On the Air, Palestinians Soften Tone on Israelis

The 'sons of monkeys & pigs' will hasten to cuddle up to these new neighbours!

Interesting that even the Phallustinios are 'getting tired of the gory images' in their media. Perhaps too much of their own medicine?

The paleys siften their tone towards israel. So chweet of them, eh?

Who dare disbelieve the paleys? Never mind their prev record.

We'll see if Mr. Abbas is being sincere or if this is just more political maneuvering.

Far more likely than not, it's manoevring.

Aside from the fact that he is holding fast on the "right of return", Abbas has been saying for months that the 2nd Intifada was a big [strategic] mistake. The error lies not in the orchestrated, wanton killing, maiming and destruction, but the negative PR that resulted from it.

At a certain level, the usually Palestinian-sympathetic European dips were very turned off by the obvious targetting of civillians, and activities by jihadists in Europe brought things too close to home for comfort and that message was conveyed to PA reps knocking on the dips' doors in Gaza and Ramallah not so long ago when they were going around looking for a sympathetic ear vis a vis the Israeli operations to clean out the bombers.

Well put, waterdragon - the PR aspect was exactly what I had in mind.

But why should anyone be surprised if there is a change of tone? And if there is, so what? There is no difference in the ultimate aims, not of the "Palestinian people" which is the tendentious and loaded self-designation appropriated post-1967 by the local Arabs, a name which the Israelis have naively or deliberately or lazily allowed to stand, and even to employ themselves, but of all Arabs and all Muslims.

Israel is an Infidel sovereignty. It does not exist by right of dhimmitude. It does not pay jizya or submit to Islam or to Muslims. This is an outrage. This cannot be allowed to stand.

Of course, it is true that the entire world belongs to Allah, and that Muslims must work, using every instrument at their disposal -- and varying the instruments depending on their effectiveness -- in order to ensure the ultimate subjugation of the entire globe. Islam is not for the Middle East or North Africa or Central Asia, or the subcontinent, or the East Indies, alone. Wherever Islam has gone, it must still go further. And wherever Islam and Muslims are dominant, they must dominate still more -- until the local non-Muslims are slowly asphyxiated, and driven out, or under constant pressure see the wisdom of "reverting" to Islam, the belief-system for all mankind.

And eventually the non-Muslims succumb. That is how vast swaths of territory, once populated entirely by non-Muslims -- Christians and Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, Zoroastrians in Sassanian Persia, Hindus and Buddhists in Afghanistan and the subcontinent and in the East Indies, in the main by military conquest but also by relentless Da'wa and demographic conquet, were taken over by the forces of Islam. "Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated."

But, while Islam is entitled to spread, and Muslims to dominate, throughout the world, Infidel sovereignties -- where Infidels hold sway -- have no right to exist. Individual non-Muslims may keep their lives, and may even practice, if they are "people of the book" (ahl al-kitab), i.e. Christians and Jews (this seemingly special treatment means little, because if the non-Muslims involved are simply too numerous, as with the Hindus in India, and it proves impossible or unwise to kill them all, then they may, in effect, be allowed to endure a harsh existence as "honorary" ahl-al-kitabish dhimmis rather than be killed).

But if terrorism doesn't work -- that is what the word "pragmatic" means when applied to Arafat's long-time loyal henchman and Holocaust-denier Abu Mazen (a "pragmatist" who thinks the murder of civilians does "not work" -- but has never uttered a syllable of moral protest about it, and if at this stage he were to, it would only be for tactical reasons; and the same goes for all the others, including the latest star in the twinkling firmament of "moderate Palestinians" to make his skyey rounds, the "Oxford-educated" ("Oxford-educated" is the Homeric epithet for Nusseibeh, just as Fritzi Hanfstaengl was a more effective propagandist for the Nazis because he was "Harvard-educated"; people are limitlessly impressionable).

One thing needs to be gotten straight. There is no "solution" to the problem of Islam's war against all non-Muslims. For the Believes, the world is divided uncompromisingly between Believers and Infidels. Believers possess the truth, or the Truth. They possess a belief-system that offers them a Total Guide to Everything. Those who stand in the way, those who are Infidels or become Infidels by supporting them in any way, are preventing what Allah wants -- which is the spread of His people, and His faith, everywhere until the entire globe is covered. That is it.

