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Samizdata quote of the day – what we owe Israel edition “The only appropriate responses to Israel’s gallantry, fortitude and skill from us—its nominal allies, especially in the U.S.—are “thank you” and “how can we help?” Instead, time and again Israel’s supposed friends, including the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have, while expressing sympathy over the outrage of Oct. 7 and uttering the usual support for “Israel’s right to defend itself,” repeatedly tried to restrain it from doing just that. Their early, valuable support has been steadily diminished by the way they have too often connived with the anti-Israel extremists in their own party.”
– Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal ($)
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I can’t read the article but this is only from several days ago:
Israel said on Thursday it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the United States to support its ongoing military efforts and to maintain a qualitative military edge in the region.
Seems like Israel is still getting plenty of American aid. Admittedly I know a lot of this money just ends back with American defence contractors in the end but that would hardly be untypical of American aid in general.
Indeed, detractors of aid imagine C-5 cargo aircraft filled with cash landing in Kyiv or Tel Aviv, but in reality the vast majority ends up getting spent in Carolina & Kentucky.
Obama and the Jarrett camp were solidly pro-Iran (the mullah side, not the people side). They were outright insulting, frequently, to Bibi. They did whatever harm to Israel they thought the congressional scene would bear.
BidenHarris never really figured out if they’re in the Obama camp, or further to the left, and couldn’t figure out what would profit them the most vis-a-vis Iran, and so have been paralyzed about the ME. If they win in November, they’re going to have a lot of freedom of action, and I doubt it will be good. For anyone.
(If Harris wins), I think the longer Harris puts off decisions, the better off we all will be. Her decisions tend to not go as I would choose.
Not this month.
The Islamic Republic of Iran (and other such powers and groups) would continue to push its faith, by force, around the world – whether Israel existed or not.
People would continue to be killed in Western countries for “mocking” Muhammed and Islam – whether Israel existed or not.
Whilst it is Israel that is under missile attack – this global conflict is not really about Israel.
This Comrade K. Harris (daughter of Donald Harris and brought up in Marxism all her life) and the Fellow Traveller Tim “China” Walz do not understand – to them religion is the “Opium of the People” – it is something that only stupid people believe in, they go to church (oh yes they go) in order to fool these “stupid people” – to them an intelligent person could never believe in God.
J.D. Vance (someone who actually believes in a religion – in his case Christianity) is not like Harris or Walz – he does not support “Trans Rights” for young children, and he does understand that intelligent people can believe in God – I suspect that Donald J. Trump has been led to that conclusion as well, although for most of his life he was very much inside the establishment secular bubble.
Someone like Senator Vance understands that both Sunni and Shia can be highly intelligent – and still believe, passionately believe, in their faith – and be dedicated to spreading that faith by force.
He can understand the Islamic Republic of Iran – but Harris and Walz (with their Marxist view that religious people are all stupid – just there to be manipulated) never can truly understand the Islamic Republic of Iran or other Islamic powers and groups.
None of the above is about whether Islam (or any other religion) really is true – but, rather, whether an intelligent person can believe a religion to be true.
Harris and Walz think not – and they are mistaken, fatally mistaken. As is the leftist Western establishment generally.
At least the UK is aiding Israel. Corbyn must be beside himself.
Israel is a high-tech powerhouse. A lot of how I’m typing this and you are reading this was invented there. And What have the Palestinians ever done for us… Amateur rocketry, rape, murder, furious genocidal rhetroric, tunnelling, living on hand-outs (and biting the hand that feeds them), shroud-waving by women who look like Brian’s Mum… You gotta give the buggers World Heritage Status for those, mind.
I’m just bored with Islamic belly-aching. Is it wrong of me to say “bored”? Well, I am. I’m bored of that story-arc. We need a new one. Lt Ripley had the right idea.
Paul,
You’re right. Israel though has an iconic status for Islamists. If they get “From the River to the Sea”* it shall be a sign from Admiral Ackbar that the Mahdi is coming or some such.
*Which of those they drown the “Queers for Palestine” in is a moot theological point.
I quit caring if Israel lives or dies with the conviction of Jonathan Pollard. Israel is not a friend of the West.
