Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Happy Thanksgiving

Today, being the fourth Thursday of November, marks [American] Thanksgiving Day. To my American readers: Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the turkey or whatever holiday food does it for you. On the occasion of the holiday, Karl Zinsmeister, back from Iraq, offers a moving toast "to the men who risk their lives to keep us free": Our soldiers, our thanks.

Another Cromwell moment

Some weeks ago the Useless Nabobs General Assembly passed a resolution calling for "the protection of Palestinian children from Israeli aggression" by 88 against 4 with 58 abstentions. In an attempt to call the UN's bluff, Israel tabled its first resolution since 1976, calling for the protection of Israeli children (Jewish, Arab, Druze, and others) against terrorist violence (suicide bombings against civilian crowds, drive-by shootings). Yesterday
it was forced to withdraw the resolution

At the United Nations, the lives of Israeli children are worth less than the lives of Palestinian children, Israel's ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman said Wednesday after he was forced to withdraw a resolution calling for the protection of Israeli children from terrorism.

"The voice of the immoral majority was once again heard loud and clear," Gillerman told the UN General Assembly's Third (Humanitarian, Social and Cultural) Committee after failing to garner enough support from the organization's 191 members to proceed with a vote.

[...]

Gillerman withdrew the draft after a group of states from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), led by Egypt, demanded the inclusion of amendments that, if adopted, would have turned the draft into an anti-Israel resolution.

The list of amendments, cosponsored by Bahrain, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, included deleting of the phrase "Israeli children" from the text and replacing it with "Middle East children," and inserting references to Israeli "military assaults," "occupation" and ""excessive use of force" ahead of all mention of terrorism. Even the title of the draft was changed from "The situation of and assistance to Israeli children" to "The situation of and assistance to children in the Middle East region."

"It's shameful that Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, sabotaged this resolution," said Gillerman. Had Israel not withdrawn the resolution, inclusion of the amendments was virtually assured due to the NAM's majority status at the UN.

Abba Eban, of blessed memory, used to quip that "If Algeria introduced a resolution [in the UN General Assembly] declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions."

What the United Nebbich needs is another Oliver Cromwell. As he spoke in 1653 to another organization with lofty intentions that had denegerated into an offensive parody of itself (and as quoted to Neville Chamberlain when he was sent packing in 1940): "You have been here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, we say, and let us have done with you. In the name of G-d, go!.

Make sure to read...

...The Captain's The Precautionary Principle. If you want suitable background music, try Rush's "The Enemy Within", which is about how fear of failure can be our worst enemy, and how, perhaps, the willingness to take risks makes the difference between living and merely existing.

Voltaire spinning in his grave

French professor Guy Millière is currently the target of death threats (see also here) because he dared translate an American book critical of Islam into French. As Millière himself wrote earlier (translation by Sylvain Galineau):

The Jew is once again the symbol of detested capitalism, and by a shameful distortion of history, of "imperialism". The [classical liberal or libertarian] becomes the bearer of evil. The Jewish, or pro-Jewish [classical liberal or libertarian] becomes the target of the ultimate hatred. The anti-globalization movement gets closer to islamists, and the latter allow themselves to openly attack "Jewish thinkers" guided by their "race". The "anti-racists" fight for the right to wear a veil, and fascist-leaning newspapers approve. To publish some books becomes difficult : publishers are scared.

There are no professional interdictions yet, but that will probably come. I am currently the object of several campaigns attempting to cut off my means of income and have me thrown out of France. Is it because I do not do my work well? No, it's because I am a libertarian, because I defend Israel, because I am outraged by terrorism, because I love the United States, and especially because I have a critical view of Islam. It would be so much easier if I were a leftist, fascist, anti-semitic, anti-american, convert to Islam. Then I would be left alone.

Scenes from a memory

Click here and keep scrolling down for a bunch of newspaper clippings from the New York Times describing the American "quagmire" and inability to find WMD... in post-WW II Germany.

As David Weber and Steve White's fictional admiral Ivan Antonov put it ("In Death Ground", p. 450): "You know... there is a mistaken proverb which tells us that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it. In fact, they're lucky if they're allowed to repeat it. More probably, they're condemned to something even worse than the past. This is doubly true of those who believe that their ignorance somehow makes them morally superior to those who don't share it."

The blind led by the wilfully blind

LGF and Roger Simon points to a Financial Times story that illustrates the saying "none are more blind than those who choose not to see".

The Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) decided in February not to publish the 112-page study, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Times, after clashing with its authors over their conclusions.
[UPDATE Dec. 5, 2003: it is now available online here and here.]

The news comes amid growing fears that there is an upsurge of anti-semitism in European Union countries. Among many recent incidents, a Jewish school near Paris was firebombed last Saturday, the same day two Istanbul synagogues were devastated by suicide truck bombs that killed 25 and wounded 300. ...

Following a spate of incidents in early 2002, the EUMC commissioned a report from the Centre for Research on Anti-semitism at Berlin's Technical University.

When the researchers submitted their work in October last year, however, the centre's senior staff and management board objected to their definition of anti-semitism, which included some anti-Israel acts. The focus on Muslim and pro-Palestinian perpetrators, meanwhile, was judged inflammatory.

"There is a trend towards Muslim anti-semitism, while on the left there is mobilisation against Israel that is not always free of prejudice," said one person familiar with the report. "Merely saying the perpetrators are French, Belgian or Dutch does no justice to the full picture."

Some EUMC board members had also attacked part of the analysis ascribing anti-semitic motives to leftwing and anti-globalisation groups, this person said. "The decision not to publish was a political decision."

