Nobody Is Saying It, But ...

The current Israeli attack on Irian is showing spectacular penetration by agents of Mossad. They have been able to precisely target important military figures for assassination, for example. They are firing drones from places inside Iran.

Nobody is saying it, but it should be obvious that these “Mossad agents” are not Israeli Jews.

They have to be Iranians—and they are not doing this out of love for Israel. Israel has made a deal with the Iranian opposition. Their intent and end game is not going to be simply to get Iran to stop building nuclear weapons. The deal will involve an attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime. And no doubt the Iranian opposition has, with the help of Mossad, prepared the necessary next steps.

This is always the great weakness of an authoritarian regime. That Ayatollah fella is going down.

The name of the Israeli operation, "Rising Lion" actually already said so. The lion is the symbol of the Iranian monarchy. 

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Things that seem epochal seem to be happening all at once, as I type, as though we are witnessing the hand of Providence. I may be speaking too soon, but rumours are growing of an economic collapse and a change in power in China. And to a more “pro-Western” regime.

What seems especially uncanny, and implausible, are reports of a sudden demographic collapse, of empty villages in the countryside, and of strangely empty streets in major cities. How can millions of people just disappear suddenly?

Possibly much work and purchasing has gone online, as it has, after all, in North America. Possibly an economic collapse means people do not have money to go out and spend, or work to get to. Possibly the government is harassing those who venture out, fearing any concentration of people might become an anti-government demonstration or a riot.

But counter to this last hypothesis, reports are that the extensive Chinese network of security cameras has been cut off. Surely not what they want to do if they fear unrest. A power shortage?

Whatever the case, it seems that something big is happening in China. And any thing big happening in China is big for the whole world.

Meantime, there is the apocalypse in Iran. Israel is suddenly, in lightning strikes,  wiping out much of Iran’s military capabilities and creating chaos in the regime. Rumours are that many top leaders have flown out to Russia or Pakistan. 

If true, this is what happens when a regime is about to collapse. The Iranian regime has for many years not had any popular support. The military was vital to hold the people down through fear. Now the military is in disarray, and shown to be weak. Iranians  may seize the opportunity to rise up. Iranian friends in Canada are cheering on the Israeli attacks. There is an organized opposition abroad; as there was when the Shah fell. Then, they successfully flew in to take charge and restore order. It may happen again now. Losing a war or some reckless military adventure is a common trigger for autocratic governments to fall. 

That’s two of the three strongest anti-Western regimes.

And then there is the third leg of the triple alliance, Russia.

Russia and Putin have also just gotten a big shock, with the Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia. It was actually eerily similar to the Israeli attack on Iran, happening almost simultaneously, as though the same mastermind was behind both. If not God, perhaps the USA? 

It took out a significant part of Russia’s strategic abilities; and it brought the war to the common people back in Moscow. Not good for popular support, I imagine. 

Online commentators also say Russia, having now lost a million casualties, is finding it hard to replace lost manpower. They may be losing this war of attrition.

At first glance, this looks improbable. Surely Ukraine has a greater manpower problem, with a much smaller population. They’ve been fighting just as long. And a greater materiel problem: their economy is smaller, and their factories have been under attack far longer.

But the argument goes that, in order to gain ground, the Russians have been using human wave attacks, in a war which heavily favours the defense. The Ukrainians, by staying mostly on the defensive, have been able to take advantage of this. Perhaps the optics were bad, but it was the smart move. Let the other side run straight into the machine guns. 

As for materiel, Ukraine still has all of the EU, and beyond, to draw on.

Rumours online are that all this recent attack puts Putin on shaky ground; a palace coup seems possible. As with Iran, a failed military adventure is the most common trigger for the fall of an autocratic regime. 

Of course, this has all been said before, the imminent fall of Putin has been widely predicted, ever since the initial Russian invasion, supposed to take three days, was repulsed. He has shown great resilience. But even a cat has only nine lives. This recent mass drone attack, and the detonation under the Crimean bridge, does look like a possible tipping point. Like the Tet offensive was for the US in Vietnam—the frustration and sense of failure is that much greater once having started to feel victory was at last within view. It must be psychologically devastating.

With Israel’s attack on Iran, Putin has probably lost his main source of drones with which to respond to Ukraine. There are suddenly leaks that Russia and China no longer see one another as allies—consistent with the rumours that China is about to turn pro-Western. It makes sense; China has unresolved historical grievances and border disputes with Russia, and not with the USA or the West. 

So Putin too might soon and suddenly fall.

If any one of these three regimes goes, the other two are more vulnerable. We’re talking dominoes. And China, the biggest and most important of the three, seems to be a pretty sure thing.

