Since the world now revolves those eternal refugees, the Palestinians, we must know about their situation in Syria. While reading the article though, I came across some interesting facts. They aren't facts that are normally reported on since they can't be used to discredit Israel. For example,
While not citizens, Palestinians in Syria have greater rights than their brethren in other Arab countries. They can hold government jobs, attend state universities for free and serve in the military. Assad's regime has long billed itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause.
So in other Arab countries, Palestinians can't hold government jobs? They can't attend state universities for free or serve in the military? Let's find out.
They are not allowed to own property, and even need a special permit to leave their refugee camps. Unlike other foreigners in Lebanon, they are denied access to the Lebanese healthcare system. The Lebanese government refused to grant them permission to own land. The number of restrictions has been mounting since 1990. However, in 2010 the government of Lebanon removed work restrictions from Palestinians, enabling them to apply for work permits and work in the private sector.
What a relief, at least in Lebanon, things are improving. Palestinians can apply for private sector work permits, but how often are they granted? And if one gets a work permit, does this mean they get the corresponding permit to leave the refugee camp? Am I allowed to ask these questions? Did these changes come about because of the actions of human rights groups and pro-Palestinian organizations. If so, they must have worked a lot more quietly than those groups who focus all of their wrath on Israel.
We don't hear anything about it, so things are probably better in Jordan, right?
Palestinian scholars and political activists including Samer Libdeh and Mudar Zahran have described the political system of Jordan as anti-Palestinian apartheid. According to Libdeh, the royal policy of "ethnic cohesion" amounts to discrimination against the Palestinians, who comprise the majority of Jordanian subjects.
What? I'm outraged! Apartheid outside of the Zionist Entity? There must be plans afoot somewhere to boycott companies who do business with the Jordanian apartheid regime that is oppressing the Palestinians . . . somewhere.
Students for Justice in Palestine, where are you? Meanwhile in Israel, Arabs who didn't flee, are citizens of Israel with full rights, They're not "refugees". They don't live in "camps." They aren't denied access to jobs. Not that these minor details matter to people whose food and drink is hatred of Israel and of Jews.
"On the individual level, there's no love for the regime or its tools of oppression, and no one thinks that it will liberate Palestine for us," said a Palestinian refugee expert in Lebanon who visited Syria this month.
Liberate Palestine? Their friends and neighbors are being murdered in the streets in Syria. They've been denied basic human rights by their "supporters" for generations, and their solution is the same self-defeating tactic that created their stateless limbo. No matter what happens they refuse to look past the hatred, which seems to be the only thing they have that gives their lives meaning. Rather than find something positive, there is always "the struggle."
He dismissed the idea that Assad's regime has been a leader in the Palestinian struggle, pointing out that Syria's border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights has been largely quiet since 1974.
In fact, he said he hoped a regime change would help the Palestinians achieve their ultimate goal: the return to their ancestral villages in what is now Israel.
"We have to work together with the free people to liberate Syria, then we'll go to the Golan and liberate Palestine," he said. "We'll work hand in hand."
With all this talk of liberation, what exactly do they mean? Outside of the destruction of Israel and the murdering of more Jews, what is this "liberation" they speak of? So far, liberation looks like trading a corrupt dictator for the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law. It's still evolving in most of the Arab nations who are making that trade, but we only need to look to Iran to see how that liberation worked. The Iranians are not exactly dancing in the streets.
So the question remains, when Palestinians are living under real apartheid conditions in Arab/Muslim countries, why is Israel the one accused of Apartheid?
Vasily Grossman had the answer in his novel, Life and Fate. He devotes a chapter to anti-Semitism. In it, Grossman says,
Anti-Semitism is always a means rather than an end; it is a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved. It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and State systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of - I'll tell you what you're guilty of.
There is more, and if I ever feel ambitious enough, I will reprint the whole chapter. It's part two, chapter 31, and I think Grossman captures the essence of anti-Semitism and of the anti-Semite. Of course, that kind of thinking will never make into the media. It's not their kind of thinking. We're not supposed to use terms like "anti-Semitism" to describe anyone, any organization, any culture, or any country; especially if it's true. Look what happened at Yale when the Yale Anti-Semitism Institute dared tell the truth about Islamic anti-Semitism.
For now the media will dutifully report enough of the facts to make you think you know what's going on, and so that you read it in the correct frame of mind; that is, it's all Israel's fault.
Actually, the only place you're going to find that awful potentially deadly malady, Islamophobia, is in the mainstream press. According to this article in USA Today, (and I'm guessing it's echoed across the MSM, we'd better all beware of the rising tide of anti-Islamic right wing extremism that's feeding off of all the anti-Jihad groups and blogs.
Some British mosques are boosting security after Norway's horrific massacre was traced to a man who fears Muslims are taking over Europe — an attack that exposed a failure to root out Islamophobia that has bled into the European mainstream.
European government leaders may even be feeding fears of Islam through measures such as bans on face veils on the streets, aimed at appeasing a non-Muslim majority wary about the continent's rising Muslim population.
Of course the over 17,000 Islamic terrorist attacks had nothing to do with Islam or the Qu'ran, just lone nuts perverting a religion of peace. It's only the pernicious anti-jihad writings that drive people to shoot up groups of young adults and blow up government buildings.
I complain about the double standard the MSM demonstrates when it comes to Israel, but it's not just Israel. It's anything that disagrees with their perverted world view. They've misinterpreted reality in order to minimize terror attacks by Muslims, while exaggerating the danger from those scary right wing extremists. In addition to the 17,000 deadly Islamic terror attacks since 9/11, there are also the ones that were broken up before they could come to fruition. I suppose those don't count, because the jihadists based their attacks on passages and commandments from the Qu'ran while ignoring or not even being aware of guys like Robert Spencer. Israel, in this case, is just a symptom of the problem. It's a lonely outpost of Western Civilization in the midst of Islamic barbarism. Since the Left romanticizes the barbarism that they don't have to live with, but only read about and excuse, Israel becomes the problem. It, like the rest of Western Civilization, ends up on the wrong end of the double standard.
The people who pass off Islamic terror attacks against Israel are in mourning over the terror attack in Norway. The irony is that the people who were murdered in Uyota were working to destroy Israel. While I think this massacre was a monstrous act committed by a truly evil individual, the victims too, were on the side of evil. They were destroyed by the same kind of monster they support when it's aimed at Israel. Check out the photo and article here. Glenn Beck was pilloried for comparing them to Hitler Youth, but their aim was the same.
We also have weasel words from the Norwegian ambassador comparing this massacre with anti-Israel terror attacks.
In an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv, Norway's ambassador to Israel Svein Sevje patiently explained that he wanted to "outline the similarity and the difference in the two cases."
Palestinians, the ambassador told Maariv, "are doing this because of a defined goal that is related to the Israeli occupation. There are elements of revenge against Israel and hatred of Israel. To this you can add the religious element to their actions."
"In the case of the terror attack in Norway, the murderer had an ideology that says that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is forgoing Norwegian culture," Sevje said, referring to Anders Breivik.
"We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel," he said. "Those who believe this will not change their mind because of the attack in Oslo."
This came after Israel was one of the first countries to reach out to Norway after the attacks and offer its condolences and assistance.
I'd like to feel more sympathetic toward the Norwegians in their hour of trauma, but I can't. They've embraced the evil of anti-Semitism and they've taken sides against the West, allowing and almost welcoming the Islamic conquest of their country. They ignore the fact that their granddaughters will be forced to dress "modestly" and their grandsons will be dhimmi. That's some legacy to leave your family. But rather than look that far ahead, we can see degradation of Norwegian society in what's happening right now.
