A press release from the Boston Israel Action Committee:
The Presbyterian Church, USA, has joined End the Occupation, a coalition that includes several organizations that endorse terrorism.Within the last twelve months, PCUSA delegations have twice met with Hezbollah, a listed terrorist organization.
Although leaders of the PCUSA have issued formal statements repudiating terrorism, they have sometimes admitted to having difficult recognizing it. In his 2004 Christmas message, PCUSA Moderator Rev. Rick Ufford-Chase wrote: "It's increasingly difficult to distinguish between… the victims of terrorist attacks or well-executed military campaigns… the United States or Osama Bin Laden...."
By joining End the Occupation, the Presbyterian Church places itself in close alliance with several organizations that endorse terrorism. Among these are the International Solidarity Movement, which views the murder of Israelis by suicide bombers as a "form of 'jihad'"; Al Awda – The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, a group dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish State "by any means necessary"; and the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which, at its National Convention at Duke University in October, 2004, voted to defeat a floor motion to condemn terrorism -- a vote greeted with thunderous applause. Rev. Mark Davidson, pastor of the PCUSA Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill, NC, was a featured speaker at the PSM conference. This marks the third year in a row that the PSM National Conference has voted overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining its endorsement of terrorism as one of the "strategies and tactics," appropriate in the elimination of the State of Israel.
End the Occupation is a large coalition. Some member organizations are legitimate religious groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee. Some are political associations with questionable attitudes toward terrorism, such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Many member organizations are radical left groups such as the International Socialist Organization and the National Lawyers Guild. This week the National Lawyers Guild held a dinner to honor Northeastern University Professor Shahid Alam, notorious for comparing the 9/11 hijackers to the Founding Fathers – favorably. Most groups on the list are single-city committees, often affiliated with one of the national anti-Israel groups: the ISM, PSM, and Al Awda.
Of all the astonishing developments over the past few years, this one concerning the Presbyterian Church is especially troubling.
The overall decline of the established Churches will continue so long as they follow the leftist path. Evangelicals are coming on strong, because of public dissatisfaction with these displays of moral equivalence by the "mainstream churches."
The Master never compromised with evil.
The article above lists what it correctly identifies as "radical left groups" (i.e., groups now supporting Islamic fascism, in its various guises, as honoring Shahid Alam, suppoorting anti-Israel causes, and so on. This is not surprising.
The most appropriate current vehicle to express anti-Western and above all anti-American resentments and hatreds. Curiously, those who really have to endure Muslim regimes and polities, those who identify themselves as Communists do so because they find that "Communism" or leftist politics is the most suitable current vehicle to express their anti-Islamic views (which can only be expressed in an aesopian language, or otherwise muted fashion).
So in the West, leftist haters of the West defend Islam and the agenda of Jihad (against Israel above all, but also against the United States). In the dar al-Islam, however, those who want to constrain Islam and recognize it as a threat to individual freedom and part of the forces of black reaction, as in Iran or Saudi Arabia or the Sudan, find themselves, like Iranian exiles from the Islamic Republic in Scandinavia, are members of the Tudeh (Communist) Party, or in present-day Iraq, where those who call themselves Commmunists are often among the bravest and most outspoken secularists.
Thus, a leftist in dar al-harb is almost inevitably going to be a apologist for Islam, while in dar al-Islam, where thinking people know all too well what Islam in practice, and not just in theory, means, many find that they embrace Communism, or claim to, because it is the most forceful way in the Islamic world to dissent from Islam.
Those who come from the world of Islam, and who now live in the Western world, and like to think of themselves as leftists and brave opponents of the "American Empire" and "hegemonic capitalism" and so on and so dreary forth, when they have to choose between the fascism of Islam and their own supposed leftist sympathies, have invariably chosen to identify with Islam. This is as true of that salon bolshevik, Tariq Ali in London, as of Shahid Alam on Huntington Avenue in Boston, with his pretense of being a bold slayer of capitalist idols, but turns out to be just one more defender of the most successful system of mental slavishness yet devised, with its Total Explanation of the Universe, and Total Regulation of Life.
Curious.
