A Great Anti-Chomskyite Passes Away

French essayist and historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, perhaps most famous in the english speaking world for his battle against Holocaust denial and his ferocious denunciation of the good professor's defense of denier Robert Faurisson, has passed away at 76. The english-language press seems not to have noticed. For those of you who read French, here is Le Monde's obituary. For those of you who want a taste of Naquet's brilliance as an anti-Chomskyite, here is his most famous deconstruction of Chomsky's morally bankrupt endorsement of Faurisson.

On Cinema

The Australian film magazine Senses of Cinema has published an essay of mine on film director Sam Peckinpah. It might make a refreshing change from the endless reports of war. Enjoy.

Judge-Penitents on Parade

The inevitable cascade of condemnations begins.

The British Independent , for example, published an editorial by Robert Fisk under the title: "How can we stand by and allow this to go on?"

"You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the 'pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime," Fisk said.

"Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbullah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about 'Muslim terror' threatening 'western civilization' as if the Hizbullah had killed all these poor people," he added.

Another British newspaper, the Guardian , also published an editorial titled: "How can 'terrorism' be condemned while war crimes go without rebuke?"

"Washington's partners in this hypocritical war on terror are given free rein to wreak their own brutal, illegal violence. As if we didn't know it already, the conflict in Lebanon shows that truth and war don't mix. All
parties to the tragedy of the Middle East resort to disinformation and historical falsification to bolster their case, but rarely has an attempt to rewrite the past occurred so soon after the fact.

"Israeli ministers and their supporters have justified the bombardment of Lebanon as 'a matter of survival.' Total war has been declared on Israel, so Israel is entitled to use the methods of total war in self-defense. This would be reasonable if it were true, but it isn't. It's completely false.

"The conflict was triggered by a Hizbullah operation in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and three killed. Let's be frank, this wasn't exactly the Tet offensive. It certainly didn't justify Israel's ferocious onslaught against the very fabric of Lebanese society. Yes, the rocket attacks on Haifa are an appalling crime, but they followed rather than preceded Israel's decision to escalate the fighting."

Let us speak of Britain. A country which I admire and to which I am related by blood. A country which once ran the greatest empire in the world. Which invented the term "administrative massacre". Which annihilated villages and killed numerous civilians quelling rebellions from Ireland to Iraq to India. Which gave Ireland the Black and Tans, who responded to IRA terror by massacring civilians in a football stadium. Which has, in other words, acted exactly had Israel has in the past, and worse.

And let us talk of other nations. Of France, for instance, whose actions in the Algerian War make Israeli tactics look like the innocuous play of children. Which responded to the horrendous threat of a Greenpeace protest to its nuclear tests by dispatching its secret service assassins to sink a boat and kill innocent people. Of Germany, we shall not speak. It is not necessary. Perhaps we should mention Russia or China, but that too is unnecessary. Even the history of the United States, lest we forget, has its dark passages.

Or perhaps we should speak of the Arab street, which showed no compunctions about such slaughters as the Munich atrocity, the murder of schoolchildren at Maalot, the hijacking of uncountable airplanes, the suicide bombings of thousands of civilians, a plethora of unprovoked wars whose only cause was genocide.

The outrage of judge-penitents, who condemn the other while exonerating themselves, is an issue beyond sorrow and regret for unnecessary dead. It is an arrestation of truth. The truth that war is random and terrible, and that innocent people die. And that the mere fact of death, and the dealing in death, is not, in and of itself, an indication of absolute moral purity, or corruption. A fact which, in their apologetics for terror and condemnation of Israel's resistance to it, they have themselves silently accepted, and have silently chosen who and what they will exonerate. And who and what they will condemn.

This is not purely the work of a lone nut. The Islamic genocidists and their leftist supporters have created the atmosphere of hatred and violence which has led to this incident. It will get worse. One cannot echo Hitler's rhetoric without eventually echoing his actions. The Jewish community in America needs to start pointing fingers in the right direction.

