Defending the last ditch

Where there is suspicion there is hope. Anything less than defiantly blind credulity must be taken as something of a triumph, especially amongst the young. If you want to see suspicion in all its varied glory make this a habit: whenever you meet a young jew (and it comes up) ask, are you a Zionist Jew or an Anti-Zionist Jew? If immediate suspicion is in the jewish character it seems to have been mostly boiled out of the semite undergrad. Mostly, as with all questions these days, you will receive the quizzical expression of a kitten nursing a cigarette. They are not used to new questions, these pupae, without getting the answers in advance, and presume you have begun speaking a foreign language. Possibly fictional. For some reason the usual method of fence straddling is likewise not employed. It is that expression, Zionist. They know they have heard it and it is not good. “But it does seem to have something to do with jews, which I am,” so they are at least hesitant to join in the hoots, the damnation of the bankers, the presumption of their jewishness, the denunciation of Israel and the perpetual explanations of how the jews are at the root of it all.

Given the givens of our day, as I said, this is triumphal and all opportunities must be explored. Exploration will reveal great ignorance in our undergrad regarding the history of modern Israel, current events there and the conditions under which the Isreali, jewish or otherwise, lives. But any attempt to remedy this situation, at least at the first go, will be met with the grumpy refusal of a toddler to visualize whirled peas. “What do you care?” they will say in more or less frank language. Somehow they never wonder if I am a jew myself. It seems the black fellow can more easily pass for non-black than any jew can be confused with non-jew. Must be pheromones. In any case, it is a good question. Why should any non-jew care what happens to Israel?

Funny how this is the only issue on which concern is suspect. Why do you care about the whales? one might ask though the response would only be a gaping disdain. Why do you care about the ozone hole? Or the Aborigines? Or the delta smelt? Or indeed, poor urban blacks with which you have engaged in little voluntary contact except in your music downloads? Concern for the so-called Palestinians likewise is suspect only in absence and again ignorance does what enmity would fail to do; present the unbreachable barrier of the guffaw. Why, everyone is for the Palestinians as everyone is for polar bears however unfamiliar they may be with them. Chip away at this if you need a lifelong project with no hope of completion. Instead, let the brats have their assumptions because there is much to say for the Zionist Goyim that is unsentimental and indeed, nakedly Machiavellian.

Of what objective worth is Israel? It is a sandy spit. Cosmic humor has made it a perverted reflection of the state of New Jersey though with less water and poorer beaches. New Jersey is surrounded by belligerent but dependent neighbors; is the last safe target for bullying in a hostile crowd and is narrow at the waist. New Jersey I would defend from attack and slander selfishly. As New Jersey sinks so does a bit of me. And if Israel were to slip? None of my relatives are there and there is plenty to concern us here at home. But those concerns are not separable and the alchemy of dividing one strand of our maladies from another is a vain project, not impossible necessarily but far too time consuming and productive of toxic waste. The struggle of Israel to draw her daily breath is not conducted on a distant front in our collective war. Israel is the farthest forward outpost on one, vast encircling theater the center of which is right where you are sitting now, presuming that is a safe chair by an open window over a placid American street.

By this counting we here in safety and plenty occupy the First Ditch. Or more accurately, we lounge in cabana chairs just behind it, confident that we will hear the bullet or the click of the detonator in time to throw ourselves in and boot up our weapons. A good few of our countrymen stroll far beyond it, touring the Second Ditch, which is in the weaker but still civilized nations of Europe or the orient.These are subject to attack but it is infrequent. Still further there is the invisible array of the Third Ditch, more a tangle of deep tracks that are filled with hostile rats and driving sand when they are not filled with lead. Iraq and Afghanistan are here, obsessed with hostility to civilization and rapidly being drained of American soldiers. Whether the project of explaining decency and tolerance to this crowd was ever plausible is still unanswered but mostly because we do not care to take No for an answer. The fact that we contemplate a full retreat without serious consequences demonstrates that even the jagged edge of daily combat is not, truly, the final front. No. It is not where our people are dropped in, lifted out and make sure to cover their tracks. It is where the free, bawdy, roilsome West comes up against medievalism forthrightly; where the bikini meets the burkha and that, friends, is Israel.

Israel is the unscrambled porno channel on Al-Jazeera. Israel is a middle-finger to the mullahs, why don’t the Occupiers (and when did that become cool?) grasp this? If they think the Bachman Conformity would be an uncomfortable place for them, how does sharia smell? To ask the question is to mark oneself out as a loony. Why, these modest goatherders mean us no harm and their quaint beliefs are far less offensive than the 700 Club. But of course they don’t watch the 700 Club. Nor do they consume its equivalent; a constant stream of jihad videos supported in principle from the BBC to USAToday with breezy equivalences that take the jihadists’ every english statement of conciliation as gospel, and ignore their domestic incitements in arabic as gibberish. This sort of thing the Occupiers devour with alacrity, at least those who are lately and prominently turning the OWS movement into an ululating denunciation of The Great Satan . International Jihad and secular jew hatred would be ripe for a Wikileak assault but for one problem; they are open in their recruitment, open in their goals and open in their methods. While bloody vitriol is ignored if its source is a protected group, dramatic slanders are concocted and promulgated cheerily through the press “exposing” targets for tactical benefit. This is the eternal role of the jew; Target. Scapegoat. Lamb. The Koch brothers have become honorary jews with their new celebrity. Murdoch as well. But even actual jewishness is no bar to an unscrutinized political career if those politics are the right flavor. George Soros, who could not more fully embody antisemitic stereotypes if he were a Bond villain, is revered and left to his machinations. The jewishness of this precocious nazi becomes a shield of corruption. Like Medusa he is so foul no one dare look too closely.

Soros as demon is much for our weary undergrad but perhaps their native suspicion is aroused. So, jew=bad is not the full equation? Ah, now as they are asking why anyone would object to Israel’s obliteration they are also wondering why anyone outside the principle parties would seek it? Hmm. No one doubts the existence of devious special interests out to line their pockets or drive on your lawn but they aren’t just jews are they? No, clearly not. The simple numbers make that impossible. So why is there so much agitation against the jews? Simple, those doing the agitating are muddying up the waters because clarity would expose THEM, with justice, to the public pillory they attempt to keep filled. Antisemitism is a tool of the tyrant since Greece. One needs not a single warm feeling towards a jew or even towards humanity to understand your self interest is at stake, if you consider liberty and truth to be in your self-interest. All this Hitler stuff is an inflammatory diversion; so it was, so it is and so it shall ever be. Diversion from what? Simple truths that our Occupiers were not denied but never sought. First, neither government nor any spacey alternative you might concoct to government can give you anything they don’t first take from someone else. And YOU are often that Someone Else. It seems the internal conflicts within the Occupiers reflect some hard lessons only lately learned. But even simpler and more basic lessons like the value of innate skepticism have been written out. That is a nearly universal diagnosis: the Occupiers at large are terminally naive. So even if you have no love for Israel, even if you have an active hostility it is STILL in your best interests to be dubious of anti-Zionism, antisemitism or any quick and dirty assignment of metaphysical blame. And this is really the first hurdle of civilization (after pooping discipline, which we will also have to work on), to forbear from simply blaming the drought or your rejection for tenure on the guy next door with the big nose. That is helpful to him, certainly, but it is even more helpful to YOU especially as The Last Ditch and The First Ditch have intersected unexpectedly in the tent cities of America.