Eugene Girin

As noted by Richard Spencer recently, there's a major split between Israeli nationalists and the mostly Left or liberal Jews who reside in America and Western nations. The current foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman who grew up in the Soviet Union is arguably the most successful and famous Israeli hardliner today.  While much maligned as an out-of-control Likud nationalist, most paleoconservatives would find his positions realistic and restrained. 

First, Lieberman’s proposed peace plan with the Palestinians calls for a two-state solution under which even Arab areas within pre-1967 Israel (such as the city of Umm-al-Fahm) would be ceded to the Palestinian state in exchange for Israel’s annexation of Jewish settlement towns on the Green Line. Lieberman himself lives on a settlement in the West Bank and stated that he’s willing to abandon his own home as part of his peace plan.

Second, the internal policies of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu (Israel is Our Home) Party are also a model of realism and moderation. Lieberman supports the introduction of civil marriage in Israel and an easier conversion policy for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are not considered Jewish by the religious authorities. His party’s delegation in the Knesset includes a Russian-born convert, Anastasia Michaeli. Also, like other Israeli far rightists, Lieberman is opposed to the mass Americanization of Israeli society and the destruction of traditional values.  After all, Jewish women in Israel have about 40,000 abortions a year, drug abuse is rampant, and openly gay soldiers walk around in uniform holding hands.  A visit to secular Tel Aviv makes you think you’re in the Castro district in San Francisco since even the store signs are almost all in English.

Considerable uproar ensued in Britain when Prime Minister David Cameron described his country as a World War II “junior partner” to America in 1940.  The problem is that this country did not even enter World War II until a year later.

Labor immediately jumped into the fray with shadow FM Miliband responding with equally historically ignorant comments:

1940 was our finest hour. Millions of Britons stood up and gave their lives to defeat fascism.  "We were not a junior partner. We stood alone against the Nazis. How can a British prime minister who bangs on about British history get that so wrong? It is a slight, not a slip.

What is it with neocons and leftists and the word “fascism”?  Last time I checked, the Allies primary enemy was the Nazi Hitler, not the Fascist Mussolini.  And Britain openly allied with Salazar, a clerical quasi-fascist. No, Mr. Miliband, millions of Britons did not die to defeat Benito Mussolini and Oswald Mosley.

This is not to say that that Cameron’s ignorance of his country’s history is excusable.  However, most young Westerners not only practice this ignorance, but almost flaunt it.  When one of my professors asked a female classmate who were the most powerful nations after the conclusion of World War II, she hemmed and hawed until venturing “Germany…. and Russia?  I don’t know.”  This mind you was not some rural community college but a fairly prestigious postgraduate institution in New York City.

The primary reason for this epidemic of historical ignorance is that Western history is barely taught in the West anymore.  The only part of Western history that is taught is a discussion of its “oppression,” “intolerance,” and “xenophobia.”  Postgraduate students don’t know Robert Fulton and Samuel Morse but know Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, and other marginal figures whose contributions to Western history were either marginal or negative.  As the Russians say, “a fish rots from its head” -- when Western leaders don’t know the history of the countries they lead, what is to be expected of those countries’ people?  And a nation that’s ignorant of its history is really no nation at all.

The recent events in Kyrgyzstan can teach us a few lessons. First, the brief civil war and a second massacre of Uzbeks by Kyrgyz in the city of Osh are the result of another color-coded revolution.  This Tulip Revolution overthrew longtime president Akayev.  His mild crackdowns on corrupt troublemakers masquerading as democracy activists and the refusal to turn against Russia raised the ire of the usual suspects:  the EU commissariat, the State Department’s paladins of international democracy, and the Russophobes from the international NGOs.  Akayev was replaced by the hapless Bakiyev who was himself overthrown in April. So much for democracy = stability + prosperity.

Second, the massacre in Osh was the result of the Soviets’ tinkering with the ethnic balance in the volatile Ferghana Valley.  This area, populated by Tajiks (ethnically identical to Iranians who speak a dialect of Farsi), Uzbeks (Turkic Eurasians who consider themselves to be descended from Tamerlane), and Kyrgyz (Mongoloid descendants of Genghis Khan) was ruled as a single administrative area by the czars. The Soviets divided it among three different republics thereby including a large Uzbek minority in the Osh area.  It was only a matter of time until blood would spill. Something for us to think about when we’re trying to make bickering nations live together in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, Russia’s reluctance to rush in troops to quell the Kyrgyz civil war is commendable foreign-policy realism.  After all, Medvedev and Putin have their hands more than full with the Islamist terrorists in the Caucasus.  If only our decision-makers were so reluctant to get involve in Central Asian and Middle Eastern trouble spots. Don’t hold your breath on it though. To the Beltway boys, Russia is just an object of hate and derision.

The usually ridiculous Colonel Muammar Qaddafi -- the dean of Arab tin-pot dictators and King of Kings in Africa -- was right in calling for the division of Nigeria between the Muslim north and the Christian-animist south. It is becoming apparent to the West that the only possible model of co-existence with Islam is separation.

In January and March, hundreds died in Muslim-Christian violence in the Nigerian city of Jos when Mohammedan Hausa-Fulani tribesmen armed with machetes slaughtered the Christian Yoruba and burned churches. This year’s massacres are repetitions of riots that took place in 2001 and 2008. As Philip Jenkins pointed out in The American Conservative, is situated right on the Tenth Parallel -- the dividing line between Muslim and Christian-animist Africa. Jos, like many other such towns in Nigeria is fractured beyond repair. Christians and Muslims even have different explanations for the city’s name. Christians say that Jos means “Jesus our Savior,” while Muslims assert that the name comes from the Arabic word jasad, meaning “body.”