Ron Paul Campaign Pushes Back Against Former Staffer's Report

I've commented pretty heavily on all of this already, but there's more news out today on the Ron Paul racism controversies.

National Journal reports that the Paul campaign is going ballistic over Eric Dondero's hit piece out today, "Ex-Aide: Ron Paul Foreign Policy is 'Sheer Lunacy': Eric Dondero says Paul is an anti-Israel 9/11 truther."

Dondero's report is at Right Wing News, "Statement from fmr. Ron Paul staffer on Newsletters, Anti-Semitism."

I saw it earlier at Althouse's, where she lasers in on the intensity of Dondero's descriptive language, "Ron Paul is not an anti-Semite, but he is 'most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general'." She also calls out Dondero for astonishingly bad writing, and commenter Deb provides this observation: "Dondero sounds a bit clueless too in his assessment of what is/is not anti-Semitic and homophobic." I agree. Because according to the report, Paul is vehemently, viciously anti-Israel --- and pro-Palestinian to boot. And combined with the statements Dondero says Paul made on Nazi Germany --- that the U.S. had no business fighting World War II --- there literally is no other conclusion to make. It's a devastating indictment. Pamela Geller picked up on that last bit big time, "RON PAUL: U.S. SHOULDN'T HAVE FOUGHT HITLER JUST TO SAVE JEWS FROM HOLOCAUST."

And in an epic example of trying to have your cake and eat it too, the New York Times has this, "Paul Disowns Extremists’ Views but Doesn’t Disavow the Support."

There's lots of links at Memeorandum as well.

I won't be surprised by a Herman Cain type meltdown for Ron Paul anytime now. And if it happens, credit bloggers for doing the heavy lifting.

Israeli Proposal to Commemorate Armenian Genocide Causes Tension

At Los Angeles Times, "Tension over Israeli proposal to commemorate Armenian genocide."

Also at New York Times, "Turkey's Leader Counters French Law With Accusations of Colonial-Era Genocide."

Merry Christmas from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

From the Prime Minister of Israel:

Christmas in Bethlehem

At LAT, "Christmas Eve in Bethlehem: A hub of activity":

And at BBC, "Bethlehem Christmas: Christians celebrate Midnight Mass."

Bombs Raise Stakes in Syria

At Wall Street Journal, "Assad Regime Blames al Qaeda for Twin Blasts in Damascus, Escalating Conflict" (via Google):

Syria's government blamed al Qaeda for two suicide bomb attacks that rocked Damascus on Friday morning, opening a dangerous phase in the Syrian conflict just one day after an Arab League advance mission arrived in the country under a plan to resolve the spiraling crisis.

"Initial investigations point to al Qaeda," read headlines on Syrian television.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks. But the government's claim set off waves of speculation among activists and observers over what group could be capable of spectacular strikes on state-security offices at the heart of the capital—Syria's first reported suicide bombings in a decade.

Some security experts said al Qaeda or other insurgents could conceivably be responsible. Others joined Syrian activists in blaming the government itself for staging the attacks, a claim impossible to verify. But many pointed out that the government's claim, grounded or not, could provide cover to mount further crackdowns against the nine-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The two attacks came within minutes of each other. They killed 44 people—mostly civilians, but also security officers—and injured 166, Syrian state media reported.

State television broadcast images of smoke and bloodied debris at the scene, to sounds of sirens. Men were shown dragging a charred torso into an ambulance. The road was piled with bodies wrapped in sheets and blankets.

And see Legal Insurrection, "Will car bombings save Assad?"

Occupy Wall Street and the Jews

Walter James Casper III has to answer for his ugly endorsement of the hate. Walter James Casper III has endorsed the anti-Semitism of the Occupy movement. Add this on top of his anti-black racist sentiments and the sponsorship of hatred at his blog under "free speech" pretenses, and it's beyond clear the depths of evil this man will go to destroy decent people, Jews and racial minorities especially, because they don't toe the collectivist line.

Here's Jonathan Neumann, at Commmentary:

Defenders and supporters of Occupy Wall Street have tried to downplay the extent of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hostility, but it was more prevalent than their initial denials suggested or their belated statements of concern conceded.