The board includes 18 members - one for each member state, the European Commission, Parliament, and the council of Europe - as well as 18 deputies. [...] The EUMC, which was set in 1998, has published three reports on anti-Islamic attitudes in Europe since the September 11 attacks in the US.

Reality is inconvenient and not politically correct? Send it down the 1984 "memory hole"! (Or throw Salman Rushdie off the troika to the wolves.) Orwell's fictional dystopia was locked in a three-cornered struggle between EngSoc, neo-Bolshevism, and "Death Worship". On the doorstep of 2004, we are seeing a three-cornered struggle as well: between liberal democracy, transnational oligarchic collectivism (of the EU variety)... and Death Worship.

Back in the USSR?

A Samizdata regular visits Brussels after a long hiatus and describes his experiences.

Turkey massacre II

Would this were a lame Thanksgiving joke. [For non-Americans: Thanksgiving is exactly one week away.] In a double car bombing in Istanbul, 27 were killed (including the British Consul-General in Istanbul) and 450 wounded. A shadowy Turkish Islamic group and Al-Qaeda both claim responsibility.

Israel Channel 1 had extensive commentary from Arab Affairs commentator Oded Granot, a former Israeli ambassador to Turkey, counterterrorism expert Boaz Ganor from the Interdisciplinary Center (where Allison's husband teaches), and several others. Summarizing the main points made:

• The choice of first synagogues, then a British target was symbolic. Yet in both cases the vast majority of the casualties were random passers-by;
  
• Turkey is being targeted less for its ties to the US and Israel than for what it is: a secular, (albeit imperfectly) democratic state that happens to have a Muslim majority, with a middle class and elite whose number one aspiration is Turkey becoming part of the West in general, and an EU member state in particular;
  
• One longtime aspiration of the radical Islamist movements has been to add Turkey to their sphere of influence. They had hoped that the new moderate Islamist premier Erdogan would move Turkey in this direction, but were disappointed when Erdogan fundamentally continued his predecessors' prolicies
  
• It is no coincidence that both double attacks were carried out in neighborhoods which are bulwarks of the secular middle and 'upwardly mobile' class;
  
• Turkey has a history of mercilessly (mechusar rahamim) fighting terrorist groups, over the long haul, and is expected to do the same now. Erdogan's political affiliation may help him get support from moderate Islamists, and thus outside the traditional anti-Islamist strongholds of the secular middle class and the army;
  
• The small Turkish Islamic extremist group who co-claimed responsibility does exist, but is a small organization whose previous attempts at terrorism were amateuristic flops. It is unlikely in the extreme that they would suddenly have achieved this level of diabolic expertise and coordination without massive input from another organization --- and particularly the synchronized simultaneous attacks are a signature al-Qaeda tactic.
  

Trade unions as reverse Robin Hoods

Israel's public sector is presently struck by "virtual strikes", since the National Labor Court forbade the national trade union federation Histadrut from calling a total general strike.

In case you were wondering if the Histadrut is engaged in a noble struggle for social justice in Israel, think again. The Histadrut long ago ceased to be the representative of low-wage workers and welfare recipients, and de facto became the main engine for protecting the interests of workers in the civil service and state-owned corporation, many of whom with bloated salaries and gargantuan benefit packages devoid of all economic or even social rationale, or of any connection to job performance. This resulted in a Catch-22: private sector workers who know that in any case they cannot count on the Histadrut let their membership lapse or no longer bother to become members in the first place, making the Histadrut even more beholden to the 'union locals' ("centrales") who need their services least.

The "threats to social justice" that the Histadrut has been disruptiing the economy over for weeks, and threatening to shut down the country altogether, include plans to privatize government-owned companies such as the Port and Railroad Authority and the Electric Corp., as well as make it easier to fire poorly performing employees in the civil service. As usual, it is the truly disadvantaged (welfare recipients unable to claim their checks, the working poor who rely on public transportation) who suffer most.

The day before yesterday, the mass circulation daily Maariv (article in Hebrew) gave us a glimpse into the absurd remuneration conditions in some of the companies slated for privatization. For instance, an ordinary dockside port worker brings home a whopping NIS 50,000 (US$11,000, or 10,000 Euro) per month. A crew foreman about NIS 75,000. (For reference: the Prime Minister's salary is NIS 33,000 --- less than the salary of an ordinary technician at the Broadcasting Authority.) An ordinary worker at the Electric Co. not only will earn as much as a tenured university professor, but gets as much electricity for free as (s)he can use up. (When it was recently suggested to cap the 'free' electricity at five times the average household consumption, the electricians threatened to shut the country down.) I can add other examples: in one university town -- despite the dire financial straits of the municipality --- the head of the garbage collection service draws a salary that exceeds that of the Chancellor of the university. (The State Comptroller's Report cites cases every year of organizations where employees get paid for so much 'guaranteed overtime' that they end up 'working' 7-day weeks of more than 24 hours per day.)

Do not get me wrong: I have nothing against trade unions as such. The fact that vigorous worker's rights activism occasionally forces an employer to put up with a truly incompetent and/or lazy employee no more invalidates the concept of a trade union than the occasional acquittal of the guilty in court delegitimizes the concept of counsel for the defense. But the Histadrut, over time, has degenerated in fact --- if not necessarily in intent --- into what I can only describe as a 'reverse Robin Hood'. For let there be no mistake --- someone is holding the bag for all this. And that 'someone' is Joe Q. Public.

Sad but true

Must-read: The Brownshirts of our time by Phyllis Chesler.