Every rape in Oslo the past 5 years, where the rapist could be identified, was committed by a male of non-western background.
In Oslo all sexual assaults involving rape in the past year has been committed by males of non-western background this was the conclusion of a police report published today. This means that every single rape assault in the last five years, where the rapist could be identified, he was a man of foreign origin.
Non-western, in this case meaning The Religion We're Not Supposed to Think About When Talking About Rape or Terrorism. And the problem has been growing. Back in 2001, only 2 out of 3 rapes were committed by Muslims. Of course, rather than expecting the invading Muslims - uh - I mean non-western immigrants to modify their antisocial behavior, Norwegians, descendents of the vikings (who would not have put up with this crap and are puking up their mead in Valhalla if they're looking down on their pusillanimous offspring), are being encouraged to modify their behavior.
The explosion in the number of rape charges in Oslo involved immigrant perpetrators, which were mostly Muslims. In 2001 a police study noticed that two out of three persons charged with rape in Oslo were “immigrants from a non-western background.” A glance at Norway’s population statistics shows between 3 and 4 times more immigrants living in Oslo than any other Norwegian city.
Yet Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, said in 2001 that because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative:
“Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes.”
The professor’s conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite:
“Norwegian women must realise that we live in a multi-cultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
and
In a 2001 debate about the culture of rape amongst Muslim immigrants in Norway, Wikan said that Norwegian women were ‘blind and naive’ towards non-Western immigrants;
“I will not blame the rapes on Norwegian women, but Norwegian women must understand that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.” “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” (for example, by not inviting into their homes Muslim men with little knowledge of Norwegian culture).
Once they allow themselves to be totally cowed, we might as well say good bye to their art and society. As long as Israel and the United States don't succumb to the same self-destructive mode of thought evident in Norway, there will still be a remnant of freedom left, although the Progressives will still be fighting against that freedom.
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of idiots such as those who made him their president.” — This quote was translated into English from an article appearing in the Czech Republic as published in the Prager Zeitung of 28 April 2011.
So when does the United States get its balls back? And I ask that after being a good little citizen and not making a fuss when I wasn't allowed to accompany my 17 year old daughter into the airport. She'll be out of the country for a month, and I wanted to see her off. She's too old to be a minor, so I was out of luck. As I was walking out of the airport, I had the same thoughts that I'm sure millions of others have had - why? Why are we pandering to Islam like we weren't the most powerful nation the world has ever seen? Why are we expected to feel so guilty at being the recipients of generations of people who have, over the past two centuries created a society that has become the envy of the world so much so, that rather than try to emulate it and create wealth and plenty for all, these barbarian thugs work day and night to destroy it? And there are Americans who agree that we must tear it all down so that we can live as miserably as the poorest wretch in the in the most corrupt dictatorship we can imagine. What the hell happened to us?
Even those who don't want it torn down, still bow to the insanity of political correctness. What do we know about Islam and terrorism that we aren't allowed to say in public? And why aren't we allowed to say it? Oh yeah. We might humiliate the followers for the Religion of They're Not All Terrorists. So what?
Instead of admitting the well-documented, historically accurate, hysterically ignored connection, our government spends millions of dollars to create an airport security system specifically designed to humiliate the traveler. And they do it while apologizing to Muslims when one gets caught trying to game that system, by making it even more uncomfortable for the rest of us. Metal detectors? Sure. Take off your shoes? Of course. Only tiny amounts of liquids? You bet. Full body grope? Well . . . uh . . . I mean - Oh OK, it's for my own safety. I don't know much about Islamic humor (whether or not it's even allowed), but the imams and other Islamic authorities must laugh at us whenever they see an news article or an Internet photo of a young child groped, or a woman in a wheel chair being forced to remove her adult undergarment. Because, as we are repeatedly admonished, it's wrong to profile.
No it isn't. We force ourselves into this idiotic, suicidal situation for the express purpose of not humiliating the followers of Mohammed - who want us to abandon our freedoms and live under "enlightened" Sharia law. We could adopt the methods used by the Israelis at their airports. But that too would humiliate Muslims, wouldn't it? We wouldn't want that to happen. That would be Islamophobic.
But that's not the only problem. How many of us are buying appliances and cars dictated and designed by the environmental movement? Our children are being scared into believing that if they don't reduce their and our standard of living, the Earth will soon become uninhabitable and all the cute, cuddly animals (like polar bears) in the world will curl up and die. Politics of fear anyone?
And what happens when it does get hot outside? Take a day like today for instance? We get warnings. We have an ozone action day. We are advised how to dress and how to act while we're outside. Conversely, when the temperature dips low in the winter, we have cold advisories.
When I was growing up, there were these beings known as mothers who made sure that we were dressed properly for the weather before they threw us out of the house to play. When it was hot, we wore shorts. We played in the pool. When there was no pool, we played in the sprinkler. When we got hot and the sweat was poring down our faces from playing baseball, or football, or riding our bikes, or just chasing each other up and down the street, we drank out of the hose or we went in for a drink. Then we were kicked back outside. In the winter, wearing jackets, gloves, long johns, and boots, even though it was cold to the touch, we played with the snow. Can you believe it? We made snow men. We made snowballs and threw them at each other. And we did many other dangerous things out in the heat and the cold. Somehow, between our mothers and us, we figured out that if we're sweating, it's hot, and if our nose hairs are stiffening up when we breath, it's cold.
I'm going to end this post on a positive note. Somebody sent me the following video as an email. There are some Americans who still have balls, but we need to work together in order to reinvigorate our nation. We need to walk proudly with the understanding that not everyone is going to like us, especially if they are citizens of the 57 states - holy Obama, Batman - I mean of the 57 countries of the OIC. The only thing they deserve from us is a one finger salute. Hold all foreign aid, stop infiltration - I mean immigration - no I was right with infiltration, from any and all of these nations.
It's time to dump the Democrats. They are killing us slowly, but they will be the death of our nation.
I saw the report, but I forget where I saw it originally, that in Canada, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently proclaimed and demonstrated his unwavering support for Israel, that 71 percent of hate crimes of a religious nature in 2009, were committed against Jews. While I appreciate Harper's principled stand on Israel, something needs to be done about the attacks against Jews in Canada. The first thing that needs to be done is to ask the simple question: who is doing the attacking? That was my first question. That was Barry Rubin's question too.
Now the figures for "hate crimes" in Canada have been issued and guess what? Like the FBI's statistics for the United States, the number one victims of hate crimes are...Jews. Indeed, 71 percent of the hate crimes in the religion category are against Jews. The Jewish proportion of Canada's population? Around 1 percent. That's 71 percent of the hate crimes on a religious basis against 1 percent of the population.
For Canada, 4 per cent of the crimes were motivated by race or ethnicity, 29 per cent by religion and 13 per cent by sexual orientation
Makes you think, right?
Apparently not. Because the report is vague about just who might be attacking Jews and why these numbers have tended to rise. Skin-heads? Neo-Nazis? Russian peasant pogroms? Crusaders? The Klu Klux Klan? Peronists? Anti-Dreyfusards? Know-Nothings? Knights of the Camellia? Republicans? Tea-Partiers?
Because if we don't know who did it, then how can the situation be improved? Was it Anglicans? Bahai? Catholics? Dunkers? Episcopalians (oh, wait, they're the same thing as Anglicans), Franciscan monks or Fire-worshippers? Greek Orthodox? Hawaiian traditionalists? Idolotors or Illerati or Inuit? Jacobites? Kansans? Lutherans?