To begin with, any conspiracy theory that connects a tiny portion (in this case 1 percent) of the population with exploitative banking practices is susceptible to taking on anti-Semitic undertones. This is especially the case when the list of supporters includes the American Nazi Party, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Farrakhan, white supremacist David Duke, Socialist Party USA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Hezbollah, 911Truth.org, International Bolshevik Tendency, and myriad other dubious organizations and individuals. With such comrades in arms, leaders of Occupy Wall Street ought to have been much on guard against anti-Semitic talk.

Nor was the hostility a matter of undertones only. The tone, very early on, was set in part by signs and messages that were overtly anti-Semitic. “Google: (1) Wall St. Jews, (2) Jewish Billionaires, (3) Jews & FedRsrvBank,” read one sign. Another: “Nazi Bankers Wall Street.” The man holding up a sign that read “Hitler’s Bankers,” upon being pressed by passersby to explain himself, replied “Jews control Wall Street.” He was then asked whether the Fox News Channel had asked him to hold up the sign, presumably to make Occupy Wall Street look bad, and he responded, “F— Fox News. That’s bulls—t. F—ing Jew made that up.” Another protester, upon being interrogated by a skeptical elderly passerby sporting a yarmulke, brushed him away saying, “You’re a bum, Jew.”

An Occupier who had traveled from Georgia explained his anti-Jewish animus to a reporter from the New York Post by stating that “Jews are the smartest people in the world,” that “they control the media,” and that nobody is willing to point out this simple truth because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.” Still another Occupier expostulated in a widely circulated video: “The smallest group in America controls the money, media, and all other things. The fingerprints belong to the Jewish bankers who control Wall Street. I am against Jews who rob America. They are one percent who control America. President Obama is a Jewish puppet. The entire economy is Jewish. Every federal judge [on] the East Coast is Jewish.”

Occupy Wall Street’s group page on Facebook was littered with images of the title page of Henry Ford’s notorious pamphlet, The International Jew, as well as a picture featuring the phrase Arbeit Macht Frei, lifted from the entrance gate at Auschwitz, with the accompaniment: “We don’t work for bad money.”

At Occupy Los Angeles, one sign explained, in remarkable detail: the “[The] satanic cult called the Illuminati…represents Masonic and Jewish bankers who finagled a monopoly over government credit….Thus the people who control our purse strings are conspiring against us.” (It went on to claim how this nefarious force funded the first two world wars and is planning a third.) Another sign read “Humanity vs. the Rothschlds” [sic] as a speaker further advanced this classic trope: “How many people know that the wars, in WWII, both sides, were funded by the Rothschilds? Those are the bankers. So banking and war is [sic] very intertwined.”

To highlight such talk is to invite one predictable retort: One cannot hold an entire movement responsible for the excesses of outliers. But, despite the assertions of its advocates, Occupy Wall Street was not in fact a movement. Its ranks never numbered more than a modest few hundred people in Manhattan—which made its anti-Semitic cohort statistically significant. Its lack of structure, moreover, and near inability to repudiate sentiments by its participants meant that even a fringe was no less part of the whole.

And Neumann illustrates how the widespread anti-Zionism at Occupy Wall Street showcases the ruthless anti-Jewish eliminationism of the global left's Israel extermination industry:

And what of anti-Zionism? Naturally, given the resonance of the word occupy in association with controversial Israeli policies toward the West Bank and Gaza, the protests were a word-association game waiting to happen. On a random visit to Zuccotti Park in October, three signs were observed by this writer that related to American foreign policy, two of which pertained specifically to Israel. One read: “Obama stop giving bunker buster bombs to an extremist Israeli regime. Stop being Israel’s hit-man. AIPAC will still dump you in 2012.” The second: “USA and Israel are criminal psychopathic nations, an axis of evil, mass murderers, financial predators if not stopped no one has a future! Hands off Iran.” A small table exhibiting books for purchase was dominated almost exclusively by Marxist and Communist literature. Among the offerings, the one seeming anomaly was a book on Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), an organization that seeks to isolate Israel on all fronts.

But the BDS book was no aberration; the policies and input of that organization seem to have been welcomed by Occupy Wall Street. On October 13, BDS issued a statement entitled “Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine,” expressing solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and hailing the objectives of the two as analogous. After all, “Palestinians, too, are part of the 99% around the world that suffer at the hands of the 1% whose greed and ruthless quest for hegemony have led to unspeakable suffering and endless war.” A month later, Adalah-NY, an organization that campaigns in New York for the boycott of Israel, relayed a message of support for the protests from the Palestinian Arab chapter of BDS and led a question-and-answer session at Occupy Wall Street on the ‘‘growing movement for BDS against Israel until it complies with international law.’’

