Egyptian Christians Under Attack

by Rich Trzupek

The assault on Christians living in Muslim nations has reached boiling new levels as members of Egypt’s Coptic Church continue to be the target of increasingly violent attacks from Muslims. According to Coptic Christians living in Cairo, Muslims looted and burned St. Mina’s Church and the Church of the Virgin Mary and attempted to burn St. Mary and St. Abanob Church. Twelve Christians were reported to have been killed, although official government accounts say that the final tally was six Christians and six Muslims dead.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), approximately 3,000 Salafi Muslims participated in the attacks, even as Egyptian troops and police did little or nothing to stop the violence. Salafists are strongly influenced by the ultra-fundamentalist Wahabbi teachings that dominate the mindset of Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorist organizations. In addition to the dozen dead, over 200 Christians were injured in the violence according to AINA.

The Egyptian government downplayed the violence, essentially portraying the incidents as unfortunate misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims and calling on Christians to forgive and reconcile with Muslims. This strategy attempts to divide responsibility for the violence equally among the two religions, while the reality is that the Coptic minority is doing nothing to provoke the Muslim majority — except refusing to abandon its Christianity.

Approximately ten per cent of Egyptians are Christians (the vast majority of those are Copts), while the overwhelming remainder of the population are Sunni Muslims. This is not, therefore, a squabble between two equally powerful and influential groups. This is bullying, plain and simple. If the new regime in Egypt is not actively encouraging persecution of the Christian community, it’s certainly not doing anything to discourage such outrages either. The Coptic Bishop of Giza, Anba Theodosius, took the government to task for abandoning Egypt’s Christians. “These things are planned,” he said. “We have no law or security, we are in a jungle. We are in a state of chaos. One rumor burns the whole area. Everyday we have a catastrophe.”

Under Mubarek, the Salafists kept their more violent and extremist tendencies in check for the most part. If and when they crossed the line, Mubarek’s very effective (and yes, often very brutal) security forces came down on the transgressors hard. There is little to hold the fundamentalists in check any longer, so they continue to push the envelope in order to find out how much they can get away with. The early returns suggest that the government isn’t going to do anything to restrain them anytime soon.

The mainstream media in the West is blissfully oblivious to the religious warfare that’s consuming Egypt of course. Having declared the Egyptian revolution a wonderful development, they can hardly be expected to acknowledge the ugly violence and bigotry that’s spreading throughout that ancient land. The New York Times, for example, wrote off reports of violence as a dispute fueled by unemployment woes and other economic pressures. Why economic pressures led members of one religion to attack the places of worship of another religion with Molotov cocktails was not explained in the Times’ coverage.

But, we have seen the mainstream media ignore religious persecution many times before, most recently in Iraq. It is sublimely ironic that a war of liberation led by the world’s most religiously tolerant nation, which was in turn led by an evangelical Christian President like George W. Bush, should result in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Christians. Yet, that is exactly what happened in Iraq. The Christian community in that nation was small, but historically quite significant, with roots that reach back to the founding of Christianity itself. No matter. Once the Muslim-dominated government of Iraq took control of the nation after liberation, Christians living there found themselves subject to more and more persecution. To date, the Christian community in Iraq has decreased by more than fifty per cent since Saddam was dethroned.

Fundamentalism has been on the rise in the Islamic world since Khomeini displaced the Shah and there are no signs that suggest the trend is shifting anytime soon. In Iraq, we saw that even the world’s only remaining superpower isn’t strong enough to head off the religious persecution that is so much a part of Islam. An Israel under siege more than ever emphasizes the point. And, if we needed any further proof, the fate of the Coptic Christians in Egypt demonstrates more than ever how the “religion of peace” is anything but that — especially when it has the power to enforce its main tenet if jihad.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/11/egyptian-christians-under-attack/

Rich Trzupek

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Dumbing-Down of Due Diligence at Canada's Huron College

by Barbara Kay

For various reasons, some quite innocent, many Western universities are keen to establish Islamic Studies programs on their campuses. And for various other reasons, some quite pernicious, Islamist organizations are keen to see Islamic Studies programs established at Western universities. To this end, allegedly to foster "understanding" of Islam, the latter are eager to establish Islamic Studies programs with boodle of such heft and shininess that salivating committees tasked with the decision of whether to accept or refuse the gift throw caution to the winds. But closer inspection of certain controversial donor groups might suggest that their real agenda is twofold: Islamist colonization of the institution, and image-laundering.

One such potential scenario may be in progress at Huron University College, an affiliate of Canada's prestigious University of Western Ontario (UWO). Huron offers undergrad degrees in a variety of majors, as well as post-baccalaureate and professional degree programs in theology. The College has recently accepted a $2 million endowment for a new Chair in Islamic Studies within the College's historically Anglican Faculty of Theology.[1] Most of the money will be provided by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)[2]. The IIIT contribution amounts to around half the endowment.

On April 5, a group of twenty-six UWO "alumni, friends and faculty" signed a letter protesting acceptance of the endowment. The letter, addressed to Trish Fulton, the interim principal of Huron, was written by UWO Associate Professor of Economics John Palmer. Palmer begins by forthrightly setting out the group's belief that "it is extremely ill-advised of the College to accept funding from any organization implicated in violent jihad." These are strong words. But they are backed by strong arguments.

The letter points out that although MAC and IIIT pay lip service to the notion that they are moderate and democratic organizations, in both cases their approach is guided by "the approach of Imam Hassan Al-Banna [who] best exemplifies [a] balanced, comprehensive understanding of Islam." Indeed, MAC boldly states as much on its website.

Hassan Al-Banna is the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The MB is universally acknowledged as the root of modern Arab-Muslim fundamentalism, and the source from which al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups draw their inspiration and validation. The MB's motto is: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qu'ran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." The captured 1991 Brotherhood strategic plan for Canada and the US declares:

The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process,' with all the word means. The Ikhwan [MB] must understand that their work in America is kind of a grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.

The letter to Fulton lays out the IIIT's disturbing background in some detail:

Two examples of IIIT's involvement with terror: In 2003, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Alwani, a co-founder and former president of the IIIT, was cited as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the trial of Sami al-Arian, an Islamist activist who served a 57-month prison sentence in the United States for conspiring to channel funds to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist group in the United States and Canada. In pleading guilty, al-Arian admitted that he knew that the PIJ engaged in suicide bombings and other "horrific and deadly acts of violence" against the people of Israel.

Jamal Barzinji, founding member and current vice-President of the IIIT, has likewise been implicated in funding for terrorists. In a sworn affidavit filed in 2003, a senior special agent with the United States Customs Service testified: "I believe that Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ as evidenced by ties to Al-Arian...but also with HAMAS.

Fulton replied to Palmer's letter two days letter. She wrote that the "funding was approved by our Executive Board after a thorough due diligence process...[which] included reviewing the outcomes of the various decisions that were before the U.S. District Courts dealing with IIIT and its members...."

Curious to know what in this case constituted a "thorough due diligence process," I arranged for a telephone interview with Fulton, which took place on April 27. At the outset of our conversation, to make it clear that I was not calling with any motives of entrapment, I informed Fulton that I was not speaking to her in my capacity as a weekly columnist with Canada's National Post newspaper, but as a freelance writer engaged to write an article for Campus Watch, a media organ whose mandate was known to her.

I asked Fulton if Palmer's letter had given her pause or in any way persuaded her to review the decision to accept IIIT's and MAC's funding. She said that the letter did not come as a complete surprise, but that "we were not naïve" about the issues, and had no regrets.

