David Horowitz: Fellow Travelers
At the outset of Iran’s proxy war to obliterate the state of Israel, the editors of the Nation – the oldest and most influential magazine of the American Left – published a lead feature condemning Israel as a terrorist state and blaming the war itself on Israel’s “oppressive occupation” of Arab lands. Written by a Palestinian Arab, Marwan Bishara, the article – “Israel On The Offensive” – claimed that Israel had “exploited” the kidnapping of its soldiers as a pretext for an aggressive war against Hamas and the “besieged” territories. “The nature of the Israeli offensive is to punish, overwhelm and deter with disproportionate force, regardless of the suffering…” To end this violence, according to this writer and his editors, Israel should cease its aggression and pursue negotiations with the forces that want to wipe it from the face of the earth.
Assuming that negotiations would lead to a prisoner exchange, freeing Israel’s kidnapped soldiers, what exactly would this mean? Israel’s kidnapped soldiers were behind internationally recognized borders protecting their own citizens from external attack. These citizens include more than a million Israeli Arabs who enjoy more rights as Israelis than the Arabs of Syria or Gaza, or any other Arab nation.
To secure the return of its soldiers, the Nation is suggesting Israel should release 1,500 Arab terrorists with blood already on their hands and murder in their hearts. Past exchanges have shown that released Hamas and PLO prisoners will quickly rejoin their terrorist armies and spill more Israeli blood. This is not a “prisoner exchange” – it is a proposal to replenish an army of religious fanatics sworn to genocide.
And of course it is Israel – not Syria, not Iran, not radical Islam that is responsible for the terrorists, but the Jews: “Whether we like it or not, Hamas, like Hezbollah, is mostly a by-product of an oppressive occupation.”
Although the Nation is not so bold as to openly call for the obliteration of Israel,or the killing of Jews, it has made itself the mouthpiece for the Islamic Nazis who do. Apologetics for fanatical Islamicists -- for genocidal terrorists -- has become the Nation’s raison d'etre. If there are culprits in the wars on terror they are America and Israel. Every argument the Nation advances is a slightly modified and more civilized version of the terrorists’ argument for themselves. The Nation is a fellow-traveler of the new Nazism, just as surely as it was a fellow-traveler of the old Stalinism. It cannot go all the way in supporting the Muslim jihad, but it will use all its political capital and literary skills to make the jihad seem as admirable as possible and its victims as deserving of their fates.
According to the Nation (and, be it said, much of the American left) it is Israel’s “occupation” that is the original sin in the Middle East conflict -- which not coincidentally is exactly the argument the fellow-traveling left also uses to attack America’s war against the terrorists in Iraq. It is America's “occupation” that needs to be ended, not the terrorists' foothold. It is American imperialism that has created the Iraqi “resistance,” whose terrorists, as it happens, are also orchestrated and armed by the Nazi parties, Syria and Iran.
In point of fact -- and as everyone knows -- there is no Israeli occupation of Lebanon or Gaza that might have precipitated this war. Quite the contrary. It is the lack of an Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Gaza – of a controlling authority to enforce the peace -- that has precipitated the present war. Israel’s withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza have created the vacuum the terrorits have filled. These withdrawals, on the other hand, were successful in one sense, and one sense alone: Theywere designed to disarm the arguments of the terrorists and their apologists, who have now unmasked their own propaganda as a cynical sham. But the Nation goes on repeating it all the same.
There is no occupation of Lebanon for Hizbollah to protest. There is no occupation of Gaza for Hamas to protest. The occupation that inspires the terror is the Jews occupation of the state of Israel. This is what Hizbollah and Hamas cannot abide.
The Nation’s current apologetics for the terrorist bloc continue a nearly 100-year tradition of its editors support for the totalitarian enemies of America and the West. For nearly 100 years, the editors of the Nation explained and justified every Communist tyrant from Stalin to Castro; when terrorists slaughtered the innocent on 9/11, the Nation's editors decried American jingoism and America’s “empire;” they opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and they continue to attack the liberation of Iraq as an imperialist “occupation” and democratic America as a “terrorist state.”
