Rael Jean Isaac

From Satire Central

Who could make this stuff up? Zimbabwe has been elected to chair the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. Under the iron grip of Big Man Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe enjoys the world’s highest inflation rate (over 2000%), mass unemployment, famine, the routine arrest, beating (and often murder) of any who dare to protest (including the lawyers who dare defend them), a huge out-migration, four-hour-a-day rationing of electricity, collapse of infrastructure, destruction of agriculture and industry —Zimbabwe, in short, offers a superb model for how to de-develop a country.

As Claudia Rosett points out, Zimbabwe’s selection is no aberration but how the UN works, is designed to work, and will continue to work. The Commission on Sustainable Development, Rosett notes, boasts among its 53 members a collection of states, which specialize not in development, but “in policies ranging from off-the-charts corruption to systematic repression to genocide” for whom “the apparently bottomless pockets of American taxpayers translate into a sustainable free ride.”

Apologies, Anyone?

Apologies are the fashion du jour. Incoming British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (among many others) wants the U.S. to apologize for slavery; Democrats want Hillary to apologize for her war vote on Iraq; Congress wants Turkey to apologize for the Armenian genocide. How about the plethora of Israel’s supposed hard-core supporters who favored the Gaza disengagement apologizing to AFSI (and the few other groups in this country, notably the ZOA, who spoke out against that insane policy)?

We aren’t holding our breath. Far from saying mea culpa, both Commentary and The New York Sun continue to publish Hillel Halkin as their Israel pundit, proof of how sadly adrift they continue to be. Halkin himself is ridiculous, a whirling dervish of opinions, who seems to suffer acute discomfort if he holds the same view for more than a week. One can only presume that this characteristic is the source of his appeal to the editors of these journals – stir in the mental sludge and you can find anything: Halkin’s for Oslo, he’s against Oslo, he’s for disengagement, he’s against disengagement. Whatever he advocates, it’s generally based on some idiosyncratic argument that no one else, for good reason, had ever advanced. Actually, after what passes for “reflection” in his jumpy mind, Halkin is always, in the end, for retreat.

Achieving a new (if predictable) low, in a May 15 New York Sun column Halkin announces Israel must re-divide Jerusalem and give the Arabs the Temple Mount because “though it is certainly a sacred Jewish site” it is “felt even more strongly about by religious Muslims than it is by religious Jews.” The real impact of turning the Temple Mount over to Hamas is summed up by Natan Sharansky: “One doesn’t have to be religious in order to understand that relinquishing the Temple Mount is a justification of the Palestinian argument. You have no right to exist in this country, you have no connection to it, get out of here. One doesn’t have to be religious in order to understand that relinquishing the Temple Mount is not only to relinquish the past, it is primarily relinquishing the future. The future of all us, here.”

There are first-class, incisive Israeli political analysts, people like Caroline Glick, Evelyn Gordon, Sarah Honig. You never read them in Commentary or The New York Sun.

“Disengagement” from Reality

In the May Outpost we published Roger Gerber’s “The Fruits of Disengagement.” In Frontpage David Hornik emphasizes yet another fruit of disengagement that not even opponents had foreseen: that “Israel would just give up and let Sderot and the surrounding area become a helpless shooting gallery.”

And yet, all this is small potatoes compared to the danger of national annihilation from Iran’s nuclear installations. Glick writes: “Can anyone believe that the same Olmert who was incapable of defending northern Israel from Hizbullah last summer, and who today is incapable of defending southern Israel from the Palestinians, will be able to defend central Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran?”

Misunderstanding Turkey

Congratulations to Barbara Lerner for pointing out the dangerous delusion of those (our State Department included) who believe that they support Turkish democracy in championing the supposedly “moderate” Islamist AKP against the supposedly power-hungry Turkish military officers who cling to a self-appointed role as guardians of the secular republic. Lerner points out this is to misunderstand both the AKP and the constitutional role of the military in Turkey.

The notion that the AKP is the Moslem equivalent of a Christian Democratic party in Western Europe overlooks that Islam is a complete, all-encompassing system of theocratic government. Understanding this about Islam, Ataturk made secularism the bedrock constitutional principle of the Turkish Republic. He recognized that otherwise there could be no democracy or liberty. Lerner reminds us that “the Turkish constitution tasks the military with a sworn duty to act as a necessary check on democratic excesses that violate the constitution—a check our Founding Fathers also deemed necessary in order to preserve constitutional democracy. The big difference is that our Constitution assigns this role to the Supreme Court; Turkey’s constitution assigns it to the military.”

U.S. Moslems Back Suicide Attacks

In this issue we publish Hugh Fitzgerald’s challenge to PC orthodoxy—his call to shut down Moslem immigration to this country. A recent poll underscores the importance of this step. The first nationwide survey of Moslem Americans, conducted by the Pew Center, found that 26% of those under 30 justified suicide bombings. Obviously, it takes a very small number of suicide bombers to wreak enormous havoc; these numbers reveal not only the potential for recruiting bombers here but potential support groups in which these fish can swim. Also significant, the survey found that only 40% of the American Moslem population would even admit Arabs were behind 9/11. (To be sure, Mark Steyn looks on the bright side: “I was heartened to discover that 40% of U.S. Muslims think there were no Arabs involved in 9/11. You couldn’t hold the number down that low if you polled American college faculties.”)

If we do not take heed of the ample warnings, we are as much in denial as our Moslem population. In 1968 the then much-execrated but prophetic Enoch Powell, warned of the dangers unrestricted immigration posed to England: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.”

Plus Ca Change...

The following is from an 1881 essay by Peretz Smolenskin “Let Us Search Our Ways.”

“Everyone must ask: Why were the Jews so blind as not to see the evil coming? Why were they so complacent when the sword was being brandished before their faces? But the fact is that for many years our ‘prophets’ so lulled us that we no longer saw reality and failed to anticipate the evil…

“Every charge made by the Jew-haters has thus been repeated without change by some of our own brethren. Is it any surprise, therefore, that these uncircumcised of heart did not attempt to prevent the disaster and were not aroused to come to the rescue of their people in its time of trouble? On the contrary, we can be sure that their ilk have been, and always will be, a stumbling block and plague to the whole House of Israel….

“It is useless to try to convince those Jews who hate Zion and Jerusalem, and whose sole wish is to make us forget the memory of our ancestors, our beliefs, and our sense of kinship. Having destroyed our traditions and mocked and derided the whole heritage of Israel, why should they spare the Land from their venom?”