I asked her what constituted "due diligence." Fulton said they had "reviewed the court decisions on allegations" against IIIT and its principals. They had also reviewed the experience of Temple University (alluded to in Palmer's letter). To my question of whether she felt the beliefs and principles of MAC and IIIT were "compatible with your values," she replied a prompt and firm "yes." I asked the question again, stipulating that by "your," I meant "Huron College." Again, she replied, "Yes, they are."

Elaborating, Fulton explained that for Huron, due diligence extends only to the "activities of the donors," adding, "We don't probe deeply into values held by donors." Huron, she said, is "concerned about the legitimacy and the civic presence" of donors, but "not the views they may hold on a wide variety of cultural issues." In Fulton's view, it is only a group's "actions" that would "compromise the academic pursuit."

As reported elsewhere, Canadian lawyer and Huron University College Executive Board member Faisal Joseph appears to have played an important role in the due diligence assessment. This role may have included the making of determinations about the pertinence of related US legal proceedings and the significance to be attached to an absence of such proceedings. Joseph, a noted member of Canada's Muslim community, is a controversial figure who participated in a January 2008 conference in Tripoli, Libya, a gathering sponsored by the World Islamic Call Society (WICS), a creation of Libya's Gaddafi regime. (In early May, its Canadian branch, WICS-Canada, saw its Canadian charity tax-status revoked over concerns of radicalism and possible financial links to the foiled 2007 JFK International Airport bomb plot.)

Huron's budget was $12 million before the $2 million endowment, so the temptation was obviously great. But given the sulphurous fumes arising from IIIT's history, associations and stated beliefs (not to mention probable "actions" in terms of abetting terrorist entities), Huron's decision not to assign an ethical dimension to the principle of "legitimacy" in performing their due diligence is disturbing.

For according to this curious strain of logic, an endowment designated for a course of studies in Western civilization, donated by white supremacists who had no history of actual jail time, would also meet Huron's standards for acceptance. But of course that would never happen, because the "legitimacy and civic presence" of white supremacists is a non-starter in our society. And yet the analogy is not impertinent.

As noted, Fulton was familiar with the case of Temple University, summarized in Palmer's letter: "In 2008, Temple University refused $1.5 million in funding from the IIIT for a chair in Islamic Studies. University President Ann Weaver Hart explained in a statement that Temple University had decided not to act on "this generous offer" by the IIIT, "until post-9/11 federal investigations of the IIIT are complete."

But Temple's case is by no means unique. Fulton and her committee might also wish to ponder a case of attempted Islamism-linked funding at Harvard University Divinity School (HDS), a gift that was accepted and only reversed after strenuous efforts by a few determined activists. The case should also be studied by the twenty-six signatories to Palmer's letter. For as it makes clear, once universities have accepted these gifts, they are loath to reverse their decision, and in Harvard's case did not do so without unrelenting and widely publicized protest.

Here is the story in brief. In 2000 the Harvard Divinity School received an endowment of $2.5 million for the creation of a chair in Islamic Studies from anti-American, Holocaust-denying Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, thirty-three-year ruler of the UAE. Zayed had been frequently condemned by human rights organizations for such abuses as starving a slave ring of Bangladeshi children for competitive advantage as coerced camel jockeys, a fact that had to have arisen during the due diligence process.

Controversy over the endowment only arose in 2002, however, when a spunky HDS graduate, Rachel Fish, met with dean William A. Graham, presenting him with a seventy-page indictment of Sheikh Zayed, requesting that the dean eschew funds from sources that promoted anti-Semitism. Fish founded a group, Students for an Ethical Divinity School, created a website, "Morality not Money" and, when the dean did not respond to her urgings, raised public awareness through the press in a years-long campaign of research-sharing with the general community.

Like the pharaoh in the Exodus story, Graham would not budge. In a bold gesture, Fish accepted her diploma from Graham with one hand, and with the other handed over a 130-page dossier of documented evidence against Sheikh Zayed, as well as a petition with 1,500 signatories expressing concern to Harvard's administration.

In the end it was not Harvard that terminated the endowment, but the UAE that decided to close the Zayed Center, citing activities by the Center that "starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance."[3] Harvard cracked; they put the funds on hold with a promise of further assessment. Under media pressure, Sheikh Zayed also cracked. He requested the funds be sent back.

Another case in point is Hartford Seminary (HS) in Connecticut (alluded to in Palmer's letter). HS boasts the oldest Islamic Studies program in America. Several of its faculty members endorse and promote Islamist views, most notably Ingrid Mattson, former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

A year ago HS accepted a $1-million gift from the IIIT. The money will be deployed in strengthening an Islamic Studies program that is deeply at odds with classical liberal principles of untrammeled academic inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. The troubling nature of the courses is well fleshed out in the published narrative of Andrew Bieszad, a Catholic HS graduate with a master's degree in Islamic Studies. Bieszad's thoughtful chronicle of his 2007-2010 sojourn in HS' allegedly mainstream program reveals a harrowing portrait of Islamic privilege run amok.

Here, for instance, is Bieszad's account of what transpired during a class in "interfaith dialogue":

I had done interfaith dialogue before, so this was not a new experience for me. We were separated into groups for the dialogue, and when I was permitted to speak, I said, 'I am Catholic, and I do not believe in Islam.' Following me, one of the Muslim students spoke. She said that she was Muslim, and then she addressed me directly. In a soft, Arabic accented voice, she told me, 'You are an infidel because you do not accept Islam' and that 'according to Islam you do not deserve to live.' A second Muslim student heartily agreed, and after repeating the first student's comments, she added that 'in Islam, the Koran and the tradition of the prophet are very clear about this' and that 'you deserve to die.'

This was one of several publicly-made threatening statements and insults that I would receive from Muslim seminary classmates for my open disagreement with Islam.

Not a single student, Muslim or non-Muslim, spoke up for Bieszad's right to express his opinion without intimidation or censure. In class,

Non-Muslim students and even professors showed a disproportionate respect for Muslim students when speaking about Islam, would not criticize certain matters, and even apologized for asking questions. Muslim students, on the other hand, were free to speak critically and even condescendingly about Christianity without any objection from my classmates and professors.

Islamic proselytizing literature was made freely available to students, but when Bieszad inquired about dispensing Christian materials, he was refused on the grounds that it would be "offensive to Muslims." These examples are a few of many crimes against the principle of free academic inquiry universities are pledged to support. A full reading of Bieszad's sojourn through this – I hardly know whether Kafkaesque or Orwellian best describes it – scholastic bordello will make the hair on the neck of any self-respecting critical thinker rise in fearful disbelief.

Bieszad's troubles were compounded when he sent a private email to a blogger friend in which he mentioned one of his professors, Ingrid Mattson, (then) president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The context of his remark was recent events in the news surrounding Mattson, ISNA, and "its indictment by the federal government over terrorism charges." The blogger published the email, and Bieszbad was essentially excommunicated. He eventually got his degree by the proverbial hook and crook.

Bieszad concludes that "The greatest threat to Islamic studies today is that the intellectual freedom that characterizes the Western approach to scholarship will be abolished if the discipline operates in accordance with Islamic principles."

Huron College was incorporated on May 5, 1863, as UWO's founding college. The responsibility to protect a venerable institution's good reputation should weigh very heavily on those tasked with vetting would-be donors. If the unsettling ideology to which MAC and IIIT openly subscribe is not a deterrent to collaboration with them, the numerous fiascos attached to donors representing Islamism-linked sources in other jurisdictions I have mentioned, as well as many I have not, should act as cautionary tales.

