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Wednesday, September 17, 2003

American integrity, security compromised by Washington's blind allegiance to Israel

by Chris Moore, LibertarianToday.com

Columnist Ilana Mercer recently used her forum in World Net Daily ("The Nature of the Jewish State") to take issue with points in an article I wrote for LibertarianToday.com entitled "Washington: Segregationist Israel--Good! Segregationist Trent Lott--Bad!"

My column revolved around the shameful hypocrisy the Washington establishment practices on matters of race vis-a-vis Israel and the United States, using the Trent Lott saga (in which he lost his Senate leadership position for publicly inferring praise for segregation) to illuminate the double standard.

My purpose was neither to defend nor condemn Lott, but to illustrate that if the Democrats or Republicans possessed an iota of integrity, they would hold Israel (to whom they mechanically vote billions of dollars a year in financial and military aid) to something at least approaching U.S. standards for racial and civil rights. Instead, while skewering Trent Lott as a racist for a slip of the tongue, they coyly look the other way as Israel openly and maliciously violates the civil and human rights of those it governs based on their race--and uses U.S. taxpayer money to do so.

Mercer objected to several assertions in the article, but as is typical of those in denial about the extent of Israel’s apartheid system, did so in an intellectually dishonest and disingenuous way:

"I’ll try and interpret this blognoscente’s outrageous canard as charitably as possible," she writes of my claim that Israel discriminates against non-Jews. "Since he would be lying if he did, he can’t possibly mean that Israel’s Arab citizens are robbed of their rights..."

Ilana, that is exactly what I meant, and I wasn’t lying.

What I wrote was: "...all manner of basic rights in Israel are granted according to race: citizenship, the right to buy and own property, the right to participate in government service. If a person born in Israel is not of Jewish bloodline, he is not entitled to any of these; in fact, he is often legally barred from all of them. However, if he is of Jewish blood, even if he was born, say, in America, his is automatically entitled to them all...."

Mercer amazingly chose to interpret the paragraph as applying only to prospective immigrants to Israel rather than those citizens already living there (which makes it easier to ignore the factual foundations of the charge, I suppose) and prattled on about how Israel is entitled to restrict its immigration list to Jews. Nonetheless, I stand by my original charge: Israel discriminates against its non-Jewish citizens and routinely denies them entitlements that are automatically granted to Jews.

Fact: Israelis are required by the government to carry identity cards which record whether or not they are Jewish. The Israel Land Administration (ILA) is responsible for managing and leasing over 90% of the land in Israel. Those who are not registered as Jews are automatically disqualified from utilizing much of the land under ILA control. Registered Jews face no such restrictions barring them from available ILA property.

Can you imagine the uproar in this country if, for example, the federal government registered whites with special identity cards that gave them privileges over African-Americans or other minorities with regard to where they could rent or own? Unthinkable. Yet Congress, including Democrats who rely heavily on the African-American vote, endorses such a concept when it writes Israel its annual blank check.

Mercer writes that "The sole legal distinction between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel is that the latter are not required to serve in the Israeli army (a bonus, wouldn’t you think?)."

What she doesn’t say is that, being the garrison state that Israel is, the army is the gateway to broader government service, and those that haven’t served in the army (or were never allowed to) are banned from many government jobs, and sometimes restricted from certain private sector jobs as well. In a socialist country like Israel, such an arrangement severely restricts a person’s job prospects. Limit army admittance to Jews, limit most government jobs to army veterans, limit most government jobs to Jews. Clever trick.

What might a corollary in America look like? How about this: limit college admission to whites, limit government service to college graduates, limit government jobs to whites. Of course, our enlightened leaders in Washington would never dream of backing such an immoral scheme, or would they? After all, they endorse this insidious form of racism in principle by subsidizing it in Israel.

