SO NOT only does Israel persist in trying to recover all of its Hamas-abducted citizens and secure its defensive security against terrorist outrages such as October 7, but it also has the profound nerve to prevent Iran obtaining 15 nuclear warheads to fire at Israel.
How dare you! How dare you! As Greta would undoubtedly proclaim.
The usual fools of the radical progressive Left, such as the Swedish Doom Goblin and Britain’s Owen Jones, unofficial leader of London’s thriving Gays For Hamas community, are of course horrified by the astonishingly successful Israeli assault on the Iranian regime and its clandestine nuclear weapons programme.
They are joined by a just as vociferous, just as outraged commentariat of the alleged Right in the US, by Tucker Carlson, by Candace Owens, by populist MAGA guru Steve Bannon, and by the libertarian Hamas apologist Dave Smith. In truth, the squeals of all of these were eminently predictable based on their prior responses to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Let us for awareness, if not edification or education, sample some of these responses. Here is good old Tucker, concerned solely with avoiding unnecessary perpetual wars and not at all motivated by anything so crass as Jew hatred:
Mimicking Tucker’s monologue style, we can respond by pointing out that maybe having to explain that calling you a Jew hater is bogus, bogus I tell you . . . So BOGUS . . . isn’t particularly convincing when you are devoting your time exclusively to criticising Israel, pretending that Netanyahu has directed every bad thing that ever happened, and describing Holocaust-denying neo-Nazis like Darryl Cooper as great historians.
Maybe the reason you keep being hit by these claims that you hate Jews, Tucker, is not because of the Power of the Zionist Lobby but because you have taken an increasingly shitty stance in relation to Israel, Netanyahu and, well, Jews and their right to defend themselves from genocidal terrorists and Islamic regimes that openly and repeatedly express the desire to wipe them off the face of the planet? Perhaps sharing such enlightened takes as the belief that every failed US neocon military intervention in the Middle East of the last 20-30 years was an evil Netanyahu master plan (including actions taken by previous and rival Israeli leaders when Netanyahu wasn’t in charge) might have dented your credibility with those of us who don’t share a hatred of Netanyahu, Israel and Jews?
And here is Tucker again, warning us against listening to propagandists. That would be the anti-propagandist Tucker who has been virulently anti-Israel from right about the moment that he acquired a highly lucrative relationship with Qatar, that brave challenger of propaganda. Some might also consider the Olympic-standard back flip seen here compared with pre-Qatar funding Tucker when talking about Pentagon insiders and whether they can be trusted. Didn’t Tucker used to be a bit more sceptical about ‘the Pentagon’s own assessments’?
Of course it’s possible that this is not at all sinister. In fact I’m happy to accept that Tucker really does want US interests placed first and really does want to avoid unnecessary wars. Some of the arguments he is making here are ones that could just as easily be made against US or Western engagement in Ukraine or against any of the failed neocon perpetual wars which I think Tucker, and anyone else who did so, was right to question.
But the problem there is that Ukraine is a different place from Israel, and Iran is a different place from Russia, and arguments that work in one context may fail in another. The innocent explanation of Tucker’s stance on Israel is that it is consistent with his stance on Ukraine and what he is foregrounding here:
- These are foreign wars;
- They aren’t the business of the US;
- Getting involved could be disastrous;
- Getting involved is very expensive;
- Doesn’t America First mean not wasting money and lives on other people’s wars?
Now all of that can definitely be your position without you hating Jews. By its logic of course you would have to rule out any ‘foreign entanglements’, and you could definitely advocate that position honestly while pointing to Washington’s warnings along those lines. That would turn, if followed, US foreign policy into a version of Swiss neutrality or extreme isolationism.
That could all be argued, and it might even be very easy to see that position as a significant improvement on the World’s Policeman, Constant War template the US has followed since World War Two. I’m highly sympathetic to the avoidance of war and the recognition of unnecessary wars that should be avoided because they are avoidable. And I’d say I’m just as disgusted as Tucker is with figures like Lindsey Graham or Mike Pence or that leading Dowager Queen of Regime Change, Victoria Nuland. If Tucker limited himself to stern condemnation of obviously corrupt, crooked and unnecessary military interventionism, without wandering around in a social sewer of alternative voices who all seem focused on hating Jews, I’d still respect him.
