Tag Archives: jewish influence

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A Jew-Firster Spat About Israel-Firsters

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Jeffrey Goldberg writes in Is the Term ‘Israel-Firster’ Anti-Semitic?, at The Atlantic, on 19 Jan 2012:

There’s been a controversy raging over the past month or so that I’ve avoided writing about mainly because it has a Groundhog Day quality to it. It began with this very interesting Ben Smith piece, but lately it has become tiresome. Apparently, it is not tiresome to other pepole, because it just keeps going. The seemingly most urgent question to emerge from this controversy is whether or not the term “Israel-firster” is anti-Semitic. The term is used by Media Matters, the left-wing advocacy group, to describe American Jews with whom it disagrees on American Middle East policy, and it was also used by staffers of the Center for American Progress, the important liberal think tank, to describe same. CAP has disavowed the language, and apologized on behalf of the staffer who used the term; Media Matters doesn’t seem to care.

So, is “Israel-firster” anti-Semitic? Its origins are certainly anti-Semitic, and the idea that Jews are incapable of being loyal to the country of their citizenship and are only loyal to world Jewry, or the Jewish state, is an age-old anti-Semitic trope.

For non-jews the “controversy” has been tiresome all along – it’s just the latest episode of jews debating jews about what’s best for jews. The obsession with arguing about whether this or that is “anti-semitic” is symptomatic of a jew-first attitude. The trope here is the jewish conceit that they may freely exhibit such attitudes while everyone else must act as if they’re incapable of noticing.

The next day Goldberg had more to say. A Question From Glenn Greenwald, 20 Jan 2012:

I don’t think CAP is anti-Semitic (it’s pretty hostile to Israel, but it’s not as if it has called for the Jewish state’s destruction), but the term “Israel-Firster” is originally a neo-Nazi term (Willis Carto’s fascist Liberty Lobby was a big proponent of its use, as is David Duke), and it is meant to raise questions about a Jewish person’s willingness to be loyal to America (this is merely the local variant of an ancient anti-Semitic trope). CAP, to its credit, acknowledged the anti-Semitic nature of the term, and apologized. (I wrote about the controversy here.)

Obviously, use of the term “Israel-Firster” to describe someone with whom you disagree is not meant to open a discussion, or advance an argument, but to demonize your opponent. When Jews use it, as Joe Klein does, it is particularly unfortunate, because it is a term specifically designed to marginalize Jews in the American political discourse, and people like Joe Klein will eventually reap the whirlwind, in one form or another. The mainstreaming of hostility toward any group of Jews leads inevitably to the mainstreaming of hostility to Jews generally. And of course it’s probably a sound idea for Jews to avoid using neo-Nazi-derived slurs to describe other Jews.

This is why I’m taking the time to write about this latest tiresome episode of jew-firstiness. Did you catch what Goldberg did right there? Did you notice how he used the terms “neo-Nazi”, “fascist”, and “anti-semitic” to describe someone with whom he disagrees? How he indirectly explained that he doesn’t mean for it to open a discussion, or advance an argument, but to demonize his opponent?

Words are not the problem, it’s facing what they mean that Goldberg can’t handle. “Israel-firster” is literally more descriptive than any of the terms he uses to demonize his opponents. To the extent “neo-Nazi”, “fascist”, and “anti-semitic” mean anything it amounts to “anti-jew” – which is exactly the kind of thing a jew-firster would be concerned about. Jefferey Goldberg is both a jew-firster and an Israel-firster. Israel and jews literally come first in his mind.

A few days later Goldberg was happy to quote someone else regurgitating his jew-first views. A Straight Line From Lindbergh to ‘Israel-Firster’, 23 Jan 2012:

[C]urious minds want to know whether the Gingrich campaign will continue to reap the largesse of Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who seems an unlikely Gingrichian. To explain it, some critics have taken to calling Adelson an “Israel-firster.” That ugly term has been applied, not just to Adelson, but to other supporters of current U.S. policies regarding Israel, as Atlantic Monthly writer Jeffrey Goldberg describes.