Speaking of the "racist" charge, Mercer says that "for their purposes, anti-Israel libertarians appear to have adopted leftist human-rights nomenclature..." She also maintains that "As it’s understood in the U.S., racism is more often concerned with discrimination based on distinct physical characteristics. It’s thus important to understand that Jews are not a race. There are white, brown and black Jews in Israel..."

In other words, Mercer is suggesting that libertarians who charge racism are betraying their beliefs by adopting left-wing rhetorical and political tactics, and that it is impossible for government favoritism of Jews to be considered racial favoritism because Judaism is not a race, it’s really just a religion.

As to the first claim, my response is that because libertarians rarely brandish the "racist" charge, when they are forced to, you can bet it’s probably true. And yes, the left does throw the epithet around routinely, but strangely you never hear it from mainstream leftist Democrats with regard to Israel--more evidence of its veracity. (And evidence that Democrats have gotten away with the political equivalent of murder for far too long now--taking credit for championing the rights of racial minorities in America while simultaneously supporting an apartheid state in Israel.)

As to the notion that Judaism has no racial element and is only a religion, tell that to the Israeli government, which awards Jewish citizenship (and its accompanying privileges) according to whether or not an applicant’s parent is of Jewish blood--even to enthusiastic atheists!

Sadly, Mercer’s misleading and outright fictitious claims about the state of civil rights in Israel for non-Jews are par for the course among its supporters, both Jew and gentile alike. They portray Israel as having a U.S. style "democracy," which succeeds only in diminishing both the word and the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world. After all, if their claims were true, what would that say about how American-style democracy treats its racial minorities? Those of us who live here know that our minorities are treated better than nearly anyplace else on earth, but does the Arab world know that? Not if it is forming its opinions based on how Arabs are treated in Israel--or worse yet, how they are treated in the occupied territories. In that light, it’s not so hard to understand why Iraqis are so tenaciously opposed to American occupation. They likely believe that the U.S. will treat them the same way that the Israelis treat the Palestinians under their control.

And in the occupied territories, which the Israeli government is in de-facto control, the state of civil rights is much worse for Arabs than in Israel. Palestinian political activists are regularly abducted and tortured by the Israeli government; suspected "militants" are routinely assassinated on the streets by the Israeli army (often resulting in the death and maiming of innocent bystanders); even Palestinian children are sadistically beaten for throwing stones. Naturally, the Palestinians respond the only way they can short of rolling over and being crushed by a government indifferent to the lives non-Jews: with terror bombings. But even those hardly scratch what is estimated to be the fourth or fifth most powerful army in the world. The bombs end up hitting the Israeli public, though, which on cue demands Arab blood in retaliation.


Ignoring the fact that most libertarians oppose all foreign aid because it implicates America in the actions of its recipients, which often leads to blowback (Sept. 11 being one shocking example) Mercer is a strange libertarian to be puzzled as to why real libertarians object to American financing of the authoritarian hell that Israel and the occupied territories have become. Not only should Israel be seen as a cautionary warning of how easily socialism can be used to enforce ethnic tribalism, but also as a portent of the kinds of problems that befall a "democracy" that adopts an official state religion: a shattered economy, racial and religious violence, bombings, perpetual warfare.

With Israel, we see the lengths to which such a state will go to control and manipulate its constituents/adherents. And how it will use advanced and sophisticated Soviet-like propaganda campaigns to convince them that in addition to their lives, the survival of their very religion is at stake.

The widespread notion among Zionists that today’s Israel, a military powerhouse with perhaps hundreds of nuclear weapons, is in an existential fight for its life ("In Israel...retaining a Jewish majority is a matter of greater urgency. It’s a matter of life and death really..." writes Mercer) is a prime example. As any cultist knows, the fastest way to separate a person from his or her individuality and make them subservient to a group is first to isolate them (hence Israel’s new "security fence") and then convince them that "outsiders" are out to get them. If that means deliberately provoking the stateless, army-less Palestinians into desperate suicide bombings, so be it.

