Nakbacide

by Daniel Greenfield

Abbas made it clear in the NYT that this writer is correct: The Nakba is a tiresome reminder that Muslims don't want peace. That they're not mature enough to handle it. They want genocide.

Imagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Jewish chants and slogans, and a historical narrative claiming that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims of WW2. That disgusting spectacle is exactly what takes place on May 15th as Arab Muslims chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of a regional minority.

It's hard to think of a more repulsive spectacle of historical obliviousness, than a regional majority responsible for multiple genocides dressing up as the victims because their invasion of Israel ended in a stalemate, rather than a genocidal purge of its residents. Perhaps only the Japanese, with their annual commemorations of a history that begins briefly before Hiroshima and ends after Nagasaki, leaving out Nanking and Pearl Harbor, are a match for the Palestinian Nakba.

The Arab history of Israel leaves out thousands of years of history of the original Jewish inhabitants and a thousand years of persecution under Arab rule. It leaves out the massacres and atrocities carried out by the Arab Muslim invaders against the Jewish inhabitants in the 20th century, including the Hebron Massacre, and the Nazi collaboration of their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Instead it begins and ends with Deir Yassin and angry old women holding up oversized housekeys and reminiscing about the good times they had massacring Jews.

There are about as many Jewish refugees from the Muslim world, as there are Arab refugees from Israel. The difference is that the Jewish refugees were a minority fleeing the violence of a brutal majority. And the Arab refugees were a regional majority making a strategic withdrawal in response to calls from the Syrian and Iraqi Prime Ministers. The Nakbaites were supposed to be the beneficiaries of a genocide to be carried out by the armies of seven Arab nations. Instead they had to settle down in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere around the region. An easy thing to do since they are the same people, speak the same language and have the same culture. The only difference between a Jordanian Arab and a Jordanian Palestinian is a few miles and about twenty-five years.

The Nakba commemorations are only possible in a culture with no sense of responsibility. A religion which has killed more people and wiped out more cultures than Stalin and Hitler combined, still remains convinced that it is the victim. A victim of their own failed genocidal war. The Nakba is really the Nakbacide. A dream of mass murder that was frustrated when their victims fought back

Had the Israeli War of Independence been fought between local Jews and Arabs, the Nakba circus might not be as bankrupt as it is. But it was actually a war fought between local Jews and the armies of seven Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Syria, overseen by two British commanders. Despite all this, the Arab Muslim invaders still failed to do more than seize half of Jerusalem, and Gaza, Judea and Samaria. And that's what really gnaws at them.

The ugly truth of the Nakba is that it blunted the nationalistic ambitions of Arab Muslims who were dreaming of replacing the Ottoman and British empires. Losing a war to a European world power wouldn't have hurt as much as losing a war to a despised regional minority. A people whose name is an insult in the mouth of every Arab. Yahood. Lower than a dog. Yahood. Transformed into apes and pigs in the Koran. Yahood. Second class citizens in every Muslim country. Who somehow beat back seven Muslim armies and took back their lands that had been conquered by the Caliphs.

But in Muslim culture time never passes. The words, "You Lost a War, Get Over It", have no meaning. Arab Muslims still think Spain is theirs. Every time they see a European army, they mutter about the Crusades. Jews are greeted with chants of "Khaybar ya Yahood" recalling Mohammed's massacre of the Jews, a historical event that is much closer to what the Nakba only claims to be. Nothing is ever forgotten. Old hatreds are nurtured into violent rages that cannot be calmed by any treaty. The purpose of hate is hate. The purpose of Nakba is Nakba.

History is a dead word. The Muslim world has no history. It has pervasive myths that feed the Arab Muslim need for self-glorification and victimization. Muslim history is one long cry of "Mine, Mine, Mine" and "Give it Back". Millions of Arab Muslims believe that they discovered America, that European science was stolen from them, that the entire world used to be Muslim, that the Holocaust was made up, that Neil Armstrong heard the Islamic call to prayer on the moon, that Jacques Cousteau converted to Islam and that the Koran invented light bulbs. The Nakba makes as much sense as any of these.

When Muslims win a war, it's because Allah is on their side. When they lose a war, it's because they were undermined, cheated and betrayed. The other side didn't play fair. And then come the cries of, "Time Out", "We Want a Do Over" and of course, "Mine, Mine, Mine! Give it Back!" Followed by oaths of vengeance, ululating cries of old women who just got done drowning their own daughters, Hashish crazed mobs torching flags that they bought for just that purpose and old men gritting their teeth at the camera. What a glorious Nakba it was, same time again next year?

Their fictional Palestinian identity, with its imagined roots in a country they hardly ever lived in, has turned millions of people into the militias of the Arab world. Their flags and chants about statehood hiding the fact that they are nothing more than proxies of countries which deny them citizenship because it makes them into better weapons, not just against Israel, but against each other. When an Arab country wants some thugs to smash in the heads of protesters, some cheap labor or even cheaper reason to get their people all worked up, they bring in the faux Palestinians, with their keffiyahs, their Arab-Socialist tricolor flags and their chronic unemployment.

The historical irony, is that it is the very gullibility of these Arab-Muslims, their willingness to accept a Palestinian identity, that keeps them displaced in the countries they live in. Had they demanded the right to be citizens of Jordan, Syria or Lebanon-- international pressure would have given them a new life. Instead by embracing the dubious honor of continuing the Jihad against the Jews, they trapped themselves in a no man's land of their own making. As long as they remain willing to be killers, sacrificing their own children to the fiery moloch of the bomb vest, then they will be forever pariahs in their own countries.

The Nakba is a tiresome reminder that Muslims don't want peace. That they're not mature enough to handle it. What they really want is to rehash grievances and sullenly plot another genocide, instead of coming to terms with the consequences of their own actions. The actual history in which Neil Armstrong didn't hear any Arabic on the moon and the Koran didn't invent the lightbulb, is also the one in which the Israelis have made concession after concession back to the mandate days, and the Arab-Muslims have responded with obstinate treachery and violence at every turn.