Last summer mass domestic protests overtook Israel—protests that attracted hundreds of thousands rather than the scant crew down by Wall Street. When an organizer of those protests came to speak in Zuccotti Park, a member of the Occupy Wall Street outreach working group, Andy Pollack, decried the appearance of “Zionist racists.”

An anti-Israel group, If Americans Knew, sustaining the conspiratorial notion of an America-Israel corporate nexus, distributed fliers headlined “Occupy Wall Street…not Palestine!” and noted that “while people are losing jobs, homes, and hope, politicians—dominated by powerful special interests—are sending more of our tax money to Israel than to any other country on earth.”

On October 28, Zuccotti Park hosted “Kaffiyeh Day at Occupy Wall Street”—the kaffiyeh being the Arab headdress associated most famously with Yasir Arafat—and protesters waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Free Palestine” and “Long live Palestine! Occupy Wall Street.”

Nor was this sort of thing confined to New York. At Occupy Oakland, anti-Zionist commentators were fixated on the allegation that the tear gas used by the police to break up their encampment was manufactured by the same American company that makes tear gas for the Israel Defense Forces. The left-wing Jewish poet Amirah Mizrahi wrote, “i was palestine in oakland,” and Max Blumenthal, an anti-Zionist blogger, insisted that, far from being a distraction from the essential economic concerns of the Occupy protests, the Arab-Israel issue had now become more difficult to avoid, as the protesters were being confronted with the very same weapons used against Palestinian Arabs.

No, it's not confined to New York at all.

And it is in fact a movement, and the radical extremists are working to leverage Occupy into a long-term program against the establishment. President Obama and Leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed Occupy. Today's Democrat Party is infiltrated with neo-communists who wouldn't flinch at the sight of Israel going up in flames  amid a Middle East holocaust to rival the interwar years. This is the program of the radical left.

Neumann goes on with further examples, citing the organizing magizine Adbusters, which is known for its virulent anti-Semitism:

And are the two—anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism—so easily divided? To begin with, the protests were originally a response to a call issued by the virulently anti-Zionist magazine Adbusters, a publication most noted for a short 2004 article entitled, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” Speculating that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was carried out to serve the interests of Israel, the essay explored the close affinity of Jewish neoconservatives for the Jewish state and emphasized the Jewish identity of several prominent neoconservatives within and without the Bush administration. In so doing, was Adbusters being anti-Zionist or was it being anti-Semitic?

What about the protester at Occupy LA who said, “I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our federal reserve, which is not run by the federal government, I think they need to be run out of this country”? Was she being anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic? Or the Kaffiyeh Day participant at Occupy Wall Street who shouted ‘‘Occupy Yahudi!’’ and ‘‘Yahudi are kafirs!’’ (‘‘Occupy Jews!’’ and ‘‘Jews are infidels!’’) and whom the group refused to silence? Was he being anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic? Or a protester at Occupy Oakland who, reacting to a speech from a Palestinian Arab youth crying “down with Israel,” turned to his fellow attendee and commented: “F—ing Jews.” How about the aforementioned protester from Georgia at Occupy Wall Street who explained that “the reason the Arabs hate us” is because of “the Jews”? Or the founder of Occupy D.C., Kevin Zeese, who has a history of lamenting the power of the “Israel lobby” in the United States?

These do not begin to exhaust the extent or foulness of the sentiments toward Jews and Israel that emanated from the Occupy protests—sentiments so extreme as to compel even Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing magazine Tikkun, to share his ‘‘distress at the hatred toward Israel and/or toward Jews’’ on display in Oakland.

Continue reading.

Neumann explains how Jewish social justice activists became central organizers in Zuccotti Park --- and thus gave cover to those attacking the movement for its rampant anti-Semitism.

PREVIOUSLY: "Manifesto: Occupy for the Revolution."

Also, "Continuing Lies by Cowardly Hate-Blogger W. James Casper in Left's Demonic Workplace Intimidation Campaign," and "Deranged Stalker Walter James Casper III Fires Up the Criminal Hate-Blogging for the Holidays."

Ron Paul Talks About Newsletters in 1995 Video

Ron Paul can't keep walking out on interviewers when asked about racially inflammatory statements.

