Poll: PA Leads in Hate for USA.

 

by Maayana Miskin

A poll released this week by the World Public Opinion polling group showed the Palestinian Authority leading several other Arab and Muslim countries in hatred for the United States, belief that the United States is battling Islam and support for attacks on American civilians.

The poll was conducted in 2007 and 2008 among residents of Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan, and in 2008 among residents of Azerbaijan, Iran, Jordan, Turkey and Palestinian Authority-controlled areas in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Nigerian Muslims were polled as well.

The survey also showed a slight increase in support for terrorism and attacks on US civilians in countries where the poll was conducted in both 2007 and 2008.A total of 638 PA Arabs were questioned for the poll, and the margin of error regarding their responses was four percent.

Among the findings:

A full 88 percent of PA Arabs said spreading Christianity in the Middle East was “definitely” or “probably” one of the United States' foreign policy goals, with PA residents the most likely to support this claim. Muslims in Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan were also likely to hold this belief, with between 70-80 percent of respondents in those countries answering that the spread of Christianity was “definitely” or “probably” a US goal.

Eighty-nine percent of PA respondents said the US was “definitely” or “probably” trying to control Middle East oil resources, a percent similar to that in other Muslim countries. Seventy percent said the US was “definitely” hoping to divide and weaken the Muslim world.

Over 50 percent said the US was “definitely” or “probably” interested in creating “an independent and economically viable” PA state. However, 90 percent said the US was also planning to expand Israel's borders.

Forty-nine percent said the US “purposely tries to humiliate the Islamic world.”

When asked about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, 42 percent of PA respondents said they believed Al Qaeda or another Muslim terrorist group was behind the attacks, while 27 percent blamed the American government.

PA Arabs were the least likely to say they disapproved of all terrorist groups that attack Americans and were the most likely to express full or mixed approval for such groups. Fourteen percent of those PA Arabs surveyed fell into the former category, while 53 percent said they supported some terrorist groups that attack US citizens and 30 percent said they approve of “most or all” such groups.

Jordan was in second place in support of anti-US terror, with 20 percent of respondents saying they approve “most or all” groups that attack the US and 42 percent saying they approve of some such groups.



Sixty-seven percent of PA Arabs said they strongly approve of attacks on US troops in Iraq, and 23 percent said they somewhat approve. Only five percent reported that they “somewhat” or “strongly” disapprove. Sixty-one percent expressed strong support for attacks on US troops in the Persian Gulf; six percent disapproved.

While a much lower percentage expressed support for attacks on US civilians inside the United States, PA Muslims still led other respondents by a wide margin, with 10 percent expressing “strong approval” of such attacks, 14 percent “somewhat” approving, and 15 percent with mixed feelings.

 

 

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

 

What happened in Italy last night (on 11th February)

 

by Fiamma Nirenstein

We didn’t expect what you see in this picture. This is the square of the Italian Parliament in Rome, Piazza Montecitorio: You can see the Palace on top of the square, and in front a lot of Israeli flags. That was last night from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. What you cannot see here, is the extraordinary number of members of Parliament, about 100 from all political sides, that took the stage during this time: for about three hours we were speaking about the role of Israel, its right to self defense, its moral height, its fight on behalf of us all, of our civilization and values, against the wild hate of the Islamic jihad represented by Hamas.

It seems to me that for the first time in the too long history of the Arab/Israeli conflict, apart from a minority of crazy leftists and fascists that took the street with anti-Semitic slogans, we have achieved a huge consensus on one critical point: this is not a local conflict, there is nothing in it that reminds us of a peace theme that has characterized the Palestinian issue. This is an attack against the western world, and Iran is behind it.

The change of attitude is great: the terrorist and religious nature of Hamas and the democratic, civilized nature of Israel are seen face to face for what they really are at least by the European elite at large, dead and wounded notwithstanding, and there rises an identification with Israel against a regime that uses human shields and promises slaughter of Jews in its charter.

What happens today, at least in Italy, is the defeat and fall of the leftist ideologies: ideology that has allowed justification of all the most violent crimes and most disgusting verbal attacks. If Arafat launched the terrorist Intifada, if he promoted the martyrdom of children in public speeches, the ideologists were ready to justify him with the issues of occupation, the Palestinian misery and loss of any hope. Not so with Hamas.

History, in Italy, has brought to a profound crisis the ideology of revolution and the justification of any cruel attack against a so-called unjust imperialist order. That time is over, nobody will see Hamas as the resolution of the problem and not even as the problem itself. I think that the word “peace” has lost that healing meaning that it once had. The new non-ideological point of view sees that there is no peace when one of the contenders doesn’t want it, and that even if the world in the short run asks for a truce, in the long run it hopes for the defeat of Hamas.

Last night, many people, Ministers and Members of Parliament, composed a very new, interesting mix of opinions. I think that when you are not overwhelmed by exotic thirdworldism, the images of children educated as hate machines, the speeches of jihad leaders, from Ahmadinejad to Nasrallah, to Haniyeh, that deny the holocaust and promise death to Jewish and Christians alike, you are left only with disgust. Westerners, thank God, can still be disgusted by uncivilized levels of political speech.

But most of all, in the Parliament square, many of the Parliament Members said: “I love Israel”.

You can’t imagine how many.

