Israel’s Finest Hour

Barry MacDonald — Editorial

Israel’s existence is a fact that only barbarous acts may alter.

Historical perspective is necessary to assess present circumstances, but humane statesmen should form their policies upon the assumption of Israel’s continued existence.

Two million Arabs, 21 percent of Israel’s population, live in Israel. Israeli Arabs have equality under the law and the right to vote. Arabs serve in the Knesset, and an Arab judge sits on Israel’s Supreme Court. The mixture of Arabs and Israelis makes for occasional frictions, with charges of discrimination against the majority. However, the overall peaceful coexistence of Israeli and Arab citizens argues mightily in favor of the decency of Israel. Internal civility endures despite the decades of warfare between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was a shock. The eruption of vile, unashamed, antisemitism in Western cities, starting on October 8, was disheartening.

Unspeakable atrocities committed on 1,200 innocent Israeli children, women, and men were laid before the world on October 8. Immediately afterward hatred for Jews was expressed by mobs in the major cities of America and Europe.

Violent protests bloomed — as if the Devil snapped his fingers, and an army of demons rioted.

Since October 8, Jewish students at elite universities, including Harvard and Columbia, have been hemmed about and threatened by violent mobs — while university administrators have fecklessly stood by. The ambivalence of university officials to the safety of Jewish students amid the hostility of faculty and the rage of mobs was stark. The rot of America’s “higher education” stands exposed.

The ancient hatred of Jews continues. I had believed that widespread antisemitism was impossible in America. Sadly, I was wrong.

If one wants to learn about the history and circumstances of Israel, about its relations with the Arab world, Jordan Peterson, Victor Davis Hanson, and David Murray are magnificent intellectuals to listen to. Peterson, Hanson, and Murray offer podcasts online. Recently, Jordan Peterson interviewed Naftali Bennett, Israel’s 13th prime minister.

Much like Europe and America, Israel in 2023 was paralyzed by polarized partisan politics. Israelis were at each other’s throats over issues of “woke,” identity politics. There were massive protests in the streets of Israel. Prime Minister Bennett described 2023 as a time of “mass distraction,” leading to a complacency for defense — leading to a successful surprise attack by Hamas.

Americans and Europeans should attend: Complacency toward belligerent nations and Islamist terrorists inspires contempt and aggression. If we don’t take the hostility of enemies seriously, we, too, will be surprised one day.

A silver lining came from the atrocities of October 7, said Naftali Bennett: A sudden end to internal discord and the emergence of unity.

Across the political spectrum in Israel, the question of Palestinian statehood is off the table for the foreseeable future. Because Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas, and because Hamas wants to exterminate all Israelis, a Palestinian state is impossible. Only a change of heart of the Palestinians will make a difference.

Bennett is immensely proud of Israeli youth. When news of the morning attack spread, young people rushed to the defense of brothers and sisters whom they had not met. They went with pistols, or bare hands, to oppose machine guns. Many died.

Bennett said:

“[American] kids need the right pronoun, otherwise they are triggered. Safe spaces, micro-aggressions — all this nonsense builds feeble people. Newsflash — the world out there is a tough world, and you need strong kids.

. . . .

“American G.I.s came back from Europe and they carried America for its best 50 years from 1945 to 2000 . . . .

“. . . this is the reason I am so optimistic about the next 50 years of Israel. This is our finest generation. . . . [We are] manufacturing super men and women who will carry us forward, who are embedded with values, work ethic, working as a team. . . with innovation, self-reliance, responsibility. They are going to be amazing.”

Election Results

Derek Suszko and I endured a couple of nervous hours on election night. It appeared, briefly, that the 2024 contest would be closer than it was. Our patience was rewarded. Eventually, we celebrated the unstoppable triumph of Donald J. Trump. Trump will be the 47th president of the United States!

Despite the mighty forces arrayed against him, Trump earned an undeniable victory. He gained an unusual cohort of stellar supporters, including Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy and Joe Rogan. He added impressive numbers of the working-class, black men, Latinos, and Jewish people to the ranks of Republicans voters.

Trump and J. D. Vance vanquished a decade of the corporate media’s vile, deranged, and relentless hatred. Trump also defeated the skullduggery of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and Homeland Security. America’s intelligence agencies successfully stymied Trump’s first administration with false charges of “collusion with Russia” in the 2016 election. They succeeded in rigging the 2020 election when 51 intelligence officials wrote a letter denying the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. These hitherto unaccountable bureaucracies have connived from the shadows to undermine Trump for a decade.

For years Trumps supporters have endured the continuous contempt of “journalists,” Hollywood narcissists, intellectual snobs, and authoritarian prigs.

Law-abiding Americans have been called garbage, Nazis, fascists, misogynists, because we object to rampant inflation; feckless and weak foreign policy; drag queens in kindergartens; open borders; tens of thousands of annual deaths due to fentanyl poisonings; the illegal traffic of human beings into America perpetrated by Mexican drug cartels; gender “corrective” surgeries on adolescents; out-of-control crime on our city streets; the stealthy censorship of free speech by social media monopiles in cahoots with government bureaucracies; and an unprecedented misuse of the law to attack political opponents, etc.

The American people have acquitted president-elect Trump of the travesties of justice directed against him by Democrat judges and prosecutors.

Trump and Musk are bulwarks in the preservation of American free speech. They have exposed the totalitarian tendencies of Leftist Democrats.

A majority of the American people want a return to normalcy. It feels like morning in America again.    *