Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
Sturm & Drang In K&C
Gaza Protests In The Royal Borough
Plus: "Those Troublesome Jews"

Thus is life in London, that we were merely bimbling along Kensington High Street, shopping for some socks and throw pillows, when we wandered into a warren of barricades and ranks of police officers, some of them visibly equipped for heavy weather. My onboard radar for such things perked up and I declared: "Gotta be the Israeli Embassy. It's right around the corner", which it is (just behind Kensington High Street on the western border of Kensington Gardens – I used to run by it daily). Sure enough, we were in the dregs of a pro-Palestinian march this afternoon, from Downing Street to the embassy.

My next thought was: Okay, where's the counter- (i.e. pro-Israeli-) demo? I'm finding it fiendishly hard to figure out how one gets alerted to these things in advance. In this case, coming home, I was gutted to learn that the pro-Israeli rally was actually three days ago. But then I was heartened again to learn that 800 people turned out for it – and from the videos, it was a corker. Maybe there's hope – of not being turned on and abandoned by the world – for this lot of six million Jews, yet.

In this next one, folks singing God Save The Queen just strikes me as both very amusing and very clever. (I saw it suggested that the pro-Palestinian folks would do well to have one or two more British flags at their demos.) Also note the cheering as the Footballers Wives advert goes by on the bus.

I've been trying to keep a fairly even tone, but here's Charles Krauthammer in the Post laying it all out in terrifying terms.

Why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself…

As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense – fighting wars on enemy territory rather than its own…

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up…

Israel then had to switch to active defense – military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community…

Without these, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses – a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem…

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million – that number again – hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists – Iranian in particular – openly prepare a more final solution.

Finally, here's a very amusing bit of video – about reducing your Zion footprint – that also runs down a few things the Israelis have managed to accomplish while being attacked from all sides for 60 years, and while Palestinians in Gaza have been stockpiling and firing rockets at old ladies and babies.


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about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

my latest book
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid by Michael Stephen Fuchs
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