Post hoc ergo propter hoc presidency

I am not trying to sound smart, and I can’t really speak Latin. The expression is simply the standard term for a logical error. In vernacular, it means “after that, hence because of that,” as most of you know. It is common for humans to draw causal connections from temporal sequences. In my field, substance use and addiction, "gateway theory," based on the same fallacy, has ruled over research and policy. Hardly anybody cared that it does not matter which drug one starts with for the risk of poisoning or addiction. But it's not just that the false causes are used as guides for action. Once they are in play, the true causes are ignored.

Does anybody doubt Trump would win, hands down, over Biden if not for the Chinese virus? He almost did (or has won) despite the Democrat agitprop that spread the calumny of the virus deaths' being Trump's fault. Nobody cared that Trump's trump card was economics, his China trade measures were substantial part of its success, and the virus came from China smack at the good time to destroy Trump's advantage. The progressive media (a clear redundancy) ignored China's role  in the spread of the virus, while Trump was depicted as a Plague-time well-poisoner.

What is the connection between the China virus and Biden's creeping out of his basement to possible presidency, with his pothead sidekick aiming at the Resolute Desk? All that was thanks to the common human mistake of readily taking “after that” for “because of that”, Trump's presidency—hence COVID deaths, the false conclusion endlessly propagated by Democrats and their media, exactly the "Organs" of the Democrat Party, as their counterparts used to be honestly called in the Soviet Union. Who cares that those deaths have no relationship whatsoever with Trump, who has done the maximum he could to withstand the biological attack while fighting the sabotage of Democrat governors, the posturing of know-nothing buffoons from NIH and WHO, and the constant attempts of political assassination from the Democrat Congress and Biden's "xenophobia" accusations. The NY governor Cuomo has actively murdered seniors by his order for care facilities—nobody will charge him with the crime. It is Trump who bears its consequences. Who cares that the US, despite all the Democrat agitprop, is far from the worst corona-wise in the world. It’s Trump's fault just because he was the president when it happened—forget all the praises Cuomo has given him in a fit of honesty.

Forget that it has been and would still be Trump's team that has born the brunt of the Chinese biological attack—and this is what it is. Even if—and it's a big if—the virus were not cooked in that Wuhan "institute," it was definitely deliberately spread to kill the US economy and thus remove Trump, the enemy of China. The Democrat fifth column was only happy to help, busy with the same work ever since Trump had been elected. Those are the causes ignored. Forget what is at stake: America’s freedom, energy independence, peace, Middle East conciliation, trade fairness, and honesty with allies and enemies. Let’s just pray that the utopia that this country has been does not turn into another nightmare of the communist takeover and bread lines. That has been a true cause-effect relationship.

The party that fought for slavery, that has revived racial conflict in this country and supports pogroms, that has open antisemites as its vocal and unrestrained leaders, that has given Iran billions to fund world-wide terror and pave its way to nukes, that is ready to reinstitute your tax-funded payments for terror murders of Israelis, that has its projected president neck-deep in corruption and client connection with the true enemies of the US—it is now on the verge of gaining unlimited power. A one-party totalitarian state, partnered with its benevolent creditor, Communist China. No Latin needed.

Antisemitism by other means: Lecturing against the Jewish state*

I went to Michael Sfard's lecture** with a heavy heart. Why would I be hesitant about listening to this young and famous Israeli lawyer? Because of his fame's source: Sfard is what is called a "Human Rights Lawyer". In other words, so that nobody gets confused, his clients are mainly Palestinian Arabs. The human rights of the Jews are not under his purview, unless those Jews, like he has eventually done himself,  refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces or are otherwise anti-Israel. He defends Arabs' rights - but surely not from fellow Arabs. For instance, not from the Palestinian Authority, which sentences to death those who sell land to a Jew, an act of "national treason", and whose courts sentence journalists to jail for "insulting" Mahmoud Abbas by a cartoon on Facebook. As Sfard informed the audience, the PA has merely "the power of a city council", executions notwithstanding. 

Why did I go then? To ask the question that had long preoccupied me: why would somebody choose to defend members of an enemy population - against his own state that protects him and has been under attack from that population for as long as his state existed? The population whose leaders have been financiers, planners and perpetrators of terror, where murder of innocent Jews and Americans is celebrated and schools and stadiums are named after the murderers, where the murderers' families are congratulated and their enormous portraits adorn city walls. I prefaced my question by saying that as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, it was particularly strange for me to hear that in the "oppressive" Jewish state it was usually sufficient for a Palestinian Arab to petition the court with a help of a lawyer in order to get a satisfactory solution to his or her problems.  I also briefly reminded Sfard of the Arab violent animosity towards the Jews that had long preceded the re-creation of Israel, the history that included Amin al Husseini, a major Nazi collaborator and Arafat's and Abbas's hero. 

The response was striking. Sfard said, deliberately and clearly expecting the audience's reaction, "I don't care about history." I too thought there would be a reaction. I thought, this educated audience , albeit visibly sympathetic to the speaker, would now rise in disbelief and indignation. After all, shouldn't they all have been familiar with George Santayana's maxim, "Those who forget history are destined to repeat it"? One does not need to be an historian to understand how dangerous that forgetfulness would be - for the Jews in particular. Some aspects of our rich history are better to stay in history - but we keep being promised their genocidal repetition, by the likes of the Arab League at the creation of Israel, Nasser in 1967, and Ahmadinejad these days. Alas, no objection arose from the future and present lawyers. On the contrary, Sfard was applauded - especially when he said that he did not believe in the Jewish state. That prompted me to interject, "How about 'Judenstaat'?" No, he did not know what it was, the title of the foundation of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl's book "The Jewish State". Of course, Sfard's not believing in the Jewish state leaves him not believing in the state he lives in, created as "a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel", according to the Israeli Declaration of Independence of 1948. It seems when people don't care about history, they don't care about the present reality either.

It is really hard to briefly summarize Sfard's talk, misinformation by both omission and commission. As usual, it started with the terminology. Long gone are the times when the disputed territories were called Judea and Samaria in general parlance. Those historic names have been ethnically cleansed into the meaningless "West Bank", adopted from Jordan that  illegally occupied those lands from 1949 to 1967. It is also forgotten that Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria to its own east bank  - of the Jordan river, which is, interestingly, the Jewish name, appropriated also by the Arab state created by Britain's fiat in Eretz Israel, which was entrusted by the League of Nations to the UK for the "close settlement by Jews on the land". Amazingly, the UK had no trouble recognizing annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan, which captured that territory in a war of aggression. Even "West Bank", however, is too neutral for Sfard, who prefers calling it "Occupation". According to him, Israel began to "colonize" that land in the 1970's. Never mind that Israelis only by then had restored Jewish access to the heartland of  the Land of Israel, including the old city of Jerusalem with its Western Wall and Temple Mount, the most sacred site for the Jews. While no law except Jordanian ever prohibited Jewish settlement on that land, the world had no qualms when Jordanians murdered and expelled Jews from there. This is how east Jerusalem was turned into the "Arab East Jerusalem"  of today's media. Never mind that this part of town until the 20th century was the only Jerusalem, with a Jewish majority there until the Jordanian murderous invasion in 1948. It is also through bloody pogroms that Hebron, the first capital of ancient Israel, and other parts of Eretz Israel became Judenfrei "Arab cities". If, as is often repeated, the territory cannot be obtained in conquest, why should this rule start being implemented with Jews who captured it in a defensive war, and not with Muslims, who took it in aggression from Crusaders, who took it from Muslims, who took it from the Roman Empire that violently took it from the Jews and exiled them from their land? Let alone the many contemporary examples of the land captured in the defensive war and kept, like  the Kuril Islands or Sudetenland. But Sfard does not care about history.

His main problem is the security barrier. He misnames it "separation wall" - despite the fact that the wall is less than three percent of this largely chain link fence. Never did he mention that the only reason for the construction of the fence that began in 2002 was the terror war that Israel's "peace partners" headed by Arafat started in 2000, after he rejected another Israeli proposal that would create an Arab state. Only in 2002, before construction started, terrorists from the territories murdered 457 Israelis. Already in 2006, before the construction of the fence was finished, the number dropped to 10, and to no fatalities in 2012. Sfard does not care about security -  he derisively calls it a "Jewish obsession". His only focus is his clients' inconvenience, as he shares their conviction that Israel's goal for the barrier is land grab. He lamented that while discussing changes in the "separation wall"  route, the main concern of the Israeli officials was security. Needless to say, the "oppressor" did change the route as per Sfard's petition, and he tells the truly horrific story how an Israeli officer thanked him for letting know about the inconvenience to Arab farmers, since remedied. In fact, Sfard intimated, the evil authorities satisfy his clients' grievances even without any court rulings, "in a shadow of the court". Why? Because, to his satisfaction, they are "willing to barter land for legitimacy. Legitimacy is in very short supply." Just how much legitimacy of the Unites States depends on the route of its security barrier built on its Mexican border - with no terrorist threat?

