Now That the Intifada Has Been Globalized...
Thoughts on how we got here and how to get the hell out.
Jun. 3 - Now that Jews are being shot dead and set on fire in broad daylight in America, it’s clear that the campus chants to “globalize the intifada” have done their job.
Well done, kids!
You said all the words! You chanted all the chants! You bullied all the Jews! And your persistence paid off. You’ve persuaded the mentally unstable monsters in our midst that they have license to act out their most depraved fantasies.
As you bask in the glow of your success, just remember you didn’t do it alone. You never would have made it this far without the support (and, let’s be honest, the encouragement) of your university professors and administrators. They deserve a lot of the credit, too. So do the media who provided cover for all of you by regurgitating Hamas propaganda as thought it were straight reporting, and the politicians who wanted to jail people for criticizing the covid vaccine but suddenly remembered the first amendment just in time to defend your calls for genocide.
(I myself haven’t forgotten the first amendment and absolutely support your right to say the stupid, awful, dangerous, hateful things you’ve been saying.)
It took a lot of chutzpah to launch demonstrations against Israel on October 8, but your big bet paid off. You’ve persuaded a substantial portion of the global public that Israel started this war and that the terrorist organization it’s fighting is actually a heroic movement of innocent freedom fighters.
You’ve worked hard for this achievement, and I think you deserve to be rewarded handsomely for the effort. I think you should be granted honorary Palestinian citizenship—which, given your enthusiasm for the cause, should free you up at last to renounce your citizenship in the only country you despise even half as much as you despise Israel.
You’ve earned it, kids. You really have.
Especially you “Queers for Palestine.” You guys are just. . . mwah!
Me, I like the Kurt Schlichter approach:
If you want to stop a war, you have to stop the enemy. The absence of shooting is not peace; when the enemy survives, it’s just a pause between spasms of butchery. We have peace with Japan because we nuked it. We have peace with Germany because we killed Germans until they threw down their guns and fell on their bellies. That’s real peace, not a mere pause.
The kindness and mercy that the West has shown its enemies and that Israel is currently showing the Palestinians will be repaid a thousandfold with the blood of Western citizens. The West is serious only about preserving aesthetic deniability. Our enemies, and we really do have enemies, sincerely believe that their holy duty is to enslave and murder us no matter how many centuries it takes. They are deadly serious about winning. Until we in the West get serious about winning again, we will be in serious danger of losing everything.
“Aesthetic deniability” is my new favorite phrase.
In just two words it explains my skepticism about the big European rearmament we’re supposed to be impressed by. Ooh, Europe is ramping up its stockpile of weapons! It’s going to be a major military power again!
No, it’s not.
It’s going to spend a shit ton of money of weapons and supplies that it’s going to bend over backwards to find reasons not to use, most of them involving words like “humanitarian,” “provocation,” and “escalation.”
Bending over backwards is easy and natural when you don’t have a spine.
War is barbaric, don’t you know. We’re civilized; we don’t do that kind of thing. We have people for that.
(Yes, they’re called Ukrainians.)
Our enemies know this. They exploit it. They know and exploit all our weaknesses.
I like Steven Green’s approach, too:
. . . Perhaps the most worrisome thing about Sunday's violence is that it was not met with immediate retaliatory violence — what decent and reasonable people call “justice.” It hardly seems right that Soliman wasn't riddled with bullets from prepared and trained civilians before the last syllable of “Free Palestine” erupted from his lungs.
(. . .)
“Remember when George Bush said we have to fight them over there or else we'll end up fighting them over here?” former GOP operative Logan Dobson asked earlier today. “He was right, but I don't think he anticipated we'd invite them in.”
Well, they're here. What are we going to do about it?
Become the Bear Jew.
The Bear Jew, as Green explains earlier in his column, is the nickname of the character Staff Sgt. Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant alternative history “Inglorious Basterds.” The Bear Jew’s particular specialty “is smashing Nazi skulls with a baseball bat.”
(Ah, cinema. . .)
It’s funny, now that I think of it—remember the leftist enthusiasm for “punching Nazis” back when the “Nazis” were just people who supported Donald Trump in 2016? Isn’t it funny how their righteous contempt for Nazism went up in smoke the minute genuine Nazis showed up?