Fiamma Nirenstein, a journalist and some-time resident of Jerusalem, is a new Member of the Italian Parliament who is outspoken on Israel’s behalf. She writes below that there is increasing understanding of what Israel is facing in its current war against Hamas.

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

 

How did this come to pass?

 

by Ruth King     

 

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, in a speech to the Roman Senate, 42 BC)

 

In 1929 Zeev Jabotinsky warned the Jews of Europe to get out in face of a coming cataclysm. Absorbed in their daily lives, most Jews ignored the escalating anti-Jewish rhetoric in the newspapers and the academies; the boycotts of Jews among Polish factory workers and trade groups; the ritual murder libels in Lublin and Vilna; the mounting attacks and beatings; the riots and desecrations of synagogues; the discriminatory laws and taxations; and the staggering failure by host nations to protect their Jewish populations.

 

Yes, the tragic Jews of Europe just tried to get on with their lives. Who could fault them? Who could have foreseen Auschwitz?

 

But what about today? After many decades of Jewish renewal and enhanced prestige brought about by the advent of Israel, Jews are threatened by the recrudescence of world-wide vicious anti-Semitism, all couched as "anti-Israel not anti-Semitic."

 

Even here in the United States trade and religious and academic institutions boycott and "disengage" from Israel, synagogues are vandalized and the mainstream media, at fever pitch to condemn Israel, gives scant attention to the threat against Jews.

 

Why has the American public lost sight of the fact that Jihad threatens the entire Western world and not Israel alone? Why did conservative Jews, even those who stood firm against Oslo become so besotted with President Bush that they swallowed whole the "road map" and the ensuing departure from Gaza without understanding or pressing the fact that Israel is in the front line of the war against Islamic terror?

 

The sad fact is that Jews themselves have contributed to the morass in which we find ourselves. First, let's examine those whom Cicero calls the fools and the ambitious.

 

Women of Hadassah: Your work in the ingathering when you provided rescue to millions of wretched survivors of the Nazis and those expelled from Arab states is the stuff of legend. When did abortion rights, gay rights and assorted trendy environmental crusades become more important than Jewish survival and Israel?

 

Listen up, ADL: You had a distinguished history in defending Jews against defamation. How did you get into the business of defaming our Christian evangelical supporters? Do you really think that Mel Gibson and a crackpot Catholic Bishop threaten Jews more than Arabs and Jihad? And, speaking of Holocaust deniers what say you about Abbas, whose doctoral thesis was devoted to that topic?

 

Esteemed grandees of the Conference of Presidents: There was a time that you were an instant deployment group, your clout felt in the corridors of American power when there was serious offense to Israel and Jews. What have you accomplished in the past ten years? Your major "achievements" were to insult Sarah Palin and elevate Mahmoud Abbas to the role of "peace partner." Even now, faced with the disastrous results of leaving Gaza-from which you egged Israel on to withdraw-you prod Israel to accept its dissolution with the "two state plan."

 

Can you not see that your servility contributes to the climate of blaming Israel?

 

Now let's discuss The Filth Column...the traitors within.

 

Jews who defame Israel are the most pernicious tools in the war against Israel and Jewry, those who, to paraphrase Cicero, move among us freely, teaching our young, their sly moral equivalence, which equates Israel with its tormentors, heard in the halls of government itself. They preen and strut as supposed devotees of "peace" and "justice." They besmirch Israel with vile comparisons to the Nazis. They pepper their talk with Yiddish, indulge in Holocaust metaphor and willfully and maliciously provide fodder for the cannons of those who would extinguish us. They are in a league of their own.

 

Here is a baker's dozen list of The Filth Column: Not in Our Name Coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Against the Occupation, Jewish Peace Fellowship, Gush Shalom, Jews Not Zionists, Truth Justice and Human Rights in the Middle East, Rabbis for Human Rights, Visions for Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jews Against the Occupation, Jewish Women for Peace and Justice in Israel/Palestine, Jewish Social Justice Network.

 

JATO (Jews against the Occupation) recently hung banners calling for "Free Palestine" from bridges and highways. Its spokesman Ethan Heitner states: "Even if foreclosures and unemployment weren't decimating our neighborhoods, surely there are better uses for $3 billion a year than helping the Israeli government commit war crimes." Students for Justice in Palestine has groups on many campuses. Matan Cohen of Hampshire College in Massachusetts works among them to get "total international disinvestment from Israel."

 

Then there are the "independents" such as Norton Mezvinsky, who runs the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Central Connecticut State University who recently invited Norman Finkelstein, another pillar of the Jewish Filth Column, to bash Israel.

 

They have rotted the soul of the Jewish nation and undermined the pillars of Israel. Yet they proliferate in the media, the academies and the arts. They deserve the obloquy of all self respecting Jews and a corner in hell.

 

It is 1928 again, but unlike the unsuspecting and tragic Jews of Europe we cannot remain in denial. A strong Israel is our only guarantor of survival. In spite of those who have unwittingly contributed to the present climate and those who are active accomplices of our enemies, we cannot give up or fail. To do so will mean the end of the Jewish people.

 

 

Ruth King

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

 

Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds.

 

by Ami Isseroff

 

Though it is painful to admit it, it should beobvious to all by now that Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds of international public opinion, not just in Europe, Asia and Africa, but in the United States as well. This is evident both in the recent reaction to Operation Cast Lead and in long term trends. This loss is not like losing a Eurovision song contest or not getting the Oscar for Waltz with Bashir. It has, and will have, grave strategic consequences for Israel's well being, international posture and security.