What will the world look like if all three dominoes are down?

Hugely enhanced prestige for the US and the West. 

Surely lesser regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea, who have been anti-Western, will also fall or convert. Partly for lost financial backing; partly for lost prestige; partly from spreading revolutionary fervour. 

More importantly, the anti-Western elites within the West will be relatively discredited: the multicult groups running Canada, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, and the EU broadly. Already in process, their fall may be turbocharged. The superiority of the Western way will have been emphatically illustrated.

Hugely enhanced prestige for Donald Trump. FWIW. Cue AI to carve a niche on Mount Rushmore. Maybe with an assist from Musk’s Boring Company.

This may be bad for peace in the Middle East. Hostility towards and fear of Iran has tended to drive Gulf States into cooperation with Israel and the US; this incentive will now be gone. 

However, a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, will have lost their funding. The current forever wars will cease. Certainly, this should end the conflict in Gaza. Without this hot conflict between Israel and fellow Arabs, the other Arab states may feel better able to sign on to the Abraham Accords.

I see a day peace will come to the Middle East. It once seemed impossible for peace to come to Ireland, too. Then it did. 

With Putin gone, Russian matters are unpredictable. But on balance, it would seem that, with the relative loss of strategic capabilities, a more bellicose leadership would have nowhere to go from here—just carrying on just the same. So if you see a problem, why reinforce failure? The obvious possible change is to try for peace. Even to end Russia’s dreams of standing apart from and against the West. That gives you a chance to declare a kind of victory. After all, culturally, Russia is Europe. Division is artificial. Pure self-interest suggests integration. It is only a childish national pride that makes Russia want to fight and seek empire.

One happy consequence of the end of the regimes in Iran and China could be a revival of Christianity. The CCP has discredited atheism in China; the Ayatollahs have discredited Islamism in Iran. Rumours are of a large number of Christian conversions as it is; although such conversions are more or less illegal in both states. With the lid off, this may grow; this may blow. And the vitality of Christianity in these influential nations, in turn, may also hasten revival in the older Christian lands; a revival that already seems to be starting. When the Iron Curtain fell, Pope John Paul II and Polish Christianity brought a new enthusiasm to Catholicism.

And Christianity is the backbone and foundation of Western culture. Is a Renaissance about to begin?

Trump's Game in Iran

 

The US is at pains to stress that Israel’s current strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is entirely Israel’s doing, and America is not involved.

I do not believe that for a moment. Methinks they doth protest too much.

Trump has been saying for years that Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Last winter he said that if the Gaza hostages were not released promptly, all hell would break loose.

Trump is a skilled negotiator. He has set this up as “good cop, bad cop,” to force Iran to the table with minimum risk or destruction. I think he intentionally spread the rumour a couple of months ago that he and Netanyahu were having a spat, simply in order to give this plausibility. The media bought it.

Now Iran may be led to appeal to US for protection from Israel. And Trump can name his terms. He has given them an escape ramp. In the meantime, other actors throughout the Muslim world have less cause or claim to attack US interests, minimizing risks. And protecting the US’s Arab and Muslim allies. All the risks are on Israel, but Israel was already entirely at risk and has nothing exposed and nothing to lose.

And Trump preserves his domestic reputation as a man of peace, the basis for much of his popular support.

It is even possible Trump is playing a similar game with Ukraine—faking his hostility to Zelensky, which really did look like something staged for the cameras, a bit from his old reality show. Thereby letting the Europeans take the lead, while feeding Ukraine the intelligence needed for them to pull off spectacular strikes recently within Russia. With official US sanction, their hands were tied, over fears of sparking a nuclear exchange and world war. But Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet and strategic submarines were very much in the US interest. Trump may still be feeding technology to Ukraine through European intermediaries. 

Again, this would let him pose as an honest broker to Putin, someone Putin could turn to without losing face to make a peace. And it lets him, again, stay the pacifist for his domestic audience. The Europeans would surely be delighted to go along, because it makes them look independent and tough and consequential. Good for their ego.

Meantime, Trump’s tariffs on China seem to have caused some sort of tipping point, and the Chinese leadership is collapsing.

Imagine if Trump’s negotiating skills actually manage to achieve, in short order, the collapse of the Iranian, Chinese, and Russian governments, all without American blood being spilled.

It would earn him a spot on Mount Rushmore.

Next question: was Trump’s spat with Elon Musk also faked, to protect Musk’s business interests from attacks, while also giving congresspeople, especially Democratic congresspeople, cover to support the DOGE cuts without looking subservient to Trump?