But then again, why should institutional leaders, hungry both for money and for the social capital they accrue nowadays from promoting Islamophilism, feel the need for caution, when so few of their constituents protest their feckless disregard for their institution's academic honor?

Notable in the story of Harvard Divinity School was the absence of support for Fish's efforts amongst faculty (exactly one member supported her), fellow Jewish students, and the Muslim student population at HDS, many of whom Fish knew personally from classes. The latter acknowledged that the source of the funds was tainted, but according to Fish argued, "We can do good things with bad money."^[4]

Can institutions do good things with bad money? Perhaps, if the people giving the bad money acknowledge that it is from a bad source, and dedicate it to the institution's purposes with no strings attached. But here is the real problem with bad money: Once it has been accepted, the bad-money group's name is inextricably linked with the good-reputation institution that accepts it. The bad-money people have gained international legitimacy through this donation, and thenceforth the good-reputation institution's name will be bruited forth internationally as a guarantor of the bad-money group's legitimacy. Isn't the good name of a university worth more than $2 million? Isn't the good name of a university...priceless? This is a question UWO must consider with extreme prejudice to its own interests and integrity.

In the case of Huron College, Palmer's letter of protest to Fulton is a good beginning. But he and his twenty-six signatories should have no illusions about the battle before them, which is part of a greater war that must be fought campus by campus. The war will be long and hard. In their battle, Palmer and his supporters will encounter apathy or hostility. Most mainstream media will ignore them or worse, denounce them as Islamophobes. But they have thrown down a gauntlet from which they cannot in conscience retreat.

***

Barbara Kay is a weekly columnist for the National Post newspaper in Canada. This essay was written for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

---

[1] Another affiliate of UWO, nominally Catholic Kings College, is extremely invested in its own Abrahamic-inspired interfaith project, The Centre for Jewish-Catholic-Muslim Learning. There is reason to fear that Islamism may be a problem there as well, as prefigured in the case of the neon "Tughra" to which I devoted a column in September 2007: http://www.barbarakay.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118&catid=1%3Anationalpost&Itemid=1

[2] The IIIT home page sports the rather curious motto: "Towards Islamization of knowledge and reform of Islamic thought." The first half – which has the virtue of candor – articulates the inherent danger in accepting funds from IIIT. The second half, if conceived in good faith, stands in contradiction to the first half.

[3] Idem, p 113

[4] Academics Against Israel and the Jews, ed by Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (2007), p. 111

Source: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11284

Barbara Kay

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel's New Neighbor Egypt: Radical Nationalist President; Islamist-Dominated Parliament

by Barry Rubin

Amr Moussa, probably Egypt's next president, has given a comprehensive picture of his views, a foretaste of the likely policies of someone about to become the Arab world's most powerful person. One thing he said is particularly important and shocking. Read on.

Moussa, former Egyptian foreign minister (1991-2001) and head of the Arab League until his resignation takes effect on May 15, is a figure from the Egyptian establishment and the old regime. But which aspect of the old regime: that of the centrist Husni Mubarak, the moderate Anwar al-Sadat, or the radical Arab nationalist Gamal Abd al Nasser?

Moussa is the last Nasserist. He knows that the next president must also be a populist to survive. So he will bash Israel, the United States, and the Egyptian upper class. The hope is that he will be pragmatic enough to restrict his demagoguery to rhetoric.

It might seem ironic that a revolution against the old regime ends up electing as president a figure from the old regime. Yet Moussa perfectly combines experience and name recognition with radicalism. A recent Pew poll shows him with an 89 percent positive rating. Moussa's prospects look so good because the Islamists aren't running a presidential candidate. Moderate democrats, restricted to a small urban middle class constituency, can choose among four candidates running against each other, thus further splitting that vote.

Another reason Moussa's election appears likely is his deft use of the anti-Israel card. So identified is Moussa with hostility to Israel that in 2001 a popular song entitled, "I Hate Israel (I love Amr Moussa)" zoomed to the top of the Egyptian hit parade. Indeed, Moussa is now emphasizing that much of the reason for his break with Mubarak was due to his desire to take a stronger policy against Israel.

Moussa's basic argument in his Wall Street Journal interview is that Egypt has obtained nothing from peace with Israel and that Israel is completely at fault for the lack of an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement. Of course, Egypt received: the Sinai's return; the reopening of its oilfields and the Suez Canal; and the opportunity for more trade, tourism, and a lower military budget. Failure to take advantage of the latter points was due to Egyptian decisions.

In addition, Egypt and Israel had what amounts to an alliance against revolutionary Islamism, particularly Hamas in the Gaza Strip. President Moussa will reverse this policy and see Hamas as an ally, albeit one that he won't trust and might try to restrain.

Hamas is now starting to believe that by attacking Israel it will have the power to draw Egypt into a war with Israel. If that view is not countered decisively by the next Egyptian government, the result will be a return to the 1960s and a terrible major conflict. Unfortunately, the current U.S. government cannot be counted on to see and help eliminate that problem.

As the Wall Street Journal accurately notes: "U.S. and European officials said they don't see the Egypt-Israel peace agreement in danger in the near term. They say Cairo won't place in jeopardy billions of dollars in aid."

We've seen this kind of economic determinism before and every time it is applied to Middle East states it fails. Examples:

--Yasir Arafat will make peace with Israel because he wants to get a state and huge compensation funding.

--Syria will moderate and turn toward the West and away from Iran in order to get trade and investment.

--Iran would much rather become wealthy than to pursue these silly ideas about spreading Islamist revolution.

Now, here's what's really shocking in the interview. To quote the Journal's account, Moussa, "Described a political landscape in which the Muslim Brotherhood...is dominant. It is inevitable, he said, that parliamentary elections in September will usher in a legislature led by a bloc of Islamists, with the Brotherhood at the forefront."

Think about that. Even Moussa, who is anti-Islamist, admits this, though Western governments and mass media haven't figured it out yet. He's running as an independent meaning with no political party behind him. Thus, Moussa must constantly compromise with the Islamist majority in parliament that will consist of the Muslim Brotherhood plus even more radical groups.

The alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood with even more radical "Salafi" groups--the kind of people who launched a terrorist war in Egypt during the 1990s and who support Usama bin Ladin--is another dangerous development. The Salafis are the ones attacking Christians; the Brotherhood-Salafi alliance has organized two demonstrations outside Israel's embassy. In contrast, there are no riot police present and the demonstrators are allowed to approach closer to the embassy than before. It's only a matter of time before there's a nasty incident.

Now, just for fun, check out this MEMRI video on the pro-bin Ladin, anti-American demonstration at the al-Nur mosque in Cairo. They chant, "Death to America" and the Islamist chant calling for the slaughter of all Jews. There's also a new one we'll be hearing a lot of in the months to come, "Obama is the enemy of Allah!" There are, what, 2000 people in that one mosque?

Note how young the crowd is. See how they use their state-of-the-art smartphones to taken snapshots of bin Ladin's face in the mosque's place of honor! At least one of them is wearing the jacket of the English national football (soccer) team! Why they might even use Facebook!

The Financial Times reports a speech by Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad Badie that when Egypt's parliament meets the Brotherhood, which will have the largest bloc, will propose the following program:

"An end to normalization [with Israel] which has given our enemy stability; an end to [Egyptian] efforts to secure from infiltrators the borders of the Zionists; the abolition of all [joint] economic interests such as the Qualified Industrial Zones agreement and the export of Egyptian gas to Israel."