The odious effluvium of the recent unjust human rights campaign against Israel following the Gaza operation  is added to the already broad stream of "anti-Israel" criticism. That will almost inevitably be joined by the stinking effluent of the upcoming Durban II Conference on Racism.

It is besides the point, inaccurate and ineffective to protest that this campaign is the result of "anti-Semitism." Surely, the campaign against Israel feeds on anti-Semitism and is fed by it. The deranged insistence that Israel must pay for the blood of Christ, the demented discourse about the supposed role of the Mossad in 9-11 and in the Mumbai massacre, and the mounting torrent of drivel painting the Federal Reserve System as a plot by International Jew Bankers are not "legitimate criticisms of Israel" and must in themselves be exposed as vicious racism. But they are not the main issue or the main danger, but only a side show.

The fact is that Israel has allowed its enemies to seize the initiative and dictate the agenda, to move the debate from central issues to diversions and irrelevancies, to establish fiction as fact, and to make the general public forget what is really at stake. Benjamin Netanyahu, a democratically elected politician, is painted as an ogre equivalent to Adolf Hitler, who must be boycotted. Conversely, Khaled Meshaal, a terrorist gangster and head of the genocidal Hamas, is painted as a fighter for freedom against oppression whose legitimate struggle should be recognized and whose organization must be considered a "partner for peace."

The horror of the Mumbai terror attacks should have been exploited to the full to explain to the world the undying enmity of Islamist radicalism for Judaism as a symbol of Western democratic values. Instead, most of the commentary asked "Why the Jews?" out of ignorance of the program and ideology of al-Qaeda and radical Islamism (aka "Jihadism"); Jewish groups focused on trying to get human sympathy for the martyred rabbi and his family and for the Chabad group. Islamist groupies were allowed to generate bogus hysteria that the Zionist conspiracy was trying to foment a war between India and Pakistan. In reality, al-Qaeda is at war with the Pakistani government and the rest of the world.

Israel is losing the support of the world over the Iranian issue. Iran's quest to kick the United States out of the Middle East has been skilfully made into a problem of Israel, Israeli nuclear weapons and Israeli interference with Palestinian "rights." Nobody hears the crowds screaming "Death to America" and the thugs burning the pictures of President Barack Obama (that's right, Obama, not Bush). U.S. policy can now be held hostage to the plots of these demented hoodlums, and officials will presumably move to appease them. Iran succeeded in portraying itself as the hapless victim of an arbitrary boycott campaign by evil Zionist neocons. It is forgotten completely that the clandestine Iranian nuclear weapons program was in place before the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is fatuously supposed that the election of Khatami or a different reformist figurehead to the Presidency of Iran will solve all the problems and eliminate the threat posed by Iran.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the sacrifice of disengagement is largely forgotten by the world. The central issue, that Hamas is a genocidal organization that repeatedly and openly declares its intention to destroy Israel is ignored. Instead, the entire debate has been moved to the bogus issues of "proportionality," Israeli "war crimes" and "human rights." We allowed the enemy to choose the battlegrounds and the weapons. We should not be surprised therefore, when they gain victory after victory. Not even Herr Joseph Goebbels would have been able to divert the entire public debate in Europe about Nazism to the question of whether allied reprisals for V II raids were "disproportionate" or the fact that the Germans suffered more casualties than the British, or to get Americans to boycott Britain because of the war crime committed in the firebombing of Dresden. But that is precisely what has happened in the Israel versus Hamas propaganda war.

Owing to an insistent campaign that has not been answered by any government or other advocacy, it is now falsely established in the public mind that the Annapolis talks failed because of Israeli "inflexibility" about Jerusalem. The truth is the opposite. Mahmoud Abbas announced and admitted on November 11 2008, that Israel had offered a compromise on Jerusalem but the Palestinian Authority rejected it, because the Palestinians insist on obliterating Israeli rights in East Jerusalem. It is not compromise that the Palestinian Authority demands from Israel, but rather unconditional surrender. The facts are not aired by the Israeli government because of internal political problems. It would have been politically disastrous to admit that Israel offered a compromise on East Jerusalem as that would raise a clamor on the Israeli right. It would have been equally disastrous to admit that the Palestinian Authority has been totally intransigent in current negotiations, because that would rob the Kadima party of the centerpiece of its political platform - peace with the Palestinians. Evidently, the powers that be estimated that the Israeli people are too stupid to understand that Israel must always strive for peace both in fact and appearance, no matter how hopeless the cause may seem. That policy has been a foundation stone of Israeli diplomacy since 1948 and is integral to mainstream Zionist ideology.

There are many other examples that bring home the fact that Israeli and Zionist legitimacy are suffering a continuing debacle. It is pointless to deny it and maladaptive to helplessly bemoan it as "anti-Semitism" or as "unfair" tactics of the other side. All is fair in love and war. Nobody should expect genocidal terrorists and racists and their advocates and running dogs to act fairly. We are not children. The Israeli government foreign ministry has failed. The Zionist and Jewish NGOs have failed. The pro-Israel volunteer advocacy network has failed. We are not doing our job effectively. We are reaching the wrong people with the wrong message or not getting the message out at all. Many of us don't seem to know what the message ought to be.

