Poor Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader performed some valuable service when he was young, but as he's gotten older he seems determined to (a) make Harold Stassen seem normal and (b) spread as much anti-Israel hatred as he can.


One of his anti-Israel op-eds was published in several Litchfield County (Connecticut) newspapers in May, 2012. The following was written in response and submitted as an op-ed, but wasn't published.

Ralph Nader seems almost disappointed so many of the rockets which Gaza terrorists send into Israel miss their targets. "The rockets failed to reach any population centers 99 percent of the time", he says. However, instead of urging Gaza to stop the violence, he jumps in and unjustifiably maligns Israel for everything that has befallen the troubled people of Gaza.

Little more than a week ago, I visited one of the primary targets of those rockets. Sderot, a small city with the misfortune of being situated just a few kilometers from Gaza, has a collection of those Kassam rockets. I even got to hold some and spoke with the mayor, who was clearly frustrated that the Israeli government has not succeeded in stopping the constant bombardment. I also suspect he'd be insulted to find Ralph Nader doesn't consider his beleaguered city to be a population center.

Gaza just didn't happen. There is a history that has led to the current simmering conflict, a history easily accessible to anyone interested. The violent anarchy and repression that roils Gaza is self-inflicted.

There is an obvious solution for the problems about which Nader rails, albeit one that Mr. Nader doesn't want to hear: Hamas merely needs to stop its daily attacks against Israel. If they did that, all hostilities would cease. If Israel, on the other hand, dismantled its defenses and opened its borders, only slaughter and killing would ensue at the hands of Hamas and its subcontractors, including the Islamic Jihad terror group.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. She has both ancient and modern claims to that land, but chose to withdraw those claims in the hopes of promoting peace. In the process, Israel evicted and displaced over 9,000 of its own citizens, even though many if not most of them lived on property that had been owned by Jews even back in 1948, when Egypt stole their property and ethnically cleansed Gaza of any Jewish presence.

Instead of seizing the golden opportunity offered by Israel and building a modern society, Hamas and other terrorist gangs intensified their rocketing directed at all the Israeli population centers that they could reach. The number of rockets and missiles fired into Israel since the withdrawal is over 8,000. Imagine what America's reaction would be if one of its neighbors was a terrorist entity and fired even a single rocket at one of our cities!

Amazingly, Israel continues to supply massive amounts of fuel, food and medical supplies to the very people launching Kassam rockets at Israeli civilians. Maybe Nader missed the fact that tons of supplies flow across the border from Israel into Gaza every day. Gaza's GDP grew close to 25 percent in the first 3 quarters of 2011. Gazan residents often cross over to Israel for medical care. In fact, the local Red Cross Office said that "numerous international organizations have said clearly that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza." Sadly, in return for what it provides to Gaza, all that Israel receives is the abduction of its soldiers, cross border violence and more daily rockets and missiles which are growing in effectiveness and numbers.

Contrary to Nader's assertion, there is journalist access to Gaza. Not many, though, choose to go there because of the danger. Those who do enter Gaza are careful not to report anything that Hamas does not want to reveal to the world, since to do otherwise would compromise the journalists’ safety and the safety of their colleagues, some of whom have paid for their honesty with their lives. Much of what happens in Gaza, therefore, remains shrouded in secrecy.

The Arab claim to Gaza and to all of Israel, not just the so-called “occupied territories,” rests on layer upon layer of fabricated “atrocities,” dispossession, and wildly exaggerated reports of civilian casualties on those rare occasions when Israel actually defends itself. Although there is little basis in reality, that doesn’t stop the Arab world and their allies from employing the “big lie.”

Ralph Nader repeats the same “big lies” en masse and wholesale in his column and substantiates them only with third-party quotes and assertions. The actual facts are that the violence and brutality which Gaza residents endure comes mostly from the Hamas gangs and criminal elements that enforce their form of discipline and “justice” on their own population. Their government, as in almost all Arab countries, is administered at the point of a gun.

Ralph Nader's invective against Israel in his column is not new. He's done it many times before. Instead of just accusing and name calling, Nader would serve us all better if he dealt with the facts on the ground and ascribed blame for the violence to the groups that foment it and not to a country which is one of the few actually doing anything to improve in the lives of those that live in Gaza.

Rather than expressing disappointment that most of the terror rockets fired from Gaza miss their intended victims in Israel, Nader ought to encourage the Palestinian Arabs to finally choose peace over their genocidal war against the world's only Jewish state.

We are at War

              GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

Ever listened in while you children were playing out on the playground? You can learn a lot about your child’s character as well as the characters your child “hangs out with”! There is usually a “pecking order”, you know a couple of kids who serve as the captains and “pick their players”. These “leaders” learn at an early age to use language as a major weapon against their classmates. Often in a situation when a certain play disrupts in arguments, the clever leader steps up and “rips” the leader and players using offensive language, body positioning power stances, ridiculing select other players on the opposing team and basically controlling the verbal exchanges-one team usually “backs down” and gives in to this type of leadership.