Note the key point there: "an end to efforts to secure from infiltrators the borders of the Zionists." In other words, to turn Egypt into what the Gaza Strip was in the 1950s, Jordan was in the late 1960s, and Lebanon was in the 1970s: a springboard and safe haven for terrorists attacking Israel across the border. Such a policy can only end in full-scale war.

Isn't it great that now Egypt is a democratic state where people feel free to voice their opinions? Of course, the problem is the nature of those opinions.

Remember this: The Muslim Brotherhood doesn't have to engage in terrorist violence within Egypt because it has allies ready to do so. This is just like Hamas' use of smaller groups to attack Israel from the Gaza Strip and then disclaims responsibility, allowing its apologists to claim that now it's really moderate.

While I doubt that the Islamists will have an outright majority they should come pretty close and thus have one by allying with various radical nationalists, leftists, and independents. That also means they'll take a leading role in writing Egypt's new constitution.

Moussa makes another important point in the interview. First, after many years in which Egypt was oriented inward, he will reassert a leading Egyptian role in the Arab world. That probably means conciliation with Syria and the recreation of a radical Arab bloc that includes Egypt for the first time in more than 30 years. The best thing that can be said is that neither Iraq nor the Saudis would participate, while the Jordanians would be very wary.

Egypt will no longer be a U.S. ally. The question is the degree to which it will be an enemy of the United States.

Finally, he knows that he will have to deliver economic benefits to the masses. But that probably means higher subsidies and more government jobs, policies that will do nothing to improve Egypt's economy in a real way. The worse the economy gets, the greater the anti-Israel, anti-American demagoguery will be.

We are able to predict this crisis more than six months ahead of time, yet Western countries, media, and experts have not yet seen what is certainly coming down the road toward us.

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2011/05/egypt-radical-nationalist-president

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Another Bite at the Apple: Hedegaard Found Guilty

by Ann Snyder

Last week, Lars Hedegaard, president and founder of the Danish and International Free Press Societies was convicted of "hate speech" under Article 266 b of the Danish penal code and fined the equivalent of about $1000. (See IFPS's press release here.) Beyond being an appalling assault on freedom of speech, if the conviction strikes you as a bit odd, perhaps it should. Just this past March, the Legal Project published an interview with Hedegaard following his acquittal on the very same charges. (Note: In December 2010, Danish MP, Jesper Langballe, of the Danish People's Party "confessed" to violating the same provision for remarks made in support of Hedegaard.)

Apparently the Danish government's current position on free speech isn't the only thing rotten in Denmark. In what reeks of violation of the general proscription against double jeopardy from this American's perspective, it would seem Danish prosecutors are allowed to make multiple attacks against the same defendant on the same charges. Determined to convict Hedegaard, the prosecutor appealed the lower court's decision, and Hedegaard was retried on April 26, 2010, the same day he released his new book, Muhammed's Girls: Violence, Murder and Rape in the House of Islam.

Hedegaard will appeal, of course, "to the Supreme Court and – if that is denied – to the European Court of Human Rights," according to a released statement. Hedegaard will not give in, and so, who are the real losers in this case? According to Hedegaard:

"The real victims of this despicable case are freedom of speech and the tens of thousands of girls and women – Muslim as well as non-Muslim – whose plight may no longer be mentioned in my country for fear of legal prosecution and public denigration."

Noted feminist psychologist, Dr. Phyllis Chesler offers a similar perspective on Hedegaard's conviction.

While it is true that some topics may make us uncomfortable and may be difficult to discuss – sexual and honor violence probably fall squarely into this category - it doesn't logically follow that they shouldn't or needn't be discussed, let alone outlawed. If we cannot even talk about the problem, what are our chances, realistically, of doing anything to stop it? Slim-to-none, I would wager.

In its zeal to convict Hedegaard the prosecution not only diminished free speech rights, generally, but also made it harder to protect the victims of violence. All of this begs the question: which side is the prosecution on, anyway? That of the perpetrators of violence and those whose PC sensibilities are offended by discussing the realities of sexual and honor violence or that of the victims and those who have the courage to speak out despite being persecuted (and prosecuted) for it? The answer seems pretty clear.

Source: http://www.legal-project.org/blog/2011/05/another-bite-at-the-apple-hedegaard-found-guilty

Ann Snyder

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

How the Media Falsify Obama's Origins Story

by Jack Cashill

In her new biography of Ann Dunham, A Singular Woman, New York Times reporter Janny Scott corrupts Barack Obama's nativity story even more than a cynic might have thought possible. In so doing, Scott follows an ignoble media tradition that deserves exposure as does the story that it corrupts.

At the very first moment of his national acclaim, the 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama established the foundational myth of his political ascendancy.

Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., had grown up in Kenya "herding goats." His mother, Ann Dunham, Obama traced to Kansas, as he always did. "My parents shared not only an improbable love," Obama continued, "they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation."

In the frequent retelling of this tale, Obama Sr. left the family for Harvard well after the family had cohered. "I get it," Obama told America's schoolchildren in 2009. "I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother."

For the first five years of his national celebrity, the major media accepted the story as told. This included the four book-length biographies I consulted when researching my book Deconstructing Obama and any number of long-form articles.

Even before the 2008 election, however, the alternative conservative media began catching on that the story was false. How false would become increasingly clear.

In his self-published book, What Does Barack Obama Believe, conservative activist Michael Patrick Leahy established that Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, had left Hawaii without her presumed husband long before her baby's first birthday.

By 2009, WorldNetDaily had confirmed the specifics of Dunham's departure. WND posted Dunham's transcripts from the University of Washington in Seattle, which showed that she had begun taking two night classes on September 25, 1961, about seven weeks after the baby's birth. WND placed her arrival in Seattle about a month earlier.

This meant, of course, that the story Obama had been telling about his origins -- what Obama-friendly biographer David Remnick calls Obama's "signature appeal: the use of the details of his own life as a reflection of a kind of multicultural ideal" -- was profoundly false. There was no Obama family, no shared "faith in the possibilities of this nation," no "improbable love."

While writing his definitive Obama biography, The Bridge, New Yorker editor Remnick had access to all this information, which was also posted on apolitical history sites in Washington State. He could not ignore it, but he could not embrace it either. So he tried to finesse it.

In Remnick's butchered version, when the baby was born, "Ann dropped out of school to care for her infant son." In the months following, Remnick suggests that Ann grew restive at home "while Barack Sr. was in classes, studying at the library, and out drinking with his friends."

As far as I know, Remnick is the first mainstream reporter to place Dunham in Washington State, but he tells us that Dunham "registered for an extension course in the winter of 1961 and enrolled as a regular student in the spring of 1962." In the sentence that follows immediately, Remnick adds, "She moved to Seattle with Barack Jr ... and reconnected with old friends."

Remnick here creates the deliberate impression that Dunham lived with Obama Sr. after the baby's birth, took "an extension course" in the winter of 1962, and then moved to Seattle with the baby in the spring. He had to know this was false. According to the university's official transcript, Dunham had received 20 hours of academic credit through four evening classes at the Seattle campus by the time the spring semester began. Moreover, she had dropped out of the University of Hawaii not after the baby was born but seven months beforehand.

To further resuscitate the "improbable love" myth, Remnick tells the reader that in fall 1962 "Ann went with the baby to Cambridge briefly to visit her husband, but that trip was a failure and she returned to Hawaii." No remotely credible evidence supports this version of events, and all logic and logistics argue against it.

Janny Scott further muddies the water. Although she spent more than two years researching Dunham's life, the defining event of which was the birth of her son, Scott contributes nothing but misinformation to the public understanding of Obama's early years.