With videos like these, he's on record in the mid-1990s as being very knowledgeable about the content of things put out under his name. The New York Daily News has a report, "Video surfaces of Ron Paul talking about racist newsletters in 1995, far earlier than he said he knew about them."

And the New Republic has a roundup, "TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul’s Most Incendiary Newsletters."( Via Memeorandum.) And see also David Weigel, at Slate, "Ron Paul and the Coming Race War."

By this time it's pretty much all out there. The best thing for Ron Paul would be to come clean. His name is on some of these newsletters, so it sounds like a bald faced lie when he denies knowledge of them.

And see previously at Pamela's, "BOMBSHELL! RON PAUL'S RACIST NEWSLETTERS."

Ron Paul's Positions Play Well in Iowa

Too well, unfortunately.

At Wall Street Journal:

FORT MADISON, Iowa — On the debate stage, Rep. Ron Paul often finds himself isolated from his rivals for the White House. All the major Republican candidates call for limited government, but Mr. Paul's platform is unique in saying that means scaling back drug laws and opposing aggressive action to rid Iran of its nuclear capabilities.

Here in Iowa, however, Mr. Paul's mix of positions has found an audience—and it's big enough to give him, at least for now, the unlikely title of front-runner in the state.

The Texas congressman holds a lead among younger voters, some of whom cite his skepticism of U.S. military action and opposition to federal marijuana laws. Mr. Paul is also drawing a share of fiscal conservatives due to his longstanding call for smaller government. And with his call to "end the Fed," he is attracting voters who are wary of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.

"I will be a Ron Paul supporter first and then a Republican," said Frank Conrad, a 62-year-old corrections officer and cattle farmer, who has had a Ron Paul sign on his garage for four years. "He's saying the things I believe."

Few people think Mr. Paul's coalition can carry him all the way to the GOP nomination. His isolationist foreign-policy views have turned off many Republicans. Evangelical Christians, a prominent part of the party, tend to look to other candidates, partly because they believe Mr. Paul will be insufficiently protective of Israel.

But amid a highly fractured GOP field, Mr. Paul has held the lead in three of the last four publicly available polls of GOP voters in Iowa, with support ranging from 20% to 28%.

More at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "What Ron Paul Thinks of America."

What Ron Paul Thinks of America

From Dorothy Rabinowitz, at Wall Street Journal:

Ron Paul's supporters are sure of one thing: Their candidate has always been consistent—a point Dr. Paul himself has been making with increasing frequency. It's a thought that comes up with a certain inevitability now in those roundtables on the Republican field. One cable commentator genially instructed us last Friday, "You have to give Paul credit for sticking to his beliefs."

He was speaking, it's hardly necessary to say, of a man who holds some noteworthy views in a candidate for the presidency of the United States. One who is the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace. 

Hear Dr. Paul on the subject of the 9/11 terror attacks—an event, he assures his audiences, that took place only because of U.S. aggression and military actions. True, we've heard the assertions before. But rarely have we heard in any American political figure such exclusive concern for, and appreciation of, the motives of those who attacked us—and so resounding a silence about the suffering of those thousands that the perpetrators of 9/11 set out so deliberately to kill.

There is among some supporters now drawn to Dr. Paul a tendency to look away from the candidate's reflexive way of assigning the blame for evil—the evil, in particular, of terrorism—to the United States.

Continue reading.

Paul can win Iowa. He can't win the GOP nomination. See, "Why Ron Paul Can't Win."

Folks suggested earlier that the Republican establishment would turn on Paul if he came close to securing the nomination. Again, he's sounds too crackpot to me for that thought to even register, but this is a crazy year in politics, so I don't dismiss an intra-party program of merciless destruction if push comes to shove.

The racist newsletter problem is bad enough, from a credibility standpoint, at least. But Paul's foreign policy is not something he can brush off: he's campaigning on it. To give that platform serious legitimacy by elevating its advocate as the GOP standard-bearer would be a horrible omen for the future of politics on the right. And it would also tell us something about the shape of the conservative political universe that this particular candidate could come so far into the mainstream. It would be a testament to the visceral dislike with the Obama-Democrat policy agenda, but it would also signify a mainstreaming of political isolationism in American foreign affairs. That alone would be one thing, but Paul's ideological program is closely intertwined with the bubbling up of anti-Semitism from the fringes, and would combined horrifically with the left's program for the extermination of the Jewish state.