This doesn’t require imagining Trump is playing 4-D chess. It’s more like the good old American game of poker. Plus acting talent.

World War III

 

World War III seems to be trending. The recent missile attack by Iran on Israel has been billed by many commentators as its beginning.

It is not. As a matter of pure logistics, Iran can’t invade Israel, and Israel can’t invade Iran. Missiles are expensive, and Israel is pretty good at making Iran waste them—little payoff for the payload. Drones may be a continuing problem; but more for Israeli civilians than for the Israeli military. 

A World War tends to require grand alliances of nations. Instead, this may increase Iran’s isolation. Iran, the Shi’ite power, is the primary strategic threat to the Sunni Arab nations of the Persian Gulf and all points West, including the wealthy and militarily powerful Saudi Arabia. Iran has been meddling in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. It has no natural allies. The big Arab states may take the opportunity to make common cause with Israel against their common enemy.

It may also increase opposition to the regime within Iran. A lot of the recent protest has been on the premise that the government has been spending money on foreign adventures while the people at home are starving. The current strike on Israel may be a show of power by a government that feels cornered; to cow their own people more than Israel.

https://x.com/elicalebon/status/1779685190941679979

I have Iranian friends. I have American friends who have visited Iran and spoken to people there. No Iranians seem to support the current regime. They are desperate for help from abroad to overthrow it, and wondering why it is not coming.

There may be an informal alliance of convenience among Iran, Russia, and China, but they are motivated by no common ideology and no common interests. In fact, their interests conflict.

The real danger is that each local war—Ukraine, now Gaza—gives incentive for the next, as the West’s resources get stretched. Now might be the time for Venezuela to invade Guyana and get away with it; now might be the time for China to invade Taiwan and get away with it.

Not Mincing Words

 

Pierre Poilievre makes his position on Gaza clear.

Might Makes Wrong?

 

Nazi antisemitic poster, courtesy of Alamy

Some days ago, I suggested the recent Tory slippage in the Canadian polls had to do with the growing strength of Donald Trump in the US, allowing Trudeau to run against Trump instead of Poilievre. Now my sister has suggested another theory.

She suggests it is young people pulling away from Poilievre for his support of Israel. Trudeau has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, as Hamas and the left-wing protesters demand.

Raising the next question: why are young people and the left, in Canada and in the US, on the side of Hamas, and against Israel, in this conflict?

I say it is because the left, and the educational system they control, have rejected the concept of morality, “conventional morality”. So there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a surprise terrorist attack, however violent; there is nothing wrong with sucker-punching a "fascist," after all. Or, intrinsically, in raping women, or beheading babies, or taking hostages. They see everything as about power. The only issue is that there must be “equity,” and no “power imbalances” or “income inequalities.” No “bullying,” bullying simply meaning, to them, the exercise or mere possession of superior force.

It follows that if it comes to a disagreement, anyone who is poor is in the right, and anyone who is rich is in the wrong. In violent confrontations, whoever is losing is in the right; whoever is winning must be in the wrong. It is a childish cartoon morality, simply the inversion of “might makes right.” It makes Hitler and Japan the innocent victims of World War II, and Bin Laden the victim of 9/11. And children always right if they disagree with their parents.

That last is perhaps a clue as to why it is appealing to the young.

This is why, to the left, police and prisons are the causes of crime: abolish both, and we could all live in peace. This is why, at a recent symposium, a University of Minnesota professor declared “the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.” This is simply and definitionally true from the fact that the US is the richest and most militarily powerful nation so far in history.

And this is why Israel is in the wrong: because they are winning against Hamas. More Palestinians are dying than Israelis. And Israelis are richer than Palestinians.

This is actually the Nazi ideology. Mussolini portrayed Italy as a “proletarian nation,” Hitler called Germany a “volkish nation,” and both played up on the idea that their nations had been exploited and bullied by the peace treaties that ended WWI. Hitler was able to turn popular wrath on the Jews because they were richer and better educated than the average German: they were supposedly the international cabal that ruled the world.

Indeed, because of their accomplishments, this doctrine of “equity,” of amoral power politics, is always going to produce antisemitism.

Sadly, because of the admirable human instinct to defend the weak against the strong, this fascist atheist doctrine is likely to appeal to an uneducated conscience, and so lead a naive or weak mind astray.

Trudeau Lectures Israel

 

Justin Trudeau has caused another foreign relations lap by publicly demanding Israel exercise “maximum restraint” in Gaza, implying they are responsible for the deaths of many women and children.