Bashing Jews for their supposed disloyalty to their nation is a crude maneuver that has been employed long before Israel existed. It has been a tactic of both the far-left and far-right, almost as though haters from both extremes come together on the dark side of the moon.

Demonizing people in this way is always a nasty form of argumentation, but in our country it is particularly disquieting when this kind of discourse seeps into the mainstream of our major political parties. Lately, that seems to have happened within certain Democratic circles, as Ben Smith reported in Politico. In Charles Lindberg’s time, the intolerance on display by the “America-First” crowd was mostly (but not exclusively) Republican.

Yes, it is a crude maneuver to demonize people in this way, for example, as “haters from both extremes come together on the dark side of the moon”.

The difference is that the America First “crowd”, including Charles Lindbergh, openly identified themselves and their interests, whereas jew- and Israel-firsters pretend they aren’t and intolerantly demonize anyone who calls them on their pretense.

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Iowa’s Critics

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On the 1 Jan 2012 broadcast of NBC’s Nightly News Andrea Mitchell said: “The rap on Iowa: it doesn’t represent the rest of the country — too White, too evangelical, too rural.”

The next day an NBC spokeswoman explained: “she was referencing critics who argue that the state shouldn’t carry so much weight because it doesn’t proportionally represent the rest of the country”.

Who are these critics?

On 18 December 2011, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger wrote about Iowa in the New York Times. A.G. is the son of publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. Their extended family owns a controlling stake in the paper.

Tucked inside Sulzberger’s article is a version of Mitchell’s complaint:

As the first state to take part in the Republican nominating contest, Iowa has long been criticized as too much of an outlier to be permanently endowed such an outsize influence in shaping the presidential field. Too small, critics say. Too rural. Too white.

Who are these critics?

On 9 December 2011, The Atlantic published a lengthly hit piece on Iowa by Stephen Bloom, Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life.

While this may not be the source of Mitchell and Sulzberger’s complaint, it appears to be the most recent, most complete expression of it. It is in fact a very thorough deconstruction of Iowans and their culture.

Bloom introduces himself as an expert Iowanologist:

For almost 20 years I’ve lived in Iowa, where as a professor at the University of Iowa I’ve taught thousands of university students. I’ve written a couple of books on rural Iowa, traveling to all 99 counties, and have spent much of my time when not teaching, visiting with and interviewing Iowans from across the state.

The article is long and well-padded with local trivia. This might create an impression Bloom not only knows Iowa but perhaps even sympathizes with Iowans. It would be a false impression.

At one point Bloom offers this blunt evaluation, clearly intended as a put-down:

I’ve lived in many places, lots of them foreign countries, but none has been more foreign to me than Iowa.

In subsequent paragraphs Bloom cites an overabundance of Germanic surnames and Christian beliefs as a particular source of irritation.

The article is larded from beginning to end with evidence of Bloom’s distaste, which makes it a consistently unsympathetic, negative, and in places even gratuitously derogatory portrayal of White Iowans.

As it turns out, Bloom strongly identifies as a jew. This is clearly the main source of his alienation.

Here’s how Bloom sums up his gripe:

Whether a schizophrenic, economically-depressed, and some say, culturally-challenged state like Iowa should host the first grassroots referendum to determine who will be the next president isn’t at issue. It’s been this way since 1972, and there are no signs that it’s going to change. In a perfect world, no way would Iowa ever be considered representative of America, or even a small part of it. Iowa’s not representative of much. There are few minorities, no sizable cities, and the state’s about to lose one of its five seats in the U.S. House because its population is shifting; any growth is negligible. Still, thanks to a host of nonsensical political precedents, whoever wins the Iowa Caucuses in January will very likely have a 50 percent chance of being elected president 11 months later. Go figure.

Bloom’s description of the mores of what he calls “insular Iowa” a few paragraphs earlier actually fit most of White America. Bloom’s perfect world, however, is more like the one tribemates Sulzberger and Mitchell live in: More cities, less Whites.

The “rap” that White Iowans aren’t representative is a rationalization offered by people who simply don’t like Whites. They don’t lay proportion guilt-trips on anyone but Whites. In fact they would rage hysterically in condemnation of anyone who aimed such a critique at their own kind.