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
Indeed, detractors of aid imagine C-5 cargo aircraft filled with cash landing in Kyiv or Tel Aviv, but in reality the vast majority ends up getting spent in Carolina & Kentucky.
I am a big supporter of Israel’s right to self defense and although brutal I think they have been doing a decent job in an impossible situation. I think in particular it has shown that Mossad and Shin Bet are in a different league than the other intelligence agencies. The image in my mind I have comparing Mossad to the CIA is of Usain Bolt racing the sprint against a fat, obese American driving one of those little electric trikes with a vast super charged engine hanging off the back. Vast piles of money does often compensate for incompetence and bureaucratic sclerosis.
But I do want to say that I don’t agree with the perspective in this comment. The implication is that military aid isn’t really spending because we get it back in our industries and local jobs is very misleading. The government could, after all, use taxpayer money to create lots and lots of jobs to have people dig big holes in the ground and then fill the holes back in. Just because the money creates jobs or stimulates commerce doesn’t mean it is good. It absolutely is spending that could be used to do other extremely useful things (like giving it back to tax payers and letting them spend it the way they want), so it has to be justified on its merits. If the money wasn’t spent on bombs and missiles creating jobs for bomb and missile makers, it would be spent on other things creating jobs for the people who make those things.
I’m sure this view that follows is unpopular here, but it is a classic libertarian point of view. The world is brimming full of people who passionately support Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. I’m one of them. Let Israel reach out to them to get the funding they need. The idea that the tax payer is doing this, when very large numbers of the tax payers deeply object to Israel’s actions in Israel is very much akin to the justifiable outrage some tax payers have when their money is used to pay for abortions and sex change operations. People should not be forced to pay for things they think are deeply immoral, even if their moral judgement is incorrect. In practice this is difficult to implement but is surely a decent principle we should strive for.
Fraser:
I think the point being made is that Israel does not get $8 bn in lovely cash, it gets to choose American made weapons to the tune of $8 bn.
Fraser,
Yes, I have even heard it called “The Only Kosher Pork Barrel”. I agree. It is the government/miltary/industrial complex in spades. Having said that I guess the Pentagon gets a lot of data back. The overwhelming majority of F-15/F-16 kills are by the IDF afterall…
True, up to a point, about Mossad and Shin Bet BUT they really did drop the ball pre-October 7th. Having said that so did the CIA et. al. pre-9/11… Having said THAT my heart sank at the announcement of setting-up the DHS. If the problem was the assorted agencies not co-operating well then setting-up yet another one is idiotic in exactly the way governments tend to be.
JohnK,
I wouldn’t mind a $8bn gift card for LockMart.
@NickM, good point about Oct 7 and Israeli Intelligence Services. That was a spectacular cock up on their part.
It’s not so much the $8bn paid to the likes of Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. The interesting question is who picks up the commission for brokering these deals.
From a British perspective, I see Israel as a country we should have relatively normal and friendly relations, like Sri Lanka, Philippines, or Colombia. I don’t see any justification for Britain to rally strongly behind the Palestinian cause, however, on the other hand I don’t think Israel and Britain are close allies and I don’t see much need for Britain to get be getting that involved in conflict there, especially because Israel gets large amounts of American military aid anyway and British military resources are already overextended.
For much of Israel’s existence as a state, its relations with Britain were quite strained. The terrorism by groups like Irgun, Stern Gang, Haganah etc against the British both during World War Two and up until 1948 poisoned the well. During the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, the fact is that at the time both Egypt and Jordan were allies of Britain, and there were incidents of Israel shooting down RAF planes. It is true that Britain and Israel collaborated in the Suez operation with France in 1956, but my understanding is the British government were nervous to work with Israel as Britain still had Arab allies, and it was the French (then very friendly to Israel) who were more keen to have Israeli involvement.
