Israel Matzav

“Don’t know much about history . . . Don’t know much about geography.”

Victor Davis Hanson laments the President of the United States' boorishness when it comes to history and geography. Of course, that boorishness helps him to follow his instincts and to be anti-Israel.

In the case of geography, Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama recently lectured, “If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina; or Savannah, Georgia; or Jacksonville, Florida . . . ” The problem is that all the examples he cited are cities on the East Coast, not the Gulf of Mexico. If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?

Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than it was to his adjacent home state of Illinois.

In reference to the Falkland Islands, President Obama called them the Maldives — islands southwest of India — apparently in a botched effort to use the Argentine-preferred “Malvinas.” The two island groups may sound somewhat alike, but they are continents apart. Again, without basic geographical knowledge, the president’s commentary on the Falklands is rendered superficial.

When in the state of Hawaii, Obama announced that he was in “Asia.” He lamented that the U.S. Army’s Arabic-language translators assigned to Iraq could better be used in Afghanistan, failing to recognize that Arabic isn’t the language of Afghanistan. And he also apparently thought Austrians speak a language other than German.

The president’s geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation’s growing ignorance of once-essential subjects such as geography and history. The former is not taught any more as a required subject in many of our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class, and gender oppression so as to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past.

The president in his 2009 Cairo speech credited the European Renaissance and Enlightenment to Islam’s “light of learning” — an exaggeration if not an outright untruth on both counts.

Closer to home, the president claimed in 2011 that Texas had historically been Republican — while in reality it was a mostly Jim Crow Democratic state for over a century. Republicans started consistently carrying Texas only after 1980.

Recently, Obama claimed that 20th-century Communist strongman Ho Chi Minh “was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.” That pop assertion is improbable, given that Ho systematically liquidated his opponents, slaughtered thousands in land-redistribution schemes, and brooked no dissent.

Those who ignore the past are destined to repeat it. And those who cannot find a place on a map cannot appreciate its challenges. Obama is a disaster.

Labels: Arab denial of Jewish history, Barack Hussein Obama, geography, history lesson

Israel v. New Jersey

I received this email from reader Captain H. I believe it makes an important point, and I have decided to post it in full.

I was deeply moved reading your thread "Toulouse and the Park Hotel" and Giulio Meotti's article.

I was sitting at my PC, trying to absorb it all, with my very vivid imagination, a blessing/curse. Imagining all those people, gathered for the Seder, being killed in that terrorist bomb blast, and that picture of the beautiful little girl, one of the dead. Words fail me.

One of the reasons it's hard for Americans to understand Israel's vulnerability to ~~Arab~~ Muslim terror is the small size of Israel. (Let's honestly narrow it down; Copts and Druze are Arabs too but don't have this murderous hate in their hearts. That's from Islam.) For Americans used to American-sized geography, it can be hard to grasp. I asked myself what would be a comparison to help Americans internalize this size difference and vulnerability. Going on Wiki statistics, I found the most apt size comparison is probably New Jersey vs. Israel. I searched and found these two about equally scaled maps of NJ and Israel that, as you can see from the scales, clearly show the relative size similarity. Using my Photo.net (the freeware "poor man's Photoshop" :-), I made the attached image that clearly shows this Israel-NJ size similarity.

Regarding Netanya in the narrow "neck" of Israel, what struck me was the great similarity to extremely narrow northern Delaware. Many years ago, I lived in Vineland, NJ and I often went via northern Delaware and the Delaware Mem. Bridge to visit my sister and her husband who then lived in West Chester, Pa, in the very southeast corner of Pa. It struck me that Wow! In a few minutes I'd gone from New Jersey, onto the Delaware Mem. Bridge, THROUGH Delaware and into Pennsylvania. One song on the radio as I drove would take me from the PA/Delaware border to the Delaware/NJ border on the Bridge or vice versa. Likewise, one song on the car radio would take an Israeli from Netanya to the "West Bank".

Anyhow, I thought you might like to have this image to use sometime, to give your American readers something they can see and relate to to realize the small size and geographic vulnerabilities of Israel.

Best regards,
Captain H

Yes, we are a small country. There's no space here that's extra, and we are surrounded by hostile states. Adding another one can only make things worse, God forbid.

Labels: geography, Israel, Judea and Samaria