Louis Rene Beres--Pimping for Israel from the Comfort and Safety of Indiana University

Well, Dear Candidates, Which Is It? A Tactical War On Terror, Or A Genuine Clash Of Civilizations? 12 Feb 2008 Originally Published: The Jewish Press, February 8, 2008. From a national survival standpoint, the candidate debates remain pretty much beside the point. Not a single presidential aspirant has answered (or even attempted to answer) a very important question: Are we Americans now involved in a merely tactical struggle against particular terror groups and individuals, or are we, instead, embroiled in something much larger? Should we now be focusing on assorted political, military and logistical issues (the effective position, more or less, of all candidates), or upon the much wider religious and cultural context from which our principal terror enemies are spawned? These questions are politically sensitive, to be sure, but the answers will determine precisely which security measures we should adopt. Here are some preliminary answers: The roots of past and still-impending anti-American terror lie deeply embedded in civilizational hostility, in a partial but widespread Arab/Islamist hatred for Western values and post-Enlightenment modernity. This constructed and codified hatred extends primarily to Judaism, but also to certain parts of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Although it is true that the greatest portion of Arabs and Muslims strenuously reject terror violence as a means of fulfilling Islamic expectations, the remaining minority portion numbers in the tens of millions. Literally millions of Jihadists are still unhesitatingly prepared to enter “paradise” at a moment’s notice. For them, there can be nothing better than an obligatory “martyrdom.” . . . Our War on Terror must confront a far-reaching enemy effort to usher in a new Dark Ages. We must wage a genuinely civilizational struggle against a resurgent seventh-century medievalism that seeks to bring fear, paralysis and death to whole legions of unbelievers. --read the entire rant-- _________________________________________________________________ Beres, from the comfort and safety of a tenured position at Indiana University (where he needn't personally duck any bullets), spews his pro-Israeli, anti-American opinion almost exclusively in the Jewish press. This paragon of ignorance concerning his own limited and skewed views of Israeli history, constantly beats the drum for widening the Arab-Muslim-American gulf, for the specific benefit of Israel. He would have us attack Iran with nuclear weapons, having written "any weakness of U.S. strategic nuclear doctrine would inevitably impact the safety and physical survival of Israel." So what? Clark Gable perhaps said it best--"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." I have written elsewhere ". . . Jews, who will not come to terms with the Palestinians they displaced. The Never Again that Jews so righteously proclaim is not for Palestinians or Sudanese, unavailable to Chadians or Liberians. Kurds and Chechnyans need not apply." If Beres paid any attention to Israeli history, he would know that David Ben Gurion (the first Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Beres) famously said,

"If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing, we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

Another former Prime Minister, this one a little more recent (Ehud Barak) once admitted,"had he been born a Palestinian, he would have joined a terrorist organization." Beres, who sports a Ph.D from Princeton University, styles himself a strategic and military affairs columnist, without offering even the slightest background or qualification for that position. The subject of his Ph.D is so guarded it isn't even Google-searchable. He chaired Project Daniel, Ariel Sharon's war-mongering Israeli committee against the terrorism that Ben Gurion and Barak agreed was justified. 36% of Jewish Americans announce themselves as 'not very' or 'not at all' attached to Israel. American Jews make up a miniscule four million in a population of some 300 million (approx 1.4%). Thus Louis Beres, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and AIPAC, et al would have us further destroy our world reputation for the chimera of Israeli-American safety (emphasis on the former). A total of thirty-six million Americans (12% of total inhabitants, 8 1/2 times the Jewish population) reported Irish ancestry in the 2006 American Community Survey (Wikipedia). They never lobbied us into backing them (to the tune of $140 billion and a mutual-defense pact) against the Irish Republican Army. It won't sell, buddy. AIPAC is more and more seen in the same model as the NRA, a lobbyist organization absolutely unaligned with core American values. Israel, in failure after failure to negotiate honestly with the Palestinians they displaced and degraded, are losing main-stream America faster than they have lost mainstream Jewry. Don't smugly "Well, Dear Candidate" me. Your so-called constituency doesn't even carry the backing of your Israeli founding and near-current Prime Ministers. The one Prime Minister you did work for has been indicted in world opinion as a terrorist in his own service to Israel. Inciting this country into an unprovoked war for the benefit of a third nation is dangerously close to treason, Mr. Beres.