"Israel's Dilemma"

While, in my opinion, Israel’s plight against Hamas’ terrorism, along with Ukraine’s war against Russia, are the West’s most important fights – and, sadly, the West sems to be abandoning both projects (or at least not providing the tools needed to win) – conservatives in the U.S. are abandoning their fight for free speech. Brendon Carr should be fired for pushing ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel. He was losing audience and would have been fired for business reasons, but government should not have forced the issue. As I told my grandson, Kimmel, in my opinion, is an ass, but he should be allowed to bray.

 

Censorship, as conservatives wrote continuously during the Biden and Obama Presidencies, destroys democracies. To now practice it, while in power, is hypocrisy of the first order. Throughout our history, censorship has been practiced by both sides: Democrat Attorney General Mitchell Palmer in 1919 during the “Red” scare; Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. There is nothing to prevent private companies from firing employees who they feel are hurting their business with crude or offensive comments but, apart from calling “fire” in a crowded theater when there is none or urging one’s friends to assault an individual or institution, government should allow people to speak freely. Words can be offensive to some people’s sensibilities, but that is not reason to censor what they say.

 

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Enough of that. Despite warm days, summer is at an end, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere, with the arrival of the autumnal equinox this afternoon. With celebrations for Rosh Hashanah and the start of the Jewish New Year beginning this evening, it seems timely to consider Israel’s dilemma.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Israel’s Dilemma”

September 22, 2025

 

“The reality here is that public opinion is shifting

very quickly and very dramatically away from Israel.”

                                                                                                                Howard Wolfson, Democratic strategist

                                                                                                                As quoted in The Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                September 13-14, 2025

 

In Hamlet, (Act 1, Scene 4) Marcellus, after seeing the ghost of the murdered king, says: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” In my opinion, something is rotten among Western nations – theoretically enlightened individuals and governments – in their attitude toward Israel, a country, a democracy, that is trying to survive almost continuous threats from state-sponsored terrorists and authoritarian governments. It is now involved in, as Lauren Smith wrote last week in The European Conservative, “...a war between the West and barbarism. It is a battle of truly civilizational proportions.”

 

This condemnation and abandonment by most Western democracies and the United Nations represents, in my opinion, the world’s biggest threat to Western liberal ideals and precepts. Israel stands accused of genocide in Gaza and then starving those they did not kill. That is wrong. Israel has done more to warn the citizens of Gaza of impending attacks than any other country in time of war. Unlike other nations involved in war they have helped their enemies’ civilian populations by attempting to bring in food and aid.

 

Israel – a Country of less than 10 million that sits amidst almost 500 million Middle Easterners – is engaged in an existential war, battling for its very existence. In perfect double-speak, the UN recently condemned the October 7 (2023) massacre: “We condemn the attacks committed by Hamas against civilians on the 7^th of October.” But then the document went on: “We also condemn the attacks by Israel against civilians in Gaza and civilian infrastructure, siege and starvation, which have resulted in a devastating humanitarian catastrophe and protection crisis.” 

 

“Any man’s death diminishes me,” wrote John Donne in 1624. The death of innocent civilians during war is a tragedy. It would be nice if war played out on assigned fields, with the only victims being combatants. However, that is not the way wars are fought. During three months in 1940 over 23,000 Londoners were killed in the Battle of Britain. A like number of Germans were killed in the February 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden. And more than 200,000 Japanese were killed in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It is estimated that total civilian deaths in World War II were over 50 million, almost two-thirds of the total. It is estimated that Korea saw about two million civilian deaths and Vietnam around 600,000. In both cases, civilian deaths exceeded military deaths. Unlike past more conventional wars, Hamas is using schools, temples and apartments to hide combatants, terrorists, weapons and hostages. And unlike the Allies (or the Axis) in World War II, or the combatants in Korea and Vietnam, Israel warns civilians of their intent. Too many in the West – political leaders and the media – simply accept Hamas’ reports of civilian casualties in Gaza. Responsibility for those casualties lies with Hamas, not Israel.

 

For the most part, the post-World War II order held through the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Walter Russell Mead wrote in the September 16 issue of The Wall Street Journal that the subsequent decade saw “the muddled thinking of a generation of policy elites, who foolishly supposed that geopolitical conflict had ended forever.” That thinking prompted Francis Fukuyama to write The End of History and the Last Man. What these globalists failed to understand was the nature of man and nations – that men seek power and power corrupts. While Western governments reduced defense spending over the past thirty-five years, China and Russia have grown stronger, absolutely and relatively. That naivete should have ended on 9/11 when 19 Islamic terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,976. 

 

But it did not. The lessons of World War I and World War II – the Armistice that ceased hostilities during the First World and the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan that ended the Second World War – seem lost on much of Western leadership. Armistices and ceasefires do not work against those intent on global domination, as we saw in the two decades following the first World War, with the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. On the other hand, the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945 allowed for the re-building of those defeated countries via the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. By 1960, a mere fifteen years after surrender, West Germany and Japan, respectively, were their region’s largest economies.

 

One does not have to be a fan of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appreciate what the abandonment of Israel by so many in the West means. Unlike its neighbors, Israel is a democracy. Its leadership changes according to popular elections. Since its founding in 1948, fourteen individuals have served as Prime Minister (the same as the number of U.S. Presidents who served during that same time). As well, Israel is more inclusive than its neighbors. About 20% of Israel’s population is Arab, while ten of the 120-person Knesset are Arab. Can one say the same about Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia?

 

Hamas, which has with the blessing of the Palestinian Authority governed Gaza since Israel withdrew in 2005, is intent on eliminating Israel. As Fred Fleitz, vice chair of the America First Policy Institute in the Center for American Security, wrote on americangreatness.com last Friday: “...the Palestinian leadership rejected statehood offers in 1947, 2000, 2008, and 2009.” Their goal is the eradication of Israel, and the establishment of a Palestinian state, “from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean).”

 

Yet, the truth is that the Palestinian people will only survive and thrive if the terrorists who now lead them, in Gaza and the West bank, are eliminated. In a victory for Hamas and other terrorist organizations, twenty-three European states will have recognized Palestine as a state (a concept, not a physical place) by the end of September. That marks a defeat for Israel and, importantly, a defeat for the Palestinian people. For the West, it marks a big step in the wrong direction –  another rung down the ladder that leads up to liberalism.

"Political Stakes"

 This essay was begun before Russia’s threat on Ukraine’s border became front page news. Putin’s actions validate the thesis that the political stakes are high, that the risks are existential, and that the United States and its Western European allies must change tactics from promoting “social justice” to affirming and defending a belief in classical liberal democracy. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Political Stakes”

February 23, 2022

 

“Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20%

of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the

decade? You don’t have to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America.”

                                                                                                                                                Thomas Sowell (1930 -)

 

The Cold War lasted for 42 years, from 1947 until 1989. It pitted the United States against the Soviet Union, along with respective allies. It ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain, and when a wave of (mostly) peaceful revolutions overthrew Communist governments in the Eastern Bloc. Three years later Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, which argued the universal acceptance of Western liberal democracies represented the final form of human government. The intervening years have shown how wrong he was. He appears to have misunderstood geo-politics, and he underestimated human desire for power and control. 

 

Today, liberal Western democracies face a new challenge: an autocracy epitomized by China, where power is concentrated in the 205 members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a Party that comprises less than seven percent of the population of the world’s most populous country. Joining the Communist Party can take several years and is generally open only to those with Han ethnicity. Xi Jinping is the current, paramount leader. He serves as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman of the Central Military Commission and President of the People’s Republic of China. China’s Communist Party is not diversified, equitable or inclusive. According to Statista, 88% of its members are ethnic Han. There are only nine women who sit on the Central Committee, a committee composed of 205 members. Its parliament, the world’s largest, stands at 2,924 members and which, according to CNBC, includes 100 billionaires. The 209 wealthiest members have an average wealth of $300 million. This is a country where the mean adult net worth is less than $68,000, and where GDP per capita is one sixth of that in the U.S. 