From the latest ADL Press Release:
"...Speaking for the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Dr. Jay Rock, Coordinator of Interfaith Relations, defended the church's recent proposal to engage in "phased, selective divestment" of companies doing business in Israel. Rev. Rock said that the decision, "is not taken as an action against the Jewish people. … It is not aimed at Israel, but at specific activities of certain corporations."
In response, Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, ADL Director of Interfaith Affairs, expressed concerns that the proposal unfairly targets Israel and has the appearance of an economic boycott against the Jewish state, similar to that once applied against apartheid South Africa in the 1960s. Mr. Foxman, ADL's National Director, added that the PCUSA's statements on the issue emphasize Israeli violence while playing down Palestinian terrorism against civilians. "What galls me is the moral hypocrisy," Mr. Foxman said. "Just say it's the Palestinian position you've adopted. … After a year of dialogue, you defend the same things you did when we began."
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The Presbyterian Church USA is now in the forefront of promoting antisemitism.
Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:
You know what's really curious? How so many people that are aware of what Islam really is find so many opportunities to try and drag down the liberals, blame the liberals for every Muslim attack, and vilify the liberals in general. I don't mean any disrespect Mr. Fitzgerald, but please tell me: what are you trying to gain by complaining about liberals? Don't you think that the right wing already hates Islam enough? (I don't mean that in a snotty way, either. I hate Islam and I'm not ashamed to tell anyone that I do so. Leftist or rightist, anyone that isn't a Muslim that doesn't hate Islam has GOT to be crazy.)
Do you think that there is something to be gained by making your average, run-of-the-mill conservative hate liberals even more? Are you spinning for someone? Are you preparing to help certain factions blame the liberals after the "inevitable" next Jihadi attack on America?
I have said this many times before: excluding the Jew-haters and Israeli-haters, I think we pretty much have the support of right-wingers locked up. If we can’t overtly focus on trying to win over the non-conservatives, would it help if we could at least refrain from bashing them?
Despite the incessant spin from certain unnamed commenters, the fringe of the right has hated America, American values, American people, etc. etc. for many decades. The KKKers, Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, and the murderers of United States Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Confederacy WERE conservative.
To say that Muslims are liberal really is a joke. Sure, they accept the help of liberals, like they accept the help of conservatives.
Please, Mr. Fitzgerald. I have many liberal views and more than a few conservative views. Most people call me a liberal. I have, with no prior hope for either conclusion, determined through careful consideration that drug use, pornography, abortion, interracial marriage, and homosexual love/marriage should not be anyone's business except the adult participants. In the same way (i.e. with no hope for either conclusion) I have determined that, as my good friend David Horowitz titled a seminal essay, Israel is the victim and the Arabs are the indefensible aggressors in the Middle East. Likewise (and with four years experience in the Marine Corps) I think that the role of women in the military should be as limited as practically possible.
So while I am in favor of conservative issues, when they are correct, I am also in favor of liberal issues when they are correct. (Why should I want the federal government tell two men or two women in love that they MAY NOT marry because of the Christian fairytale book? Why should I trust Antonin Scalia to determine whether my wife or daughters MAY have an abortion if they are raped?) Am I in error to think that eventually we anti-Jihadists will focus on Islam and its trappings, or will this forum forever be a right-wing site that mostly talks about Islam, but tends to fixate now and again on Liberalism (a la the en vogue fixations on Ward Churchill and Lynne Stewart)?
There has been some extremist talk here lately pertaining to the possibility of rounding up the American Muslims and putting them in camps somewhere. (BTW, if we do this, don’t look for THIS liberal to put up any fight. I hope that it will either be a waylay point for eventual resettlement in a Muslim country, or that the "guests" will have RU-486 put in their water supply. Just look at how the "palestinian" "refugees" in their "camps" have somehow swelled by tenfold in two generations. (This is a point I often use with my liberal brethren with wild claims of the "palestinian" genocide, slaughter, massacre, ethnocide, diaspora, etc. etc.))
But if we do "put away" the people in America that follow a cult that demands the destruction of democracy, is there any reason to think that the liberals won't be put away next?
It is hard for me to maintain my faith in this anti-jihadi movement, especially since I really can't tell any of my liberal friends to visit here.