People differ on tactics and on time-tables. You can go back, and read, from the late 1960s and early 1970s, if you choose, the dozens or hundreds of articles written by Arab military strategists on how to wear Israel down, to push it back, to demoralize it, and then to go in for the kill. Some want to declare this goal openly, and do. Some, realizing that the balance of forces is not now in their favor -- such as Abu Mazen and all his fellows -- wish to strike a different note. And they particularly wish to strike a different note (as does the Egyptian government, which after 25 years of violating every single one of its solemn commmitments to avoid hostile propaganda and to encourage peaceful relations with Israel, has suddenly -- and will continue for at least another few months -- discovered that it can say all kinds of soothing things in the run-up to the idiotic unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and also to keep that American aid money -- $60 billion and counting -- flowing to a country where Copts are persecuted, and 98% of the population, when polled, says it "hates America" (hmmm -- can't we find anyone else upon whom to lavish our largesse? The Bulgarians? The Southern Sudanese? The Costa Ricans? Why the Egyptians -- why are we giving them a cent -- so that we can pretend we have an important "Arab ally" and continue to confuse the farce, and to confuse our own policymakers, who will not see that any measures that strengthen the world of Islam will delay the moment when Muslims themselves will have to question, really question, the political, economic, intellectual, and social failures that are a direct result of that mind-stunting belief-system, Islam.

All talk about a "two-state solution" simply shows, on the part of Muslims themselves, the Big Taqiyya (could be a movie by the Coen brothers, no?). And on the part of any Infidel, it shows simply not so much stupidity, as ignorance -- ignorance of the central tenets of Islam.

Before Dennis Ross, or waddling Madeline Albright, or careerist Martin Indyk (he's gone far, the boy from Australia), continues to peddle this, ask them pleasse what they make of the Western concept of pacta sunt servanda (they'll have to look it up, and it will do them good). Was that basis of international treaty-making, in the Western world, the product of centuries? Did it emerge as an obvious concept?

And ask if the principle of pacta sunt servanda obtains in the Muslim world? Do they assume it does -- that Treaties Are to be Obeyed? And do they think that the various Arabic words for "peace" -- such as "sulh" and "salaam" -- mean the same thing, or embody important, perhaps fatal for Infidels, differences? And finaly, what do Indyk and Hass and Ross and the rest, make of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya? Oh yes, they can shuttle back and forth in the best Kissingerian style, and keep notes for fat unreadable books about the sheer vacuity and hopelessness and pointlessness of their self-important tasks -- pointlessness if you actually think it would be a good thing, a moral thing, a just thing, a geopolitically and spiritually important thing, for the Western world to move heaven and earth to make sure that Israel survives, and not only for the sake of the Israelis, or the Jews, but for the sake of the continued access to the Holy Land (what would Muslim conquest of Israel mean, in the end, for Christians? And what would it mean, even more importantly, for the self-consciousness of what used to be called, a little too complacently, Western civilization? Israel cannot be allowed to go under, and it cannot be allowed, given the repeated naivete of its leaders, to make steps that are foolish and fatal -- such as those Ariel Sharon seems determined to make in uprooting Jewish villages that have every legal, moral, and historic right to be where they are -and serve an important military function as well in the overall strategy of Isarel's self-defense).

NOTE TO EVERYONE IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND WASHINGTON. GET HOLD OF MAJID KHADDURI'S OUT-OF-PRINT BOOK ON WAR AND PEACE IN ISLAM. BETTER YET, REPRODUCE IT 5,000 TIMES AND SPREAD IT ABOUT WASHINGTON AND NEW YORK. READ CAREFULLY THE PASSAGES ABOUT THE TREATY OF AL-HUDAIBIYYA. GET IT INTO YOUR SKULLS ONCE AND FOR ALL: THERE CAN BE NO PERMANENT PEACE TREATY, ONLY A TRUCE-TREATY, BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND INFIDELS. ANY "TREATY" WILL BE TREATED AS A BREATHING-SPACE, IN WHICH TO GAIN TIME, AND STRENGTH -- ALL ON THE MODEL OF MUHAMMAD'S TREATY OF AL-HUDAIBIYYA. THE WESTERN CONCEPT OF "PACTA SUNT SERVANDA" HAS NO APPLICATION IN AGREEMENTS BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND INFIDELS.

I hated to put that all in the majuscular. A well-reasoned argument should carry its own emphasis. But really, one suspects that there is a certain myopia abroad in the land, and perhaps just this once the all-caps method may be forgiven. It won't happen again.

Changes in tone -- sure. Changes even in the instruments of the Jihad -- of course. Why put bombs in AStrasbourg Christmas markets, or Madrid subways, when, if you just keep people calmed down sufficiently, and shut up in various ways the inconvenient Theo van Gogh, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Geert Wilders, or Yvan Rioufol, or Oriana Fallaci, or Will Cummins, or Charles Moore (wasn't it nice of Tony Blair to personally call Muslim leaders in England and apologize for his article in The Telegraph? The new motto for Infidels in Eurabia: Always Apologize. Always Explain.)

So hold on to your hats. There are going to be so many indignant denunciations of "Islamophobia" (carefully left undefined). There are going to be so many Pluralism Project hand=-holding interfaith candle-light vigil whycan'tweallgetalong meetings that you are going to be even more nauseated than you are now, and there will not be a single American campus that will host Evenings of Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque (with winsome hijabbed girl students, looking very serious, and a male professor or two quoting from Leviticus and telling the students that "Christian fundamentalists," when they were "crucifying" blacks in the South, would stand around singing "Christian hymms" -- indeed, something close to that was peddled to students at Harvard on Dec. 7, by members of a Panel on "Islam and Violence" (Emerson Hall 105).

Taqiyya from the local Arabs -- sorry, "Palestinains" in "Palestine." Taqiyya and soft words from Tariq Ramadan (but why then did Muslims threaten with death -- by calling him an apostate -- the Algerian journalist Mohamed Sarfoui in order to try to get him not to broadcast his program about Ramadan, which Sarfoui nonetheless did show on Dec. 2 on France-2?). Taqiyya from non-Muslims as well, from John Esposito (does the administration at Georgetown believe that perhaps now is the time to sever its embarrassing institutional connection with Esposito-Haddad-Zoll, and let them keep their Arab-financed "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding" but without using the Georgetown name, since Esposito, not only with his U.N. performance, or his appearance on a Muslim website declaring how "pleasantly surprised" he was that conversions to Islam in America had not diminished after 9/11 (why "pleasantly"? why not simply "surprised"?), or his refusal to disavow his old friend, Aziz Tamimi, as Martin Kramer has publicly called upon him to do, now that Tamimi admitted to a television interviewer that he, Tamimi, would be glad to himself become a suicide bomber in Israel -- does Georgetown wish to continue having its name connected to someone who is closely associated with a would-be suicide bomber? That is the question, and perhaps James V. Schall, S. J. who happens to be at Georgetown, should be consulted on this matter. Not to mention the alumni of Georgetown, not all of whom will be terribly fond of Mr. Esposito or of his Tamimi or other connections. Time to cut the cord, for all it does is lend respectability to Esposito, and does terrible long-term damage, including to its finances, to Georgetown. Why should innocent faculty members have to suffer, or inoocent students for that matter, because contributions diminish, all because of the likes of Esposito. He won't suffer; his little "Center" can continue, financed by the Sabbaghs or other Arabs, for as long as he wants.

Meanwhile, kindly scroll up to the all-caps paragraph. If it is old hat, skip it. But if it isn’t , then read and thoroughly assimilate its meaning. Send it to your friends, especially if those friends happen to work on Capitol Hill or in the Old Executive Office Building, or at the Pentagon. Do your bit to enlarge the number of people who will stop swanning over Islam as a “religion,” and will instead calmly and stubbornly call it a belief-system, and will learn, and cause others to learn, the most important, indeed the most elementary, of principles of Muslim jurisprudence involving Infidels, whether under Muslim rule,or still harboring the illusion that they can continue to live in their own, non-Muslim sovereignties, unsubmissive to the will of Allah (how wrong those Infidels are!).

There is a downside to learning the truth about the value of treaties, for example, between Israel and the Arabs. It will depress many Israelis, for it means there is no end to their fight for survival. And there isn’t. But it also clears the air of confusion and time-wasting, and can enable them to concentrate on maintaining a position that will ensure their survival – which is to say, one of such overwhelming power, and strategic depth (which requires that they maintain control of Gaza, as well as all of Judea and Samaria – the “West Bank” for those of you who don’t want to use the placenames the Israelites, ancient and modern, and a certain Jesus Christ, and every Western cartographer, from the very beginning, used). Darura, the doctrine of necessity, which enables Muslims to claim an exemption from the otherwise firm requirement that they fight the Infidel when he is weak enough, is the only sure peace-keeper.

Another sad result of reality will be some damage done to the careers of careerists – Indyk, Ross, and so on. Yet, given how foolish they are, their remarkable ability to extract large sums of money from Israelis or Jews who think, with their think-tanks, they are thinkingly helping the cause of Israel – think of Indyk extracting his allowance from Haim Saban, and have a good a laugh.

And finally, let’s not forget how many frequent-flyer miles all those shuttle diplomats will no longer be able to pile up. But let’s be kind. It is not a new reality that renders all of these people yesterday’s men. It is the new and intelligent perception of the same reality that was always there. Arafat was simply an updated Shukairy, one who had bothered to invent the “Palestinian people,” use as many islamochristians as he could as front men, and for Western audiences limiting the Jihad and Al-Hudaibiyya talk and instead rolling his eyes in outrage over the “outrages” to the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.” Abu Mazen will go a step further, now that the violent intifada has been tried, a little taqiyya and charm offensive (just like what the Egyptians have decided to enter into so as to ensure Israel’s retreat from Gaza, and the steady flow of American aid that should be cut off no matter how Egypt pretends, after a quarter-century of completely ignoring its commitments, to fulfill its solumn undertakings from the Camp David Accords.

If all these schemes for “Peace” and the idiotic “Peace Process” gang agley, and will always gang agley, then what have the last 30 years of “peace-making” accomplished? Am I suggesting it was all pointless and silly, and we ought to have been educating ourselves about the nature of Islam, and done what we could to stop the Muslim migration to Western Europe instead of focusing so monomaniacally on the Arab-Israeli dispute which surely stands at the center of everything? Could I be suggesting that? Do I really think that it has all been not merely a waste, but a dangerous diversion from the real matters at hand, that threaten the survival of the West?

Well, since you ask -- why, yes.

Simply put, there can never be peace, only a temporary ceasefire, between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, according to shari'a*. As Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic stated, "There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies..."

Apologizing for Oslo, Arafat told Muslim audiences that he was following the Prophet's example by entering into a temporary ceasefire that would lead to Israel's destruction.

History lesson/on:
In 728 A.D., Muhammad's Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya - a 10-year ceasefire with the Quraish of Mecca - set the legal precedent. Two years later, on a pretext, with an army of 10,000 he took over Mecca with its Ka'aba. Such a ceasefire is agreed to only when the Muslims are too weak to pursue conquest.

*Majid Khadduri's "War and Peace in the Law of Islam" can be bought on-line. Shop carefully, the prices can vary widely.

"Am I suggesting it was all pointless and silly, and we ought to have been educating ourselves about the nature of Islam, and done what we could to stop the Muslim migration to Western Europe instead of focusing so monomaniacally on the Arab-Israeli dispute which surely stands at the center of everything? "

Posted by: Hugh at December 15, 2004 02:14 PM

Hugh

If the Muslim imperative is to render entire globe Dar-al-Islam, how can you say the Arab Israel dispute "surely stands at the centre of everything?" Bernie Lewis says Osama puts Israel at number 3 or number 4 spot in his list of grievances, far behind the infidel presence in Saudi Arabia.

I cannot say why so much importance has therefore been placed on Israel by Muslims around the globe other than for some reason they bear greater rancour towards Jews than Christians, or that being so small in number, we appear to make a softer target. As for the level of support Israel's continued existence receives -- I guess that's a combination of Jewish influence on US politics, geopolitical strategic importance and, perhaps an acknowledgement of Israel's status as the only democracy in the region.

The reason for the special animus:

1) Jews are despised; they were never a powerful enemy, as Christians were, so defeat at their hands is especially infuriating.

2) Israel is located right in the middle of dar al-Islam, and separates the two sections of the Arab world. It was controlled by Muslims for a long time, and while the whole world belongs to Islam, there are certain areas -- Israel and Spain and much of India-- that have a certain priority, at least emotionally (parts of Western Europe may actually succumb, through demography and Da'wa, before all of Israel goes under, if the Israelis prove willing and able to use their nuclear weapons), though it has to be constantly repeated that the entire world, not part of the world, not the part that so far happens to have been conquered for Islam or that once was conquered for Islam, belongs to Allah.

3) Israel is a constant reproach to the Arabs in every way, and its way of life -- tolerant (possibly too tolerant), encouraging of free and skeptical inquiry, offering full equality to women, and so on -- is everything the Muslim Arab states are mostly not. It sticks in the craw.

