David Gelernter: The Roots of European Appeasement

Obviously the analogy between Poland and Israel is rough. Poland was submerged for 123 years, Israel for nearly two millennia. But the similarities are obvious, too. Lots of Arabs moved to Israel during the years when no Jewish state existed. Lots of Germans moved to Poland. But Poles and Jews maintained an unbroken presence in their homelands. The idea that a Pole returning to Poland is a "colonist" is idiotic; a Jew returning to Israel is no "colonist" either. Nor does the fact of a large Polish diaspora in America make Poland's existence any less necessary. Nor does the Jewish diaspora make Israel less necessary.

Poland's 1919 borders (finally fixed in '21) incorporated a large German minority, many of whom stayed on. Her 1945 borders incorporated even more Germans, most of whom fled or were driven out; the historian Henry Ashby Turner reports a staggering "exodus of between ten and twelve million German refugees from these eastern regions." German refugees from Poland might have been the same kind of festering problem as Palestinian refugees from Israel. They aren't, because Germany took them in--after all, they were Germans. It is tragic whenever a settler of long standing has to pull up roots and move elsewhere. This is a tragedy that Jews, hounded from country to country for 2,000 years, know better than anyone else. It is a tragedy no Jew has ever made light of. But when such refugees can find a new homeland where the language, religion, and worldview are all familiar, it is a manageable tragedy. Jews have known worse.

Many thousands of Jews were driven out of European and Arab countries. Many came to Israel. By way of comparison, Arab refugees who left or fled Israel in 1948 (as Israel struggled to fend off invaders who had jumped her on every side) numbered something over half a million, according to Martin Gilbert in his "Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict." By an interesting coincidence, roughly the same number of Jewish refugees fled from Arab countries (where "most of their communities dated from Roman times," Gilbert notes) to Israel. So things are all even on refugees. Except that they aren't. Because another half million or so refugees came to Israel in the postwar years from the devastated Jewish communities of Europe--more than 150,000 from Poland, over 200,000 from Romania.

Israel might have kept them all in filthy camps, taught them to pine bitterly for their lost homes and eventually sent forth their teenagers to murder Poles and Germans, Iraqis and Egyptians at random, in order to establish themselves as romantic heroes in the minds of self-hating appeasers the world over. But they were Jews, and Israel took them in. For any fair-minded student of history, there is only one conclusion: The Mideast refugee story is first and foremost a story of Jewish refugees. (And yet sometimes, listening to NPR or ABC, you don't get quite that impression.)

Europe should be (you would think) very glad it all worked out this way--that Israel (like Germany) welcomed its countrymen home instead of (like the Arab countries) sending them back where they came from to blow up buses, schools, and supermarkets. Or does Europe feel, in its worshipful admiration of Palestinian refugees, that Jewish refugees should emulate them? Should Israelis whose families lived in Cologne or Cracow for a thousand years go home to murder German and Polish schoolchildren? The next time Europe feels inclined to blast Israel on account of the Palestinians, it might think this over, and cast its mind back to the 1920s, and shut up.

1:39:13 PM  comment []    

Seattle PI: Filming up women's skirts is ruled legal

On Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled that filming up women's skirts, though "disgusting and reprehensible," isn't actually against the law.

Tittilation. Outrage. Grandstanding. New law. Next "problem".  

12:45:14 PM  comment []    

Longhand

I've come to the rather unpleasant realization that I do my best writing in longhand, on a yellow legal pad.

I don't know that I write better in longhand, but I know I take notes better that way. I've increased my productivity a great deal over the years by using logbooks. My favorite are Boorum & Pease 21-300-R, which are hardbound, narrow-ruled, and have pre-numbered pages. They're god-awfully expensive ($48). I go through about two per year year, but it's well worth it. I get them at Keysan, and use their stock number ESS21300R.

And while I'm on my quirks, I use (nearly exclusively) Uniball Gel Impact pens. Blue. They're the next best thing to a fountain pen -- they dump ink on the page, which encourages me to keep the pen moving!

I've done a pretty good job of training myself to write everything in there. How did I partition the hard drive on my new Linux box? It's there. What fields did we decide to put into that database? Also there.

Sometimes the simple fact of writing down a question I have or the problems I've run into will cause an answer to pop out. After all...

"A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved."
Charles Kettering

11:31:16 AM  comment []    

Fuck The Onion. I have removed my link to an article on The Onion in compliance with their (non-)linking policy. [dive into mark]

I love Mark, but he's not much of a compromiser. As for me, I'm going to continue to link to the Onion against their will, just to piss them off.  

11:21:40 AM  comment []    

USS Clueless: Arab Traditionalism

To that end, we will in part work in Iraq to create a cosmopolitan society because it will be impossible for all the people in neighboring nations to ignore. America will arrive, it will fight a war and win, and then the people in Iraq will be much better off. And all the nations around there where the Traditionalists still rule will face rising internal dissent. Instead of it being heathen half way around the world, they will see other Arabs succeeding right next door.

There are certain political changes which will be necessary which will have to be accomplished by strong coercion. Saudi Arabia's ruling elite will have to be forced to stop subsidizing militant Wahhabism and stop paying for Madrassas' around the world, and otherwise providing the hundreds of millions of dollars yearly that are financing much of the mischief and violence.

All the nations there will be forced to stop using thought police; there will be no tolerance for any "Committee for the promotion of virtue and suppression of vice". Vice is our greatest weapon, and we're going to have to work to maintain free access by the Arabs to it. (I'm speaking half facetiously there; I mean things that we consider normal that the Traditionalists think are vice, like Barbie dolls, and dating who you want, and fashionable clothing.)

9:47:56 AM  comment []    

The American Epiphany

if it is possible [to win a war with Iraq] you will be creating more hate, more orphans to become the next generation of terrorists

Oh, c'mon. That tired old cycle of violence argument? That must explain the generation-spanning waves of Russian, German, Japanese terrorist attacks we've been plagued with lately. There's so many of them we barely notice the Confederate, Mexican, and Native American suicide bombers anymore.

via Andrew Olmsted

9:43:02 AM  comment []