RUTHFULLY YOURS

In an attempt to consolidate power after last week’s coup attempt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched a massive purge of Turkish institutions. As Noah Daponte-Smith notes, among those fired or detained are 1,577 university deans and professors, along with tens of thousands of teachers. In conjunction, the government has “issued a blanket travel ban on all academics.” The purges are a signal that Erdogan is finished dealing with the irksome byproducts of a free academy.

Academics have been critical of Erdogan throughout his autocratic reign, with some sympathetic to Pennsylvania-based opposition leader Fethullah Gulen. Now, however, not only has the Turkish state built a rejection of academic freedom into its regime, but Turkish universities must also cheerlead for that regime. The Turkish academy is going to be nothing more than a megaphone for Erdogan as the suppression of dissenting scholars reverberates throughout its institutions.

Or, put another way, the actual situation in Turkey is therefore a lot like the imaginary situation in Israel, as imagined by academic associations that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). These institutions claim that, first, Israel’s state activities violate international law, and second, that Israel’s academy as a collective is complicit in the perpetuation of these state activities. The president of the American Studies Association said about their Israel boycott that it “is the best way to protect and expand academic freedom and access to education,” adding that “as an association of scholars and educators, the ASA has an ethical responsibility to act.” Turkey’s actions since the aborted coup have been grotesque and illegal. The government has destroyed the freedom of individual scholars and lower-level educators. So should we expect the ASA — and the handful of academic associations like it that have also declared boycotts of Israel — to exercise its “ethical responsibility to act” in the case of Turkey?

When President Obama entered office, he dreamed that his hope-and-change messaging and his references to his familial Islamic roots would win over the Muslim world. The soon-to-be Nobel Peace Prize laureate would make the U.S. liked in the Middle East. Then, terrorism would decrease.

But, as with his approach to racial relations, Obama’s remedies proved worse than the original illness.

Obama gave his first presidential interview to Al Arabiya, noting that he has Muslims in his family. He implicitly blamed America’s strained relations with many Middle Eastern countries on his supposedly insensitive predecessor, George W. Bush.

The new message of the Obama administration was that the Islamic world was understandably hostile because of what America had done rather than what it represented.

Accordingly, all mention of radical Islam, and even the word “terrorism,” was airbrushed from the new administration’s vocabulary. Words to describe terrorism or the fight against it were replaced by embarrassing euphemisms like “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disaster,” and “workplace violence.”

In apology tours and mythological speeches, Obama exaggerated Islamic history as often as he critiqued America. He backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He pushed America away from Israel, appeased Iran, and tried to piggyback on the Arab Spring by bombing Libya. He even lectured Christians on their past pathologies dating back to the Crusades.

Yet Obama’s outreach was still interpreted by Islamists as guilt and weakness to be exploited rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated. Terrorist attacks increased. Obama blamed them on a lack of gun control or generic “violent extremism.”

Careerist toadies in government parroted the party-line message and even tried to outdo their politically correct boss.

We know what is going to follow the latest terrorist murder in Nice. Shrines to the dead will instantly spring up. Conclaves of citizens will gather at sorrowful demonstrations filled with ecumenical clichés. The media will profile selected victims, wringing every ounce of pathos out of their tragedy. Twitter will be inundated with sentimental bromides and ephemeral hashtags, and politicians will give solemn and empty speeches laced with even emptier threats.

Welcome to terror in a therapeutic age.

What we will not read are passionate demands from most citizens of Western governments that mind-concentrating force be unleashed on those responsible for the latest slaughter of the innocents. Nor will we hear stirring speeches from our political leaders that forcefully make the moral case for war against the murderers and their enablers.

Obsessing over feelings and emotions is what many moderns reflexively substitute for meaningful action. Righteous anger and burning revenge of the sort that fired up Americans after the Pearl Harbor attacks are too “mean” and “hurtful,” and require a serious commitment and exorbitant risk. Displaying emotion is cheap and gratifying and offends no one. Indeed, such displays demonstrate the purveyors’ superior “we are the world” sensibilities and sensitivity. It is “conspicuous compassion,” as Alan Bloom called it, as much a status symbol as Veblen’s conspicuous consumption. It’s how people show themselves to be civilized and advanced, too sophisticated for retrograde emotions like avenging anger. That’s so Old Testament.

