey that is chronicled in his book Radical Son. Many other books followed, but his most recent is The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.

Since the 1960's colleges and universities have become the last refuge of the dying ideologies of the Far Left. The Leftists have holed up in this final fortress, perhaps for their last stand against reality. They have regularly denied tenure to professors of conservative persuasions (no matter how qualified in their field) and actively hired, supported and celebrated the most god-awful extremist kooks. Communist Angela Davis, who had a hand in a jailbreak in which the judge was held hostage and murdered, is now a sitting professor at University of California at Santa Cruz, where my youngest son graduated only two years ago.

Other dubious stewards of college age kids' education include Nicholas De Genova, a Communist professor at Columbia University who called for "a million Mogadishus," the military disaster in Somalia in which 18 U.S. soldiers lost their lives. De Genova sounds like a raving lunatic as he denounces Western Civilization as bastions of imperialism and white supremacy. Not surprisingly, he also hates Israel and wishes to see it destroyed.

Another "professor" described in The Professors includes Bernardine Dohrn, a professor of law at Northwestern University. In the 1960's she was the leader of the radical and violent "Weatherman" faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, an antiwar leftist group that actively supported the Communists drive to annex South Vietnam. Her views today are as radical as ever, but apparently Northwestern couldn't find a better qualified law professor. The truth is that she was hired as a reward for her radical past and her extreme views.

People who hate America and Western Civilization tend to hire and associate with others who reinforce their biases rather than those who might challenge them. They seek psychological mirrors of themselves, people who reinforce their prejudices and give them a false sense of validation. In such an atmosphere there is no "reality check," no accountability from competing ideas. Not surprisingly opinions become increasingly radicalized in that environment and leftist caricatures like Ward Churchill and Nicholas De Genova become the norm.

Indeed, the Left has long captured both the lecterns of learning as well as the main stream media, where they now wallow in an incestuous orgy of self-validation and stagnant ideologies, where competing ideas are suppressed and even demonized. For instance, they have not received Horowitz's book The Professors with kindness and objectivity. On Amazon.com where the book is sold (follow the title link), angry leftist academics regularly excoriate the book without having actually read it, and a hacker recently replaced the Amazon page title with one that said "Springtime for Stalin and Other Hits." The American Amazon page was repaired after readers reported it, but as of today the Amazon UK page still has the hacked title. See it here.

Horowitz says that of all the books he has written, this one has engendered the greatest wrath from the Left. That's a great reason to buy it. Do so today.