Of course, we know that answer to the question. And for those who are still having difficulty admitting to the answer, let me help by asking, which religion do you desperately try not to think of when you read reports like this?
Right.
Exactly.
But to admit to anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims destroys the "Muslim as victim of Western Society" paradigm that must be upheld at all costs, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics are required to maintain that ridiculous idea. There are people who will fight tooth and nail to force that paradigm on others and battle fiercely against those who point out its falseness. And some of them aren't Muslims. They are the happy dhimmis.
Through American Digest, I was introduced to Ann Barnhardt. Gerard posted the following two videos. I don't have much to say about them. Mostly I agree with them. Lindsey Graham is a jackass. He does not value freedom. I do. So, obviously, does Ann Barnhardt.
If he and Ann Barnhardt ever meet in person, I hope the meeting is videotaped and posted as a lesson to the rest of our political class that there are Americans who still care and are willing to forcefully and publicly defend our country and Western civilization from the barbarians both within and outside the gate. I will beg mercy for Senator Graham in that the cameras should not follow his sobbing retreat into the men's room. Even a spineless dhimmi like Graham should be afforded a little privacy after his humiliation.
Regarding the second video, I am obsessive when it comes to books, even bad books, and I do have problem with book burning. And using bacon as a bookmark would leave a nasty stain, so forget that. It is her book, though, and she has the right to do whatever she wants with it. And she's doing it to make an important point. My obsessiveness wouldn't allow me to do the same thing. If somebody is offended, they can make their own Youtube video to express their humiliation.
If the New York Times can endanger our country by printing the things they printed under the Bush Administration, then Lindsay Graham and the rest of the dhimmi class can shut up about burning Qu'rans. Actually, they can just shut up.
And is it my imagination that so many women are standing up publicly to defend Western Civilization as many of our "men" cower under the ruses of "showing tolerance", or "cultural sensitivity", or the avoidance of being called a racist or "islamophobe?"
Part two is longer than part one, and although it it repetitious, there is a point to the repetition. There are not merely a few evil passages in the Qu'ran that have to be diligently searched for. That is a book that is full of troublesome stories and advice to Muslims.
iOTW – Your communication skills are pretty impressive, do you have a background that would have prepared you for this, or are you just a natural?
Ann – I have always been a good public speaker and writer. I do apply my talent by teaching seminars for cattlemen as part of one of my businesses, and have a DVD version of my seminar as well. I deliver one of the best five-hour economics lectures on the planet. Not that that is saying much, I know.
iOTW - Have you been a political activist in the past and were there particular issues, apart from Islam, that you focused on?
Ann – I am not a political activist. I am the owner of three small businesses who looked around two and a half years ago and said, “Oh, HELL no.” Politicians make me ill. I can never and will never be a politician. For the last two to three years I have been focusing heavily on explaining and exposing Marxism, Islam and the fraud that is Obama. But that is triple-redundant, isn’t it?
and
iOTW – Have you heard from Lindsey Graham’s office?
Ann – No. They haven’t come out of the men’s room yet.
How absurd is it that the deranged pastor of a tiny Florida church can make the entire world hold its breath just by threatening to burn a book?
The Rev. Terry Jones of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville is a hate-filled nut, for sure. But nothing he's done or vowed to do in offering what can only be viewed rationally as a minor insult to Islam merits the paranoia in the West about a worldwide wave of bloodshed at the hands of offended radicals.
Jones was implored not to carry out his promise to burn a copy of the Quran by, among others, the United Nations, the pope, Gen.general David Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
His back-and-forth deliberating was covered as if it was another Bay of Pigs stand-off and this scruffy preacher had his finger on the button.
Come on. Jones should have been entirely ignored. He's not an official of our government, nor is he a national leader in any fashion. He's an obscure redneck, or at least he was until the cameras showed up at his 50-member church.
That Jones captured so much attention is an indication of what the West is up against in its effort to coexist with Islam.
Yeah, I know -- all Muslims aren't mayhem makers. But the lunatic fringe is apparently wide enough to trigger an extreme overreaction from our nation's top offices to a silly little publicity stunt.
If Muslim sensibilities are so tender they can't ignore the bizarre rants of an insignificant American fanatic then this is a culture with a serious anger management issue, and one the West can't help with.
There's no way to head-off every potential slight to Islam. Last time it was Danish cartoons, this time it's a Pentecostal pew jumper who lays down his snakes to strike a match.
Tomorrow, an atheist in Italy may name his dog Mohammad, or a biker in Australia will have a likeness of the prophet tattooed on his backside.
The only answer is for Islam to grow up. Religion invites antagonism; get used to it.
Using the destruction of a book as an excuse to rampage is unacceptable and immature. A Quran, like a Bible, is a physical thing. What makes both books holy are the ideas and inspiration they contain, not the pages and ink. The religion won't be broken by taunts, or by bonfires.
Burning a Quran in the Florida swamps doesn't weaken the foundation of Islam any more than burning an American flag in Pakistan dents our nation's underpinnings, or coating an icon of the Virgin Mary with elephant poop, like that "artist" once did in Cincinnati, undermines Christianity.
Grown-ups shrug off such affronts for the ignorance they are, and move on. They don't go nuts, as the radicals did after the cartoon episode.
We've had the mantra "Islam is a religion of peace" drilled into us for the past nine years. But Muslims still have some work to do to make that case. Peaceful religions aren't so easily provoked to violence. Religions of peace turn the other cheek.
In the previous post I forgot to mention that in one of the propaganda pieces the Free Press ran, someone gave the bogus analogy of Muslims being subjected to the same senseless discrimination that other ethnic groups were forced to endure when they first came to these shores. That is more fantasy. No other ethnic group came to these shores demanding that we give up our ways in order to follow their ways. And we have to do it for Muslims in order to remain sensitive to their needs, so we don't humiliate them, and because others have suffered in the past. Oh, and because if we don't, some misguided Muslim might, through a misinterpretation of that holy book of peace, tolerance, and love, the Qu'ran, become violent toward the United States.
So halal food must be served in schools that Muslim children attend. Prayer rooms and foot baths should be set up for Islamic usage - oh wait - anyone, not only Muslims, can use them, but the prayer rooms must be segregated by sex because you-know-which-religion demands it, and the foot baths - who else would really think of using them? During Ramadan we shouldn't eat or drink in the presence of a fasting Muslim. So we'd better be fluent in the Muslim calender. Health clubs and public swimming pools should have women only hours so that Muslim women aren't forced to exercise in the leering presence of a man.
When a Muslim or Muslims have launched or are caught preparing a terror attack we are strictly forbidden to entertain the slightest thought that it is a terror attack by Muslims. We are encouraged to suspect any person or any group on the political right. And once it is conclusively proven that Muslims were involved, we must agree, under the pain of being called an "Islamophobe" that the perpetrator(s) are either insane or perverting the teachings of yada, yada, yada . . .
They must be allowed to murder their daughters if their daughters stray from daddy's will. They can beat their wives. They are entitled to welfare as soon as they enter the country. (I think that is true of all new immigrants though). My grandparents had to work. And so did all of the other immigrants from all of the other nations of the Earth who came to the United States in search for a better life. And the only favor they expected was to be allowed to work in order to better their own and their children's lives. No accommodation were expected by them or made for them. Sensitivity to their old country cultural norms if one of their community was arrested? Yeah, right. They were expected to learn the language - English, that is - and become Americans.
