World opinion be damned

26 Comments / 26 Comments

1. @ James B – Montreal:

   “The Nakba catastrophe destroyed a vibrant, prosperous way of life.”

   So?

   Everybody suffered.

   And in many ways, everybody still does.

   (Moreover, had the shoe been on the other foot, and the Arabs succeeded at their intent

   — it would’ve been a helluva lot MORE than a “vibrant, prosperous way of life” that was destroyed.)

   War has consequences.

   That’s why it’s wise to avoid war

   — if you can.

   So the question isn’t, ‘who’s hurting?’

   — the question is, who attacked WHOM?

   And whenever the world does its little hand-wringie thingie about the poor Palys, it should NEVER be permitted to get rolling with that stuff

   — without being promptly reminded of who it was that drew first blood.

   Because he who controls the focus of discourse. . . . controls the discussion.

2. @ BlandOatmeal:
   BO,

   As chance would have it, as I was reading your comment on the monitor, my wife brought down to my office a plate of oatmeal to which she had added a handful of raisins. Better for this purpose than chili peppers, I warrant. And, I presume, not treif for us Jews as covered by this or that obscure talmudic restriction.

   Arnold Harris
   Mount Horeb WI

3. Thank God, I’m just being “moderated”. That’s a joke. How do you “moderate” bland oatmeal? Add water?

4. @ leonard white:
   Hi, Leonard. By the way, Phoenix, I loved the elephant & mouse video 🙂

   Leonard, just look at the record. Today, the US truly calls the shots in the world, in that it can blast any country off the planet, except perhaps Russian and China, any time it pleases. Even Russian and China have chosen to cooperate with us CONSIDERABLY, seeing that head-on confrontation was fruitless.

   Up until WWII, the world had gotten used to having a balance of power, repeatedly tested by wars. Before WWI, it seemed like Britain had become unstoppable: France had been its chief opponent, but fell apart in 1789 with the Revolution. After that, Victoria ascended the throne of the UK and married her daughters off to the principle monarchs of Europe. By WWI, the King of Engtland, the Kaiser of Germany and the Tsarina of Russia were all grandchildren of victoria. They had tea together and vacationed together, and it looked as though Pax Brittanica had arrived. But the Kaiser didn’t really rule Germany, and King George didn’t really rule England: Democracy had come to reign in Europe, and countries who should have been at peace with one another because of their ruling family tore into one another tooth and nail. Two great wars ensued, that left tens of millions of Europeans dead. The biggest casualty of those wars, on a global scale, was the British Empire: It was replaced by the United States of America, and the Soviet Union replaced Germany as #2. Britain came close, but, as Groucho Marx used to say, “no cigar”. Perhaps the US will succeed where the Brits failed, and the French and Hapsburgs before them, and the Franks before them.

   The key to the downfall of all these empires, was that the sovereign didn’t really control the hearts and souls of the people: The House of Hanover and its related houses ruled nearly the whole world, on paper; but their subjects were ruled by their own ideas: People thought of themselves as “The German People”, “The Anglo-Saxon People”, “The Proletarian Class”, etc., each with its own interests. They each jockeyed for position in the paper “Empire” until the great test of the Wars provided an opportunity for them to tear the structure apart and rebuild it. “Peace” eventually arose out of the dust, or more aptly, “equilibrium”, and literally hundreds of “mouse” countries like Zimbabwe and Nauru and Grenada — and Israel.

   The situation is not too different from the time of the Roman Empire — the most powerful empire in the known world at the time, far overshadowing its Parthian neighbors to the East (ironically, in modern-day Iran). Rome was repeatedly wracked by “world wars” of Imperial candidates vying with one another for the throne, and by periodic economic collapses brought on by top-heavy governments. During such times, Israel and other small nations sometimes revolted, or latched on either to the Parthians or to new hopefuls such as Xenobia of Palmyra. In every case, one of the Imperial candidates made it to the top of the heap, vanquished his opponents, and ultimately, crushed Israel into non-existence.