Later, even a philosemite like Margaret Thatcher had poor relations with relationship for most of her tenure as PM due to issues like Israel selling Argentina weapons while the Falklands War was being fought and opposition to then Israeli actions in Lebanon (which led to a British arms embargo which lasted until the mid-1990s).In 2006, Netanyahu attended a celebration of the Irgun bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 (91 dead), which I think shows us what his attitude to Britain is. Now, unlike the supporters of the 2006 parliamentary motion that denounced this celebration, I don’t see any need to condemn Netanyahu over this too much. He is an Israeli nationalist after all and isn’t obliged to like Britain or the British. But I don’t think we are obliged to go out of the way to support Israel too strongly.
We may well be sending cash to Ukraine soon.
– Artillary shell production in the hurricane area is stopped right now. Big area for arms manufacturing.
– If we could make the shells, how do we ship them out of east coast ports during the longshoremen strike?
Some might say that the well was poisoned first, and Israel reacted to that.
“The terrorism by groups like Irgun, Stern Gang, Haganah etc against the British both during World War Two and up until 1948 poisoned the well.”
Speaking of World War Two, nearly 80 years on, Germany and the UK are best buds, despite the vast scale of death and destruction that conflict caused. Only 26 years ago, the UK agreed to a peace deal with the IRA no less.
Yet it is still fussing over events in Mandatory Palestine from 76+ years ago?
The big problem is that neither Iran nor Hezbollah nor Hamas (like all Islamic extremist entities) have any objectives that make sense to Western minds. I believe it was Mark Steyn who once suggested that, even if you did not like the IRA or ETA (the Basque separatists), their aims at least had a semblance of rationality to them: a united Ireland or an independent Basque state respectively. Whereas ISIS/Al-Qaeda objectives were based on some “miracle” where somehow all the kaffirs will be defeated and submit to Islam throughout the world.
I’m sorry, but given the choice between a modern, democratic, successful State of Israel and a corrupt, Islamist Palestinian state (“from the river to the sea”), I know exactly where I stand.
I’m not aware of any British atrocities against Jews in the Palestine Mandate.
Setting the Israelis up to be massacred by their Arab neighbors while working violently to hinder their defense isn’t a hands-on atrocity, no. Pontius Pilate would have been proud.
Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah were formulated as Israel’s early defensive fight against its hostile neighborhood, but its leaders found themselves constantly arrested and imprisoned – by the British – for trying to arm up. They found incoming ships carrying more Jewish refugees blocked and boarded and refused entry – by the British.
The British did their best to leave Israel defenseless as they themselves finally just left. They basically said to the Arab world, go ahead and wipe them out.
From a US-centric viewpoint, England did not do itself proud during this chapter of history. To a lesser extent, neither did we. England took on a very hard spot during the Mandate – but it accepted that assignment, and then performed rather dishonorably.
JJM,
***
I agree completely. It is good to let go of the past (if it is possible) and to negotiate (if it is possible) BUT you just can’t do either with people who desire nothing less than your absolute overthrow and any “deal” is only a ceasefire that enables the jihad to re-double it’s stength*. Israel totally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas had Gaza. Did they stop?
Israel is of the West. This is a battle we all need Israel to win. It is as macroscopic as Tours-Poitiers, Lepanto or the Relief of Vienna in 1683.
The Polish version of the F-35 is called the “Husarz” for a reason.
*“In Islamic Law, Muslim fighting forces may only call for a truce when they are in a position of weakness and require time to resupply and rebuild forces. It is a grave concern because it entails nonperformance of jihad.” That’s the top result on Google for: “islamic truce concept”. It’s called “Hudna”. Yes, Google! And that is verbatim.
@NickM Reading your points I was reminded of the mindless media droids who conducted the Vice Presidential debate last night. The first questions was:
“Iran launched its largest attack yet on Israel. … Would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?”
I think the ignoramus who asked this question doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “preemptive”.
The problem you highlight, the implacable desire of the Islamic extremist groups to utterly subjugate or destroy anything that isn’t an Islamic extremist is compounded only by the implacable desire of our self loathing “thought leaders” to accommodate this very goal.
Martin writes:
From a British perspective, I see Israel as a country we should have relatively normal and friendly relations, like Sri Lanka, Philippines, or Colombia. I don’t see any justification for Britain to rally strongly behind the Palestinian cause, however, on the other hand I don’t think Israel and Britain are close allies and I don’t see much need for Britain to get be getting that involved in conflict there, especially because Israel gets large amounts of American military aid anyway and British military resources are already overextended.