That's what bugs me most about Ron Paul and his paleoconservative brew.

See AoSHQ for a refresher.

'The Israel Lobby' Continues to Poison Leftist Politics

(Note: When I place "The Israel Lobby" in quotes like that, I'm referring to the Mearsheimer and Walt smear thesis of a Jewish interest group section that dominates U.S. policy making toward Israel. I thought I'd put this up at top so there's no misunderstanding about my meaning at the title.)

There's a ferocious backlash against Thomas Friedman's latest New York Times column, "Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir."

Instapundit has the link to Jennifer Rubin's essay hammering Friedman, and see also Power Line, "Tom Friedman Goes Mearsheimer and Walt."

And still more from Jonathan Tobin at Commentary, "Thomas Friedman and the New Anti-Semitism-Part One":

The notion that the only reason politicians support Israel is because of Jewish money is a central myth of a new form of anti-Semitism which masquerades as a defense of American foreign policy against the depredations of a venal Israel lobby. This canard not only feeds off of the traditional themes of Jew-hatred, it also requires Friedman to ignore the deep roots of American backing for Zionism in our history and culture.

Friedman goes on to embarrass himself by contrasting the reception Netanyahu received on Capitol Hill to the one he might get at a center of leftist academia such as the University of Wisconsin. There’s little doubt he would not be cheered there. But the same would be true of most American politicians or thinkers who deviated from leftist Orthodoxy. The notion that liberal campuses are more representative of opinion about Israel than Congress is laughable. It is the sort of whopper one has come to expect from the liberal chorus on the Times op-ed page and shows Netanyahu may have a better feel for what Americans think than Friedman.

And continued here: "Thomas Friedman and the New Anti-Semitism-Part Two."

Meanwhile, check yet another installment of Mondoweiss thanking God for Mearseimer and Walt, "Why did it take 6 years to talk about the Israel lobby?"

My good friend Norm tells me that these people hate, that progressive especially hate Israel, and that it's not going away. But I can't stop shaking my head at the enormous chasm I see whenever I read this stuff. Mondoweiss (and I mean Phillip Weiss) argues that "The Israel Lobby" smear has now gone mainstream and that it's "safe" for journalists like Chris Matthews to come aboard the good ship anti-Semitism. I guess that it's just that I'd not realized how exterminationist is the left-wing project. So, I shake my head partly out of my own naïvity. There's a war going on, and it's fully enjoined on the question of the defense of Israel. Game on, I say. And give no quarter to these f-kers.

Anyway, more from Elliott Abrams, "Mr. Friedman’s Diatribe Against Israel."

Roundup on Newt Gingrich and the 'Palestinians'

In the odd case that you missed it, the video's here: "Newt Gingrich on Palestinians at GOP Debate in Iowa: 'These People Are Terrorists'."

Now, see Caroline Glick, "Gingrich's Fresh Hope." It's a long post, but interestingly the biggest challenge to Gingrich is not the Arab liars backing the Hamas-dominated Palestinians, but the U.S. conservatives attacking Newt for "turning his back on a 30- year bipartisan consensus" on the (failed) two-state solution for Middle East peace.

And check Daniel Greenfield, "A Badly Invented People." This is excellent:

Palestinian identity is just so much gibberish. The official definition of that identity encompasses only those parts of the Palestine Mandate which Israel holds today.

The people who live on the parts of the Palestine Mandate that were turned into the Kingdom of Jordan in 1921 are not Palestinians. There is no call to incorporate them into a Palestinian state. The people who lived in the parts of Israel that were captured by Jordan and Egypt in 1948 weren't Palestinians, and there was no call to turn the land that today comprises the so-called "Occupied Territories" into a state. But in 1967 when Israel liberated those areas-- only then did they magically turn into Palestinians.

How is anyone supposed to take this nonsense seriously?

But RTWT.

And from Melanie Phillips, "Hey, stop this dangerous candidate! He's told the truth!":

US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich ... has recently demonstrated yet again Melanie’s First Rule of Modern Political Discourse – the more obvious the truth that you utter, the more explosive and abusive the reaction.

For Gingrich said the Palestinian Arabs were ‘an invented people’ – and the world promptly started hurling execrations at him, as if such a statement proved beyond doubt that Gingrich was indeed a dangerously extreme individual who, when it came to political positioning, was just off the graph altogether.

