No Worse Friend: The West’s Treatment of Israel
Meanwhile the enemies who have sworn to wipe Israel off the map are courted and indulged.
The Romans said of 1st century B.C. general Sulla that there was no better friend, and no worse enemy. Epitomized in this saying is the ancient ideas of what comprises the just treatment of the gods and other people, expressed by the phrase do ut des, “I give so that you give.” “Friends” are those, humans or gods, from whom you have received, and to whom you owe benefits. “Enemies” are those who seek to injure you, and whom you may justly injure in return. In antiquity this principle of reciprocity defined all relationships.
And it applied to foreign policy. What we would call national interests were served by being predictable and reliable. If you were named a “Friend of Rome,” you could rely on Rome’s backing you against your enemies––as long as you reciprocated by paying taxes, obeying the laws, and providing auxiliaries for the Roman legions. Betray the principle of reciprocity, and you could depend on Rome to ruthlessly punish you, for as Homer shows in the Iliad, there is no greater injury than betrayal by a “friend” whom you have benefited, and from whom you are owed benefits in turn.
We moderns, of course, find such an ethic primitive, if not savage. Our notions of interstate relations are steeped in idealism, particularly “moralizing internationalism,” as British historian Correlli Barnett called the post-Versailles foreign policy of democracy promotion, and the non-lethal adjudication of conflict through diplomacy, foreign aid, and multinational institutions.
Yet as the sorry history of those efforts over the last century shows, the old realist mentality reflects more accurately the truth of human nature, and the inevitable clashes of passions and interests arising in a world of diverse peoples with equally diverse beliefs and aims.
A good case study of this truth is found in the West’s treatment of Israel, especially by globalist progressives. The Biden administration has been typical. For all its specious complaints about Russian interference in our politics, it recently injected itself into Israel’s current debate over judicial reform, which for the present has been put on hold.
According to the Times of Israel, when asked about the reforms, “The president responded that he hoped [Prime Minister] Netanyahu would ‘walk away’ from his current judicial overhaul legislation, and that he was ‘very concerned’ about the health of Israeli democracy. ‘They cannot continue down this road. And I’ve sort of made that clear,’ Biden said. ‘Hopefully the prime minister will act… to work out some genuine compromise, but that remains to be seen.’” Biden also pointedly rejected inviting Netanyahu to the White House.
Biden’s unseemly behavior, as the Wall Street Journal writes, “makes us wonder if his real goal is to stir more trouble for Mr. Netanyahu so his coalition falls.” I remember when the Dems decried such intrusions as heinous “interference in our election.”
Biden’s team, of course, somewhat backed off the comments for political PR reasons. But that they were made in such a scolding, school-marmish manner in the first place is revealing. It typifies most Democrats’ condescending disdain for one of our most important allies. Moreover, such a tone seems reserved for Israel (and Russia after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016). The Dems certainly don’t talk that way to our brutal, autocratic sworn enemies like China and Iran.
In fact, the contrast with the president’s treatment of Iran points to the moral idiocy and cringing retreat that has marked this country’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear ambitions since Barack Obama’s administration, itself a reprise of Jimmy Carter’s feckless groveling during the hostage crisis in 1979. And don’t forget the Reagan administration’s failure to punish the Iran-sponsored 1983 murder of 241 of our military personnel in Beirut.
As a consequence of our decades-long appeasement, briefly suspended during the Trump administration, Iran is now mere months, at most, from building a nuclear weapon, and has joined with China and Russia in order to thwart the NATO nations’ support of Ukraine and weaken the West.
So our long-time, chronically beleaguered ally is serially disrespected, its domestic politics meddled with, its interests and security seemingly low on our country’s list of concerns, while the world’s worst state supporter of terrorist murder, the genocidal mullahs who have sworn to wipe Israel off the map, are courted and indulged even as it relentlessly moves ever closer to becoming a nuclear-armed power.
But it’s not just progressive and leftist Americans who assume they can libel and insult Israel with impunity. Most European governments and EU functionaries obviously dislike Israel, and resent the complications it creates with oil-rich Muslim states and Europe’s own sizable Muslim immigrant population. Indeed, many immigrants openly sympathize with terrorist gangs like Hamas, whose founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel.
Typical is Scotland’s new head of government, First Minister Humza Yousaf, who has accused Israel of “killing innocent civilians” and “starvation of population of Gaza and continuing human-rights abuses.” Not a word about the Palestinian Authority’s torture and execution of its Arab political enemies, nor the incessant missile-attacks on Israel’s civilians.
So why? Why is the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, one surrounded by enemies who have waged three major offensive wars against it, a country that has to live under the constant threat of rocket and missile attacks and terrorist violence, treated this way? Why do the UN and EU and progressive Democrats scorn Israel as a pariah state to be boycotted, sanctioned, demonized, and condemned for defending its people?
Post-Holocaust anti-Semitism accounts for some of the animus against Israel. For decades many in our foreign policy establishment were opposed to Israel ––the “stripe-pants boys, the boys with the Ha-vud accents,” some of whom “were antisemitic, I’m sorry to say,” as President Truman characterized them when he ignored their advice not to recognize Israel in 1948.