So don't try and make me believe that Muslims are just like any other ethnic or religious group in this country. It simply isn't true. No other group in the history of this nation has demanded so much while contributing so little (well, except maybe for teenagers, but most people grow out of that.) No group has been so adept at developing unearned whining to the art form it has become. They've quickly learned to take advantage of the surfeit of liberal guilt that is eating away at the fabric of our nation. Responsibility for their actions? Forget it. It's always somebody else's fault.
Like others have said, Muslims, like everybody else are welcome to come to this country. But if they are going to become Americans, then they have to adapt to American society. Don't expect me to adapt to Islamic society because I will not submit.
The Detroit Free Press has gone into full pro-Islamic propaganda mode today, the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There are two articles and an editorial all about the strain on Muslims since that fateful day and about how members of all monotheistic faiths are coming together to promote tolerance, and battle intolerance, and to let the world know about the tiny minority of Muslims who pervert a religion of peace, and-. But let's face it. We've been force fed this crap for the past nine years, and it is still a load of crap.
The Free Press managed to interview people of differing religions to get their 9/11 stories, and wouldn't you know it, they all agree that because of that attack, innocent Muslims have been unfairly maligned, and these fine folk have gone out of their way to improve relations between themselves and people of other faiths. The deaths of the almost 3000 Americans murdered that day actually made the interviewees better people. Wasn't that a lucky break for them? And it helped make the United States a more moral nation - well, except for that war stuff, you know, when President Bush made that reactionary, non-progressive, non-enlightened decision to fight back. At least that's the way I read these interviews. Random quotes:
I'd like to think it's made everybody more aware in a better way. But I think in some way, the paranoia hasn't helped.
and
On a personal level, I became actively engaged in conversations with my Muslim neighbors. ... Upon moving to southeast Michigan, my opportunities to work closely with Muslims have only increased due to the much larger Islamic presence in this area. Yes, I do believe that 9/11 has changed me dramatically, and ironically I believe that on a personal level, that has been for the better.
and
Since 9/11, life has been filled with more work and blessed moments to enlighten others on my faith and culture. Immediately post-9/11, I found myself overanxious, more cautious of where I went, how I traveled and the people I associated with. I felt I had to constantly defend my faith, culture and fellow Muslim brothers and sisters who were being persecuted for the actions of a rotten few.
and finally
9/11 stoked our country's best and worst sides. As a country, we mobilized with incredible speed and unity. We paid beautiful tribute to the people who lost their lives and sacrificed themselves to save lives. We lost our way through wars and still have not found the courage or means to articulate the strength of our country to ourselves and the world. Our religious hostility and fear continue toward the Muslim world. We have not convincingly articulated America's strength, goodness and promise. ... Our country began chasing demonic enemies, instead of leading ... with integrity and hope.
Either the reactions I read are kind of bizarre and twisted, or I'm the one who is nuts. For some reason, I keep thinking that we should not be accepting the words of our local imams. I've read opinion pieces by some of them in our various local news rags, and based on these writings and interviews in these same rags, I don't trust them.
But there was an editorial in today's Free Press defending the peacefulness of Islam (because that's what the Qu'ran is all about, we are told) that had a line that I do agree with:
We need more dialogue, more reading of the Quran, both inside the Muslim community and out.
Yes, we should all read the Qu'ran. My son bought a copy, but it was translated by a non-Muslim. I'm not sure how accurate it is. I'd like to find one of the ones that CAIR passed out a few years ago. I've been checking used book stores. I tried reading my son's but it is a tough slog. The narrative is kind of weak, and it seems to be full of non sequitors. I can't let that stop me though. Read, I must.
When it comes to this claim in the editorial though:
The Quran is filled with such verses calling on Muslims to practice every kind of goodness. Yet most Americans know little or nothing about them. An August Pew Research poll concluded that 35% of Americans believe Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions, while 24% weren’t sure.
Of course, it’s not difficult to understand why. Approaching the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, we can’t forget the violence of that day. The really ugly truth: The 9/11 attackers, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are all doing far more harm to the Quran than Jones is by burning it. By distorting the verses of the Quran to justify their violent agenda, these terrorists and their sympathizers continue to breed hostility toward Islam and Muslims. Instead of spreading the Quran's message of peace, they are spreading their own message of hatred
I have to ask: how do you distort verses like:
Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.
and
Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender, paying the protective tax in submission.
and
So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world).
and
When you clash with the unbelieving Infidels in battle (fighting Jihad in Allah's Cause), smite their necks until you overpower them, killing and wounding many of them. At length, when you have thoroughly subdued them, bind them firmly, making (them) captives. Thereafter either generosity or ransom (them based upon what benefits Islam) until the war lays down its burdens. Thus are you commanded by Allah to continue carrying out Jihad against the unbelieving infidels until they submit to Islam.
and
The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them.
and I could go on and on, or I can recommend Prophet of Doom for more quotes from the Qu'ran and other Islamic sources that the apologists, and the imams, and the spreaders of "dawah" don't talk about and don't want us to talk about. We are supposed to ignore a vast body of Islamic teaching that is not as savory as the tiny verses of love and honesty, that may have even been revoked according to the the Islamic concept of abrogation.
In an attempt to polish Islam's image, Muslim activists usually quote verses from the Quran that were written in the early days of the Islamic movement while Mohammed lived in Mecca. Those passages make Islam appear loving and harmless because they call for love, peace and patience. Such is a deception. The activists fail to tell gullible people that such verses, though still in the Quran, were nullified, abrogated, rendered void by later passages that incite killing, decapitations, maiming, terrorism and religious intolerance. The latter verses were penned while Mohammed’s headquarters was based in Medina.
When speaking with people of Christianized/Western societies, Muslim activists deliberately hide a major Islamic doctrine called "al-Nasikh wal-Mansoukh" (the Abrogator and the Abrogated). This simply means that in situations wherein verses contradict one another, the early verses are overridden by the latter verses. The chronological timing in which a verse was written determines its authority to establish policies within Islam. Non-Muslims cannot afford to be ignorant about the full implications of the Abrogator and the Abrogated Doctrine (al-Nasikh wal-Mansoukh). When Islamic spokesmen say that Islam is a religion of peace and that the Quran does not support such things as human rights infractions, gender bias and terrorism, they are lying. This means that the Western politicians and liberal journalists, who continually spout that Islam is a noble religion of peace, are in reality propagating a deception that they have been deceived into parroting.
I'm sure they won't be discussing any of that today as the imams slide some more taqiyya past the gullible Christians and Jews, and these silly infidels won't care because they can engage in vast amounts of self-congratulation based on how tolerant, accepting, and enlightened they are. Rather than be part of that charade, I'll be thinking of those murdered in the 9/11 attacks and in all of the over 16,000 Islamic terror attacks since then.
The Media's Anti-Semitic Hate Machine by Daniel Greenfield
When I read this article, I realized that it said a whole bunch of things that I'd been thinking. The fact that it was put into words by someone who actually knows how to write makes me happy. To say Greenfield "hits the nail on the head" would be a gross understatement. He hits many nails.
By linking Islamic terrorism to some form of Israeli provocation, and from there to the support for Israel by American Jews—the same media which would commit seppuku rather than blame Muslims for Islamic terrorism, instead blames Jews for Islamic terrorism. The steady drumbeat of such rhetoric, which exonerates Muslims but indicts Jews, for the actions of Muslims, is brilliantly perverse. And it also puts the lie to the media’s defense that it avoids attributing terrorism to Islam because it does not want to stoke bigotry. In reality, the media has no problem with using Islamic terrorism to stoke bigotry. It just has a different target in mind.