This is our problem. To solve it we need our own pundits, our own media, our own politics, and ultimately our own countries. What we don’t need is these critics. They’re not representative of us.

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Roth and Weiss on What’s Best for The Jews

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Two years ago I wrote about jewish influence on Christmas music. Sometime later I ran across a passage from Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock praising Irving Berlin for de-Christing Christmas (and Easter). What I didn’t realize until today was that Roth’s book frames jewish hostility toward Christmas in a much broader context of jewish hostility toward Christianity, Christians, and Whites in general.

Roth, like Berlin, is not some marginal, inconsequential jew. Roth is considered “one of the most honored authors of his generation”:

His fiction, set frequently in Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its “supple, ingenious style,” and for its provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity.

Actually, it’s more accurate to describe Roth’s work and it’s fans as reflecting an all-consuming obsession with jewish identity. Roth is concerned about what it means to be a jew and how that contrasts with being Christian, American, or European. In Operation Shylock Roth weighs the differences between zionism and diasporism, two complementary jewish identities.

The portion excerpted here was not easy to find. In the end I transcribed it from Moshe Waldoks’ The Best American Humor 1994. Though Roth’s book is in Google Books, and precise searches will display snippets, I have not been able to find a link to freely viewable content.

Without further ado, here is Philip Roth, speaking through a character he named Philip Roth:

I heard myself next praising the greatest Diasporist of all, the father of the new Diasporist movement, Irving Berlin. “People ask where I got the idea. Well, I got it listening to the radio. The radio was playing ‘Easter Parade’ and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’ The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow. Gone is the gore and the murder of Christ—down with the crucifix and up with the bonnet! He turns their religion into schlock. But nicely! Nicely! So nicely the goyim don’t even know what hit ‘em. They love it. Everybody loves it. The Jews especially. Jews loathe Jesus. People always tell me Jesus is Jewish. I never believe them. It’s like when people used to tell me Cary Grant was Jewish. Bullshit. Jews don’t want to hear about Jesus. And can you blame them? So—Bing Crosby replaces Jesus as the beloved Son of God, and the Jews, the Jews, go around whistling about Easter! And is that so disgraceful a means of defusing the enmity of centuries? Is anyone really dishonored by this? If schlockified Christianity is Christianity cleansed of Jew hatred, then three cheers for schlock. If supplanting Jesus Christ with snow can enable my people to cozy up to Christmas, then let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Do you see my point?” I took more pride, I told them, in “Easter Parade” then in the victory of the Six Day War, found more security in “White Christmas” than in the Israeli nuclear reactor. I told them that if the Israelis ever reached a point where they believed their survival depended not merely on breaking hands but on dropping a nuclear bomb, that would be the end of Judaism, even if the state of Israel should survive. “Jews as Jews will simply disappear. A generation after Jews use nuclear weapons to save themselves from their enemies, there will no longer be people to identify themselves as Jews. The Israelis will have saved their state by destroying their people. They will never survive morally after that; and if they don’t, why survive as Jews at all? They barely have the wherewithal to survive morally now. To put all these Jews in this tiny place, surrounded on all sides by tremendous hostility—how can you survive morally? Better to be marginal neurotics, anxious assimilationists, and everything else that the Zionists despise, better to lose the state than to lose your moral being by unleashing a nuclear war. Better Irving Berlin than the Wailing Wall. Better Irving Berlin than Holy Jerusalem! What does owning Jerusalem, of all places, have to do with being Jews in 1988? Jerusalem is by now the worst thing that could possibly have happened to us. Last year in Jerusalem! Next year in Warsaw! Next year in Bucharest! Next year in Vilna and Cracow! Look, I know people call Diasporism a revolutionary idea, but it’s not a revolution that I’m proposing, it’s a retroversion, a turning back, the very thing Zionism itself once was. You go back to the crossing point and cross back the other way. Zionism went back too far, that’s what went wrong with Zionism. Zionism went back to the crossing point of the dispersion—Diasporism goes back to the crossing point of Zionism.”