There is no doubt in Sfard's mind that Israel is oppressor in regard to the Arab population of Judea and Samaria. Never mind that this oppression has resulted in the immense growth in the Arabs' longevity, education, and living standard that is higher than in the surrounding Arab countries. Never mind that no military would be needed in Judea and Samaria, or in entire Israel for that matter, if there were no constant and thousands of times realized threat of death from the Arab population. The threat that is maintained by the incessant antisemitic and anti-Israel brain-washing that Arabs undergo from the beginning of their lives. 

As to the question I asked Sfard, I still do not know the answer. The phenomenon of a Jew crossing to the enemy side, while rare, is not new, however. It used to require apostasy, and the apostate could become an inquisitor burning Jews at stake, or a blood libeler, inciting lethal pogroms. Nothing as dramatic as apostasy is needed nowadays, when religion has largely become for many merely a slightly embarrassing tradition - at least, among the progressive intelligentsia. Today's secular apostates merely defend those who attack the Jewish state's security measures that not only protect Israelis - Jews and Arabs alike - but also obviate the need for military action and casualties that would inevitably result from it, if terror acts were not prevented. Sfard did not see it that way, all the lynchings of random Jewish victims who fell into Arab hands, terrorist suicidal massacres and other murders notwithstanding. A possible motivation used to be the apostate's conflict with the community, or the desire to break from the persecuted minority. These days, all it takes is to become a "Human Rights" lawyer like Sfard. In Israel, this ecological niche is unique enough to avoid competition with other lawyers, kept out of it by their conscience. In that rarefied niche, even a mediocrity can earn his bread and butter - perhaps, with caviar and international travel on top.

I do not know why this annual lecture cycle has been renamed from The Martin Luther King Lecture to Lawyering For Social Change, but I think Dr. King would be happy that his name is no longer associated with it. The "social change" it stands for is not consistent with his vision of Israel, so dramatically different from Sfard's: "Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.” Peace through security is exactly the human right that Sfard the "Human Rights Lawyer" denies his compatriots and, ultimately, his Arab clients as well. As for the Pitt law students, they were denied truth, and for their $25 education credits for this “lawyering” lecture received not education, but anti-Israel ideological indoctrination. 

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*The published version of this entry is in  The Jewish Chronicle, titled "Michael Sfard: 'I Don't Care About History'". There is also a prior entry in this blog, related to Sfard, "Champion Of Displacement".
** “Can the Occupier Provide Justice? The Dilemmas of Human Rights Litigation in Israeli Courts,”  7 p.m. March 28 in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 3900 Forbes Ave..

British Anti-Zionist Committee

As reported in the Jerusalem Post, the "leadership" (for what it's worth) of the British Jewry has been "de-Zionized". In other words, it has consistently taken a "critical" position towards Israel (quote marks, because it is consistently one-sided and calumnious). Worse even, the head of its self-appointed Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), Mick Davis, has suggested that Israel's policies should be corrected because they poorly reflect on him, thus repeating one of the main antisemitic ideas, according to which the Jews bear collective responsibility for actions of fellow Jews, whether real or imaginary, just as they have had for the slander of deicide.

This reminds me of my home country. In the Soviet Union, antisemitism was officially banned but its official expressions were well understood by the population from the incessant "criticism" of Israel, with printed propaganda including cartoons hardly different from those in Der Stuermer. Everybody could readily connect this "criticism" and its fluctuations with the official and not so secret policy regarding hiring Jews, accepting them to universities, and allowing them emigration. In the antisemitic Soviet Union, there used to be "Anti-Zionist Committee" comprised of famous Jews - actors, writers, lawyers, scientists, and headed by a general, a World War II hero. The AZC, "voluntary" as it was called, was created in 1983 by the KGB and the Propaganda Dept. of the Party (basically the same animal). It was popularly known as the "Antisemitic Committee". Its goal was to malign Israel with the added legitimacy of "Jews themselves" doing that, and to convince the "abroad" - whoever would need such a pathetic pretext, particularly in the USA and Israel, - that the Soviet Jews needed no Israel and there was no antisemitism in the USSR. Needless to say, if anybody thought to organize a Zionist committee, he would see the other side of the KGB in no time, as people like Sharansky did indeed. Those AZC members were partly duped by the continual Communist (anti-capitalist and anti-Israel) brain-washing, partly scared of the KGB for themselves or for family members, partly the official and popular antisemitism had brushed off onto them. I do not know how many well-known Jews were approached and rejected the KGB's kind offer to join. I am not sure how many of the members were "invited" by the KGB rather than volunteered, but there were those among them who did the latter, ashamed of fellow Jews and vocal in "criticizing" Israel. That was nothing new. Right after the Bolshevik revolution, young atheistic Jews had created "Yevsektsiya" (Евсекция; the "Jewish Section" of the Communist Party), whose function was eradication of the Jewish religious and national culture - following Marx's suggestions on the Jewish emancipation by emancipation from Jewishness.