Behind the media’s long ugly history of misreporting terrorism against Israel, has been that one fundamental narrative, that it is not Muslims who are responsible for Muslim terrorism, but the Jews. When a Muslim terrorist attack happens in Tel Aviv, Madrid or New York—it turns out that the Jews are the ones to blame. It really doesn’t matter whether an Israeli soldier kills a Muslim terrorist, or a Muslim terrorist kills a Jewish father of four driving home from work, it is never the Muslim that is at fault. Always the Jew. Forget about even splitting the difference. There is never any difference to split. It is always Israel’s “humiliation” of Arab Muslims that is at fault for provoking their righteously murderous anger. A familiar theme that recalls Hitler’s constant invocation of “German humiliation” at the hands of the Jews.
Yeah, I know, the constant comparison of one's political political opponents with Hitler and Nazis gets tiresome, but here the comparison is apt, not overused hyperbole. Who was out to end the life of world Jewry back then? Who's, by their own admission, out to end it now? See?
All the media’s talk about Israeli disproportionate force in relation to Muslim terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank has nothing to do with it. Back when Israel was fighting wars for survival against enemies that vastly outnumbered it, the Jews were still to blame for humiliating their enemies by refusing to die. That is “Jewish Privilege”. To go on living, even when people who fancy themselves nobler and better, who have wonderful ideas about a Third Reich or a Pan-Arab or Pan-Islamic union want them dead.
It is a fairly lengthy article, but it is well worth reading. I already passed it on to the people on my email list and posted it at the Garbanzo Annex.
As Debbie Schlussel points out, pandering, bowing, and scraping to the Muslim world did not begin with Obama. The difference is, Obama doesn't try and hide it. In this respect, he is much more honest than those presidents who served before him. Like Debbie says,
When I was an intern on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1985 and still in high school, Saudi Prince Sultan Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud held a giant party for all of the young interns on Capitol Hill. He and the Saudi Arabian Embassy rented out the Capitol Center and hosted free food, music, belly dancers, and other entertainment, trying to reach out to America’s future leaders and convince them of the modernity, hipness, and “appeal” of Saudi Arabia. The was the real purpose. But the ostensible purpose was to celebrate Prince Sultan’s trip into space, courtesy of NASA–Ronald Reagan’s NASA. While ultimately this was Reagan’s move, it was carefully orchestrated by then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, a close friend to the Saudi Royal family.
There were exhibits all over the Cap Center party honoring Prince Sultan’s space trip. And, at the time, everyone in the U.S. space program knew what a joke it was, what an obvious sop to the Saudis, given that the Prince didn’t have an iota of the years of training and skill it takes to become an American astronaut. He had the title of “payload specialist,” but the only payload for which he was actually skilled was “pay the lady.” Only months earlier, the Prince was the acting Saudi Information Minister and had zero space knowledge.
Everyone knew that this was a PR stunt that was outreach to Muslims in the form of fulfilling this spoiled Saudi Prince’s only unfulfilled Walter Mitty fantasy, courtesy of the Bush family that feted these people for decades. The real American astronauts laughed that the pretentious Prince Sultan insisted on wearing his Islamofascist get-up for the group picture of the STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery crew, yet he dressed in space gear for his individual shot. At the time, Sultan was the youngest person to fly in a space shuttle and not because he earned it. Even worse, U.S. taxpayer dollars helped finance Sultan’s launch and deployment of the Arab Satellite Communications Organization’s ARABSAT-1B satellite in space, the ostensible reason Sultan was aboard the flight. Yes, the Saudis supposedly paid a token amount. But it didn’t cover the overwhelming costs incurred. And that’s not the point.
Most of us weren't as aware of the pathologies of Islam as we are today. I was one of those who joked about it. Now, I'm a lot more serious, but there is still room for humor. Our sense of humor must never be lost. Then the terrorists (and their progressive supporters and enablers) will have won.
This Get Fuzzy comic has nothing to do with NASA or Islam, or anything of earth-shattering importance. But it's funny, and with me, funny counts.
Here is the dialogue in a more readable sized font: ROB: Bucky, whether you like it or not, Soccer is the most popular sport in the world.
BUCKY: Well, with all due respect, I wouldn't go around usin' "The World" to make a point. "The World" is nuts.
ROB: Again, most popular game in the world? Soccer, A.K.A., Football.
BUCKY: Oh yeah? What did it edge out? Ethnic-Cleansingball? Malariaball? Fighting-Over-A-Patch-of-Dirt-Ball?
Did anti-Semitism in Europe end with the demise of the Third Reich, only to be reborn with increased Islamic immigration to Europe? Or did it merely go underground, seething and waiting until the time was right to once again take prominence in the minds of the European populace? I don't know. But I know that if I were a Jew living in Europe, even one of the supposedly free and democratic western European countries, I would pack up my family and make Aliyah. The reaction of European governments to the recent Gaza flotilla was monstrous. It has also been noted that England, the country, that thanks to Winston Churchill, stood fast against the Nazis in Europe's darkest hour, had strict quotas for Jews and rather than admit them during the dark days of the Shoah, sent Jews trying to escape the Nazis back to the continent to be liquidated. And of course during the 30s and 40s they tried to keep Jews out of the holy land.
England hasn't changed much since then, except for the worse. With all the fuss they made over forged British passports used to assassinate a Hamas terrorist in Dubai because they assumed the Israelis made the hit, they're strangely silent on the use of forged British passports used by Russian spies. As they continue to bend over further and further on their journey to dhimmitude, their natural animus against Jews has returned. How bad is it? Let Debbie Schlussel fill you in on the latest.
So, it’s no surprise that a British judge and jury said that vandalism–destruction that could have killed many and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars–is okay . . . so long as it’s against the Jews or Israel (or someone doing business with or helping them). It’s really not too different than laws the Nazis had in place. And that’s no hyperbole.
The ends justifies the means, Judenrein-style. Yup, 1940 Europe repeats itself 70 years later. Today, they use the euphemism “Israel” as their excuse, but tomorrow, they’ll openly use the word “Jew”:
Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.
The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.
Yeah, go read the whole thing. And remember, this is Great Britain. There have been a few times in the last few years when I thought that England would wake up from its slumber and fight the enemy in its midst. I don't think so any longer. At some point, leftists in the United States who didn't care what was happening over there will be trying to bargain with the British Islamic mullahs in order to have the art treasures (more important than people to some) of the various British museums kept out of harms way, and perhaps moved to a safe (for the moment) haven in the U.S.
Some people have been trying to figure out why Europe hates Israel.
The Europeans' vicious attacks on Israel are animated less by the Jewish state's foreign policy than by Europe's ongoing fixation on the Holocaust. What else could explain the presence of posters equating Israel with Nazi Germany at pro-Hamas demonstrations in Vienna? According to one recent German university study, 45.7 percent of the European respondents supported the contention that "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians."
In their eyes, apparently, maintaining a naval blockade against a government sworn to destroy you – while providing the unfortunate people living under that government with tens of thousands of tons of supplies and humanitarian aid – now equates to looting and butchering six million people. Click here to find out more!
Wolfgang Benz, the controversial director of the Berlin Center for the study of anti-Semitism, neatly summed up this incongruity on German television when he insisted that "anti-Semitism is different from anti-Zionism."
Benz embraces the European wish to alleviate guilt by denying the weight of the Holocaust. (As the head of a center for the study of anti-Semitism, he's a particularly strange case; the German political scientist Clemens Heni discovered that Benz's beloved academic mentor was the now-deceased Karl Bosl, an outspoken Nazi who contributed enormously to spreading Hitler's ideology.)