There is an anecdote about an Israeli driver who accidentally hits a sheep belonging to an Arab. The driver gets out and offers to pay for the sheep. The Arab refuses. The driver offers to pay for five sheep, for ten sheep. The Arab still refuses. "What do you want?" the frustrated driver asks. "I want that sheep," the Arab says, pointing to the dead sheep. That is the Nakba in a nutshell. The Arabs don't want to negotiate an agreement like adults. They want the dead sheep that represents their dreams of a united Arab empire ruling over the region. And the wars will go on until they finally learn that they can't have it back.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10244

Daniel Greenfield

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

An open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron

by Melanie Phillips

Dear Prime Minister,

I was interested to read that, when you met Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last week, you said: “Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel’s security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.”

I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel “engages seriously in a meaningful peace process” with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the “State of Palestine” for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September.

This is not the behavior of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a mafia protection racket.

First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressurize the victim in this conflict to make peace with its aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the “Green Line” is a bar to negotiations.

I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Palestinian Authority President Abbas “engages seriously in a meaningful peace process” by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict? I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative “State of Palestine” which the PA says it will declare – a state in which Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live – but which you have now threatened to support? I’m sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernizing program for the Conservative Party.

Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organization. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which it has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile.

And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the “assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior” – while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terrorist department of Fatah that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden’s death “a catastrophe” and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world.

I’M SURE we are all agog to learn why you, a Conservative prime minister and the supposed ally of America in the defense of the free world, have chosen not only to applaud and promote a coalition which includes genocidal fanatics who are in bed with both al-Qaida and Iran, but why you are also threatening their victim, Israel, that Britain will endorse a state run by this genocidal coalition unless Israel itself enters into negotiations with it. To carry on with the mafia analogy, this is akin to threatening someone that if they do not put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger you will set the mob on them to achieve the same result.

I’d be grateful if you could explain to us why you support the killing of the leader of al-Qaida, as well as sanctions against Iran on the grounds that both represent an unconscionable threat to the free world, and yet at the same time demand of Israel that it makes concessions to a coalition made up of the allies of Iran and al-Qaida. I’m sure we’d all like to know, if this is how you treat your “friends,” how you would treat your enemies.

I realize, Prime Minister, that before you achieved high office your knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs was hovering around the zero mark. As a result, it is likely that your only knowledge of the Middle East comes from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has a history of virulent antagonism towards the Jewish people.

I would also expect, however, that you have an eye to your own place in history, and that you would probably like to be viewed by future generations as the British prime minister who stood shoulder to shoulder with the victims of genocidal aggression against their destroyers, rather than the other way round.

If you are to get this the right way round and thus avoid such posthumous infamy, it is vital that you come to realize the key point about the Middle East impasse. To arrive at a solution, it is imperative first of all to correctly identify the problem. The problem in the Middle East is not the absence of a state of Palestine. Were that the case, the problem would have been resolved when such a state was first mooted long before World War II. The problem is instead that the Arabs wish to destroy the State of Israel. The solution, therefore, is to stop them from continuing to try to do so. And to achieve that, it is essential that the West stop rewarding them for their attempts.

For the single most important reason for the never-ending nature of the Middle East impasse is that, uniquely, for more than nine decades the West has rewarded the Arab aggressors and punished their Jewish victims. And from the start, the western leader of this infernal process, I’m afraid to say, was Britain.

It was the British who, out of sheer breathtaking malice against the Jewish people, first incited the (hitherto mainly benignly disposed) Arabs against the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century. It was the British who set out to undermine and reverse their own government’s policy to reestablish the Jewish national home in the land of Israel. It was the British who reneged on their internationally binding treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout Palestine – including the areas currently known as the West Bank and Gaza – with the result that they kept out desperate Jews trying to flee Nazi Europe, causing thousands to be murdered in the Holocaust.

At the same time, they encouraged Arab immigration from neighboring countries and turned a blind eye to the pogroms carried out by these Arab newcomers against the Jews whose land it was supposed to be – thus laying the groundwork for the false claim that the Arabs were the rightful inheritors of the land. And all the time, the British cloaked this vicious treachery in the honeyed fiction that they were the true friends of the Jewish people and had their interests at heart.

THE HISTORY of the British in this terrible conflict between Jew and Arab is not merely a chronicle of the utmost perfidy and malevolent Judeophobic bigotry. It is also directly responsible for the continuation of the conflict to this day. For Arab aggression against the Jews has been rewarded and encouraged from the start, by robbing the Jews of their rightful inheritance and giving great chunks of it to their aggressors. But if aggressors are rewarded, the inevitable result is more aggression until they achieve their final terrible aim.

And that very same process is in evidence today, with Britain’s grotesque endorsement last week of the coalition for genocide and your government’s unconscionable pressure upon Israel to negotiate its own destruction with its mortal enemies. Prime Minister, the virus of Judeophobia is now rampant once again throughout Europe – let alone in the Arab and Muslim world. And the fuel for this fire is the set of genocidal falsehoods about the Arab and Muslim war of extermination against Israel, a big lie which has turned victim into aggressor and vice versa.

Appallingly, the British government is helping stoke this vile inferno by endorsing many of these falsehoods – and now, worse still, by actually promoting the coalition of genocide and turning the screw on its victim.

The similarities with the 1930s and 1940s are uncanny and horrifying – similarities not just with what was allowed to develop in Europe, but also what happened in Palestine itself, the source of today’s terrible impasse.

Prime Minister, if you are not very careful indeed history will judge that you reestablished a direct line back to the malevolence of the British in Palestine; back to that terrible time when Britain so foully betrayed the Jewish people and became a party to genocide; back to the approach which gave genocidal fanatics hope that victory was within their grasp. To stand up against all this – the defining madness of our times – would demand of you, I know full well, the utmost statesmanship and moral courage. But the alternative is to earn the contempt of decent people everywhere and the scorn of posterity.

The choice, Prime Minister, is yours.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=220137

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. Her books include All Must Have Prizes, Londonistan and several other books.

