I doubt the American conservative media will be exercised by these revelations quite like they were by the world-shattering Dave Weigel and JournoList scandals. 

For more on Grant Smith, see here.

I don't know what to make of John Bolton's recent announcement of an August 21 "deadline" for Israel and/or America to strike Iran's Bushehr nuclear power reactor. First off, as Joshua Keating notes at Foreign Policy, “according to Bolton, right now is always the best time to attack Iran.”

In July 2009, he said that Israel would likely attack by the end of last year. In June 2008, he said it would have be before the end of the Bush administration. Way back in 2007, he was saying that "time is limited."

Bolton doesn't actually think that Israel will attack Iran this week, and believes that they have "lost this opportunity," but something tells me this isn't the last time that Bolton will give the Israelis an extension on their deadline.

No doubt.

And there’s more reason to discount Bolton and his pronouncements. Since the inauguration -- perhaps even since the 2007 NIE report on Iran -- the neocons and their frontmen have been marginalized and demoted. "Regime Change" was out, replaced by schemes that were no less interventionist but more palatable to the high-minded Soros crowd -- the "Green Revolution," which self-righteous liberals watched unfold over Twitter last spring, being the most obvious example. Bolton is, thankfully, far from power and influence at the moment, and his "deadline" might amount to no more than a mad man howling in the woods.

And an attack is still extremely difficult politically. Though there has been significantly more media chatter about Iran over the past three months, there is simply no popular mandate for action and there has been nothing like the White House-led, coordinated war rollout that we saw in 2003. Any U.S. attack would be a traumatic shock to the American public, and my guess is that, much like Washington’s other two Middle East wars, such a campaign would be highly unpopular with everyone except the neocon/neoliberal wonks living in the Beltway.

Unfortunately, none of this means that an attack isn’t in the cards.

The thing that Bolton -- and everyone else who supports confronting Iran over its nuclear ambitions -- rarely puts into words is what he expects to happen exactly after Iran’s nuclear reactor is "taken out." The neocons are famous for their rosy scenarios ("We'll be greeted as liberators!"), which they, no doubt, sincerely believe in. One senses that they think Washington and/or Jerusalem could pull off another "Operation Opera" that would quickly accomplished its goal and be soon forgotten. America’s benign hegemony could be reasserted on the cheap.

But at some level, even the neocons must recognize that Iran is a completely different ballgame. There is no possible way that Tehran would allow an attack to take place -- even a targeted, limited one aimed solely at Bushehr -- without a full-scale, extreme prejudice retaliation.  Bolton & Co. always talk about the “Second Holocaust” that shall inexorably occur “if Iran gets the Bomb,” but then fail to mention the kind of damage Tehran could inflict on Tel-Aviv and the bunched-up American military bases in Iraq with conventional weapons. In 2009, the commander in chief of Revolutionary Guards stated flatly, “Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran has missiles with the range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), and based on that all Israeli land including that regime's nuclear facilities are in the range of our missile capabilities.”

Do Bolton and people like him understand whom they’re dealing with?

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.

Former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg has written an assessment in The Atlantic on the odds of Israel or the US bombing Iran.  The most interesting part is the discussion about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s father and the influence that the old man has over the son.

To understand why Netanyahu possesses this deep sense—and why his understanding of Jewish history might lead him to attack Iran, even over Obama’s objections—it is necessary to understand Ben-Zion Netanyahu, his 100-year-old father.

BEN-ZION NETANYAHU—his first name means “son of Zion”—is the world’s foremost historian of the Spanish Inquisition and a onetime secretary to Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the intractable, “revisionist” branch of Zionism. He is father to a tragic Israeli hero, Yonatan Netanyahu, who died while freeing the Jewish hostages at Entebbe in 1976; and also father to Benjamin, who strives for greatness in his father’s eyes but has, on occasion, disappointed him, notably when he acquiesced, in his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, to American pressure and withdrew Israeli forces from much of the West Bank city of Hebron, Judaism’s second-holiest city. Benjamin Netanyahu is not known in most quarters for his pliability on matters concerning Palestinians, though he has been trying lately to meet at least some of Barack Obama’s demands that he move the peace process forward.

