Israel and the World

All over Europe, there are expressions of solidarity with Israel. The Star of David is flown. Buildings and monuments are lit up in blue and white. Here is a typical scene:

That’s great. Welcome. Heartening. But if I may be blunt (because we have had so much experience with this): The world tends to like Jews when they are down and bleeding — not so much when they are up and fighting.

We will see, in coming weeks.

I think of an expression that Kevin Williamson taught me. He must have heard it in West Texas, when he was growing up: “Some people just need killin’.” They do. Hamas, for example.

In the air are calls for a cease-fire. I think of Bernard Lewis, the great Middle East historian, and a quip he made in 2014. The Gaza war was on. Bernard was almost 100. Various voices abroad were calling for a cease-fire. Bernard was in Israel and full of sympathy for the people around him. To calls for a cease-fire, he rejoined: “We cease, they fire.”

• I don’t mean to pooh-pooh symbols (entirely). This was awfully nice. Wonderful.

• In France, President Macron has been magnificent. The Eiffel Tower has been lit in blue and white. Etc. There is also this:

Permit a personal memory. In the summer of 1982, I was in Paris for the first time. (In Europe for the first time, for that matter.) I had just graduated from high school. How thrilling it was, that trip.

That summer, Abu Nidal and his gang staged their attack in the Marais. They bombed Goldenberg’s Deli, on the Rue des Rosiers. Killed a bunch of people, including two Americans.

This made a deep impression on me. It was one of those things that shape you.

I also remember Prime Minister Begin — who said something like, “If the French state can’t protect our people, we will.” It was mere bravado. Yet, it was stirring.

• Consider the below:

In free and liberal societies, there are always enemies — enemies of liberalism, enemies of man. What to do about them? For one thing, this: If they don’t obey the rules — if they violate the rights of others — you bust them, with alacrity.

Sickening, the intimidation that goes on in our societies.

• I greatly appreciated this, from Kaz Nejatian:

• By Francesca Ebel, the Russia correspondent of the Washington Post, a very interesting report on the Kremlin and Hamas. An excerpt:

In recent years, Russia’s contact with Hamas has become more frequent. Since 2020, Lavrov has received senior Hamas figures — including the leader of the group, Ismail Haniyeh — at least five times in Moscow, with the most recent visit taking place in March.

“Lavrov” is Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister.

Another excerpt:

Sergey Mardan, a Russian propagandist and television presenter, wrote: “This mess is beneficial for Russia, because the globalist toad will be distracted from Ukraine and will get busy trying to put out the eternal Middle Eastern fire. Iran is our real military ally. Israel is an ally of the United States. Therefore, choosing a side is easy!”

Yes. Iran is an arms supplier to Russia and Hamas, both.

• Let me recommend an article by Daniel Hannan. (When don’t I?) It is an article shot through with pain and honesty. The heading is: “This week, my dream of a prosperous, bourgeois state in Palestine died.”

Hannan looks at smaller pictures and bigger ones. Here is something in the latter category:

Speaking in Sochi last week, Putin spoke of the eclipse of Western power and the rise of alternative civilizational models. A war in Israel is, from his point of view, almost a second front against NATO. We are, in short, seeing precisely the multi-polar world that wokies drool over. Welcome to the post-Western order, in which wars multiply and violence begets violence.

Hannan then says,

It seems almost redundant, at this stage, to lament what might have been. I used to have a vision of a propertied, bourgeois Palestinian state, whose citizens were too busy making money to join militias. After all, in almost every country to which they have emigrated, Palestinians have proved enterprising and industrious.

Oh, my gosh, yes. I grew up with many, many Palestinians — Palestinian Americans — in southeastern Michigan. (The Detroit metropolitan area has the largest Arab population outside the Middle East.)

One of the prerequisites for peace is: the desire for it. What if most people want it but a minority — a militant minority — will not permit it? That is a question oft addressed and hard to answer.

To be continued.