Talking of that social sewer, and referring to another alternative voice who once seemed like a worthy opponent of what might be accurately described as an extremist mainstream, we get a more obvious indication that objection to Israeli actions against Hamas or objecting to this strike against Iran is motivated very much by hatred of Jews when we come to the response of Candace Owens. Owens was another figure I once genuinely liked, especially when she seemed to oppose the anti-white racism and hypocrisy of the Black Lives Matter/St George of Fentanyl period. Since Kanye’s descent into utter madness, Owens has followed and now sounds much more like a spokesperson for Nation of Islam than she does a sensible opponent of Critical Race Theory:
Anyone who thinks the above is not about hating Jews really isn’t paying attention. Israel is, in the Candace worldview, demonic. It has a ‘blood lust like no other’. The only Jewish nation on Earth is the only nation Candace describes with such vehement loathing. Notably, she doesn’t speak this way, and never has, about the savage blood lust of Hamas on October 7, which did not prompt her to be sickened at all. Nor has she condemned Iran in such terms, despite decades of Iran sponsoring, funding and creating terrorism that targets the US as much as it targets Israel.
If this was simply a matter of an isolationist decision that this is not America’s war, there would be no need for this level of pure hatred in the condemnation of one side of the conflict. With this level of hate, Candace is repeating and supporting the attitudes of Hamas and of Iran, the things which created the current state of warfare in the first place. Candace and Tucker both imagine Netanyahu as some sort of Sauron, an evil supernatural Enemy who has bewitched and enraptured Western leaders into his Ever Hungry War Agenda.
Criticisms of the Ukraine war that are eminently provable and rational (the corrupt nature of Ukraine, the lack of necessity regarding our intervention, the legitimacy of some Russian points, the purely corrupt financial links and secrets that underpin the false moral arguments for our engagement, the risk of nuclear conflagration and escalation) are all absent in the arguments against supporting Israel. But the very simple point that these are different conflicts with different causes and consequences is lost in either a fetish for Cold War reasoning and Nato belligerence towards Russia or in seething race- and religion-based hatred of Jews in the case of Israel.
For rational and moral clarity, then, it’s important to point out the fundamental differences regarding what we are dealing with in each case:
- Ukraine was not an existing or traditional ally. There were no treaty obligations to protect Ukraine. Israel has been a known, acknowledged and firm Western ally for decades.
- There is little to morally distinguish Ukraine from Russia. Both are former Soviet nations ruled in a dictatorial manner. Russia invaded, but the Ukrainian government had been oppressing and killing ethnic Russians. This wasn’t a Hitler-style invention as an excuse for invasion – even Russia’s enemies admit that 14,000 people were killed on both sides before Russia directly intervened. By contrast, there is a huge moral difference between Israel and Hamas or between Israel and Iran (despite anti-Israeli propaganda on this).
- Ukraine is not a democracy. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
- Ukraine had obvious measures, before the war and early in the war, that would have prevented Russian intervention. Russia would negotiate, and Russia initially simply demanded that the area remain neutral and not part of Nato due to Russian security concerns. No such easy route to peace has ever been available to Israel, whose enemies insist on its complete annihilation.
- Supporting Ukraine required huge new spending. While it’s true that the US provides financial and military support to Israel, the Israelis have a much more developed infrastructure and capacity which allows them to pay for military tech they purchase from the US and which also allows them to fight much more effectively on their own without ever needing to request Western troops. It’s likely that Ukraine can ‘win’ only via direct Western intervention, assuming that attrition alone doesn’t sap Russian interest in the conflict (of which there is little sign so far).
- Israel faces an enemy that is very clearly also our enemy, in that Islamic terrorism has repeatedly targeted the West too, and that Iranian leaders have made it explicit that they want to see the destruction of the US (the ‘Great Satan’) and the UK (the ‘little Satan’) as well. Israel’s war is our war, whether we want to admit that or not, whilst Ukraine’s war is only our war if you believe fantasies such as that Russia intends and is capable of a world military conquest.
- Financial support for Israel has never been lost at an extraordinary rate through corruption. It has built the military and civilian infrastructure of a flourishing nation that now contributes massively to the world in terms of research and innovation. Financial support to Ukraine has been subject to huge levels of corruption, with even Zelensky admitting that billions have gone missing. It matters whether the money you give goes to a use that is beneficial to you too, or whether it goes to buying palaces and luxury cars for the corrupt lesders you are foolishly supporting. Arms supplied to Israel have been paid for, and don’t then appear on the black market for sale. Arms supplied to Ukraine are not paid for, and do appear on the black market for sale.
