Going After Israel? Why I Think this is a Bad Idea

I see this article this morning:

US going to reverse its policy toward Israel in the UN.

This sounds bad to me, primarily because of the people who are going after Israel: The Muslims, Carter, and now Obama and Hillary. Red flags are waving.

Obama, especially, and Hillary are Alinsky's intellectual descendants. One of their principles is to isolate their enemy, i.e., whoever they want to dominate. How they and all the knowledgeable Left does this is through language. They draw attention to some thing or activity by calling it something which ordinary people would not like. I think this may be happening in this case.

The word settlement – “Jewish settlements” – is used to refer to the homes that people are building in a particular part of Jerusalem. The word “settlement” suggest that it may be an extension into land that is somehow not theirs. I’m questioning this. I think this land has been purchased and is owned by those who bought it. Wherever land is purchased, be it here or in Mexico or Iran, e.g., it is governed by the laws of how property is treated in those places. In other words, there is no problem settling on purchased land unless a country is trying to extend its boundary. E.g., if Mexicans purchased land in Arizona next to Mexico and then they automatically made the boundary between Mexico and the US bend into the US along the northern boundary of their property, this would be an invasion of the sovereign territory of the US.

My point is that the Left would love the word “settlement” here and hate the word “property” because if they can get you to think “settlement,” then they can have you associating immoral action with those who are building and buying in that particular area. This is how the Alinsky principle works. It changes the terminology so that you don’t like the people who are accused of a particular action which then isolates them from the rest of society. And this is how evil must always work because it must mask itself as the good in order to gain something that it did not earn – i.e., via production and then trade.

And in our current cultural state, the terminology is so confused that people are no longer able to even think in terms that support life. We are rapidly reverting to a primitive state where no one is really safe from his neighbor. The great value of civilization is that it objectively identifies the facts of reality and institutes particular concepts which forward a man’s ability to live in society. The US system of rights and law is the apotheosis of this idea. A man can live in Nigeria and invest in America because he is protected by American laws that honor his objectively defined property as his. He cannot do the same thing in areas of Nigeria because this system doesn’t exist. There, he is limited to creating with family and friends – people he trusts – because the system is not available to protect and stand for his rights – his right to his life and his right to own property and use it as he wishes so long as he doesn’t violate another man’s equal right. In the absence of individual rights, a group of people that one trusts have survival value.

Nowadays, people wonder why they should stand for Israel. I say their religion and their right to practice it is not a sufficient answer. Israel is the only state in the Middle East where man has freedom and that is why its existence is important. Although there is tension between Muslim and Jew in the state of Israel, I understand that Muslims there are clear what is available for them in Israel that isn’t available in Gaza or Jordan or Syria and increasingly, Lebanon.

If we are to live in society and have a possibility, then the rule of objective law must be the law of the land. And, that law has to be grounded on individual rights which, when boiled down means that you have a right to your life and all the property you own. You then are free to do all the things that humans do when living (such as producing, speaking, convening, contracting and trading) grounded on the fact of private property. That the government must protect private property is the essential principle and one’s private property is one’s body and all the things that he legally owns. In other words, he owns all the stuff in his possession which is not stolen or illegally gotten from someone else. (When I say “illegally gotten,” I’m thinking of fraud. One commits fraud when he pretends he offers a value but the buyer is unable to value it as the seller represented it to provide. Think Madoff.)

One of the confusing elements regarding Israel is that it is tribal, based on its religion. The Israeli state is set up on the idea of living in a society ultimately grounded in Jewish law and which largely honors individuals to be free. America, on the other hand, is a melting pot. No tribe dominates America. We are all considered individuals first. Whatever you want to belong to is fine, it is that you are ultimately responsible as an individual human being.

Tribes often get into fights with other tribes for domination. Tribal mentalities are threatened by the existence of a Jewish state because it happens that the Jews value their minds and use them well to produce value and be strong in the world. It is the strength of Jews that they fear. A non-tribal mentality, on the other hand, doesn’t fear this because they see the creativity and production of the Jew as a resource that they can gain via trading with them. The tribal mentality and the Holocaust has made the Jew very wary of people too. Those that identify primarily as Jew are inclined to combat their threats by gathering together into a tighter ball which makes them even more identifiable. This then gives their enemies more reason to aim directly at their dreaded enemy. And so it goes.

The disgusting thing about the US and its representatives who speak about Israel – O, Hill, and Carter – is that they do not stand for individual rights. They do not distinguish the principle which could untie this Gordian knot – namely, all sides have got to lay down their recourse to the tribe and fight for people as the individual’s right to exist. And what is so hideous about our spokesmen is that they fight FOR collectivism. This is especially true of Obama who believes in collective redemption – an ideology so heinous that anyone with an ounce of sense would reject it. (If you want to read about this, look up black liberation theology, the theology of Reverend Wright and Obama. Also there are public video clips of Obama advocating this idea.)

I would like to hear a conversation by somebody offering a “civilized” solution to the Mideast problem.