ISRAEL

I normally say little on this blog about the terrible plight of Israel (they suffer regularly from what we Australians have just suffered once) because I feel that many others say it better than I could. But amid the growing Leftist hatred of Israel and her people I feel I have to speak up. So, as my contribution, I reproduce below a brief report of a recent speech by Haim Divon -- the Israeli ambassador to Canada. Thanks to Israpundit for the report. And by the way, I am myself of WASP background, not a Jew.

"Every day, an Israeli meets and confronts a very hostile environment," he said.
Israel has tried "everything" to live peacefully with Palestinians, Divon said, but nothing has worked, and that is why they have turned to reprisal attacks on refugee camps to counter suicide bombers.

"If there's another way, tell us about it," he said.

"No one is holding (Palestinian chairman Yasser) Arafat accountable. I think Israel is the only country in the world where there are mortar and missile attacks daily. Where else in the world would you tolerate such attacks from neighbours?"

Divon said that until the "Iraq issue" is solved, there won't be a major breakthrough between Israel and Palestine, and charged Iraq has been funding Arafat. "No one wants to live in such a crazy situation. The international community shouldn't be so soft on Arafat," he said.

Divon said there are so many Palestinians living in refugee camps because the Palestinian government wants to use them "to better bash Israel." He said that since the Second World War, there have been 50 million refugees and most have been resettled, "except the Palestinians."


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HITLER IN A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

Hmmm.... I am having a lot of trouble convincing Jiri that Hitler was a Leftist. I have just received a long email from him once again pointing out the many nationalist elements in Hitler's appeal and pointing out how widely he diverged from the various Marxist movements of Europe. My reply to him is of course that Hitler was BOTH a nationalist AND a socialist -- as the full name of his political party (The National Socialist German Worker's Party) implies. I have expanded my argument on how it is that Leftism and nationalism are far from incompatible in my forthcoming article on Mussolini and, for convenience, I reproduce that section of my forthcoming paper here.

And I might add that, although many modern-day US Democrats often seem to be anti-American, the situation is rather different in Australia and Britain. Both the major Leftist parties there (the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party) are perfectly patriotic parties which express pride in their national traditions and achievements. Nobody seems to have convinced them that you cannot be both Leftist and nationalist. That is of course not remotely to claim that either of the parties concerned is a Nazi party. What Hitler advocated and practiced was clearly more extremely nationalist than any major Anglo-Saxon political party would advocate today.

I think, however, that the real stumbling block for Jiri is that he has a very European perspective on what constitutes Leftism whereas I have a very Anglo-Saxon one. To Jiri you have to be some sort of Marxist to be a Leftist and Hitler was very clearly opposed to any form of Marxism so cannot have been a Leftist. I write for the Anglosphere, however, and in my experience the vast majority of the Left (i.e. the US Democrats, The Australian Labor Party, the British Labour Party) have always rejected Marxism so it seems crystal clear to me that you can be a Leftist without accepting Marxist doctrines. So Hitler's contempt for Marxism, far from convincing me that he was a non-Leftist, actually convinces me that he was a perfectly conventional Leftist! The Nazi Party was what would in many parts of the world be called a "Labor" party (not a Communist party).

And the moderate Leftists of Germany in Hitler's own day saw that too. The Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) who, like the US Democrats, the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party, had always been the principal political representatives of the Labor unions, on several important occasions voted WITH the Nazis in the Reichstag (German Parliament).


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OTHER BLOGS

Many of my fellow bloggers have a very long list of other blogs down the Left-hand side of their pages. Lists giving links to over 100 other blogs are common. This is very useful in many ways but seeing that so many others are doing it, I thought I might risk being a bit different and instead list only the blogs that I myself am reading regularly at the moment. Being a gentleman of leisure, I read quite a few. My plan is to update the list every week or so. The idea is that people who like my blog will be given an idea of where they might find other writing that they might like. My list is of course only a personal preference and is not meant to reflect on the many other good conservative blogs that I am not following regularly at the moment:


Australia:
Dr Bunyip
James Morrow
Scott Wickstein
Slattery
Alex Robson.
Gareth Parker
Jason Soon
Tim Blair
TANSTAAFL
Ken Parish
Alan McCallum
Bizarre Science

New Zealand:
NZ Pundit
Silent Running

Israel:
IsraPundit
Not A Fish

UK:
Cinderella Bloggerfeller
England's Sword
Steven Chapman
Conservative Commentary

Samizdata
Oxblog -- Americans at Oxford U.

USA:
Sabertooth Journal
Light of Reason
Pejman Pundit
Dr Weevil
Clayton Cramer
Common-sense and Wonder
Rightwing news
Judd Brothers
Vodka Pundit
Instapundit
Rottweiler
Daniel Drezner
ParaPundit

Canada:
Enter Stage Right

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Comments? Email me:
Email: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
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