- Perhaps the clearest distinction comes in terms of what support risks. In intervention on behalf of Ukraine, for no clear or honestly acknowledged gain, we risk escalation to nuclear conflict and a wider World War. That is a pretty big risk. With Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear development, by contrast, the risk is reversed. It is allowing Iran to have nuclear warheads that is the potentially suicidal risk. Escalation to nuclear war becomes more likely from intervening in Ukraine, and less likely from intervention in Iran. Iran would absolutely use a nuke with little or no provocation, and Russia even under the Soviets showed that it would not use a nuke without severe provocation first. Therefore logically with an already nuclear armed opponent who won’t use that option unless you threaten their national existence, the saner option is to avoid severe provocation. But with an enemy that has shown itself to be more belligerent and far more irrational, the saner option is surely to prevent them ever acquiring nukes in the first place.
Jew hatred blinds some people to the differences between these conflicts, and Nato fetish, wrapped up in old Cold War realities that no longer apply, blinds others to the differences between them as well. Quite often, those who oppose supporting Israel supply superficial arguments that don’t apply in this case because they hate Jews, just as those supporting Ukraine supply superficial arguments that don’t apply in that case because they hate Russians. It’s certainly possible to find actual reasons to oppose interventionism in both cases, but this is rarely the case with the arguments put forward.
The idea that Russia is a world military threat is a fantasy, and so is the idea that Israel is a world threat through its innate manipulative evil. Much of the argument for not supporting Israel is based on hate, as is much of the argument for strongly supporting Ukraine. I subscribe to neither Jew hatred nor Russophobia.
But don’t just take my word for the difference between these conflicts. Let us look to the man who has a better personal record on foreign policy than anyone else alive today. Let us look to President Trump. Let us look to the President who delivered the Abraham Accords in his first term, and the recent extraordinary Middle East tour of the second term.
Nobody has a better record of avoiding unnecessary wars than Trump. He was the first US President of the modern era to engage in no new wars during his first term. Trump was loudly and consistently arguing against military interventionism with no clear or realistic goals long before people like Tucker Carlson did, and long before people like Dave Smith were born. The military industrial complex detests Trump. Much of the RINO (Republican in Name Only) opposition and hatred of him has consistently come from those Republicans who are paid by the defence industry and those Republicans who join with Nuland and Democrat hawks in supporting perpetual war policies. This is why McCain and his daughter, close friends and allies of Nuland, detested Trump. This is primarily why Pence betrayed him, why figures like Barr were told to get close to him and be ready to oust him, and why the Deep State has always opposed Trump. The insane progressive social issues were another disagreement, but a secondary one. The first river of corruption was always that cycle of bomb and build and dole out the contracts and kickbacks before the next war, then do it all again.
Military interventionism as a tool for redirecting public spending into private pockets was the right-wing arm of the Uniparty, grasping whatever it could, just as social interventionism as a tool for redirecting public spending into private pockets was the left-wing arm of the Uniparty. The World Policeman and The Social Engineer have been the two masks of Pure Corruption. In USAID funding of both radical social projects and regime change coups, military interventionism and progressive social interventionism were even more explicitly tied than they were simply by the same corrupt figures supporting, and profiting from, both. People like Tucker Carlson were perfectly correct in opposing both unnecessary foreign wars and radical domestic social engineering (DEI, affirmative action, the LGBTQ+ agenda and every race and identity based grift) but then became gullible fools or malignly evil themselves in seeking an underlying ‘it’s the Jews’ narrative to explain the vast corruption that had become commonplace (at which point they welcomed and praised people like Darryl Cooper and Dave Smith, or themselves spouted unhinged blood libels on Israel repeating old anti-Semitic tropes, as Candace does).
What we see with Trump though is rational and pragmatic nationalism that is resistant to both old corruption-based false moral narratives (that so appeal to Establishment conservatives with a fetish for free trade and Nato) and the sewer of Jew hatred that underlies most criticism of Israel. Trump has managed to be simultaneously a strong opponent of unnecessary perpetual wars and foolish engagements driven by corrupt interests, and the strongest supporter of Israel to occupy the Oval Office in modern times, perhaps the firmest friend Israel has ever had. Why?