Victor David Hanson makes a good point on this: calling for restraint or measured response in war is incoherent. This is to prolong war indefinitely, and perhaps to court defeat. The moral course, if you have overwhelming force, as Israel does here, is to use everything you have to bring the war to an end as soon as possible, and so end the killing. Trudeau’s advice would lead to many more deaths.

Of course, it is morally necessary to avoid any killing, of either soldiers or civilians, not needed to achieve victory. But if Israel is correct to claim Hamas is using “human shields,” the IDF refusing to fire on them for this reason is like paying ransom to kidnappers: if the tactic works for the terrorists, it guarantees more innocent civilians will die in future.

What the Left Wants in Gaza

 

Friend Xerxes has apparently now expressed the official leftist position on the Gaza War. It is that we in North America are too prone to take the Jewish side, This is due to Jewish money, and the influence of the Bible. If only they had their own Holy Book.

“The root of this unequal support has to be the Bible.”

To begin with, Xerxes and the left fall here into the argumentum ad temperantiam fallacy: the idea that two opposing positions must both be valid. It is far more likely, if matters have come to blows, and, as Xerxes himself laments, no rational discussion is taking place, that no compromise or appeal to reason is possible. And this is almost always precisely because one side is in the right, and the other in the wrong. Those who know they are in the wrong are not going to listen to reason—because then they lose.

Accordingly, in all such cases we must evaluate the two positions, to see who is right. Not insist that both sides be “supported,” and supported equally—a perfect way to ensure the problem is not solved, and injustice and violence go on forever.

Moreover, if one side is right, and the other wrong, we have a moral obligation to intervene on the side of right.

Consider, for example, a man wanting to have sex with a passing woman in an alleyway; and the woman does not want to have sex. So he forces her.

A moral person does not try to support both sides. He does not negotiate a compromise; he does not watch with interest, then walk on.

So too in international affairs. Chamberlain negotiated his “compromise” between Hitler and Czechoslovakia at Munich. How did that work out? 

How about Hitler and the Jews? Were both equally in the right, or in the wrong? Would a compromise have been possible, or acceptable?

If we can conclude that one side in Gaza is in the right, one should hope to see most nations line up and offer assistance. This is the swiftest way to end the violence.

Xerxes blames the Bible, and says it would all be easily solved if the Bible were abandoned, with its claim of Jewish ownership of the land.

This seems to suggest that the “compromise” he and the left prefer is the elimination of Israel, and the deportation or execution of all the Jews.

But as to it being down to the Palestinians not having their own Holy Book, of course they do: those who are not Christian have the Quran. Awkwardly, however, the Quran , like the Bible, also recognizes Moses as a prophet, Jewish residence in Palestine, and at least implicitly a Hebrew claim to the Holy Land in perpetuity.

Not that this, either Quran or Bible, need be the justification for supporting Israel. It has more to do with the right to ethnicity, the right to exist, the right to self-government, and who is the aggressor.

Thoughts on Israel and Hamas

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew Klavan in this interview: all Jew hatred is God hatred. Jews are hated because they represent the moral law, the demand to make something better of ourselves. Everything else is alibi.

Michael Knowles is here as the voice of Catholicism, but I strongly agree with Klavan and not him in understanding Christianity as a branch emerging from the Jewish tree, not something that supersedes Judaism. Any more than the covenant with Noah was cancelled by the covenant with Abraham, or the covenant with Abraham by the covenant with Moses. God does not renege on his promises. This point is made repeatedly in the New Testament.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

Klavan also points out that Israelis are not colonizers. This is another example of the attempted mind control through the illegitimate use of language I posted about yesterday. A colony by definition lacks self-government, and is controlled by some parent state. Israel has no parent state. 

Should pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests be made illegal in Canada, as in France? Technically, they already are illegal, because they violate the “Hate Laws.” But inevitably, such laws are always used selectively, to suppress groups out of favour. They are of no help in the face of real hate.

I understand why such demonstrations make Jewish Canadians feel unsafe. I still oppose banning them; this is where free speech is put to the test. Were I a Jew, I would feel safer knowing where the threat is coming from. The Devil’s favourite con is convincing us he does not exist: then he gets to act with impunity.

Should the US bomb Iran over this? As things stand, the average Iranian is pro-American. Getting bombed would rally many behind the corrupt and hated government. And taking out Iran’s oil facilities is not a great idea either. We’re already boycotting Russian oil, and refusing to allow fracking and pipelines at home. Why not just bomb Washington and London and get it over with?

Should Israel, as is being suggested in some quarters, just expel everyone from Gaza? Not possible. No Arab country will take them in, because that would be abetting Israel’s ethnic cleansing. No Western democracy should, because that would mean endangering their existing Jewish population. 