As in the USSR, the "Jews themselves" argument attaches - in the eyes of so many willing beholders - additional legitimacy to slander and antisemitic canards about Israel in the old tradition of blood libel. That's why the Jewish slanderers of Israel - Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Steven Rose - are so popular among neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Muslims, as well as the antisemites of the Left. Under strong pressure, traitors appear with regularity, and provide the ever-interested public with all needed argumentation for why their enemy is right.

I am not sure how strong the pressure on the Jews is in England. I appreciate the possibility that some of them have been brain-washed by the increasingly antisemitic environment in Great Britain into seeing the root of the Arabs-Israel problem in Israel's attacking innocent Arabs rather then in the sworn rejection of Israel's right to exist by Arabs. I do know, however, that compared to the Soviet Jews imprisoned in the Soviet Union, the British Jews and their "leadership" have an additional and much nobler option than slander and betrayal: emigration - to Israel. Instead, they have succeeded - without any KGB pressure and truly voluntarily - in organizing "Anti-Zionist" antisemitic committees. Mazel tov.

Peace pardnership

As we find out for the umpteenth time, our "peace pardners" the philistines are really not. They are ready to wage war against Israel once Arab countries get to that. A friend commented that this is another example of taqiyya on the part of Abbas, a lie Muslims are supposed to be free to use when dealing against the kuffar, unbelievers. I think, however, that people have to be intentionally blind to buy this kind of taqiyya, or have concerns that override Israel's (and ultimately, this civilization's) security. Muslims have to be either exceptionally stupid to think it's believable, or simply realistic, knowing that however stupid and improbable their lie is, it is good enough to be either believed by the "international community", or used by the latter as another pretext to punish Jews for what they have never done - from killing Jesus to contemporary blood libels. No need to try hard.

If we, you and I, can get enough information from open public sources to detect damn lies of our "peace partners", shouldn't those having access to intelligence know a bit more? What additional proof is needed that whatever verbal concessions are given by them in English, they translate into their opposite in Arabic or, at best, are abrogated at the first opportunity - just as this is prescribed by Muhammad? Allah himself used to abrogate Koranic suras once they would become inconvenient to the ingenious "prophet" - remember the "Satanic verses", not the Rushdie book, but the actual Koran 53:19-20? Arafat openly called the Oslo accords Hudaybiyyah peace, referring to the 10-year truce that Muhammad signed with the Meccans when he was too weak to fight them, only to violate it in two years when he was ready to attack them. Why the hell wasn't Arafat and his gang immediately kicked out at least after that? The consequences of Oslo had been obvious to so many before Israel reimported sworn enemies and bandits. ZOA, for instance, of which I am a member, was against it, as it was against the abhorrent self-imposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Nobody among the decision-makers listened. Nobody does. I am afraid, nobody will. We are governed by people lacking not only morality, but also knowledge and the intellect to use it.

As I write this, I am listening to a Fox News report (courtesy of the ever-smiling Reena Ninan) of the "discrimination" against "Palestinians" buying real estate in Jerusalem. Of course, the "fair and balanced" reporter asks only a complaining Arab - of course, Abu Abdullah, looking so noble, decent and peaceful - how he suffers, with no possibility of finding out what the criminal Zionists think about that. I am not holding my breath for Fox News, bought by the memorable prince al-Waleed (who also helps families of suicidal murderers a little), to decry the discrimination against Jews buying land - not just in any of the 22 Arab states, but from a "Palestinian", who would be executed by the "peace pardners" if he decided to sell any. After all, the Jews got their land as stolen by the Europeans from the "Palestinian" natives, a payment for that dubious Holocaust. Just ask Barack Hussein. We know to whom he thinks Jerusalem belongs.

Deir Yassin and Other Morbid Arabian Nights

In our time, when remembering any history beyond the historic 2008 elections is not in vogue, many events may appear as new. Although the Arab world and the rest of progressive humanity are acutely aware of Israel's iniquities (hardly a day passes without them), they may still be surprised by another one because they have forgotten how it all started. One of the first events that formed that opinion of Israel was the 1948 "massacre" in Deir Yassin, an Arab village near Jerusalem.

This is a reminder of how anti-Israel Arab propaganda is made:


Then there was the Mohammed Al Dura blood libel (read here). Then Saeb Erekat's "Jenin massacre" (read here).  Now it's the "flotilla" with the innocent blood of peaceful humanitarians (calling for Jews to go to Auschwitz). Times change, but the Big Lie methodology does not. After all, the favorite leader of Pal Arabs is Amin al Husayni, Hitler's pal (here is some more, to place the "Palestinian struggle" into perspective).