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

Zionist Land Org.: The Writing was on the Syrian Border Fence

by INN Staff

The Regavim Movement is an organization of young, Israeli idealists dedicated to preserving Israel's lands from illegal encroachment by non-Zionist elements as well as to preserving its environment and natural resources.

Its members were not surprised by the events today on the northern border. The movement's spokesmen told Israel National News today that over a year ago they appealed to the High Court of Justice against what was happening in the Golan Heights Druze town of Majdal Shams and claimed that the state of Israel was well on the way to losing sovereignty in the region.

Regavim has proof of Syrian involvement in Druze affairs in the Golan Heights. It recently warned that Syria would make use of the connections it has built to try to set the area "on fire" in order to aim protest at the northern border and deflect it from the presidential palace in Damascus.

The writing was not only on the wall – the movement stated today – but on the border fence itself.

The movement’s coordinators, who work in nature preserves in the northern Golan Heights, documented the illegal building in the nature preserves of Mt. Hermon by pro-Syria Druze residents of Majdal Shams, including multi story buildings only a few meters from the border fence. These could serve as hiding places for infiltrators and might leave IDF soldiers exposed to sniper fire.

In the framework of their appeal to the High Court, filed against that illegal building, just last week Regavim monitors came to Majdal Shams and documented that building was going on as before there despite their obtaining a High Court order prohibiting such work.

Bezalel Smuttrich, Regavim spokesman, said today, “For two years the Regavim movement has warned the state and legal authorities about the loss of Israeli sovereignty in the Druze settlements in the northern Golan Heights, in general, and in Majdal Shams in particular, and about the dangerous repercussions of the Druze-Syrian connections and coordination on the Golan Heights.

"Regavim has warned for two years about the establishment of alternate planning commissions by the Druze Wakf which evade the Israeli planning institutions, and aim to take control of state lands and harm the Mt. Hermon nature preserve, and which have even tried to ignore the Israeli legal authorities and appeal to the High Court themselves.”

Regavim also warned about the laissez faire police treatment in the investigation and the light sentencing of criminals who committed violence against Israeli legal representatives and police in the last round of disturbances in Majdal Shams. They warned repeatedly about the dangers of the large quantity of illegal building on the margins of the town, only meters from the Syrian border.

Regavim northern district coordinator Meir Deutsch, who has followed with great concern what is happening in the north for the last few years, was not surprised by the events this morning. Deutsch, who documents the illegal building and is in constant communication with heads of regional authorities and with northern residents, turned to everyone possible for help. He tried written notices, meetings in the Knesset with policy makers, on site tours with opinion makers, public figures and journalists.

From his correspondence with the authorities and with law enforcement figures, a gloomy picture emerged – Regavim sounded the alarm, and the authorities just passed the buck.

“We approached the Internal Defense Minister who oversees the police, we turned to the Construction Minister who is in charge of land management for Israeli lands, including state lands on which illegal building is taking place to the extent of thousands of dunams. We turned to the Interior Minister who is in charge of the building monitoring unit – we of course received a reply that our inquiry is acknowledged and will be handled soon, but in fact nothing happened. Also the appeal to the High Court has unfortunately not been successful in halting the out of control situation there.”

Smuttrich concludes: “In this case the writing is not only on the wall. It is on the walls of the multi story buildings that have been built illegally next to the border fence, but everyone chooses to avert their eyes. The events today are the result of cooperation between residents of Majdal Shams and the Syrians and of refusal to enforce the law on the part of the Israeli authorities.

"Sovereignty is not a theoretical issue. When it is not enforced, it no longer exists."

In order to prevent repetition of mass infiltration in the future, aided by Majdal Shams residents, Regavim calls on the legal authorities to return and re-establish the country’s sovereignty de facto in the region and take firm practical measures for this purpose.”

Deutsch concludes: “The Israeli government needs to make a strategic decision – to recover the sovereignty in the north – or it will find itself again coping with events like those that took place today on the Syrian border with Majdal Shams.”

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144197

INN (Israel National News) Staff

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

Where Are the Human Rights Groups? Where Are the Media?

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Assaults on writers and journalists in the Arab world are not uncommon, but the case of the Yemeni poet who just had his tongue cut out appears to be one of the most horrifying crimes against those who dare to express their views in public.

The poet, Walid al-Ramishi, was kidnapped by armed gangsters in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. The kidnappers released him after they had cut out his tongue.

Al-Ramishi is now being treated in a Jordanian hospital, where doctors say he would not be able to talk again.

His alleged crime: he had written a poem in praise of embattled Yemeni dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh.

Abdel Salam al-Qabsi, a prominent Yemeni poet, condemned the gruesome assault, noting that it was the latest in a string of attacks on writers and intellectuals in his country.

In the past few weeks, a number of writers and intellectual figures were targeted by unknown assailants in broad daylight in Yemen.

Some say the attackers belonged to the government, while others have pointed a blaming finger at opposition groups.

The most recent victims included three women novelists: Bushra al-Maqtari, Huda al-Attas and Arwa Othman. The three women were beaten during anti-government protests in the Yemeni capital.

The assault on al-Ramishi, whose tongue was cut out, has been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media and human rights organizations in the West.

Even the media in the Arab world, which is controlled by repressive Arab regimes, has ignored the tragedy of the Yemeni poet.

Similarly, the international media is looking the other way as crimes are being committed almost every day against Christians and churches in Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

The silence over such grisly assaults only serves the interests of the perpetrators and encourages them to carry out more crimes in the future.

How many media outlets in North America and Europe have reported about the case of Egyptian Coptic teacher Ayman Metri, who has accused Muslim fundamentalists of cutting off his ear and burning his house?

Or the case of the Palestinian photographer who had both of his arms broken by Fatah thugs in the West Bank because they did not like his pictures and political views?

Those who did not like al-Ramishi's controversial poem could simply have published one of their own, criticizing him or even mocking at him for heaping praise at a dictator.

But that is often not the case in most Arab countries, where violence and terror are regarded as a legitimate weapon to silence critics and or anyone who dares to express a different opinion.