The IDF can huff and puff, but there is no military solution here. I think of this passage from Heart of Darkness:

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.

You cannot subdue a hostile population with weapons, if they are not prepared to accept defeat.

The Israeli Situation Expressed Visually

 

Ending the Eternal Pogrom

 

Hitting a stone wall.

I have a lot of Jewish friends. I also have a lot of Muslim friends. The horrors Israeli Jews have suffered in the last few days depress me beyond measure. 

Putting aside anger, and even right and wrong, how do we ever end this? It has been going on since 1948. No matter what Israel does, the Palestinian Arabs and many Muslim powers surrounding Israel will not be reconciled to its existence. The transplant has failed.

The supposed reason for Israel was so that the Jews could avoid pogrom and persecution; at last they could escape historic European persecution and defend themselves. But this has turned out to be a false hope. The last few days have been as bad as any old Russian pogrom. 

Israel is a relatively small number of people on a small patch of land surrounded by a vastly larger number of hostile neighbours. Who are gradually developing technologically. For sheerly demographic reasons, sooner or later, Israel is going down, going down in blood, and in the meantime there will be massacre after massacre after massacre of the Jews.

Israel is a mistake. 

In the Torah, the Jews are called to be a leaven and a light unto the nations. It seems obvious this was God’s desire. The return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple is supposed to happen only in the last days. To have tried to force the issue as a purely secular matter seems presumptuous. Presumptuous as the Tower of Babel.

Of course, the recreation of Israel was also never fair to the Arabs. Why was it up to them to surrender some land? Why did they have to yield sovereignty to the Jews, and not, say, Germany or Russia or Poland, whose borders were fungible in 1948? Why not the US, Canada, or Australia, with large sparsely populated areas?

To be a light or leaven unto the nations, the Jews must disperse to all lands; as the leaven must be worked though the bread, and the light must not be hidden in a bushel. Any land not of idiots ought to be desperate to have them. There is a world depopulation crisis; developed countries calculate that they need immigrants in larger numbers. Why not this group of naturally adaptable, mobile immigrants, who contribute more to the culture wherever they go than any other group ever?

Consider English Canadian culture without Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, A.M. Klein, Ed and David Mirvish, Wayne and Schuster, Sharon, Lois, and Bram, William Shatner, Jack Granatstein, Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie, Avie Bennett, Mordecai Richler, the Bronfmans, Mel Hurtig, Jonathan and Barbara Kay, Ezra Levant, Moses Znaimer, Heather Reisman, Eugene Levy, Howie Mandel, Rick Moranis, Robbie Robertson … there would be nothing. That’s what leaven is like.

The best thing Canada could do in the current crisis is to open unrestricted immediate citizenship to any Jew coming from Israel. Best for the Jews, who would surely face less persecution in Canada than in the Middle East. What the Arabs would prefer, not want to live with the Jews. Best for Canada. Best for the world. God’s stated desire.

Other countries should do likewise.

Israel a Colonial Enterprise?

UN Mandate, 1948

I note people accusing the Jews of stealing land from the Arabs in order to form the state of Israel. One correspondent compares the Israeli position to Italians laying claim to England on the grounds that it once belonged to Rome.

But that is not a fair representation of the history. The Jews did not take the land. Israel was mandated to the Jews in 1948 by the United Nations. If there was an injustice done to the Palestinian Arabs, it was done by the international community, not by the Jews. Canada had a vote in the UN General Assembly; the Jews did not.  To blame the Jews is scapegoating.

What do those who make this argument now propose? That the Jews, having been legally ceded the land by the UN generations ago, are now to be evicted due to the claims of some prior inhabitants? Aren’t such theorists guilty here of exactly what they are falsely blaming the Jews for?

If dispossessing the Arabs was wrong then, by the same standard, dispossessing the Jews would be wrong now.

I would allow that the original grant was unfair to the Arabs. The world community was giving the Jews someone else’s land. The recent attempt by Hitler to exterminate them no doubt made it seem pressing to the international community that the surviving Jews be given their own homeland, where they might be secure from such mass murder. 

Wherever that homeland was established, it was going to require the dispossession of whoever was currently living there. 

Perhaps it would have been more just to give the Jews a slice of Germany, rather than taking land from the innocent Arabs. But then, a small Jewish state would never seem secure from bigger neighbours in Central Europe. Ask Poland about that.

Perhaps Canada should have offered some of its own territory, rather than voting to give the Jews some of the Arabs’.

But then, Britain was indeed altruistically giving some of its own territory for the creation of this Jewish homeland. Britain had conquered the territory from the Ottomans in the recent World War.

