Most notoriously, before the first Gulf War, he wrote that there were only two groups "beating the drums for the war in the Mideast," and that was the Israeli Defense Ministry and its "amen corner" in the United States, and then you went on to say later that "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzalez, and Leroy Brown were going to do the fighting."
As William F. Buckley concluded: "There is no way to read that sentence without concluding that Pat Buchanan was suggesting that American Jews manage to avoid personal military exposure even while advancing military policies they uniquely engineered," and, I would add, that those policies would be at the expense, intentionally of non-Jews. 1/ What makes it especially egregious is that it was simply false. Not only was there an obvious precipitating caus for the war that had nothing to do with Israel, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but a total of 42 countries joined the US-led coalition against Iraq, and contributed troops. 2/

@gracecamille_ If you think Zionism has anything to do with "white supremacy," saying that you are an ignorant fool would be a gross understatement. 1/ @gracecamille_ Like any ideology, Zionism, the idea that Jews should have a modern homeland in part of their ancient homeland, which in turn means simply that Israel should continue to exist, is subject to criticism. 2/

Well, Ron should have rethought the last sentence, but there is an important point here: Christianity has historically defined Judaism by its rejection of Jesus. But Jews don't define themselves that way at all. Jesus just isn't part of Judaism, period. 1/

https://twitter.com/kampeas/status/1984245707818270969

I've met well-meaning Christians who have asked me, "but Jews think that Jesus was a great rabbi, he just wasn't the messiah or Son of God, right?" Nope. Jesus just isn't part of Judaism. He isn't in our holy books, he isn't part of our rabbinical literature, he is just the 2/

Again: The rise of identity politics on the right was an entirely predictable reaction to the Great Awokening and its identity politics, including demonizing white people as a class.
That doesn't in any way exonerate the dipsticks who are promoting racism, antisemitism, nativism, and so on. 1/ But again, it was entirely predictable, which I can say because I (among others) predicted it, but any attempts to warn the identitarian left about it were met with one of two objections. 2/

It's important to reiterate that Nazi antisemitism is not only not the only form of antisemitism, it's aberrational in that it thought every Jew an enemy warranting extermination. More standard political antisemitism tends to have a conspiratorial tone blaming Jews for everything, 1/ BUT, it exempts the "right kind" of Jews. The right kind may be Jews who convert to Christianity, Jews who adopt the right political ideology, Jews who join antisemites in attacking other Jews, etc. Antisemite @MearsheimerJ exempts "righteous Jews," for example. 2/

In all seriousness, part of the Mamdani phenomenon, and the related growth of "socialism" in the circles of young, highly educated Democrats is that the traditional jobs you'd get as a humanities major from fancy liberal arts colleges--publishing, media, paralegal--have disappeared. 1/ You are an under-30 graduate in English, Art History, etc from the likes of Vassar, Smith, Oberlin, and move to NYC to make your fortune like prior generations. You aren't likely to get a job at the Times, or Harper & Collins, or Sullivan & Cromwell. 2/

If you are philanthropist and want spread ideas you care about, eg pro Israel or pro free market, instead of reinventing the wheel why not look for individuals or institutions that are already doing a good job and ask them if incremental additional resources will help, and how. 1/ You are likely to get a much bigger bang for your buck this way. Imagine for example you find someone who already has a book forthcoming on the topic you care about. That person has already invested a huge amount of time and resources in the book. 2/

The essential problem with far leftists and Jews is that not that they harshly criticize Israel and so forth, but that they refuse to apply the analytical frameworks they apply to every other minority group to Jews. 1/ If it weren't Jews and Israel, imagine going to your average leftist and saying, "here's a group that was (literally!) demonized by the Christian majority for centuries, and that were treated as perfidious inferiors by Muslim majorities. 2/

Did you know that @ggreenwald is a zionist, or at least not an antizionist? Or at least that's what he told an interviewer as recently as last year? 1/ "People can debate those things, but certainly one of my goals is not to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. I understand the importance for world Jews of having a state, but it's important to recognize that it is an ethno-state. The idea of it is that a certain group of people will remain, the majority will remain supreme. We talk about white nationalism being evil. We talk about other forms of ethno-nationalism being evil. It is a form of ethno-nationalism." 2/

One the weirdest things that Palestinian propagandists seem to believe is that before, during, and after WWII, Palestinian Arabs welcomed Jewish refugees to Mandatory Palestine with open arms. Even in the US, some prominent Palestinians have stated that it comforts them to know that while their ancestors suffered, they at least take solace in knowing that their ancestors helped Jewish refugees survive the Holocaust. 1/ This is such a bizarre, counterfactual take on history that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with the fact that the story they tell is based on the notion that local Arabs, not the British (and before them, the Turks), controlled Palestine before Israel existed. 2/