“Always in the back of Bibi’s mind is Ben-Zion,” one of the prime minister’s friends told me. “He worries that his father will think he is weak.”Ben-Zion Netanyahu’s most important work, The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th-Century Spain, upended the scholarly consensus on the roots of that bleak chapter in Jewish history. He argued that Spanish hatred of Jews was spurred by the principle of limpieza de sangre, or the purity of blood; it was proto-Nazi thought, in other words, not mere theology, that motivated the Inquisition. Ben-Zion also argued that the Inquisition corresponds to the axiom that anti-Semitic persecution is preceded, in all cases, by carefully scripted and lengthy dehumanization campaigns meant to ensure the efficient eventual elimination of Jews. To him, the lessons of Jewish history are plain and insistent.

Ben-Zion, by all accounts, was worshipped by his sons in their childhood, and today, the 60-year-old Benjamin, who has been known to act in charmless ways, conspicuously upholds the Fifth Commandment when discussing his father. At a party marking Ben-Zion’s 100th birthday, held this past March at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, before an assembly that included the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, Benjamin credited his father with forecasting the Shoah and, in the early 1990s, predicting that “Muslim extremists would try to bring down the Twin Towers in New York.” But he also told stories in a warmer and more personal vein, describing a loving father who, though a grim and forbidding figure to outsiders, enjoys cowboy movies and played soccer with his sons.

After a brief debate between Ben-Zion and another prominent academic about competing interpretations of the Inquisition—“It is an unusual 100th-birthday commemoration when a debate about the Inquisition breaks out,” said Menachem Begin’s son, Benny, who is a minister-without-portfolio in Netanyahu’s cabinet—Ben-Zion rose to make valedictory remarks. His speech, unlike his son’s, was succinct, devoid of sentiment, and strikingly unambiguous.

“Our party this evening compels me to speak of recent comments made about the continued existence of the nation of Israel and the new threats by its enemies depicting its upcoming destruction,” Ben-Zion began. “From the Iranian side, we hear pledges that soon—in a matter of days, even—the Zionist movement will be put to an end and there will be no more Zionists in the world. One is supposed to conclude from this that the Jews of the Land of Israel will be annihilated, while the Jews of America, whose leaders refuse to pressure Iran, are being told in a hinted fashion that the annihilation of the Jews will not include them.”

He went on, “The Jewish people are making their position clear and putting faith in their military power. The nation of Israel is showing the world today how a state should behave when it stands before an existential threat: by looking danger in the eye and calmly considering what should be done and what can be done. And to be ready to enter the fray at the moment there is a reasonable chance of success.”

Many people in Likud Party circles have told me that those who discount Ben-Zion’s influence on his son do so at their peril. “This was the father giving his son history’s marching orders,” one of the attendees told me. “I watched Bibi while his father spoke. He was completely absorbed.” (One of Netanyahu’s Knesset allies told me, indelicately, though perhaps not inaccurately, that the chance for movement toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state will come only after Ben-Zion’s death. “Bibi could not withdraw from more of Judea and Samaria”—the biblical names for the West Bank—“and still look into his father’s eyes.”)

Of course, many of us are frightened when we hear that Muslims see geo-politics from a religious perspective, and rightfully so.  Israel, on the other hand, is presented to us as a secular, modern state which only desires peace.  The more one reads about it, the more we see that this is not the case.

I don’t have Ben-Zion’s historical background, but looking at the rampant miscegenation that went on in Latin America makes it hard for me to believe that 15th century Spaniards decided to oppress the Jews because they were worried about “purity of blood.”  Like the nefarious and irrational motives assigned to Muslims, is this simply another case of projection?

Although Richard Hoste seems to be the polar opposite of Larry Auster, both of them are equally  driven by Jewish fixations. Auster considers anyone who fails to meet his fastidious standards of Jewish nationalism and anti-anti-Semitism to be a closet Nazi. Hoste by contrast can’t rein in his hatred for Israel and for anyone who sympathizes with that country’s geopolitical plight. If this is our choice of allies, then the non-aligned Right should be ready to close shop.

Fortunately I don’t think these our only alternatives. Richard Spencer urged contributors to drop any further discussion of what is a needlessly divisive issue, but Hoste’s positions are so intemperate that I can’t resist the impulse to exercise my privlege as a contributing editor and address them, before moving on. His views illustrate the silliness to which Israel-haters can be driven in their determination not to be associated with what Arab Muslims call “the Zionist entity.”

I most definitely do not have the impression that Richard Hoste is simply interested in disengaging from Middle Eastern affairs. Nor is he merely following the counsels of Ron Paul, who wishes to end giving foreign aid to any country anywhere. He also seems oblivious to an obvious point that Richard Spencer brings up, namely that the Palestinians, like the Israelis, are being flooded with American foreign aid. And it’s not just Israelis and Palestinians who are the beneficiaries of American largess: Palestinians, Egyptians and other Arabs are also receiving U.S. aid. And by the way, one of our most favored, aid-receiving nations is Egypt, whose Muslim population has been viciously attacking and even murdering Coptic Christians, with only sporadic attempts by the government to control this practice.

Yes, anarcho-capitalists like Doug Casey frequently claim that "The State" is just about to send its hapless population marching off into World War III ... but there's good reason to beleive that Caesy is right this time. It's difficult to gainsay most of his points. In my estimation, the odds are around 25 percent that Israel and/or the U.S. will attack Iran before the new year; if the economy suffers a major downturn, I'd up the odds to 70 percent.    

Doug: [I think] there is a very significant chance that we are headed for something that might vaguely resemble WWIII.

Louis James: That's going to be a pretty shocking statement to a lot of people – too much cognitive dissonance for most to let themselves think about it. Many readers might say that folks in the Middle East have been squabbling for years without the world going up in flames. Did you have a guru moment while there? Why now?

Doug: Well, people, especially Americans, forget that war, far from being an alien experience only read about in books, is actually a commonplace occurrence. Major powers have had major wars periodically throughout history. There's no reason to imagine mankind has kicked the habit. It may not be the conflagration people once expected from a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but it could still happen, and I suspect that the Middle East, Israel in particular, will be the epicenter.

One thing that drew my attention to this possibility again at this time is not what's going on in Gaza but a friend of mine who had just been to a conference with an ex-director of the CIA, some high FBI officials, a whole bunch of defense department wonks, and similar types from Israel. He reports that all those spooks and military types really think Israel is going to attack Iran. The situation looks very serious to them. And one of Obama's top military advisors has just said the U.S. itself has plans formulated, and they would be put into effect should the Iranians be proved to have nukes.

You add that to all you see in the news, including Iran's new reactor plans and so forth, and we could be pretty close to the edge.

L: So, if Israel attacks Iran, presumably to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, I can see the region going up in flames, but how does that become WWIII? I don't think the U.S., Russia, and China are bound by treaty to enter the fray…

Doug: It may not. But the logic goes like this: Israel is just a tiny sliver of a country, about the size of New Jersey. It's the kind of place that would be totally wiped out with just two or three nukes. And due to the nature of the place, those weapons could be delivered by yacht, or a cargo ship, or an airliner, or even a truck, for that matter. So Israel is very concerned about any hostile countries gaining nuclear capability – any of them that could produce just two or three such weapons could completely obliterate all of Israel. The spooks at the conference my friend went to all thought Israel would simply not allow any of its hostile neighbors to achieve that capability.

L: Okay, but isn't "military intelligence" usually an oxymoron? They got 9/11 completely wrong (unless you believe the conspiracy theories).

Doug: It usually is. With failures like Pearl Harbor, the Chinese invasion of Korea, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Tet offensive to its credit… I've long held the president of the U.S. would do just as well reading the New York Times for intelligence. And the fact that the U.S. now has a literal army of people in intelligence – about 854,000 with Top Secret clearances, according to a recent Washington Post series – doesn't mean the situation is going to get better. It means it's going to get worse, because none of these people know who's on first, and they all have competing agendas.

The U.S. government is far more out of control and byzantine than the Byzantines themselves could even have imagined.

Of course some of those guys are very good at what they do. But people rise in bureaucracies because of political infighting skills, not competence. What's needed for sound decisions is a wise man in command, not hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats. And we don't have a wise man in command, we have a glib ward healer from Chicago. If anything, he may be worse than Bush, which I didn't think was possible.

But to get back to Iran: It's important to recognize what has happened before. People forget that back in 1981, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in central Iraq, just weeks before it was to be loaded with fuel. And in 2007, they did the same with Syria's secret al-Kibar reactor.