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2116/human-rights-groups-media

Khaled Abu Toameh

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

Civil Libertarians and Academics Who Support Censors

by Alan M. Dershowitz

Should students who conspire to "shut down" an invited speaker with whom they disagree be prosecuted for the misdemeanor of conspiracy to disturb a meeting? That is the question roiling the University of California. The facts are not really in dispute. Israel's Ambassador to the United States—a moderate academic named Michael Oren—was invited to present a talk at the University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Islamic hate speech against Israel. The Muslim Student Union organized an effort, in the words of one of its leaders, to "shut down" Oren's speech—that is to prevent Oren from expressing his views and to stop the audience who came to hear him from listening to them. Here is the way the Dean of the law school, who opposes any criminal prosecution, described what happened.

"The Muslim Student Union orchestrated a concerted effort to disrupt the speech. One student after another stood and shouted so that the ambassador could not be heard. Each student was taken away only to be replaced by another doing the same thing."

The dean's description is something of an understatement —as anyone can see by watching a video of the event, available online. This was more than a "concerted effort to disrupt the speech. It was a concerted effort to stop it completely—to "shut [it] down."

Ultimately, that effort failed and Oren managed to deliver his speech, after many long and sustained disruptions, but if the Muslim Student Union had gotten its way, Oren would have been shut down completely. The University, which is a state institution, had a constitutional obligation to protect the First Amendment rights of Oren's audience to hear what he had to say, and the state prosecutor has a legal obligation to deter future conspiracies to censor controversial speakers, by criminally prosecuting those students who conspired to deny other students their First Amendment rights.

While dissenting students have the right to express disapproval of a speaker's views by episodic booing, heckling or holding signs, they have no right to conspire to shut down a speaker, which is what the Muslim Student Union students did in this case. One would think that this distinction should be clear to all civil libertarians, academics and others who claim to care about freedom of speech on campus.

It is shocking therefore to see who has lined up behind the students who set out to censor Ambassador Oren. Two prominent leaders of the American Civil Liberties have joined with radical Muslims and other extremists in an effort to pressure the local District Attorney to drop misdemeanor charges against 11 student censors.

A letter supporting the censoring students was signed by Chuck Anderson, President of the Orange County ACLU, and Hector Villagra, the incoming Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California, along with several other radical anti-Israel extremists such as the local heads of the Council on American-Islamic relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the National Lawyers Guild, the Islamic Shura Council, and the West Coast Islamic Society (If you don't believe this, as I originally didn't, read the entire letter for yourself.)

The ACLU leaders have denied they support censorship and claim that the letter they signed is merely a request to the local District Attorney to drop criminal charges against the students who tried to shut Oren down. But the letter goes much further and defends—indeed praises—the censorial actions those students, while condemning the actions of other students who wanted to hear the speaker.

Here is how the letter described the actions of the students who came to shut down the speaker:

"the students non-violently and verbally protested a university-invited speaker. The students left the event peacefully."

The letter then compared the actions of the censors with those who wanted to listen:

"[They] conducted themselves in less of a disruptive manner than some of the counter-protesters…."

Sounds as if the Muslim Student Union deserved a civil liberties award, while the students who came to listen to the invited speaker—"the counter-protestors"—deserve to be condemned. In a more recent letter the ACLU leaders claim that "the students' intent was not to censor the speaker…."

The problem with the ACLU account is that it is completely fictional—made up out of whole cloth—as anyone can see for themselves by viewing the video and listening to the Muslim Students Association leaders who described their aim to "shut down"—that is to censor—the speakers. That is why these students are being prosecuted, according to the District Attorney—not for merely "protesting" the speaker's views, but because they "meant to stop [Ambassador Oren's] speech and stop anyone else from hearing his ideas." The students themselves have been more honest about their intentions than the ACLU leaders. . For instance, one student leader refused to acknowledge that Mr. Oren had First Amendment rights of his own by interrupting him and shouting, "Propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!" Another student was caught on video telling a crowd assembled outside the event that "we pretty much shut them down."

Ultimately a jury will decide whether the students conspired to "shut down" Oren's talk, or whether they were merely "protesting" the content of his talk. The evidence will clearly show a conspiracy to stop Oren from speaking.

Why then have the ACLU leaders distorted the facts and conveyed a totally misleading impression of what took place at the University of California? The answer seems clear. These leaders don't like Israel and they support the censorship of pro-Israel views. They would never take the same position if the shoe had been on the other foot: If the speaker were from Hamas and the students trying to shut him down were pro-Israel.

The national ACLU must investigate this matter and take action to assure that its longstanding principle of neutral support for freedom of expression has not been compromised by local leaders who have placed their opposition to Israel above the principles of free speech.

Another group that has sought to pressure the District Attorney to give the censors a pass is comprised of 30 Jewish Studies faculty members at the University of California. That may be surprising to some who believe that such professors would be sympathetic to students who wanted to listen to the Israeli Ambassador and history professor.

But it is not surprising to those who understand that many Jewish Studies have departments been hijacked by anti-Israeli extremists. Among the signers of this letter were academics who favor boycotts, divestment and demonization of Israel as an Apartheid or Nazi regime.

As a lifelong civil libertarian and defender of free speech, I hope the District Attorney will not succumb to these political pressures. The values of the First Amendment favor prosecution in this case, just as they would if Jewish students conspired to shut down an Anti-Israel speaker. The defense of freedom of speech must be neutral and vigorous.

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2119/civil-libertarians-academics-censors

Alan M. Dershowitz

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

Horowitz and Intellectual Terrorism at UCLA

by Mark Tapson

Last Wednesday, evening the Freedom Center’s David Horowitz gave a much anticipated and ferociously opposed presentation before a crowd of more than 300 people at Moore Hall at the University of California at Los Angeles. The event was hosted by the Bruin Republicans, self-described as “the only officially right-of-center organization on the UCLA campus” – which is a good, albeit disheartening, indicator of the very issue Horowitz has been addressing on hundreds of campuses across this country, and which was the evening’s topic: the fact that our institutions of supposedly higher learning are utterly dominated by intolerant progressive academics who are ill-serving and mentally straight-jacketing their students.

