Daniel Greenfield

The Light Above

For the eight days of Chanukah, it is common to see a candelabra with eight lights and one light above it, shining here and there, in the windows of stores and hallways, in people’s homes and even on intersections. Some are filled with oil, while others are topped with candles. Some tower high overhead and some are child sized. But all have eight lights and one above it, and all commemorate the same occasion. Many nations have religious holidays and days of national liberation and independence, however rarely do the two come together quite in the way that Chanukah does. That is because Chanukah is a commemoration of national liberation from the rule of the Syrian-Greek empire ruled by Antiochus IV and a commemoration of the hand of divine influence in inspiring and accomplishing that liberation.

When they stop even trying to lie to you

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin bizarrely praises Romney for not even promising to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. She is correct that Republican presidential candidates who got the big job promised it and then broke their promise, but is there something praiseworthy in Romney refusing to even promise something as basic as that?

Between Responsible and Irresponsible Isolationism

There is one fundamental element that is absolutely necessary for an isolationist foreign policy. Isolation. Isolationism without physical isolation is as much good as belligerence without an army to back it up. American isolationism might have been feasible during WW1 when its neighbors were either friendly or no threat, there was no danger from the Pacific and a fleet crossing the Atlantic seemed unlikely. Though it wasn't so unlikely even then.

The Light That Burns

A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again. 120 years after the Maccabees drove out the foreign invaders and their collaborators, another foreign invader, Herod, the son of a Roman Idumean governor, was placed on the throne by the Roman Empire, disposing of the last of the Maccabean kings and ending the brief revival of the Jewish kingdom. The revived kingdom was a plaything in the game of empires. Exiled by Babylon, restored by Persia, conquered by the Greeks, ground under the heel of the remnants of Alexander's empire, briefly liberated by the Parthians, tricked into servitude and destroyed by Rome. The victory of the Maccabean brothers in reclaiming Jerusalem was a brief flare of light in the dark centuries and even that light was shadowed by the growing darkness.

Unlimited Muslim Entitlement

In addition to being exempt from satirical cartoons, airline security procedures and human rights-- the chattering media classes in all their wisdom have decided that Muslims should also be exempt from the laws of economics. Forget welfare, Muslims are now entitled to media welfare. When normal religions want to put on a show promoting their religion, they build themselves a cable channel. Sadly, Bridges TV, the Muslim cable channel dedicated to challenging stereotypes, hating Jews and promoting Islam ran into some trouble when its founder and president beheaded its co-founder, who also happened to be his wife.

Mr. Islam’s Blindfold and Machete

Islam is peaceful. At least that is the likely defense of Rafiqi Islam, a loving husband, who told his wife that he had a present for her, blindfolded her to make it a surprise and then cut off her fingers. Then the rest of the Islam family mopped up the blood, while Mr. Islam threw her fingers into the trash, and after a few hours took her to the hospital where they warned her to tell the doctors that she had an accident.

Should We Intervene in Syria?

Forget all the talk about democracy and a revolt against tyranny, the choice here isn't being a tyrant and a populist movement, it's which species of Islamists will come out on top. On one side is Iran and on the other are the Gulf States and the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria is not an Islamist regime, except to the extent which all Muslims countries incorporate Islamic law into their legal and social systems, but it is the pawn of Iran, a Shiite Islamist state. On the other side are Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulfies, Turkey and the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

A letter from Goebbels

The Republican race is more muddled than ever as Gingrich's numbers fade a little without anyone to take his place. Either Gingrich recovers, Perry surges or it's Romney all the way. The establishment backing Romney had to damage Gingrich to limit the fallout from their backing of Romney. This way they chose between two evils, rather than choosing the man that they were always going to choose.

Know Your Enemy

"The right wing extremist strains of Israeli Judaism are threatening to turn that ignition into a conflagration." That quote comes from Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, the same Rabbi now being widely quoted for his bizarre Tim Tebow column. Or rather there are numerous articles quoting the column without mentioning his name or who he is. This is not the article that I had planned to run tonight. That article has already been written and sits waiting. It may be timely, but it will have to wait until next week, because this is timelier and it needs to be said.

Anyone But Obama

A year ago today few of us probably thought that the primaries would come down to debating whether Romney or Gingrich are more conservative. It's a rather thankless and pointless debate currently being settled by cherry picking statements on single issues. The bottom line is that neither man is particularly conservative, certainly neither man is a small government conservative. But the odds of anyone like that getting to the finish line were never very good. The only two consistently conservative candidates in the race, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann were ridiculed off the stage by a "conservative" media which never gave Santorum a chance and rushed to drown Bachmann the moment that Perry took the stage. Now that media is racking up pageviews on Romney vs Gingrich, tearing down both candidates for fun and profit.