A country has no friends, only interests.
What are these interests, today? They are rather different, in my view, from those as they might have appeared to the British when dealing with the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.
It is true that Margaret Thatcher did not, despite her intellectual admiration for Judaism and its social teachings, have particular affection for some of the leaders of Israel during the 1980s. She was a foreign policy realist – witness her suspicions of Reagan’s Star Wars anti-missile defence ideas, and her preference for old-style “MAD” nuclear deterrence. She got on well with the King of Jordan, and so on. But…she was also under no illusions about Arafat and the PLO; she was by the end of her time in office getting a more full view of what Islamism (that blend of Islam and hard-Leftist/nihilist political ideology) meant for the world. During the 1990s when she was out of office, she continued to change her view; I am sure that was the case even more after 9/11.
As for me, I think of Israel not as primarily a friend of the UK (why Israelis should feel affection for Britain in general is a mystery, given the degenerate state of our culture), but as a country that needs to survive and flourish. It is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Its business and technological prowess are marvels, and testimony to what a broadly free society is capable of. The forces ranged against it are disgusting and evil. The fall of Israel would be a hammer blow to the “West” – that term we use to describe a set of values, practices and tendencies in human affairs that have seen Man’s greatest achievements to date. So whatever specific frictions and problems between the UK and Israel in the past, I fully share the arguments given by Gerard Baker in his WSJ article to which I linked.
Whatever else Israel is, it is not in the same bracket as, say, Sri Lanka, Columbia or other “normal” nations you mention.
@Johnathan Pearce
I think there is another way in which Israel is not just another nation, beyond some of your comments. Something that is entirely unique about it, as a nation, and that is the very raison d’etre of Israel, namely the protection of Jews. All through recorded human history Jews have been persecuted, sometimes in the most horrific of ways. Israel is there specifically so that Jews have at least one small sliver of land where they can be free of this rampant anti semetism.
Honestly, it isn’t something that fits well with my worldview, since I am an implacable atheist. But I also recognized historical reality. There is something built into the human psyche that causes Jews to be persecuted, and so a land where they aren’t is something of great value.
Those on the left will happily rob the property rights of owners to set aside millions of acres of land to protect vulnerable populations of the greater spotted owl. Yet those same people violently oppose setting aside the most useless, resource-free, desert dry part of the middle east for a population of actual people who have a long history of being proven very vulnerable to extinction indeed.
There is nothing in Judaism that makes it incompatible with atheism. It is a religion, among other things, but not the chief one among them.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-long-until-israels-foreign-aid-consists-of-rewards-for-dead-terrorists/
Yet (the UK) it is still fussing over events in Mandatory Palestine from 76+ years ago
Yes, a minority of people are determined never to let it go. However please do not tar the entire country with this particular brush. We’re still a long way from that mindset.
Yes NickM – this conflict is certainly not just about Israel.
Someone like StevenR who says that Israel is “not a friend of the West” – failing to see that Israel is part of the West, are going to have a shock.
Let us assume that all seven million Jews have their throats slit (which is, basically, what the “international community”, i.e. the international establishment, want) – after all previous efforts of the Jews to return to the land over the centuries have ended with massacre by Islamic forces (although the community in Jerusalem managed to cling on – although treated like dirt, and only allowed to live because of bribes paid by Jews elsewhere in the world).
Would this, the killing of all the Jews “between the river and the sea” mean that Islamic forces would leave France, Britain, Germany, Michigan, Minnesota…..?
There is no chance at all that Islamic forces would leave other areas of the West if Israel was exterminated – on the contrary their numbers would continue to increase, both by immigration and by natural increase (births).
And critics of Islam would continue to be persecuted – often NOT by Muslims, but by the “liberal” left authorities in Western countries (authorities whose version of “liberalism” is just about the OPPOSITE of the beliefs of real liberals such as British liberals such as Gladstone and John Bright, or American liberals such as Senator Roscoe Conkling – to these liberals, liberalism meant defending liberty, not working to destroy liberty).