Because he recognises the pragmatic and moral difference between neocon created wars and Israel’s existential struggle against terrorism sponsored by Iran. With neither ingrained Establishment attitudes towards the inherent sanctity of Nato nor any outmoded Cold War fixed idea of permanent Russian evil, and devoid too of any innate suspicion of Israel as a nation directed by the Wicked Jew, Trump is capable of distinguishing Ukraine from Israel in ways that a Tucker Carlson cannot. Trump and his second administration have been astonishingly adroit in handling foreign affairs, just as they were in the first term but even more so. Far from being rampaging unjust idiocy, as the Globalist media presents it, criticisms of ‘allies’ have been sharply accurate ones (on free speech and democracy, and on European and British determination to provoke a wider conflict via Ukraine). Trump has been the champion of peace so far as Ukraine is concerned, leveraging US influence as hard as he can to force both Putin and Zelensky to end the slaughter.
But with Israel Trump has repeatedly, according to lying mainstream and alternative media Israel-hating reports too, helped Israel. He’s even played on the general false narrative, pretending a rift with Netanyahu that didn’t exist in order to lull Iran into complacency regarding both his own 60-day warning and Israeli preparations for the recent strike on Iranian targets.
And from Trump himself, confirmation of this coordination:
So Trump helped disguise the coming attack, but can also in some ways honestly claim to still be a peace broker, since the US had no direct military involvement and he is urging the Iranians towards negotiation. 4D chess claims have usually been false on the domestic front, where Trump faces more embedded opposition, but are not false on the foreign war front, where the powers of the Presidency operate with more leeway and can be subject much more readily to the true aims of the administration.
So why this difference between Trump calling for peace with Russia but greenlighting Israeli attacks on Iran? The difference is there because he knows that this ‘escalation’ as framed by Israel’s critics is actually de-escalation, the neutralisation of a threat that would otherwise see an actual nuke attack. Compare Russian and Iranian commentary to understand fully why one war is not necessary and one war is necessary.
Here is the ‘madman’ Putin:
With of course similar comments repeatedly directed to Europe and the US. Here, by contrast, is the Mullahs of Iran together with correct commentary on why they are our enemies:
Israel’s supposedly ‘wild’ and ‘dangerous’ war against Hamas followed by strikes against Iran has not been the stupid adventurism and corrupt playing of games we see with neocon unnecessary wars. It has been the most precise, brilliant and successful unravelling of an enemies strategy seen in the modern era, literally reversing 30 or 40 years of Iranian strategy in about two years of carefully co-ordinated retaliation. The entire structure the mullahs built across the Middle East as major sponsors of terrorism has been levelled and taken out. The strike on Iran wasn’t unnecessary, and it wasn’t wild. It was the last chance to stop Iran getting nukes, and the Israelis saved all of us from a nuclear attack by doing this – we were all, in the West, potential Iranian targets. This wasn’t a WMD fiction as we had with Iraq and the unnecessary war there. This was completely real, and an imminent massive threat. Israel seems to have stopped it, but notable too is that it was done with astonishing accuracy:
Hamas is in tatters, its leadership dead. Hezbollah is contained, partly destroyed, and terrified. The Houthis are chastened. Gazans have in some instances finally turned on Hamas. And now Iran’s cherished nuclear development is dead, together with 20 of its senior commanders, so long aided by the foolishness and duplicity of Marxist agents in the West such as Obama, but dealt an instant, crippling blow through Israeli patience, genius and precision.
Not only have Israel’s actions been morally justified by the nature of their enemy, but they have been conducted with very, very high levels of competence – something which cannot be said of neocon wars (except perhaps the First Iraq War) and certainly can’t be said of the aftermath of neocon wars or the money wasted in the Ukraine stalemate.
These wars could not in fact be more different, and Trump, who takes the comments and actions of his opponents seriously, has noted that, in ways neither the Jew-hating ‘woke right’ (much as the term is incoherent, it does define exactly who I’m talking about) nor the Russia-hating Establishment Right can recognise (the left of course simply side with any enemy of the West and detest any of our real allies and interests too). Trump’s populist nationalism is much more sophisticated by being much simpler, capable of discerning difference and navigating between refusing the military engagements that serve no purpose and authorising the military engagements that save us from disaster far more intelligently than people fixed in ideological frameworks could.
The world is safer because Trump is the US President, and safer too because Israel is smarter and saner than any of its critics and enemies are. Both Trump and Netanyahu know the difference between necessary and unnecessary wars, and that’s a rare thing which neither those who oppose every war and those who support every war are in a moral or practical position to sneer at.
