Ilana is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies (an award-winning, independent, non-profit, free-market economic policy think tank).She is listed at the JIMS website "team" as a "Media Fellow."
The JIMS states its mission as:
...promot[ing] social progress in Israel through economic freedom and individual liberty.What is Mercer doing writing for an organization with political roots in Israel?
Which leads me to the following biographical information (on her website):
Ilana was born in South Africa, which her father, Rabbi Ben Isaacson, decided to leave pursuant to harassment by the South African security police on account of his anti-apartheid preaching and activism. (Ilana herself, on return, decades later, fought petty apartheid tirelessly.) The family departed in the 1960s for Israel, where Ilana spent her formative years. She returned to South-Africa in the 1980s, married and had a daughter. The family emigrated to Canada in 1995, and then went on to settle in the US.And who is Rabbi Ben Isaccson?
Another courageous fighter [against Apartheid] was Rabbi Ben Isaacson. A graduate of Bnei Akiva and some of the finest yeshivot, he understood that the oppressive apartheid regime ran counter to Jewish values. As a rabbi, he felt compelled to condemn such injustices from his pulpit and he did so with gusto. Not all his congregants were sympathetic to these fiery sermons. As he berated successive communities for their compliance with apartheid, they responded by firing him. [Source]Perhaps Mercer's conflicted cannibal imagery stems from her background as a fighter against Apartheid, which led to her post-Apartheid Apocalypse exposition. Perhaps what Mercer needed was a psychoanalyst!
The South African situation is tragic, and difficult to wrap around. The Boers/Dutch built that beautiful country, which is now reviving somewhat. But they did make an expeditionary risk, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles to find their Jerusalem on a Hill. The American nation is built on such adventurers. At some point, the natives might rebel.
Mercer, adamantly, writes "Yes I am a Jew" and continues on to vilify the author who questioned her, among other things, on the image she chose for her book cover Into the Cannibal's Pot.
Incidentally, double-barreled surnames are largely a feminist affection. “Mathis-Lilley” happens to be male. Or, rather, an excuse for a man. Real men don’t bully, berate and bitch baselessly.(I forgot Mercer's knack for alliterations!)
Again, sloppy journalism and a little insight into Mercer's unremarkableness. She's not the world connoisseur she purports to be
In British tradition, a double surname is heritable, and mostly taken in order to preserve a family name which would have become extinct due to the absence of male descendants bearing the name, connected to the inheritance of a family estate. Examples include Harding-Rolls and Stopford Sackville.There you have it, masculine and traditional.
Above: "Yes, I'm a Jew" Ilana Mercer with her Irish Catholic-South African husband Sean Mercer.
How will "Yes, I'm a Jew" Mercer bring up her mixed-marriage Irish-Catholic/Jewish daughter?
And below is Ms. Mercer with VDare's Peter Brimelow, at a Mencken Club conference, which hosted the "usual suspects." Brimelow and Mercer have likely met on many other occasions.
VDare has reviewed her cannibal's pot:
Not surprisingly, no mainstream publisher would have anything to do with this a stunning indictment of the state of affairs in Bantu-ruled South Africa...There is a wiki-link for "Bantu," in case erudite VDare readers don't know that we're still in the same continent.