Scott seems almost reluctant to raise the subject of those years. On page 84 of the book, the reader learns that "Obama was twenty-four years old and Ann was seventeen when they met in the fall of 1960." On page 86 of the book, we are told that baby Obama is born in Honolulu, and, "Eleven months later, the elder Obama was gone." Improbably, this two-page account follows thirty well-documented pages on Dunham's high school years in Seattle.

According to INS documents, Obama was 26 at the time the couple met, but that is not the real problem here. The problem is that Scott obfuscates everything. About the wedding itself, Scott can tell us no more than that the couple married "reportedly on the island of Maui." As the authoritative source on Dunham's life, she should be embarrassed to use the word "reportedly."

Scott adds nary a detail to an otherwise undocumented ceremony. Critically, too, she fails to comment on Ann Dunham's whereabouts from the alleged wedding in February 1961 to Obama's birth in August 1961. In so doing, Scott does not quiet the skepticism about Obama's origins. She aggravates it.

To her credit, unlike Remnick, Scott does not cite the comically unreliable Hawaii governor Neil Abercrombie as a source on the storied relationship. To her discredit, Scott cites no credible real time witnesses at all. The only person who bears witness on this subject is a woman who learned about it from Ann several years after the fact.

As to the birth, Scott provides no details other than what was available on the short form certification of live birth. She does not tell us where the happy newlyweds lived or even if they lived together, let alone if they were happy.

Recently posted INS documents note that the newborn baby Obama was "living with mother" and she in turn was living "with her parents." Obama Sr. meanwhile was living at a totally separate address. These documents were requested through the Freedom of Information Act by Heather Smathers, a young reporter for the Arizona Independent, a community weekly. No one at the Times apparently bothered.

Although sent by the INS, let me add a word of caution about these documents. In the 55-page release, only one page is fully hand written by an INS official. That is the page I cite above, confirming my argument that the Obama birth narrative was manufactured. That page also confirms, however, that "Barack Obama II" was born in Honolulu on "8/4/1961."

Smathers requested these documents in September 2010. They arrived conveniently on April 18, 2011. She posted them on April 26. Obama released his long-form birth certificate on April 27 with the unusual designation "II" after his name, not "Jr." as one might expect. The INS documents offer official backup to the date on Obama's birth certificate, but the official's repetition of the unusual locution "II" leaves me a tad suspicious as does the timing of the documents' release. A hand-written document copied to a CD cannot be hard to falsify.

There are more holes still. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama observes that a newspaper story announcing his father's departure for Harvard in June 1962 failed to mention him or his mother, and he wonders if "the omission caused a fight between my parents." Scott comments, "Whatever fight there was may have happened earlier." Of course, it happened earlier. The two had not seen each other for nine months. Based on the available evidence, the two had surely broken up long before the baby was born, if indeed there was a real relationship at all.

Scott concedes Dunham did go to Seattle but, like Remnick, she plays games with the timeline. "In the spring quarter of 1962, as Obama was embarking on his final semester in Hawaii, Ann was enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle," Scott writes.

As in Remnick's case, this is borderline fraud. Scott credits her information about the spring semester to a university official, and although true, it conceals the larger fact that Ann had already been at the university for months. The maladroit Scott even cites a Dunham friend who places Dunham and the baby in Seattle in "late in the summer of 1961."

After reading Remnick and Scott, the public has absolutely no idea whether Dunham married Obama Sr. and where Dunham spent the next seven months. The story the two reporters tell us about the first year of Obama's life is conspicuously and consciously false.

And yet they and their pals get to mock us for the very act of asking questions about Obama's birth! Someone please wake me and reassure me I am dreaming.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/how_the_media_falsify_obamas_o.html

Jack Cashill is the author of Deconstructing Obama.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Wapo 'News'' Coverage With An 11-To-1 Pro-Fatah, Pro-Hamas Bias

by Leo Rennert

The "unity" agreement between Fatah and Hamas is of sufficiently significant importance to warrant a closer look by the Washington Post and other western media.

Brokered by the new Egyptian regime, it provides for a joint interim government of the two rival Palestinian groups, which together will administer Gaza and the West Bank territories for a year pending elections for a Palestinian legislative council and a successor to President Abbas.

Both Fatah and Hamas have launched an all-out public-relations campaign to "sell" the agreement to the international community. For its part, the Israeli government is also sparing no effort to alert the world to all the lethal dangers it sees lurking in this accord.

So, one would think that a responsible newspaper would tackle this story in a fair-minded, balanced objective way -- providing readers with a thorough account of both the Palestinian view of this reconciliation accord between long-time bitter rivals, and the Israeli view that inclusion of Hamas in a Palestinian regime bodes ill for prospects of a real Israeli-Palestinian peace.

But that's not the way Joel Greenberg, the Washington Post's Jerusalem correspondent, covers this new development in the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a 22-paragraph article, 20 paragraphs are devoted to depicting the "unity" agreement in roseate, reassuring colors, while Israel's skeptical response gets only a measly two paragraphs -- both buried far down in Greenberg's dispatch.

The headline leaves no doubt about Greenberg's pro-Palestinian slant: "Mediators of accord between Fatah, Hamas see new hope -- Palestinians say move represents fresh chance for peace with Israel" (May 10, page A9) The headline leaves Israel and its views out in the cold.

And no wonder, since the headline is faithful to Greenberg's article. He devotes ample space to Mahmoud Abbas's efforts to reach "unity" with Hamas. He quotes Munib al-Masri, one of the "independent" Egyptian mediators, as vouching for Hamas's evolution from a terrorist organization to a more Gandhiesque partner for peace -- both Fatah and Hamas "have agreed to coordinate diplomacy and the confrontation with Israel, reining in further use of violence."

Mustafa Barghouti, an "independent" Palestinian politician, calls the agreement "a fantastic opportunity for real peace with all Palestinians," while Khaled Meshal, Hamas's supreme leader, Greenberg assures us, "took a step away from the group's charter, which envisions an Islamic state in the entire area of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." Hamas now talks about a Palestinian state confined only to the territories bordering Israel, Greenberg reports.

While acknowledging that Hamas has a history of sending "mixed" signals, he nevertheless sticks with sources who opine that this time Hamas is content to emerge with a "Palestinian state next to Israel, not in its place."

In similar vein, Greenberg trots out Mahdi Abdul Hadia, a political analyst and Fatah-Hamas mediator, as stating flatly that Hamas had effectively "legitimized the negotiation process for a two-state solution."

Only after this avalanche of pro-Fatah, pro-Hamas commentary does Greenberg finally devote a single, brief paragraph -- Paragraph 17 -- to a short, incomplete rebuttal by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who warns that this "unity agreement" is aimed at creating a Palestinian state that would "improve the position from which Hamas wants to drive Israel to the sea." But this is immediately negated by Meshal and Egyptian mediators who argue that, under the 'unity" agreement, any armed Palestinian action would have to be cleared with Fatah, and since Abbas "has emphatically opposed such attacks, they were effectively ruled out." In other words, Meshal -- not Netanyahu -- gets the last word.

Finally, in his windup, Greenberg quotes Mark Regev, a Netanyahu spokesman, in Paragraph 21, who insists that Hamas still reserves the right to launch terrorist attacks and that the "unity agreement' is not a recipe for reconciliation and peace -- "there is no evidence that this is the case."

But again, Regev is trumped in Greenberg's piece by Masri, one of the Egyptian mediators, who categorically disagrees with Regev and proclaims the new-found Fatah-Hamas unity as "the best opportunity for peace." Masri gets the final word in the article. Hamas, Masri assures one and all, no longer is on the outs with Abbas and Fatah -- Hamas is "in the tent." There is a funny side to this wording, which might be taken as an admission that Hamas, like the proverbial camel's nose under the tent, has managed to infiltrate Fatah. But that's not Greenberg's or Masri's meaning. They insist on painting Hamas's entry into the "tent" as a benign, peaceful move.

