“What I like about Israel”

An Indian living in the West, a long time VFR correspondent who now adopts the pen name Kautilya, writes:

If I were living in a country which was no more than a tiny sliver of land surrounded on all sides by large nations much more numerous and all of them hating me, my country and my people with a venomous, vengeful passion, I would probably become a hate-filled fanatic myself. In that situation it would be the only logical and rational response to that kind of hatred. Not only that, but to be subject to moral lectures by civilized nations when one acts in the most civilized manner imaginable to defend oneself would be intolerable.

But the Israelis never have and still don’t possess that kind of hatred. They have not been overcome with the kind of hate-filled fanaticism that I think would be a perfectly logical response to their situation.

It is this that makes me admire the Israelis immensely, the more I think about it. And this is the reason more than any other that they deserve to win against all their enemies. Because between their legions of enemies and them, they are the only civilized and decent ones around. The Moslems don’t deserve to win against Israel because they are a rabble and they are hate-filled bigoted fanatics. They bring nothing positive to the sum of human existence. They only represent the regression of mankind.

Kautilya also sends an item about Venezuelan president Hugh Chavez likening Israel’s attacks on Lebanon to Hitler’s war crimes, and comments: “Shouldn’t American Jews be glad that such uneducated, South American rabble are flooding their country? Or do they simply not care?”

LA writes:

It’s good that the Israelis have not become fanatical haters. It’s not good that the Israelis have remained leftist peaceniks. Nor is it good that American Jews, and the whole Western world, continue to surrender to the barbarian influx which could well sweep away our world as the barbarian influx of the fifth century swept away Rome. This hyper-civilized West is like Dr. Richard Kimble in the last episode of the 1960s tv series The Fugitive, when, in an armed stand-off with the one-armed man who is the real killer of Kimble’s wife and is about to shoot Kimble, Kimble doesn’t have the heart to fire his weapon, and is saved at the last second by the police detective Lt. Gerard who shoots the one-armed man. Western liberals inchoately imagine that someone else, some mean but effective Lt. Gerard type, who is willing to use deadly force against bad men, will save them from the consequences of their own unwillingness to do so. They feel their superior virtue entitles them to win. The world may not work that way.

Paul K. writes:

I was interested in your comparison of the modern liberal to Dr. Richard Kimble in “The Fugitive,” unable to take violent action when he finally confronted his wife’s murderer. The show’s writers probably felt that this made him a more sympathetic character. Under liberalism, the victim occupies the high moral ground until he takes action against his victimizer, at which time the latter is redefined as the victim.

You wrote, “Western liberals inchoately imagine that someone else, some mean but effective Lt. Gerard type, who is willing to use deadly force against bad men, will save them from the consequences of their own unwillingness to do so.”

In a recent article about the attack on Seattle’s Jewish Federation offices, the hero of the event, Dayna Klein, described why she called 911 after being shot, despite gunman Naveed Haq’s declaration that he would kill anyone who did so. “I didn’t even think about it. It never occurred to me to be afraid,” she said. I wonder if she was unafraid because her liberalism allowed her to believe, even in the middle of a violent attack, that it was somehow unreal, that “it can’t happen to me.” This is just a thought, perhaps unfair. But I note that the only lesson Klein took from the incident was the need for stricter gun control. She did not direct her anger against her attacker: “Naveed Haq has wasted enough of my time,’’ she said. “I’m not a person who’s interested in looking backwards. I’m a person who looks forward.’’ Neither did she consider whether Jews will face ever increasing danger as America allows a steady influx of Muslims. No, she immediately settled upon the approved liberal solution, gun control, which will only make it more difficult for people such as herself to be armed and ready for such attacks in the future. As for the Naveed Haqs of the world, they can do their dirty work as easily with a baseball bat or a gasoline bomb.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 28, 2006 01:03 PM | Send