Let me give you an example of the hypocrisy. It is an accepted historical fact that James Baker III told Reagan, "F**k the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway." Now, oddly enough, he is gainfully employed by the rulers of Saudi Arabia to FIGHT the lawsuit brought by the widows, orphans, and survivors of the Saudi-funded WTC attack. Why then all the hype on Lynne Stewart? Does anyone really think that a nobody lawyer for a Jihadi has more influence on the world scene - or national scene for that matter - than James Baker? As in “Secretary of State” James Baker?
This is just one small example of what I see as an anit-liberal bias among the commenters and increasingly the Board of Directors here at JW and DW.
What am I to make of this? Should I stay and ignore the non-Jihadi related stuff? Should I lay down and play Colmes for the trolls that come here mainly to excoriate liberals? Should I argue with the monkeys until I am banned from posting comments? Should I just forget the whole thing and keep telling myself that everything will be alright?
These aren't rhetorical questions. I would really, really appreciate frank answers. (Attention rabble: spare me the flame mail.)
I remain your attentive reader,
KJ
LLLL
Dear KJ,
All I can say is wow. Thank you so much for expressing what for me has been the most perplexing and puzzling aspect of these last few years. Why is the left so completely deaf and blind when it comes to Islam? Why is it they refuse to see the obvious?
I think the answer lies in Hugh's post. For Muslims, the way forward lies through secularism and the most extreme form of secularism is communism and you have a ready made opposition structure left over from communism in the dar al-Islam. Whereas here, the post-communist left is radically secular in opposition to the Christian underpinnings of Anglo-Saxon democracy. Both oppose Christianity and equate fundamentalism across the board.
The radical left's alliance of convenience with Islamism only makes sense in that they are both anti-Christian.
I would like to hear more from your point of view.
"It's increasingly difficult to distinguish between. the victims of terrorist attacks or well-executed military campaigns. the United States or Osama Bin Laden...."
Jesus or Beelzebub, I don’t think they would know the difference even if it came up and bit them on the behind.
They believe that Israel’s rejection of the Messiah has broken Israel’s covenant with God.
Unfortunately this mistake has been made by many misguided Christians throughout
history and flies in the face of what they say they believe...
A history lessen or good Bible study is what these people need, just not sure it would help...
As a socialist-with-suspicions myself, I can sympathize with you a bit, KJ. I know there's argument here among everyone about politics above and beyond the call of mere religion, but we don't do each other a disservice when we beat on each other about issues that are more peripheral to the main issue: justified islamic skepticism.
So it pains me a bit to see Gary and KJ especially duking it out all the time. I know you guys don't like each other (seriously - we all picked up on that, I think =) ) and through careful political analysis and seer-like between-the-lines-reading, I can tell your politics don't match. Both of you have truth on your side, insofar as individual and group perception goes. Let's not make politics an issue on top of everything else.
At the same time, Hugh and the site au generale do have a point: there is widespread...well I don't want to say collaboration, but I'm sure someone will in a minute anyway...between some leftist organisations and islamicism. At the least, one can say that there is mutual emotional and rhetorical support. We should - must - recognize that. It represents the field of thought arrayed against those skeptical of islam as a geo-religio-political force, and we cannot fail to know our opposition. Therein lies societal death. (Incidentally, I've dealt with the ISO at different times, and a more particular set of lunatics does not exist anywhere. Once, they protested Easter at a Catholic church. They do NOT represent socialism for me, or frankly that pesky thing they like to avoid, called 'reality'. 'Nuff said.)
But at the same time, it does not render leftist thought, or liberalism, or socialism, null and void of value. The core principles are not - or should not be - a question for this site. This isn't liberalwatch. It is jihadwatch, dhimmiwatch, and serves its purpose by being exactly that.
Let's concentrate on the issues.
Geoff
PS: Getting liberals to visit this site is something that would help both them, Robert Spencer's work, and liberalism/socialism overall. If it can be done - somehow - it should be, though I can certainly appreciate KJ's position.
Stout hearts.
End the Occupation? Why, that sounds like a GREAT idea! Where do I join?
...