No informed person believes that the Middle East is a walk in the park or that Arabs haven’t historically been just as ruthless toward the Jews as Jews are toward the Palestinians today, and just as vulnerable to being manipulated by their leaders. And while it’s true that Israel treats its Arab citizens (excluding the Palestinians in the occupied territories) better than most Muslim countries treat their minority citizens, it’s also true that the Jewish state should be held to a much higher standard. Why? Because no Muslim state has been provided all the money and military hardware it can hold--and the tacit permission to use both for purposes of persecution--as both the Democrats and Republicans have provided for Israel.

Unfortunately, not only has U.S. aid to Israel been abused, but this abuse has given fanatics a legitimate opening through which to illegitimately attack America. Our blind spot for Israel has become an Achilles heel, and turned us into a target for Muslim rage. Right now, most Americans are unaware of what the Israeli government is really doing with their tax dollars. But that will change as more American casualties return from the sand traps of Iraq--good American boys betrayed by Congress and sent into harms way by a clique of neocon ideologues bent on protecting the Jim Crow laws of a small, high maintenance Middle Eastern nation.

Chris Moore is editor of LibertarianToday.com

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Libertarians could reap huge political benefits by challenging Democrats, Republicans on immigration status quo

(By Chris Moore, LibertarianToday.com) -- Libertarianism is regularly accused of being an “open borders” ideology. Whenever the prospect of a Libertarian government is discussed, among the first rhetorical accusations is that it would mean an end to immigration laws, citizenship laws and even the concept of nationality. The borders would be opened, the refugee flood would begin, and all across the country Americans would have Mexicans camping in their back yards.

While there is a utopianistic streak in the libertarian movement that conceptually fantasizes about a borderless future, no serious Libertarian Party candidate should advance this notion as a viable possibility any time soon. In fact, in the short-term and for the foreseeable future, Libertarians should actually propose stricter immigration and border controls than do the Republicans and Democrats, and not just because some Americans already do have Mexicans camping in their back yards. This should be done for strategic purposes, but also because in the current economic and political climate, it is intellectually consistent with libertarian ideals.

At the moment, the Libertarian Party trumpets the economic benefits of immigration by selectively citing pro-immigration studies and arguing that if welfare programs were cut, taxpayers wouldn’t get stuck with huge immigrant-related social-services costs. But the economic disaster that is California (one of the highest immigration states in the country) drastically undermines the economic-benefits-trumps-expenses argument. As for the social-service costs, once welfare is cut, maybe libertarians can talk about loosening the borders. But until that is accomplished, open immigration is an open invitation to get new arrivals on the dole, and to move America inexorably toward socialism.

It’s long since time for the Libertarian Party to change its official policy on this issue. And by doing so, what huge political benefits the party could reap.

Political payoff could be huge
Already a hot-button issue, poll after poll has shown a majority of Americans support stricter immigration controls. And year after year, the status-quo parties ignore the public’s will. There is a pent-up demand for political action on this issue and the pressure will only build as the unemployment rate continues to rise.

When adding up the potential votes for a more restrictive immigration policy, it quickly becomes clear the political payoff could be huge. In addition to the unemployed and people who support stricter border controls out of principle, there are literally millions of workers whose jobs are threatened by the continuing deluge of immigrants: the unskilled working-class fed up with trying to compete with low-wage immigrant labor; low-skill retail service sector workers whose wages never rise because of the downward pressure caused by a large ready-and-waiting immigrant labor pool; semi-skilled blue collar workers -- truck drivers, transportation workers, manufacturing and construction-industry workers, mechanics; even many health care workers -- all of these industries and their living-wage pay scales are threatened by a massive immigrant work force either massing on the borders or already here.

In addition, there the millions of people spanning the entire socio-economic spectrum that recognize the threat to quality-of-life that uncontrolled immigration brings. Right now, that threat is most evident in the Southwest, where major city freeways are clogged, public schools are overrun and public hospitals are bursting at the seams (all of which makes that region a natural place for an immigration-control Libertarian Party to establish a foothold). But those problems are inevitably going to spread north, east and west, too. Someone is going to reap political rewards for addressing the problem. If they would only listen to reason and approach the issue with a little political sophistication, Libertarians would be in a good position to be the party to do so.

