July 29, 2006

SEXUAL PERVERSION AND ISLAM

        Before he gunned down five defenseless women, Seattle jihadi Navid Haq, had been arrested for 'lewd conduct': "...In March of this year, he climbed up on a raised coin fountain inside Kennewick's Columbia Center mall and began "catcalling" women at the makeup counter at the nearby Macy's store, said Lisa Beaton, a Kennewick city prosecutor. When young women walked by his perch, Haq unzipped his pants and allegedly flashed his penis at them, Beaton said..."
        The Seattle Times profile of Haq is careful to tell us that he was a good, good boy. After all, his high school yearbook photo "..revealed a big smile, friendly eyes, buttoned-down collar and smart tie. "Peace Be Unto You" were the words that appeared with his name and picture. Other students said that image and message fit the young man..."
        Where could such a good boy possibly have gone wrong? Perhaps he absorbed Jew-hatred at the local mosque, one of whose founders was his father? And perhaps gunning down five defenseless women has something to do with his identification with cowardly Islamo-Nazi Jew haters who lob missiles into Kindergartens? Or might it derive, in part, from Islam's 'religious' support for the enactment of sexually perverse, sado-masochistic wishes and fantasies? Remember those snuff porn, beheading videos? Oh we forgot, Islam is a Religion of Peace, so it must be something else. Maybe he was a victim of Islamo-phobia, or maybe he was provoked by Jews. That's it, he was provoked by Israel and the Jews. And how might Jews have done that? First of all, their very successes are humiliating to an unhappy loser like Haq who was unable to successfully make a life for himself in our non-Muslim culture. Just like so many of his fellow Muslim brother losers in the Middle East, he has been a failure at the most basic task of life- growing up- and like his Hezbollah role models, he looks for scapegoats to explain his failures. Israel is of course the constant reminder of Jewish accomplishments, contrasted with Muslim failure. It's also a regular reminder that a liberal (in the original sense of that word) democracy requires mature adults to make it work. Like his brethren, Navid Haq found Jews a convenient scapegoat for his own dysfunctionality and failures and the failures of the Muslim world.
         It comes as no surprise to Horsefeathers, that an aggrieved, envious Muslim fanatic would turn out to be a sexual pervert. Adult perversions, as Freud pointed out, to the shock and horror of the Victorian world, are persistent residues of childhood sexuality, and symptomatic in adults, of arrested psycho-sexual development. Or read the Marquis de Sade and discover how murder and sexual gratification may combine. Mr. Haq, we learn, was socially inept, and was angry at being unable to acquire a girl friend.
        Among the various tasks of maturation for boys, overcoming fears of castration by the opposite sex, and developing a strong sense of manhood are crucial. This peace lover, Haq, was unable to function as an adult male and was arrested for exhibiting his penis, a phenomenon seen, clinically, in men who are immature sexual failures and have to reassure themselves that they actually possess a penis by exhibiting it and revelling in the shocked response. Islam, we would venture to say is a religion for male sexual losers who can't tolerate the threat posed to their manhood by the existence of an opposite sex. It endorses exhibitionistic sadism, as witness the many torture videos circulated by the Muslim world. Read any of the accounts by Muslim, or former Muslim women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, of how Islam deals with women and the threat women pose to sexually immature men. Women are essentially reduced to the status of objects, of non-human animals in order to reduce the sexual threat they pose. They are forced by the men who enslave them to cover themselves hand and foot with ugly garments so as not to reveal the dangerous allure of their sexuality. Sexual mutilation of girls, treating women as objects and even killing them for transgressing the sexual rules, all help reduce the sexual threat they pose to inadequate, fearful men. These men try to hide their own fright, by demonstrating their control over helpless individuals. Essentially, in the sexual realm Islam accords dhimmi status to its women, thus supporting male sexual perverts in their struggle to master their own anxieties. Male perversions are the sexual defensive acts of men seeking to control their fear of women. Islam is thus a perfect ideological home for the likes of Naveed Afzal Haq.

July 26, 2006

HORSEFEATHERS' POLICY FINALLY ACCEPTED

Yesterday Peter W. Galbraith, former Ambassador to Croatia, published an op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Our Corner of Iraq", suggesting a new policy designed to ease America out of its difficult position there.
[click HERE].

Alas, Horsefeathers posted an OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH on April 27, 2004 in which an identical policy was articulated--more than two years and 1500 deaths ago. Below the reader will find the relevent passages:

IRAQ IS NO PLACE FOR A CRUSADE: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH

“I say that freedom is not America’s gift to the world. Freedom is God’s gift to everybody in the world. I believe that. And I believe that we have a duty to free people. I would hope we wouldn’t have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.”

The President has said this over and over again. That he sees his job as doing God’s political work by bringing freedom to all people in the world. And we fear that Iraq has come to mean that for him. It is crusader cant, it has the ring of messianism, and it is chimerical. As foolish as the crusades of the past were.

We were with the President when he rose to the challenge of 9/11 and proclaimed the Bush Doctrine—that any nation or state that harbored, supported, or gave aid to terrorism in any form was as guilty as the terrorists and should be punished and eliminated. He came to see that Arab radicalism—jihadism—was all connected whether it came from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen or Iraq. Isolated acts of terrorism were never really isolated, but part of a loosely knit Arab conspiracy of terrorism. And he took the lead in going to war against this conspiracy.

After Afghanistan, he saw that Iraq was a probable source of great danger. Why? Because Saddam had the largest conventional army in the Middle East, a modern air force, modern armor, and a modern command-and-control structure. It was the sixth or seventh largest military force in the world. In the previous ten years it had attacked three of its neighbors. It had programs for WMD, many of which were destroyed after the Gulf War. And for the previous five years Saddam had refused to allow UN inspectors into the country, suggesting that his WMD programs were being reconstituted. Clearly he was a man who was completely ruthless and capable of doing extremely imprudent acts—like giving or selling WMD to terrorists. He had been a threat to his neighbors and now he had become a threat to the U.S. because terrorists could deliver destruction to the shores of the U.S. much more reliably than ICBM’s.

But somehow, in the course of planning the “regime change” in Iraq, the primary aim of getting rid of Saddam’s regime and its weapons became distorted into “nation-building” and making Baghad into a City on the Hill, a shining example of American democracy and American values, including equality for women and minorities, and getting rid of Sharia law and theocracy.

Only the most blatant arrogance and messianic outlook could have allowed such nonsense to go forward.

Except for the most sophisticated and westernized, Iraqis cannot understand or accept western political values. In the world of the Arab, tribalism trumps everything. Two Arab brothers may be at each other’s throats until an infidel comes on the scene, whereupon they immediately join hands and attack the infidel. That is the way Arab culture works.

America has achieved its primary aim in invading Iraq—to weaken it as a threat to its neighbors and the world, and to show the the rest of the Islamo-fascist world what is in store unless they curb their resident terrorists.

Now, President Bush, it is time to move on. Give up your misguided mission to democratize Iraq. Iraq should be free to turn down Western values. You can’t shove it down their throats. Let’s stick to realpolitik and get past the crusader mentality. If you do you will quickly realize that you are free to:

1. Kill all of America’s enemies in Iraq without being held responsible to any future Iraqi government. You can go into Najaf and kill al Sadr. Go into Falluja and kill all the troublesome insurgents without having to worry about hearts and minds—which you will never win anyway.

2. Declare that Iraq has been given this great opportunity to create whatever form of government it wants.

3. Declare that the United Nations can help it determine whatever form of government it wants. Why not saddle the UN with the mess in Iraq.

4. Move our forces to the Kurdish part of Iraq, which is largely autonomous anyway, and get them to allow us to build an airbase there. In this way we can say that we are “staying the course” in Iraq. We can protect our friends, the Kurds, and their oil fields. We will also be able to use the base for any operations against enemies in Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. Or to launch Special Operations forces when such opportunities appear. Such a base would stabilize the entire Middle East. In such a situation our forces would be both welcome and safe from insurgents while at the same time able to mount small offensive tactics, something our troops are best at.

Won’t such a strategy—leaving central and southern Iraq to the Sunnis and Shiites—lead to civil war in Iraq? Very likely. But the fact is that Iraq was never an integrated nation. It was cobbled together by a cadre of French and English bureaucrats after the First World War for their own respective national interests, and to pay off debts in their fragile relationships with the Arabs.

