In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
Bernard Lewis wrote about it in the 1980s, in his book, Semites and Anti-Semites. Now Ha'aretz picks up on the fact that radical, racial, eliminationist (to use Goldhagen's phrase) anti-Semitism is rampant in the Arab world, among our "allies" as well as among our enemies. It is the one element holding together conservative, reactionary regimes like Saudi Arabia with revolutionary Islamists like the mullahs of Iran and the Hezbollah with secularist dictatorships - whether pro- or anti-Western - like Egypt and Iraq.

I've said before that states would have little reason to use nuclear weapons if they were certain to lose a war, because there would be no good military purpose to their use. But Hitler used gas - which he was deterred from using against British or American or even Russian troops - against Jewish civilians, and diverted important resources away from the front to assure his "victory" over the Jews. I still maintain that nuclear weapons are primarily weapons, with battlefield utility, and that even terrorism is primarily a political/military strategy to achieve concrete goals. But when the ideology animating the enemy defines murder as victory - if killing Jews, for example, is the objective of war, not gaining territory or resources or control of a state - then, as with Hitler, all bets are off.
posted by Noah at 11:54 AM