The situation is not beyond hope, but we will never even begin to solve the problem if we do not recognize that it exists and that it is quite urgent. It is far more important than petty internecine rivalry which absorbs the energy of Israel advocates. It will not be solved by appealing to the anti-Semitism issue. The anti-Semites already know they are anti-Semites and are quite proud of it. The others truly are horrified by the accusation and really do not understand why saying that "Zionists control the world" is anti-Semitic. It will not be solved by appeals to Jewish opinion. The enemy is not other Jews. The rising tide of opinion against Israel is not, in the main, related to anything that Israel did or did not do, since the aim of the campaign is to destroy Israel. The "critics" will criticize Israel no matter what Israel does. Every action, whether it is disengagement, or peace offers, attacks on terrorists or building of settlements, whether is totally right or totally wrong, will be turned into grist for the propaganda mill of enemies, if we let them do it.

The nature of urgent corrective measures that should be taken will be the subject of future articles here. The problem should also be subject to detailed public scrutiny and debate. It is not a minor problem, but rather a central strategic issue for Israel, a threat can only be countered by a massive effort of attention, ingenuity and resources.

Ami Isseroff

Original content is Copyright by the author 2009.

 

The Right to Criticize Islam

 

by Pilar Rahola

 

We women who defend liberty are not Islam's enemy. The enemy is in your house; it takes the name of God in vain and perverts it to serve a wicked ideology. One final request. Think twice before pointing your finger at us and accusing us of insulting Islam. For I wish to remind you that some of those about you might consider such an accusation [as indicating] a target.

 

The first quote: "Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali born Dutch parliamentarian who was issued a death sentence for fighting against the oppression of women in Islam, in her book J'accuse :"Two out of three wars in the world are fought in the name of Islam. The notion that Islam is a religion of peace is without basis in fact." Second quote: Wafa Sultan, Syrian psychologist, in an interview on Al Jazeera: "Only Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, murdering people and destroying embassies. This path will give no result. Muslims should ask themselves what they can do for Humanity, before asking Humanity to respect them." She lives under a death threat. Third quote: Fadela Amara, Muslim of Algerian origin and president of the French movement "Neither Whores nor Submissive": I am a believing Muslim and I consider the veil an instrument of oppression against women."

 

I could add to the names of these women many others whose struggle for freedom in the heart of Islam has forced them to live under threat. None of them insulted that religion, but all were accused of insulting it. The first and worst thing that we find when we try to hold a calm debate about Islam is the demonization of critical thought, and always in the mouths of those who arrogate unto themselves the role of universal spokespersons and who present Islam as an anti dialectic and ahistorical dogma.

 

Years ago I wrote that Islam needs to have a Voltaire. Seeing the response that Ms. Ndeye Andújar dedicates to me, an ad hominem attack (she kills the messenger twisting me into an entity filled with prejudices), and how she turns my critical arguments into insults of Islam, I consider it all the more urgent to appeal to the Enlightenment. I rebel against that sickness of thought that bases the truth of its arguments on the negation of any debate. I rebel because it is a manichaean and antidemocratic posture. Maybe Andujar is afraid of free thought (it's good to read Fromm), but she will not be able to keep, in spite of her demonization, some of us from being seriously critical with modern day Islam.

 

A fundamental note. No matter how much she tries, she will not find a single insult of Islam in any text of mine. I profoundly respect the beliefs of each person and, although I am cut from rationalist cloth, I don't believe faith to be the source of the problem. But she will indeed find many worried reflections on the perverted use of religion to advance a totalitarian ideology that today, in the name of Islam, educates people in fanaticism, suicidal nihilism and scorn for women. If Ms. Ndeye Andujar wants to find and call attention to those who insult Islam, I advise her to look at home. I'll give her a few ideas. Those who teach their children to be suicide bombers severely insult Islam. Those who establish laws that enslave woman insult Islam. Those who teach anti-Semitism, anti-Westernism and scorn for liberty, all insult Islam. Those who use 21st century technology to connect to the Middle Ages insult Islam. Those who encourage children to flagellate themselves to the point of delirium to commemorate someone who disappeared centuries ago insult Islam. And yes, they too insult Islam who from Western mosques encourage the covering of their women, the sending of young men to Iraq or consider democracy an evil of the infidel.

 

Didn't she know that this takes place in French and Spanish mosques? I invite her to read some reports, or even to learn the reasons for the expulsion of certain imams from France. All the mosques? Of course not. To be sure, there exists a progressive and democratic view of Islam. But along side it and flourishing, there lives a regressive, fanatical and anti-modern view. This view, to the misfortune of all of us, has a lot of power and receives a lot of money. And this view, by the way, has a particular obsession with imposing the veil, an unmistakable metaphor for the denial of a woman's freedom.

 

We could discuss other issues. For example,

 

Ndeye Andujar claims that the Islamic University of Al-Azhar denies the Koranic validity of female circumcision. But she chooses to forget that

there are scholars in the same university who support it. And she also forgets that in Al-Azhar are nourished certain fundamentalist Koranic readings that have done the most ideological harm. Founders of the Egyptian Brotherhood, from Hassan al-Banna to Sayid Qutb or Yussef al-Qardawi, have drunk from its springs. And its textbooks, a model of the most totalitarian fundamentalist currents, make up the readings for the majority of Islamic centers in Europe. So, the topic isn't so neat and pretty after all.