Fear of a Lonely Planet

The left-of-center European press has responded to Prime Minister Cameron's veto of EU 2.0 with all the hysteria of a man on a desert island who sees the rescue plane flying off into the distance. Equal to them is the American press which is already barking that if we don't sign on to Durban's boondoggle and accept a global environmental court, then we have doomed the planet. This pathological drive toward regional and global union regardless of the negatives seems more like a neurotic reaction than serious policy. Is the UK really doomed outside of the EU, especially since for all the hyperbole it isn't anywhere near to being outside the EU, and is a failure to create another disastrous bureaucracy in the name of saving the planet from disaster really going to doom the human race?

A Badly Invented People

In the post-news environment, media no longer exists to report, it exists to disseminate glib talking points that sound good at first, but don't stand up to examination. Fact checks, one of the latest media gimmicks, have become another vector for disseminating talking points. So have media blogs which began repeating the same ridiculous thing over and over again.

The Prisoner

Few other places turn out dystopian fantasies quite like the United Kingdom and if the United States has never quite become the chrome skyscraper and flying car utopian wonderland of its utopian fantasies, with its ubiquitous cameras and DNA banks, the United Kingdom seems well on the way to its dystopian destination. 1984, The Prisoner and V for Vendetta are all a train ride away nowadays. Say the wrong thing and you can expect to be wearing a prison suit and nominated for a national run on Two Minute Hate.

A Holiday in Brussels

Prime Minister Cameron firmly saying no to EU Zero took quite a few people by surprise, I didn't really think he had it in him. But Merkel and Sarkozy have gotten most of the EU on board. The Swedes and the Czechs (barring referendums) may be joining the UK in holding out, but for now long? A change of government in the UK will put the Laborites squealing that Cameron has isolated them from the rest of Europe into power and how long will the resistance last then. Like all international orders, the EU has thrived by waiting around for governments decadent enough to join or fail to resist. Once you're in, getting out takes more guts than any government has shown so far.

Day of Infamy

When the Japanese fighters and bombers passed like shadows over the waters of Hawaii, they carried more than bombs and bullets, their fleeting shadows marked the end of over a century of security. The last time an enemy army threatened American territory was in the early nineteenth century, since then the closest thing had been the vicious clowning of Pancho Villa.

Who is Responsible for Muslim Violence?

Who is responsible for Muslim violence? Anyone but Muslims. When Howard W. Gutman, Obama's ambassador to Belgium, told his audience that Jews should be accepting responsibility for the violence practiced on them by Muslims, because it's their own damn fault for insisting on having a Jewish state, the State Department wasn't willing to stand behind his words, but neither did it disavow him. Imagine for a moment if Howard W. Gutman had adjusted his red hipster glasses and told his audience that Muslims should take responsibility for Islamic terrorism. Hillary would have personally fired him, after yelling at him for a good thirty minutes, and Obama would have issued an apology to the Muslim world. Every newspaper column on both sides of the Atlantic would have spent the better part of the week denouncing Islamophobia and clucking over how mainstream intolerance has become.

The Winter of Our Economic Discontent

What do the United States, Russia and the Middle East have in common? They all have unpopular regimes run by out-of-touch kleptocrats who faced popular uprisings. The opposition groups in all those place don't have much in common, but the governments do. Obama might have sneered at Mubarak or Putin, but for all the pretense of democracy, he was sitting at the top of his own kleptocracy, doling out fortunes to supporters out of the emergency bailout and stimulus plans. The Tea Party was the outraged and vocal response of a working middle-class that was seeing its taxes and its children's future being squandered to feed the appetites of the oligarchy. The media elite might bemoan the Tea Party as the second coming of the Klu Klux Klan, but it was a far more honest expression of economic discontent than OWS, which limited its manufactured anger to the junior partners in the kleptocracy, while giving the men in power a pass.

At the Table with Barry, Leon and Howard

Leon Panetta, fresh from a stint as CIA director and off to his new job as Secretary of Defense, did his best to butch up in the usual way of DC hacks "daringly" delivering the same utterances that have been current in the capital for generations. When Panetta, the man who looks like everyone's least favorite accountant or funeral director, showed up at the Saban Forum, he butched up by shouting that Israel needs to "get to the damn table" and negotiate with the Palestinian Arab terrorists.

A Lack of Leadership

What the 2010 elections and the 2012 primaries both tell us sharply is that having a vibrant grass-roots is not the same as having political leaders. Often when the base is boiling, that's when the party is unable to bring anyone to the table except the halfwits and leaders so uninspiring that no amount of hair pulling cognition can make you understand how they made it to the endgame. After four years of Clinton, the only man that the party thought could beat him was Bob Dole. And yet you can hardly blame the voters when the lineup included stars like Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm and Lamar Alexander. While voter anger was hitting a peak, the party had nothing to offer them except the sort of candidates who probably couldn't have even won forty years earlier.

The Man from Massachusetts

He was a prominent politician from Massachusetts with great hair and all the visual qualities of a leader. There were some who accused him of flip flopping on important issues, but he always had a glib reply, except for the times when he got nervous and said something stupid, like, "I voted for that 87 billion dollars before I voted against it."