And Palestine made the most sense, not necessarily because it was the ancient homeland of the Jews, but because it had the largest concentration of Jews anywhere. 

This was largely because of its symbolic important to the Jews, and largely because the British had already been legally bound, by League of Nations Mandate in 1922, to create in Palestine a homeland for the Jewish people. Accordingly, they were more or less bound to allow Jewish immigration into the area. 

Stalin made a parallel attempt to set up a Jewish homeland in Siberia, but got little uptake.

The only solution I can see is acceptance of the status quo.

Trump's Nobel

Napoleon is said to have preferred his generals to be lucky rather than good. Trump seems to be lucky. He is now credited with a major breakthrough in the Middle East, a peace deal between Israel and the UAE. But peace in the Middle East has been in the cards for a while.

Once upon a time peace in Ireland seemed impossible too; then it just happened.

Not hard to understand why. The Soviet Union collapsed; for a time Libya took over sponsorship of the IRA, but when they lost interest in turn, guerilla fighting ceased to be a viable career option.

The strife in the Middle East, as well as Islamist terrorism, has been funded by oil revenues. For the past few years, thanks to fracking, oil revenues have been drying up.

War is a luxury the Arab world can no longer afford.

Doubting Thomas and Blind Faith

There is a disturbing element to last Sunday’s reading. I got distracted yesterday into writing once again about transubstantiation. I meant to write once again about salvation by faith alone.

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

It seems “Doubting” Thomas is criticized for not believing without evidence. This is a common reading of the passage. He should have believed it all without seeing the evidence for himself.

But this makes no sense. Why should anyone believe anything without evidence? Why should this be considered admirable, instead of merely credulous? If we are to believe without evidence, how do we choose what to believe, and what not to believe? What if we are told the moon is made of emerald Camembert?

I think the passage must be read differently. Those who believe without having seen are being congratulated for their good luck, not commended. “Blessed” can obviously have this meaning. When Jesus says, in the Beatitudes, “blessed are those who mourn,” surely he is not saying we have a moral duty to mourn without cause. “Lucky for you if you can believe without evidence.”

True faith is not blind, and is not an act of arbitrarily believing this or that in order to be saved. That is not faith in God; that is usurping the powers of God. It requires faith to pursue the logic and evidence relentlessly, fearlessly, humbly, wherever it leads. To assert a truth because you want it to be true, because you think it will gain you something to believe it, is the opposite of faith.

Accordingly, as Descartes for one demonstrated, doubt is the foundation of all faith. Thomas is modelling the proper attitude.

Jacob wrestling with God at the Jabbok River demonstrates it too. 

Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there until the breaking of the day. When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him, the man touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained as he wrestled. The man said, “Let me go, for the day breaks.”

Jacob said, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.”

He said to him, “What is your name?”

He said, “Jacob.”

He said, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

For this, he won the name that he has passed down to all his descendants, “Israel.” The name means “Wrestles with God.”

Any truly religious person must know such nights. It is the man who is forever engaging with God who has true faith.

The Secret History of Crimea

The Jewish Khazar Empire

As the Ukraine spirals further into chaos, and the Mideast crises drag on without sign of resolution, it is interesting to ponder what might have been.

In the years just after World War II, Molotov was largely in control of the Soviet Union, and the expected successor to Stalin. He had a plan, ultimately vetoed by Stalin, to make the Crimea a Jewish homeland.

There was a lot of sense to the idea. Unlike Palestine, the Crimea had recently been depopulated. Stalin had deported the Crimean Tatars for collaboration with the Germans. So the land was up for grabs. Moreover, it had a history of Jewishness. The local Jewish population was significant, and it had been part of the Medieval Jewish kingdom of the Khazars. If Arthur Koestler is right, modern Askenazi Jews are actually mostly Khazar by blood.

Molotov's wife was Jewish

The Zionists, for their part, were not terribly picky at this point as to where their homeland was to be, so long as they were given one.

Had the plan gone through, we might have avoided most or all of the ongoing strife in the Middle East, and certainly several wars. We might also have avoided the recent troubles over Crimea. From the standpoint of the Jews, the Crimea is more defensible over the long term than Palestine, and more fertile. Moreover, it is European, as were most of the Jews who colonized Israel. It would have looked far less like the last colony of imperial Europe.

Israel: Just a Bigger Ghetto

Sofia's Grand Synagogue

I was walking along a street in downtown Sofia one Friday evening several years ago. Gradually, through the dusk, I realized I was surrounded by a small gang of elderly people. All the men were wearing yarmulkes. I had stumbled upon the last remnants of Sofia's Jewish community heading for synagogue for the beginning of the Sabbath. Perhaps a score of aged men and women.

