THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Netanyahu has had to call new elections in Israel.

The peace process is in crisis.

The situation is grave.

Gosh.

How surprising.

How unusual.

How fascinating.

Liberals have to be fanatically pro-Israel. A large proportion of their money and their most dedicated support comes from the Jewish community. That means that anybody who is not deeply interested in Israel is anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

I watched Robert Kennedy debate the night before he was shot by the Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy and his opponent in the California Democratic primary were both "peace" candidates. This meant that they both demanded an immediate American withdrawal from Vietnam. But what they said in that debate was as far from "peace" as any discussion could conceivably be.

They were not debating about Vietnam. As two far-left Democrats competing for the same votes, they agreed on that.

What the two men were competing for was the large Jewish vote and monetary support for the far left in the California Democratic primary. No one who listened to that discussion would have called either one of them a "peace" candidate. Each one was trying to be harder on the Arabs than the other one.

I had heard many a really vicious attack on the Arabs by political candidates in the past, but I distinctly remember being appalled by the competing diatribes against them by Kennedy and McCarthy on that evening in 1968. I had heard a lot of people condemn the Arabs and demand force be used against them, but this sounded to me like two people bent on something frighteningly close to genocide.

Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian residing in the United States, got so angry and frightened by what Kennedy said that he shot him to death..

Having seen the popularity of conspiracy theories about the death of Martin Luther King and John Kennedy, a lot of people are now saying that Sirhan Sirhan may not have killed Kennedy on his own. Before there is any more of this kind of talk, everybody should see a rerun of that debate. Because I saw it, there is no doubt in my mind that Sirhan did it.

Liberals are pro-Israel. Liberals imply that any criticism of Israel is very close to Nazism. So naturally respectable conservatives are fanatically pro-Israel. Except for conservatives who are under a cloud, and are trying desperately to prove to liberals that they are really and truly respectable. They are BLATHERINGLY pro-Israel. The Christian Coalition is more fanatically pro-Israel than American Jews are. No anti-liberal commentator DARES say what so many of us are thinking: I don't give a damn about Israel.

So let me go on record: I don't give a damn about Israel.

There are an awful lot of people that I know who feel exactly the same way.

As soon as "...Middle East peace talks..." is mentioned on television, we all use that wonderful little remote and switch channels. In fact, the better the remotes have gotten, the shorter the pieces on Peace For Israel have gotten. Back when ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS owned all TV news outright, they would have long, long discussions of Israeli affairs, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Ah, but I forgot. Everybody but me and the legion of people I know are FASCINATED with Peace For Israel.

How do I know this?

Because I have never seen one single opinion writer on the left, on the right, or in the middle, who dared to say what I just said: "Israel means absolutely nothing to me."

Now, this is a free country, right? If lots of people were bored with Israel, somebody else would have mentioned this somewhere, right?

Maybe, just maybe, we're not as free as we brag we are.

I recently explained that our way to ruin is to continue to be "The World's Last Remaining Superpower." (Please see my January 9 article in the archives, "The Way to Ruin: Being 'The World's Last Remaining Superpower' ")

But we can travel down the road to ruin even faster. The way to do that is not merely to be The Last Remaining Superpower, but to be the STUPID Last Remaining Superpower.

There used to be some rules that everybody knew about foreign policy. To violate them was to invite destruction and, to repeat, everybody knew what those rules were.

One of these rules was that a Western country should avoid getting into "a land war in Asia." As described in the liberal David Halberstam's book, "The Best and the Brightest," the bright young liberals in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations decided they could violate this rule, and went into Vietnam.

Like every other liberal policy, Vietnam was a total disaster.

Another rule is that you NEVER try to straighten things out in the Balkans.

Europe tried that, and got into World War I. The Balkans have been a disaster for centuries and NOBODY who is sane gets in there.

Then there is the Middle East. Charles Issawi, an Egyptian who teaches in the United States, put it best. In his book, "The Laws of Social Motion," he gave Westerners advice, and I quote

"ON SOLVING MIDDLE EASTERN PROBLEMS

God sent Moses, and he couldn't fix it.

God sent Jesus, and He couldn't fix it.

God sent Mohammed, and he couldn't fix it.

Do you think YOU can fix it?"

The United States is still licking its wounds from the Asian land war no Western country should ever get into. And did we learn anything from Vietnam? Apparently not. Now we are in the Balkans AND we are in the Middle East. Once again, the liberals are violating the rules about sane foreign policy that everybody used to know.

We are in the Middle East for Israel.

We also say we are in the Middle East for oil. But the fact is we have ample oil for our needs in this hemisphere. We are in the Middle East for Israel and to preserve EUROPE'S oil supply. We are in the Balkans out of sheer, stumbling, blind stupidity.

Liberals are all for this. Respectable conservatives are BLATHERINGLY in favor of all this.

Let's secede, gang, as soon as we possibly can!