ArielSharon – ILANA MERCER

A Soldier In The Style Of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

Ilana Mercer — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:16:26 +0000

Barack Hussein Obama at war and George W. Bush at war: How does the 44th president of the United States differ from the 43rd? If nothing else, former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has settled that question. Bush sent troops to fight futile battles without flinching; Obama did the same with some reservation.

Hardly a peacemaker, Obama questioned the mission in Afghanistan and was skeptical of the military brass’s motivation in securing for itself—to the detriment of the grunts on the ground—a long-term commitment to the theater of war in that country.

Like Obama, 82 percent of Americans oppose the war the president is being panned for having embraced publicly, but agonized over privately. On Afghanistan, Obama is more aligned with the American people—and the truth—than the former defense secretary and his Republican champions.

This I say with reluctance. I awarded Barack Obama brownie points thrice in his tenure: for doing not a thing about the 2011–2012 protests in Iran, for ceasing the criminalization of cancer and AIDS patients for their medicinal use of illegal substances, and for breaking with Bush and his neocons in refusing to step on the Russian Bear’s claws. Obama scrapped the missile-defense shield in Russia’s backyard.

Yet this revelation in Gates’ “Duty,” a book that hangs on one hook, has Republicans gurgling with pleasure. Limitless is the GOP’s zest and zeal for ignoring the negative right of the American people to be free of the Sisyphean (and Jacobean) struggle to save the world.

If anything, it sounds as though Gates might have had misgivings of his own about the missions in which his “soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines” were dying for nothing.

A bereft Gates tells of “evening sessions” during which he’d write condolence letters “to the families of service members killed in action.” There “probably wasn’t a single evening in nearly 4 1/2 years when I didn’t — when I didn’t weep,” he confessed. Gates relates how focused he became “on the strain on our troops and on their families.” After all, “they’d been at war for 10 years.” “My highest priority,” he averred in an interview with NPR, was “trying to avoid new conflict … in terms of recommending against intervention in Libya,” and expressing “concerns about going to war in Syria, much less in Iran.”

It just seemed to me that some of the areas where we were looking at potential conflict were more in the category of wars of choice. And it was those that I was trying to protect the troops from.

Having fought for the survival of his people—and never to democratize or “save” another—Ariel Sharon was far less of a study in contradictions than poor Mr. Gates. The former Israeli prime minister died on Jan. 11, after languishing in a vegetative state for 8 years.

Seared in my mind as a child growing up in Israel is a 1973 image of the late Ariel Sharon. He is on the western bank of the Suez Canal in Egypt, head bandaged because of an injury sustained in combat. What is he doing? Winning. Sharon was beating back an enemy that came close to vanquishing Israel. Ariel Sharon led his men into battle and won the 1973 Yom Kippur War in which the Israeli government and the intelligence failed miserably. He himself had said that “his greatest military success came during that war, during which he surrounded Egypt’s Third Army and, defying orders, led 200 tanks and 5,000 men over the Suez Canal, a turning point.”

Had Sharon himself not performed military miracles, who knows if Israelis, myself included, would have survived? How many Americans can point to a leader who had actually saved their lives, rather than send other men to die in foreign lands, and then propagandize his countrymen about having fought for their freedoms?

As a Special-Forces commander, Sharon was on the front—and in front of his men—performing daring assaults that saved Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Pugnacious and tenacious, “Arik” Sharon was nothing if not controversial. Hated though he was abroad, Sharon was, nevertheless, a soldier in the style of “Stonewall” Jackson, not Dubya the Deserter, to whom he and the Likudniks were often compared.

Agree or disagree with the methods and politics of this titanic personality—it is unarguable that Sharon’s overriding concern was with the survival and security of the Jewish state: he saw himself as bearing a “historic responsibility” for “the fate of the Jewish people.” By contrast, Bush’s Wilsonian, global missionary movement to rid the world of “evildoers” related not even tangentially to the future and safety of the American people.

Unlike George Bush the internationalist, “Arik” Sharon was a fierce nationalist, who put his country and its people first.

As with so many of our military men—cast adrift by the policies of Rome-on-the-Potomac—Mr. Gates would be less of a mess had he, too, been able to lead his men into wars of necessity, instead of charging headlong into unjust “wars of choice.”