If Greenberg had used as much ink on Netanyahu and Regev's views of the "unity" agreement and given them as much prominence as Hamas, Fatah and Egyptian mediators receive, the headline might have read a bit differently and, at a minimum, hinted that Israel viewed the accord in a different light. Also, Netanyahu and Regev could have detailed many other lethal implications of Fatah-Hamas "unity" -- that it would give Iran a forward position in the West Bank to harm Israel, that release of Hamas prisoners by Abbas under the agreement would free more terrorists to kill Israelis, that Hamas hasn't changed one comma or word in its charter, which unambiguously calls for the total destruction of Israel, that with Hamas not changing its stripes whatsoever, President Obama's diplomacy of promoting resumption of peace negotiations has gone out the window.

But Greenberg's article is bereft of any such Israeli criticisms of the "unity" accord. He tosses in brief, perfunctory rebuttals by Netanyahu and Regev -- rebuttals that are immediately squashed by Meshal and other exponents of a supposedly reformed Hamas -- so as to give himself phony deniability if readers complain that he delivered a totally one-sided article.

Greenberg's role is not that of a professional journalist. He is a salesman. And the goods he peddlers are definitely not kosher.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/05/wapo_news_coverage_with_an_11t.html

Leo Rennert

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Geert Wilders's Problem with Islam

by Jonathan Kay

As an editor at the National Post, I often rely on three letters to protect my columnists from human-rights tribunals: I-S-M — these being the difference between spelling Islam and Islamism.

The former is a religion — like Christianity or Judaism. The latter is an ideology, which seeks to impose an intolerant fundamentalist version of Islam on all Muslims, and spread the faith throughout the world. Declaring Islamism a menace isn't controversial. Declaring Islam a menace is considered hate speech.

Geert Wilders' refusal to deploy those three letters is the reason that the 47-year-old Dutch politician travels with bodyguards, and cannot sleep in the same house two nights in a row. For Mr. Wilders, the problem plaguing Western societies is Islam, full stop. Terrorism, tyranny, the subjugation of women — these are not perversions of Islam, as he sees it, but rather its very essence.

"The word 'Islamism' suggests that there is a moderate Islam and a non-moderate Islam," he told me during an interview in Toronto on Sunday. "And I believe that this is a distinction that doesn't exist. It's like the Prime Minister of Turkey [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, said 'There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that's it.' This is the Islam of the Koran."

"Now, you can certainly make a distinction among the people," he adds. "There are moderate Muslims — who are the majority in our Western societies — and non-moderate Muslims."

"But Islam itself has only one form. The totalitarian ideology contained in the Koran has no room for moderation. If you really look at what the Koran says, in fact, you could argue that 'moderate' Muslims are not Muslims at all. It tells us that if you do not act on even one verse, then you are an apostate."

Unlike most critics of Islam, who tend to shy away from the explosive subject of Mohammed himself, Mr. Wilders forthrightly describes the Muslim Prophet as a dictator, a pedophile and a warmonger. "If you study the life of Mohammed," Mr.Wilders told me, "you can see that he was a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden ever was."

It is an understatement to call Mr. Wilders a divisive figure in the Netherlands. On the one hand, he is the leader of the PVV, the country's third most popular political party — which currently is propping up the ruling minority government. And Mr. Wilders has been declared "politician of the year" by a popular Dutch radio station, and come in second in a variety of other mainstream polls.

On the other hand, the Muslim Council of Britain has called him "an open and relentless preacher of hate." For a time, Mr. Wilders, even was banned from entering the U.K. A popular Dutch rapper wrote a song about killing Mr. Wilders ("This is no joke. Last night I dreamed I chopped your head off.")

Before meeting Mr. Wilders on Sunday, I knew him mostly from his most inflammatory slogans — such as his comparison of the Koran to Mein Kampf — which his detractors fling around as proof of his narrow-minded bigotry.

Yet the real Geert Wilders speaks softly and thoughtfully. It turns out that he's travelled to dozens of Muslim nations. He knows more about the Islamic faith and what it means to ordinary people than do most of Islam's most ardent Western defenders.

Nor do I believe that Mr. Wilders is a bigot — a least, not in the sense that the word usually is understood.

"I don't hate Muslims. I hate their book and their ideology," is what he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in 2008. Mr. Wilders sees Islam as akin to communism or fascism, a cage that traps its suffering adherents in a hateful, phobic frame of mind.

Mr. Wilders describes Muslim as victims of bad ideas, in other words. In this way, his attitude is entirely different from classic anti-Semites and racists, who treat Jews and blacks as debased on the level of biology.

Of course, in the modern, politically correct Western tradition, hatred expressed toward a religion typically is held on the same level of human-rights opprobrium as hatred expressed toward a race or an ethnicity. But Islam is not really a religion at all, as Mr. Wilders sees it, but rather a retrograde political ideology with religious trappings.

He notes that while other religions draw a distinction between God and Caesar, between the secular and the spiritual, Islam demands submission in every aspect of human existence, both through the wording of the Koran itself and the Shariah law that has developed in its shadow. The faith also supplies a justification for aggressive war; vilifies non-believers; and pronounces death upon its enemies. In short, Mr. Wilders argues, it has all the ingredients of what students of 20th century history would recognize as a fully formed totalitarian ideology.

"I see Islam as 95% ideology, 5% religion — the 5% being the temples and the imams," he tells me. "If you would strip the Koran of all the negative, hateful, anti-Semitic material, you would wind up with a tiny [booklet]."

It's easy to see why many Europeans casually jump to the conclusion that Mr. Wilders is a hatemonger. He wants to halt non-Western immigration to the Netherlands until existing immigrants can be integrated, and he wants to deport any foreigner who commits a crime — the same sort of policies as those advocated by genuine xenophobes.

But even so, his insistence on the proper distinction between faith and ideology is an idea that deserves to be taken seriously. For it invites the question: If we permit the excoriation of totalitarian cults created by modern dictators, why do we stigmatize (and even criminalize) the excoriation of arguably similar notions when they happen to be attributed to a 7th-century prophet?

It's a good question. And as far as I know, Geert Wilders is the only Western politician taking it seriously.

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2108/geert-wilders-problem-islam
This article was originally posted in the National Post May 8, 2011

Jonathan Kay

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Hamas's Newest "Collaborators": Fatah

by Khaled Abu Toameh

The two main partners in the new Palestinian government, Hamas and Fatah, have chosen to celebrate their unity accord by targeting anyone who helps Israel.

This means that the new unity government, which is supposed to be established in the coming weeks, would not only be opposed to compromise, but would also target those who maintain contacts with Israelis.

The timing of a recent execution in the Gaza Strip was seen as a warning message from Hamas to Fatah against continued "collaboration" with Israel.

Just hours before the signing of the Palestinian "reconciliation" pact in Cairo last week, the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip announced the execution by firing squad of Abdel Karim Shrair, 37, on charges of "collaboration" with Israel.

Days later in the West Bank, Palestinian gunmen believed to be members of Fatah, murdered Mohammed Khawaldi, 32, who had also been accused of "collaboration" with Israel.

Instead of issuing a condemnation, Fatah rushed to murder a "collaborator" in the West Bank – as if it is trying to tell the Palestinians: "You see, we are also capable of killing people who help Israel."

