RUTHFULLY YOURS

Slandering American & Israeli Soldiers
November 15, 2010 by Eugene Narrett
Many cultural, moral, economic and strategic principles and events bind America uniquely close to Israel. Each is a unique nation, America being unique in the West for the degree of tolerance it has extended to Jews, a situation perhaps stemming from the strong respect for and knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures by those people who gave America its character.

Now the two nations, specifically the soldiers of these two nations share another bond: each is targeted by internationalist academic ‘peaceniks’ as being in the unifier of an army filled with imperialists and rapists.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is a premise among the world’s major media that Israel is an imperialist power: perhaps this is why the core of the “peace process” is the expulsion of Jews from Judea and the rest of the historic heartland of Israel. Ethnic cleansing of Jews for “peace” shows the hypocritical and vicious character of this process and of those professing pacifism and justice.

To bolster their position, and in a combination of denial and projection, these ‘scholars’ accuse Israeli soldiers, whose restraint in the face of Arab violence is startling and perhaps absurd, of ethnic cleansing and rape. When no evidence of rape is found, academics in Israel concoct theories that Israeli soldiers do not rape Arabs because they are “racists.”

Being thrust into such a double-bind is familiar to American conservatives whose support for Israel, for many good reasons, remains high despite the drift of major media bias.

The Jews of Israel, not least its settlers and soldiers truly are in a no-win situation. If the settlers join the army and fight alongside those commanded by regimes that vilify them, prohibit them from building homes or even expel them from their homes they are accused of trying to take over the army. If they occasionally are less eager to re-enlist or serve (as is routine among many critics of Jewish “occupation” of Judea), they are accused of being hostile to the State and sluggards. In any case, it is their ‘intransigence’ for wanting to live in their homes that is responsible for jihad ongoing now for fourteen centuries.

Similarly, if Israelis soldiers don’t rape, it’s because they are racist.

Now American soldiers have been slandered in the same way. Penelope Blake, a Professor at Rock Valley College, appearing on FOX exposed an a-historical and vicious anti-American agenda at an NEH-funded conference. America was blamed for the attack on Pearl Harbor, for World War Two in the Pacific and American soldiers were charged with being rapists. According to Professor Blake, when she confronted one of the participants after a panel he insisted that the American military was similar in its behavior to the Japanese in World War Two. Americans, especially in the military, were charged with formulating self-serving propaganda about the War presenting themselves as good guys.

Try convincing Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans or others in East Asia that American soldiers behaved like the Japanese during World War Two or afterward…

The facts, once fairly well known when history still was taught in American public schools, are that during World War Two the Japanese army had an ugly record of wholesale and violent rape and pillage. The use of scores of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of “comfort women” from countries they overran in the field or their export to Japan for similar service was well known.

There is nothing remotely like this in the history of the American armed forces. The tendency of academics and a certain political party to deride and vilify American tradition, principles and Americans shows a deeply perverse spirit, ignorance and, in some cases perhaps service to those funding the take-down of America, great bulwark against global collectivism. It is similar with Israel whose founding tenets make national sovereignty a distinctive feature of identity.

In any case, now the American people and military and Israelis, most of whom still serve in what remains a citizens’ army have yet another bond in common: not for the first, or even the hundredth time they find themselves castigated and slandered in similar ways by the same kinds of mindless, hare-filled, leftwing groups whose ignorance of history is matched by their notion that “global governance” is a path to peace. These cadres are so dazzled by “peace” that an MSNBC host recently ranted about the need for “violent revolution” against what he perceived, characteristically as an alliance of the military, corporate and “right wing” forces in America.

Imagine a conservative Tea Party adherent or activist advocating “violent revolution” on TV or radio. The pack of independent minds would be out in full cry bellowing for indictments and loss of the offender’s FCC license.

The silver lining to these kinds of slander and subversion of history is that Americans and Israelis, those who still can think, realize that they are targeted by the same kinds of haters and that, truly, they represent what is best and most hopeful in a floundering world.

Prof. Eugene Narrett is the author of five books about cultural history and Israel related issues. His latest book is Culture of Terror: The Collapse of America (May 2009). Dr. Narrett blogs at www.israelendtimes.com.