©2014 By ILANA MERCER
WND, American Daily Herald & Praag.org.
January 17

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From Russia With (Less Than) Love

Ilana Mercer — Sun, 29 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

As Ariel Sharon perceptively observed, Vladimir Putin is a patriot and a nationalist, a man cognizant of Russia’s “profound culture”, and driven by “national honor…and the desire to restore the status of an immense empire with all its influence.” The Russian president is also pragmatic. He was polite and pleasant for the duration of his historic visit to Jerusalem—the consummate gentleman really. But when the niceties were over, he picked up his marbles and went to play with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

At best, Putin seemed tepid about Russian and Israeli ties. Rejected was Sharon’s request that Putin reconsider a decision to sell nuclear technology to Tehran and anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. And rebuffed also was “Jerusalem’s bid for intelligence-sharing with Moscow.” As DEBKAfile has reported: “The Russians indicated they were open only to one-way traffic from Israel, but offered nothing of value in exchange.”

All a little baffling given how much the two countries have in common.

Russia supported the Jewish State at its inception. Israel is home to the “largest Russian minority in the Middle East”—one million Russian-speaking Israelis, whom Putin regards as “expatriates, exemplars of Russian culture, art, sport, language and education.” And there’s terrorism. Israelis and Russians live alongside terrorist societies.

Both Sharon and Putin were elected to be tough on terrorists. Russians voted for Putin because they have to put up with Shamil Basaev (a Chechen terrorist and advocate of an Islamist state in the Northern Caucasus); Israelis elected Sharon because they have to contend with the new Dalai Lama of Gaza, heir to Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Chechnya is a Shari’a-law dominated anarchy, whose chief export is terrorism—to Russian cities. Americans became familiar with the handiwork of Chechen terrorists in 2002, during a deadly hostage-taking at Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater. And again in 2004, with the attack on a school in Beslan in which hundreds of children were murdered. The country’s transformation into an Islamist terrorist training ground is nearly complete. Besides a thriving trade in weapons, drugs, stolen goods, and slaves, Chechnya has no economy. Due process and punishment take the form of court-ordered mutilations and public hangings.

In the Palestinian Authority it’s business as usual. The radicalization of this society has continued apace under Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s successor. The message of murder permeates every nook and cranny in the PA. In government, mosques, and madrasas Palestinians preach and teach that “Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation,” and that Muslims must “finish off every Jew.” The July-17 election is predicted to be a shoo-in for Hamas.

Al-Qaida has inserted itself into these local conflicts. The Murder Inc. of the Middle East and that of Russia are thus tied to al-Qaida and share pan-Islamic aspirations.

Both Putin and Sharon, however, are expected to concede to those who maim and kill their civilians, while President Bush and the international community make no such allowances in prosecuting their war on terror. Both leaders are hectored by elements in the administration, Britain, and Europe about granting statehood to their terrorism-endorsing neighbors. Against insuperable odds, both are expected to trust terrorists and their fan base to stop butchering babies and embrace Jeffersonian democracy and a Bill of Rights (a fantasy says James L. Payne, in The Prospects for Democracy in High-Violence Societies).

Consequently, Putin is being badgered to pull back from the North Caucasus and ignore the caliphate under construction there; Sharon was recently told to dismantle a suburb of Jerusalem, no less—Maaleh Adumim—to make way for a suburb of “Hamastan.” Shorn eventually of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem, he is being counted on to sit back and trust a Palestinian state comprising Fatah, its militant offshoot, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad to deliver peace for land.

What other commonalities do Russia and Israel share? Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has received a great deal of aid from the U.S., aimed at stimulating market reform. Israel’s debt to America is incalculable. He who pays the piper calls the tune: Putin has to stand at attention as the administration admonishes him for allegedly sliding back into Stalinism. For their part, Israeli politicians have long since opted to sacrifice sovereignty rather than cut the Gordian Knot.

Let us clarify for the record that this is a broad-brush outline of what unites Russians and Israelis and why their leaders might have forged a more substantial relationship. It omits, for instance, that Russia is just now transitioning into democracy; whereas Israel has been a stable democracy since its founding, and remains a country under the rule of enlightened Western law, with a free media and liberal courts. By the assessment of The American Conservative, “Israel is the only nation whose civilian courts have such a broad jurisdiction over military actions” (March 14, 2005). The Chechens have been fighting for independence since the 15th century; whereas the Palestinian liberation movement is a contemporary—cynically calculating—project. Compared to Russia’s terrorist-fighting tactics, Israel, warts and all, is a paragon of restraint. In the two Chechen wars, the Russian army killed tens of thousands of Chechen civilians and displaced many more.

