David Horowitz: Israel ‘the canary in the mine’

Dear Supporter,
As I write, Hezbollah rockets are raining down on Haifa in the latest attempt by the Islamic jihad to destroy Israel, the only democracy and non-Muslim state in the Middle East.

This war is the same war America is fighting in Iraq. The enemies are the same -Islamic terrorists backed by Syria and Iran- and the stakes are the same, whether Islamic totalitarianism or democracy will prevail.

Israel is capable of defending herself. But behind Syria and Iran are Russia and China, and therefore she has always depended on her ally, the United States. I’m writing to you today because just as the Fifth Column left in this country has attempted to sabotage America’s war in Iraq, so America’s support for Israel is being undermined in alarming ways, and I badly need your support to help me fight back.

● Item one: As Israel came under attack last week, the producer of a talk show on a major Washington D.C. radio station declared that because the existence of Israel was bringing us to the brink of nuclear war, he could no longer support Israel’s right to exist. This producer is a left-wing Jew.

● Item two: Around the same time, the website Daily Kos, which is a power in the Democratic Party and is spearheading the campaign to unseat Joe Lieberman, posted an item headed, “Imagine a world without Israel.” The subhead read, “Or is that not allowed?” This kind of hate-Israel sentiment is common on the left, and the left’s influence is growing, especially in the Democratic Party.

That is why I have called Israel “the canary in the mine.” The Islamic terror war against the United States mirrors its terror war against Israel, just as the left’s attack on Israel mirrors its attack on America.

Just as Islamists accuse America of being the root cause of 9/11, so the left accuses Israel, a victim of fifty years of Arab wars to destroy it, of being the aggressor in the Middle East.

● Item three: The cover of The Washington Post’s magazine last Sunday was headlined, “Is the Israel Lobby Too Powerful?”The idea that Bush-Cheney-Rice and Rumsfeld are manipulated by a bunch of second and third tier Jews in the Administration is a modern-day version of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion which provided a text for Hitler and claimed that Jews ruled the world. But today it is entering the mainstream of liberal thought at an alarming speed.

Part of the reason this kind of anti-Israel, anti-American propaganda has traction is that people are woefully in the dark when it comes to the nature of the enemy we face.

Muslim and radical fanatics and haters of America and Israel operating in the universities and the press, along with their liberal fellow travelers, have been preaching the gospel that the Palestinians and the terrorists are actually victims of the imperialism of the West, and that their heinous acts against humanity are legitimate expressions of hopelessness and despair.