Nor should we be surprised. These foreign policy mavens were drawn from the same cognitive, social, and educational elite that a few decades earlier had been champions of “scientific racism” and its practical application, eugenics and forced sterilization, in order to ward off “race suicide” brought on by careless immigration policies that allowed in too many “beaten men from beaten races,” as the president of MIT, Francis Amasa Walker, put it in 1896.
More significant for Western attacks on Israel has been the Leninist demonization of imperialism and colonialism, which helped to create the current clichéd view of both as original sins for which the West must continually atone. Now, as Robert Conquest wrote, these terms refer to “a malign force with no program but the subjugation and exploitation of innocent people.” These verbal “mind-blockers and thought-extinguishers” continue to serve “mainly to confuse, and of course to replace, the complex and needed process of understanding with the simple and unneeded process of inflammation.”
Nowhere has this insight been more true than in the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict.
Disguised as anti-Zionism, Jew-hatred was incorporated into the anti-colonial and anti-imperial narrative that after World War I has shaped Western foreign policy. The creation of a Jewish nation in its ancestral homeland, and legitimized by international law and treaties, was transformed by its enemies and “friends” into an imperialist weapon against the national self-determination of the supposed displaced and “occupied” population. Israel became a neocolonial “settler” outpost stifling the longing for “national self-determination” of the innocent original inhabitants.
One can see this specious historical analysis in the 1979 UN General Assembly resolution making an exception to the ban on hostage-taking, a tactic popular with terrorists, if the hostage-takers were fighting “against colonial occupation and alien occupation and against racist regimes in their exercise of their right of self-determination.” Here we see the malign nexus of alleged “racism” and evil “colonialism” and the post-Versailles idealization of “national self-determination” that have comprised the pretexts for attacking the state of Israel––but only when Westerners are listening. Otherwise, as Yasser Arafat put it, it is “jihad, jihad, jihad” from “the river to the sea.”
And the pretexts have worked: as Ronald Reagan’s UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick once said, “The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one.” Our collusion over the years in this assault on an ally, this mistreatment of a “friend,” has been a stain on the West, one particularly outrageous given our incessant preaching and preening about the “rules-based international order.”
Finally, the biggest lie in the anti-Israel catalogue of slanders was referenced in Kirkpatrick’s statement. Just recently, the Biden administration has publicly condemned an Israeli minister for saying that “there is no such thing as Palestine because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” Of course that statement is historically true.
In fact, as Sha’i ben-Tekoa documents in his three-volume study Phantom Nation, the first UN resolution referencing “Palestinians” instead of “Arabs” occurred three years after the Six Day War, marking the international recognition of a “Palestinian people” and nation as yet another Arab tactic in gaining support in the West by exploiting an idea––nationalism––alien to traditional Islam. Before then “Palestinian” was a geographical term, more typically applied to Jews. Numerous quotations from Arab leaders reveal not a single reference to a Palestinian people, but numerous ones identifying the inhabitants of the geographical territory Palestine as “Arabs.”
For example, in 1937, Arab Higher Committee Secretary Auni Abdel Hadi said, “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a country the Zionists invented. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us.” The Christian Arab George Antonius, author of the influential The Arab Awakening, told David Ben-Gurion, “There was no natural barrier between Palestine and Syria and there was no difference between their inhabitants.” Later in his book he defined Syria as including Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan. In testimony to the UN in 1947, the Arab Higher Committee said, “Politically the Arabs of Palestine are not independent in the sense of forming a separate political identity.”
Thirty years later Farouk Kaddoumi, then head of the PLO Political Department, told Newsweek, “Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people.” A few years, after the Six-Day War a member of the Executive Council of the PLO, Zouhair Muhsin, had been even more explicit: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity . . . Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”
Clearly, the continuing statements about a Palestinian people as a distinct nation that deserves its own borders and sovereign territory have been a tactic for pursuing the eradication of Israel by casting the struggle in Western terms of “national self-determination” and the struggle against neo-imperialism.
That the West has endorsed and legitimized this lie for nearly 80 years is perhaps its worst mistreatment of Israel and its people. At a time when Israel is facing internal division, riots, terrorist attacks, an enemy on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, and one American political party that sympathizes with Palestinian Arabs more than with Israelis, Biden’s meddling in Israel’s domestic policies, and harping on “settlers” living in their ancestral homeland, are despicable. And that’s no way for a great nation to treat a friend and ally.
Bruce Thornton
Bruce S. Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an emeritus professor of classics and humanities at California State University, Fresno, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is Democracy’s Dangers and Discontents: The Tyranny of the Majority from the Greeks to Obama.
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Columbia Faculty Oppose Planned Israel Center Because of ‘Human Rights.’ The School’s China Center Gets a Pass.
Faculty at Columbia University are protesting the school's proposed Global Center in Tel Aviv over human rights concerns in Israel despite remaining silent on human rights abuses in China, home to the university’s Beijing Center.
Ninety-five faculty members signed a letter in opposition to the Global Center over human rights and free speech concerns, though an opposing letter in favor of the center gained more support, the New York Times reported.