Chomsky Back in the Game

A few posts ago, I wrote:

Perhaps even political evil's foremost apologist has, for the moment, run out of excuses for terrorism and mass murder. Give him some time.

I was right.

In Every Generation...

Something struck me about the statement by Sheldon Drobney in the previous post. It points, I think, to a generational issue which may be significant regarding leftist antisemitism. It is this:

Most of the anti-Semitism comes from racism and most of the racism I have experienced has come from the far right, not the left.

The first statement betrays only Drobney's total ignorance of the history and development of antisemitism. The second, however, may or may not be actually true (liberals have a remarkable capacity to ignore political evil in their own camp) but it is very telling. Because I, a generation or more younger than Drobney, have had the exact opposite experience. All the racism I have experienced has come from the far left. And not only the far left. A liberal preacher at Boston University, a Unitarian church member, an anti-war activist, a professor of political science, all liberals or leftists, all made unmistakably antisemitic statements to me personally. What I have witnessed vicariously, through the media and my own studies, is equally absolute. Every single one of the public figures and movements I have witnessed making antisemitic statements are from the left. The only right wing antisemitism I have encountered has been from brain-impaired skinheads and the occasional statement by David Duke. I did not and do not consider these an active threat to my existence. Liberal and leftist antisemitism, on the other hand, howls at us from organizations and institutions which are prominent, effective, well-financed and influential. The rabbis said that in every generation our enemies rise again to attempt our destruction. They were right. But they should also have mentioned that quite often they wear new and very different masks.

Liberal Delusions

Via LGF, a piece of self-congratulatory delusion by Sheldon Drobney, apparently a major financier of Air America:

So my conclusion is that the bloggers who violently hate Israel and see it in black and white terms are not really liberals. They may even be anti-Semites, but they are not representative of the liberal community that was so active in achieving racial and ethnic equality. It is a contradiction for a true liberal to be an anti-Semite. Furthermore, I would not put it past the right wing to flood the liberal blogs with hateful criticisms of Israel to advance a perception that liberals are anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. And I see Karl Rove's fingerprints all over this.

To use layman's terms: bullshit. Antisemitism is not only representative of the "liberal community," it is the essence of liberalism itself. Liberalism is a bid for power first, and an ideology second. Its advocacy of racial and ethnic equality is, in fact, an expression of the imperialism inherent in liberal universalism. Liberalism must expand, its ambitions are total. Its desire is not, in fact, to make all peoples equal, but to make all peoples liberal. Its desire is not to equalize, but to conquer. When peoples are not liberal, they must be destroyed. This is not confined to antisemitism. Witness the brutal and inhuman racism directed at black and Hispanic conservatives. But in the case of the Jews, we have an absolute rejectionism.

The reason is that liberalism must seek to annihilate the Jews because the very fact of Jewish existence is, in the end, a rejection of the metaphysical totalitarianism at the heart of liberalism. Judaism is particular, rooted in place, uncompromising in its pride and its belief in its unique and divinely connected existence. This is called Chosenness. I am at best an agnostic, but I do not deny Chosenness. It is a fact of history. Albert Camus wrote that "a mission exists for any human group which knows how to derive pride and fecundity from its labors and its sufferings." He was speaking of the working class. He could easily be speaking of the Jewish people. This too is Chosenness. In the eyes of liberalism, this is not only offensive, but an existential threat.

This principle was summed up by the avatars of the French revolution, who proclaimed that the glorious new order of reason would grant everything to the Jew as a citizen and nothing to the Jews as a people. In other words, for the Jew who is not a Jew, everything. For the Jew who is a Jew, who willfully embraces the ephemeral architectures that make him a Jew, nothing. The reason is obvious. It is rooted in the essentially destructive nature of liberalism. Liberalism is based on the rejection of all connections or values beyond the material. We are all human beings, we are all flesh and blood, and this is our only legitimate value. The architectures of the past which make us human are demolished by liberalism, and those who hold to them are considered enemies of the one true faith. Thus, liberalism becomes an inquisition dedicated to the reduction of man to the biological. The medieval Inquisition named its justification the immortal soul. Liberalism calls it equality. It is still, ultimately, only another name for the will to power. And the destruction of those who would stand in the way of its absolute consummation.

