RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Cretans both by land and sea are irresistible in ambuscades, forays, tricks played on the enemy, night attacks, and all petty operations which require fraud, but they are cowardly and down-hearted in the massed face-to-face charge of an open battle. – Polybius, Histories, Book IV, Volume II of the Loeb Classical Library (1922), p. 319. Translated by W.R. Paton.

The other evening, when I came upon that specific description of the military strengths and weaknesses of the various ancient Greek states in the events leading up to the Social War of 220-217 BC, I was too strongly reminded of how Muslims act when operating in gangs. Polybius’s description of the Cretan method of fighting and not fighting is also a description of guerrilla warfare – often called rape jihad. That is what Muslim gangs wage wherever they roam – in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Sweden, in virtually every country where they reside in large numbers, including in the United States.

A settlement between the University of Illinois (UI) and former Virginia Tech University professor Steven Salaita was approved by UI’s Board of Trustees Thursday. He will receive a lump sum payment of $600,000 and $275,000 in legal costs. In return, he will not seek or accept future employment by the university.

Thus concludes a saga that began in the summer of 2014 when the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) withdrew an offered position in its American Indian Studies Program due to Salaita’s vulgar, Israel-bashing, anti-Semitic tweets. He sued the university and unnamed donors, alleging breach of contract and violation of free speech.

Over 8,000 migrants entered Serbia on November 11 on their way from the Middle East to Western Europe. The item went unreported by the major media because it was not newsworthy. Daily totals may vary, not much, as the Great Invasion of 2015 continues unabated.

Millions are on the move, with unknown further multitudes tempted to follow suit. They will do so because Europe, rich and decadent, irresistibly tempts them. In all creation disease and frailty invite predators, as witnessed in the scene of Madame Hortense’s death in Zorba the Greek. Both the loss of the will to define and defend one’s native land and culture, and the loss of the desire to procreate, send an alluring signal to the teeming kazbahs and sukhs: Come, ye all, there’s money for nothin’ and chicks for free. Come, for no Western nation has the guts to shed blood—alien or its own—to keep you out in the name of its own survival. According to the leading German daily Die Welt (October 14), “Merkel’s call of welcome echoes even in West-Africa. The German welcome-culture appeals in Mali even to those who did not want to leave until now. TV pictures of nice people with welcome presents lure migrants. German visas can be bought.”

Spengler famously heralded The Decline of the West ninety years ago, but the English title of his magnum opus did not convey the dark, tragic implications of the word Untergang, “going under.” Spengler himself did not anticipate a cataclysmic event but rather an extended decline, a twilight. (Abendland, the West, literally means the “evening land.”) It now appears that the protracted fall is over, and the stage is set for a series of quick, brutal catastrophes.

Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
THIS week the European Commission announced guidelines suggesting that Israeli products from areas that came under its control in 1967 be labeled “Israeli Settlement” products and not “Made in Israel” as they have been until now. The policy carves out a special legal rule for Israel, not only contradicting the European Union’s own official positions on these issues, but also going against rulings of European national courts, and violating basic tenets of the World Trade Organization.

Faced with criticism from both the right and the left in Israel and the United States, the European Union claims its action is merely “technical,” rather than politically motivated or punitive. Yet this is belied by the fact that the measure comes in response to explicitly political demands for labeling by some member states’ foreign ministers, as well as anti-Israel NGOs.

In fact, the labeling controversy must be viewed as just one step in a broader, purposeful and gradual escalation of anti-Israel measures by the European Union. Two years ago, the commission promulgated a regulation that barred spending money on Israeli academic, scientific or cultural projects in the West Bank or Golan Heights. Then the union began refusing to allow imports of certain Israeli agricultural products. Last year, 15 European states issued warnings, alerting people to unspecified legal dangers of interacting with Israeli settlements. These steps, while supposedly motivated by what the European Union sees as Israel’s occupation of territory, have been applied only to Israel, and not to other countries regarded as occupiers in international law, such as Morocco or Turkey.

Just when you thought you’d heard it all from professional peace promoter Martin Indyk, he goes and one-ups himself. The ability to do so when the policies he has espoused over the decades have consistently backfired is an accomplishment in and of itself. And it explains why he was appointed twice to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel and also filled the role of assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs.

Indyk, author of “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East,” has always held the position that an accord is possible between Israel and the Palestinians — if the “two sides” would only trust one another. This, of course, is why he was a perfect fit for Secretary of State John Kerry, under whom he was dispatched to Israel as an envoy to broker a deal.

Well, that didn’t work out so well, and he quit after nine months to return to his full-time job as director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He, like many peace processers, feels more at home presenting global strategies in a think tank than confronting the need for actual tanks in the real Middle East the rest of us occupy.

This is not to say that Indyk is uncomfortable in Israel. On the contrary, he loves visiting the country where he is treated like a king by the chattering classes, while enjoying a cappuccino or two from balconies overlooking the Mediterranean.

I have a proposal: Let’s turn the whole damn campus into a “space of healing.”

Such “spaces,” we learn in Rich’s excellent column on the Mizzou mau-mauing (to be read in conjunction with similarly insightful columns by Kevin and our friend Roger Kimball on last week’s Yale mau-mauing), are what university administrators failed to “create” so the coddled children could grieve over … well … everything.

As always, there are pretexts aplenty – purported racial insults (you’ll have to forgive me – or not, who cares? – if I won’t believe these incidents happened as described until that is convincingly proved) and, of course, the killing of a teenager who was attacking a police officer right after knocking off a convenience store. Speaking of Michael Brown, Columbia Law school students who claimed to be too “traumatized” by the Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer he attacked were permitted to postpone their exams – evidently, a classroom with a test placed on the desks is no longer a “safe space” on the American campus.

Can we please stop pretending that this is anything other than what it is? As an institution taken over by the hard Left, “higher education” simply wants to confiscate more of our money and obliterate any remaining vestiges of meritocracy. The agitators know that if they agitate enough, no matter how trifling the pretext, they will get concessions.

So let’s stop paying for it.