July 16 should probably be called boredom day and made a
holiday whereupon people will stay home and just be bored. So now you want to
know why I am making this suggestion. Okay, I'll tell you why, but you'll have
to do some work on your own which, I promise, will entertain you enormously or
perhaps bore you to death. In any case, the outcome will depend entirely on
your temperament.
The work you will have to do is to read three articles that
were published on that day. Two articles came in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ),
one being: “Israel Has Launched Long-Shot Attacks Before” and having the
subtitle: “Iran should take heed: In 1967, a pre-emptive strike on Egypt seemed
impossible too.” It was written by Daniel Nisman. The other WSJ article came
under the title: “The Boring Palestinians” and the subtitle: “If this were a TV
drama, it would be 'The X-Files' in its 46th season.” It was written by Bret
Stephens. As to the third article, it came in National Review Online under the
title: “Obama's Authoritarians” and the subtitle: “Mouthing Sixties-style
anti-Western slogans is the way to win the president's heart.” It was written
by Victor Davis Hanson.
The Stephens article will tell you about the “Boring”
Palestinians while the Hanson article will tell you about “the free expression
that Palestinians are denied … so taken for granted as to be boring.” As you
can see, these two gentlemen may be bored by themselves, having to exchange
notes all the time, and hearing each other badmouth the Palestinians nonstop.
They will most certainly bore you as well, but only a little because they
manage to turn up a comical trick once in a while. But the article that will
really bore you is the one written by Daniel Nisman because, like a perpetual
motion machine that mimics a frustrated eunuch forever massaging his phantom
erection, he will cause your tears of boredom to flow like a river.
So let's begin with this guy Nisman whose task this time is
to bore the world yet again with the fictitious notion that Israel is facing an
existential threat from Iran, and the equally fictitious threat that Israel is
going to bomb Iran to remove the Iranian threat. It is like the nth rerun of an
old movie where the characters are the same: “Benjamin Netanyahu's willingness
to use military force” because there was before him Levi Eshkol who faced a
similar question in May of 1967 and used military force.
The author admits it was a “surprise attack” in which
“Eshkol sent most of Israel's air force into Egypt” presumably to ascertain
that Netanyahu will do the same thing with Iran. He will do so – if he will do
it at all – except for one thing: where will the surprise come from when the
eunuch has been massaging his fictitious manhood openly in full view of the
world?
The author of the boring article does not answer the
question but goes on to display Israel's bravado by reminding the reader of the
fact that “successive Israeli leaders have signed off on daring operations”
because they all had a “do-or-die, all-or-nothing mindset.” And he promises
that Israel will do it again, this time without an element of surprise
protecting it because “Iran's nuclear program is racing forward like an express
train.”
And the man ends the article this way: “the Obama administration
should heed this history.” Yes indeed, Mr. Obama you should heed this history.
If they want to do it, let them do it alone. If they are going to die, it will
be their wish. Don't send American boys and girls to die rescuing them if and
when it comes to that. If you do it, you will have the blood of your people on
your hand for history to curse you till the end of time.
And while Nisman is discussing an Iranian threat out of his
imagination, Bret Stephens is discussing a real situation in which Israeli
troops are occupying the Palestinian homeland, and have for several
generations. But he advises that people should pretend the occupation is not
real, and think of it as a TV drama that is unfolding; something like the
'X-Files' where the truth is out there but nobody can locate it.
To make his point, he does something that shows the world
and shows you the readers how you can stare at the truth and pretend not to see
it. To wit, anyone familiar with the way that Israeli politics is conducted at
times, knows that these people will go as far as call each other Nazi-like Jew,
and children of Nazi collaborators. But that's fine, says Stephens and others
like him, because it proves that Israel is a vibrant democracy. Okay, said the
world, if that's how you define democracy, so be it.
But now, that same Bret Stephens and others like him are
telling us otherwise. In fact, he tells of a situation that is somewhat
similar; it is one that prompted him to write the current article. He tells the
story of a Palestinian named Sufian Abu Zaida who is an unhappy camper because
he finds that Palestinian President Mahnoud Abbas has too much authority. He
did not call him a Nazi or anything like that, he only expressed on a website
the though that “the President today is the President of everything that has to
do with the Palestinian people and cause.”
But why does Stephens not see this as proof of Palestinian
democracy – vibrant or not – and wish the Palestinian people well? Why not, you
ask? I'll tell you why not. Because he is spinning this incident not to say
something good about the Palestinians; it is to say something bad about them.
Not only them Palestinians but also them Americans who are giving them
Palestinians too much attention instead of diverting their attention to them
Iranians who pose a fictitious threat to Israel. And this is how he put it:
“What else is new? It isn't going to keep John Kerry – a fool on a fool's
errand – from making his sixth visit to try to restart Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks.” Peace? Who wants peace? Peace is for sissies. Eunuchs display
their phantom manhood and that's why they are he-men.
Stephens goes on a tangent for a few more paragraphs to end
the article like this: “If Palestinians want to be interesting again, and worth
of decent respect, they could start by not playing to tin-pot type.”
And this is when your braincells light up like a Christmas
tree. It hits you that Victor Hanson – the guy that Stephens must have
communicated with before the two sat down to write articles on boredom – has
opposite ideas on the subject of tin-pot dictators. In fact, the Hanson article
sings the praises of “strongmen like Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet,
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and Anastasio Somoza.” But he also denigrates other
strongmen like “the Castro brothers, Che Guevera, the Eastern European puppet
regimes, an array of monsters in Africa, the Ortega bunch and Hugo Chavez.” So
you ask: What's going on?
What's going on is that a tin-pot dictator must be a
pro-American tin-pot who will also tolerate, or at least pretend to tolerate
Israel, to be considered a good tin-pot; otherwise he will be viewed as a bad
tin-pot. Hanson goes on to say that because the kids of long ago failed to see
things in this light, they were dishonest with themselves and: “that dishonesty
remained with us as the children of the 1960s aged and assumed the reins of
American power.” Which is why, in his view “Barack Obama – who came of age on
the fumes of the 1960s – react[s]” to events the way that he does, says Hanson.
But if Hanson communicated with Stephens before the two sat
down to write their respective articles, where is the Hanson fiction, you ask?
Here it is: “Obama's 2009 Cairo speech was pure mytho-history, inventing out of
thin air all sorts of Lala Land Islamic achievements.” Not only that, but you
have fools and toadyism in both articles. Stephens saw John Kerry as a fool,
and detected “pervasive toadyism among Palestinians. Hanson, on the other hand,
has called James Clapper a “toadyish fool.” See how the echo chamber echoes the
call to the gas chamber?
When this day will come again, it will not have been brought
by the tin-pot dictators that Stephens and Hanson hate; it will have been
brought by the tin-pot dictators they love so much for, these are the types
that are fashioned after the idol from the Third Reich.
Don't be a fool, Steve. Don't be a fool, Vic. History will
not be erased because you do not like it. And fiction will only materialize in
your imagination. If you keep this up, people will deem you to be insane and
treat you as such.