An extraordinary lineup of genocidal Islamic racists and their leftist supporters taking to the streets to call for our annihilation is up at LGF.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

...before the good professor chimed in. Once again, he's being "interviewed" by psychotic pseudo-journalist/corrupted abuser of taxpayer funds Amy Goodman on her show Democracy Now! I'd love a show called Defund Pacifica Radio Now! but I'm sure that wouldn't be high on Miss Goodman's list of priorities. Robbing the American taxpayer is always preferable to democracy if you're the one getting paid.

At any rate, even Chomsky can't seem to bring himself to defend Hezbollah with any passion. His embrace of its leaders just a short time ago seems to have lost its charm. Who knew? Of course, he does manage to blame it all on Israel.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. Well, he's correct that hundreds of rockets have been fired, and naturally that has to be stopped. But he didn't mention, or maybe at least in this comment, that the rockets were fired after the heavy Israeli attacks against Lebanon, which killed -- well, latest reports, maybe 60 or so people and destroyed a lot of infrastructure. As always, things have precedents, and you have to decide which was the inciting event. In my view, the inciting event in the present case, events, are those that I mentioned -- the constant intense repression; plenty of abductions; plenty of atrocities in Gaza; the steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation, the end of Palestine; the abduction on June 24 of the two Gaza civilians; and then the reaction to the abduction of Corporal Shalit. And there's a difference, incidentally, between abduction of civilians and abduction of soldiers. Even international humanitarian law makes that distinction.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what that distinction is?

NOAM CHOMSKY: If there's a conflict going on, aside physical war, not in a military conflict going on, abduction -- if soldiers are captured, they are to be treated humanely. But it is not a crime at the level of capture of civilians and bringing them across the border into your own country. That's a serious crime.
And that's the one that's not reported. And, in fact, remember that -- I mean, I don't have to tell you that there are constant attacks going on in Gaza, which is basically a prison, huge prison, under constant attack all the time: economic strangulation, military attack, assassinations, and so on. In comparison with that, abduction of a soldier, whatever one thinks about it, doesn't rank high in the scale of atrocities.

Not a word, of course, about the Kassams which have been fired on a daily basis from Gaza into Israeli towns, such as Sderot, where one of my best friends lives. Nor the fact that these missiles have been fired for years without a significant Israeli response. Nor the fact that the very presence of Hezbollah on the northern border is a violation of international law and UN Resolution 1559, which has yet to be enforced. International law, it seems, is only of interest to Chomsky when it serves his purposes. Chomsky's breezy dismissal of Iranian involvement in this, despite the use of Iranian missiles by Hezbollah, is hardly surprising. The good professor, as I have noted below, seems determined to allow Iran the time to develop nuclear weapons whatever the cost. Chomsky's denials regarding the Iran-Syra connection are especially fascinating, since this connection is common knowledge in Lebanon and the Arab world at large. The only groups, in fact, who are bothering to deny it are Iran, Syria, and the Western left. Chomsky appears to abrogate to himself the right to engage in pro-Arab propaganda even when it is not pro-Arab, that is, even when the Arab states themselves reject it. No one, it appears, who murders Israelis or Americans can possibly be guilty of anything.

One must assume that Chomsky is citing the instance of kidnapping civilians to refer to Israel's Hezbollah prisoners. This is apparently, the crime "that's not reported", due no doubt to the extraordinary powers of the Zionist conspiracy. Of course, if Hezbollah's war against Israel is legitimate, as Chomsky claims, then those are prisoners of war and not kidnapped civilians. If Hezbollah's war is not legitimate, than Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and, again, Israel's taking of prisoners is legitimate. To Chomsky, of course, the taking of Hezbollah prisoners is illigitimate because it was done by Israel. When adhering to racist double standards one really ought to have the courage to admit to it and not hide behind facile and cowardly pretensions to a hypocritical universalism.