Of course, nothing Israel has ever done can even begin to compare to the crimes of the Shoah. But to help alleviate their feelings of guilt, Europeans delegitimize Israel, ignore modern anti-Semitism, and portray Muslims – who number over one billion and whom no one seeks to eradicate from the earth – as the new persecuted Jews of Europe.
Some of that may be true, but after 1500 years of persecution, I think it has become ingrained into the European psyche. And then there's the new European (and generally Western) secular cowardice. Their ancestors unapologetically conquered the world and forced their morals and ethics - for good or bad - on those they conquered. Some of that conquest was done in the name of Christianity. So what. No matter how much anyone insists that there is, there is no moral equivalence between Western/Christian imperialism, and Islamic imperialism. That should be clear by looking at the results of both. The fruits of one over time is freedom and prosperity. The other has only spread barbarism and intolerance.
The secular descendants of European warriors quiver in fear, because to admit that unassimilated Muslim immigrants are destroying the Western freedom that their brave ancestors fought for and bestowed upon them, would be seen as racism and "islamophobia". They never had to work for their own freedom. It was unearned and so it means nothing. Until it's gone. Then it will be mourned by some. They will wonder what happened. But, it's better to shut up and be conquered without fighting back than to be thought a racist. Besides there are always the Jews to blame.
UPDATE: I almost forgot this article about the situation and the possible use of "decoy Jews" in Brussels.
In an effort to arrest the culprits who terrorize Jews, the Amsterdam authorities have ordered police officers to walk the streets disguised as Jews. The Dutch police already disguise officers as “decoy prostitutes, decoy gays and decoy grannies” to deter muggings and attacks on prostitutes, homosexuals and the elderly. Apparently sending out the decoys has helped reduce street crime. The “decoy Jew” has now been added to the police attributes.
Go ahead, read it and weep - or laugh. I mostly laughed at the insanity of it all. I'm sure decoy Jews will help solve the problem. Actually, if everybody dressed up as orthodox Jews . . .
Four Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims were arrested and jailed Friday for disorderly conduct at an Arab festival in Dearborn, police said.
"We did make four arrests for disorderly conduct," Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad said Saturday. "They did cause a stir."
Nabeel Qureshi of Virginia and David Wood of New York, both with a Christian group called Acts 17 Apologetics, were arrested with two others after they were said to be causing disruptive behavior, police said.
The four, who were at the Dearborn Arab International Festival, were later released on bail.
This morning I went to a fundraiser. I didn't know it was a fund raiser. I got an invitation from a friend to come to her house for brunch and to hear a talk by an IDF member. So I went. And I was impressed. The soldier I listened to was from a new (at least to me) organization: Our Soldiers Speak. They travel the world giving their story, of life on the battlefield, fighting terrorists while trying desperately to avoid hurting the terrorists' human shields. The young fellow giving our talk spoke eloquently about the morality of the IDF compared to the documented immorality of Hamas and Hezbollah. He also talked about the need to counter the UN and the MSM who have chosen the side of the barbarians against civilization and morality in this battle.
He also asked for tough questions. He wasn't afraid to answer them. He'd already spoken at Columbia and in Berkeley, hotbeds of Palestinian sympathizers. Some of my friends had heard him speak at Michigan State University and at U of M Flint, where he was verbally attacked by the Israel haters. He answered their questions and kept his cool.
I've been going to various pro and anti Israel events around the Detroit area. Besides the points of view, the big difference is in the demeanor of the two sides. Pro Israel speakers are not afraid of tough questions. When they're not being interrupted or drowned out by the moral retards of the "human rights" and "peace" communities, they are willing and very able to give easy to understand answers to the most obnoxious and insulting questions. When attending Israel-bashing events, we sit quietly and politely and wait until the end to ask questions. That's when we get shouted down and insulted and when our questions get too tough, we are asked to leave. The Israel haters don't always have good answers. Frequently they are convoluted and hard to follow, or outright lies.
Why the interruptions? Why are they so threatened by allowing our side to speak? We know the answer. It's embarrassing to be unmasked in public as a liar.
Anyway, the organization, Our Soldiers Speak, deserves your support. And if you are looking for an effective pro-Israel college speaker, this is the organization to seek.
Here in today's Detroit Free Press is a lengthy article on the failings of airport security. They do use the word "terrorist", but nowhere in the entire article are the words that should be in any article on protection against modern day terrorists. Yes, the words "muslim" and "Islam" are absent. But wait. If that weren't dumb enough,
But one risk is that in the rush to protect the flying public, vigilance could mean widespread profiling of race, age and gender, raising civil liberty questions.
and
"When it comes to safety, I am willing to do just about anything. You've got nuts going around," she said. "But profiling may get a little trickier. I have a family member with a common name, and he is a dark-complected African-American man. He is constantly getting stopped at the airport. They stopped him several times just going to Vegas. I have to remind him to just stay calm and answer the questions."
No, why bother profiling Muslims? After all, we're constantly told that terrorism is unIslamic. And we must believe that at the cost of creating new terrorists or something like that.
On the other hand, there is this article that demonstrates that even Democrats can sometimes learn new things.
Some Democratic lawmakers who support closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say the U.S. should reconsider whether to repatriate suspected terrorists from Yemen, given the al-Qaida activity in the poor Arab nation.
But stupidity is a tough thing to beat.
Yemen has freed the six Yemenis who were released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to the country on Dec. 20, security officials and a lawyer for the men told the Associated Press.
The lawyer, Ahmed al-Arman, said the six were freed from Yemeni custody over the last week, with the last two freed Saturday night. They were handed over to their families.
Security officials held the six for questioning and investigation since their handover by the United States, but they found no evidence of involvement in terrorism or other crimes, Yemeni security officials said. The six gave guarantees that they would not leave the country, would not associate with terror groups and would report regularly to the police, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
The aspect of today's liberalism, or progressivism as it is sometimes referred to, that helped shove me toward a more conservative political point of view, in fact it is the thing that outraged me the most in this post 9/11 world and actually began my move rightward, is the knee jerk anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stance among so many progressive adherents. It shocked me at first. I was used to seeing anti-Semitism coming from the right. I was always under the impression that those on the Left fought for the underdog, while those on the Right were for the rich and powerful. If there is one group who has been the historical underdog, it's been the Jews. And Israel, that miniscule strip of land on the Mediterranean, surrounded by five hundred million Arabs who nurse genocidal dreams against the Jewish state so foul that murderers are celebrated and lionized, while children are sacrificed if it means killing even one Jew, is the feistiest of underdogs, facing attacks unprecedented in history.
Yes, there is anti-Semitism on the right of the political aisle too, but except for Pat Buchanan and a few others, it isn't nearly as mainstream as that coming from the left. For the most part, it is still reviled on the right as a mental disorder and the sign of a twisted mind.
Due to some fancy propaganda from Islamic nations and a moral weakness among Progressive leaders, Israel has been absurdly portrayed as the the aggressor in this situation with no regard as to how many violent, unprovoked attacks it's had to endure over the years. The inversion of good and evil that has taken place in Progressive groups and media runs counter to the facts and counter to reality. There is a general acceptance of the Palestinian "narrative" as a replacement for objective (or as objective as it can be) history. And no matter how they try to deny it, or dress it up as anti-Zionism, or bring up the fact that there are some Jews who buy into this madness, in its rewriting of history and inversion of morality, it is anti-Semitism, pure and twisted.