Okay, they’ve got a master religion instead of a master race, and want a caliphate instead of a reich, but the Jew hate is just as pure and perfect.
I wonder if the old friend who used to spam Facebook with witty posts about the importance of always punching Nazis is half as enthusiastic about confronting Hamas supporters as he was about confronting Trump supporters?
An old friend of mine—a different one, one I still like—used to constantly remind me of something his father had drilled into him as a child: “If you’re gonna talk, walk. If you’re gonna fight, swing.”
Related: Mike Tyson’s celebrated epigram that “everyone has a plan til they get punched in the mouth.”
A character in one of my favorite plays makes a similar point: “Why resort to violence? Because it fucking works!”
Violent people understand violence. Many non-violent people do, too. But too many people who aren’t violent by nature and don’t want any part of violence seem to believe that their own aversion to violence is some kind of magic shield.
Call it the “gun free zone” fallacy: anyone with any understanding of the universal human capacity for violence ought to know that proclaiming oneself defenseless is not only not a defense: it’s practically an invitation to hostilities.
Six whole years ago, a Jewish leader in Germany advised Jews in that country to forego visual expressions of their Jewishness. Try not to look all Jewish and shit, the logic seemed to go, because that could get you hurt.
It’s horrible advice—morally and ethically horrible. Understandable, but horrible.
It’s no different than saying, “Don’t wear short skirts, ladies, or you’ll encourage the rapists.”
That’s not a message anyone anywhere in the west ought to be communicating.
My message to the Jews of Germany would be the same as the message I’ve given my daughters: if you’re being attacked, remember there’s no such thing as a dirty fight. Once the fight is on, it’s on. Poke eyeballs, kick testicles, claw, kick, chew, scream, use anything you can get your hands on as a weapon, and never, ever, ever worry about hurting your attacker “too much”—they obviously aren’t giving you that courtesy, so if their decision to attack you ends up costing them their life, that’s on them, not you.
I’d rather help my daughters cope with the trauma of having had to kill some stupid son of a bitch than help them cope with having been raped—much less any scenario that puts them beyond my help.
All of this works at the macro as well as the micro level.
The west always wants to talk when when what it ought to do is swing.
The minute Russia invaded Ukraine—I mean that very instant—Europe ought to have thrown every goddam military asset it had into western Ukraine, including personnel. They should have poured in from Poland and Slovakia, flooded the zone. It should have been building up to do that all winter while Russia was powering up on Ukraine’s eastern flank.
“Just an exercise,” they could have said. “We won’t cross the border if you won’t.”
Meanwhile, they should have rained down hellfire on the invading columns in eastern Ukraine.
“We don’t understand why you’re upset, Vladimir. . . we’re bombing Ukraine, not Russia!”
Can you not already hear the objections?
“But, moron, that would have provoked Russia! It would have risked world war three!”
All right, then. Pull down your panties, lie back, and think of England.
The same goes for Hamas.
On October 8, the west ought to have announced that unless every hostage taken were immediately returned, healthy and intact, and unless every member of Hamas who participated in that disgusting orgy of depravity voluntarily surrendered to the friendly IDF soldiers waiting to receive them at the border, then the armed forces of every western power would assist Israel in converting Gaza into the world’s largest parking lot. “You have 24 hours, Gaza. Choose wisely.”
That’s how you convert Gazan civilians into allies: by giving them an incentive to turn on Hamas.
We need to start making examples and setting precedents.
I propose we take this Mohamed Sabry Soliman, strip him naked, cut his balls off, and toss him into a cage with ravenous feral pigs. Televise the whole thing.
These things sound harsh because they are harsh.
But that’s the thing with violence that the non-violent need to learn before it’s too late: it fucking works.
(Award yourself ten points and advance to Go if your gut reaction was, “but that only perpetuates the cycle of violence!” Then wake up: you’ve hit snooze too many times already)
And of course the nub of it is that the more times we hit the snooze button, the more vicious, bloody and barbaric the reaction will need to be to get the message across. Early, harsh and decisive action would have saved a lot of blood and crying.
But no, apparently this is the road we need to go down.