   Israel is in a difficult position. Geography works against her: God elected to have his Chosen People live in the middle of an international freeway that everyone wanted to get between empires and resources. History works against her: Most of Israel’s history was spent in exile, while the latest world bullies took turns ruling her homeland. Last of all, but not least, nearly all the people of the world have been convinced to hate her.

   Should Israel “go it alone” under such circumstances? She has no choice; because the world doesn’t just want Israel’s land (which, for nearly 2000 years without Jews on it proved to be barren wasteland); IT WANTS HER HEART AND SOUL. It wants her life, ALL of it, forever. It’s the People of God and the Heavenly Host vs. the rest of the world, coached by Vince Lombardi. That’s a close match, very close, and certainly out of my league; but I’ve seen all these guys play, and I’m with God and the Yids.

5. @ yamit82:
   One may make an argument that America, as a large super power may attempt to go it alone. But when it comes to a very small nation such as Israel, that would be totally different matter. For the fact is Israel choses to interact with other nations and entities suggesting that it requires the contact and support of these entities. Israel remains a member of the O E C D, the United Nation, UNO,UNESCO, UNHCR, FAO, WHO, Associate member of NATO, Associate member Of EU.AS well as many other lesser international Cultural and athletic international associations.

   And Yamit, imagine doing all of that and not consulting you.

6. ArnoldHarris Said:

   As for Israel, it may well be compared to America as a mouse to an elephant

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXiMs65ZAeU

7. BO,

   That was an interesting comment. I cannot say I agree with your specific predictions. But conditions may well lead to a situation in which the USA would be compelled to use tariffs to reduce the flood of foreign manufactured goods that come into this country. We have no long-term economic option but to revive and rebuild the American manufacturing economy. The US could then use its tariffs as foreign policy options, with all that could imply.

   We have here a market that comprises the entirety of North America, at least to the extant that Canada, Mexico and the Central American states are part of our immediate and local trading imperium.

   As for Israel, it may well be compared to America as a mouse to an elephant. But I think in the long run, the mouse will grow by a number of successive magnitudes.

   Arnold Harris
   Mount Horeb WI

8. @ yamit82:

   Yamit, you said,

   The only way America will ever hope to reverse her current economic slide is to reestablish high tariffs on all imports. That will enable a return to made in America of many if not most of the products imported today.

   The first thing that came to mind was that you were echoing the “infamous antisemite” Pat Buchanan:

   Buchanan on the history of U.S. protectionism: “Behind a tariff wall built by Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, and the Republican presidents who followed, the United States had gone from an agrarian coastal republic to become the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen — in a single century. Such was the success of the policy called protectionism that is so disparaged today.”

   — http://www.freetrade.org/node/444/print

   With all that said, I think you and Pat both (I voted for him, by the way, when he ran against Bush — precisely because of his stand on tarriffs) are being a little simplistic. We had tarriff walls around us when everyone else had tarriff walls, and went “global” when everyone else went global. The world then isn’t the world now. There are disadvantages to living behind economic barriers. When the Soviets were a world unto themselves, lots of Russians had respectable jobs, many being the best in their country. When the walls came down, they ended up out of work and either emigrating or seeking more humble employment. Why? Did the world “steal” jobs from Russia? Or was it in part because Russian cars were smog-belching pieces of crap, Russian clothing had no style, Russian stores didn’t give the consumers what they wanted, etc.?

   I would love to see American factories humming again; so I would know that the keyboard I’m typing on gave work to my countrymen, and the monitor I’m looking at is doing the same. Tarriffs might help. But if we produce crap, because other countries are kept from competing with us, we MIGHT find out that the world we shut out has left us behind. We could produce our own cars and computers; but if we don’t do so efficiently, the average American might not be able to AFFORD them. Then what? Are we going to keep abreast of modern technology while calculating on slide rules and taking a horse and trap to work — or to the library, to look up words, because we can’t do look-ups on the Internet? I dare say, that if we raised tariffs, the thing that most certainly would happen is that the money would all be squandered on bigger government, on programs that produce absolutely nothing.