Horowitz’s speech was as blunt as the title of his presentation – “Intellectual Terrorism: The Left’s War on Free Speech.” Pacing back and forth at the front of the hall, he was revved up right out of the gate and became even more impassioned as he went on. He began the wide-ranging, forty-minute speech with a condemnation of academics who indoctrinate rather than teach (“The students who suffer most are those of you who are on the left, because your assumptions are never challenged.”) Among other topics, he went on to decry campus anti-Semitism and to identify Islam as the greatest oppressor of women and gays in the world today. He delivered a myth-busting history of “Palestine” and a concise explanation of his opposition to slavery reparations a hundred years after the fact. And he attacked the Muslim Student Association, ubiquitous on major college campuses, as a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, a supporter of the terrorist organization Hamas and the sponsor of Israel Apartheid weeks across the country.

He was flanked throughout the speech by very visible security – a tragic necessity for Horowitz, who is a lightning rod for some of the most bilious hatred that has ever been directed at a conservative public figure. He regularly receives threats prior to speaking engagements and has in fact been physically attacked. This is the inevitable result of his having once been a radical leftist himself, for the Left is only marginally more forgiving of its apostates than fundamentalist Muslims are of theirs.

But considering that Horowitz is frequently the target of organized disruption on the part of certain antagonistic student groups, this UCLA crowd was notably and unexpectedly quiet and respectful. There were literally no interruptions, heckling or outbursts, apart from frequent applause from a largely supportive crowd (and one other I’ll describe in a moment). Horowitz seemed so disarmed by this that he commented on it and commended the crowd for it more than once, eventually confessing that his many previous difficult campus experiences may have inclined him to a bit of paranoia.

However, the audience’s civility belied the atmosphere of intimidation under which the event was organized in the first place. In addition to the usual concerns which prompted the hiring of private security, there was more subtle coercion at work. The Bruin Republicans were the only student group that dared host Horowitz; no Jewish group at UCLA would sponsor him or participate in erecting the Freedom Center’s “Palestinian Wall of Lies,” designed to counteract campus campaigns against Israel’s so-called “apartheid state;” indeed, one of those Jewish groups told a Bruin Republican organizer that she would be ostracized by the Jewish community on campus if she participated in arranging Horowitz’s presentation – a threat that was probably unfounded and that she ignored, to her credit.

Evidently, however, the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine – both singled out by Horowitz as groups conducting a hate campaign against Jews on college campuses – decided to sit the speech out. The only questions about Islam after the speech were raised by a couple of members of conservative organizations who asked Horowitz to comment on the threat of Sharia and the existence of moderate Muslims. Regarding the former, he pointed out that people are so focused on violent terrorism that they fail to recognize the more subtle threat on the cultural front. As to moderate Muslims, he noted that there are good and bad people in all religions; there were probably many Germans who did not support Nazism either, he said, but their existence didn’t make a damn bit of difference in terms of halting the Final Solution.

The only apparent organized opposition to Horowitz’s appearance came from the Afrikan Student Union, which serves the needs “of the Afrikan student body and the Afrikan community within the context of the Struggle for Afrikan liberation.” The ASU passed out flyers outside the hall questioning Horowitz’s upbeat assertions about the prosperity of American blacks. The ASU members apparently weren’t mollified when he noted in the speech that his commitment to the civil rights movement began in 1948 – probably before the parents of the students present were even born.

During the Q&A period, one black student (who was grasping one of the flyers but didn’t identify herself as belonging to the Afrikan Student Union) confronted Horowitz about racial inequality in America. He pointed out that although there’s never been a Jewish president, there is currently a black one – clear evidence of how far blacks in this country have come – and he encouraged them to celebrate that progress. This positive perspective prompted exaggerated eye-rolls from more than one of the black students waiting in line to speak.

One girl, her voice quivering with emotion, challenged him to explain why she should embrace America, when there are so many impoverished black communities. Horowitz replied that 49% of blacks in this country are middle class, that many others are wealthy, and that every single inner-city school disaster across the country from Harlem to Watts can be attributed to school boards and school districts that are 100% controlled by Democrats, who use the schools as a jobs program for adults and a cash cow (through the unions) for the Democratic Party and thus have a vested interested in keeping blacks under their collective thumb. If you’re voting Democrat, Horowitz said, “you need to re-examine your commitments because you’re voting for your oppressor.”

The final questioner mentioned that conservative new media pioneer Andrew Breitbart, in his book Righteous Indignation, cited the political demonization of black conservative Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas as the inciting incident in his switch from Left to Right; the student asked if there were a similar watershed moment that inspired Horowitz’s own political conversion. Having read his intellectual autobiography Radical Son, I knew that there was such a moment. I knew what was coming, and knew it would get a reaction.

Horowitz explained briefly about his supportive association with the Black Panthers in the 1970s: “That was before I understood that the Panthers were a criminal gang of thugs” under a veneer of progressive ideology. This elicited a loud groan of disapproval toward the back of the hall from a couple of male students, who seemed to be unaware of – or perhaps dismissive of – the Panthers’ lengthy rap sheet of violent crimes. Their murder of Horowitz’s friend Betty Van Patter was the beginning of his about-face.

After the speech, the Afrikan Student Union members conferred intently outside the hall, apparently strategizing a response to Horowitz, who had closed the talk by offering his e-mail address to anyone interested in further discussion. For many, if not all of the left-leaning students who attended the event, it was possibly the first time they had been challenged by a conservative viewpoint on campus.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/13/horowitz-and-intellectual-terrorism-at-ucla/

Mark Tapson

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

Syria’s Deadly Deadline

by Ryan Mauro

Posted May 13

The death toll from the Bashar Assad regime’s violent suppression of the Syrian uprising is now up to 800 and is likely to jump significantly during Friday’s protests. At least 10,000 have been detained, taking up so much space that soccer stadiums are being used as prisons. Now, the Interior Ministry has given a final warning to all who have protested: turn yourself in by May 15 or face serious consequences.

