Caroline Glick, columnist and Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post, addressed the HonestReporting mission this morning in Jerusalem.
Glick delivered a powerful talk on Israel and the West’s confrontation with radical Islam, describing an inherent cultural clash between totalitarian Islamists on one side, and Israel/the U.S. — founded upon individual liberty and democracy — on the other. Glick stressed that world terror groups are not ‘amorphous and non-definable’, but rather are actively enabled by Arab states (such as Iran, Syria and Pakistan) that must now be confronted aggressively to cut off the terrorists’ lifeline.
“We have to make it clear,” said Glick, “through HonestReporting and continual letter-writing, who the enemy is and what is really happening with the Islamist threat against Israel, the U.S. and the West. Just as they used jetliners to destroy the twin towers, they will use the media to destroy our will. We cannot let that happen.”
With regard to Israeli politics, Glick believes the Israeli left is suffering from a type of ‘battered wife syndrome’ that leaves one with the illusion that ‘my husband will come to like me if I learn to make creme boulee!’ In fact the husband may be a beast who cannot be appeased — likewise, implied Glick, the current Palestinian leadership.
Regarding NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Glick said:
Tom Friedman is an honorable man, but he’s been wrong about everything he’s written on the Mideast and Israel for about 25 years. [As illustrated by his recent columns] Friedman doesn’t understand that with the Lebanon withdrawal, Israel brought the enemy to our doorstep — Israel is a much less safe place than before the withdrawal.
Friedman is not only wrong — his views are downright dangerous, for he consistently blames Israel for the fact that someone wants to exterminate us. By failing to acknowledge the true nature of the threat, Friedman is guilty of encouraging it.
Glick left the mission participants with a thought on Nazi Germany’s ongoing impact on the Jewish people:
The Nazis made it hard to understand antisemitism outside of mass extermination and gas chambers — if you don’t have chimneys, many now believe, it’s simply ‘anti-Zionism’ or something else. We must understand that this attitude is another, ongoing form of victory for the Nazis. Today’s antisemitism, when disguised as anti-Zionism or ‘sharp criticism of Israel’, must be exposed, delegitimized and crushed.