   That’s all hypothetical stuff; and as I said, I’ve supported tariffs in the past. Tariffs or no, the world is going to Hell in a handbasket. Our economy is in trouble; but Europe’s seems to be in worse shape because of unsustainable debt. When Germany becomes the next Greece, which it almost certainly will, what are they going to do? Europe is an attractive place, but it’s all built with borrowed money. And if Europe collapses and America stagnates, to whom are the Chinese going to export goods? The whole world is set for one rumble of a tumble, probably very soon.

   I haven’t read all the posts here, but from the looks of it, someone was saying that “Israel can’t go it alone, because the US can’t go it alone”. That’s comparing apples and oranges. The US is the center of a One World Government empire, and Israel is a small peripheral state. It’s something like comparing a mouse and an elephant: Which one is more likely to die in a drought? Both species seem to have made it through many droughts, though I would say that the mice have the upper hand: They’re everywhere, but the elephants are scattered in a few zoos and preserves. There are advantages to being big, but also to being small. The bottom line for both countries, is that both are in the hand of God; and what HE wants should be the main point of policy-making.

9. @ yamit82:

   Yamit. Wake up. Where would America be if there was no China to finance its debt. Billions of dollars of U.S. treasury bills are purchased every year, without which America would be bankrupt.There are numerous examples of trade relationships, cooperative military collectives uch as Nato whereby nations share the burden of existing in this difficult world.

10. ‘FDR used the Jews’
    By RAFAEL MEDOFF
    03/05/2012

    Benzion Netanyahu’s eyewitness report on America’s response to the Holocaust.

    Over the years, I had the opportunity to conduct a number of lengthy interviews with Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, who passed away early Monday, concerning his activities in the United States in the 1940s, when he was executive director of the American wing of the Revisionist Zionist movement.

    The previously unpublished interview below took place in June 2009, as I was working on my book, Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Vote” and Bipartisan Support for Israel (coauthored with Prof. Sonja Schoepf Wentling), which was published last month.

    In your view, why were American Jewish leaders so cautious during the 1940s?

    Part of the problem was how they saw themselves. In their contacts with president Roosevelt, Jewish leaders thought of themselves as weak or helpless. Take, for example, Rabbi Stephen Wise – leader of the American Zionist movement, the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress. He thought of himself as a servant of president Roosevelt.

    He referred to Roosevelt as “chief,” and he really meant it that way – Roosevelt as was the chief, and Wise was the servant. Wise was happy to just follow along with whatever Roosevelt wanted. He was content as long as FDR just remembered his name or gave him a few minutes of his time every once in a while.

    What about the Jewish advisers within Roosevelt’s inner circle?

    FDR used Jews if they served some purpose that he needed. Samuel Rosenman was useful to him as a speechwriter. Henry Morgenthau Jr. was useful to him as secretary of the Treasury. Only a certain kind of a Jew could reach that position in Roosevelt’s administration – the kind of Jew who would not talk about Jewish issues or problems.

    FDR used the Jews, but there was no room in his heart for the plight of the Jewish people. In his mind, the suffering of Europe’s Jews was not included in the “Four Freedoms,” the four great principles for which America was fighting in World War II. Roosevelt had no time for the problems of the Jews.

    (Prof. Netanyahu’s assessment was privately shared, at the time, even by many within the Jewish establishment. Coincidentally, on the morning of our conversation, I spent some time doing research at the Central Zionist Archives, and came upon the transcript of a meeting in 1944 between Nahum Goldmann and the Jewish Agency Executive, including David Ben-Gurion.

    Goldmann, who was cochairman of the World Jewish Congress as well as the agency’s representative in Washington, had come to Jerusalem to brief the agency’s leaders on the political situation in the US capital.

    Goldmann told them Roosevelt was only “superficially sympathetic” to the suffering of European Jewry. He said, “It is impossible to educate the president, because he will only let you see him once every six months, for 30 minutes, and he spends the first 10 minutes chatting and telling stories.”)

    Just before Yom Kippur in 1943, the Bergson Group (led by activist Hillel Kook, who was known as Peter Bergson) and the Vaad Hahatzalah (an Orthodox rescue committee based in New York City) mobilized more than 400 rabbis to march to the White House to plead for rescue. The president refused to meet with a delegation of their leaders.