 

Instead of trying to demonize those of us who take pen in hand to denounce abuses made in the name of Islam, the Ndeyes of the world hereabouts would do well to apply their own energies to combatting them.

 

We women who defend liberty are not Islam's enemy. The enemy is in your house; it takes the name of God in vain and perverts it to serve a wicked ideology. One final request. Think twice before pointing your finger at us and accusing us of insulting Islam. For I wish to remind you that some of those about you might consider such an accusation[as indicating] a target.

 

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish-Catalan journalist, and a philo-Semite. She writes a regular column for the Barcelona paper La Vanguardia and in monthly El Periodico

 

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

 

'Anti-Semitism on the rise in Sweden'

 

by David Stavrou

 

Sweden, like most countries in the western world, is obsessed with the Middle-East. The Arab-Israeli conflict receives constant media coverage and public interest, and the recent events in Gaza were no exception. As usual, they sparked a lively and sometimes violent debate. Sadly, and this too is usual, the debate is full of misinformation and misunderstandings.

 

Most Swedish political figures positioned themselves between strongly condemning Israel while mildly criticizing Hamas’ actions on the one hand and totally supporting Hamas and its administration in Gaza on the other.

 

On the left many condemned Israel’s military operation and the Jewish state in general. "I don’t think Israel is a democracy worthy of the name. It’s a racist apartheid state,” said the Left Party’s Hans Linde, calling for a boycott of Israel.

 

On the right, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister who visited Gaza last week, blamed Israel for intentionally targeting economic infrastructure and called Israeli policies "neither morally nor politically defensible". These remarks were part of a wider debate which included demonstrations, calls for boycotts and anti-Israel diplomacy.

 

A leading Social-Democrat, Urban Ahlin, Deputy Chair of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, implored the government to encourage the EU to suspend its cooperation agreement with Israel, while perhaps the most amazing remark was made by another Social-Democrat. “Israel is an apartheid state. I think Gaza is comparable to the Warsaw ghetto,” said Ingalill Bjartén, the vice-chair of one of the Social Democratic women’s organizations.

 

This is all very well and is part of living in a democracy but when one mentions the Holocaust and the latest round of violence in the Middle East in the same breath - a ridiculous and manipulative comparison - one should try to remain true to the facts. These are important since the victims of the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel, Jews and Arabs alike, deserve the truth. Deceitful and over-simplified versions, like those listed above, are an insult to those who live through the reality of the region, and are part of the reason the tragedy goes on.

 

Here are a few inconvenient truths that Swedish politicians, on the left and right, choose to forget :

 

There is no Israeli occupation in Gaza. Israel withdrew all its troops and settlements years ago and did not blockade Gaza when its forces withdrew. In fact - and this may come as a surprise to those who don’t bother with facts before they make their moral judgments - Israel signed an agreement with the Palestinian Authority concerning security arrangements and safe passage of people and goods between Israel and Gaza. The agreement was breached by Hamas, purposely ignoring the best interest of the Palestinians themselves, when they took control of Gaza in 2007 and declared that all agreements and cease-fires with Israel were cancelled and that Israel must be destroyed.

 

Hamas then launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli citizens (who, for some reason, don’t attract much attention from Swedish moral experts) and massacred hundreds of members of the rival Palestinian fraction, Fatah, among them those who were responsible for the safety of the borders with Israel (yes, that’s right, their own people). Two additional facts are interesting to point out here : first, even when Israel finally had to close its border with Gaza because of the violent nature of the new Palestinian regime it still allowed the passage of humanitarian help, fuel, electricity and money.

 

Second, Egypt too had to close its border with Gaza, which shows that this is not really an Israeli-Arab conflict, but rather a struggle against gangsters and thugs. Egypt, of course, drew absolutely no Swedish criticism though it is blockading Gaza just as much as Israel is. In Swedish terms you could imagine the following scenario : Norway is taken over by a gang of crazed fascists who regularly launch rocket attacks on Karlstad, kidnap Swedish nationals and threaten to annihilate all Swedes in a holy war. Obviously, in a case like this most Swedes would support a strong reaction and certain adjustments in Swedish border and foreign policies. Well, this is exactly what happened in Israel and Israel waited eight years before finally attacking the Hamas power basis in Gaza.

 

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. During the latest conflict Hamas intentionally fired rockets from schools and mosques in order to provoke a counter-attack. You would expect Hamas’s rather unlikely Swedish supporters (oddly enough, usually left-wingers supporting ultra nationalist religious fanatics), to be a little more critical of a leadership cynically sacrificing its own people, including women and children for political purposes.

 

Even the Arab press has had enough of this. "There are a million and a half desperate people", wrote a columnist in the leading Arab daily Al-Hayat, "they were wounded, their houses destroyed, their children were kidnapped to be human shields for those craving a confrontation with Israel. And there are those who sit in their comfortable chairs in Damascus and Beirut, boasting their divine victory which never existed and preventing a cease-fire". It is one thing that extremist Arab regimes silence voices like this. It’s incomprehensible that Swedes should do the same.