Roth’s argument isn’t complicated. First, he takes as a given that jews are a group, his group, distinct from everyone else. Second, he’s advocating in favor of that group’s best interests, regardless of what it means for anyone else. Roth subtitled his book A Confession. It is a jewish confession though, which means it’s more of an arrogant celebration of jewish victimology and supremacy than an expression of humility or contrition. Roth revels in his enmity toward “the goyim” even as he projects his hate into their minds. That the Other are so clueless, even about their supposed hatred for jews, serves as just another excuse for jews to hate them.

Talking directly to his own people, Roth first reminds them how easily and completely the goyim can and have been manipulated by jews. Then he shames them with the notion that jewish nationalism isn’t good enough for the jews. Why constrain yourself to live in one small country when you can thrive everywhere by manipulating the goyim? Then, finally, as a sort of trump card, Roth invokes morality. As with confession, morality means something different to jews than Christians. Christian morality is universalist – it refers to principles that apply equally to everyone, even their enemies. Jewish morality is particularist – “Is it good for the jews?” Working with this definition of morality Roth doesn’t see anything wrong with jews manipulating the goyim to further jewish interests. If it’s good for the jews then it’s good. When Roth describes zionist jews nuking their enemies as immoral, it’s not because of the harm it might cause those enemies. It’s because he thinks it would cause “the end of Judaism”, which to him means “there will no longer be people to identify themselves as Jews”.

Scrolling back to the top of the page in the book where the quote above begins we find Roth elaborating on who the enemy is, and what he wants from them:

… call on Europe to purge itself of a thousand years of anti-Semitism and to make room in its midst for a vital Jewish presence to multiply and flourish there and, in anticipation of the third millenium of Christianity, to declare by proclamation in all its parliaments the right of the Jewish uprooted to resettle in their European homeland and to live as Jews there, free, secure, and welcome. But I have my doubts.

This is the jewish version of history, together with the jewish solution to their European problem. Roth makes it plain enough, and not nicely at all, that Europeans must be subordinated to jews so that jews can multiply and flourish. Roth wants Europeans (by which he means Whites everywhere) to admit collective guilt and abandon any collective identity or interests of our own. Meanwhile jews enjoy the opposite.

Roth is sometimes absurdly described as a “self-hating jew” because he clearly favors diasporism over zionism, rather than both. This “self-hating jew” bit also serves as a kind of cover – shoo away now goyim, this is private jew business being discussed here. The fact is that he’s simply one particularly prominent example of the typical White-blaming, White-hating what’s-good-for-the-jews jew. The less the goyim know about that the better for the jews.

The belief that zionism is somehow bad for the jews is not uncommon on the “liberal” side of the political spectrum – which is to say amongst the majority of jews outside Israel. Philip Weiss expressed a similar belief earlier this month in Israel isn’t good for the Jews. Weiss, aiming non-fiction at a (slightly) more mixed audience than Roth, writes:

A feeling has taken root deep in the American Jewish community that Israel is hurting us, hurting our standing in the world and our future. The restrictions on democracy, the curbs on women, the intransigence vis-a-vis the Palestinians when Obama has demanded movement, the indifference to the Arab Spring– Israel is a society we no longer recognize as Jewish like we’re Jewish, and worst of all, its militarism is exposing American Jews to the accusation that we are dually loyal. And we don’t like that: We’re Americans.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was clearly the oafish ad campaign that targeted Christmas and intermarriage– the ad campaign that Netanyahu cancelled. Even rightwing Israel lobbyists were stunned by how clueless the ad campaign was. But it was an expression of genuine Israeli attitudes. And that is what’s so scary: American Jews are waking up to the fact that Israeli society is nothing like ours. Hillary Clinton could only launch her criticism of religious restrictions on women in Israel because she knows that American Jews feel this way. Ambassador Howard Gutman was speaking for many sensible American Jews when he said that Israeli policies are hurting Jews by fostering anti-Semitism.

We are integrators. We live in America because we want to be Jews in a diverse society. That is the spirit of American Jewish life by and large. And now these Zionists–separatists whom we never completely trusted when we were arguing with them in Eastern Europe–are quietly understood to have hijacked Jewishness and taken it to a dark ugly place.