    Later, a columnist for one of the Yiddish newspapers wrote that if 400 priests had come to the White House, the president would not have refused to see them. Was there indeed a double standard applied to Jewish concerns?

    To answer that question, just consider how the international community would have responded if millions of Englishmen or Frenchmen were the ones who were being annihilated, rather than millions of Jews. Would the world have just stood by, quietly?

    Would you have needed to have protest groups organizing marches and taking out newspaper ads in order to wake up the world’s conscience? No. The nations of the world would have immediately risen in angry protest, without any prompting. They would never would have allowed such a thing to continue. But when the Jews were the victims, it was a different story. It was as if the Jews were untouchables. It was as if the nations did not want to besmirch their hands by touching the Jews.

    What could American Jewish leaders have done to change Roosevelt’s position?

    Roosevelt understood the language of political power. Jewish leaders should have done, and could have done, what my colleagues and I did – we went to the Republicans. And then Roosevelt got the message. We built relationships with Republican members of Congress, and leaders of the Republican Party such as [former president Herbert] Hoover and [1936 presidential nominee Alf] Landon, and we lobbied them before the Republican Convention in 1944. They put a plank in their party platform that year calling for “unrestricted immigration and land ownership” for Jews in Palestine and it called for making Palestine a “free and democratic commonwealth” for the Jewish people. That was the first time one of America’s political parties took such a position.

    Stephen Wise said he was deeply embarrassed that the Republicans were trying, in his view, to upstage the president on Palestine.

    But the Democrats responded by putting language in their platform – this is the first time they did this – supporting “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization” and establishment of a “free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”

    Was Congressman Emanuel Celler the key figure in convincing the Democratic Party to do that?

    Some of the Jewish congressmen were very good. Some were not. Celler was one of the best.

    I had many meetings with Celler during those years. He was very friendly and supportive.

    Sometimes when we discussed with him an idea for a newspaper ad, or a resolution in Congress, he would want to use language even stronger than we proposed. He was not afraid to criticize the president on Jewish issues, even though he and Roosevelt were from the same party. Celler was a courageous man.

    How would you characterize Sol Bloom, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who was the most powerful Jew in Congress?

    Bloom was a very small man, a narrow-minded politician.

    He was worried about keeping his powerful position. He stayed close to the State Department and Roosevelt, and did what they wanted, so he could keep his position.

    Would you say there was a certain similarity between Bloom’s attitude and that of Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Wise?

    They were both in a position to push the administration, but they were both afraid to do so. If American Jews had pressured FDR with regard to opening Palestine, he could have compelled the British to put aside the White Paper so Jews could escape from Europe to Palestine.

    (In his biography of Wise, Prof. Melvin Urofsky describes one of the rare instances in which Wise pressed FDR – and got results. Hearing, in 1936, that Britain was planning to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine, Wise asked Roosevelt to intervene. The fact that it was an election year gave Wise some implicit political leverage.

    Urofsky explains that Roosevelt, “alert to the potential political benefits” (meaning, a chance to impress Jewish voters at no cost), let London know he would be unhappy if Palestine’s doors were shut. The British, anxious to preserve relations with Washington, backed down. It was a very significant accomplishment. Three years later, the British would impose the White Paper, “but in the intervening years (1936- 1939),” Urofsky points out, “more than 50,000 Jews, mostly from Germany and Austria, were able to [enter Palestine] –men, women, and children who would undoubtedly have perished had the 1939 White Paper been issued three years earlier.”)

    What was the response of grassroots American Jews to the news from Europe, as compared to the response of the leadership?

    Certainly the grassroots Jews responded in a more heartfelt way than the leaders. And the lower they were on the economic ladder, the more they seemed to care. Our work had the support of the poor people, the little newspaper vendor on the corner, or the kosher butcher or the school teacher.

    Those who were better off were more assimilated, and they paid very little attention to what was happening. They slept soundly at night, because they closed their eyes to the Jewish tragedy.

