Well I'm Done Defending Brussels Journal

No one is perfect and I am certainly not. I think my former posts on the topic were fairly realistic about what to expect from some European conservatives. And then Brussels Journal put up one post promoting Ron Paul as the American Paul Belien and an article from Taki's magazine that cheers Jewish Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein as an inconoclast, calls Mearsheimer and Walt "illustrious academics" and claims AIPAC was behind the invasion of Kuwait.

I'm not sure what the point of this exercise was at a time when Brussels Journal was fighting accusations of racism. Taki is notorious as a bigot, a jailed drug addict and a millionaire whose money finances paleocons like Pat Buchanan who have a bug up their ass about Jews too. It may simply reflect a split going back to old fashioned bigotry.

Charming sections of the article complete with money quotes can be seen below.

The livre de scandale of John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy, was for me a mostly disappointing read. Having seen the earlier article by these two illustrious academics, one at Chicago and the other at Harvard, “The Israel Lobby,” in the London Review of Books (May 2006), I found nothing particularly original about the expanded version.

Unlike the hysteria at the New York Review occasioned by a real iconoclast, Norman Finkelstein, who pulls no punches when going after the German-haters and the Holocaust-exploiters"

To their credit, Walt and Mearsheimer do make respectful references to Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, and Georgie Ann Geyer as critics of the first Iraqi War, who pointed the finger at AIPAC for fomenting the invasion of Kuwait.

But what makes this lobby especially obnoxious, and this is the one valuable series of revelations in the book, is not only its money and power. It is also the lobby’s arrogance and sheer viciousness, which extends to issues going beyond Israeli security, and which is manifested in its close ties to such shrieking gentile-haters as Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz. AIPAC enjoys and cultivates the support of some very unpleasant types, who specialize in maligning those they disagree with. On page after page, the authors document AIPAC’s defaming of politicians such as Charles Percy and Paul Findlay (both from Illinois) who dared to question our “special relation” with Israel. These and other politicians were routinely smeared as “anti-Semites,” and most of them were brought down by the charge

Incidentally, the authors, to their credit, don’t bother to distinguish between AIPAC and its numerous slanderous front organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League. These groups act in unison not only by backing what the Israeli government, and especially the Israeli nationalist Right, wants but also by wielding what Pat Buchanan has called “the branding iron of the charge of anti-Semitism.”

Well I'm done. I don't think there's much left to say. I stand by my original statements that the times are dark enough that we have to work with a lot of Europeans who are on the ugly side, but we should never mistake our relationship with them or the consequences and implications of their views. They may sometimes be friendly to us, but they are not our friends. BJ still serves as a source of important material on the rise of Islam in Europe, but I won't be linking to it.

In Brussels Journal's defense, they did not quote the truly hateful parts of the article, only the seemingly pro-israel section, but I don't find that to be much of a defense. There's a difference between a movement's nazi roots in the past and its present. We may have to look away from some things for the sake of alliances, but it's hard to ignore what's right in front of your face.