The regime claims that 1,083 protesters have given in to the threat. Those that admit to taking part in the demonstrations are given amnesty if they sign a pledge to never join activities that undermine the government. The regime is also warning that it will not tolerate any protests that it does not authorize in advance.

At the same time, Assad is trying to make it seem as if he is willing to change and respond to the demands of the Syrian population. Just recently he said he is giving orders to his security services not to fire upon protesters during the Friday protests, but he has yet to even admit that his forces have done so in the past. His regime claims that it is fighting Salafist terrorists and gangs and that these foes are the ones firing upon protesters, not government personnel. This declaration by the regime that it will not fire on civilians is a repetition of the lies it has been telling all along.

The regime has announced it will hire 10,000 university graduates every year, and it earlier lifted the state of emergency, a meaningless concession that changed nothing. It also says that a committee reviewing election laws will propose reforms within two weeks, including allowing political parties other than the ruling Baathists to participate. This is also a deceitful tactic, as the regime knows it can use fraud and intimidation to make the results whatever it wishes. It is also setting up a pro-regime Islamist party under the direction of a close friend of Assad as part of this some appeasement game.

At least 24 people have been killed in the past two days alone, including 13 in Hara where tanks shelled four homes. The military is carrying out sieges instead of direct assaults on troublesome areas of the country. The expulsion of journalists from these areas allows the regime to limit the flow of information, and the siege forces the population into submission without massacres that cause internal and international backlash. For example, the regime claims its military has withdrawn from Daraa, but residents consistently report that there is a humanitarian disaster in the city, with citizens unable to access food, water, electricity, medicine and communications.

The story is the same in Homs, Jassem, Banias and other cities. Tanks are now circling the town of Hama, the city that Assad’s father massacred in 1982 when the Muslim Brotherhood revolted. The regime is particularly concerned about the unrest in areas in and around Damascus. Its Allawite “shabeeha” militia has attacked civilians in the Midan area of the capital, and large raids have been carried out in the nearby town of Zabadani, with at least 80 arrested. Tanks also entered Madaya, 40 kilometers northwest of Damascus, and residents report their communications being cut off. In the Saqba suburb of Damascus, 286 people were arrested in house-by-house searches.

There are reports of small-scale military defections. The regime regularly reports that police officers and soldiers have been murdered by the “terrorists” and “gangs,” but the opposition says this is a way of justifying crackdowns and covering up the execution of those who refuse to fire on civilians. On May 7, the regime claimed that ten soldiers were murdered in Homs, but the opposition said 9 had defected. It has been confirmed that there was a two-hour clash in the city between military personnel and that at least one soldier was executed for turning on the regime. Other opposition sources have reported defections in al-Rustun.

Al-Jazeera has learned that some soldiers from the 5^th Division in Daraa acted to protect civilians being fired upon by the 4^th Division led by Maher Assad, resulting in fighting for hours in front of Bilal Mosque. The network reported that about 20 soldiers had sided with the people, but the regime has made it very difficult for information to come out of the areas under siege, and unconfirmed reports indicate the number could be significantly higher.

The Reform Party of Syria reports that an army officer named Safok Khalifa in Homs and 35 of the men in his unit refused to fire on civilians, resulting in their executions. There has yet to be a large-scale defection of government officials, but at least 233 members of the Baath Party have resigned their membership, including 203 from Daraa and 30 from Banias.

The international community is finally reacting to the Assad regime’s inhumanity. The U.S. has placed sanctions on three senior Syrian officials, and the European Union has approved an arms embargo and sanctioned 14 officials, though Assad himself has been spared for now. The U.N. Human Rights Council has voted in favor of investigating the abuses, and now, the Obama Administration is reportedly moving towards calling for Assad’s resignation.

Assad is a dictator that makes good on his threats and will stop at nothing to crush whoever stands in his way. It is not known what Assad is planning on doing after the May 15 deadline passes, but there is little time for the international community to pressure him into backtracking on whatever evil he plans on carrying out.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/13/syrias-deadly-deadline/

Ryan Mauro

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

Osama Bin Laden: Chicken or Egg?

by Raymond Ibrahim

To posit the significance of Osama bin Laden's demise, we must first decide which came first — the chicken or the egg? Quaint as it is, this question is fundamentally an inquiry into the nature of cause and effect. In our context, did Osama bin Laden "create" the idea of jihad, or did the centuries-old doctrine of jihad — supplemented by Koranic verses to "strike terror into the heart of infidels" (8:12) — create him?

It is clear what the mainstream media would have us think. Take CNN alone; its national security analyst Peter Bergen maintains: "Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now." Insisting that the "iconic nature of bin Laden's persona" cannot be replaced, Bergen suggests: "It's time to move on."

Another CNN analyst, Fareed Zakaria, assures us that even if politicians including President Obama aren't saying it yet (you know, "to be cautious"), "the truth is this is a huge, devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word."

Rather than limit his analysis to pithy, sensationalist phrases and buzz words — the tools of the trade of op-ed writing — the ambitious Zakaria undermines his own position by actually trying to argue in historical and existential terms:

Al-Qaeda was an idea and an ideology, symbolized by an extremely charismatic figure in Osama bin Laden. … History teaches us that the loss of the charismatic leader — of the symbol — is extraordinarily damaging for the organization. … With the death of bin Laden, the central organizing ideology that presented an existential seduction to the Muslim world and an existential threat to the Western world is damaged beyond repair. … That existential threat is gone.

Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth. How many Muslim "charismatic leaders" and ideologues have come and gone only for the jihad to rage on?

Consider the Islamist leaders of this century alone: Hassan Bana and Sayyid Qutb, founder and chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, respectively; both were killed, yet over fifty years later, the Brotherhood — the parent organization of many jihadist organizations, including al-Qaeda — is today more dominant than ever, and may well take over Egypt.

Then there is the immensely "charismatic" Ayatollah Khomeini — the original poster-boy of radical Islam, who transformed once secular Iran into a fundamentalist theocracy. Over twenty years after his death, Iran is more radical than ever, and on its way to becoming a nuclear power with eschatological visions of glorious "martyrdom."