    This is something I could never understand. How could they just turn away and continue to go about their business as they usually did? How could they still eat in the finest restaurants, when the Jews in the ghettos were starving? How could they sleep at night? There were times I literally could not sleep at night because of what was happening in Europe, and I could not understand how anyone else could.

    Was that also true of Jewish leaders?

    Jewish leaders, too, were going about their business, and involved in all kinds of issues. And they probably were sleeping soundly at night. They did not understand the full urgency of the situation.

    And they had other problems, such as the problem of their big egos, especially in the case of someone like Stephen Wise. I had a meeting with him in 1940, shortly after I first arrived in the United States. He knew my father, Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky, who was a prominent speaker for the Keren Hayesod and other Zionist causes. When I sat down with Wise, I began speaking in Hebrew. I looked upon him as if he was the chief rabbi of America, so I assumed that of course he would know how to speak Hebrew.

    He answered me in English – he said, “As a matter of principle, I do not speak Hebrew in private conversation.”

    In fact, as I later discovered, he could not speak Hebrew at all – he just could not stand the idea that anybody might think that he could not speak Hebrew. He was a bluffer. A man who was so shallow and petty was not suited to be a Jewish leader, especially one who had the responsibility to lead American Jewry in responding to the Holocaust.

    It is a mark of the poverty of the Jewish people that these were its leaders in those terrible times.

    Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

11. @ yamit82:
    Yamit,

    I comprehend that there are small populations of Andean South Americans who have been converted to Judaism, probably by Orthodox ravim and possibly by Chabadnikim like our own Yona Matusov, who runs our local Beit Chabad in nearby Madison, Wisconsin. I am not convinced that necessarily equates to a “mass conversion”.

    I also know there is evidence that Pashtuni tribesmen of Afghanistan may be descended from Jews exiled eastward from the northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians some 28 centuries ago. For that matter, there also evidence that some Jews, possibly from the first exile, traveled eastward along the so-called silk road as far as China and probably even into the Japanese islands.

    And yes, there probably are as many as a million or more Jews or part-Jews living in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and some of the Islamic former Soviet states. For them, the reviving Jewish community in modern Germany has seemed to be a better attractant than either the USA or Israel.

    Furthermore, the Roman Catholic Church, through its obvious structural and possibly doctrinal weaknesses, continues its international down-slide. This does in fact leave a significant door open for conversion not just by Evangelical Christians and the Mormons, but also by Jewish proselyters.

    But demography, which is an important science for societal planning purposes, cannot be left to depend on vague hopes or guesses.

    As for your last statement, I think there is a lot more rationality in the planning of the Jewish leaderships of 2000 years ago, for purposes of keeping the Jewish nation alive and healthy even in exilic conditions, than you possibly give them credit for.

    But I am also realist enough to agree with you that the survival of the Jewish nation throughout the 2-3 millenia of national degradation, are nothing short of a miracle. Because sometimes what we think of as realism did in fact depend on some outcome that no human ever could have rationally planned.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

12. @ terence:

    If America has a problem “going it alone”, how can Israel? We live in an interdependant world. No nation is an island. Those who suggest otherwise are either stupid or nutty or both.

    America has no problem going it alone. With a population of 320 million people still rich in natural resources with the strongest and best equipped military in the world and not under any immediate existential threat America has or should have no problem going it alone.

    That some of you dimwits believe you can’t is because you have been conditioned by your leaders and culture into believing you are reliant on others.. That sense of reliance is self inflicted not born out of real need and dependency. The only way America will ever hope to reverse her current economic slide is to reestablish high tariffs on all imports. That will enable a return to made in America of many if not most of the products imported today. Other countries will retaliate but so what America is big enough and still rich enough to not be overly hurt by such retaliation. It will destroy weaker economies but so what.

13. Hello, Irv.

    We have led partially parallel lives.