Children learn an enhanced lesson-use the power of language embedded with enough half truths to be considered plausible and you have now latched onto one of the most powerful weapon systems in the world-cognitive warfare.  You control the narrative and always put your opponents on the defensive.

In order for cognitive warfare to be effective one side in the war must have the following behavioral needs: a desire to never offend anyone, wanting to be looked upon favorably, avoid confrontation at all costs and believing that you are superior to the other party but you must uphold your humanness values through appeasement.  I call these conditions of support that unwittingly leads to our downfall as a nation.

Our enemies are very intelligent and clever.  They almost seem to know us better than we know ourselves. They learned many years ago that there is more than simply conventional warfare to destroy an enemy; control a country’s narrative and over a period of time you defeat them from within.

What is an operational strategy to utilize this powerful cognitive weapon system? First, infiltrate inside your enemy’s major institutions, i.e., law enforcement, academia (K-University), government, government, business to name but a few. Infiltration demands a lengthy time frame and thus you must be incredibly patient and not require immediate gratification. The endgame of the infiltration is to shift the institution’s narrative toward one’s enemy. Multiple tactics are use.

The following represent a short list of tactics and serve only as examples demonstrating how insidious is their penetration into our Western society and culture.

·      Appear the victim and draw attention to your victim condition

·      Demonstrate the conflict that obviously exists between victim treatment and the greater society’s belief in humanness

·      Publicly cry out how you are being mistreated

·      Create “support” groups in certain of the aforementioned institutions and get them to assist you

·      Align yourself with counter-culture groups who despise the American culture-use them as co-conspirators-you remain a silent component-let them do the work for you

There are many additional tactics; I only want you, in this article, to be introduced to a few. 

Second, shift the accepted cultural mores and behaviors over a long period of time. Again, there are multiple tactics currently in play as I write-here are several:

·      Run for local political office, e.g., school board, city council, planning board, 527 groups to identify a few. Use your position to make favorable political decisions for your group

·      Target specific individuals/groups and begin a campaign of delegitimization using many different techniques

·      Create outreach programs designed to enroll others outside your group to believe something positive about your group yet is contrary to your actual intent.

·      Initiate legal action against those who oppose your point of view

·      Slowly introduce changes to the local, regional, state and finally federal legal system making it illegal for anyone to dare confront your positions

·      Increase your population so that your group comprises between 5-10% of the country’s total population. When this happens, the research shows you emerge the winner!

All of the preceding are non-military weapons, the per unit cost is a fraction of any military armament or weapons’ systems. Our enemy learned this a long time ago and for literally “a song and a dance” realized the weapons of cognition. They are organized, focused, they veer not off message and realize how vulnerable America and the rest of the West is to this tool.

Of course this cognitive warfare requires a compliant society and culture.  As long as we are unwilling to engage in confrontation with our enemy they know we loose. They are counting on this principle alone to defeat us. As long as Westerners believe they are responsible for other peoples’ thoughts and feelings, we have no chance of victory. I address this version of cognitive weaponry in a recent article. (Going to the well time and again pays off-why not keep going?)

 

The West can win this war, we have the truth on our side, and our societal values are as valued today as they were so many generations ago. The question becomes when will we find the resolve to take a stand and defend ourselves? Our enemy is counting on never!

Going to the well time and again pays off-why not keep going?

 By

 GS Don Morris, Ph.d.

Take advantage of the situation-never let a good …fail.  Let us examine what has happened-again. Internal Israeli politics have ramped up regarding housing units in Judea and Samaria. The issue has become a nightmare for all of us here in Israel. Our Prime Minister finally made a decision and of course the “winners” are smiling, the “losers” are not only frowning they are truly p….. off. Conveniently Mr. Abbas seizes upon this moment and offers “offers dialogue for prisoners, arming police” and if Israel engages in a full settlement freeze, he will be willing to actually sit down with us and resume talks. In return for certain gestures (code for reward irresponsible behavior) Abbas and his crew will grant us a seat at a table to discuss the future. Let us stop this insanity-you do not alter any behavior situation or act by continuing the same reinforcement process.

Let’s ask ourselves what do we know about human behavior.  You don’t have to be a psychologist or behavior therapist to know some simple, common sense behavior concepts. Let us examine how you treat your own children.

When your child misbehaves or displays inappropriate behavior do you ignore it?  Let’s say yes, you ignore it up to a point in time-for most of us when the same behavior shows up time after time-my rule is 3-what is your rule before you intervene and take action so the behavior changes?

The actual technique varies from one person to another but the nature of something called reinforcement is basically the same for all of us. You know it as do I. Common sense and your own life experiences taught you the truth. It is just this simple: to change a behavior do not reinforce the inappropriate behavior. When your child acts out do you smile, give him/her a treat-of course not. You know not to reward this behavior. Have you, as your children grew in age and ability to understand required your child to learn about personal responsibility? For example, if your child is asked to clean up his/her room and does not do it, do you hold the child accountable?  When you don’t, ever notice how the child simply keeps on repeating the same behavior?

