by Steven Plaut
Israel is currently under a worldwide assault, one whose foundations are anti-Semitism. The campaign of demonization and delegitimizing has many forms, including the economic warfare of the “Boycott, Divest, Sanctions” movement or BDS. The goal of the campaign is the annihilation of Israel and its population, and victory for the movement of Arab terrorism and Islamofascism.
It is impossible to understand fully this assault against
Israel and the Jews without an appreciation of the role of Israeli
leftwing traitors, collaborating with anti-Israel Arab nationalists.
From the beginning, the initiatives calling for worldwide boycotts of
Israel have come from a small group of disloyal radical leftist
Israelis, many of them holding tenured positions at Israeli
universities. These lead the calls for boycotts against their own
country and their own employers. They provide a figleaf of
respectability for anti-Semites around the world who can claim that even
“progressive” Israelis are endorsing their campaign to boycott Israel
and Israeli institutions. The disloyal tenured radicals are also the
inventors of the canard that Israel is an apartheid regime. They are
the moral equivalents of Vichy French and other European collaborators
with Nazi Germany during World War II. Their aim is to provide
legitimacy, aid and comfort to the enemies of their own country.
The belligerence of the Israeli Radical Left is not
restricted to endorsements of BDS. Radical Leftists in Israel have led
campaigns for mutiny and insurrection among soldiers designed to
persuade Israelis to refuse to serve in the military. The Radical Left
wants to impose its political agenda on the country undemocratically, by
conditioning army service on the adoption of its own political agenda.
(Some rightwing groups have also called upon Israelis to refuse to
serve in the military unless their own political agenda is adopted.) In
some cases, the radical Leftists have openly endorsed terrorism and
violence. In almost all cases the Radical Left opposes freedom of
speech for non-leftists.
The Israeli government has always coddled the disloyal
radicals and excused their behavior as protected speech. But as the
world campaign of anti-Semitic aggression against Israel escalates, it
is increasingly clear that something must be done about the treason
involving Israeli radical leftists. Simply stated, Israelis who call
for BDS warfare against Israel should have their own property seized,
sequestered, and confiscated by the state.
Too radical, you say? Undemocratic? Well, think again.
The effective means by which Israel can deal with its own Fifth Column
may be learned from the history of another great democracy – the United
States – in coping with disloyalty. It is time for Israel to deal with
sedition the same way that Abraham Lincoln and the Union did.
Shortly after the American Civil War broke out, both the
Union and the Confederacy passed confiscation laws that seized the
property of those living in the territories of the enemy belligerent.
Penalties for disloyalty were not restricted
to seizure of property. The Confederacy’s law was called the
Sequestration Law and, if anything, went even further than the
Confiscation Act of the Union.[1]
The Confiscation Bill S151 of 1862, which replaced a weaker
similar American law from 1861 (passed right after the first Battle of
Bull Run), was largely the initiative of Lyman Trumbull. He was a
Republican Senator from Illinois and chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary
Committee. He was from a middle class family that traced its origin
back to the earliest settlers in New England, and he was a descendent of
the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather. After studying law, he settled in
the Illinois western wilderness, and forged early close personal ties
with Abraham Lincoln. He built a reputation as a highly skilled and
intelligent state legislator, and was a moderate on the controversial
issues of the day, including abolition. He first served as a
representative in the state legislature of the pro-South Democrat Party,
but later joined Lincoln in the newly-created Republican Party, where
he was disliked by the more radical members of the party due to his
moderation.
Trumball’s confiscation law authorized the permanent
seizure of all property of anyone involved in treason against the Union,
including notably anyone considered to be offering “aid and comfort” to
the enemies of the United States. The property in question could be
located either in the North or the South, and could be seized without
due process. There would be no compensation whatsoever for any property
confiscated. The message was: endorse the enemy of your country and
forfeit your property!
“Property” included lands, business assets, securities and
bank accounts. The law allowed for seizure of assets left as bequests
by northerners to family members living in the south. Where a person
was considered to be disloyal but his heirs were not, the government
would seize dominion over the property as a “life estate,” one lasting
as long as that person himself lived, to revert later to his heirs after
his death. Conservative legislators who were concerned with due
process and uncomfortable with the constitutional implications of
complete seizure of property without trial found the idea of seizing a
life estate in rebel property to be entirely acceptable. The Act’s
orders for seizure of property were made more popular when it explicitly
included slaves as “property” that could be seized without trial and
without compensation (and freed) by the forces of the United States.
Trumbull was subject to much criticism by more radical
politicians for not going further in confiscating the property of
supporters of the Confederacy. For example, his bill did not allow
wholesale seizure of property of slave owners in the “border states”
that had not seceded from the Union, and provided for compensation when
any property would be seized from people in those areas. Trumbull was
the leading advocate of the doctrine of “dual sovereignty,” which held
that those supporting the Confederacy retained certain rights and
privileges of citizenship, but at the same time they could be treated in
some ways as enemy belligerents. In his words, “We may treat them as
traitors and we may treat them as enemies, and we have the right of both
belligerent and sovereign so far as they are concerned.”
The Confiscation Acts at the time were considered quite
moderate and restrained because of American experience and policies
during the War of Independence. During that War, a significant portion
of the population was “Loyalist” and supporting Great Britain against
American independence. Every one of the original thirteen colonies that
were to form the United States confiscated the property of “Loyalists”
without trial, and in many cases the Loyalists themselves were expelled en masse
from the territories of the United States. Disloyalty had been
regarded as legal grounds for seizure of property under English law
going as far back as 1351.
In some areas American confiscation began as early as
1775. In November of 1777 the Continental Congress recommended that all
colonies seize all property of Loyalists without compensation and sell
it at auction. Among the most enthusiastic supporters of this wholesale
confiscation were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Large
swaths of land were confiscated in New York and it is estimated that 11%
of the property in Boston was seized. “Loyalists” opposed to
Independence were considered to have forfeited all rights of protection
for their property. After the war ended, no compensation was made to
previous owners of “Loyalist” property, with limited exceptions in
Vermont and Massachusetts.
Later chapters in American history also saw rigorous
measures taken against manifestations of disloyalty. These ranged from
the banning of the pro-Nazi German American Bund in 1941 to the
wholesale internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War
II. Ethnic Germans and Italians in the United States were also interned, although in fewer
numbers. Before that, the Sedition Act of 1918 (repealed in 1920)
implemented a wide range of penalties for disloyalty, including
imprisonment up to 20 years. Public figures opposing service in the
military and promoting refusal to serve were jailed for sedition,
including Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party of America.
The lessons for Israel from all this are clear. Radical
leftist Israelis, including tenured traitors, who endorse BDS economic
warfare against their own country, should be forced to pay a price for
their disloyalty and sedition. Those Israelis who are endeavoring to
cause economic and financial harm to their own country because of their
animosity towards it should suffer harm to their own economic
interests. Those who attempt to undermine the willingness of citizens
to serve in the military should be subject to personal sanctions,
whether they be from the Left or Right.
Most important of all, it is high time that Israel gets serious about dealing with treason and sedition.
[1] Much of the historic material presented here is based
upon Daniel W. Hamilton’s “The Limits of Sovereignty,” University of
Chicago Press, 2007.
Steven Plaut
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/lessons-for-israel-from-americas-civil-war-in-coping-with-treason/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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