The state of Israel "refuses to abide by international human rights laws and norms both domestically and in its treatment of Palestinians," the anti-Israel letter, which the Columbia Spectator reported was first circulated by law professor Katherine Franke, said.
But faculty in support of the Israel center noted in their letter, which has received 172 signatures, that the university maintains centers in countries with human rights controversies of their own—China, Jordan, and Turkey—that are ranked by the Freedom House democracy index as far more unfree than Israel.
"To apply a separate standard to Israel—and Israel alone—would understandably be perceived by many as a form of discrimination," the letter in support of the Israel center read. "One does not have to support the policies of the current government of Israel—and many of us do not—to recognize that singling out Israel in this way is unjustified."
Franke told the Washington Free Beacon she opposes the Tel Aviv center because it would "conform to Israel's apartheid policies, thus implicating Columbia in that illegal regime." She said she did not take issue with the university's centers in China, Jordan, and Turkey because they act as a "haven" for "local academics and students" against the "repressive regimes in which they live and work." Israel, Franke said, has no need for a Global Center because there has been "no domestic call" for such a "safe haven."
Columbia has maintained its center in Beijing since 2009, even as the United States has declared China’s imprisonment of more than a million Uyghurs a genocide. The United Nations in August declared that China’s activities "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."
Columbia president Lee C. Bollinger celebrated the new Tel Aviv center in a statement Monday.
The new center will allow Columbia "to connect with individuals and institutions, as well as with the alumni community in Israel, drawing them closer to the ongoing life of the University," Bollinger said.
Published under: Columbia University , Israel
Since Biden’s inauguration, the University of Pennsylvania has disclosed at least $14 million in donations from China or Hong Kong, the Free Beacon reported last week. The names of these donors have yet to be disclosed by the Department of Education, breaking the precedent of prior administrations which published foreign donor names in a public database.
HOW MANY OF THESE ARE PARASITE GAMER LAWYERS?...............EVERY SINGLE ONE BUT PELOSI AND TRUMP.
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE CRIME FAMILIES
The Blame Game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ZS2svPOWI
JOE BIDEN: LYING SOCIOPATH GAMER PARASITE LAWYER!
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania. JOHN BINDER
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) and the Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (THE CHINESE - BIDEN - PENN INSTITUTE) (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES & FRANK) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER).
Since Biden’s inauguration, the University of Pennsylvania has disclosed at least $14 million in donations from China or Hong Kong, the Free Beacon reported last week. The names of these donors have yet to be disclosed by the Department of Education, breaking the precedent of prior administrations which published foreign donor names in a public database.
VP Biden’s Former Assistant: Classified Docs Left Unlocked in Penn Biden Center Closet
Classified documents were transported from then-Vice President Joe Biden’s safekeeping to the Penn Biden Center, where they were kept in an unlocked closet and remained accessible to center employees and potentially others, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) revealed Tuesday after an interview with Biden’s former assistant, Kathy Chung.
Chung, who current Biden administration officials appear to blame for the mishandling of Biden’s classified documents, told Comer that Biden’s classified documents remained unsecured at the Penn Biden Center for years and remained accessible to her until May 2022.
“This story does not begin in November 2022, as represented by President Biden’s attorney,” Comer said in a statement. “[T]hen-White House Counsel Dana Remus tasked Kathy Chung with retrieving these boxes from the Penn Biden Center as early as May 2022.”
Public records reported by the New York Post suggest that Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals or entities donated at least $54 million between 2014 and 2019 to the Penn Biden Center.
According to a CNN source, the classified documents found at Biden’s “private office” at the center pertain to Iran, the U.K., and Ukraine, where the Biden family conducted business deals.
On Monday, Comer raised concerns about Biden’s classified document scandal in connection with the Biden family business schemes. “We don’t the know the true extent of what he [Joe Biden] has done,” Comer said. “All we know is he had classified documents scattered all over the place dating back to the time as U.S. senator.”
“There is one document in particular that I can tell you from my investigation of Biden family influence peddling that we are very concerned about with respect to the document that Hunter Biden sent to officials at Burisma in Ukraine,” Comer said. “It was a government document. We are concerned that it may have been one of the classified documents.”
Comer’s investigation comes as Chung was hired as Joe Biden’s assistant after a recommendation from Hunter Biden. Chung appears in numerous email threads on Hunter’s “laptop from hell,” including Hunter’s correspondence to Chung about being hired as Joe Biden’s assistant.
According to Legistorm, Chung worked for Joe Biden until January 19, 2017, right before Joe Biden left the vice presidency. However, she told Comer she was tasked by a former White House lawyer to access the documents as recently as May 2022, contradicting statements from Joe Biden’s lawyers about the timeline of events.
The White House has failed to fully explain why Joe Biden’s lawyers were looking through the Penn Biden Center papers on November 2 when the classified documents were discovered.
Notably, the classified document scandal was leaked to CBS News on January 9, weeks after the initial trove was found by Biden’s personal lawyers in November. The establishment media has reported at least three times that Biden and the DOJ agreed to hide the scandal from public view with likely no plans to disclose it.
Joe Biden is currently under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Hur in connection with classified documents found at his Wilmington home and in his office at the Penn Biden Center.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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