Since Petti showed up in my feed, I want to take the opportunity to note that every single article he writes for @reason on anything to do with Jews and Israel is consistently terrible, the kind of stuff you might find @mises. I even wrote up a critique of one article: 1/

https://twitter.com/matthew_petti/status/1974797450935484421

It was about supposed hysteria when Hamas declared a "Day of Rage" for 10/13/2023:
(1) You would never know from this article that there have, in fact, been attacks on Jews in the US from Islamists. The most recent one before 10/7 was in 2022, when Malik Faisal Akram took worshippers hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel of Colleyville, a Jewish synagogue. The history of such violence, again never mentioned by Petty, makes the hysteria look a lot less hysterical. As would a mention of vandalism and threats against Jewish institutions and individuals since 10/7, including the killing of a Jewish man at a pro-Israel rally by an anti-Israel protestor less than a month later. 2/

For new Washington Post poll on Jewish opinion, it includes 24% "with no religious affiliation but Jewish ethnically, culturally or through their family background — and either were raised Jewish or have a parent who is Jewish." Some of this group are legit "secular" Jews. But someone with one Jewish parent, wasn't raised in anything, doesn't do anything Jewish but says, "yeah I'm half-Jewish" (and thus identifies as Jewish ethnically)--nope, they aren't part of the Jewish community, they shouldn't be part of a survey on Jewish opinion. 1/ The not-really-Jewish Jews are concentrated among younger people. So that. how you get statistics like this: "While 56 percent of Jewish Americans overall say they are emotionally attached to Israel, among those ages 18 to 34, that drops to 36 percent." Well, that and 2/

There is a tremendous amount of ideologically motivated/distorted scholarship by academic historians, and it's funny, but also very much not unfunny. Because it's when normies learn that you can't trust "mainstream" history that they become susceptible to conspiracy theory, Holocaust denial, and so on. 1/ Consider the debate I participated in over Nancy MacLean's ridiculous book on economist James Buchanan, filled with speculation, invention, tendentiousness, and incorrect statements of fact. 2/

More on Iraqi-British historian Avi Shlaim: One of his major contributions to Israeli history was to question the notion that Israel always faced implacable hostility from its Arab neighbors. Shlaim showed that various players in the Arab world showed some willingness 1/ to accommodate first Zionism than Israel, and in his opinion Israel often blew these opportunities by being overly suspicious or otherwise uninterested in peace overtures from the other side. 2/

The most influential libertarians of mid-century when libertarianism took off were Ayn Rand (Jewish), Ludwig von Mises (Jewish), Milton Friedman (Jewish), and FA Hayek (not Jewish). None of them called himself a libertarian. 1/

https://twitter.com/Sam_Schulman/status/1971613188438507662

The primary organizers of what became the libertarian movement were Nathaniel Branden (Jewish, via his work spreading Objectivism) and Murray Rothbard (Jewish, though something of an antisemite). 2/

A historical lesson for those who want Israel to be less "belligerent": Why did Israel risk Oslo in 1993? Because (a) the USSR was dead; and (b) The PLO had lost much of its support in the world after backing Saddam Hussein in 1991.
The combination made Israel feel secure. A secure Israel is an Israel willing to "take risks" (including foolish ones like Oslo). 1/ A threatened Israel, however, is going to be less accommodating. You have to remember that almost every Israeli adult is just one to three generations removed from genocidal violence against Jews in their homeland, plus have been subject to genocidal rhetoric from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. 2/

Libertarianism as a political movement strikes me as defunct.
One faction has reverted to the conspiratorial anti-governmentism of the old far right, like the old Liberty Lobby, which comes as the LL did with a big heap of antisemitism. Ron Paul and Tom Massie are the soft-core versions. 1/ The other has basically thrown its lot in with a different sort of reactionaries on the far left, promoting every nonsensical notion that has a bit of libertarian cache, like "Defund the police." They are also infected with their own version of far-left antisemitism. I admit to having a particular interest in antisemitism, but it's also true that adopting antisemitism is the sign of the intellectual decay of any movement. 2/

If people expected this, they were being ridiculous: "For many around the world, [Oct. 7] was proof that the Palestinian issue won’t be buried, that the oppressed will eventually burst with rage. They expected Israel to retaliate but then for it to negotiate a joint future." 1/ Who was Israel going to negotiate a joint future with? Hamas, which on Oct. 7 tried to launch a war of total destruction, and then vowed to do it again and again, with the help of the "Shi'ite axis?" 2/

Re the current wave of conservative censoriousness and attempts to cancel people for their comments on Charlie Kirk’s murder, the right use of tactics previously more associated with the was not only predictable, I predicted it. 1/ A big theme of my 2003 book “you can’t say that” was that one reason you have neutral pro-free speech principles even if censorship is perceived to be benefiting your cause the other side will use the same tactics when they get power. 2/

I have no special insight into what's going on in Netanyahu's head, but here's the strategic case for fighting to until Hamas surrenders in Gaza. 1/ The argument given, including by high-level members of the security establishment in Israel, is that if Israel makes a deal that leaves Hamas in place, Israel could always go back in if Hamas violates a ceasefire or otherwise poses a threat. 2/

Abortion, trans, & refugee rights are endangered, we have a militarized response to the undocumented & local crime, affirmative action is gone, and ... a wildly disproportionate amount of the left's attention has been focused on supporting a foreign Islamist terrorist group. 1/ One can add that other recent issues favored by the left--BLM/criminal justice reform, climate change, Me Too--are also being overshadowed. Maybe someone who understands the sociology of the activist left better than I do can explain to me: 2/