    I applied to join the Illinois National Guard in 1951, but my dad, who had served overseas in France in WW I, didn’t want me to join anything military until after high school. So I did just that and joined the US Army Reserves (a tank battalion of the 85th “Custer” Division) in late summer 1952, when I was 18 and had recently finished high school. I then started classes at the old Chicago Undergraduate Division of the University of Illinois at their post-WW II Navy Pier campus (“Harvard on the Rocks”, we all called it.) However, I attended only one semester, which left me wide open for being called to active duty. That happened in spring 1953. Because of my prior US Army Reserve experience, I was assigned as a cadreman in a basic training unit as Camp Atterbury, Indiana, the 31st “Dixie” Division. Late that year. Not long afterward, large numbers of us were expecting orders for transfer to USAFFE — the catch-all code word for Korea. But with the Korean War armistice in July 1953, all of us were dropped in place wherever we were, sort of like what would happen to all the Mississippi River sediments if the downstream flow were suddenly to stop. I spent the rest of my two years awaiting ETS day in a heavy artillery unit (155 mm “Long Toms”, as a clerical member of a Courts and Boards unit attached to the headquarters of our artillery group, and other sundry assignments.

    My wife and I were living in a rented Jerusalem apartment 8/6 Mevo Yoram, off Gdud HaIvri which was off Rechov haPalmach, all across a nice little park behind the Teatron Yerushalaiim. We were newly-enrolled Hebrew University students at that point in time, when the simultaneous invasions of the Egyptian armies along the Suez Canal and their Syrian counterparts against the Israeli defense positions on Har haGolan. We volunteered for service in Jerusalem, but the only immediate use they could find for us was delivering telegrams and other messages, driving around Jerusalem in our 1973 VW Bug with the headlights painted over with the same blue gunk that were required to black out visible lighting under wartime conditions.

    I had combat training in the US Army, but that’s nothing in comparison with the actual combat that I assume you experienced as an infantryman.

    We might have stayed in Israel, except that we both wanted to complete our masters’ degrees in our respective academic disciplines, and our overseas grants were only good for a single year.

    I still miss that beautiful campus; my Friday afternoon conversations with the great Dr Yisrael Eldad in his Rechavia apartment, where I learned the real story of Zionism as the battle of the Jewish nation, but whom I never could beat at chess; the quiet of Shabat all around Jerusalem, followed by Saturday nights when we could again drive downtown, enjoy a felafel sandwich with the unique hot sauce they served up; visits with my wife Stefi to the great archaeological museum on the East Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew University; plus an occasional visit to Tel Aviv, which, I must tell you, impressed us as little more than a somewhat tacky version of Los Angeles. We even enjoyed shopping days in the open-air food market in Machanei Yehuda, complete with the freshly-ground coffee that I was drinking too much of in those years. But most of the time, then and forever after, I have had it firmly implanted in my consciousness that I had been, albeit all too briefly, living amidst my own reviving Jewish nation on the home soil of our people.

    So Irv, I assume you live now in the USA. Where?

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

14. @ ArnoldHarris:
    @ ArnoldHarris:
    lxc.@ CuriousAmerican:

    Rationally you are correct but nothing or almost nothing in Israels history have followed rational logic.

    I don’t know that Israels population will increase substantially in the next ten years, 5 years or a hundred but nobody expected to see a million Russians suddenly coming here when I first came to Israel. Nobody is counting or expecting any mass Western immigration to Israel but who knows? In 1948 5% of the Jewish people were in Israel today there is almost 50%. There are over 1 million expats living outside of Israel.

    There are still a half million to a million Russian Jews or part Jews still in Russia. There are over a half million in S. America.

    There is a reservoir of potential Jews in Afghanistan (15 million) if the Americans don’t kill them first, today Muslims but who knows?

    There are some Rabbis beginning to Proselytize to the Christians with some serious successes. If the Rabbis ever come to a conclusion that they want to outreach to Christians the sky is the limit.
    TJI Mass Conversion in Guayaquil Ecuador 5771
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTgayZraqKU&feature=relmfu
    Guayaquil, Ecuador’s First Orthodox Synagogue
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtuGY17YCyk&feature=relmfu

15. @ Laura:

    The land was made vibrant and prosperous because of the Jewish presence. That creep doesn’t know what he is talking about.

    True but with more than a little help from the Boss.