More at the link (with additional sources at the discussion).

And there's lots of stuff at FrontPage Magazine, for example, from David Horowitz, "Gingrich Gets It Right":

In an interview on Saturday, Newt Gingrich put some reality into the surreal discussion of the Middle East conflict and (as he put it) the delusional nature of the current “peace process.” The Palestinians are indeed an “invented people” — invented by the Nasser dictatorship and KGB by the way — and the Hitlerian lie that Israel occupies one square inch of “Arab” let alone “Palestinian” land needs to be buried for any clarity on what the conflict is about, let alone progress towards peace.

Of course there is no peace in the Middle East and there can be no peace so long as the Muslim Arabs want to kill the Jews and destroy the Jewish state. That is the explicit goal of the enemies of Israel in the terrorist entities of Gaza and the West Bank, and also of Israel’s principal enemy the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And another essay from Horowitz, "An Invented People Despite Some Doubters":

Some conservatives, most notably Elliot Abrams, have criticized Newt Gingrich’s observation that the Palestinians are an invented people by saying that even if they are — (and there is no real question but that they are) — they’ve been around long enough (50 years, or since the creation of the PLO in 1964) so that we need to deal with that fact — not. What makes anyone think this is a people even today? Last spring I spoke at Brooklyn College. My speech was attended and then obstructed by a sizeable contingent from the Brooklyn College “Palestinian Club” — at least fifty people, all ethnic Arabs claiming to be Palestinians. During my talk I referred to the Palestinian death cult, its admiration for Hitler, its determination to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth, its eagerness to kill any Jew and to blow up its own children in the process. I said it was a “sick, sick culture.” But when the members of the so-called Palestinian Club erupted at me, what they said was “Why do you want to lynch all Muslims?” (This is on video available on YouTube or on our site — under “Videos” — for anyone who wants to check. It comes in the Q&A period.) This does not sound like a nationalist movement.

But the evidence is that Palestinians are a political fiction for a movement whose organizing desire is the destruction of the Jewish state and expulsion of the Jews is far stronger than this small incident. In 1948, 80% of the so-called “Palestine Mandate” had been given to the Hashemite minority in control of Jordan. The Jews were given half of the remaining 20% and the Arabs the other half. A nationalist movement would surely have accepted the partition and then laid claim to the 80% controlled by the Hashemites in Jordan. No such thing happened. Instead the Arab states including Jordan attacked the Jewish state with the intention of destroying it.

The upshot of that war was a Jewish victory in 1949. Whereupon Egypt annexed Gaza and Jordan annexed the West Bank — all the territory that had been offered to the so-called Palestinians and rejected by them. There was not a peep out of the Arab world — or out of the so-called Palestinians — over this rejection. Why? Because a Palestinian state was never their agenda. Their agenda was and is the destruction of the Jewish state and the expulsion of the Jews from the Middle East — or failing that, their absolute subjection as a hated minority without access to state power.

See also Bruce Thornton, "Newt Challenges the Myth of Palestinian Nationalism," and Ryan Mauro, "History of ‘Palestine’ Becomes Center of GOP Debate."

BONUS: See the letters to the editor at New York Times, "A Spotlight on Gingrich and Romney."

Time for Jews to Wake Up to Renascent Bigotry and Hatred

From David Solway, at PJ Media, "Resisting the Obvious":

In much of my recent work — books and articles — I have addressed the issue of antisemitism in the contemporary world. That the beast is once again slouching, not only towards Bethlehem as in the Yeats poem, but towards Oslo, Paris, London, Stockholm, Malmo, Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Washington, Toronto, Sydney, Caracas, Brussels, Amsterdam, and many other cities and regions around the globe, should come as no surprise. From biblical times to the present moment, in their own homeland or “scattered among the peoples,” Jews have never been safe. This is precisely what distinguishes the Jewish people from the rest of humanity, the specific nature of their “chosenness.” Wherever they may find themselves they are always at risk, whether actively or potentially, targeted for slander, exclusion, or extinction.

