English Anti-Semitism

This book review equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, which has the effect of making Israel above reproach. In the process, the book he reviews reviles some of the greatest writers in English -- Shakespeare, Dickens, and T.S. Eliot. If you are not Jewish, it's a stretch. What Jews need to do is clean up their act -- quit persecuting Palestinians, deal honestly in commercial matters, etc. It doesn't help that so many of the people involved in the latest financial meltdown were Jews. By no means all of them were. In Europe there was criticism of the Anglo-Saxon way of doing business, but in America there were a disproportionate percentage of prominent Jews, from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to Lloyd Blankfein and John Paulson, among many others.

So the idea is that Jews can do anything, and if you criticize them, you are anti-Semitic. And if things get testy, there's always the cry of "Holocaust!" I don't buy it. Israel and the Jews need to get their house in order.

Israel and Non-Proliferation

I am worried that the Western world, including the US in particular, is too unconcerned about Israel's nuclear status. The Arabs and Muslims, particularly Egypt and Iran, will make a run at Israel during the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the UN, but are unlikely to achieve much. The US will be instrumental in running interference for Israel, which will not be there because it is not a member of the NPT. There is a lot of racial, religious and national acrimony between the Muslims and the Jews, but there are some genuine issues that get overlooked because people concentrate so much on the religious aspect.

Israel is the panic room for Jews all over the world. It is the place where they can go if they are threatened again by something like the Holocaust. Thus, Israel's bomb is really a Jew bomb that could be used in defense of Jews anywhere. An unusual question is under what conditions Israel would use it's nuclear weapons in defense of Jews in another country, as well as the more typical question of when it would use nuclear weapons in defense of Israel itself. If someone were to start another Holocaust, would Israel nuke them? What if there were a purge of both Jews and gentiles, like Stalin carried out in the gulags? Would Israel use nukes?

It's not a current question in the US, but what if in the future a state passed a law that discriminated against Jews as much as the Arizona immigration law discriminates against Hispanics? That certainly doesn't merit a nuclear holocaust, but it's moving that direction. Are there circumstances in which Israel would use its nukes against the US?

Thus it is reasonable for the world to ask what nuclear weapons Israel has, what delivery systems it has, and what its nuclear policies are. Currently this dialogue stops before it begins, because Israel won't admit that it has nuclear weapons, and it won't renounce them and join the NPT.

NPT RevCon Starts

The Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference started without me. About 15 years ago, while I was in Poland, Amb. Strulak was lobbying me to get US support for him to serve as Rapporteur. It's hard to believe it was that long ago.

This year, Obama has laid a much stronger position for the US at the RevCon. The NPT calls on nuclear powers like the US and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals. Usually the US has done nothing and is the object of criticism from the smaller countries who say that the NPT is a one-sided deal, because they promise to give up their nuclear ambitions, while the US does nothing. This year we have done something by signing the Start successor agreement with Russia. In addition Obama had his huge summit conference on controlling nuclear materials. We are trying to balance the scales a little bit.

Clearly Iran will be a target of this meeting. But the US and its allies must be careful not to alienate signatory countries by appearing to apply the NPT in a discriminatory manner. We need to prove that Iran is in non-compliance. The rest of the world will probably not accept a claim that we have to sanction Iran because we don't like them.

Other countries will also perceive that we are Israel's proxy in this dispute, because Iran potentially constitutes a much greater threat to Israel than the US. Meanwhile, Israel is not an NPT signatory, while everybody believes that it has nuclear weapons, and thus is technically more of a pariah state than Iran, which is an NPT signatory and which no one believes has nuclear weapons yet.

Oklahoma City Bombing Victims Worth Less than New Yorkers

With all the news talk about the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, I have wondered how the compensation for Oklahoma victims compared to the New York victims of 9/11. This article in the Chicago Tribune makes it pretty clear. The Oklahoma City victims got virtually nothing compared to the New York City victims. The Oklahomans got about $10,000 each, while the New Yorkers got about $2 million each. There were several million dollars in charitable gifts to the Oklahoma victims, some of which is still being used to put the children of victims through college, but it's not from the government, and it's still paltry compared to what the New Yorkers got.

One reason the New Yorkers got so much was that the Democratic leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, was married to a lobbyist for American Airlines. This article in the Washington Monthly details her long lobbying history, although it doesn't deal in detail with 9/11. Arianna Huffington also weighed in in 2003. The connection is important for 9/11 because the potential liability of American Airlines, Linda Daschle's client, was huge. So, the government gave huge amounts to the 9/11 victims to discourage them from suing the airlines. Sure, there was some public interest in preventing the airlines from being bankrupted by the liability, but did it really get debated with the Daschles on the case? It didn't hurt either that the 9/11 victims were a lot of loud, greedy New Yorkers, contrasted with the Oklahomans who were willing to die for their country. So, the government made the New Yorkers millionaires while it did almost nothing for the Oklahomans.

I suppose that if you pressed Congress, they would argue that the New Yorkers were killed by foreign terrorists, while the Oklahomans were killed by an American. They are all equally dead. So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that loud, greedy New York bankers got their own bailout after they themselves almost bankrupted the US. New York is definitely the welfare capital of America, with Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Schumer as the beggars-in-chief for a bunch of con men. No wonder no one suspected Bernie Madoff; he was just another con man in the New York crowd.