16. @ ArnoldHarris:
    Arnold too bad we never met as I am also 78. I my wife Rita lived in Israel with our three small children from 1970 to 1976. I kind of agree with you on your thoughts. There are many resaons why we made Aliyah. Why we stayed for six years and why we left, and what we did after we left. I’m a US Army veteran, which I enlisted in the early 50s during the Korean War. The best part of that time is when I met and married my wife Rita. I’m also a veteran of the Israeli Army, which I enlisted in at the very beginning of the Yom Kippur War in October of 1973. When they found out I was trained as a combat infantryman back in the US Army, they accepted me almost on the spot. They gave me a unuform, boots, showed me how to take apart and use the UZI weapon I was issued. With a brief training period they then sent me with a small unit to fight in the Sinai. If I had to do it all over again I would.

17. @ James B – Montreal:
    The land was made vibrant and prosperous because of the Jewish presence. That creep doesn’t know what he is talking about.

18. @ ed4katz:
    Ed,

    The reality of the situation is that I’m a 78-year-old man who spent 18 months in Israel with my wife in 1973-1974, largely studying city and regional planning (me) and archaeology (her) under graduate fellowships. I don’t think I would do Israel much good at this very late stage of my life, and if more than a handful of people listened to me and took me seriously, I would get the same treatment from the Israeli establishment that Rav Meir Kahane got when he left Brooklyn, New York and showed up in Israel to push for his own political party. Perhaps you are not familiar with the way they banned the Kach Party, which they charged was “racist”.

    Twelve million Jews in Israel accumulated in just 10 more years? I think, and I am sure Yoram Ettinger would agree, that is a bit of a stretch. I prefer to go with conservative estimates based on known trends. The near future in any situation most typically is an extrapolation of the recent past. Our people will get there in time. Other and newer generations of Jews will live to witness the power and glory of the real Israel, even though I am not likely to be around long enough to celebrate what our Jewish nation has awaited and prayed for since the days of David haMelech, and for which the giants of Zionism worked, built, fought and died.

    But all this can take place only if Israel’s leadership stops its trend of trying to surrender the territorial rights of the Jewish nation.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

19. @ terence: History shows again and again that when the danger is greatest Israel will be left to fend for itself. Even worse the U.S. will likely again try to tie Israel’s hands as it is doing right now. The U.S. has mutual defense treaties with some two dozen nations but not with Israel.
    This should be no surprise as the Torah also states that Israel is a nation “that dwells alone”.

20. If America has a problem “going it alone”, how can Israel? We live in an interdependant world. No nation is an island. Those who suggest otherwise are either stupid or nutty or both.

21. @ ed4katz:
    I normally cede to Arnold who I believe has the clearest mind of the needs of Israel. This ttime I slightly differ. Because of the coming immigration from Europe (I know it’s coming) I can see a population of 12 million Jews by 2022.

    There aren’t that many Jews in Europe; Adolf saw to that.

    I wish the Jews would leave Europe before things get bad, and go to Israel. It would be better for everybody. Europe is getting nasty. But there are only 2 million Jews in Europe, not enough to bolt the population of Jews up to 12 Million in Israel, even with Orthodox rates of increase.

    To get to 12 million you would have to empty out about half of the Jews in America and the Western Hemisphere. Right now, it is too nice for them. That may change; but it is not foreseeable.

    The Chief problem is getting the Arabs out of Judea and Samaria. Here, you will have to pay – I know you hate paying, but it is the only way – to get them to move elsewhere. And you will have to supply them with residency cards so they can leave … for Chile, Argentina, Brazil, or France, or whereever.

22. I normally cede to Arnold who I believe has the clearest mind of the needs of Israel. This ttime I slightly differ. Because of the coming immigration from Europe (I know it’s coming) I can see a population of 12 million Jews by 2022. He is right when he states that the welfare of the Jews from this time forward depends upon the ability to make the land accessible to industry and, for that, we need territory from the Jorday west, to the Litani in the north, At least 50% of the Sanai so as to control the water ways.

    I know that it will not happen, but I would vote to elect Arnold Harris as PM if he would leave Wisconsin.