In the therapeutic world, conflict is to be resolved by peace, love, and understanding. Or as our Attorney General said after the Orlando jihadist massacre, “Our common humanity transcends our differences, and our most effective response to terror is compassion, it’s unity and it’s love.” Thus the institutional instruments for resolving our differences with the jihadists are diplomatic engagement, foreign aid, economic development, negotiated agreements, and careful nurturing of our enemies’ self-esteem. We must flatter them, stroke their egos, attend to their grievances, censor any unpleasant facts about their religion. Pretend, as Obama does, that Islam, the “religion of peace” and has absolutely nothing to do with Muslim terrorism, or what he prefers to call “violent extremists.” Assert, like Hillary, “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

The problem is, we live in a world of people with radically different ideas about the goods they should pursue, and who don’t give a damn about “peace, love, understanding,” or the opinions of Western infidels about their religion. Whatever their potential is for possessing and recognizing a “common humanity,” in practice this possibility remains mostly unexpressed in their traditional religious tenets. Rather, Muslim jihadists––and hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslims–– limit their compassion, sympathy, and respect for humanity to fellow Muslims, and deny them to the infidel or heretic. That’s why zakat, the personal obligation for Muslims to make charitable contributions, for the most part restricts that charity to other Muslims.

One day perhaps not far off, there will be another war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist proxy in Lebanon. One might assume that any future clash will be similar to past ones –– Israel struck by disruptive and occasionally lethal rocket attacks, and intense, but limited, hostilities over days or weeks, leading to a new, uneasy ceasefire. But this is unlikely. The next Lebanon war might well be like none that preceded it.

The reason is that Hezbollah, in the decade since the last Lebanon war, has amassed an astonishing arsenal of 130,000 rockets, missiles and mortars, largely provided by Iran, aimed at virtually every square inch of Israel.

As Willy Stern in the Weekly Standard reminds us, “This is a bigger arsenal than all NATO countries (except the United States) combined.” And it is the hands of a movement whose veteran leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has spoken of Israel as a “cancerous tumor” to be eliminated and of Jews to be globally murdered, saying, “if they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

Worse, these are not the katyushas rockets or mortars of old, which terrify and disrupt, but kill and maim only in small numbers, mainly in Israel’s border areas.

Hizbollah’s arsenal includes over 700 long-range Fateh-10 and Scud-D missiles, sophisticated munitions which carry heavy payloads and can hit any part of Israel, killing hundreds or even thousands. Add to that new Russian anti-tank and anti-ship missiles, and future Israeli operations against Hezbollah will be scarcely a cakewalk.

With its enormous number of missiles, Hezbollah could rain down huge barrages that overwhelm Israeli anti-missile defenses, with some 10% of their missiles penetrating the Iron Dome defenses. Thus, Israeli casualties could be in the thousands and senior Israeli military figures have said as much. Israel Defense Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Major-General Yair Golan has estimated that central Israel, untouched in previous clashes, will be hit hard. “Dozens” of missiles, in his view, could hit Tel Aviv.

Where terrorists have no scruple about using whatever weapons they can obtain against an enemy nations’ civilians en masse, it is clear that it is only a matter of time until that country acts. The truth is that Israel will be obliged to do so before long, whether by its own pre-emptive initiative or in response to a devastating attack.

Israel has been constrained by a desire to avoid military clashes that harm its international reputation, so it has been reluctant to act in the past. Just recall the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel waited rather than shoulder the blame for initiating fighting, causing Israeli casualties to be in the thousands.

Israel has normally awaited a serious escalation –– a border attack with numerous casualties, for example –– before responding.

The so called two state (dis)solution belongs in the dust bin of failed policies. Trying to revive it as the EU and the quartet do is like putting a cadaver in rigor mortis on a respirator…..rsk
PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s failure to accept the recent Quartet Report has effectively emasculated the role of the Quartet and humiliated the United Nations and European Union in their efforts to resolve the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict.

The Quartet website points out:

“Established in 2002, the Quartet consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. Its mandate is to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution building. It meets regularly at the level of the Quartet Principals (United Nations Secretary General, United States Secretary of State, Foreign Minister of Russia, and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) and at the Special Envoy level as well.”

Given the Quartet’s crucial role, Abbas should have accepted the Report with equanimity and pledged his readiness to stamp out reprehensible conduct identified in the Report:

‘Palestinians who commit terrorist attacks are often glorified publicly as “heroic martyrs.” Many widely circulated images depict individuals committing terrorist acts with slogans encouraging violence. The spreading of incitement to violence on social media has gained momentum since October 2015, and is particularly affecting the youth.’

As Chairman of Fatah – the dominant faction in the PLO – Abbas would not have enjoyed reading the Quartet’s following condemnation of his failed leadership:

‘Some members of Fatah have publicly supported attacks and their perpetrators, as well as encouraged violent confrontation. In the midst of this recent wave of violence, a senior Fatah official referred to perpetrators as “heroes and a crown on the head of every Palestinian.” Fatah social media has shown attackers superimposed next to Palestinian leaders following terrorist attacks’

Abbas was subjected to the following further criticism:

“Regrettably, however, Palestinian leaders have not consistently and clearly condemned specific terrorist attacks. And streets, squares and schools have been named after Palestinians who have committed acts of terrorism.”

Abbas’s pathetic response was to claim that the Report:

“does not further the cause for peace…We hope that the Security Council does not support this report”