By the way Fraser Orr – the Israeli intelligence services were utterly useless in the run up to October 7th 2023 the biggest mass killing of Jews since the early 1940s, the intelligence services missed the build up of THOUSANDS of Islamic warriors.
Either the intelligence services failed or WORSE they shut their eyes to the preparations for the massive Islamic offensive – because they hoped that a massacre would “get Bibi out”.
I hope it was NOT the latter alternative – I hope the intelligence services were just incredibly incompetent.
As for the international establishment, including the international media, their dishonesty is total.
We are told that what is needed is “Palestinian autonomy” – when that is exactly what Gaza was.
An Islamic state – not a Jew (not one) there, for years.
The international establishment know (know well) what the “West Bank” (much of which is closer to the sea than to the Jordan River – it almost cuts Israel in two) would be if the Israeli military left – it would be another Gaza, just vastly bigger.
The schools of the “Palestinian Authority” teach the same things as the schools of Hamas – how could it be otherwise? Both are Muslim.
The international establishment know very well that the objective is to wipe the Jews out – but they pretend the objective is “peace” via a “Palestinian State” – as if Gaza was not exactly that – for years.
And, make no mistake, the international establishment do NOT care about Britain, France, Germany, the United States, and so on, any more than they care about Israel.
And this includes those people from Jewish families in the leftist international establishment – they do not care about Israel, any more than they care about any other Western country.
I can understand Israel. They want to be Israel, without rockets landing on them. I understand Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and all their filthy kind. They want to kill Israel. They want to kill me. It’s not a hard choice which side to support.
I can’t handle the truth!
Alisa – it is shameful that the Telegraph prints such things, as you know the Israeli Prime Minister is getting on in years and was never a spy, his military service was infantry. Mr Johnson is away with the elves and pixies if he really thinks “Bibi” planted bugs in toilets of Number Ten.
This is the same Mr Johnson who says that he planned an invasion of the Netherlands to get Covid “vaccines”.
So, according Mr Johnson, he planned war with a NATO ally to get more toxic muck to inject into British people – the AstraZenica “vaccine” was not called the “Clot Shot” for no reason – the British government quietly dropped it over a year ago.
I remember the promise Mr Johnson made to Northern Ireland – no border down the Irish Sea, and then his deal with the European Union (the same deal that sold out British fishermen and others) created a border-down-the-Irish-Sea (cutting off Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom).
Meanwhile the new Labour government has just handed key islands in the Indian Ocean to a puppet state of the People’s Republic of China – ally of Russia and Iran.
As for bugging people in Washington D.C. – sounds more like an FBI (or other American security agency) Blackmail operation than an Israeli intelligence operation.
The American Deep State loves to have information – with which it can blackmail politicians and other people, sometimes quite ordinary people (or members of their families).
Rudy Giuliani has been challenged with the grim fact that some (some – certainly not all) of the despicable tactics the modern state uses against conservatives were used, years ago, by him – when he worked as a Prosecutor.
His reply was to say that he only used such tactics against the Mafia.
This totally fails to grasp the point that once precedents are set in the fight against “bad people” the state does this sort of thing to everyone else as well.
People of a certain age will remember the film “A Man for All Seasons” when Thomas Moore says that he would not break the principles of the Rule of Law to go after even the Devil – because then he, Thomas Moore, would find he had no defence in law against the Devil.
Long before Rudy Giuliani started to “cut corners” to get Mafia people – American “Justice” officials, Federal, State and local were doing this sort of thing. Bending (or breaking) the basic rules of Justice to get-the-bad-people.
Well now the Bad People are in charge – they are in power (they have been for years – even when there were Republican Presidents), they control the “Justice” system.
The Devil can come after you now – and he is, and you have no legal principles to give you shelter.
And it is not just corrupt, politically motivated, officials and judges (and jury selection) – it is also the statutes themselves.
Many of the statutes on the books in the United States are a disgrace – they violate basic principles of justice, they were put on the books to “get the Mafia” or some such reason.
It was inevitable that such corrupt laws would end up being used against political opponents.