In developing this argument in such books as The Big Lie (2007) and Hear, O Israel! (2009), I have been condemned by a number of my critics, who accuse me of exaggeration, self-pity, or a sort of obsolescence, as if my gaze were fixed on the past at the expense of a more amenable or complex present. The fact that many of these detractors are themselves Jewish is only to be expected, for Jews have a long history of wilfully ignoring the signs and rejecting the self-evident. It is not only the JINOs (Jews in Name Only), the “non-Jewish Jews” flagged by Isaac Deutscher, or the apikorsim (“wicked sons” of Jewish public life) enamored of their enemies who are blind to the historical fatwa against them. It is also those whom I refer to as the “good Jews” and whom author and Sun Media columnist Ezra Levant calls the “official Jews” — that is, a significant number of Jewish communicants, as well as their secular counterparts — who refuse to read the writing on the wall even when it is in their own language, inscribed in block letters, and blazoned on every street corner.

These Jewish critics — I have in mind people like Richard Just, editor of The New Republic, éminence grise Clifford Orwin of the Hoover Institution, and Canadian poet Harold Heft, among others who share their inveterate myopia — assailed my analysis as, variously, hyper-inflated, unfair to Islam, scare-mongering, one-dimensional, and so on, as if I refused to align my perspective with the mores of the enlightened and democratic West.

But the enlightened and democratic West is no longer what it very intermittently was — or rather, it is certainly not what it presents itself as being. The legacy media, academia, the political class, and an alarming proportion of the public have made common cause with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign of the growing Islamic hegemony in the realms of ideology and practice. This is especially true of Europe whose Jewish population is increasingly under threat. As French philosopher Guy Milliere observes in his new manuscript Dissident: Why Europe Is Dead and What It Means for America and the World (not yet published), “Almost everywhere in Europe, it is now dangerous for a practicing Jew to wear a yarmulke,” a development that he regards as a visible and repellant symptom “of a wider and more disquieting decay.” There is no doubt, he continues, “that there is something rotten in today’s Europe.”

God, that sounds awful, and worse because it's so objectively true.

But continue reading here.

Strong Support for Israel is Litmus Test for Conservatives

See David Bernstein, at Volokh, "Israel as a Litmus Test for Conservatives."

It's an interesting discussion of how support for Israel is becoming generally more widespread on the right side of the political spectrum. Bernstein also addresses Ron Paul's Israel problem. See: "Ron Paul Tells Newsmax: I Support Israel." And Jonathan Tobin, "No Need for the RJC to Invite Paul to Forum":

People like Ron Paul have taken the valuable libertarian creed of opposition to intrusive government and support for individual freedom and twisted it into a belief system that doesn’t view U.S. security abroad or the life of a besieged democratic Jewish state as something Americans should care about. Far from respecting Israel’s sovereignty, Paul is willing to watch with complacence as its very existence is called into question without the U.S. feeling obligated to lift a finger. His “respect” for Israel is little different from the sentiments voiced by an earlier generation of isolationists — the “America First” group — whose admiration of Nazi Germany and indifference to the fate of the Jews restrained the country’s initial response to both Hitler and the Holocaust.

And that is why I wrote two posts hammering Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. We went around on Twitter for a while and he was unable to defend his opposition to Israel. Faced with the fact that "Palestinians" repeatedly call for Israel's destruction, Mataconis was relegated to calling me names like "nutjob" and "Pamela Geller loon."

See: "Newt Gingrich Attacked By Weasels," and "Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?"

Newt Gingrich on Palestinians at GOP Debate in Iowa: 'These People Are Terrorists'

Here's the video:

Somebody oughta have the courage to tell the truth: These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools...

Previously: "Newt Gingrich Attacked By Weasels," and "Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?"

Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?

Newt Gingrich is absolutely correct. The "Palestians" are Arabs who lived on territory of the former Ottoman Empire, an area technically known as the Southern Levant. And the word "Palestinian" is derived from the "Philistines," the people who occupied the area during the Roman Empire.

And now this? At New York Times, "Damage Control From Gingrich on Palestinians."

You know, Gingrich isn't my man, but the backlash is completely typical of the Israel annihilation industry. See Wall Street Journal, "Gingrich’s Palestinian Comments Draw Flak":

According to the AP, Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said that Mr. Gingrich had “lost touch with reality” and that his comments were “a cheap way to win (the) pro-Israel vote.”

A pair of Mr. Romney’s surrogates said Mr. Gingrich’s comments were evidence that the former House speaker is a loose cannon who struggles to stay on message.