In conclusion Weiss writes:

Because more and more of us who care about Jewish life, as an integral part of western society, need to separate ourselves from an ethos of separation.

It’s refreshing to hear a jew admit that powerful non-jews like Hillary Clinton are actually beholden to jewish will – able to do what they do only so long as jews approve. Howard Gutman is also only nominally a representative of American interests. What Gutman said was delivered at a conference of organized jewry that deserves a detailed examination and critique of its own. Suffice it here to say that Gutman drew a distinction between Whites and muslims vis-a-vis jews. Whites, he said, simply hate others, like jews, largely for the sake of hating, whereas muslims at least hate jews for somewhat more sensible reasons, namely jews in Israel acting like Whites. This was controversial to jews and non-jews seeking to serve them. They complained Gutman wasn’t being fair to the jews.

Weiss, like Gutman, describes concerns that are clearly pinned to what he thinks best serves the interests of jews, or at least jews who live in the US. Not Americans. Not Palestinians. That’s what the word integration means to him. He’s so eager to defend his jews from exposure to (valid) accusations and yet so intellectually bankrupt that all he can do is spew blatant contradictions. We’re jews AND we’re Americans! That’s NOT dual loyalty! We’re integrators AND we continue separately as jews! We’re not at all like those DARK, UGLY separatists over there! Oh, and by the way, THEY’RE NOT JEWS!

The bottom line is that Weiss, like Roth, thinks jewish interests are best served within subservient Western societies. Whereas Roth sees the jews in diaspora as living among hostile aliens and writes more or less frankly about defusing Christians, Weiss is more interested in playing the anti-“racist” liberal, defusing separatists and nationalists. Like Roth, Weiss seems confident that jews can and will continue to thrive, at least in diaspora. The problem, as Roth sees it, is that zionism is immoral. Weiss claims the problem is that “oafish” “clueless” zionists are making a mockery of his (jewish) moralizing.

Weiss says he’s scared that jews are waking up and they’re upset that zionists have “hijacked Jewishness and taken it to a dark ugly place”. I couldn’t care less, but I think what scares jews more, zionist and diasporist alike, is the fear that Whites will see through their double-talk. That enough of us will wake up and be upset to realize that jews, as a group, are only worried about the interests of jews. That we’ll understand that they have always seen us as the Other, the enemy, regardless of how we regard them. That we’ll see how diaspora jews, through calculated, coordinated, collective effort, have hijacked Western societies and taken us to a dark ugly place, turning our homelands into amusement parks in the interests of “minorities”, first and foremost themselves. That we’ll put together the various pieces of truth, left and right, and see how militarism (and corporatism and globalism) really figures into all this. How the lives and vitality of our people have been squandered stomping around, on ourselves as well as others, to keep the world safe for jews, diasporists AND zionists, while they take turns demonizing and exploiting us.

[The Philip Weiss image comes from Gilad Atzmon’s Jews & Their Self Interest-An Interview with Philip Weiss.]

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Where Jihad and Counterjihad Agree

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Farha Khaled’s Caroline Glick Cited As One of Israeli American Tipsters By Gates of Vienna Where Fjordman Appears To Be Back surveys and connects a good portion of counterjihadist dots, linking names with pseudonyms, blogs and photos.

Khaled describes herself as:

Freelance writer. Columnist for the Saudi based Arab News. My op eds focus on exposing Islamophobia.

Khaled begins her article by asserting that Gates of Vienna is a “white supremacist blog which published ‘Fjordman'”, “regularly publishing essays promoting white supremacism”. The bulk of the article goes on to associate various counterjihadist ideologues with GoV.

Here is one of the more meaty, lucid portions (links preserved):

Far right Islamophobic activists have forged alliances of convenience with radical Zionists and regard Israel as an ally, not least because they see Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a role model for how Muslims should be treated. Hard line Zionists see it as an opportunity to lessen the growing Muslim influence in the USA or Europe which they see as detrimental to a greater Israel. Stooges like Geert Wilders are funded in the hope they can halt Muslim immigration and influence. Marginalised as they are, some European nationalist groups are willing to shed their traditional Jew hatred in an attempt to find allies, but as often happens in marriages of convenience, it doesn’t take much for cracks to appear.