These differences notwithstanding, there were plenty of reasons for cooperation, if only to inject a new dynamic into the current imbalance of power in the world. But nothing transpired. And not because Putin was being hostile. On the contrary, he was sincerely nice, even keen to combat anti-Semitism in Russia. What his snub confirms is that Israel is weak. The country is no longer the regional power it once was. Had Sharon handed Putin Vladimir Gusinsky (an oligarch hiding in Israel) on a platter, the Russian would still have scampered to Ramallah to seal the sale of armored personnel carriers to the Palestinians.

Israel was not always strategically insignificant. For a brief period after the Six-Day War, observes Arieh Stav, “Israel ceased to be a provisory state, which constituted a political liability and became a strategic asset, to use State Department parlance.” Compelled by their American handlers and their own failings, Israeli leaders have since abandoned the national interest—and with it the very principles of international law.

By returning land to the aggressors—the Sinai first—Israel violated Nullum crimen sine poena, the imperative in international law to punish the aggressor. It continued to breach this principle—and its own national self-preservation—by signing and honoring agreements (Oslo I and II) with a terrorist organization (the PLO). Israel also flouted and continues to flout the “rights of necessity,” says Professor of International Law, Louis Rene Beres:

[T]his norm was explained with particular lucidity by none other than Thomas Jefferson. In his ‘Opinion on the French Treaties,’ written on April 28, 1793, Jefferson wrote: ‘The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever its preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations.’

Israel apparently can and does—abandoning even its “indispensable obligation to endure.” For example, like his predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas insists on “the right of return” of 4 million Arabs to Israel proper. The Palestinian “right of return” is a euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish State (and, with it, a bulwark against barbarism in the region). Yet Mahmoud Abbas is considered by Israel a “partner to peace.”

It’s now de rigueur for most Europeans, too many Britons, the Muslim world, the Israeli far Left and their soul mates in the U.S., the “executive committee of the Third World dictatorships” (Jeane Kirkpatrick’s coinage for the UN), university students the world over, and in some conservative circles, to depict Israel as the almighty architect of “American imperialism” in the Middle East. (Though no one can say who “moved” the world’s superpower to station troops in over 100 other countries across the world). When it comes to Israel, the logical power pyramid is mysteriously inverted so that a small nation is seen as wielding paranormal powers over a superpower.

Putin knows better. (So, evidently, does Hu Jintao, China’s President!) Intent on re-establishing a presence in the Middle East, Putin understands that strategic power lies not with a United States satellite—“The minuscule State of Israel hanging on to a bit of sand on the Mediterranean coast,” in Arieh Stav’s words—but with “a Muslim world, which stretches over two continents and 53 countries, among them 21 Arab states,” which is in possession of “half of the world’s oil reserves, almost limitless capability to purchase weapons, control of first-rate strategic centers and a predetermined majority in the UN.” (Because Muslims identify with the ummah, the Muslim world has always been squarely behind the Palestinians.)

The proof of Israel’s strategic insignificance is in, shall we say, the … Putin.

©2005 Ilana Mercer
FrontPageMagazine.com
May 29

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BLAME THE JEWS

Ilana Mercer — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Next, Kevin MacDonald will hold Jews responsible for loading the Episcopal Church with homosexuals ~ilana

Although the administration’s Jewish neoconservatives share the same policy positions as their gentile compatriots, they are being portrayed – at times subtly, at times not so subtly – as the instigators of the administration’s blunders, but more seriously as being agents of Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party, essentially doing Israel’s bidding.

The chatterboxes promoting this wild-eyed view will concede that most rational people at the time saw through the lies that took us to war. They imply, however, that this was beyond Mr. Bush’s ken and responsibilities. Neither was it, apparently, his duty to abide by his campaign commitment to a humble foreign policy. Mr. Bush was simply “bamboozled” – this manifestly neoconservative (and unrepentant) president is not responsible for his blind quest for power.

In other words, the Jewish neoconservatives ate the president’s homework.

Patrick J. Buchanan, for instance, is perfectly capable of entertaining the “complicity of the president of the United States in perpetrating fraud” when it comes to FDR, who, he claims, lied the U.S. into war with Germany, aided by a forged document. But when it concerns Mr. Bush, Mr. Buchanan finds it impossible to believe the president would deliberately lie to the nation. Either he was misled, or he was “deceived.”