“I’m not sure that statement gets us any closer to accomplishing an agenda,” former Ambassador Mary Kramer, a Romney supporter, said Friday on a conference call with reporters. “That’s one of the things that makes me a little nervous about Speaker Gingrich.”

Mr. Romney has adopted a choreographed approach to campaigning. “Gov. Romney is much more disciplined in his approach and much more thoughtful about the things he says,” said Renee Schulte, an Iowa State Representative and one of the Romney campaign’s Iowa co-chairs. “This comment is just another example of the difference between the two.”

The Romney people are extremely annoying. And I'm with Pamela on this whole affair:

Finally, the biggest lie of the late twentieth century has been called just that, a lie. And while I have many issues with New Gingrich (Bachmann or Santorum would be infinitely better), Gingrich must be heralded for speaking the truth about Yaser Arafat's enduring annihilationist narrative, the "Palestinian".

And of course, I'm not with Doug Mataconis, who's a leading paleocon member of the Israel annihilation industry: "Newt Gingrich Calls Palestinians an “Invented People”."

There is no "two-state solution" to the Middle East "crisis," because the so-called "Palestinians" don't want one. See Melanie Phillips:

For peace to be achieved, the belligerent has to stop making war. The Arabs have made war on the Jews in their ancient homeland since Israel became a state and indeed for three decades before that. For a solution to be arrived at, it’s necessary correctly to state the problem. The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.

You got that, Doug?

More at Memeorandum.

Growing Campus Anti-Semitism

From the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

At the clip, that's Lydia Mazuryk at UCLA, the lead organizer of Bruin Republicans. Lydia's close friends with Barbara Efraim, my former student at Long Beach City College. They published a letter to the Daily Bruin last month, "Letter to the editor: Horowitz ad wrongfully attacked."

Fifth Circuit Upholds Convictions of Hamas Front Group Holy Land Foundation

At the Investigative Project on Terrorism, "Fifth Circuit Appeals Court Upholds HLF Convictions." And at Commentary, "Court Decision Reaffirms Convictions of Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. Branch":

The Dallas Morning News reports the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld the 2009 convictions of five persons who helped the Holy Land Foundation raise money in this country for the Hamas terrorist group. Andrew McCarthy gives a good summary of the decision at National Review. But, as he demonstrates, the significance of this case goes beyond the question of how Islamists sought to use American Muslims as a cash cow for Hamas. The details of the case, reiterated by the unanimous opinion of the three-member panel of federal judges, provide a history not just of American jihadists but their connections with the Muslim Brotherhood; yes, the same group that just won the Egyptian parliamentary elections.

Continue reading.

Israel Pulls Ads Aimed at Expatriots

At Jerusalem Post, "PM cancels government campaign to entice expats home," and Telegraph UK, "Israel government scores own goal with US Jewish organisations."

Also at New York Times, "After American Jewish Outcry, Israel Ends Ad Campaign Aimed at Expatriates":

JERUSALEM — One video advertisement shows a Jewish elderly couple distraught that their Israeli granddaughter in the United States thinks Hanukkah is Christmas. Another shows a clueless American boyfriend who does not get why his Israeli expatriate girlfriend is saddened on Israel’s memorial day. A third shows a toddler calling “Daddy! Daddy!” to his napping Israeli expatriate father, who finally awakens when the child switches to Hebrew: “Abba!”

For many American Jews, the Israeli government-sponsored ads, intended to cajole Israelis living in the United States to come home, smacked of arrogance, ignorance and cultural disrespect of America. Jewish groups in the United States expressed outrage, saying they were causing a rift with American Jews who support Israel. On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aborted the campaign.

The ads — short videos and billboard posters — were intended to touch the sensibilities of Israeli expatriates and tap into their national identity, according to the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, which oversaw the campaign.

But critics said the ads implied that moving to America led to assimilation and an erosion of Jewish consciousness. The Jewish Federations of North America called them insulting. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called the videos “heavy-handed, and even demeaning.”

Continue reading.

More on the John Mearsheimer Anti-Semitism Controversy

One of the better, more concise discussions I've read on this, at Counterpoint, "From the Editors: On the Controversy of John Mearsheimer" (via Instapundit).

And from Pejman Yousefzadeh, "It Is Time for John Mearsheimer to Go."

I wrote on this here: "The Tragedy of John Mearsheimer."

The Anti-Israel President

From the Horowitz Freedom Center: