Apropos Of Nothing

The following sentence is from an article on today’s Yahoo News about Jill Carroll, the journalist for Christian Science Monitor who was kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq:

“The Bush administration, Hamas, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the student newspaper at the University of Massachusetts have called for Carroll’s release.”

Is that an incredibly peculiar lineup or what?

Between that kind of headspinning weirdness and Iran contending with a straight face that Tom & Jerry are a fiendish Zionist plot (which would probably surprise world-class anti-Semite Walt Disney), I’m starting to get that sense again that we’ve slipped into a crazy parallel universe. Maybe things will look a little less nutty after some camomile tea…

I am battling the mother of all headcolds and have been unable to do much productive work for a week or so. I have a number of blog entries gestating in my head and will zip them out at the earliest possible date.

Have to go do some Felix Unger-esque honking now…

I’m linking to this news item not to vent my outrage (I don’t think this forum can contain it) but to draw your attention to the response of the Parisian public prosecutor.

The facts of the case, in brief:

1. Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Parisian Jew, was lured from his shop, overpowered, abducted, stripped, tortured for weeks, set on fire, then dumped, naked, handcuffed, gagged, with burns covering 80 percent of his body, at a suburban train station. In the words of the judiciary police chief heading the investigation, “[The kidnappers] acted with indescribable cruelty.” Halimi died on the way to the hospital.

2. The 13 people arrested for this crime are all Muslims of North African descent.

3. The kidnappers have specifically targeted Jews in the past. In their ransom conversations with Halimi’s family, in response to their pleas that they couldn’t come up with 500,000 euros, they said, “Go to the synagogue and get it.”

4. The response of the Parisian public prosecutor to the family’s belief that this crime had something to do with anti-Semitism: “[N]o element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action”.

Of course not. The monsters might be offended if we suggest that they are anti-Semites. And remember, everybody — under no circumstances must we ever offend the monsters.

The invaluable Norm Geras has posted a piece on the Third International Congress of Terror Victims, which was held on February 13 in Valencia, Spain. The Congress is a gathering of survivors and family members of victims of terror attacks across the globe, including, among many others, the 9/11 assault on the US, the 2004 Beslan elementary school massacre, and the 2005 London transit bombings. In view of the extraordinary deference being shown to those coreligionists of the terrorists who are taking the Danish cartoon controversy as an opportunity to openly espouse mass murder (and, indeed, to commit murder), an event like this warrants more publicity, to say the least.

On opening day, a powerful speech was made by Israeli Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001. Roth makes many points worth reading — about the terrible human need for explanation that can impel one to find rationality where there is none, about the complete inability of the United Nations ever to take the side of the victims, about the fatal lack of clarity in the news media about the very meaning of the word “terrorism”. The following are excerpts:

…it is not beautiful to be a victim of terror. It is not romantic. It is not transcendental and it is not heroic. It is not like the movies. It is a nightmare and the deepest, most painful tragedy that most people will ever experience in their lives…

This process of becoming a victim makes very little sense to those of us who have experienced it. But the societies in which we live seek to understand terror. They try to get to the bottom of the anger and the hatred which animate terror by looking for root causes that explain it, that rationalize it. We have seen this done by journalists, by politicians, by community leaders, by our own neighbors…

A committee of the United Nations has been trying for the past nine years to write a convention against terrorism. For ordinary people like us, this does not sound like the most difficult thing for lawyers and diplomats to do. We know that terrorism means the deliberate targeting of civilians for injury and death. But there is an international association of states – I will not name it – comprising some 57 countries, nearly 30% of the 191 member states of the United Nations. For nine years, this association has frustrated the writing of the United Nations anti-terror convention by insisting that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose…

Their definition is not at all interested in how barbaric that act may be. Or how random. Or how defenseless and innocent the victims.

I am neither a diplomat nor a politician. But I have consulted with some academic experts and it is clear to me what this means. It means that terrorism when it is done for a bad cause is bad. Terrorism when it is done for a good cause is good. An individual citizen, a diplomat, a journalist or a country which holds to this view is not against terrorism at all but simply opposed to bad causes.

The effect of this regimented attention to semantics is that in its entire history the United Nations has failed time and time again to express an unequivocal condemnation of terrorism…

To dismiss this depressing chain of events by calling it a difference of opinion over definitions is to miss the point. There is an actual, practical life-and-death question here which we, assembled here in this hall, are uniquely placed to answer: Is it ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants? For nations comprising some 30 per cent of the United Nations, the answer – tragically, astonishingly – is yes.…

Some of the men and women who murdered my child are in prison in Israel. Others are alive and well and free and active. Some of them have even become newly-elected members of parliament – not the parliament of my country but the parliament of the neighbour with whom we desperately want to live in peace.

Since the death of my daughter Malki, I read [newspapers] carefully and I pay close attention to the words [journalists] use. You may have noticed that the media seldom use the word “terrorist”. Instead, the men and women who kill innocent civilians in restaurants, who place bombs on train carriages and buses, who stab and beat children in kindergartens and playgrounds – these are called fighters, activists, protesters, militants, insurgents, anything except what they actually are: murderers, terrorists, barbarians.

I believe that this avoidance of plain and clear language happens because journalists, editors and publishers are unsure, themselves, of what terrorism is. They need to hear our voices. They need to understand – to really understand – that terrorism is not some kind of romantic struggle for dignity. It is not a noble alternative form of warfare. It is the purest, most physical expression of hatred and intolerance. [emphases added.]

Roth concludes by citing a line that appears in the Jewish Talmud:

“He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate”.

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Read the whole thing.

Courtesy of Damian, the following was written by Winston Churchill in 1899:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

From Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

Apropos of the danger to Europe, I’d like to commend to you a forthcoming book, Menace In Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too by Claire Berlinski. The book addresses the profound degree to which Islamic fundamentalism has sunk, with Europe’s drowsy acquiescence, into the fabric of European culture. She looks at the frightening way the spiritual void of Europe has been filled — quite effortlessly, it appears — by fanatical Islam, which demands the “respect” of its European hosts even as it aspires to destroy it. Claire wrote me bulletins while she was researching and writing this book and I assure you, it is gripping stuff. It’s being released this week and I recommend it heartily.

Oxford University will shortly be hosting a week-long hate fest conference entitled “Israeli Apartheid Week”. Ever a beacon of free speech and open debate, Oxford is no doubt eager to host a parallel conference that is as unabashedly anti-Palestinian as this one will be anti-Israeli. As an alumna of Oxford myself, I want to do my part to foster a healthy exchange of views. I have therefore put together an agenda for a second conference, to take place concurrently with Israeli Apartheid Week.

In deference to the tradition established by Israeli Apartheid Week, this second conference will similarly feature incendiary and offensive language, cavalierly inaccurate use of terminology, and speakers who express only one side of the story.

The conference will cover all aspects of Palestinian society — culture, sociology, history, politics, and more. Here are the planned lectures and events:

“Palestine”: Terrorist Thugocracy Week

The Art of the Lie: Historical Inaccuracy as a Tool of National Self-Determination

“We Are a Blood-Drinking People”: A close look at the Palestinian fetishization of the murder of non-Muslims. The lecture will focus primarily on obsessive Palestinian hate for Jews and its manifestations, but will also address the persecution of Palestinian Christians by Palestinian Muslims. Appearances are scheduled by Israeli victims of Palestinian terror and by Palestinian Christians who have been intimidated, harrassed, threatened with death, and had their homes torched by their Muslim neighbors.

Learning to Spin: A photographic, video and documentary exhibition of Palestinian media manipulation. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be an examination of the IDF incursion into Jenin, the Palestinian massaging of the truth of the operation, and the credulity of the many international news organs that unhesitatingly disseminated their lies as facts. Special guest: one of the Palestinian “corpses” of Jenin that was taped climbing back onto its bier after a stumble will speak to the assembly. (He will be speaking via sattelite, as he is now a visiting fellow in The Philosophy of Media at Columbia.) Note: A separate lecture will be given on the al-Dura blood libel, possibly the Palestinians’ most successfully spun lie.

Screw the People; I Need a Villa: Evidence will be presented detailing the funneling of untold millions — possibly billions — of foreign aid dollars into the pockets of a small Palestinian minority. Special guest: Suha Arafat’s Paris couturier.

My Son the Mass Murderer: A roundtable discussion about institutionalized Palestinian child abuse. A close look at the curriculum of the Palestinian education system, the highest value of which is indoctrination to hate, violence, murder and suicide. There will be an accompanying slide presentation of Palestinian children, including toddlers and babies, dressed as gunmen and suicide bombers.

Free Speech Is For the Weak: An interview with the AP photographer who was going to file full imagery of the Palestinian celebrations at the fall of the Twin Towers until he was held at gunpoint and forced to clean up the story.

Kill the Women, Purge the Homosexuals: A lecture with question-and-answer session on the violent repression of women and homosexuals in Palestinian culture. The lecture will be given jointly by the mother of a Palestinian woman stabbed to death by her father and brothers for the crime of leaving an abusive husband, and the brother of a closeted Palestinian homosexual who was hunted down, captured, tortured, and publicly executed in Ramallah on trumped-up “collaboration” charges.

I have no doubt that the pro-Palestinian community at Oxford will welcome this second conference, as will the Oxford administration. Oxford is, after all, one of the finest academic institutions in the world, one that strives tirelessly to raise the level of discourse. The Jewish student body is expected to tolerate a week-long slander, and I’m sure the pro-Palestinian lobby at the University will graciously return the favor. Long may we all prosper in the ivory tower.

You know that blood libel that various people have been hurling at us from time immemorial? You know the one: that Jews like to drink non-Jewish blood. (You can regularly see cartoon images of this in the Arab press, where there is so much concern for religious sensitivity.)

Well, it turns out that Hamasniks, at least, are connoisseurs on the subject. Herewith an excerpt from a new videotape just released on Hamas’s website:

We are a blood-drinking people and we know that there is no better blood than Jewish blood.

We will not leave you alone until we quench ourselves with your blood and we will quench the thirst of our children with your blood. We will not rest until you leave the lands of the Muslims.

That’s a suicide bomber talking, shortly before heading out to pulverize the Karni crossing in 2004. The site shows another clip, this one a touching scene of a Palestinian mother helping her son to strap on his explosives belt. This is what that shaheed had to say:

By the life of Allah, we will destroy you. We will blow you up. We will take our revenge on you. We will purify our land of you, pigs, who have defiled our land. By the life of Allah, we will take our vengeance. We are carrying out this operation as harsh revenge against the sons of monkeys and pigs.

(Hey, I didn’t elect them.)

In the Jewish religion, you know, pigs are a big no-no. I think I can live with the monkey part, but calling me a pig — I don’t know. Might have to burn me a couple of embassies over that one.

Something occurred to me this morning.

“Submit to my demands and I won’t kill you” — the rallying cry of the Islamist cartoon rioters — sounds like the same premise, at base, as “land for peace” — that mantra that’s been shoved at Israel for decades as the answer to all our problems. Make a painful, dangerous concession — treasured political ideals, say, or a chunk of territory — and the other party will be placated. We will all then live side by side in peace and light.

But over here, when our reluctance to quite literally give away the farm has been met with international wails about our intransigence, we have always wondered why submission to one territorial demand should lead to peace rather than to its more likely outcome: another territorial demand. After all, the other party has always made its ultimate desire for all our territory perfectly clear. When Israel made a whopping territorial offer (Barak’s offer at Camp David in 2000), she was rewarded by the second intifada. Just a few months ago, Israel made a significant territorial concession to the Palestinians and was rewarded by the Palestinian election of Hamas. Do secular Westerners really believe that submitting to Islamist demands for self-censorship will stop there? Why should the Islamists be anything but encouraged by the refusal of the West to defend its values?

This will not stop with a few new laws on the books at the EU. Gird your loins, people. This is only the beginning.

Tyranny is winning in a walk.

Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has spelled it out for us. During a rally in Beirut last Thursday, he made it clear what the Islamists want in the cartoon wars: prostrate submission. And if they don’t get it, they’re going to make us pay:

…there [will] be no compromise before Denmark apologizes and the European Parliament and individual assemblies in Europe pass laws that prohibit insulting the Prophet…let George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to … we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices.

Anyone who still thinks this is about manners or respect is delusional, as is anyone who thinks a polite apology will placate the Islamists. This is not about respect. This is about submission. This is an exceptionally clever and well-orchestrated opening salvo in a war on the free world by the tyrannical, violently oppressive, fascistic strain of Islam. It was calculated by a Palestinian imam based in Denmark who deliberately shopped the cartoons around the Arab world in order to stir up resentment (in a dossier that he supplemented, by the way, with far more egregious cartoons that had never appeared in the targeted Danish paper). They were leaped on by Arab tyrants as an easy way to deflect attention from their miserable administrations (c.f. secular Bashar al-Assad). The cartoon wars were designed to go for the Western jugular: fear of appearing intolerant. And they’re working.

Nasrallah and the rest of the blood-loving, caliphate-yearning Islamists can only be encouraged by the Western response. Bill Clinton, as noted on this blog, fully backs Islamist censorship of free, non-Islamic countries. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, cheerfully maintaining the special dispensation granted to Islamist tyranny, condemns all papers that reprint the cartoons, not for the practical reason that reprinting them provokes psychotic Islamists to threaten mass murder, but because the cartoons are “insensitive…offensive…provocative”. (I am offended by the constant stream of disgusting anti-Semitic cartoons that appear daily across the Arab world, but Annan has never been too bothered about that.)

Meanwhile, the Western world is lining up to submit to the bullies. Sweden is shutting down websites that display the cartoons. Canada is censoring student newspapers that publish the cartoons. The reliably craven European Union is contemplating a new media code to conform to Islamist demands. In his explanation of this dangerous idea, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini made a statement that is quite a bit closer to the truth than the fatuous “it’s all about sensitivity” declarations of the US State Department and Kofi Annan. He said, “The [European] press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression.” Creepily, though, he does not seem to consider submission to blackmail disturbing: ”We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.” (All citations via Michelle Malkin’s cartoon roundup.)

Andrew Sullivan characteristically hits the nail on the head:

People keep talking about avoiding conflict. They are in denial. The conflict is already here. It is outrageous to be informed by a crowd of hundreds of thousands that the West must give up its freedoms in order to avoid violence.

I can’t help but wonder how many freedoms the West will voluntarily give up before it finally wakes up.

British Jews have reason to be very uncomfortable today.

Yesterday, the Church of England voted to divest from all companies doing business in the occupied territories, the most prominent of which is Caterpillar. The vote was championed by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Though keen to punish Israel for what he terms its illegal actions, the Archbishop is notably without comment on the recent Palestinian election of Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the total destruction of the State of Israel.

The divestiture is apparently intended to support Christians in Israel, who, according to Bishop of Chelmsford John Gladwin, are in “despair”. Gladwin rather blithely overlooks the evidence that most of the Christian Arabs’ plight is the result of Muslim persecution. No, it’s all obviously our fault, he claims — a view the synod had no difficulty swallowing, though they might have opened their minds a little had any alternative views been presented at the synod. Alas, a fair exchange of views was not to be: the vote was called after an hour, cutting off any opportunity for rebuttal or debate.

There have been the to-be-expected responses from British Jewish groups, but most encouragingly, a scathing criticism of the vote came from George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Disgusted by what he calls “a most regrettable and one-sided statement” that “ignores the trauma of ordinary Jewish people” in Israel who are victimized by Palestinian terror, he stated that the vote has made him “ashamed to be an Anglican.”

While the Church of England has termed its divestment decision “morally responsible,” Carey classifies it as a “one-eyed” response that “only rebukes one side” and shows the church’s “propensity to reduce complex issues to black and white.” His stand was supported by the Rt. Rev. Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St. Albans and chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, who called the synod at which the vote was held “unbalanced”.

The Post article cited above quotes Dr. Irene Lancaster, of the Center for Jewish Studies at Manchester University, as saying the vote represented “a very black day for Anglican-Jewish relations.”

“The Jewish community will have to reconsider their attitude to interfaith work with the Anglican community,” she went on. “The writing is on the wall for the Jews of Great Britain, 350 years after they settled here.”