One can go on and on. For example, after Hamas' spiritual leader and founder, Sheikh Yassin, was assassinated, far from fizzling, Hamas grew in strength to the point that it now runs the Palestinian Authority.

Bana, Qutb, Khomeini, and Yassin are a meager sampling of Islamist leaders that have come and gone in this century alone. Were one to go further back in time, the continuum of history would unequivocally prove the existentialist nature of the threat: "Charismatic ideologues" — like Ibn Abdul Wahhab (18^th century), Ibn Taymiyya (14^th century), and Ibn Hanbal (9^th century) — have preached the jihad throughout the centuries; and any of these Muslim leaders would make bin Laden look like a sissy.

Indeed, if one doesn't mind being labeled an "Islamophobe," one could trace jihad back to the origins of Islam in the 7^th century, to the prophet Muhammad, who proclaimed: "I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah."

Yet all of them — including the revered prophet of Allah — came and went. And still the jihad rages on.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda's de facto leader, once summarized this phenomenon well. Asked in an interview about the status of bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Omar, he confidently replied:

Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden — may Allah protect them from all evil — are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time (The Al Qaeda Reader, p.182).

How terribly myopic of mainstream analysts to conclude that the death of bin Laden — of one man—can in any way, shape, or form eliminate the threat of jihad, which has a fourteen-hundred year lineage. It is a sign of the times that the media's most celebrated "experts" cannot — or will not — distinguish between cause and effect.

For our purposes, then, clearly the "chicken" (the cause, the idea) came first, producing many "eggs" (the effects, the believers). Even as we crack and fry up another jihadi-egg — an admittedly large one, bin Laden — the jihad-chicken runs wild, producing batches of eggs around the globe, while the establishment refuses to acknowledge its existence.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/2903/osama-bin-laden-chicken-or-egg

Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum.

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

Had There Been No War, There Would Be No Nakba

by Eli E. Hertz

Starting a civil war in 1947 after the Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan, Palestinian Arabs became belligerents in the conflict. Rather than accept a Jewish state after five-and-a-half months of warfare, Palestinian Arabs called upon their brethren from seven surrounding countries to invade and crush the nascent Jewish state.

The Arab League's April 10, 1948 decision to invade on May 14 to "save Palestine,"as the British Mandate ended, marked a watershed event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. Accordingly, Israel bears no moral responsibility for deliberately banishing Palestinian Arabs in order to "consolidate defense arrangements" in strategic areas, as the Jewish people organized to battle seven well-equipped and well-trained aggressor armies. With the pending invasion following Israel's declaration of independence, it is no exaggeration to say the new Jewish state's very existence hung in the balance.

The new Jewish state found it imperative to eliminate all potential pockets of Arab resistance in key areas if it was to survive. Dislodging all Arab inhabitants from sensitive areas in proximity to Jewish settlements, establishing territorial continuity between blocs under Jewish control, and ensuring control of key transportation arteries were a military necessity. As May 14 approached, Israel could not afford to risk a Fifth Column at its rear to add to all other aspects of its militarily inferior situation. The cost of defeat was hammered home by a stream of dire warnings from Arab capitals, with perhaps the most chilling for Israel coming from Jamal Al-Husayni as vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee [AHC], who publicly declared:

"The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out."

Three years after world Jewry had lost a third of its people in the Holocaust, Israelis were not about to test whether Al-Husayni's words were merely rhetoric or a real threat, and so they prepared for the worst.

The cost to Israel to halt the Arab onslaught and gain the upper hand was horrendous. During the first four weeks following the Arab invasion, 1,600 Israelis were killed - a quarter of all the war's casualties. It was as if on a per capita basis the U.S. military lost 80,000 soldiers in Iraq in one month.

Objectively, the claim that Palestinian Arabs were innocent bystanders ignores the facts: The sides in the conflict were not two rival empires - outsiders, or rival caliphs. It was a conflict between two national or ethnic groups. Palestinian Arabs represented one side in the conflict - and in fact the side responsible for starting the war.

The Palestinians were responsible for escalating the war - a move that cost the Jews thousands of lives and Palestinians their homes. By their own behavior, Palestinians assumed the role of belligerents in the conflict, invalidating any claim to be hapless victims. Explains scholar Benny Morris:

"One of the characteristics of the Palestinian national movement has been the Palestinians' view of themselves as perpetual victims of others: Ottoman Turks, British officials, Zionists, Americans - and never to appreciate that they are, at least in large part, victims of their own mistakes and iniquities."

The United Nations Charter, international law, humanitarian law, and conventions such as the 1949 Geneva Convention for the Protection of Victims of War make no mention of a "Right of Return." The claim of innocent refugee status does not apply.

Source: http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=204

Eli E. Hertz

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Tariq Ramadan Discovers His Inner Flower Child

by Jonathan Gelbart

Tariq Ramadan -- a member of the world's most famous Islamist family, as the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan el-Banna -- spoke at Stanford University on April 12, 2011, in a lecture entitled, "The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism."

Sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the event was packed, with people spilling out the auditorium doors and standing in the aisles. The audience of at least 250 appeared to consist largely of Muslims and non-students, most of whom hung on Ramadan's every word. In summing up the palpable awe of the audience, Stanford religious studies professor Shahzad Bashir, who gave the introduction, gushed that:

If ever there were a case where the speaker did not need an introduction or a very short one, it would be for Dr. Tariq Ramadan.

Ramadan is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and despite his extensive writings on that subject, he adhered closely to the title of his talk, rarely mentioning religion until the question and answer session.

In the first of what would become a series of open-ended, philosophical questions, Ramadan began by asking the audience how to find meaning in the relatively short time they are given on earth. "What is the meaning [of all this]?" he asked rhetorically. After pausing for a moment, he added an unexpectedly blunt and morbid caveat: "One day you will not be able to pose that question -- because you are all going to die." The audience responded with nervous laughter.

