The website The American Catholic is always a little kookie. They have a bizarre post about the Klan and Progressivism that reads like cliff notes of a Glenn Beck special. But, they also have an article about U.S.-Israeli relations that includes this sentence: “Is the ultimate plan of the Israeli braintrust to find a rationale for one big war in order to ethnically cleanse most of the rest of the Palestinians into Jordan/Egypt/Lebanon et al?”
It is, arguably, the most repulsive sentence I have read all year. Suggesting that the Israeli government engages in ethnic cleansing is beyond the pale of kookie, and more than halfway to evil. While we have an obligation to call-out such outrageousness, there is no real arguing with someone who makes such a claim. As Barney Frank, that pro-Israel congressman said, better to argue with your dining room table.
I will share a story, however. Back in the early 1990s, I became very involved in both helping Bosnian refugees and in advocating for Western military intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing going on there. At the early rallies, it was always me, a Polish friend and members of local synagogues. That was it. If American Jews had not raised the alarm on behalf of the Muslims of Sarajevo, the alarm would not have been raised. I learned something powerful back then, that while everyone mouths the words “Never Forget” when they go to Auschwitz or Majdanek, it was Jews who actually did something to stop the ethnic cleansing.