Oh, they meant Israel, not Lebanon. Sorry. Got m'self all fired up fer nuthin.
Geoff
Yes Geoff, as the Protest Warriors' slogan goes, From Iraq to Palestine, End the Occupation* (*does not include Tibet, Hong Kong, Lebanon or anywhere else under Islamic or Communist domination. They should just shut up and stop whining.)
kj has a point insofar as this battle is too important to be compromised by partisan politics.
I'm from the opposite end of the political spectrum to Bush: I'm an atheist who doesn't have a problem with gay marriage, abortion, legal drugs and prostitution, or even euthenasia for those who want it. Siding with conservatives (especially christian conservatives) is not an ideal state of affairs for me, but my traditional compatriots on the left are so hellbent on whitewashing Islam that I have no choice. kj is right about the importance of winning more liberals/leftists over to the cause, but on the other hand, if such people are genuinely too stupid to see the threat posed by Islam, with all the evidence we now have available, I'm not sure they'd be much use in a fight anyway.
Excellent post kj. I often feel pretty much the same way. I'm mystified by the amount of nonsense that is generated by folks pigeon-holing one another here. I'm an Independent and always have been. I vote for the person and their ideas not for a political party. I recognize we each have both liberal and conservative elements in our personal political philosophies. To rage and bombast against “liberals” or “conservatives” like there was a clearer distinction between the two than there is seems disingenuous to me.
I would be interested in hearing what people here think defines a "liberal" as well as a "conservative".
I basically think we should keep our tax dollars at home, help America and Americans first, find OSB and kill him, find and eradicate every terrorist group and the governments that support them, that we don’t have to rebuild everything we blow up, that immigration and border security are priorities, that the government should be held accountable for its actions when it screws up, and state rights. I believe in social progress and the preservation of civil liberties. I believe in the separation of religion and government. I believe that the United States of America is the greatest country on earth because of its history of human liberation and freedom.
Does that make me a stinking liberal or a nasty conservative or just an American trying to find his way?
Politics makes me nauseous how about you?
D.T.O.M.
kj -- My aim is not to anger you; but I assume you wouldn't want to be coddled either: you are blind if cannot see that many, if not most, progressives support Islam. It is a knee jerk reaction. In my U.S. locale, for example, a group of progressives were commenting that they were going to avoid the place of business of a conservative American whose wife opposed abortion in favor of a similar business run by a Palestinian. They knew nothing about the Palestinian owner other than that he was (they assumed) not Christian and not American.
Is this a healthy frame of mind? I think not. Is it common? You bet. I salute you if you do not think that way, but any peopl who side with you on many issues, do. Try to get them to see reason (at least about Islam), and stop being bitter if you feel lumped in with the rest. Certainly you are welcomed here.
Sorry. Typo in last paragraph: "Many people who side with you" and NOT "any peopl who side"
I think the bottom question here is: why the Western members of activist groups including pro-Islamicist militants are overwhelmingly of a liberal mindset?
My answer: because liberalism provokes severe ethical deficits, as moral relativism, and its derivatives: pacifism, multiculturalism, anti-Westernism.
Joel CatalÃ:
You might consider reading Paul Berman's Terrorism and Liberalism and Sam Harris's End of Faith for another perspective on why so many liberals/leftists are so tolerant of, if not sympathic and supportive of such heinous totalitarian ideologies as communism and Islamism.
Berman says it's because the liberal mind (a philosophy that emerged during the Enlightenment)simply cannot contemplate the medieval, illiberal mindset. Harris's findings are similar.
A sweet new kind of dhimmitude has just been shown on Britain's Channel 4, the everlasting fortress of Political Correctness and anti-Americanism. No longer able to pretend that Islam is not violent and aggressive, they are lumping it in with other religions, specifically Sikhism - which, given the history of the Sikh religion and community, is a particular outrage. To be specific, they have made a documentary in which Sikh anger about a play in which murder and rape take place in a Sikh temple is placed on the same level as the Theo Van Gogh murder and the innumerable other outrages of Muslim activists. Now, even granting that the Sikhs were wrong in that particular episode - the play dramatized events that, alas, have taken place, and no Sikh can guarantee that moral corruption and cruelty will not take hold of groups of their fellow-Sikhs - there still is a million miles between the over-sensitive, angry reaction to a single episode, and a repeated and apparently unstoppable pattern of criminality that blankets the Earth and that the world's thirty million Sikhs could not, even if they had the will, have the strength to match! This is simply Muslim apologetics taken to another and to a lower level. I am only surprised that they did not go after the Christians as they usually do.