History has shown, again and again, that very often the only way to solve problems between states, nations, peoples, religions, tribes, and all groups of enemies is by war. The polite, highly civilized Western democracies which are just about to enter into a European Union, with a common currency, socialized medicine, and three-week ski vacations didn’t start out that way. From the fall of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century until 1991—about 1600 years—there were political wars, civil wars, religious wars, and revolutions almost constantly. Even peaceful Switzerland, which hasn’t had a war since 1848, was at war for seven hundred years before the Swiss got tired of it. If you let them, these things have a way of working themselves out. It may take a few hundred years but eventually they do reach an equilibrium.

Mr. President, give up your crusade and let America get on with our war against terrorism.

July 21, 2006

MEDITATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN SUPPORTER OF ISRAEL

Good friend of Horsefeathers, Richard Munro, sent the following response to the Spanish PM Zapatero's donning of a kaffiyeh to show solidarity with the Hamas terrorists seeking to destroy the Jewish homeland.

In these disturbed days I am spending many hours reading and studying Greek and Roman books; books so profound that I am almost ashamed to say I still do not understand them but I know I can learn from them. Aristotle, Plato, Cicero. When I read them I still think these are permanent books.

I love the feeling and passion and genuineness and sweet melodies of the Big Songs as we call them and their successors but I know that these cannot teach more than simple things. They recall, after all, a way of life that has virtually passed away.

I am neither a Greek nor a Roman and I am an American by choice but I feel deep gratitude and reverence for the Great Americans.

I am really much more interested in Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln than William Wallace or Robert the Bruce or even Mary Queen of Scots about whom I have written a play which in a way was an elegy.

When I was much younger I loved Caesar and Thucydides and dreamed of finding Trajan’s lost commentaries of which only a single line survives. I wrote an article for MILITARY HISTORY based on my fascination for this lost book.

But I suppose I have always had it in my mind that all glory is fleeting and that man’s nature is to desire to struggle and gain dominion and when this is not possible to hate, brood and burn with envy.

Men love honor and they love glory. There are many manifestations of this passion.

When I think I cannot learn any more or think I have no answers I always return to the Auld Book a great Gift of the Jews and so beloved to Paul and the Great Teacher.

I think of the Sabbath in every Jewish synagogue in which a handwritten copy of the Torah, the first books of the Hebrew Scriptures, is taken out from its special place.

After a reading, the book is carried through the congregation (I have seen this myself) before it is returned to the ark and every pious Jews kisses it.

The Torah is always handwritten in the ancient style with a quill pen. It is always in the form of a parchment roll.

I have seen fragments from synagogues destroyed by the Nazis but meticulously preserved to be relics of a “vanished race”.

The text is always the same. I am told the very letters are counted so that they may not vary even an iota.

This reminds the Jews, perhaps, that the wisdom of the God Almighty does not vary and is eternal.

By doing homage to a book this way, the Jews express their devotion to the Creator but also by implication they express reverence not only for GOD but also TRADITION, their splendid ancient heritage, and one of the greatest inventions of history: the book.

I am not a Jew but I feel a deep gratitude for the wisdom of Abraham who did not kill his son Isaac in sacrifice.

Abraham’s reverence for God was great –he proved that he feared God- but he sacrificed the ram as a burnt offering instead of his son.

Perhaps I think the Jews were the first to decide that human sacrifice was cruel, unnecessary and WRONG.

It is said that Islam, like Buddhism, has also been free from human sacrifice.

I know my pagan ancestors were Gaels of the Isles, Picts and Lochlanachs -the barbarians of the Fjords (Northmen or Sutherlanders they were also called).

They came very late to letters and Christianity and had been blood thirsty killers, raiders and slavers. Somehow I know the Aztecs had nothing on these people, from whom I am descended, called the Last White Barbarians (or Savages) of Western Europe by Toynbee. So I know my own ancestors were not free of man’s darkest passions and most evil moments even perhaps cannibalism.

Some of this ferocity and passion lingers on to this day and the knowledge of this is found in Adam Ferguson's ESSAY ON CIVIL SOCIETY and this quality made his work unique, I think, in the Scottish Enlightenment which never romanticized human nature as something always tending toward the good.

So I feel in a very real sense a great gratitude for the virtues and godliness taught from the Judeo-Christian tradition which teaches above all THAT HUMAN LIFE IS a BLESSED THING AND A SACRED THING. That OUR LIVES OUR NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE BUT FOR GOD AND FOR OUR FELLOWS.