Even those who aren't anti-semitic have bought into the current anti-Semitism being promoted throughout the Islamic world. They don't dig into their beliefs to see where they come from. Their self-willed ignorance gives them the strength of their convictions. For those who do plunge into the history of Islamic and European Jew-hatred and notice the ancient blood libels being updated, the explanation is that it is the fault of Israel, you know, that tiny sliver of land, about the size of New Jersey, population of around 7 million, a country that under normal circumstances would scarcely be noticed except for the fact that it is the only majority Jewish nation on Earth. But anti-Semitism, like other dysfunctions, is blamed on who? Why, as always, it's blamed on the Jews, or now, since Progressives refuse to take responsibility for their irrational hatred, it's blamed on the Jewish state.
The second unforgivable sin of the Israelis is the fact that they have created wealth through the adoption of Capitalism in the midst of dysfunctional dictatorial Islamic cultures. Notice, I did not say that Israel has amassed wealth. They created that wealth where previously there was very little. And they did it in spite of almost universal condemnation and continuous violent attacks from their Jew-hating, dysfunctional neighbors.
One of the more twisted and offensive tactics of the anti-Semitic left is the attempted relabeling of people which goes beyond confounding good and evil. Some of the more deranged have gone so far as to equate Israel with Nazis and name the Palestinians as the new Jews. But over time, this got me thinking about the way these people think. I'm going to do a lot of generalizing (as if I haven't already), but I think my generalizations are correct . . . in general.
Those who demonize Israel imagine themselves on the side of goodness and morality, no matter how ignorant they force themselves to be. I'm guessing that they imagine that if they lived in Germany back in the 1930s that they would have been part of the brave few that spoke up against the Third Reich. I bet they really believe that they would have bravely hidden their Jewish neighbors, that they would have risked their lives to do what was right.
But they wouldn't. They would have been boycotting Jewish businesses, turning in their Jewish neighbors, cheering as they were being carted away, and ignoring the awful truths of the death camps.
And here's why.
Progressivism, due to the Marxist leanings of . . . well, of . . . Progressives, is also profoundly, proudly, and stupidly, anti-Capitalist. And Marx was profoundly anti-Semitic. How that stance leads to progress of any kind is beyond me, but that's not what I'm writing about today. In Germany of the 1930s, there were wealthy Jews, doctors, lawyers, merchants, who wanted nothing more than to be accepted as Germans. Many downplayed their Judaism. Some even converted in order to be more a part of mainstream German society, and to spare their children the hatred they faced their whole lives. Did it work? Well, according to Nazi racial policy, you were Jewish if one grandparent was a Jew. So there really was no escape. And if you were wealthy besides, well what a scapegoat you could be.
Not all Jews were or are wealthy, but that's one of the age old stereotypes. And if one rich Jew can be found, then they all must be rich. They are rather clannish, we're told. And we know that according to the Progressives who condemn Capitalism, wealth is never earned, it is always stolen. From whom is it stolen? It is stolen from the poor. Do the poor really have anything one can steal? They must have at one time. When? Who knows? Maybe before the Jews, or Zionists, or Capitalists stole it from them.
Just as they hate Israel today for being Jewish, strong, and wealthy, they would have hated Jews back in the 1930s for the same reason. Strong and wealthy is bad. Poor and weak (in appearance if not in reality) is good. They worship (in retrospect only) the poor, weak Jews of the Holocaust. That is how their brains work. Just as they accept every anti-Israel canard, no matter how ridiculous and unprovable, they would have accepted every piece of propaganda coming down from the Third Reich. The lies are the same. Nazis fraudulently claimed that Jews "stabbed Germany in the back" during WWI. They were outraged over the fact that some Jews became wealthy. They accused Jews of trying to control the world (not just the Middle East) They were -ahem - anti-Zionists. Remind me. Who takes those positions these days? I don't think most Israelis do. And don't forget the ancient blood libels, now resurrected throughout the Muslim world and in mainstream Swedish newspapers.
There is no logic behind the Israel hating stance, there is only a burning hatred that comes from envy and a strong desire to make sure that nobody is allowed to become too wealthy or as the term is used, "obscenely wealthy," especially if they're Jewish. It's the same burning hatred that ran rampant through Germany in the 1930s, the demonization, the calls for boycotts of Jewish businesses, the personal attacks on Jews and their property. I'm not claiming that Progressives are in favor of reopening the death camps. I am claiming though, that when Jews are murdered in Israel, or anywhere for that matter, when synagogues are vandalized, the silence from the Left demonstrates that they care as much as the average German citizen cared when those oppressive Jews of Berlin, and Frankfort, and Hamburg, were forced to wash the streets to cheering crowds and later carted away. And who in the West is demanding divestiture from and the boycotting of Israeli businesses and the country of Israel itself? As I recall, it's those loving, human-rights-demanding Progressives.
All of the excuses the "good Germans" made are made by today's Progressives. But in order to be able to face themselves when they look in the mirror, they have to create a morally inverted world where terrorists who gleefully murder children are called "freedom fighters" and the society that raises them and cheers these murders is called "oppressed". The one country in the Middle East that has allowed its citizens to create a decent standard of living is condemned in the stupidest and most offensive manner. But then again, it is the Jewish country. And as much as they deny it, that is what it comes down to when Progressives decide who their devil is.
They've taken the same positions that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Nazis take. They fail to see the hypocrisy in their position which claims Muslims can murder Jews as a basic human right while Jews who fight back are oppressive. And as one last thought, let us not forget that Nazis were officially known in Germany as National Socialists. That's kind of far left, isn't it?
Perhaps some would consider this progress. It seems more regressive to me.
Decades ago, Muslims could dance, listen to rock music and intermingle with the opposite sex inside the American Moslem Society mosque in Dearborn.
But all that ended after new leaders, influenced by a revival in the Middle East, adopted a more rigid interpretation of Islam.
As the mosque -- believed to be the oldest in Michigan -- celebrates more than 70 years today, local Muslims see it as an opportunity to reflect on past changes and its future.
"This mosque has been the seed for the Muslim community in Michigan," Mahdi Ali, 37, of Detroit, president of the mosque's board, said of the building near the historic Ford Rouge plant.
The mosque was opened in 1938 by Arab immigrants who hailed from what now is Lebanon and Syria, said Sally Howell, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn who studies the Muslim communities of metro Detroit. Today the mosque is predominately Yemeni-American.
From the early 1950s until the late '70s, the mosque was considered the main Islamic center of metro Detroit -- a symbolic place visited by Muslims across the region, visiting Arab leaders and non-Muslims seeking to learn about Islam.
But as immigrants from Yemen and the Palestinian territories started to move into the south end, they pushed out the old board members and took over leadership of the mosque in 1978.
The newcomers were concerned with what they saw as permissive attitudes and banned old practices such as sock-hop dances for teens, Howell said.
"They weren't quite comfortable in their Americanness yet," Howell said.
They also required women to enter through separate entrances and wear headscarves when entering the prayer hall -- practices that continue today.
The mosque is believed to be the first in Michigan to broadcast over outside speakers the Muslim call to prayer, Ali said. Over the years, it has seen several expansions, the last one in 2000, and now is 48,000 square feet.
Are Muslims becoming less comfortable in their Americanness as they are compelled by "a more rigid interpretation of Islam" to support jihad? Are any feminists going to question the mosque's practice of requiring women to enter through separate entrances? In the future, will this mosque become even more rigid as the city of Dearborn continues its transformation into a piece of the ummah?
