SMARTERTIMES.COM WEST
Re: George Neumayr’s Gunning
for Bill Simon:
Excellent article on the Chron’s biased approach regarding the
Governor’s race.
Regards,
— Jim Sparkmen, editor
ChronWatch.com
WHOSE BLINDNESS?
Re: John Corry’s A
Conservative Blind Spot:
I was a bit surprised at the content of John Corry’s article
today. Some points are taken as well founded, but there were many
that lacked credibility. Most glaringly is the assertion that the
IDF’s military responses to the Palestinian attacks have not
worked. Whether or not Palestinian resolve has increased, as
asserted, the results are drastically different. As I recall,
without providing hard numbers (as I would like to do, but don’t
have the time) there has not been anywhere near the number of
suicide attacks since the defensive began. Prior to the IDF
response, attacks occurred almost daily. Now, it’s been days since
any attacks.
Key Palestinian killers have been captured and killed. The
obvious response to this would be that new ones would rise in their
place. We should let time tell that. In the meantime, capture and
kill is the appropriate method to disrupt the Palestinian terrorist
infrastructure. The offensive has resulted in the capture of PLO
munitions and the destruction of at least one bomb making facility
where 30 bomb belts were found, ready to go. Ten suicide bombers
have been intercepted by the IDF.
In short, a military solution works. Barak offered Arafat 97% of
the “occupied territories” in Fall, 2000, and he refused. That was
the ultimate political solution, and the Palestinian response was
the current Intifada, which Israel finally responded to in the West
Bank.
Finally, when the world is “right” and in agreement, we should
be wary. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights is hardly respectable
— isn’t Syria a member?
Cordially,
— Nathan Moore
John Corry quotes Haaretz as saying that “Everyone knows
that if not for the settlements, it would have long since been
possible to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.” While adding
that he’s “not sure about the “everyone knows” part of that,” he
seems to agree. I’m surprised to hear Corry say this. If the events
of the last few months have done nothing else, I thought for sure
they had laid bare for all to see the essential truth about the
Palestinians’ position — this is not a dispute about a few acres
of land on the West Bank. This is a war against the existence of
Israel, as it has been since 1948. Since 1967 the Arabs have done a
masterful job at clouding the issue, and making many in the West
believe that the real dispute is over the “Occupied Territories,”
but of course, if that is really the only issue, what was the
source of Arab hostility prior to 1967?
You can’t negotiate over your own right to existence. The fact
is that there has never been any possibility of a true “agreement
with the Palestinians,” other than one which the Palestinians would
view as a temporary expedient on the road to their ultimate goal of
the extinction of Israel. Corry looks at the current situation and
concludes that only a political solution can end the fighting. I
would say that only a thorough military defeat that cures the
Palestinians of their belief that they can eliminate Israel will
ever create the conditions for that political solution. As with
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, they must be defeated militarily
before there can be any hope of the Palestinians accepting “a world
that is not the way you may wish it to be, but the way it actually
is,” i.e., a world that contains a permanent Israel.
— Steven Bleiberg
I literally gasped when I found John Corry advising his readers to
refrain from holding the “liberalism” of the Israeli daily
Ha’aretz against it, and citing its Op-Ed content as a
reliable reference whose credibility, he would have the reader
suppose, is buttressed by the fact that Arab terror bombs went off
outside its offices.
Great Scot! I am a fluent speaker, reader and writer of Hebrew.
I was a subscriber, for a while, of Ha’aretz (native
Hebrew version!) during the years I lived in Tel Aviv and elsewhere
in Israel.
To characterize Ha’aretz as “liberal” is, shall we say,
a stunning, breathtaking, heart-stopping, blood-curdling
understatement. “Flaming, off-the-charts, psychopath- delusional”
is more like it. Mr. Corry might as well refer his readers to the
Village Voice, or perhaps Pravda. The bias, the
awful Leftist world-view built in to everything the paper prints
would make even Brent Bozell gasp, and make Peter Jennings feel
this small.
It could be that, like Mr. Arafat, Ha’aretz speaks in
one voice to its vehemently left-wing Israeli audience, in Hebrew,
and in another to its international, English-speaking audience. I
wouldn’t know — I don’t read the English edition.
If so, Mr. Corry (a man I have recognized for years as a
solid,
perceptive conservative) has, simply, been had.
— Paul Kotik
Plantation, FL
So the way the world is, per John Corry, that absent the Israeli
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a political solution
to the war in the Middle East could be reached. Even in light of
the following:
1. 90% of the land which comprised the original Palestinian
Mandate is what is now Jordan, which slaughtered thousands of
Palestinians.
2. In 1948, 1956, and 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza were
parts of Jordan and Egypt, respectively, Israel was attacked by
Arab armies, defeated them, and occupies these territories to
buffer themselves from Arab hate.
3. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups
have, in there very charters, the destruction of Israel as their
ultimate purpose; as does the PLO and Arafat. Not the return of the
occupied territories, but the death of every Jew.