 

In the broader context, Hamas began to implement Sharia Law over the population of Gaza. These laws include punishments such as executions, beatings and limb amputations, not to speak of the degradation of women, a total lack of respect for human rights and a complete disregard of human life. Not exactly the material of Socialist utopias.

 

Now Israel is often accused of aggression towards its Arab and Muslim neighbors but history, both recent and far, shows that it is the Arab regimes which oppress their own people and sometimes slaughter them in an orgy of death-worshipping fundamentalism. Yet, somehow Israel is always to blame. Israel, though far from perfect, didn’t butcher almost two hundred thousands Muslims with knives and axes during the nineties, that was Algeria. Thousands of Palestinians were murdered during "Black September" by forces under the control of the king of Jordan, not by the Israelis.

 

The Israeli regime, while having its flaws, didn’t slaughter, rape and burn thousands of Shia Muslims in Afghanistan. That was the Taliban. Israel is not responsible for the daily suicide bombs in Iraq that claim the lives of thousands of Muslims. Israel is not innocent, it has also committed acts of violence and aggression, but it is nothing compared to the barbaric and murderous regimes in Sudan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, which, like Hamas are all responsible for countless Muslim deaths and for millions of Muslims living in poverty and despair.

Swedes with a conscience may want to stop turning their head the other way when it concerns the homemade tragedies of the Muslim world. Was there a large demonstration in Sergels Torg when the Syrians, the Pakistanis or the Somalis initiated yet another of their bloodbaths ? Are there any boycotts of products from the Gulf States which continue to persecute minorities, oppress women and mock basic concepts of freedom and Democracy ? Of course not. It’s all Israel’s fault.

 

If only the Jews could stop provoking the Arab world, say Israel’s critics, if only Israel would accept a peaceful solution. But they’re wrong. The assumption that the Palestinian struggle is a reaction to Israeli policies, though it may sound reasonable, is simply wrong.

 

Any careful study will show that radical Islamism is not a reaction to Israel’s so-called imperialism - it existed long before the state of Israel ; Islamic racism and anti-Semitism are not a reaction to Israel’s so-called aggression, they existed long before the Zionist movement even began and, for God’s sake, movements like Hamas and Hizbullah aren’t really interested in a Palestinian state. Their agenda is to kill Jews, and focusing on this agenda enables them to continue oppressing their own people.

 

The Palestinians themselves rejected numerous chances to establish an independent state and reach a solution to their tragic situation (some examples are the 1936 Peel Commission, the 1947 UN Partition plan and the 2000 Clinton proposal). Their leadership simply thrives on the conflict and they’ll continue it at any cost.

 

But why are these facts ignored in Sweden ? How can a leading Social Democrat compare Israel to the Nazis and still keep her seat. Is this ignorance or deceitfulness ? Are they ill-informed or are they knowingly playing an active role in the propaganda machine of extremist elements from the Middle East ? One can only speculate as to which of these is the case for Ms Bjartén and Mr Linde.

 

And it’s not just a question of words. Mr Linde and Ms Bjartén cannot claim their words have nothing to do with the eggs and bottles thrown at pro-Israel demonstrators in Malmö at the end of January. They are partly responsible for the attacks on Israel’s embassy in Stockholm, the Jewish centre in Helsingborg and the Jewish cemetery in Malmö. An ugly wave of anti-Semitism is on the rise in Sweden and they cannot claim to be free of responsibility.

 

A participant in a demonstration in Stockholm, a Swede converted to Islam who writes regularly in the Swedish press, wrote in his blog : "it felt good to burn Israel’s flag and trample on the remains. It was uplifting to shout "Allahu akbar" [Allah is great] together with blond and blue eyed non-Muslim Swedes".

 

Do Mona Sahlin and Jan Eliasson, leaders of Sweden’s biggest political party, really think that marching under Hezbollah and Hamas flags, as they did a couple of weeks ago, doesn’t contribute to the legitimacy of these actions ? Can they really consider themselves worthy heirs to the noble Social Democratic values of Humanism and Solidarity ?

 

Back in Israel, many Israelis are not at all sure that the Israeli operation in Gaza was wise or justified. Many opposed it and demonstrated against it. They may be right. Israel is a democracy and unlike the Palestinians in Gaza they are entitled to express their opinion without being tortured or executed. The obvious conclusion after almost every round of violence in the Middle-East is that the conflict isn’t between Jews and Arabs, it’s between progressive peace-seekers and warmongers within the various countries.

 

At the end of the day, the Palestinians have suffered the most from the recent conflict. Sadly, their own leadership is responsible. Most Palestinians, and especially the children and the families who have lost everything, are innocent victims. For their sake the historical lesson must be clear. Freedom and Democracy must be defended at any cost. Racists, fascists and promoters of oppression and genocide must be opposed.

 

Hamas is all of these things just like the Lebanese Hezbollah, despite the support they attract from the bizarre Swedish so-called left. Swedes, as lovers of peace and freedom, would be wise to encourage those who fight these forces of evil thousands of miles away or they might find them in their back yard. If they’re not there already.

David Stavrou

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

 

Going wobbly in the West

 

by Mark Steyn

 

'It is hard to understand this deal," said Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy. And, if the special envoy of the so-called smartest and most impressive administration in living memory can't understand it, what chance do the rest of us have?