In 1944, Jews made up one quarter of the city's population.

What happened to them all? No, they were not sent to Hitler's death camps. Bulgaria never permitted that. Instead, they all emigrated to Israel after the war.

Sofia synagogue interior

I am not at all sure this was a good idea. I am not at all sure that Israel is a good idea. And I do not mean that it is bad for the Arabs, although no doubt it is. I mean it is bad for the Jews.

In fact, it has done Hitler's work for him: it has achieved his vision. Early plans and directives suggest that Hitler had no special interest in killing Jews. His original idea was to exile them—he thought to Madagascar, or somewhere else in Africa. This was also, not coincidentally, the original plan of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Palestine would have done nicely had the British allowed it. Hitler just wanted them out of Europe, so that they could not contaminate Europe's Aryan purity. Just as Herzl wanted an independent state to prevent Jewish assimilation.

Theodor Herzl

Hitler, in other words, was a Zionist. Israel has done exactly what he sought to do, but was unable to do. Is this a good thing?

And is it a wise strategy in terms of Jewry's ultimate survival to huddle into one small nation state? Isn't this a case of putting all one's eggs in one basket? Wasn't Jewry's previous strategy, of dispersion throughout the nations, in fact an unusually successful one? Where, by contrast, are the Assyrians, the Carthaginians, or the Visigoths today? It allowed them an escape hatch in all circumstances: suppress them in Spain, and they had connections and relations in Turkey; in the Netherlands, and they had contacts in Poland. Hitler, though he controlled all of Europe, was unable to eliminate them. In ten years, he managed to kill six million. By contrast, now two well-placed Iranian bombs could wipe out seven million Jews in an instant.

A passionate Zionist

Just as keeping all the Jews of a city in one ghetto made it easier to find them when a pogrom started, so concentrating all the Jews of the world into one twelve-mile-wide country seems on the face of it like herding them all into one big cattle train.

And it is, of course, apartheid, segregation. This has not always turned out well elsewhere. Nor did we ultimately find shipping all the blacks of America back to Liberia an entirely satisfactory solution for that minority group.

Moreover, if the Jews are really determined to set up shop permanently in one location, Israel is actually a remarkably bad choice. There is a reason why the Israelites have, historically, kept being thrown off this land. As have the Canaanites, the Philistines, and the crusading Franks. It is a natural thoroughfare, the only land route between Africa and Asia, the carrying point between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, wedged in between the two larger entities of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Trying to establish and hold an independent nation in this little corridor is rather like building your house in the middle of a highway, and hoping nobody will trespass. Not to mention, of course, that the place is a desert, a natural wasteland. The Zionists could have done far better by settling Argentina, Oklahoma, or the interior of BC. All of which were still more or less available.

A sheep among wolves.

At the same time, the loss of so much of its Jewish population, I suspect, has greatly impoverished Europe. I had this sense in Sofia, and it seems, on reflection, self-evidently so. Jews are responsible for a staggering proportion of European, as well as American, culture. It is the mission of the Jews, after all, according to the covenant, to be a light unto the nations. By retreating to Israel, they are abandoning this mission, and this religious duty. Is it any wonder that European culture now seems moribund and listless? The light has departed from it. If American culture seems still more vital, it is perhaps because fewer of its Jews have been tempted to leave for Israel. And abandoning their historic mission is likely to have the same enervating effect on Judaism.

Now, of course, as a result of Israel's existence, the Jewish witness has been stripped from the Muslim world as well. Distinct communities and subcultures all over the world, with their millennia of traditions, are being wiped out, as in Sofia, in a generation. Bahrain's synagogue stands idle. The Jewish community of Cochin, of over two thousand years' duration, older than France or England, is no more.

The abandoned Manama synagogue.

One suspects that, when the histories are written a hundred years from now, the State of Israel will be seen as a greater calamity for the Jewish people than the Holocaust itself.

Interior of Cochin synagogue.

The Ancient Civilization that Dare Not Speak Its Name

A model modern US grade 6 curriculum at which I am looking currently seeks, admirably, to avoid the ethnocentrism of the old ancient history curriculum, which limited the birth of civilization as we know it to Greece and Rome. I'm all for that. In a delirium of inclusion, it adds to the mix Egypt, Mesopotamia, early China, Persia, India, East Africa, and Mesoamerica. Indeed, fearful of letting anyone feel their ancestors are left out, it also throws in “hunter/gatherer” and “tribal” generically, despite the fact that, not having had cities, these groups were not, literally, civilizations.