On this day in 1974, Arab Muslim terrorists carried out the Ma'alot Massacre. According to Wikipedia,
The Ma'alot massacre[1] was an attack on May 15, 1974 in Ma'alot, Israel, in which 22 Israeli high school students, aged 14–16, from Safed were killed by three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.[2] Before reaching the school, the trio shot and killed two Arab women, a Jewish man, his pregnant wife, and their 4 year old son, and wounded several others.[3]
There have been so many brutal acts committed by Islamic terrorists since then, that this attack is almost forgotten. Our society has become morally inverted enough to elect Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States. He is "reaching out" to the same kinds of minds that planned an perpetrated this massacre and thousands of terrorist attacks since. He is pressuring Israel to submit to the demands of Islamic terrorists. How is that supposed to work to our or Israel's benefit? How will that advance civilization?
I first wrote about Egyptian Coptic priest Zakaria Botros, when I discovered him through Victor Davis Hanson. The gist of Hanson's article was that Fr. Botros, through his radio show, was inspiring huge numbers of Muslims to convert to Christianity. Imagine my surprise, while thumbing through (sort of, since I read it on-line) The Arab American News, that Fr. Botros is carried on a local Detroit station, WNZK (690 AM). If I read the article correctly Botros' program airs every Wednesday from 3:00 to 5:00 PM. According to the whining from the local Muslim community,
Egyptian Coptic priest Zakaria Botros, known around the world for his controversial theological rants about Islam, had been featured regularly for weeks on a Chaldean Christian programming broadcast by WNZK (690 AM), enraging many with frequent assertions that Islam's Prophet Mohammed, was, among other things, a homosexual.
Muslim leaders feared the weekly programs could cause tension between local Christian and Muslim communities, and sought out talks between interfaith leaders and the station owner about pressuring producers and the host of the show to keep the more radical commentaries off the air, said Ghalib Begg, Chair of the Council Of Islamic Organizations Of Michigan.
and
Another local Arab Christian leader, Fr. George Shalhoub of St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Livonia, said that Botros' outbursts may come from a bitterness felt by many Egyptian Christians, who he said have struggled to practice their faith in that country for years.
"Historically, Christians in Egypt have been persecuted," he said.
Religious life for Copts in Egypt, said Shalhoub, whose congregation is made up primarily of Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and Lebanese Americans, is much harder than in other Arab countries with large Christian populations, where, he said, there is mutual respect and tolerance between Muslim and Christian groups.
Mutual what? Between Muslim and infidel dhimmi? Huh? But wait. No defense of Islamic terrorism or the Islamic assault on free speech is complete without the moral equivalence argument.
"Father Zakaria is fueled by desperation, but no one should be condemned by other people's faith," he said. "Just leave him alone and he'll go away… There are fanatics among Christians. There are fanatics among Muslims. There are fanatics among Jews. If we pay attention to fanatics, we become fanatic… Don't forget we have freedom of speech here. No one can silence another by force."
Our intellectual elites have become so weak and degraded that Muslims no longer need force to shut down debate. All they have to do is claim humiliation and hurt feelings. Their prophet has been insulted - oh dear.
It's obvious that local Muslims are up in arms over Fr. Botros. That makes him A-OK in my book. As AM stations sometimes have weak signals, I hope I can still hear the show. As I have to report back to school next Wednesday, this will be an even bigger problem, but I will at least be able to hear part of the show. I have to assume too, that he's syndicated in other markets, possibly on a station near you.
And another thing. The Arab American News has a lot of nerve complaining about so-called hate speech after publishing their assault on the Israel at 60 Celebration. They can dish it out, but when it comes to taking it . . .
As soon as I'm done with this post, I'll be sending a short email to WNZK in support of Fr. Botros. If anyone else is interested, you can contact Operations Manager: Mr. Sima Birach at Sima@BIRACH.com.
UPDATE: Fr. George Shalhoub, a local "Palestinian" Orthodox Christian priest who is quoted in the article speaking against Fr. Botros. Shalhoub, demonstrates in this article, that he is a well trained, well behaved, dhimmi.
On Wikipedia, I discovered that "Palestinians" celebrate today as Nakba Day. Here they are, giving of themselves again. Besides offering gifts to the world like terrorism, homicide bombing, new permutations of Jew-hatred, and contributing to the general moral rot of civilization, these people who call themselves Palestinian now embrace a new holiday - so happy Nakba Day.
Let us join with the most thoroughly debased society on the planet as they once again demand recognition of their unique condition. That unique condition is multiple generations of dependency on the misguided charity of the West. The charity, of course, has given the Gazan and West Bank Arabs an entitlement mentality that causes them to demand huge infusions of cash and materials in order to avoid that humanitarian crisis that is continuously looming directly overhead and will come crashing down if we in the West don't keep the coffers of the P.A. and Hamas full. By now we know that their definition of a humanitarian crisis is a shortage of weapons with which to attack innocent Israelis.
That is certainly a Nakba . . . for the West.
After all, we are stupidly subsidizing the Middle East terror machine. And we know we are. There's no such thing as a free jihad.
It is a Nakba that our leaders are so blind and delusional that they keep throwing money at murderers thinking that will get them to stop murdering. It's a Nakba that we allow our good intentions to be held hostage. It's a Nakba that our compassion keeps us in denial of reality so that we too contribute to the moral rot.
Besides the Nakba of maintaining generations of Muslims in festering genocidal rage, there are the Nakbas that don't get the attention they deserve. This is due to the insanely detailed and cruelly biased reporting on Israel.
China has occupied Tibet since the 1950s. Why, besides bumper stickers, has there been so little concern? How many thousands or millions of Tibetens have been ethnically cleansed? Why are the brave reporters who speak truth to power not concerned with Tibet?
We've got a better idea of the body count in the current Darfur genocide. The U.N. and various NGOs are keeping better track of this Nakba than they did during the Sudanese anti-Christian genocide of the 1990s. Don't worry if you've forgotten that. The whole sick chapter of Sudanese history only got about as much coverage as the Muslim-inspired propaganda that caused an anti-Israel uproar when Israel tried to do some repair work to the Temple Mount.
And then there's Zimbabwe. How many are starving to death there due to Robert Mugabe's despotic rule? Nobody cares about that Nakba.
And where is the U.N. Human Rights Commission in all of this? Well, with China, Zimbabwe, and Sudan as members, they're right where you'd expect them to be - in session, condemning Israel.
So how are the pampered, overly photographed Arab refugees different from the rest of the current and past Nakba sufferers? Well - they have props. Those keys offer a visual. I used to think they were really a key to a jihadist's heart. But we know that the only key to a jihadists heart is a dead infidel.
The self-titled Palestinians have been spending their free time (which they have lots of since they live in a welfare state and don't have to work) persecuting Israel, the Jewish State. If Robert Mugabe were Jewish, he would have been driven from power years ago, and he would be discredited by every news medium in the civilized world. Claim the Chinese are descendants of the 10 lost tribes and there would be divestment rallies on college campuses throughout North America and Europe. Newspapers would rewrite Chines history to deligitimize 4000 years of Chinese history. Not even Chairman Mao would escape the wrath of the enlightened who hate the fact that Jews have power for the first time in 2000 years.
Let's face it. The real Nakba is the moral inversion that has willingly taken place in Western civilization at the behest of a barbaric enemy.
But that doesn't mean we can't party.
So happy Nakba Day everyone. Strap on that bomb vest and celebrate the most morally twisted holiday ever created.
Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.
Botros is an unusual figure on screen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.
The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.
I hope this is no exaggeration, and I hope his success increases.
"No one can find a safe way out for himself if socety is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." -- Ludwig von Mises
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