But Iran is much further away, and they are building their reactors in hardened facilities – the jets that bombed Osirak barely had enough fuel to make it back to Israel – so Israel will probably need some help if it's going to pull it off this time. And since Israel is practically the 51st U.S. state, the feeling is that the U.S. would get sucked into helping them. Or, even if the U.S. doesn't help, it would still be blamed for not having kept its dog on a leash.

This is all compounded by the fact that the U.S. has been engaged in an unspoken War on Islam for close to three decades now, although it's styled the War on Terror.

L: And if the U.S. gets dragged into it, it becomes WWIII. I get it. It's interesting that Iran actually attacked the Iraqi reactor first, for much the same reason Israel did. Even more striking to me is that the UN boldly responded to Israel's actions with… strong words. And those words included the assertion that self-defense did not justify preemptive strikes – but that's exactly the excuse the U.S. used when its turn came to bomb Iraq.

Doug: I know – you can't make this stuff up. Although Iran attacked the Osirak during the nasty war between Saddam and the Ayatollah, shortly after the Shah fell in 1981. But these things do happen. They can be hard to predict. Still, the evidence is building – the latest press reports have a new carrier group joining the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf. It's the type of thing that's considered provocative by a neutral observer.

But the fact is that nuclear weapons have been around now for over 60 years. The technology for making them is well known and getting cheaper, easier, and better all the time. North Korea can make them; even a rich individual can. But why not buy them from a Pakistani general or even a Russian supply sergeant? Rogue regimes now recognize, based on Saddam's experience, that having some nukes is the best way to prevent an invasion by the U.S., or someone else. Therefore, they will proliferate.

L: I wonder how the peace activists who voted for Obama feel about that… Pretty scary stuff.

Doug: It is. You know, historically, the U.S. typically picks entirely too many fights with little nothing nowhere countries – rabbit- and squirrel-size game in Central America or the Caribbean. All it's ever done is foster the next generation of rebels; at best it puts in a right-wing strong man who's recognized as a stooge and who makes the U.S. a lot of new enemies.

Anyway, Iraq was a country with only 20 million people, and even Viet Nam was not a large country at the time – and desperately poor. But Iran is genuine big game.

L: I just looked it up in the CIA World Factbook, and they say it has 67 million people as of an estimate last month, and is the 19th largest country in the world.

Doug: Yes. It's a theocratic police state, with a highly regulated, state-managed economy. Everything is either subsidized or price controlled. The government gets 80% of its income from oil, but the fields are so badly run that production is going into decline. The fact is, if the U.S. just waits, economic collapse or revolt from the kids, or both, will bring the regime down. Instead, the U.S. may act as a catalyst to unify the people behind their goofy government. It's completely perverse.

If this spins out of control, it could do some very, very serious damage. It's not like the Iranian army isn't expecting something. They're an old civilization, they're not stupid, and I'm sure they have contingency plans if they're attacked.

L: I see. But even if the U.S. is drawn in, that makes the conflict one of global scope, but it doesn't really plunge most of the world into war. I doubt China or Russia would attack the U.S. in retaliation. But I could see Muslim countries around the world deciding to go to war. This could become an open War on Islam – is that what you mean by WWIII?

Doug: Well, let's just suppose that Israel, or Israel and the U.S., attack Iran before Iran can become a nuclear power. Now, what would the Iranians do? They could do nothing, which is what the Iraqis and the Syrians did when Israel bombed them…

L: Somehow, that doesn't seem likely. They are a proud people. And their military had to have learned some lessons from the Iraqi experience with the U.S.…

Doug: I agree. A likely response would be to close the Strait of Hormuz, by way of punishing America through a denial of a large part of its oil supply. About 40% of all seaborne oil shipments pass through that strait – 20% of all the global oil supply. Its closure would be a major disruption to the whole world.

Of course, Obama would thump on his chest and say that Iran can't be allowed to close international waters. Iran would likely say, "We just did. What do you expect after launching an unprovoked attack?"

It's well known that sea-skimming missiles go 2,000 miles per hour. They have hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and they can be launched from small, fast boats. Even in the U.S.' own war games conducted a few years ago, the U.S. Navy lost against these things. If the U.S. tries to open the Strait of Hormuz by force against Iran, I think it's likely that most of the fleet will soon be turned into an artificial reef that divers in future decades will explore with morbid fascination. Militaries always fight the last war, and that's precisely what the U.S. is doing with its carriers and B-2s.

L: Here's a map. And then what?