But hey, despite all this inclusiveness, do you notice a problem here? Do you notice one group awkwardly missing from that list above? One group that has had an undeniably important influence on civilization as we know it?

Apparently, Jewish students are to understand that their ancestors had no part in the ancient world, or in civilization. Where are the Hebrews or ancient Israel? The guys who gave us three great world religions, our basic moral code, and all that?

One can certainly understand the problem with including them. Their history is also sacred history, to Jews and Christians. Including them, perhaps, would be too controversial for a public school. But ignoring them does not work any better; and the very attempt to be inclusive makes their absence far more troublesome.

And it certainly denies schoolchildren a proper understanding of the development of civilization.

There is only one real solution here: religion-based schooling.

Israel's October Surprise

This writer is saying the same things I have been saying here:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/when-israel-strikes-iran-in-october/

Hard to believe there's no fire behind all the smoke about an imminent Israeli strike on Iran.

The Coming October Surprise

There is definitely chatter going on about Obama dropping Biden as VP candidate in favour of Hillary Clinton.

Here's what I think is behind it.

Israel believes Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon. Their calculation is to strike now, if they think Obama is going to be reelected, or wait, if they think a new administration might be more favourable to Israel.

The polls now favour Obama.

Therefore, the Israelis are likely to strike at least before January. Indeed, the calculus may suggest striking as soon as they are reasonably certain of an Obama win. That would probably be September or October. Just in time for an “October surprise.”

If they strike, there is likely to be a muscular response from Iran. This will dominate the news for a time; Israeli sources are talking about a month-long war.

Whether or not Obama was a good bet to win before this point, this will probably make him a shoo-in. Nobody can blame him for the carnage, and the natural tendency will be to rally round the Commander in Chief. This also takes the public focus off economics, Obama's weak spot, and puts it on foreign affairs, where he seems to have done a decent job. Or rather, Hillary Clinton seems to have done a decent job.

This development, if it comes, will leave the Republican ticket flat-footed, as its expertise is entirely on domestic economic matters. The Ryan pick cemented that, and struck me as risky in part for this reason.

At this point, Obama doing anything is perhaps a case of spiking the ball, but it does make sense to highlight the foreign policy side by taking on Clinton as VP candidate, giving the Democratic ticket the image of the team who are most likely to be able to handle the foreign crisis. That is not quite so clear with Obama-Biden—Romney and Ryan just might pip them in perceived competence even so. It is Clinton who has been the face of US foreign policy. Presumably, Obama has or soon will have advance warning from the Israelis at least that they are seriously considering an attack.

If he does decide to swap Biden for Clinton, I think it will be an indication that the balloon is going up.

Some say Clinton is unlikely to want the job. However, if she wanted the Secretaryship of State, she might also go for the Vice Presidency in these circumstances. If she wants to succeed Obama as president, then, win or lose, this puts her in a somewhat better position, by eliminating Biden as a rival in 2016. If she does not want to succeed Obama as president, then this is a good way to cap off her political career. Rockefeller made the same decision.

Bombing Iran

Leon Panetta, amazingly, has just said he expects an Israeli attack on Iran in April, May, or June.

This is remarkable, because if he knows something, this is sensitive information. If Iran can expect an attack at that time, they can watch and try to prepare for it. The huge tactical advantage of surprise is largely lost.

So why would Panetta do this? The only motive I can see is to make it clear it is not the US who is attacking, hence perhaps avoiding Iranian and Muslim backlash against America and American interests.

This fits with a few other recent bits of news. First, just a week or two ago, the US leaked the claim that they had no bombs that could definitely crack the Iranian bunkers, and so they were ordering an upgrade. Again, on the face of it a damaging leak that threatened US interests. But if believed, it tells Iran that the US is not planning and is not responsible for any attack in the very near future on Iranian installations.

And the third, even more disturbing, piece of evidence is the American withdrawal of all forces from Iraq just a month or so ago. Officially, this was because the US and Iran could not agree on a SOFA. But several sources have claimed the US did not try very hard. This withdrawal was against the advice of the top military brass. Again, it seems against US interests, or at least risks losing US prestige.

But it too makes sense on the premise that there is going to be a big attack on Iran soon. A small American deployment in Iraq might simply have been sitting ducks for Iranian retaliation. A large American deployment in Iraq might have trapped American into a large-scale land war with Iran.

My take is this: there will probably be a massive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. It will be done by Israel, though America or others may help behind the scenes. America believes Iran is capable of doing a lot of damage in any counter-attack. Hence it is wisest to limit possible retaliatory targets to Israel alone.

And it will probably happen before April.

Let's watch and see.