Fatah's failure to condemn the execution is a sign that the secular faction does not want to anger its new partner: Hamas.

Whatever Shrair did to help Israel, it could not have been more than what Abbas and Fayyad have done over the past few years. The two meet with Israelis on a regular basis and support security coordination between their security forces and the Israelis.

In the eyes of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayyad are also "traitors" because they have agreed -- at least in English and in public -- to recognize Israel's right to exist. If Abbas and Fayyad were to stand trail before a court on all what Hamas has accused them of doing, they too would end up facing a firing squad.

Shrair, after all, was also affiliated with Fatah, and had served in their security forces before Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

Citing Fatah security forces' security coordination with Israel, Hamas had previously refused to sign the unity accord, demanding an end to all forms of collaboration with Israel.

In the end, under Egyptian pressure, Hamas agreed temporarily to drop its condition.

The issue of security coordination between the Fatah-controlled security forces in the West Bank and Israel had been a major obstacle to ending the dispute between the two rival Palestinian factions.

Over the past four years, Hamas complained that this security coordination has resulted in the arrest and of hundreds of its followers in the West Bank. The coordination, according to Hamas, has also led to the elimination of many Hamas-linked institutions in the West Bank.

Hamas has also accused Fatah leaders of helping Israel during the 2008 Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip known as Operation Cast Lead.

But now it appears that Hamas is willing to sit in a unity government with Palestinians it still considers to be "collaborators" with Israel.

The decision to execute Shrair hours before the signing ceremony in Cairo is an indication that Hamas continues to see the issue of collaboration with Israel as a very serious matter. Many Palestinians see it as a warning and challenge to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad.

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2107/hamas-collaborators-fatah

Khaled Abu Toameh

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Canadian Election: A Chance for Real Hope and Change

by David Solway

On May 2 of this year, Canadians went to the polls and generated a set of electoral results that defied the collective wisdom of the nation’s pollsters, editors, political pundits and think tankers. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was given the majority government that had eluded him over the previous two election cycles—and a substantial majority it was. The best he could have hoped for, according to the commentariat, was yet another minority government presiding over a fractious, multi-Party House of Commons, with little chance of passing a Conservative budget and implementing Conservative legislation. He was regularly lampooned in Canada’s mainstream left-wing media as cold, unlikeable, domineering and “scary,” apparently harboring a “secret agenda” to turn the country into a far right, semi-police state. Fortunately, ordinary Canadians thought otherwise.

The Liberal Party, which styles itself as the “Natural Governing Party” of Canada and which had been in power for most of the last century, met the worst electoral defeat of its long and epochal—and scandal-plagued—history. It was ignominiously reduced to rump status in parliament, a mere 34 seats to the Conservatives’ 167. The Liberals had pinned their hopes on the intellectual lustre of their leader, acclaimed author and Ivy League prof Michael Ignatieff, who had spent most of his career outside of Canada, teaching in Europe and the U.S. He was, presumably, to play the part of Elisha to Pierre Trudeau’s Elijah, donning the mantle of the “intellectual giant” who was also a university scholar and author and who had gradually snaffled the country to the left during his controversial tenure. Trudeau had captivated the public with his charisma and Gallic charm, his eloquence, his marriage to a beautiful (if unstable) woman, his sandal-wearing hippiness, his pirouette behind the Queen’s back when he succeeded in repatriating the Constitution, and many other feats of derring-do that arguably caused far more harm than good.

But Ignatieff, popularly known as “Iggy,” could never arouse the electorate. He came across as pompous, self-infatuated, rather stodgy, and like a modern version of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, seemed uncomfortable flipping hamburgers and kissing babies. Worse, he was seen as more American than Canadian, parachuted in to revive the Party’s flagging prospects. This was perhaps his greatest liability. Canadians tend to distrust Americans and to regard them with a mixture of condescension and pity, when they are not denouncing them as cowboys, rubes and warmongers.

No less surprising than the Conservatives’ stunning victory and the Liberal collapse was the unexpected surge of the hard left New Democratic Party, or NDP, led by the opportunistic Jack Layton. Earning hefty salaries, he and his parliamentarian wife, Olivia Chow, lived for years in subsidized government housing. As well, Layton, a vigorous supporter of mandatory public health care, had no compunction jumping the queue and undergoing medical treatment in a private clinic. No matter. A caviar socialist can do no wrong.

Formerly a minor player in the country’s motley parliament, the NDP’s appeal to the programmatic left had ensured it of a gadfly presence in the House, if not of administrative influence. Under Layton’s clever minstrelsy, all this has now changed. Buoyed by its 102 seats, the NDP constitutes the Official Opposition and brandishes considerable clout in upcoming budgetary and policy debates. In many ways, the NDP, given its close affiliation with organized labor, its courting of the Islamic vote, its intention to pass Cap-and-Trade, impose carbon tariffs, raise the corporate tax rate, withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, and steer hundreds of billions of dollars into social welfare programs, resembles the Democratic Party in the U.S. and José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in Spain.

It should be noted, however, that of its 102 seats, 58 were picked up in Quebec, largely at the expense of the province’s independence Party, the Bloc Québécois, which was reduced from the 47 seats it held at parliament’s dissolution to an infinitesimal 4. Like the NDP, the Bloc is strongly socialist in its political orientation, a similarity upon which the NDP was able to capitalize. But after several terms in Parliament, once as the Official Opposition, the Bloc’s tiresome, one-note, strident vuvuzela and its lack of productive results, eventually paled upon Quebec voters.

Without a single member from the ROC (Rest of Canada), the Bloc was always something of an anomaly. For Americans to understand this electoral curiosity, they would need to imagine a parliamentary system in which an independence Party representing one of their most populous states, say California or Texas, is regularly elected to the halls of power in order to achieve the secession of the state from the body of the nation. One might call it the Catalan model—Catalonia has long agitated for political dismemberment from Spain, in some respects like Scotland from the United Kingdom and Flanders from Belgium. But in Canada the threat is real and ongoing, far more so than in other Western nations, and in the Quebec referendum of 1995 the country came within a 1% vote differential of breaking up.

What is rather delectable in the current situation is that the NDP now finds itself between a ROC and a hard place. As Official Opposition, with 44 seats won outside of Quebec, it must act as a national unity Party if it wishes to retain credibility and a viable future. At the same time, it must also answer to the demands of Quebec separatists and so-called “sovereignty-association” sentiment if it holds out any hope of retaining the Quebec vote that catapulted it to its present position of eminence. Adding to its predicament, much of its Quebec caucus consists of young people, students and raw first-timers, clearly unready for the exercise of power. For example, one of its candidates, twenty-something Ruth Ellen Brosseau, whose passion is rescuing stray animals, was happily vacationing in Las Vegas during the election, ran in a jurisdiction where she does not live, and does not speak passable French, the language of 98% of her constituents. Only in Quebec, one might say.

