The Professors and The Terrorists

4:53 AM - I woke up with a gestalt experience. Now let's see if I can do it justice in writing.

Ever since I saw Walt & Mearsheimer on CSPAN yesterday, I've been mentally pacing back and forth, getting nowhere, going round and round with myself, trying to figure out what motivates their palpably venemous complaints about Jews. Jews in America or Jews in Israel, it doesn't matter; the professors cannot seem to bear either.

I was thinking of what I might ask General Yaalon at the next "Face the Bloggers" conference call this afternoon, when it occurred to me that I might just tell him that Israel looks the fool, and see what he says. Then I got it. Israel lost the war with Hezbollah, Israel looks the fool, and our enemies are emboldened by it.

It's one thing to read about one's enemies becoming emboldened, it's another thing to experience them on nationwide television.

I made an ugly comparison yesterday, writing that I find Walt & Measheimer every bit as frightening as Hamas terrorists who thirst for Jewish blood. The former aims to slit our collective political throat; the other - being more fundamentalist - would literally slit our throat. It's the same animus, variations on the theme of being disgusted by seeing Jews with power. It's such a very old story.

7. The children of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and increased and became very very strong, and the land became filled with them.

8. A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph.

9. He said to his people, "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are.

10. Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and depart from the land."

11. So they appointed over them tax collectors to afflict them with their burdens, and they built store cities for Pharaoh, namely Pithom and Raamses.

12. But as much as they would afflict them, so did they multiply and so did they gain strength, and they were disgusted because of the children of Israel.

So here they are, the professors and the terrorists, our new pharaoh, with their visceral negative responses to empowered Jews --(AIPAC, the state of Israel, or individual Jews, it seems to matter not). And what happens? Israel loses a war for the first time. Unable, for whatever reasons, to crush Hezbollah, to defeat the enemy, we couldn't even stop the rocket attacks; on the last day before the ceasefire was imposed, Hezbollah launched the most rockets ever in one day: 250. We were unable to get our soldiers back. And we failed miserably in the PR war as well. Worst worst worst of all, we have some kind of Chelmnik at the helm.

So into this breach leap the professors. With Israel's weaknesses exposed, its population in turmoil, its government on thin ice, what better time to cast aspersions, to castigate, to criticize, to ridicule?

I have no doubt that had Israel allowed the IDF to decide the war (instead of the UN), if we had brought our soldiers home and left Hassan Nasrallah begging for mercy, then Walt & Mearsheimer would have STFU. As it is, however, they smelled our blood and it prompted them to attack. again.

Their slightly more sophisticated veneer notwithstanding, the professors enjoy our misfortunes and seek to exploit them no less than Hamas or Hezbollah. Disgusted by Jews with power, and knowing full well that we cannot afford weakness, that it could lead to our destruction, they seek to further weaken us. (When a transcript becomes available, I'll give you the exact quote.)

Before leaving for an interview with al-Jazeera, Mearsheimer accepted a button proclaiming

Walt & Mearsheimer Rock

Fight the Israel Lobby

"I like it," he said, beaming.

These people admit to "fighting" us; they are our enemies. They "beam" at the thought of it. They are emboldened.

They are dangerous.

Am Yisrael had better wake up and wise up. The longer we look the fool, the more they seize upon our perceived weakness, the greater the danger.

Comments

[Irene Solnik]

The PR fight is the one that will either destroy us, or give us victory. Wake up Israel and Jewish interests. Hire PR people, people who write ads to sell products, linquistic psychologists. I am afraid time is running out for us.

[S Silverstein]

You write: "...I find Walt & Measheimer every bit as frightening as Hamas terrorists who thirst for Jewish blood." Agreed. They are inciters. At http://informaticsmd.blogspot.com/2006/07/walt-mearsheimer-and-current-middle.html I wrote: One can only wonder just how much the Walt/Mearsheimer paper “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” contributed to the current attacks on Israel that led to the outbreak of violence in the Middle East, as well as the recent deadly attacks on the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle's women and the attack on a synagogue in Sydney, Australia. We can only surmise the glee of Middle Eastern and local terrorist groups towards the paper. I believe it can rightly be said that the defective and horribly biased paper was, through agitation of the Arabs against the Jews, partly responsible. That being the case, Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, ideological mentors to terrorists, could rightly be viewed as accessories to murder.

[S Silverstein]

By the way, as in the 1930's, nobody is really taking this academic incitement seriously. Robert Belfer, who paid for Walt's Endowed Chair, for example, is parking his head in the sand, doing nothing. Why isn't Belfer speaking out with a lot more fury after funding this trash? While he didn't expect this, he still *IS* the donor who paid for it.

[S Silverstein]

Also by the way, where did Belfer earn his millions? Here: http://www.apfn.org/enron/belfer.htm