4. During the Gulf War, in which Israel was not involved, Iraq
lobbed Scud missiles into Israeli neighborhoods, killing innocent
civilians of a nation not participating in the conflict.
5. Arafat was offered 95% of the land he wanted for the
establishment of a Palestinian state in the Camp David talks in
2000, and refused.
In light of the above, and the facts that Arafat has broken
every single accord, treaty, cease-fire, and agreement he has ever
signed with terror and murder, that every day, media in Saudi
Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and other Islamic nations spew the
vilest blasphemy about Israel and the Jews, call them pigs and
monkeys, that Arab children are paraded about with mock grenades
and explosive belts, and effete, “morally superior” Europe is
wracked with anti-Semitic violence — despite all that, Corry would
have Israel withdraw, stop the very same defense it has mounted
against this hatred as has the U.S., and sit at a table with those
who despise them and wish them dead. No, Mr. Corry, there comes a
time when the real world is one where Israel must defeat its sworn
enemies, not one where, after still another “peace process,” they
are asked by diplomats to suffer more Palestinian violence in
silence.
Respectfully,
— Bob Cavalli
Richmond, VA
John Corry quotes Haaretz as asking, “What is the
terrorist infrastructure when anyone can become a suicide bomber?”
and states that such a question is “sensible”? Surely Mr. Corry
doesn’t think that Palestinians, with an average income of less
than $1,700 in the year 2000 (when the Palestinian Authority
launched its ongoing “intifada”), simply walk out of their houses
and blow themselves up, unaided. Estimates on the cost of these
bombs range from $150 to $2,000 to make, and that’s not factoring
in the training and indoctrination courses that many of the bombers
are led through by the terrorist leaders in the weeks leading up to
the bombing.
If there is no clearly defined, terrorist infrastructure in
Palestinian controlled areas, Mr. Corry, why have the suicide
bombings (the “successful” ones, anyway) come to a complete halt
since Israel moved into the West Bank?
Sadly, Mr. Corry includes Israel and conservative American
pundits in his blame for the recent shocking displays of the
“return” (ha!) of European anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately for Mr. Corry’s contention, these people, just as
they displayed in the 1930s, have the exact same worldview as they
have had for centuries, and they are the only ones to blame for
their typically pathetic actions and words. Luckily, for truly
oppressed people across the world, Israel has a friend in American
conservatives just as Britain was lucky to have a friend in
American conservatives the last time Europe dissolved into an
anti-Semitic wasteland. Hopefully the U.S. won’t be needed to save
the world again this time around, but, of course, it likely will
be. At least this time we have a wonderful friend in Israel that
will be their with us… even as “enlightened” Europe cowers in the
background.
— Mike Dunlap
New York, NY
John Corry’s 4/23 rejection of anything but a political solution to
Israel’s problems makes two critical mistakes:
(1) His dismissal of settlements as a mistake ignores the
relative inability of any Israeli government to stop free Jews from
making homes anywhere they can defend (particularly in Judea, their
traditional homeland).
(2) Corry says military methods do not stop suicide bombers.
Does he think C-3 or C-4 grows on trees? How many untrained
teenagers will be crushed under tank treads before the undertaking
loses allure?
There has seldom been peace in human history without the
stimulus of the sword.
— Bill Heuisler
Tucson, AZ
There are only military solutions when an enemy wants to destroy
you. Peace comes after you have thoroughly defeated them. Israel
should, as should the U.S., ignore the moral and intellectually
repugnant U.N. and Western European elites and destroy the Islamic
fascists around the world. That will safeguard the U.S. and
defeating the corrupt Islamic regimes will offer the only hope for
a peaceful Middle East.
— Michael Brody
If law and order had been imposed on Palestine, it would be a
prosperous part of Israel, living in peace with her neighbors. As
long as you have lawlessness and disorder, you have a fertile
ground for the hatred and bizarre definitions of peace that result
in Arafat getting a peace prize!
Wise up. Simplistic, left-wing pacifist solutions sound good,
but they just don’t work.
— Lamar Johnson
Beaverton, OR
NEW VOICES
Re: George Neumayr’s Savage
Times:
While Dick Riordan’s views are perhaps not distinguishable from
those of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, he
still has what it takes to create an interesting alternative to the
dominant daily: bags of money and a willingness to bring in writers
and editors like Matt Welch, Ken Layne, and Tim Blair. Those voices
will define the paper, and they have been consistently sharp in
criticizing the Times at mattwelch.com, kenlayne.com, and laexaminer.com. Neumayr should check
them out.
— Gregory S. Taylor
Northwestern University School of Law,
Chicago, IL
g-taylor@law.northwestern.edu
THE ART OF DIPLOMACY
Re: Lawrence Henry’s The
Bush-Powell Conundrum:
Thank you. It’s reassuring to learn I’m not the only one that
considers the post of Sec. of State to be something more than that
of a shouting bully.
— Charles Conrardy
SPRINGS IN HER STEP
Re: The Prowler’s Cuomo’s
Crackup:
Oh, I so looooove to see Liberals crack up!!!
— Ruth Lindemann
Colorado Springs, CO
