A few days ago, I called a young relative who is serving in the Israeli air force and asked him: “Do you know that song—“Kum, Aseh Piguim”?
Without missing a beat, he said: “You mean that song that’s a hit all over Israel? The song that all my friends are singing all the time?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That song. I wanted to know if you can explain to me why they are singing it?”
What I actually meant to ask was: Can you please explain to me why all the young people in Israel are singing a song entitled “Up, Do Terror Attacks”—a song recorded and released by Hamas in Gaza, which repeatedly calls for killing or expelling all the Jews from of Israel? But I didn’t have to say all that. He knew why I was asking.
“It’s because it makes us feel good,” he replied.
Israel
Journalistic Appeasement, With a Precedent
The London Times has refused to run an ad featuring Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust surviver Elie Wiesel. The ad, which has already run in several US newspapers, is headlined “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.”
(via Pam Geller. The whole ad can be seen here.)
The London Times said it refused the ad because “the opinion being expressed is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers.”
Hmm…reminds me of something. Yes…
In 1939, photos of dispossessed Czech Jews wandering the roads of Eastern Europe were made available to the Times. Geoffrey Dawson, then the editor of this publication, refused to publish them: it wouldn’t help the victims, he told his staff, and if they were published, Hitler would be offended. (Source: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Alone, cited in my 2006 post here and with an extended excerpt from the book at this interesting post on appeasement.)
“Is Thinking Now Obsolete?”
From Thomas Sowell’s latest column:
Some have said that we are living in a post-industrial era, while others have said that we are living in a post-racial era. But growing evidence suggests that we are living in a post-thinking era.
Many people in Europe and the Western Hemisphere are staging angry protests against Israel’s military action in Gaza. One of the talking points against Israel is that far more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli military attacks than the number of Israeli civilians killed by the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel that started this latest military conflict.
Are these protesters aware that vastly more German civilians were killed by American bombers attacking Nazi Germany during World War II than American civilians killed in the United States by Hitler’s forces?
Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera says that there is no way Israel is winning the battle for world opinion. But Israel is trying to win the battle for survival, while surrounded by enemies. Might that not be more important?
Worth reading as is everything that Sowell writes.
Two Surveys About Israel and the Palestinians
Survey by Pew Research conducted 7/24-27 and survey by Gallup conducted 7/23-24. There are some notable differences in the results…while the questions asked weren’t precisely the same, they seem pretty close, and the response gaps seem pretty significant.
Effect of age: When asked about Israel’s response to the conflict with Hamas, in the Pew survey, only 22% of those in the 50-64 and 65+ age ranges say “gone too far,” whereas about 30% of those in the 18-49 range give this response. With the Gallup survey, the question was whether Israel’s actions are “justified” or “unjustified”…about 30% of those in the 50-64 and 65+ ranges said “unjustified,” whereas 51% of those in the 18-29 range, and 43% of those in the 30-49 category, gave this answer.
Effect of race: In the Pew survey, 14% of whites, 27% of blacks, and 35% of Hispanics said that Israel is most responsible for current violence. In the Gallup survey, the justified/unjustified question resulted in 34% of whites saying that Israel’s actions were unjustified, with 49% of nonwhites giving that response.
Effect of gender: With Pew, 19% of both men and women say that Israel is most responsible for the current violence. With Gallup, 32% of men but 49% of women say that Israel’s actions are unjustified.
Effect of political affiliation: With Pew, 13% of Republicans but 26% of Democrats say Israel is most responsible for the violence. With Gallup, 21% of Republicans and 41% of Democrats say Israel’s actions are unjustified.
These opinion numbers are important not only from the standpoint of Israel’s survival and well-being, but also for the survival and well-being of the United States and the entire world, as they are largely (though not completely) proxies for attitudes which greatly affect our long-term ability to conduct a rational foreign and military policy in the face of radical Islamic terrorism.
“In Defense of Zionism”
A very good column by Michael Oren, who knows a thing or two about Zionism:
But not all of Zionism’s critics are bigoted, and not a few of them are Jewish. For a growing number of progressive Jews, Zionism is too militantly nationalist, while for many ultra-Orthodox Jews, the movement is insufficiently pious—even heretical. How can an idea so universally reviled retain its legitimacy, much less lay claim to success?
The answer is simple: Zionism worked. The chances were infinitesimal that a scattered national group could be assembled from some 70 countries into a sliver-sized territory shorn of resources and rich in adversaries and somehow survive, much less prosper. The odds that those immigrants would forge a national identity capable of producing a vibrant literature, pace-setting arts and six of the world’s leading universities approximated zero.
Elsewhere in the world, indigenous languages are dying out, forests are being decimated, and the populations of industrialized nations are plummeting. Yet Zionism revived the Hebrew language, which is now more widely spoken than Danish and Finnish and will soon surpass Swedish. Zionist organizations planted hundreds of forests, enabling the land of Israel to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the end of the 19th. And the family values that Zionism fostered have produced the fastest natural growth rate in the modernized world and history’s largest Jewish community. The average secular couple in Israel has at least three children, each a reaffirmation of confidence in Zionism’s future.
Worth reading in full.