Ramadan then lamented the lack of understanding between the ethnic majority populations in "pluralistic societies," or developed nations, and the minorities. He argued that education is the key to reconciliation: "You have to educate yourself . . . by [leaving your] comfort zone and [understanding] other traditions hands on." He pointed to the existence of "segregated societies" in the U.S., Britain, and other countries as evidence that many "pluralistic societies" were not rising to the occasion and that "the Anglo-Saxon model of hybrid identities is failing." He pointed favorably, however, to France's de facto model of allowing ethnic communities to form their own enclaves instead of integrating into French society. Perhaps he forgot about the 2005 teenage immigrant rampage through the banlieues or the recent ban on face-coverings. It seems that multiculturalism's sharp decline in popularity has yet to reach Ramadan.

He continued by delineating the three concepts that make up a peaceful and progressive society: humility, respect, and consistency. Humility, he explained, means believing that "the other [religious] traditions have something to give me. . . . [It] means listening first and then talking." Ramadan defined respect with the following sentiment: "Not only am I humble with what I think, but I acknowledge the fact that your opinion is legitimate, although I don't share it and I don't understand it." He contrasted respect with the concept of tolerance, arguing that "tolerance is about power" (as in, a superior deciding to tolerate an underling), while "respect is on an equal footing." Ramadan's description of the final dimension, consistency, deserves to be quoted in full if only because the world would be a more peaceful place if his radical co-religionists would take it to heart:

Consistency . . . is the relationship between humility and respect. [It] means that at the very moment you are sharing values and speaking about principles that are, for you, the best principles there are; you also are able to be critical with your fellow members of your tradition. . . . [It means] that you make the difference between what are your principles and where are they implemented. . . . What we have very often are people comparing their principles to the practices of the other. . . . When you compare your ideals with the practices of the other, you are always the winner.

Ramadan's point was that congratulating oneself for moral superiority over opponents is unhelpful and that judging cultural ideals against real practices is an unfair comparison. The problem with all this high-minded rhetoric is that Ramadan's behavior can hardly be called humble, respectful, or consistent. In 2004, he was banned from entering the U.S. after it was discovered that he had donated funds to a charity with ties to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization designated as such by the European Union, Canada, Japan, and the U.S. His statements are littered with misleading historical inaccuracies and conspiracy theories, including a recent interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in which Ramadan questioned whether al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were behind the 9/11 attacks. As for consistency, French author Caroline Fourest was able to write an entire book, Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan , detailing the contradiction between Ramadan's public support of diversity and respect and his active support of political Islamism.

He continued to describe difficult concepts such as suffering, love, and the end of life, while shying away from the politicized subjects on which his career has been built. In a blatant case of pandering, he implored his audience:

Don't forget to tell the people you love that you love them. . . . Profound love is the way by which you liberate yourselves and look at yourselves in a positive way.

That statement would have been beautiful if it had not come across as so painfully insincere. It could have been inscribed in a greeting card.

Similarly, Ramadan described all belief systems as essentially equal:

Think of it as a mountain. We all have the same top, but there are many ways to reach it. Humility is realizing my path is not the only one.

Though this is a wonderful concept that goes over well with audiences, Islam has shown over the centuries that it is forging a path to quite a different summit in quite a different manner from most of its counterparts -- something that Ramadan did not acknowledge.

Having apparently discovered his inner flower child, he added, "In every tradition, peace is the final goal. Peace within, peace without."

He then elaborated on the need for people to:

[R]ead books, read more, get a sense of history . . . [and] get a sense of religions. . . . Often when you ask other people about other religions they have no idea. Or they don't even know about their own religion. . . . A basic knowledge of religions is necessary if you are serious about pluralism.

When Ramadan next stated that, "in the Islamic tradition, philosophy was perceived as something which was against religion; which is completely wrong," he was exactly right. The influence of Enlightenment philosophy on Western Europe cannot be overstated, and an equivalent intellectual revolution never occurred in the Islamic world. If anything, the Enlightenment's analogue in the Middle East has been the rise of Islamism and violent jihadist groups, with Ramadan's grandfather being one of the latter's first leaders.

The question and answer session led to a thorough airing of the political views that had been previously gone unexamined. In response to a question about how "the weaker" such as "Palestinians, Muslims and blacks" should resist "oppression," Ramadan recounted how, as he put it, "when Israel was killing innocent people in Gaza," Switzerland chose to break its neutrality and take the side of the Palestinians; not to do so would have been to implicitly support the "oppressor." The implication was that if even neutral Switzerland decided to support the Palestinians, everyone should. He did not bring up Hamas's use of human shields or its deliberate choice to store weapons in hospitals and near U.N. buildings, nor did he mention Richard Goldstone's recent recantation on the entire official narrative of the Gaza War.

The obligatory question, "What is jihad?" also came up. Predictably, Ramadan responded by repeating the standard apologist line: "The meaning of jihad is not really war. . . . Jihad is to make peace with yourself." He then made the blatantly false statement that "the association of jihad with war is from the Crusades." On the contrary, Islamic jurisprudence has considered "jihad" a term for warfare since at least the tenth century, 100 years before the Crusades.

Finally, in response to an audience member asking how to respond to those Islamists who refuse to accept Ramadan's rosy view of reality, he stated that, "there are people in every single religion . . . [who] think dialogue is worthless. . . . In every religion there are people who are not ready for it." He then suggested, "You can sometimes challenge them by referring to the text." Unfortunately, it is by referring to the text -- the Koran -- that many Islamists have successfully recruited young Muslims to violent jihad around the world. Ramadan offered no solution to this problem.

It is no exaggeration to say that the world would be better off if everyone adhered to Ramadan's notions of humility, respect, and consistency. Such idealistic pronouncements, however, only serve to obfuscate the real issues facing the world today. It will take more than words, for instance, to stop the persecution of Christians across the Muslim world, the violence directed at Israel, the export of Wahhabi supremacism from Saudi Arabia, and the brutal Iranian theocracy. Ramadan would have done well to explain how his lofty "philosophy of pluralism" can be brought down to earth and used in real solutions to society's most intractable problems.

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

Jonathan Gelbart is a senior at Stanford University majoring in International Relations. He is the president of Students for an Open Society and former world news editor of the Stanford Review, an independent publication. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

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