In my article 40 years now 40 years in the desert then, I explained that the sole reason the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years in the Exodus was because of defeatists and that the sole reason for the astonishing success of Israel against its combined enemies in the 6 Day war was because Israel did not have defeatists in power in 1967; but unfortunately we are in a period of history where the defeatists are in great number again, both in Israel and here in the United States.
Then, in my post War Now - War in 1967, I noted the difference between the fearful Jew of old and the fearless Israeli of 1967 and ended by concluding that Liberal Jews in America will still happily skip into gas chambers and climb into ovens, which angered some of my readers. No Jew, one reader commented, skipped happily into a gas chamber. OK, so I used a bit of hyperbole, but the truth is that, except for a few exceptions, most Jews stood silent while atrocities were committed against them.
Actually, I was not writing anything untrue or unknown to other Jews. A tip of the turban 
to Smooth Stone for alerting me to Hayyim Nachman Bialik, who wrote a poem in 1905, "Be-Ir ha-Haregah (the City of Death)" about the slaughter in the Bessarabian city of Kishinev (now part of Moldova), in which Bialik blamed the Jewish men for being too frightened to prevent the rape of their women by Cossacks.
Let's all admit it, before the existence of the modern State of Israel, Jews would for the most part suffer in craven silence all manner of indignities and violence against their person and property. However, the Jews who saw the possibility of having their own country fought unlike Jews of the centuries before. These were the Jews I met in 1967. Sadly, many of their children have grown up to be defeatists running the government of Israel today, which explains why the Israeli army fought a wimpy, excuse-me type of war in Lebanon last year.
Sadly, here in the States, many of the children of the Greatest Generation have also turned into defeatist cowards who sit in Congress today. One day we will have a president who will pull our troops out in surrender even as we begin to win the war.
The US has had defeatists before. Whiners who complained that our government was taking away all their freedoms in the name of national security. In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Quirin that unlawful combatant saboteurs could be denied habeas corpus and tried by military commission, making a distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants. The 1950 case Johnson v. Eisentrager denied access to habeas corpus for nonresident aliens captured and imprisoned abroad in a US-administered foreign court [Wiki]. We survived those curtailments of our freedoms didn't we? Between 1950 and 2000 did you hear any one complain about Johnson v. Eisentrager? You young people who call Bush a fascist because of the Patriot Act, did you ever feel less free growing up in 1980s and 1990s because nonresident aliens captured and imprisoned abroad were denied access to habeas corpus?
Most of you whining cowards have no idea what freedom means. You've never been to a country that restricts the very thing you take for granted. You do not secure your freedoms by granting those very same freedoms to enemy combatants. Lincoln knew this in 1861, The Supreme Court knew this in 1942 and in 1950 (when were not even at war). Obviously the Peace Democrats (and 80% of fearful American Jews are Peace Democrats) of this century do not know or do not care to know. More Americans die of AIDS every 60 days than have died in Iraq in the past 5 years; if Congress agonized as much over AIDS as they now do over Iraq, we would have had a cure years ago, so please, you defeatist cowards, spare me the "Oh-we've-lost-thousands-of-lives-in-Iraq" bullcrap. Like you care.
Image of fearless Jew, Judah Maccabee courtesy of Dyspeptic Mutterings.
Unrelated, but here are some blog posts I've read today:
The Amboy Times,
Top Saudi cleric calls for writers' deathsSome of the critics of the list of things that offend Muslims have claimed that a similar list could be made about Christians, Jews etc...But like this story, the Danish cartoons and Salman Rushdie, an offended Islam responds with fatwas calling for death.
Right Truth,
Obama's Nation of Islam Connections and other Sunday ReadingThe Pastorgate Scandal and the Wreckage of Obama's Campaign, from Bill Rojas via email:
How long it will take for the "God Damn America" story to "die down" is anyone's guess. The potential exists for many more "revelations" because the stock of sermons on DVD preached by Rev Wright is extensive and the news media has only reported on a very limited number.
Stageleft:. Life on the left side,
The Elections EditionVoter turn out in Iran was 65%… Spirit of Man says that people refused to participate in a "sham election” - in Alberta the turn out was around 42%, are they saying the same thing?
In Florida they held an election and nobody came
[Click on images for larger view]
For more of my articles like this see Jewish