Chomsky is, of course, correct that abducting civilians is different from abducting soldiers. Abducting soldiers is a casus belli, a case for war. To acknowledge this, "whatever one thinks about it", would, of course, demand that Chomsky acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel's military operations. Including those undertaken before the missile attacks. Attacks which are, since they deliberately target civilians, also a blatant violation of international law. Instead, we must be satisfied, it appears, that, like mass murder on the part of leftist regimes, Chomsky considers abducting soldiers to be "not high on the list of atrocities."

Still, it is telling that despite Chomsky's recent hugs and kisses with the Hezbollah leadership, he spends most of his time talking about Gaza. An issue which is, to say the least, not of great significance at the moment. Perhaps even political evil's foremost apologist has, for the moment, run out of excuses for terrorism and mass murder. Give him some time.

The major ground operations seem to have started.

The clashes occurred as the IDF significantly expanded its ground operations in southern Lebanon on Thursday, sending in thousands of troops. Air assaults against Hezbollah targets also continued throughout the day.

And we didn't get Nasrallah yesterday. Here's the proof, courtesy of LGF.

Kofi Annan really needs to return that Nobel Peace Prize. Its becoming embarrassing for all involved.

There's an article in today's Yediot Acharanot that I can't seem to find online. It has some pretty extraordinary statements that have apparently been coming into the foreign ministry from various secret channels. These are reportedly messages that have come in from Arab countries that do not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel, in my loose translation:

From an unnamed Arab ruler:

"I support your actions in Lebanon felt the need to inform you at this hour. You must continue to the end. Many in the Arab world support you." (Literally: "Many sources in the Arab world clasp fingers with you.")

Others:

"Continue your military attacks until you erase Hezbollah."

"You will do a great good to Lebanon and to the entire region if you assassinate Nasrallah."

"All who define themselves as moderate clasp hands with you."

"Only Israel has the courage to stand against this man [Nasrallah]."

How accurate any of these are, I don't know. But according to foreign ministry officials quoted in the article they are not surprising or unusual. Curiouser and curiouser, as they say.

War Upends Us

And everybody else, apparently. Check this out:

Without mentioning Hezbollah by name Saudi Arabia blamed certain “elements” inside Lebanon for the violence with Israel and said “it is necessary to make a distinction between legitimate resistance and uncalculated adventures adopted by certain elements within Lebanon without the knowledge of legal Lebanese authorities.” While reiterating its support for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against Israeli occupation, Saudi Arabia has clearly said it is against irresponsible adventures undertaken by certain elements in the region without consulting the legal authorities putting all Arab nations at risk. The Kingdom has also said “these elements must take responsibility for their irresponsible actions and they alone should end the crisis created by them.”

This angry response from Saudi Arabia has politically isolated Hezbollah and Hamas besides holding them responsible for their actions. This attitude of Saudi Arabia, which has been doing all it can to protect the Arab world from Israeli aggression, is enough to unmask the adventurers, who have violated the rights of their own countries and tried put their people under the guardianship of foreign countries like Iran and Syria. A battle between supporters and opponents of these adventurers has begun, starting from Palestine to Tehran passing through Syria and Lebanon. This war was inevitable as the Lebanese government couldn’t bring Hezbollah within its authority and make it work for the interests of Lebanon. Similarly leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has been unable to rein in the Hamas Movement.

Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of “these irregular phenomena” is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community.

From the Arab Times of all places. Is it possible that the "Arab street" is finally getting tired of its dream of wiping us out? Or is this simply the natural schizophrenia of war?

One soldier was killed today in a ground incursion into southern Lebanon. The ground phase seems to have begun. Zicaron l'bracha.