I try to understand hatred. The hatred of the Jews.

Part of this hatred is hatred for the Other.

Part of it is hatred fueled by envy.

But a great part of it is hatred fueled by PRIDE.

THIS PRIDE makes it impossible for ARABS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE TERRIBLE TRUTH of the terrible hatred and murderous cult-like idolatry running through THEIR OWN CIVILIZATION!

“Some people say ‘we saw you beheading, kidnappings and killing. In the end we even started kidnapping women who are our honor,’” good Muslims say. “These acts are not the work of Arabs. I am sure that he who does this is a Jew and the son of a Jew.”

THEY CANNOT ADMIT IN THEIR PRIDE THAT THE KILLERS ARE THEIR BROTHERS AND KINDRED SO THEY BLAME THE JEWS!

The fact that Israel exists is painful to Arabs.

They think that anything that happens to the Jews is what they deserve.

They are fixated on the existence of Israel but never mention their own ferocious hatred which led to the expulsion of all the large Jewish minorities in more than 20 Arab countries.

They embrace a fantasy that somehow all the Jews will move to Brooklyn when in fact more Jews are leaving America for Israel than Israelis for America. Most Jews in Israel were born in Israel or are descended from Jewish refugees from Arab or Muslim countries.

The Israelites are not going anywhere. Israel is the last citadel of their faith and culture. It is their New Masada and they are the New Spartans. They will not yield.

If the Muslim extremists do succeed in “wiping out Israel” then surely they will destroy themselves in the process. But they cling to the delusion that the Israelis will be demoralized in the end and flee as Jews have always fled.

I humbly admire the good things English people have done, the Jews have done, the Romans have done the Greeks have done and others have done such as the Chinese and the Arabs too.

I know the part my own people have contributed to the world is small and really just an accessory to the great achievements of other greater more unified people.

I know my contributions to the world are small but I think I have done more good than evil in this world and this gives me some comfort. I have taught with sense of humility and have tried to DO NO HARM.

I know the better life I have, the more secure life politically and materially is based upon the achievements and inventions of many others.

This does not disturb me. It fills me with awe the way I am filled with awe when a woman gives birth to new life or can tame a man.

I try to think how Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah or Bin Laden are different from me.

I have had bad experiences with Jews but bad experiences with three people out of a 100 or hundreds does not make me hate “all the Jews”.

In fact meeting Jews through books and in person and studying Israel I cannot have anything but admiration so great that I probably wish I were a Jew.

I know I cannot be one but I have great love for the Chosen People whom I think have done well, upon the whole and it is upon the whole such things must be based.

I can honestly say I have known more cruel, inhuman and rapacious Scots than I have ever known, personally, cruel, rapacious and inhuman Germans.

So If I dislike the Germans more than Scots, which I do, this is due to acquired prejudice. I KNOW I HAVE A DEEP PREJUDICE, for example, against Germans and I know this is a vice so I try to control this feeling.

I know this hatred is a noxious weed AND CONTAMINATES my thought and I try to prune or overcome this hatred.

But I know I can never quite get over it. Others I know hate Mexicans or hate Blacks or hate Catholics. Some people hate rich people. Everyone has their prejudices.

I do not think Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and Bin Laden are like this. In their pride their hatred for the Jews –and their American and British friends- grows. They refresh themselves by feasting upon their own passions and prejudices, and doing so their hatred and pride and their prejudices grow.

I read what the Prime Minister of Spain said with deep concern and shame. After all, my wife is a Spanish national and all my children and nieces and nephews are Spanish nationals.

According to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Hezbullah and Israel are MORALLY EQUIVALENT! He made no criticism whatsoever of the Hezbullah terrorists.

Then Zapatero topped off his disgusting appeasement by wearing the Palestinian kaffiyah. INCREDIBLE. But of course he is a Spanish Socialist so what can you expect from such a man.

Why didn’t he put on a Nazi arm band while he was at it? This was a cowardly and disgraceful act! But of course it would take courage to support Israel or offer the slightest criticism of Al Qaida or Arab terrorists.