Of course you know this and have done a good job raising self-reliant responsible young adults-they have learned how to act in order to fit within their community and thus be respected as a thoughtful, caring and responsible young person.

Isn’t it amazing how this foundational behavior principle is not used with the “Palestinian” leadership? Yes, the preceding principle applies conceptually to the Israeli-Arab arena. Every time we in Israel have been forced to make concessions the outcome has resulted in attacks, injuries, deaths and continued aberrant behavior by our “neighbors”. There is NO CHANGE in their behavior.

Once again, Abbas and company visit the “giving well” of appeasement-why?  You know the answer; that’s it, say it out loud. Just as a spoiled child, one who does not have to learn how to grow up, the international community has failed as a constructive “nation building parent”.

This behavior technique has morphed into a cognitive warfare weapon. It is part of their weapon cache and is used time after time. Our enemy understands how important cognitive warfare is in terms of shaping the international narrative against Israel.

The West refuses to stand up for basic human behavior principles-it refuses to defend its behavioral values and allows its enemies to control the cognitive battlefield. The political correctness, another cognitive tool used by our adversaries, has us heading along the path of destruction-our homes have been infiltrated by “ideas” meant to destroy us.

Note how our enemy does not hesitate to offend us in every way, every day. They do not “buy into’ PC; they have learned that our Achilles heel in the West is our perceived need to be liked as we actually worry about offending others. Our enemy uses this powerful cognitive weapon-is it not time to stand and defend ourselves? Do we not do this on the battlefield? It is time to stand united against the weapons of mass disintegration of American values and ideals. Stop rewarding actions that do not change behavior in a responsible manner.

Understanding the Iran talks

By Jay Bergman

This op-ed by PRIMER board member Jay Bergman was published in The Jerusalem Post June 3, 2012. It is reproduced here with the permission of the author.

For good reason Munich has become code for the appeasement of regimes that cannot be appeased because there is no limit to the demands they will make. Photo: REUTERS As a professional historian, I normally do not place much stock in historical analogies. They usually obscure and confuse more than they clarify.

But in the case of the recent P5 + 1 talks in Baghdad that will resume in Moscow later this month -- when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, will try again to negotiate an agreement with Iran that will prevent its nuclear program being used to develop nuclear weapons -- an analogy comes to mind that suggests what the results of these negotiations are likely to be.

The analogy is with the Munich conference at the end of September 1938, at which Nazi Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain forced Czechoslovakia to cede to Germany the so-called Sudetenland, in the western part of the country, where some (but by no means all) of the three million ethnic Germans living there were demanding, in the name of self-determination, that it become part of Germany.

Hitler favored this because it made easier the destruction of Czechoslovakia, which in turn would facilitate the acquisition of lebensraum (living space) in Russia for the Aryan race. Additionally, the Czech government was required by the Munich agreement to cede to Poland all parts of Czechoslovakia where the population was more than 50% Polish, and to Hungary all territory where the population was more than 50% Magyar.

THAT THE agreement was negotiated by the four heads of state -- Hitler, Mussolini, Edouard Daladier for France, and Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister -- rather than by their foreign ministers underscored its significance. Hitler had scheduled an invasion of Czechoslovakia for October 1 - a fact known to the British and the French -- if it did not meet the Sudeten Germans' demand, and for that reason the Munich agreement seemed to preclude a European war. In reality it merely postponed it.

Conspicuously absent from the conference were the United States, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia itself, whose vital national interests the participants at Munich did not consider legitimate enough for the Czechs to be present to protect. The closest any representatives of the Czech government got to the negotiating table was a room adjacent to it, where two lowlevel functionaries sat in silence, forbidden to participate in the negotiations.

For good reason Munich has become code for the appeasement of regimes that cannot be appeased because there is no limit to the demands they will make.

The obvious analogue of Czechoslovakia in the P5 + 1 talks is Israel. Like Czechoslovakia in 1938, it is the only country whose existence is deemed illegitimate by a participant in the talks, namely Iran. The Iranian government has repeatedly, and with increasing vehemence, threatened to annihilate Israel -- most recently by Major General Hassan Firouzabadi in a speech in Tehran this past Sunday. Nonetheless, Israel is not represented at the talks; there are not even any Israelis in an adjacent room. And like Nazi Germany in 1938, Iran will not be deterred by any agreement it signs from its longstanding intention of acquiring nuclear weapons for the purpose of annihilating Israel and dominating the entire Middle East. Like Hitler, who six months after Munich ordered German troops to occupy the rump that remained of Czechoslovakia, the Iranians several times have agreed to limits on their actions, for example on the percentage to which they will enrich low-grade uranium, only to ignore these limits when it became possible politically to do so.

By consenting to America's participation in these talks, President Obama is acquiescing in a process that can only jeopardize the lives of the six million Jews (and the one million Arabs) who live in Israel. That he is doing so while claiming "to have Israel's back" is an act of cynical calculation worthy of the appeasers at Munich.

The writer is a Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University and the author, most recently, of Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov.