Tag: Terrorism

Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism

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The false distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism has utterly collapsed in the aftermath of the October 7 atrocities. Good.

Over the past five months of war in Gaza, there has been an outpouring of protest in favor of the Palestinian cause and against the nation of Israel from radical leftist quarters across the West. The virulent demonstrations, often involving slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” have proliferated in cities and on campuses. They have sometimes become violent and destructive, targeting visible Jews and Jewish institutions. But of course, if you listen to the pro-Palestinian faction, these protests-cum-riots are merely against Israeli policies and politicians. They only want to make Israel stop its genocidal war against the innocent civilians of Gaza, who have done nothing wrong. They insist that they are simply anti-Zionist, not antisemitic, and that there are anti-Zionist Jews among their ranks. This is the mask they wear to court mainstream respectability. But the mask is slipping, and what it reveals is a deep hatred not just for Israel, but for the Jewish people writ large.

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No to ‘Palestine’

Mike CotéLeave a comment

The recognition of a Palestinian state anytime soon would only reward terrorists.

There have been a whole mess of no good, very bad, absolutely awful ideas vis a vis the Israel-Hamas conflict tossed around the media and the internet since October 7 of last year. We’ve had serious arguments that Israel was responsible for the deaths of Jewish civilians on that horrific day, that the whole attack was a false flag meant to gin up antagonism towards Palestinians, that the well-documented atrocities against civilians – including mass rape – did not occur, and that there were no hostages taken into Gaza. On top of these egregious contentions, there has been widespread blame ascribed to Israel for purported war crimes, including destruction of civilian property (used, of course, as Hamas military camouflage), disruption of food and other necessities (basic screening of humanitarian aid that has historically been used to smuggle weapons to Hamas), ethnic cleansing (relocation of civilians outside of combat zones), and even genocide. The last allegation was leveled by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, making it all the more official-sounding, despite its complete fabrication. But these are complete bupkis compared to the new proposals coming out of major Western nations.

Over the past few days, both the British and American governments – ostensibly Israel’s allies – have floated trial balloons for the recognition of a Palestinian state in the immediate aftermath of the current Hamas-Israel war. David Cameron, former British Prime Minister and current Foreign Secretary (somehow a man who is bad at both jobs), has asserted that the UK may just decide to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations, so as to make the statehood process “irreversible.” He argues that “most important of all, is to give the Palestinian people a political horizon so that they can see that there is going to be irreversible progress to a two-state solution and crucially the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This would include recognizing Palestine as a state before negotiations commence, rather than doing so as a part of a final negotiated settlement.

The Biden administration has put the idea of near-term Palestinian statehood in the ether as well, hoping for it as a part of a broader Saudi-Israel normalization deal. The Palestinian issue was not part of any prior Israeli-Saudi negotiations, but the Biden team has forced the issue after the attacks of October 7. According to a senior White House official, “some inside the Biden administration believe that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state should be the first step in talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of the last,” dovetailing with the view embraced by Cameron. Of course, this information was promoted in the press by the White House’s chief useful idiot, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. The so-called “Biden doctrine” for the Middle East is replete with pie-in-the-sky idealism – famously something that works so well in the region – and assumptions about Palestinian and Iranian behavior that fly in the face of reality.

But we’re going to focus for now on the push for Palestinian statehood as part of the cliché “two-state solution,” which was, is, and should remain a dead letter. Here’s why.

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War Is Hell

Mike Coté2 Comments

Far too many observers of the Israeli retaliation against Hamas see war as a theoretical construct, not a battlefield reality.

The famed Union Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman is widely credited with popularizing the phrase “war is hell.” And he would certainly know, seeing action at some of the war’s bloodiest battles and captaining the controversial March to the Sea, where Union soldiers would run roughshod over Confederate lands from Atlanta to Savannah. That march, replete with the utter devastation of civilian infrastructure, farmland, and property, helped break the back of the Confederacy and has remained a textbook example of total war. The term ‘total war’ itself was a product of World War I, which saw entire societies mobilized for what they all saw – and some experienced – as existential combat. The sequel, which killed even more people and included the most heinous act of genocide in the modern era, was the last of these sorts of conflicts – or so many thought.

