April 1, 2025
"I've often wondered why conservative Christians remain the most faithful friends of American Jews but have their friendship repeatedly spurned in favor of a Jewish alliance with the cultural and political left." So wrote Paul Gottfried, editor of Chronicles magazine, a conservative monthly. The recent war in Gaza began with the butchering of 1,200 innocent Israelis, but as of this moment the response has been more than 55,000 dead Palestinians and over 80,000 wounded-a number of civilian casualties that would mortify Genghis Khan. The slightest mention of these innocent deaths caused by indiscriminate Israeli bombing has the neocons and AIPAC, not to mention my favorite newspaper, the New York Post, claiming the Nazis are back and a new Holocaust is about to begin. Only last week, 463 dead and 600 injured Palestinians were dismissed as if an exterminator had gotten rid of unwanted insects in a housing area. Anyone protesting is more likely to be called a Nazi than to be heard. In Britain, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, two conservative papers, hardly mentioned the casualties of the bombing. Columnist after columnist extolled Israel's restraint in the face of 1,200 dead, as if the number 1,200 vastly exceeded the number 55,000.
Are Jewish lives far more precious than Palestinian ones? In America and Britain it is a given that Black Lives Matter. Well, they do in America and Britain, but they do not matter at all in Africa. Nor do Palestinian lives matter, at least not enough to be mentioned in America and in Britain. History has been weaponized by Zionists, and the Holocaust is invoked to silence any criticism of Israel. As I write, another 85 flies-sorry, Palestinians-have been killed. Watching this on screen, I see a father holding a dead 2-year-old child and demanding to know: What has he done to Israel? He is guilty of what?
"At times I wonder if Bibi Netanyahu spent his youth pulling wings from insects."
Netanyahu ordered food, fuel, and medicine to be stopped for 2.3 million Gazans just before the resumption of hostilities. If this wasn't a major crime, my name is Adolf Hitler. Western media correctly describes the October 7 Hamas attack as sadistic barbarism. What angers me is the same media fails to decry the starvation, the atrocities, and the bombing of women, children, and old people by 2,000-pound bombs provided to Israel by Americans.
Any criticism of Israeli brutalities is immediately labeled anti-Semitic, this being among the oldest tricks of the neocons, those nice guys who gave us the Iraq War; people like the Podhoretzes, the Kristols, the Feiths, the Wolfowitzes, and the Kagans. They knew what they were doing. Dubious accusations of anti-Semitism were reserved for paleoconservatives like my friend Pat Buchanan, a great American patriot who was not fooled about what lay behind the war: Israel worried about Saddam and needed Uncle Sam to pull the rug out from under him.
And then there's Mearsheimer and Walt, two brilliant intellectuals who criticized the Jewish lobby and wrote some terrific books about the lobby's influence in America. The level of unhinged, ferocious hatred of their books, devoid of any proof that they are anti-Semitic, was hysterical and venomous. Had they been related to Hitler by blood, and had they partaken in putting Jews in concentration camps, the attacks on their persons would not have been worse. But what really bothers me is the media's lack of interest where Palestinian deaths and injuries are concerned. We used to think that various human subjects, like Rome's slaves, gladiators, and barbarians, were not worthy of moral consideration. Eventually we corrected that, or thought we did. Roman emperor Domitian spent his youth catching and killing flies. He became an elder tyrant and the cruelest of them all. At times I wonder if Bibi Netanyahu spent his youth pulling wings from insects.
Israel's defenders are outraged at a "globally orchestrated campaign" against Israel's war in Gaza. There is no campaign, just outrage at the violence and brutality against a defenseless people by the IDF. Israel has killed, blinded, and maimed thousands upon thousands of innocent women, children, and old people. If there was such a globally orchestrated campaign against Israel, the war would have been stopped long ago. No one cares about the Palestinians, and anyone who does is painted as an anti-Semite. Believe me, I am among the first to know.
Nothing remains but a desert of rubble. A graveyard if there ever was one. Oh yes, I almost forgot. There are also crippled orphans, the blind, and the homeless. A Palestinian Riviera, to be sure.