Hamastan has just marked its third birthday. It was a glad gala indeed, punctuated with buoyant morale and maritime hijinks by “freedom flotillas” raucously rushing to spark the celebrations.

Unbelievably the anniversary of Hamas’s hegemony in the Gaza Strip came and went with scant critical appraisal anywhere. The Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, which took over Gaza in a spasm of violence during June 2007, now appears an acceptable regional fixture. Nobody demands even a modicum of good behavior from it. Hamastan gets such pampering press that it seemingly cannot set a foot wrong.

At first the international Quartet (US, EU, UN and Russia) mildly hiccupped with reluctant disapproval, not so much for Israel’s sake but out of concern that its darling Mahmoud Abbas, figurehead president of the rival Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, might lose ground. Formally the above guardians of global propriety request that Hamas recognize Israel, forswear terror and acquiesce to previous Israel-PA deals. But in reality they itch to backtrack. Continue reading →

Salami-slicing, a familiar if infamous ploy, has long been a favorite of assorted shysters whether in business, party politics or geopolitical machinations. It wasn’t invented by the Arabs in their tactically mutating but strategically consistent war against the Jewish state. That said, the Arabs are matchless masters at deploying the deceit, whereas delusional broad-minded Jews voluntarily cast themselves as the ultimate dupes.

In a recent Tack I wrote that “while Israel serially drew back from its positions… Arab orientations during all that time hadn’t budged a fraction of a millimeter. Their only modifications were tactical. Instead of eradicating Israel in one fell swoop (which they didn’t do only because they couldn’t), they settled on slicing Israel’s salami bit by bit to deprive it of strategic depth, render it more vulnerable to predations and erode it by demonization and demoralization. The basic premise remains that at most the existence of the unwanted ‘Zionist entity’ is admitted temporarily de facto, that this entity must shrink and that Arabs have a right to deluge it.” Continue reading →

Fate inserts assorted unexpected subplots into our lives. Some months ago, a reader from Germany responded to a column of mine in so insightful a manner that I thought it merits acknowledgment. From there sprang forth a friendship by e-mail that still thrives. This non-Jewish German friend quickly explained that his unwavering support for Israel is by no means the bon ton of his Bavarian milieu and that his outspokenness on its behalf hardly enhances his popularity.

A relative of his, a philosophy professor who currently teaches in China, won’t hear of visiting Israel due to its “flagrant human rights violations.”

But aren’t Beijing’s abuses, pressed my Internet interlocutor, far more off-putting? Continue reading →

Suicide can be individual or collective. In either manifestation it can share similar attributes and arise from parallel psychological anomalies. It can be perversely popular.

In early 20th-century Vienna, for example, a spate of high-profile suicides triggered a pseudo-romantic fad. There seemed to be something dashing in taking one’s own life in a grand gesture that apparently made a statement. Pivotal in sensationalizing the fashion was 23-year-old philosopher Otto Weininger who shot himself in 1903 in the same hotel room where Beethoven died (presumably to enhance the dramatic effect). Continue reading →

It was sweet solace for the soul to learn that some on the entrenched Left still retain a smidgeon of hankering for the Zionist fold. It was comforting to conclude that maybe the more progressive self-appointed guardians of other people’s consciences have noticed, albeit belatedly, that they had strayed too close to the loony fringe. So it was with genuine joy that many of us received the news of initiatives to purportedly back away from postmodern/post-Zionist excesses and return to the patriotic middle ground that was historically the solid power base of this country’s Labor-Left.

We sincerely yearned to applaud the renascent National Left (Smol Leumi), not least because our entire body politic must be able to count on two responsible mainstream mainstay alternatives. It must be able to count on alternatives which place Israeli security and self-preservation above all trendy inclinations and which do not observe our reality through deliberately distortive enemy lenses. Continue reading →

“There is no precedent of a conflict between nations being brought to finality without direct negotiations. In the conflict between the Arabs and Israel, the issue of direct negotiations goes to the very crux of the matter. Our objective is to achieve peace and coexistence but how will our neighbors ever be able to live with us in peace if they refuse to speak with us?”

The above is a direct quote from an address by prime minister Golda Meir to the Knesset on May 26, 1970, 40 years minus-five-days ago. The insistence on direct talks was cardinal for Israeli leaders before and since the above statement. A succession of foreign emissaries and politicos came and went, but Israel consistently recoiled from the notion of go-betweens and shuttle diplomacy.

The principle of direct talks steadfastly guided even the misguided progenitors of the Oslo folly – until the advent of Binyamin Netanyahu’s current term. Continue reading →

In 1799, just before he failed to conquer Acre, Napoleon Bonaparte penned a momentous letter “to the Jewish nation.” At that point, still confident of military triumph, he perceived himself as the great liberator of history’s most oppressed people – the “Israelites.” They constituted “a unique nation, which, during thousands of years, lust of conquest and tyranny have deprived of its ancestral lands, but not of its name and national existence!”

When Napoleon aspired to establish a renascent state in Palestine, it was unquestionably to be a Jewish state. He had no doubt whose ancestral land this was, with whom it’s associated and who were the only people who ever made it a distinct sovereign unit. Continue reading →

We can avoid Iranian nukes by opting for the Auschwitz borders or we can avoid the Auschwitz borders but be bullied by Iranian nukes.

Time to quit quibbling. No pedantic hairsplitting can mitigate the evidence: The Obama administration cynically links Iran to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The premise is simple and chilling. If Israel wants a last-minute, last-ditch, quasi-credible American move to keep Iran from obtaining nukes, it must pay the piper by making hefty concessions to the sham paraded as the Palestinian Authority. Boiled down to its bare essence, the White House diktat means that Israel can maybe extricate itself from existential Iranian threats by submitting itself to existential Iranian-proxy threats. Continue reading →

Some of the luckier folks are born into renowned families. If sufficiently mercenary, they can cash in on their lineage and do quite well from a departed forefather’s fame. Arun and Rajmohan Gandhi, for instance, are the Mahatma’s grandsons and their genealogical good fortune presumably entitles them to profess unique moral authority.

Quite like them is Martin Luther King’s eldest son and namesake.

Ordinarily we couldn’t care less about them. But they came to our region, participated in propaganda forums and dispensed advice on how to overcome villainous Israel “nonviolently.” Arun was the trailblazer. He appeared here in 2004. Rajmohan and MLK III followed in his footsteps this month. Continue reading →

In herself Anat Kamm could not be more unimportant. As a symptom of the psycho-political ills that plague Western democracies Anat Kamm could not be more important.

The malaise her pseudo-intellectual narcissism mirrors can obviously be least afforded in beleaguered Israel, but it’s not only endemic here.

Moreover, it’s lauded as the epitome of politically correct bon ton not only by this country’s homegrown left-leaning media. Continue reading →