4) In the spirit of the story of Solomon and the two mothers claiming the same baby, it is clear that while Israel has, at least at times, been willing (quite incorrectly and foolishly) to "share" the Holy Land, the Arabs have no intention of doing so. But the least important motive for their hatred of the Infidel state is that of interest in the supposed affront to the well-being and "legitimate (or "national") rights of the recently-invented "Palestinian people." The almost complete reliance on Western aid, and the miserly and pitiful sums extended to those same local Arabs, or those who claim to be descendants of them (the ranks of the "refugees" have swelled far beyond any possible natural growth, even if every Arab family in every generation had 10 children, so that it is clear that a great many local Arabs have gone on the UNRWA dole for several generations, and no one has dared, or desired, to kick them off -- a massive fraud all way round.

5) Attention to Israel is a sure-fire way to divert attention from the failures and follies of Arab states, and above all from the criminally corrupt elites -- the House of al-Saud, the hangers-on and fixers (we know some of the names -- Khashoggi, Hariri, et al -- and some of the means, including all those bribes offered by arms and oil companies to everyone who mattered) in Saudi Arabia and the sheikdoms, and all the middlemen in London and Paris and Switzerland, arranging for the visiting Arabs' every whim, including all the services you need only imagine). If the Infidels are the permanent scapegoat and enemy in Islam, the nearest Infidel Enemy, and one which can easily be attacked because it can be made to appear that it is only that tiny country, and its handful of supporters, not the larger Infidel world, that represents the enemy in Islam -- when in fact the Little Satan, Israel, is in the end just warm-up for the assault on the Great Satan, America, and any other parts of the West or indeed the rest of the Infidel world that may decide to resist Islam and the many instruments of Jihad.

6) While under Israeli sovereignty the two religions in which the entire cities are holy -- Judaism and Christianity -- have full access to their holy sites, and the other belief-system, Islam, has control over the Temple Mount, with the Mosque of Omar and the Dome of the Rock (a typical Byzantine martyrium, with non-canonical Qur'anic inscritpions running around the walls -- inscriptions which demonstrate that they are intended to make a political or geopolitical clalim against the Infidel Christians, and the two structures themselves, built on the holiest site in Judaism, are simultaneously a claim against the Jews. Jerusalem must be taken, along with the rest of the Holy Land, in order to demonstrate sole Muslim power over the sites that Jews and Christians want to visit -- it is to deprive them, not to seize something which Muslims already possess -- full access to, and essential control over, the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Omar, which are the sites holy to Muslims in the city.

Waterdragon52--

I am chagrined to admit that I do not examine my postings for typos or anacolutha. I should, but I just don't. I like to type fast, and race with my thoughts. There are quite a few that could stand a second look. When I wrote the phrase "the Arab-Israeli dispute stands at the center of everything" I was already doing the police in different voices (in my head), and imitating some idiot reciting the idiotic and baseless phrase, but it appeared in a place where the reader has not been signalled that that is what is going on. If I could change it (perhaps in the morning I will ask Robert what he can do), I would do so thus:

...which, many fondly but baselessly insist, "surely stands at the center of everything."

I notice that you write "centre" and I write "center" -- but let's not, despite Fred Astaire's making a big song-and-dance about it, call the whole thing off.

And speaking of centers or centres, in Italy, the self-service gas stations bear big signs which unforgettably state their name:

Self-Center.

On the other -- fine Italian -- hand, English doing Italian can also produce similar remarkable examples. Passing a pseudo-Italian restaurant in Cambridge, England a few years ago, I noticed chalked on the sidewalk board announcing the day's Specials:

"Pene rigatte alla crema." What a difference a lost letter makes, as that sign, and Thomas Hardy, a fellow "centre"-speller, both remind us.

Hugh:

Although everyone says it all the time, and your head must now be about the size of the Goodyear blimp, I must reiterate:

YOU ARE INCREDIBLE!

And occasionally hilarious, as in the case of the missing letter "n". My first good laugh of the day!

Hugh:

Thanks for the full appraisal of the particular animus toward Israel and Jews. The points are pretty much what I touched on very briefly.

As for your apparent lapse, I'm just relieved to know that my reading comprehension level hasn't deteriorated too much over the years. I write "centre" because I'm the 52 year old product of the Canadian education system and have retained British spelling, (except for "ise" vs "ize" as in criticize or analyze. There I do adopt the American style).