Challenging the contemporary open-borders status quo
One major reason the United States has been so economically and politically successful is because it citizens, from the Founders on down the line, possessed a unique combination of defining characteristics: a love of liberty and freedom and an accompanying hostility toward tyrannical government. It was their commitment to both of these concepts that spurred the Founders to first fight a war against the British to secure them, and then enshrine them in the Constitution by writing a series of government checks and balances into the rule of law.

Americans are still strong on personal liberties, but despite their heritage, they are slipping in their resistance to tyrannical government, which today takes the form of creeping domestic socialism. So today’s immigrants are arriving en masse into a socialistic environment run by a government that is no longer committed to limiting itself or securing its citizen's freedom by encouraging self-sufficiency. In fact, it actually discourages immigrants from pursuing these ideals on their own. Mass immigration is designed to shore up support for the political status quo, as the Republicans and Democrats, the architects of the current system, well know.

For the Democrats, mass immigration means the ability to buy votes from poor immigrants and their extended communities by promising welfare, social services and government jobs in return. For Republicans, mass immigration means an ever-expanding marketplace and cheap labor for their big-business constituency, which in return keeps their coffers running over. (The GOP’s folly, of course, is that a campaign money edge can blunt a demographic tide for only so long, which is why Republicans are more often following Democrats down the road of throwing taxpayer money at various government-dependent constituencies in exchange for votes.) For both parties, mass immigration means a population that will forever be grateful to the status quo powers running the government for letting them into a country with a standard of living that is almost always head and shoulders above where they came from.

The problem with all this is that the United States has a high standard of living because its population has prevented the government from stealing the hard-earned fruits of its labor. By allowing mass immigration, the Democrats and Republicans are selling out the long-term overall interests of the country for the short-term benefit of maintaining their iron-grip on power. This is to be expected from the Democrats, who don’t really want people controlling their own economic destinies anyway and would much rather run the entire economy through the federal government. And more recently it is to be expected from the Republicans, who will gladly compromise their few remaining scruples for the price of a fund raising ticket. But it need not be the position of the Libertarians, who can tap into a working and middle-class fed-up with paying for this dysfunctional form of socialism and exploit the issue without straying from their status as the party of principle.

How to sell immigration control
Libertarian candidates could sell their advocacy of strict immigration controls to the public on the following grounds: Uncontrolled immigration swamps social-services agencies (depriving their existing “clients”), and it swamps public schools as well (decimating the quality of education for existing students). This inevitably leads to higher taxes, and even those never seem to solve the educational and social problems that mass immigration brings. Privatizing schools and even social services could solve many of these problems, but no political or ideological solution can possibly contend with tidal wave after tidal wave of economic refugees.

Another strong libertarian argument against uncontrolled immigration with populist appeal is one of national sovereignty. Just as libertarians oppose willy-nilly war-making in part because it violates and undermines the concept of national sovereignty (the right of a nation to choose it’s own political direction) so too does uncontrolled immigration. By radically changing the culture, value-system and population demographic, mass immigration is a back-door means by which big-government advocates can radically attack the America that up until recently was a bulwark against socialism, and replace it with an America that is less resistant to the soft tyranny of government dependence and control.

Of course, advocating a reduction in immigration will open Libertarian candidates up to the standard political epithets from open-borders advocates: xenophobic, isolationist, nativistic…the list goes on. But no one is proposing an end to immigration, only a strong effort to get it under control. As for countering the demagogues, really now, is there anyone less patriotic and more anti-American than those who want to alter the demographic, cultural and political landscape of the world’s oldest democracy in order to advance their own short-term financial interests, and the interests of big-government, socialistic controls?

Chris Moore is Editor of LibertarianToday.com