The Ghetto of History

A great many voices have been raised in anger over this article by Richard Cohen in which he refers to Israel as a historical mistake. Cohen does not strike me as a hater of Israel. Most of the rest of the article is fairly supportive, but he has clearly accepted a mythology of sorts. A mythology based primarily in an Arab supremacist (or Muslim supremacist, if you prefer) reading of history. The basic premise lies in his opening paragraph:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

This is, of course, a mythology which has, at times, been echoed on the Israeli left and among the "New Historians", such as Benny Morris. It is, nonetheless, wholly racist and rather obviously so.

The mythology states, in effect, that there is no history but Arab history. There is no history but Muslim history. Zionism (and Zionism is what he is talking about here) is an alien force. A bizarre, demiurgical act of violence against the natural development of human events. I must emphasize the artificiality of this mythos. History is not natural. That is, the very idea of history as a natural development, operating under reasonable and autonomous rules, is itself a human creation. It is the Kantian a priori we require to understand the chaotic reality of events. As soon as this architecture of thought takes on the aspect of divinity, and this is what Cohen grants to it, it becomes a weapon, and not a means of knowledge.

What Cohen has accepted is a history as a weapon. A mythos as a weapon. This architecture denies Zionism because it must. Because if history is Arab, or history is Muslim, then history cannot also be Jewish. That is, there cannot be a history of the Jewish people or a Jewish people which acts within history and upon which history acts. This denial ends in the exile of Zionism. In an apartheid history which creates a metaphysical ghetto whose doors are locked upon the Jewish people. We are made unnatural, alien, and perverse. A mistake.

I know what Zionism is. It is difficult to express and even more difficult to explain. I leave it to better writers than myself. Over half a century ago German-Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin, on the eve of his suicide in the face of inevitable Nazi capture, wrote the following:

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

This storm is also Jewish history. And the Angel's desire, the desire to awaken the dead, to make whole the catastrophe, this is Zionism. It is the structure of catastrophe formed by these ever mounting debris which makes our history, which demands a reckoning with those who would deny us. Who would return us to the ghettos of history. It is this denial, this rape of history in the name of history, which finds its expression in the mythology which Mr. Cohen has so lamentably chosen to accept.

Read Kishkushim for real time updates from Haifa.

There's a major wave of missile attacks across the north at the moment. It looks more and more like ground forces are going to have to be deployed to deal with this.

Just caught a clip of Bush and Blair talking on Channel Two. They didn't know they were being filmed and the results were truly marvelous. Quoth George Bush:

If they just stop Syria from doin' this shit its all over.

Yeah. I really like that guy.

Fox News just reported that the IDF has entered southern Lebanon. Israeli Channel Two is not reporting this at the moment. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE:
So far none of the Hebrew media is reporting this. I'm inclined to think its false.

UPDATE:
Apparently there was a brief incursion today but no major ground forces were deployed.

One of the worst things about this current situation (among many) is the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese who are caught in the middle. This blog has some very tough commentary by a liberal Lebanese writer. He's plenty mad at us right now and I would probably feel the same way if I was in his shoes. I wish people like him had the political power to change the situation, but they don't. Someday, I hope they will. Many times, Israel has to act as if it has no friends. I pray that after this is over some of the connections between Israel and liberal Lebanese, and liberal Arabs all over the Middle East, can be repaired. Ultimately, that is the only real hope for this region. As the poet said: "Peace comes dripping slow." At the moment, we fight. Tomorrow...

Here's an interesting interview with Natan Sharansky, one of the more extraordinary human beings alive today (you try surviving seven years in a Soviet jail). He thinks that Israel has a very short window of opportunity to destroy Hezbollah before world opinion forces us to stop. I'm not entirely convinced of that, since I think Hezbollah is just dumb enough to keep attacking us until they're completely crippled by our retaliation. However, the increasing outcry about the damage being done to Lebanon will be a major political factor. He has some very interesting things to say about the contrast between Olmert and Sharon. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but he knew both men, so don't take my word for it.