It will be interesting times ahead for Canada. The Bloc is moribund for now, but should not be counted out in the future. Liberals will be looking inward, struggling to rebuild. A product of the perennially freakish West Coast, the Green Party with its measly one seat is a non-entity, though it can be expected to side with the NDP in stirring up as much trouble as it can for the Conservatives—and for the country. The socialist zombie is always on the prowl, hunting for victims.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/10/the-canadian-election-a-chance-for-real-hope-and-change-2/

David Solway

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Challenging the Slander at Columbia’s Israel-Bashing Event

by Phil Orenstein

The Center for Palestinian Studies (CPS) at Columbia University hosted an event on May 2, 2011 entitled “Gaza: Israel’s War and the Goldstone Report.” The panel of rabid anti-Israel academics included Norman Finkelstein, author of “This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion;” Rashid Khalidi, author of “The Iron Cage” and former professor of political science at DePaul University who was denied tenure and resigned; Edward Said, professor of Arab studies at Columbia and co-director of CPS; and Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

I gathered a couple of defenders of Israel and attended the event in order to challenge the radical anti-Israel orthodoxy at Columbia. Before the event began, I handed out a printout of David Horowitz’s forceful and factual ad that ran in the New York Times last week, entitled: “The Palestinians’ Case Against Israel is Based on a Genocidal Lie.” I had the fortune to meet Danielle Reich, a Columbia undergraduate student, Hasbara fellow and campus Camera representative, who came to defend Israel as well. There were altogether 300 people, an assemblage of student activists, faculty and aging hippies with a handful of Israel supporters. Many people handed the flyer back to me after they saw the name David Horowitz Freedom Center. I engaged a few folks in debate over some of the points in the ad.

I reiterated the message in the Horowitz ad that the Palestinian claim that Israel “occupies Palestine” is an outright historical lie and that there has never been a “Palestinian” state or entity to occupy before the PLO was created in 1964 in order to obliterate the State of Israel. People asked why I am denouncing the Palestinian people. I said, “Because they are suffering,” echoing the message in the ad. But, I continued, the cause of their suffering is not Israel, but sixty years of Arab aggression. If we continue to blame and demonize Israel, we will never get to the core of the Israeli-Palestinian question, which is that Arab dictatorships have been using the Palestinian people as political pawns in their war against the State of Israel. This is the manner in which Danielle and I argued with some of the anti-Israel activists around us before the event began.

The speakers, Finkelstein and Khalidi, were venomous in their detailed demonization of Israel, and it was grueling to listen to their talks, but the audience was worse. The person I was sitting next to was mourning the death of Osama bin Laden. In fact, I think many in the audience were OBL sympathizers. I got into a vehement argument with one middle-aged lady who viciously attacked Israel, saying that Israel backed out of every deal and shortchanged the Palestinians and that I should read Dennis Ross’ book, whom she described as “one of your guys.” I said Arafat backed out of the deal which would have given the Palestinians a state and she kept hollering, “Bulls**t, Israel backed out, read Dennis Ross.”

I overheard one young woman praising Hezbollah and saying that Israel was the worst thing that happened since the Holocaust. I confronted her on her statements, asking her to repeat what she said about Israel and why she was praising a terrorist organization. She was startled to find a supporter of Israel in the midst of an otherwise compliant group of Muslims and left-wing activists and was speechless. Her friends chimed in saying, “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter,” making the point that they, too, are admirers of Hezbollah.

Before the lecture, people were passing out nefarious literature on “Nakba” (the Palestinian anniversary of the creation of Israel, “the catastrophe”) and the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” to their activist friends and announcing upcoming events to excoriate the Jewish State. I spoke to a Palestinian Muslim sporting a 1960s beatnik goatee, who said the Palestinians have had a “culture” in the region for many past generations, after I confronted him with the fact that there was no Palestinian entity during the 400 year Ottoman reign and during the British rule after World War I. I mentioned the fact that Mark Twain said it was a desolate land with virtually no inhabitants. To everything I said, he answered, “Zionist propaganda.” He even claimed there was no Arab War with Israel in 1948. It is all Zionist propaganda. There was nothing further I could say to the deaf and dumb.

To begin the event, a video was shown of testimony from the Goldstone Report in which a victim described how his three children were intentionally shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers at point blank range. Norman Finkelstein went into excruciating detail on the war in Gaza. He said Israel reneged on lifting the blockade during the Hamas ceasefire. Israel needed a pretext to launch the attacks on Gaza, he claimed. As the narrative goes, Israel’s aggressive provocation drove Hamas to break the ceasefire. Finkelstein charged that it wasn’t a war, it was a massacre of 1400 unarmed civilians, including 350 children, inflicted by 2800 Israeli air combat missions. They terrorized the entire population of Gaza, bombing while they slept in their homes, intentionally targeting civilians, dropping deadly white phosphorous, and using “an insane amount of firepower.” The indiscriminate killings resulted in a disproportionate ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths, which turned out to be 100-1. There were no clashes with Hamas fighters, no battles took place, only deliberate massacres of innocent men, women and children. Amnesty International reported that there was no evidence of the use of human shields by Hamas fighters. Finkelstein went on like this for 40 minutes, elaborating on Israeli “crimes against humanity” and the sympathetic audience shook their heads in disgust and derision of Israel.

Rashid Khalidi was worse. He lambasted the American political and media establishments for their pro-Israel slant and distortions of the truth. According to Khalidi, they portray Gaza as being synonymous with terrorism, which is Zionist spin. He went on to talk about “collective punishment” of Gazans, the siege of Gaza, the blockades, like a prison where no people or goods can enter or leave. Then he went on to talk about the wave of Arab revolutions, which are for true democracy. However, he pointed to Israel as the crux of the problem. He said all of the Arab uprisings involve concern among protesters about the suffering of their Palestinian brethren, and in Egypt, the new regime will not be servile and submissive to Israel and the West like the Mubarak regime was with respect to the Palestinian-Israeli issue. The new regime will force the issue, with or without Israel’s cooperation. He said this in a threatening tone as if implying the Arab revolutions will rise up in solidarity against Israel.

Finkelstein’s and Khalidi’s talks were litanies of shameless lies and slander. Finkelstein never mentioned the eight year bombardment of 12,000 rockets and mortar bomb attacks from Gaza, 3000 attacks in 2008 alone, after Hamas seized power and started to build up its military wing. He never mentioned that Hamas is a well-armed group of over 20,000 operatives, an Iranian proxy that considers armed struggle to be its mission, in order to wipe Israel off the map. In answer, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, in which Israel engaged Hamas’ military wing and in which Hamas now admits 700 of its fighters were killed. Hamas hid in civilian population centers, in hospitals, schools and UN facilities, stored weapons in mosques and used ambulances to transport weapons and soldiers. In combat situations in population centers, civilians were duly warned by Israel in advance of attacks. White phosphorus was used as a non-lethal smoke screen to protect Israeli soldiers. It was not used to indiscriminately target civilians as Finkelstein heinously charged and was used in full compliance with international law.

The entire audience was docile and sympathetic. No one interrupted except for occasional applause. There were only two security guards in the back of the room. During the Q&A, everyone was respectful, polite and asked their questions and sat down, unlike the harassment we have had to face, like during the recent Horowitz lecture at Brooklyn College during “Israel Apartheid Week,” which was replete with obnoxious disruptions. At Columbia, I asked the question: “Why is there total silence on the Arab dictators as they massacre their own people in the Arab uprisings. Why is the only focus on demonizing Israel, the only free democracy in the Mideast? And why aren’t Israeli Arabs revolting, who have more rights in Israel than in Arab countries and in fact 80% of whom would stay in Israel if there was a Palestinian state?”

I got an answer from Khalidi who said he does speak out in other lectures about the brutality, and he agreed with me that the Israeli Arabs do have somewhat more freedom than in Arab nations. He said they would stay in Israel because it’s their home. I don’t know which way he meant it, but judging from his threatening tone, he probably meant that they are living in their true home, and Israel needs to be vanquished. After that, I shook my head and left. I had gone into the hornets’ nest, stood my ground, challenged the lies and defended the only true democracy and America’s one loyal friend in the Middle East.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/10/challenging-the-lies-at-columbia-israel-bashing-event/

Phil Orenstein

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