Doug: Remember that WWI started with the assassination of one archduke. These things are chaotic and unpredictable, but one thing leads to another, drawing all sorts of parties into the fight as it spins out of control. The trouble is that the ante has gone up considerably since those days. The only way to win a game with nuclear weapons is not to play.

L: What if everyone who could help Israel attack Iran realizes this and refuses to help? Does peace have a chance?

Doug: Anything's possible, but this is not the only flashpoint. The war in Iraq could heat up in all sorts of ways. Pakistan could boil over. There are probably 50 other combinations that could be as serious as the U.S. and Israel picking a fight with Iran. The global stage is a powder keg with many fuses. The situation with Israel is just one of them.

L: But that's long been the case, what makes it more likely to blow now?

Doug: The economic crisis is just getting going. It's important to remember that the whole world has been in a long boom, punctuated by relatively minor recessions, since 1946. What's happening now is not just another cyclical recession. As it gets worse, and I'm quite confident it will, people will look for others to blame, and politicians will look for distractions to appease the masses. These factors are actively fanning the flames.

L: Nothing like a good war to distract people from their own misery – and their own responsibility for their individual circumstances.

Doug: That's right, at least until their house gets blown up or their son gets killed. Nothing like a good foreign war against an invariably evil and subhuman enemy to distract people from local problems. And, of course, there are actually fools out there that believe war stimulates economies.

L: Yes… Can't tell you how many times I've heard that WWII ended the Great Depression – they told me so in school, so it must be so. Alas, the dumb masses.

Doug: Indeed. If that were true, the best prescription for prosperity would be to make every city look like Berlin in 1945, so the economy would be restimulated as the starving masses rebuilt them with their bare hands. But I do think the conflict between Israel and Iran has high odds of happening. Whatever they say about peaceful uses – and, actually, Iran should have a massive nuclear program since it beats burning valuable oil for electricity – Iran is going to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea has shown that it's the best thing they can do to protect themselves from the bigger kids on the block. And of course Israel can't let them do that. These countries are on a clear collision course.

L: Grim.

Hat tip: LRC.

Richard Hoste has presented us with another shrill call to embrace unconditional anti-Zionism. I don’t know where to begin in addressing him.

I’ll start with the point of easiest access.

It seems that some paleoconservatives and white nationalists have internalized the Left’s worst stereotypes about themselves. “We basically want the same thing as Zionists, so we can work with them.” I believe most WNs and traditionalists simply want to be left alone, not to seize some land in the third world, slaughter/expel the natives, and form an ethno-state there and then for the next 60 years continue living in a never ending state of war in order to expand in a sea of one billion hostile and aggressive Muslims in search of some all elusive “security,” all the while being financed and protected by foreign taxpayers and soldiers. Western Rightists shouldn’t be comparing themselves to Israelis, but pointing out how reasonable, humane and moderate their goals are compared to those of mainstream Zionists.

If Richard think that advocates of Traditionalism and occidental consciousness are going to get anywhere by claiming “But look, at least we’re not Zionists!” then he must have forgotten everything he and others at this website have written about the civic religion of political correctness and multicuturalism.

In turn, it is, in my mind, still highly legitimate -- and philosophically powerful, if not yet politically effective -- to inform people like Abe Foxman, and others who are as fanatical in their Zionism as their anti-racism, that the Traditionalist Right and White Nationalists desire things that aren’t unlike the stated goals of the Israeli government: an ethno-state for one’s own, and respect for the aspirations of other nations.

My sense is that paragraphs like the one quoted above derive not from any rational recognition of American Jews’ hypocrisy on the issue of the ethno-state but from Richard’s infantile wish that Zionsim never happened (hence his reiteration of Israel’s well known misdeed against Arabs.)

Via email, a friend has criticized my recent piece for the fact that it “sounds like the status quo refurbished for the purpose of ‘Western survival,’ especially when Russia is already practically aligned with Iran (and Turkey).” The criticism hits the mark in that I omit the pressing matters of foreign policy. If the far Right and Israeli nationalists were to come to some kind of understanding, would we then stand by if Israel attacked Iran, knowing that such an action might set off a global conflict, involve Russia, and generally be a negative-sum game for all around?