But even in the context of this sordid record, the Nation’s present support for the agents of the second Holocaust marks for it a new moral low. Its role in this war, as in the war in Iraq, is too transparent to be defended. Its editors may not openly embrace the goal of eliminating the Jewish presence in the Middle East, and possibly can’t even admit to themselves that this is the radicals’ goal. But the Nation editors are nonetheless dedicated to justifying the jihadists who are pursuing this goal, and for that they cannot be forgiven
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Assuming that negotiations would lead to a prisoner exchange, freeing Israel’s kidnapped soldiers, what exactly would this mean? Israel’s kidnapped soldiers were behind internationally recognized borders protecting their own citizens from external attack. These citizens include more than a million Israeli Arabs who enjoy more rights as Israelis than the Arabs of Syria or Gaza, or any other Arab nation.
To secure the return of its soldiers, the Nation is suggesting Israel should release 1,500 Arab terrorists with blood already on their hands and murder in their hearts. Past exchanges have shown that released Hamas and PLO prisoners will quickly rejoin their terrorist armies and spill more Israeli blood. This is not a “prisoner exchange” – it is a proposal to replenish an army of religious fanatics sworn to genocide.
And of course it is Israel – not Syria, not Iran, not radical Islam that is responsible for the terrorists, but the Jews: “Whether we like it or not, Hamas, like Hezbollah, is mostly a by-product of an oppressive occupation.”
Although the Nation is not so bold as to openly call for the obliteration of Israel,or the killing of Jews, it has made itself the mouthpiece for the Islamic Nazis who do. Apologetics for fanatical Islamicists -- for genocidal terrorists -- has become the Nation’s raison d'etre. If there are culprits in the wars on terror they are America and Israel. Every argument the Nation advances is a slightly modified and more civilized version of the terrorists’ argument for themselves. The Nation is a fellow-traveler of the new Nazism, just as surely as it was a fellow-traveler of the old Stalinism. It cannot go all the way in supporting the Muslim jihad, but it will use all its political capital and literary skills to make the jihad seem as admirable as possible and its victims as deserving of their fates.
According to the Nation (and, be it said, much of the American left) it is Israel’s “occupation” that is the original sin in the Middle East conflict -- which not coincidentally is exactly the argument the fellow-traveling left also uses to attack America’s war against the terrorists in Iraq. It is America's “occupation” that needs to be ended, not the terrorists' foothold. It is American imperialism that has created the Iraqi “resistance,” whose terrorists, as it happens, are also orchestrated and armed by the Nazi parties, Syria and Iran.
In point of fact -- and as everyone knows -- there is no Israeli occupation of Lebanon or Gaza that might have precipitated this war. Quite the contrary. It is the lack of an Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Gaza – of a controlling authority to enforce the peace -- that has precipitated the present war. Israel’s withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza have created the vacuum the terrorits have filled. These withdrawals, on the other hand, were successful in one sense, and one sense alone: Theywere designed to disarm the arguments of the terrorists and their apologists, who have now unmasked their own propaganda as a cynical sham. But the Nation goes on repeating it all the same.
There is no occupation of Lebanon for Hizbollah to protest. There is no occupation of Gaza for Hamas to protest. The occupation that inspires the terror is the Jews occupation of the state of Israel. This is what Hizbollah and Hamas cannot abide.
The Nation’s current apologetics for the terrorist bloc continue a nearly 100-year tradition of its editors support for the totalitarian enemies of America and the West. For nearly 100 years, the editors of the Nation explained and justified every Communist tyrant from Stalin to Castro; when terrorists slaughtered the innocent on 9/11, the Nation's editors decried American jingoism and America’s “empire;” they opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and they continue to attack the liberation of Iraq as an imperialist “occupation” and democratic America as a “terrorist state.”
But even in the context of this sordid record, the Nation’s present support for the agents of the second Holocaust marks for it a new moral low. Its role in this war, as in the war in Iraq, is too transparent to be defended. Its editors may not openly embrace the goal of eliminating the Jewish presence in the Middle East, and possibly can’t even admit to themselves that this is the radicals’ goal. But the Nation editors are nonetheless dedicated to justifying the jihadists who are pursuing this goal, and for that they cannot be forgiven