Nevertheless, let's try. In the Swat Valley, where a young Winston Churchill once served with the Malakand Field Force battling Muslim insurgents, his successors have concluded the game isn't worth the candle. In return for a temporary ceasefire, the Pakistani government agreed to let the local franchise of the Taliban impose its industrial strength version of sharia across the whole of Malakand Region. If "region" sounds a bit of an imprecise term, Malakand has over five million people, all of whom are now living under a murderous theocracy. Still, peace rallies have broken out all over the Swat Valley, and, at a Swat peace rally, it helps to stand well back: As one headline put it, "Journalist Killed While Covering Peace Rally."

But don't worry about Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of "extremists": The Swat Valley is a good hundred miles from the "nation"'s capital, Islamabad — or about as far as Northern Vermont is from Southern Vermont. And, of course, Islamabad is safely under the control of the famously moderate Ali Zardari. A few days before the Swat deal, Mr. Zardari marked the dawn of the Obama era by releasing from house arrest A. Q. Khan, the celebrated scientist and one-stop shop for all your Islamic nuclear needs, for whose generosity North Korea and Iran are especially grateful.

From Islamabad, let us zip a world away to London. Actually, it's nearer than you think. The flight routes between Pakistan and the United Kingdom are some of the busiest in the world. Can you get a direct flight from your local airport to, say, Bradford?

Where?

Bradford, Yorkshire. There are four flights a week from Islamabad to Bradford, a town where 75 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins. But don't worry, in the country as a whole, only 57 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to first cousins.

Among that growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He was in the news the other day for threatening (as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it) "to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords" if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film Fitna. Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Minheer Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested at Heathrow and returned to the Netherlands.

The Home Secretary is best known for an inspired change of terminology: Last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as "anti-Islamic activity." Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam's reputation — i.e., it's an "anti-Islamic activity" in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.

Anyway, Geert Wilders's short film is basically a compilation video of footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities — whoops, sorry, "anti-Islamic activities" — accompanied by the relevant chapter and verse from the Koran. Jacqui Smith banned the filmmaker on "public order" grounds — in other words, the government's fear that Lord Ahmed meant what he said about a 10,000-strong mob besieging the Palace of Westminster. You might conceivably get the impression from Wilders's movie that many Muslims are irrational and violent types it's best to steer well clear of. But, if you didn't, Jacqui Smith pretty much confirmed it: We can't have chaps walking around saying Muslims are violent because they'll go bananas and smash the place up.

So, confronted by blackmail, the British government caved. So did the Pakistani government in Swat. But, in fairness to Islamabad, they waited until the shooting was well underway before throwing in the towel. In London, you no longer have to go that far. You just give the impression your more excitable chums might not be able to restrain themselves. "Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it." Twenty years ago this month, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative ministry defended the right of a left-wing author Salman Rushdie to publish a book in the face of Muslim riots and the Ayatollah Khomeini's attempted mob hit. Two decades on, a supposedly progressive government surrenders to the mob before it's even taken to the streets.

In his first TV interview as president, Barack Obama told viewers of al-Arabiya TV that he wanted to restore the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." I'm not sure quite what golden age he's looking back to there — the Beirut barracks slaughter? the embassy hostages? — but the point is, it's very hard to turn back the clock. Because the facts on the ground change, and change remorselessly.

Even in 30 years. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, while the Muslim world increased from 15 percent to 20 percent. And in 2030, it won't even be possible to re-take that survey, because by that point half the "developed world " will itself be Muslim: In Bradford — as in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and almost every other western European city from Malmo to Marseilles — the principal population growth comes from Islam.

Thirty years ago, in the Obama golden age, a British documentary-maker was so horrified by the "honor killing" of a teenage member of the House of Saud at the behest of her father, the king's brother, that he made a famous TV film about it, Death Of A Princess. The furious Saudis threatened a trade boycott with Britain over this unwanted exposure.

Today, we have honor killings not just in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but in Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, Toronto, Dallas, and Buffalo. And they barely raise an eyebrow.

Along with the demographic growth has come radicalization: It's not just that there are more Muslims, but that, within that growing population, moderate Islam is on the decline — in Singapore, in the Balkans, in northern England — and radicalized, Arabized, Wahhabized Islam is on the rise. So we have degrees of accommodation: surrender in Islamabad, appeasement in London, acceptance in Toronto and Buffalo.

According to ABC News, a team of UCLA professors have used biogeographic theories to locate Osama bin Laden's hideout as one of three possible houses in the small town of Parachinar, and have suggested to the Pentagon they keep an eye on these buildings. But the problem isn't confined to three buildings. It ripples ever outwards, to the new hardcore sharia state in Malakand, up the road to nuclear Islamabad, over to Bradford on that jet-speed conveyor-belt of child brides, down to the House of Lords and beyond.

Meanwhile, President Obama has removed Winston Churchill's bust from the Oval Office and returned it to the British. Given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the bust will almost certainly be arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.

Mark Steyn

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

 

The choice is ours.

 

GEERT WILDERS speech in House of ords if he would not have been banned from the United Kingdom.

 

London, Feb. 12, 2009

 

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

 

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you Lord Pearson and Lady Cox for showing Fitna, and for your gracious invitation. While others look away, you seem to understand the true tradition of your country, and a flag that still stands for freedom.