I would be interested to hear whether AltRight readers and contributors think Israeli nationalists or their slobbering devotees in the conservative movement are more eager to bomb Iran. My sense is that John Bolton & Co. are significantly crazier than those making policy in Jerusalem, for the simple reason that if Israel really wanted to attack Iran, it has already had ample opportunity to do so, and hasn’t. (Sadly, over the next year, I’m afraid we’re going to find out just how lunatic Washington and/or Jerusalem really is/are.) The fact remains that the primary enemy of the real Right in Europe and North America is Washington, DC, and the American financial-political-media establishment; it’s not Israel.

A second point. Part of me regrets using “alliance” in the title and “coalition” elsewhere in the piece, for this has led a number of commenters to misunderstand my main thesis. Just for the record, I do not believe that American and Israel’s interests are identical (as do so many neocons and movement conservatives.) Nor am I, Bill Buckley-like, inviting all sorts of Israel Firsters to come masquerade as “American conservatives.” (Moreover, Jews in America who make up a large component of the power elite will, no doubt, view the real Right as a threat.) What I am arguing is that Israel nationalists’ and the Alt Right’s interests are compatible, and that we need not be enemies. (“Working relationship” and “mutual understanding” might be better terms than “alliance” and “coalition.”)

In his contribution to our recent symposium, “Is the Far Right Anti-Semitic?” Srdja Trifkovic suggests an improbable alliance,

To put it bluntly, the survival of the West, which is recognizably Christian in spirit and European in genes, is "objectively" becoming the optimal survival strategy for the Jewish community as a whole, Israel included. (I've known several Jews who understand, notably my late friend Sir Alfred Sherman.) In the postmodern mélange of races, cultures and cults still desired by the likes of Abraham Foxman, the narrative of victimhood and its associated claims will carry little weight with the brown, black, and yellow multitudes blissfully devoid of European self-loathing, guilt and shame. The results may easily exceed in ferocity and magnitude the events of 1942-45.

It’s true that Africans and Chinese are less likely to erect Holocaust museums in their hometowns, though I’d hope European identity could be advertised on something other than self-loathing and white guilt.

Srdja continues,

It is essential for the Jews to grasp that the survival of European gentile identity and institutions is a sine qua non of their own survival. It is desirable for the traditional Right to overcome its instinctive impulses, historically justified as they are, and to consider this possibility and its implications.

Srdja’s proposition is reasonable, and, no doubt, attractive to many, but when such an alliance is examined in the cold, hard light of reality, it appears highly unlikely. The least of its problems is the fact that American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and multiculti, whereas traditionalists are decidedly neither.

The people Srdja seems to be offering to the Jews as coalition partners are American “paleoconservatives” (and related groups), some of the few who would openly define themselves as guardians of Christendom. However right their cause may be, the paleos and their ilk wield little in the way of influence in contemporary American society, and quite less in Europe. Their readership base is small, shrinking, and graying, and it’s difficult to imagine a major breakthrough occurring anytime soon.

More important, even if Jewish leaders were to take an interest in this band of cultural and literary critics, such people have developed ways of thinking that wouldn’t be particularly attractive to Jews in positions of leadership: the paleos are marked by their frequent announcements of the total futility of political or national struggles, their quasi-ideology of local attachment and participation in small-town governance, and their manifest grumpiness.

This doesn’t mean Jews aren’t interested in working with the Right. What Srdja leaves out of his essay (though he’s certainly aware of it) is that Jews already have engaged in a “Nixon goes to China” alignment with another group of Christian “traditionalists.” Indeed, Jews display great deference to this group, shower them with gifts, fly them to the Holy Land, and invite them to sumptuous junkets.

I’m, of course, referring to the “Christian Zionist.” Pastors Hagee, Robertson & Co. are out in front of this demographic, but it includes millions of Evangelical Protestants who don’t get carried away with “the rapture” and Dispensationalism but are strong backers of Israel nonetheless.

It’s worth noting that Jews haven’t “subverted” this group of mostly White Christians, or infected them with any anti-Western ideology, so much as they’ve latched on to a certain American messianism and sense of “chosen-ness” that was present long before their arrival.

In The War For Righteousness, his history of the American home front during the First World War, Richard Gamble describes well the ways in which American Protestants imagined their country as a “light to the nations” and tasked with spreading democracy and “Americanism” to benighted Europe. This spirit could be traced back much further, of course, to Governor Winthrop and his image of “New Jerusalem.” And it’s not hard to see how the “Americanism” Geist could be summoned to support Old Jerusalem as well.