After the end of the Cold War – which was itself something of a totalizing rivalry – the mood in the West was triumphant, not just over Soviet Communism, but over History itself. Gone were the days of existential conflict, replaced by a world of progress where genuine alternatives to the liberal democratic capitalist world order were nowhere to be found. These naïve optimists were, however, flat out wrong. Alternatives to the American order have reared their ugly heads: from the CCP’s brand of techno-totalitarianism, to Vladimir Putin’s throwback imperialism, to the militant antisemitic Islamism of Tehran and Hamas, oppositional ideologies abound. And those ideologies are more than happy to engage in totalizing, existential conflict. We have seen that in Ukraine for the past 600-plus days, and we are seeing it in Israel now.

Make no mistake, the Hamas terror of October 7, combined with its genocidal ideology and the support of regional powers like Iran, poses an existential risk to the Jewish state. If Hamas is not utterly annihilated, Israel will face a future of constant attack from all fronts meant to eradicate the nation itself – and massacre its population in the process. Hamas and Iran have made this into a total war; Israel has recognized that reality and is responding in kind. And that’s where we run into problems.

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Reverse Causality

Mike Coté1 Comment

When it comes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, media warps cause and effect through misrepresentation and decontextualization.

Anti-Israel bias is rife in the media and international organizations like the United Nations; this has been the case since the founding of the Jewish State in 1948. This truth was humorously depicted by the Israeli statesman Abba Eban, who said “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” This prejudice is especially prevalent with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where media and anti-Israel actors paint Israel as the aggressor when it is far more often the respondent. The false presentation of the conflict is not only in the realm of history, but current events as well. Through decontextualization, differential treatment, and outright prejudice, a false picture of this thorny issue is painted. This has been clearly displayed in the past week, as violence – blamed on Israel, but stoked by Palestinians – has flared during the Ramadan and Passover holidays.

To put these recent tensions into their proper context – which the media is loath to do – Israel has been dealing with a wave of terror attacks over the past year, including stabbings, car attacks, and rocket assaults from Hamas in Gaza. This has boiled over in the past few days, sparked by an incident that has been blatantly mischaracterized by most coverage. On Wednesday April 5, Israeli police entered the Temple Mount compound – the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam – to disperse an illicit gathering and remove fireworks and other stockpiled non-traditional weaponry from the al Aqsa Mosque. This was described by almost all media coverage as a violent Israeli “raid” that was unprovoked and brutally targeted peaceful worshippers. This could not be further from the truth, and ignores critical context that puts the Israeli reaction into perspective.

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When the Cat’s Away

Mike Coté2 Comments

The China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia has shuffled the deck in the Middle East, cutting the US out of the pot.

Over the weekend, in a surprising development to most Middle East watchers, China brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore some bilateral ties between the Islamic powers after seven years without them. The agreement was a very basic one, with the two countries agreeing in principle to exchange ambassadors within two months, reactivating a security cooperation agreement, and restoring some economic and cultural exchanges. This is the first formal rapprochement between the Islamic Republic and the Kingdom since 2016, when the Saudis executed a prominent Shia cleric, sparking violent protests at its embassy in Tehran and precipitating the break in relations. Since that split, the underlying conflict between the two states on either side of the Persian Gulf has rapidly escalated, with Iran taking the aggressive lead. Its proxies in Yemen, the Houthis, have attacked Riyadh directly, while Iran itself has launched cruise missiles at Saudi energy infrastructure, crippling a major refinery for weeks back in 2019.

Given this recent history, the fact that any kind of deal was struck shows that key changes are occurring in Middle Eastern politics. The agreement, basic as it was, did not force Iran to cease its aid of international terrorists or non-state proxies, even those which target the Kingdom; this was a conciliatory move on behalf of the Saudis towards the Iranians. This step towards normalization of relations without addressing some of the proverbial elephants in the room – the malign regional activities of Iran, the Shia-Sunni dispute, relations with Israel – fits well within the Chinese diplomatic playbook, as does the language of the agreement. In the text, both Iran and Saudi Arabia agree to the principles of “respect for the sovereignty of states and noninterference in their internal affairs,” a classic Chinese formulation that Beijing uses to ignore human rights abuses abroad and gloss over its own at home. There are a wide variety of implications and impacts from this diplomatic coup for China, both in the Middle East region and further afield.

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