The reality is that if there had been no terrorist attacks and no kidnappings there would be peace now. If they want a ceasefire all they need do is return the kidnapped Israeli soldiers and stop shooting rockets at defenseless civilians. As long as Arab Muslim terrorists intentionally target innocent civilians with terrorist bombs or showers of rockets there can be no peace.

If the Israelis did disarm there would be another Holocaust. Wise Israelis know this. This is why 85% of the Israeli people support their Armed Forces and hope against hope the day of reckoning can be postponed.

Arab news media say:

"In Madrid , Spanish Prime Minister Jose' Luis Rodriguez Zapatero renewed his condemnation of the Israeli brutal aggression on Lebanon, saying that " human rights must be above all considerations ." Yeah that’s a laugh; as if human rights get much consideration in Syria, Iran etc.

Brutal aggression? One would think the Israelis fought back just for fun. They are fighting for their very lives and they know it.

The reality for Israelis is that their WAY OF LIFE IS UNDER THE SHADOW OF THIS NEW ROCKET JIHAD whose rockets are ever bigger and longer in range.

The logical conclusion is that these new Vengeance Rockets will be tipped with nuclear war heads so that ISRAEL COULD BE ERADICATED- the PROFESSED GOAL of the Islamofascists.

I am not making this up. THIS IS WHAT THEY SAY. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. They say they WANT WORLD WAR III !!!

It has been said that Islam is free from human sacrifice but reading the twenty second chapter of Genesis again I think that something is terribly wrong. What is happening today seems to be a strange manifestation in Islam of a return to MOLOCH the god of the Ammonites and Phoenicians TO WHOM CHILDREN WERE SACRIFICED.

Cannibals they say always elect cannibal kings.

This new Islamofascism seems to me to be a regressive form of idolatry, something terrible, possessing the power to exact horrible sacrifices. This is very anti-human and nothing good and no peace can ever come from such fanaticism.

As long as these people hate the Jews and their American friends more than they love their own children they will want to kill and destroy.

There can be, in my view, no parley with this wicked murder cult.

I think that Israel and its citizens, however imperfect, are noble and good. They deserve our admiration and our friendship and support.

But the Islamofascists hate Israel and say THEY WANT TO WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

Why? Because they fear the existence of Israel just as they fear the existence of America.

The mad Mullahs and Ayatollahs want to destroy, ultimately because they fear that their traditions and cultures will be washed away by the West.

Ironically their new nationalism and their new Islamofascism is totally Western in origin.

So I return to the miracle of the preservation of thought.

What is the difference between Israel and its enemies?

Israel has God but also a lot of Rome, Athens and America.

Israel is not a utopia but a humane country where human rights, rule of law, culture and civilization count for something. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

The Islamofascists in their pride want nothing but one people, one law, one book.

In their shame they want to destroy what they are afraid to understand.

Europeans thought they would be safe when they sacrificed Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler.

Now they rush to see who can denounce Israel the most so they might be safe. They even dress like terrorists. Disgusting.

But feeding crocodiles only has one result. They grow in size and gain a taste for blood and human flesh.

Moloch will claim more blood.

The only way to stop a man-eating dragon is to kill it.

We are living in dangerous times. Very dangerous times.

Our way of life is very fragile and will not hold without strength, courage and sacrifice.

We will know, I am thinking, new horrors, hunger, thirst and hardship.

Innocent young, old and sick will suffer and die and not in one place but in many.

We must above all, think of how we will preserve thought, faith in God and freedom.

The greatest miracle of all will be the preservation of thought, not of one book but of many books.

This is what I think under the stars of the still summer night.

And I thank God for the Psalms…..and the wisdom and comfort of the Auld Book...my last reading of the night...and my first reading of the morning….

RICHARD K. MUNRO

ISI Renshaw Fellow UVA 2004

Teacher of English, history and Spanish

Former Mentor Teacher, Kern HS District

Master Catechist Diocese of Fresno (New Wine Certificate)

July 20, 2006

A DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE?

On June 1, 1942, Winston Churchill addressed the following remarks to the House of Commons:

"...I ought not to sit down without referring to the mammoth air raid delivered by the Royal Air Force on the Cologne region during the night of 30th-31st May. In this triumph of skill, daring and diligence against the enemy, all previous records of night bombing have been doubled and excelled. On that occasion no fewer than 1,130 British-manned aircraft operated across the sea. The results have been of a devastating character, but accurate photography has so far been hampered by the pall of smoke which hung over the smitten area. Last night, also, 1,036 machines of the Royal Air Force visited the Continent. Nearly all of these operated on the Essen region, and first reports received indicate numerous and widespread conflagrations. From this second large-scale raid 35 of our bombers are missing.

I do not wish it to be supposed that all our raids in the immediate future will be above the four-figure scale. Methods of attack will be continually varied according to circumstances. On the other hand, these two great night-bombing raids mark the introduction of a new phase in the British air offensive against Germany, and this will increase markedly in scale when we are joined, as we soon shall be, by the Air Force of the United States. In fact, I may say as the year advances German cities, harbours and centres of war production will be subjected to an ordeal the like of which has never been experienced by any country in continuity, severity or magnitude.

I am sure the House will wish me to express its compliments to Air Marshal Harris and the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the Bomber Command, including the efficient and devoted maintenance staffs, upon the work which they are doing and the results achieved. Congratulations upon this encouraging event are also due to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air, to the Chief of the Air Staff and to the Air Ministry upon the activities of those committed to their charge..."

DANGEROUS FANTASIES

        A combined 80+ years of close clinical observation of the individual human mind has persuaded Horsefeathers that fantasy often trumps reality. To hold firmly to a fantasy when reality disproves it daily, usually requires a scapegoat. Thus the unattainable Jihadi dream world of an Islamic caliphate requires first, the destruction of the Jews, and their homeland. Their allies, another group of fantasists, the left-liberal wordsmith elites, similarly blame the Jews and Israel for the failures of their own one world, egalitarian, Godless religion.
        Friend of Horsefeathers, Professor Edward Alexander, writes of the possibility that perhaps this time Middle East reality will trump wishful fantasy. Our clinical observation has been that, indeed, sometimes after repeated collisions with reality, the human mind can absorb the blow to one's narcissim and slowly begin to change. Can the collective Arab psyche do this in the face of the hated Jews' clear superiority, the very existence of a free and prosperous Israel being a reminder of their own primitive, failed culture of death?
        Professor Alexander writes"...Can anything positive emerge from the current carnage? Perhaps. Since Hezbollah has over the years killed hundreds of Americans (most notably the Marines in Lebanon) without ever paying a price, its destruction by Israel would constitute a major American victory; the same may be said of Hamas, whose agents of mass murder are already operating in America.

Perhaps the incessant nattering about "the occupation" will finally give way to a recognition that the real "root cause" of Middle Eastern wars is a genocidal Islamicist culture, which must be uprooted by a process roughly akin to the denazification of Germany after World War II.

Perhaps the Israeli politicians who were so proud of their flight from Lebanon and Gaza will conjure the ghost of Winston Churchill rebuking arch-appeaser Neville Chamberlain: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."

Perhaps — but maybe this is too much to hope — even our Middle East experts in this country (who bear a large portion of responsibility for our mental unpreparedness for 9/11) will be subject to liability laws for scholarly malpractice of the sort that have long been in place for medical malpractice."

See the rest here.

July 16, 2006

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AT WORK: HUMANIZING SAVAGES

Trust the AP to throw into the middle of an account of Israel's efforts to defeat the Islamo-fascist savages, a literary moment designed to bring tears of admiration to the eyes of readers. The "fluttering dusty pages" is what really got to me. How cruel can Israel be?

"...Furniture pieces, blankets, mattresses, clothes and soft toys were scattered on the streets. A copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, lay in the street with its dusty pages fluttering until it was reverently lifted and kissed by a Hezbollah gunman..."