23. A good example of a sick “American Jew-with-a-German name”:

    Stephen Lendman – this vile piece of garbage writes this in his blog

    http://sjlendman.blogspot.ca/

    The Nakba catastrophe destroyed a vibrant, prosperous way of life. Besides slaughter, displacement, and destruction, soldiers, militias and civilian volunteers collected books and other culturally significant items

    I have never read such garbage in my life.

    He is what you call a PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT OBAMA SUPPORTER

    Perhaps on the excrement end but this is what American Jewish Community has given us.

    Here is Norman Finklestein on rt.com:

    http://rt.com/programs/crosstalk/norman-finkelstein-israel-us/

    Another example of the excrement on the AMERICAN Jewish left. Why must Americans be so extreme in their views? As if the world gives a damn what an American has to say? Everything you people touch you ruin.

24. Mr. Ettinger forgot one other big plus – the 1+ trillion cubic meters of offshore natural gas and the potential for tens of billions of barrels of oil from fracking shale.

25. As usual, Yoram Ettinger has the clearest possible vision of Israel’s capabilities and needs. As a trained urban and regional planner who studied, all too briefly with a one-year graduate fellowship in 1973-1974, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Geography and it’s City and Regional Planning curriculum, I see great long-term opportunities to utilize Shomron and Yehuda not just as a military defense zone up to the Lower Jordan River, but also as a place in which the now-rebuilding Jewish nation can expand the demography of the Jewish state.

    The Jewish population of Shomron and Yehuda, as an attractant area for young Jewish families, can in fact be doubled repeatedly at a rate even faster than that of Israel as a whole. Here in the USA, “urban sprawl” is a descriptive term used pejoratively in urban planning circles, justifiably so if you reside in a rural fringe of any expanding American city, as I do. But in Israel, a local variant of urban sprawl can and should be used for the rapidest of possible speed-up of the resettling of the Jewish nation on the soil of Shomron and Yehuda.

    This will mean expanded industrial, commercial and agricultural usage on the land, with expanded municipal services, transportation, and other infrastructure. For many of the Jewish inhabitants of the cities, villages and agricultural enterprises now in place, as well as for the all-but certain expanded Jewish population that will reside in and near cities and villages not yet built or even planned, there will be plenty of local and regional opportunities for employment, shopping, recreation, education, health care and all else needed by skilled and educated 21st century populations.

    The Jewish population of Israel has been doubling every 30-35 years. This demographic growth rate was partly dependent on a greatly-expanded aliyah from the former Soviet Union. But who is to say that in the future, social, political, economic and other relevant conditions in other societies will not generate more such aliyot?

    Presently there are more than 6 million Jews living, working and raising a new generation of the Jewish nation in Israel. An easily-attainable steady rate of annual population growth of 2% per year would mean that Israel could be home to 12 million or more Jews in time for the first centennial of the independent State of Israel in 2048, and 24-25 million Jews 72 years from now in 2084.

    What will sustain such populations? The answer is industrial development backed by an increasingly optimistic outlook for Israel’s fossil-based energy supply. Israel’s technology base is second to none. Israel is one of the leading attractants of capital investments. Israel has probably the most significant all-around military potential in the entire Middle East.

    So the time as come for the leadership of the State of Israel to return to the fundamental Zionist principles which drove the national build-up in the Yishuv era and the determination of steadfast giants of leadership such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir to reach out and begin retaking the ancient homeland of our Jewish nation. The land is there. The Jewish nation will be there. Now let us all see a government with strong enough determination to ignore the murmurings and even the hinted threats of those who may never be our friends no matter what course the Jewish nation takes.

    Zionism, above all, is the will to power of the united Jewish nation, and our manifest destiny can and must be control today of all Eretz-Yisrael from the Mediterranean Sea to the Lower Jordan River, the Dead Sea and the Arava Valley; and in the not-distant future, that control must extend from the Gulf of Suez to the Syrian Desert, and from the Litani River gorge in the north to control of both shorelines of the Straits of Tiran on the south. The armed and dangerous local enemies of the State of Israel can be all but counted upon to initiate the hostilities which shall provide Israel its justification to take control of these territories, to annex them, and to populate them with the Jewish nation.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

26. Ettinger gets it right!