 

Yet, our enemies see us as divided, in retreat globally and undergoing self-flagellation. What do immigrants make of Vice President Kamala Harris’, the daughter of immigrants, recent statement: “The truth is: There is segregation in America, xenophobia exists in America. Antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia all exist.” One cannot deny that among 330 million inhabitants one could find examples to substantiate her claim. But do the words of a few nuts define our nation? In every country there is good and evil, there are saints and devils. On February 17, reporting on Ms. Harris’ observation, National Review said: “If they wish, American citizens may be neutral on the virtues of their country. The Vice President doesn’t have that luxury.” Her statement served as aid to our enemies who want the rest of the world to perceive the U.S. as hypocritical, as divided by race and gender. Moreover, Ms. Harris, a woman of mixed heritage and daughter of immigrants, has risen to the nation’s second highest office. Is she a victim?

 

One asks: Why do immigrants choose to come to the United States, Western Europe, Australia and Canada and not to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or Cuba? Why did Ms. Harris’ parents come here rather than Russia, Iran or Cuba? Where are the Chinese protesting China’s internment of Uyghers? Where are the Russians protesting Russia’s new-found imperialism? Where are the protesters complaining of wealth and income gaps in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or Cuba?

 

What we face is a new cold war – which we pray does not become heated – between forces of darkness, led by China and other totalitarian states, and forces of freedom led by the United States and other liberal democracies. We must be alert and able to respond to weapons they will use: strengthened militaries, cyber warfare, which could affect banks and electric grids, biological weapons and, perhaps most important, insidious and infectious propaganda designed to undermine our culture. The outcome may not affect those of us in our 80s, but it certainly will have consequences for our children and grandchildren.

 

But the United States will continue to stand as a beacon to other nations: if our government continues to protect our inalienable rights; if it functions under the rule of law; if it offers opportunities for individuals to use their individual drive and abilities to better their conditions; if it promotes freedom not mandates; if it rids itself of the scourge that is wokeism, and if it once again recognizes its unique position in the world.

 

Speaking to the desire of some in government to impose more controls, Kimberly Fiorello, a Republican Connecticut State Legislator representing Greenwich and Stamford, penned an op-ed in the February 18, 2022 issue of the Greenwich Sentinel in which she argued November’s election will not be about Democrat versus Republican. “In 2022, it is about more freedom versus more government control.” What is true for Connecticut is true for the world.  It is freedom, which lights the lamp that distinguishes democracies from autocracies. An interview by Richard Milne with Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, in last weekend’s edition of the Financial Times, highlights the concern of smaller, more vulnerable nations: “That memory of the terror and deprivations of Soviet rule, and a desire to never return to those days, explains why Estonia has consistently warned the west about the dangers of a revanchist Russia.”  

 

Among these concerns, there has been suggestion that woke Progressivism, which mimics the ideology, tactics and goals of totalitarianism, may have reached its zenith: The parents’ revolt in Virginia resulted in the election of Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor; in November voters in Minneapolis rejected the overhaul of their police department; Eric Adams, a former chief of police, defeated Kathryn Garcia in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary last summer; the Build Back Better bill failed in the Senate, and a recent vote in San Francisco recalled three progressive schoolboard members. We must build on those successes, as we and the world confront ever-more dangerous, political alternatives, represented by the autocracies of China and Russia.

 

Thomas Sowell is correct, in the rubric quoted above. The United States, in the history of nations, has been unique in its radical, and positive, experiment.  It is the country that created and led an international order following World War II, an order now at risk. As we retreat from leadership, we leave open spheres to be influenced by China and Russia. The risk we face is truly existential – a new cold war that could end the nation and a way of life we have known, a country in which individuals, through aptitude, determination and effort, regardless of connections, race or gender, have risen from poverty to success. In this new war, the political stakes are high. It is imperative we keep lit the lamp of freedom, which gives hope to millions.