Sad to say, from my point of view at least, this phantasm of a global democratic mission represents a much more powerful component of American national identity than any connection with European Tradition.  At any rate, there’s simply no reason why Israel-minded Jews would go looking for new Useful Idiots when the current ones are working out so splendidly.

But there will come a time, perhaps soon, when Jews will need new partners. And the fact that Allan Dershowitz and Norman Podhoretz have teamed up with Pat Robertson and John Hagee proves that anything is possible.

At the moment, American Jews generally support politicians like Barack Obama, as well as all sorts of multiculti, open-borders, and affirmative-action legislation, with the assumption that their current status won’t be affected much by it, and might be improved. But much as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice discovered, after a spell is cast, it can take on a life of its own -- and turn against its originator. The next generation of Latino politicians will likely make Obama seem like Eisenhower. And Srdja is right to point out that political multiculturalism will tend to get out of hand and become very bad for the Jews, who will be viewed by Black and Brown as a particularly annoying version of Whitey.

And here’s where a coalition could take shape. World Jewry isn’t as monolithic as some anti-Semites and philo-Semites like to imagine; and indeed, the fractions within it can be extremely mutually hostile. Speaking to the Jewish Federation in the late ‘90s, Bibi Netanyahu called America the “crematorium” of the Jews. He was referring to the tendency of Jews to migrate to the States, pick up on its ways, and never make it to Jerusalem. He could have been referring as well to the documented tendency of Americanized Jews to have a greatly attenuated connection with the Holy Land (despite efforts of outfits like Birthright Israel) and essentially become typical American liberals: childless, urban, postmodern souls who are more likely to criticize Israel for human rights violations than make aliyah. This is a trend lauded by the New York Review of Books and greeted with dismay and anger by nationalist Israelis.

Your average eastern seaboard liberal Jew, who takes his marching orders from the New York Times and reads Phillip Roth in his spare time, will likely never want to have anything to do with the far Right -- even if his life depended on it. Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are a different story.

With the prospect of American politics slipping out of control, and non-Whites commanding nuclear weapons and a massive military arsenal, Israeli hardliners might much prefer that the extreme Right were in charge of things.

Unlike the neocons and the Holy Rollers, this new group would be willing to radically reconstitute the American social order. It would extricate the U.S. military from the Middle East, and wouldn’t likely express strong opinions about who wins or who looses in various land disputes in the region. Israelis might learn to prefer such an isolationist regime, which would give them a free hand, as opposed to the ever-meddling Democrats and Republicans.

Alliances aren’t about liking your allies, or imaging that you share a common destiny or bond. Alliances are about ensuring your survival and defeating your enemies. Israel’s fruitful relationship with the South African Apartheid government, which included the sharing of nuclear intelligence and material, should serve as a model in this regard. Who knows? Israeli nationalists might want to help finance the far Right in Europe and North America. Certainly, if the two camps could grasp that their interests are complimentary, an improbable grand alliance might be in the cards.

Stranger things have happened.

A question I’ve been thinking about for some time is as follows: Where on the American political spectrum would it be proper to place strong supporters of Israel, including American partisans of Israel’s present nationalist government? What complicate this question are the support patterns for the Israelis and the Palestinians. They cut across conventional ideological divisions.

While the Republican Party and the media-promoted conservative movement are unconditionally pro-Israel and lean heavily toward Israel’s now ruling, hard-line Likud coalition, the overwhelming majority of American Jews are Democrats, but emotionally attached to the Jewish state. Despite the tensions between the Obama government and Premier Netanyahu’s coalition, American Jews show greater fondness for the Obama administration than does any other ethnic group, save for blacks. Obama’s reduced popularity among Jews, which fell from 83 percent in January 2009 to 64 percent last month, doesn’t change the relative standing of his Jewish supporters. His popularity among Hispanic voters, another group with which he did well in 2008, has dipped to below 60 percent.

With the exception of the Orthodox, most American Jews combine their financial and other forms of assistance to Israel with unmistakably left-of-center views about American politics. Despite the attempts by some Jewish groups to be more “even-handed” in the Middle Eastern conflict, most American Jews find no contradiction between being on the social and cultural left in the U.S. and remaining ardent Zionists and, in effect, Israeli nationalists.