Pamela Geller’s association with the EDL caused waves when Roberta Moore claimed they had Jew hating members and were not sufficiently pro Israel. In Europe, German newspaper Der Spiegel probed this alliance in ‘The Likud Connection‘ showing how some marginalized right wing populists are going the Geert Wilders way. This bizarre coupling has split the far right movement in Europe which has traditionally been anti-semitic.

The counterjihadist network Khaled analyzes is a jewish movement. It is dressed up as Westerners concerned with a defense of the West, but it is in fact dominated by jews and others whose first and foremost concerns are for the best interests of Israel and jews. There are no prominent counterjihadists who defend the best interests of Whites as a people, separate and apart from jews. While they readily distinguish jews and muslims for special consideration, positive and negative, they regard other distinctions between people as wrong, especially if race or “white” is involved. They regard any distinction of Whites from jews as roughly comparable to the threat to jews they see coming from islamization – unthinkably evil.

Khaled engages in similar doublethink, but to a different end. She blithely conflates counterjihadist bigotry in favor of jews with “white supremacism”. She carries on about “islamophobia” as if fearing or resenting being colonized and ruled by aliens is a mental disorder. Khaled has adopted and adapted characteristically jewish rhetoric. She paints her muslim Us as the helpless, blameless victims of a “hate”-filled Them, ascribing bizarre, pathological motives to Them, smearing Them collectively using guilt-by-association.

This rhetoric is fundamentally dishonest as well as bigoted. Counterjihadists see Us and Them as jews and their enemies, while Khaled sees the Us/Them divide being between muslims and their enemies. Both agree that Whites are not entitled to an identity of our own, much less to decide for ourselves who our enemies are.

Just as jews living amongst Europeans have done for centuries now, muslim intellectuals today excuse and direct attention away from their own group’s transgressions by finding fault instead in someone else. As with the apologists for jews, apologists for muslims zealously defend their own group identity and interests while moralizing against “hate” and “racism”, trying to guilt-trip Whites for expressing any kind of identity that excludes them.

Khaled finds it scandalous that Anders Breivik commented at Gates of Vienna. As it happens, Breivik took issue with Diana West’s “anti-sharia” strategy and more generally with the unwillingness of counterjihadists to face the demographic threat posed by immigration:

Why havent you or any of the other current authors on the Eurabia related issues/Islamisation of Europe (Fjordman, Spencer, Ye`or, Bostom etc.) brought up the “D” word? I assume because it is considered a fascist method in nature, which would undermine your/their work? Why would it undermine their efforts when it is the only rational conclusion, based on the above argument? As far as I know, it’s not illegal in Europe to suggest deportation as a future method when discussing future hypothetical World Orders (correct me if im wrong though, Im not 100% sure, lol)!?

The answer, as unwilling as Breivik was to face it himself, is that counterjihadism is about serving the best interests of jews. Thus the concern to not appear “fascist”, meaning “nazi”, meaning anti-jew, takes priority over the identification with or concern for the best interests of Europeans as a people. Should Europe be lost, oh well, the struggle against islamic jihad (in defense of jews) will continue elsewhere.

When Baron Bodissey republished Breivik’s comments he also linked Daniel Pipe’s apologia, Norway’s Terrorism in Context. To distinguish his position from Breivik’s Pipes quotes a similar statement from Breivik’s book:

The reason why authors on the Eurabia related issues/Islamisation of Europe — Fjordman, Spencer, [Bat] Ye’or, Bostom etc. aren’t actively discussing deportation is because the method is considered too extreme (and thus would damage their reputational shields). . . . If these authors are to [sic] scared to propagate a conservative revolution and armed resistance then other authors will have to.

The portion omitted by Pipes is telling:

This would un-doubtfully undermine their work and probably disallowing them to publish any future books. However, the warning about Islam has been repeated for more than two decades and it is apparent that 40 more years of dialogue, without action, would have a devastating effect on Europe.

Indeed. Like the other leading lights of counterjihadism, Pipes doesn’t care as much about the devastating effect on Europeans as he does about what’s best for jews.

(Thanks to Flanders for the link.)