 

This is no ordinary place. This is not just one of England's tourist attractions. This is a sacredplace. This is the mother of all Parliaments, and I am deeply humbled to speak before you.

 

The Houses of Parliament is where Winston Churchill stood firm, and warned - all throughout the 1930's - for the dangers looming. Most of the time he stood alone.

 

In 1982 President Reagan came to the House of Commons, where he did a speech very few people liked. Reagan called upon the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced a phrase: 'evil empire'.

 

Reagan's speech stands out as a clarion call to preserve our liberties. I quote:If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

 

What Reagan meant is that you cannot run away from history, you cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you.

 

Denial is no option.

 

Communism was indeed left on the ash heap of history, just as Reagan predicted in his speech in the House of Commons. He lived to see the Berlin Wall coming down, just as Churchill witnessed the implosion of national-socialism.

 

Today, I come before you to warn of another great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, the end of democracy. It is not a religion, it is a political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you.

 

There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.

 

Islam will never change, because it is build on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never go away. First, there is Quran, Allah's personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect.

 

Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about it's goal. That's a given. The question is whether the British people, with its glorious past, is longing for that submission.

 

We see Islam taking off in the West at an incredible speed. The United Kingdom has seen a rapid growth of the number of Muslims. Over the last ten years, the Muslim population has grown ten times as fast as the rest of society. This has put an enormous pressure on society.

 

Thanks to British politicians who have forgotten about Winston Churchill, the English now have taken the path of least resistance.

 

They give up. They give in.

 

Thank you very much for letting me into the country. I received a letter from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, kindly disinviting me. I would threaten community relations, and therefore public security in the UK, the letter stated. For a moment I feared that I would be refused entrance. But I was confident the British government would never sacrifice free speech because of fear of Islam. Britannia rules the waves, and Islam will never rule Britain, so I was confident the Border Agency would let me through. And after all, you have invited stranger creatures than me. Two years ago the House of Commons welcomed Mahmoud Suliman Ahmed Abu Rideh, linked to Al Qaeda. He was invited to Westminster by Lord Ahmed, who met him at Regent's  Park mosque three weeks before. Mr. Rideh, suspected of being a money man for terror groups, was given a SECURITY sticker for his Parliamentary visit.

 

Well, if you let in this man, then an elected politician from a fellow EU country surely is welcome here too. By letting me speak today you show that Mr Churchill's spirit is still very much alive.

 

And you prove that the European Union truly is working; the free movement of persons is still one of the pillars of the European project.

 

But there is still much work to be done. Britain seems to have become a country ruled by fear. A country where civil servants cancel Christmas celebrations to please Muslims. A country where Sharia Courts are part of the legal system. A country where Islamic organizations asked to stop the commemoration of the Holocaust. A country where a primary school cancels a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with an Islamic festival. A country where a school removes the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar so as not to offend Muslims. A country where a teacher punishes two students for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. A country where elected members of a  town council are told not to  eat during daylight hours in town hall meetings during the Ramadan. A country that excels in its hatred of Israel, still the only democracy in the Middle-East. A country whose capitol is becoming 'Londonistan'.

 

I would not qualify myself as a free man. Four and a half years ago I lost my freedom. I am under guard permanently, courtesy to those who prefer violence to debate. But for the leftist fan club of Islam, that is not enough. They started a legal procedure against me. Three weeks ago the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ordered my criminal prosecution for making 'Fitna' and for my views on Islam. I committed what George Orwell called a 'thought crime'.

 

You might have seen my name on Fitna's credit role, but I am not really responsible for that movie. It was made for me. It was actually produced by Muslim extremists, the Quran and Islam itself.

 

If Fitna is considered 'hate speech', then how would the Court qualify the Quran, with all its calls for violence, and hatred against women and Jews?

 

Mr. Churchill himself compared the Quran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Well, I did exactly the same, and that is what they are prosecuting me for. I wonder if the UK ever put Mr. Churchill on trial.

 

The Court's decision and the letter I received form the Secretary of State for the Home Department are two major victories for all those who detest freedom of speech. They are doing Islam's dirty work.

 

Sharia by proxy. The differences between Saudi-Arabia and Jordan on one hand and Holland and Britain are blurring. Europe is now on the fast track of becoming Eurabia. That is apparently the price we have to pay for the project of mass immigration, and the multicultural project.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack. In Europe, freedom of speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a natural component of our existence is now something we again have to fight for. That is what is at stake. Whether or not I end up in jail is not the most pressing issue. The question is:

Will free speech be put behind bars?

 

We have to defend freedom of speech.

 

For the generation of my parents the word 'London' is synonymous with hope and freedom. When my country was occupied by the national-socialists the BBC offered a daily glimpse of hope, in the darkness of Nazi tyranny. Millions of my country men listened to it, illegally. The words 'This Is London' were a symbol for a better world coming soon. If only the British and Canadian and American soldiers were here.

 

What will be transmitted forty years from now? Will it still be 'This Is London'? Or will it be 'this is Londonistan'? Will it bring us hope, or will it signal the values of Mecca and Medina? Will Britain offer submission or perseverance? Freedom or slavery?

 

  

The choice is ours.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

We will never apologize for being free. We will never give in. We will never surrender.

Freedom must prevail, and freedom will prevail.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Geert Wilders MP

Chairman, Party for Freedom (PVV)

The Netherlands