July 15, 2006

NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY

        Horsefeathers grew up in a mixed lower and middle class neighborhood of the Bronx that was 1/4 Irish, 1/2 Italian and 1/4 Jewish. Those were the days before there were organized leagues to make sure every little darling got equal playing time, before political correctness made everyone 'sensitive' to hurt feelings, and before homework was done with the aid of tutors, parents and the internet. There was no ritalin to drain the restless aggression out of boys and turn them into good little test taking drones. The schoolyard was a rough but invaluable tutor. One of the early lessons learned was, if you wanted to play in schoolyard games you had to show you could take and dish out verbal and sometimes physical aggression. 'There's no crying in baseball', but there's also no crying in schoolyard basketball, football or stickball. The kid who did cry did not receive caring consolatory 'support', but rather, was mercilessly scorned and dismissed as a 'cry baby'--the worst insult by far. Ethnic slurs were part of the currency of the schoolyard, but these could be dealt with, either by dishing out on a one for one basis, or at times by the judicious use of fists. Jews were regarded as stereotypically smart, but fearful of mixing it up with their non-Jewish peers. Horsefeathers recalls a particular time, when physical force proved useful and satisfying. One day he appeared in the schoolyard of P.S. 108, wearing eyeglasses for the first time and was greeted with howls of derision: "Look at the four eyed kike". It was the last time that particular phrase was used, even though the fight that ensued didn't have a clearcut winner--bloody noses all around--but willingness to fight was enough to elicit future respect, and an assured place on the playing fields of the East Bronx. Another lesson learned, not in the classroom, applicable in many areas of life, is that the louder a bully's threats, the more imperative it is to respond forcefully. Bullies quickly retreat in the face of determined counter-force and then claim the role of victim themselves. Basically they're cowards, the sort who in war hide among civilians and don't wear uniforms. What Churchill said of the Germans could be said of all bullies: "They're either at your throat or at your feet."
        As a secular Jew, Horsefeathers strongly identifies with Israel, not just for its practical importance to world Jewry but for its psychological importance to Jews everywhere. Israel showed that Jews can fight, can deploy aggression in the service of survival and need not cower fearfully, pleadingly before their tormenters. It changed the psychology of Jews around the world. The new Jew, born in the Warsaw ghetto, strengthened in Israel's wars of survival, brought shared pride in the prowess of the IDF. In its hour of greatest triumph, the Six Day War in 1967, the world's brief post-Holocaust sympathy for the Jew-as-victim began to fade. Who are these Jews to think they can fight and win wars as boldly and brilliantly as if they were a nation of Pattons? Now that Jews were victorious in battle, the old demons of anti-semitism reappeared in the form of anti-Zionism and sympathy for the primitive Arabs whose Jew hatred was excused because they only had 21 states and needed a 22nd with which to continue Hitler's project. Every anti-semitic utopian leftist or rightist could now express horror at the plight of the oppressed Arabs forced to submit to Israel because they were unable to destroy her. Never, of course, did these same anti-semites condemn tyrannical Arab rulers for their primitive Jew hatred or for their oppression of their own people. No, it was once again those pesky Zionist Jews who stood in the way of pan-Arab, Judenfrei Utopia.
        Unfortunately over the years since 1967, Israel has partially succumbed to the old yearning for acceptance and approval by the world. They have traded victory on the battlefield for fantasies of approval and imaginary coexistence with a primitive and savage foe. This has eroded the collective self-confidence acquired in earlier victories. The bold, assertive Israeli was slowly yielding to the old Jew, the good Jew who just wanted the pogroms to stop, and thought that making nice would work. In short, the old appeasing mentality reappeared. The Jew as the only real Christian in the world, would turn the other cheek and hope to be loved for it.
        Not only has this not worked, (see Oslo accords, road maps to peace, withdrawal from Gaza, withdrawal from Lebanon, etc.) it is psychologically damaging. It erodes self respect: it makes the appeaser, deep down feel like a coward. It becomes a form of self-emasculation. It robs Jews of pride in their strength; no wonder so many prefer the utopian dreams of Liberalism to their own Jewish identity. The heros of the Warsaw ghetto, and the pioneers of the state of Israel rejected this mentality.
        As we are glued to our TV sets and the internet for news of the IDF's bold actions, we dare to hope that, at long last, the old spirit has returned! The news of the IDF kicking the crap out of the Arabs is exhilirating. It's liberating and is a rebuke to appeasers everywhere. Israel should never again hesitate to destroy its tormenters. Let the enemies of the Jews and of freedom quake in their boots. No better way to effect that than to unleash a 'rain of ruin' (see Harry Truman post below) from the air, up to and including tactical nuclear weapons. Let's let the mullahs go to sleep wondering whether their dreams will be interrupted by an IDF jet's payload. Let us hope the IDF does not stop until victory.

Here's Bob Dylan on Israel, written years ago, but true as ever.

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.

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