Perhaps there were fewer Jews to blame in FDR’s administration. Either way, too many paleoconservatives are ignoring that Wolfowitz is not the only thug pressed up against the famous bow, screaming, “I’m the king of the world.” Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Bolton, Rice and Powell are right there beside the Jews, hollering, “Me first.” Equally, and on the lower decks, Richard Perle is flanked by neoconservative Christians like Gary Bauer and William Bennett.

Kevin MacDonald, at least, comes straight out with it. Instead of the cowardly, infantile, and frankly nauseating nudge-nudge, wink-wink insinuations about Jews, he offers grand conspiracy. Jewish neocons recruited all the non-Jews and now manipulate them like marionettes. No mortal (read gentile) could possibly resist a Jewish intellectual – that a cabal of Jews allegedly hijacked the administration is because gullible gentiles are powerless in the face of Jewish persuasion, or so it goes according to MacDonald’s unique Science of Jews.

The argument that Jews act collectively to promote interests which are exclusively Jewish, also means, says MacDonald, that Jewish neoconservatives are in cahoots with the larger “organized Jewish community,” all working to promote a Jewish agenda that is “arguably only tenuously related to the interests of the U.S.”

MacDonald has proof. Immigration policy “provides a valuable acid test for the proposition that neoconservatism is actually a vehicle for perceived Jewish ethnic interests.” “In their attitude to race and immigration,” neoconservatives differ from mainstream conservatives, but resemble attitudes held by the Jewish community, he warns.

However, in his messy habit of mind, MacDonald omits that on issues of race and immigration, neocons are not that different from liberals. Jews, of course, are incorrigible liberals. In as much as neocon views are leftist on race and immigration (and the welfare state), Jews would share their opinions. And so would countless other American egalitarians.

Indeed, liberalism (and I don’t mean the classical kind) is a pathology American Jews share with a good many Americans. Most Jews don’t like the Right and that, incidentally, includes the Israeli Right, represented by Ariel Sharon. It is far from clear that Jews, at large, identify with neoconservatives. Considering that most Americans supported the war in Iraq, Jews, to the extent they supported it, were wrong but not unique.

Jewish organizations, as a rule, do promote liberal causes and policies such as multiculturalism. But it isn’t obvious that this practice is conducive to the health of the Jewish community. At the very least, there is a contradiction between the leftist ideology so many Jews embrace, with its indifference to assimilation and its extreme tolerance for alternative lifestyles, and the survival of the Jewish religion and people.

MacDonald’s assertion that Jews support open immigration policies so that they can bring about a more diverse society in order to diminish anti-Semitism” and promote “Jewish ethnic interests” must be questioned, especially in the post-September 11 world.

Jews have little to gain by advocating for minority communities with which they haven’t much in common, culturally or socioeconomically, and who are likely to be hostile to them. How does promoting immigration from Muslim countries, for instance, benefit Jewish interests?

Jewish activism, if anything, is self-defeating as a group strategy. The community’s egalitarianism is thus more accurately seen as a function of liberal pathology, the same pathology so many Christian denominations exhibit – they all believe, mistakenly, that they are promoting “social justice.”

All in all, the paleoconservatives’ attempts to blame Jews for pervasive gentile madness, such as Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq, his lingering presence in Afghanistan, multiculturalism and “mass, non-traditional-immigration,” is too silly to sustain, but, at the same time, a little sinister. (Next, MacDonald will hold Jews responsible for loading the Episcopal Church with homosexuals.)

About the Jewish psyche, MacDonald shows complete ignorance: Justified or not, Jews are petrified of anti-Semitism. I used to think they were mistaken. I still believe Jews express this deep-seated fear shamefully and inappropriately. But in light of recent scapegoating, I am no longer sure about anti-Semitism’s obsolescence.

The MacDonald Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum Science of Jewish intellectual habits makes me (as a Jew) wary of mentioning Sigmund Freud in any capacity. (Certainly not much store should be put on his theories about human nature.)

Nevertheless, there’s no harm in a joke. When Freud was once quizzed about his incessant cigar smoking, he humorously chose to sidestep what was, according to the very theory he invented, a manifestation of his own oral fixation. He replied: “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

And sometimes, anti-Semitism is just anti-Semitism.

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