KJ,
Even though I am an agnostic, I find your moral equivalencies between Christian and Muslim fundamentalists extremely wrongheaded and profoundly offensive.
I agree that the useful idiocy of leftists who act as apologists for Islam should never be used as a pretext for bashing liberals, but when you react by bashing conservatives you are guilty of the same crime.
For some self-styled "liberals," restrictions on abortion are just as "anti-women" as Sharia law. Perhaps those leftists should be invited to a stoning fest for a woman who is pregnant out of wedlock. I doubt that having a "right to choose" is much of a priority for her. Hopefully, you do not belong to this group.
To the conservatives, you gain nothing by gratuitous bashing of liberals. After all, Charles Schumer's denunciation of CAIR is worth more than 1,000 denunciations by Robert Spencer. This is by no means meant to belittle Mr. Spencer's excellent (and highly readable) scholarship. I mean that when conservatives criticize Islam or Islamists, most leftists write it off as further evidence of their "bigotry." On the other hand, when liberals say the same, they pay attention.
In effect, liberals who criticize Islam can be a highly valuable asset when they make their views known to other liberals. However, in view of the world threat of organized Islam, your differences with conservatives are petty. So please, stop barking up the wrong tree.
Here is a thread on a liberal website were your criticism of Islam from a liberal point of view could provide a valuable service to society. Please don’t delay. Strike this thread while it’s hot:
http://forums.bluelemur.com/viewtopic.php?t=1943&start=45&sid=8752a70b5b7b3ce57b8149afcd49828a
In the 1980's, Orianna Fallaci was denounced as a "communist" for suggesting that Soviet Communism was a lesser evil to the Islamist agenda of the Afghan Muhahideen.
Today, she is denounced as a "fascist" for her continued criticism of Islam and Islamism.
In effect, the consistency of her criticism provides a sharp contrast to the cognitive dissonance of her critics (How can she be both extrem right and left for the same point of view?)
Geez!
Hugh has nothing to apologize for here.
Oh for Christ's sake: typo.
My post should have been "we DO each other a disservice", not "we DON'T do each other" a freaking disservice, I HATE typos. Sorry.
Hehe waterdragon52 - 'Protest Warriors', yeah, didn't that used to be part of their theme? I was at university on a campus where they were very active and there was always something going on. Churches, banks, the lot. (Won't say what campus that was: there's a couple of islamofascists from another site monitoring my posts on here and one of these peace-loving individuals has already more or less stipulated to the punishment of those who insult the Prophet by murder. Nice and tolerant, eh?)
Geoff
Paolo:
Check out Melanie Phillip's Diary (MelaniePhillips.com) for more evidence of the BBC's Arabist leanings. They recently let some Scottish cleric prattle on in a "homily" about a conversation he had with someone who assured him he was an Arab Israeli (named Adam?) who served in the IDF and was ordered to shoot at Palestinian children. The twit, a Reverend Bell, accepted the story at face value and the Beeb, of course, didn't bother to do any fact checking.
The rather ignorant reverend not only assumed that this person previously unknown to him was telling him the truth about his alleged origins and army service, but doubtless knows squat about the non-Muslim "arab" population of Israel -- the Jews who fled Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt etc., nor even the Christian "arab" population. The gormless idiot just assumes that they are all Muslim if they aren't Jewish.
Above kj directs a question or four to me: "What are you trying to gain by complaining about liberals? Don't you think that the right wing already hates Islam enough? ... Do you think that there is something to be gained by making your average, run-of-the-mill conservative hate liberals even more? Are you spinning for someone?" I don't think these questions are sent to the right address; I have never complained about "liberals" and I do not spin for anyone, not even the prettiest Parca.
I always assumed I was a liberal, a conservative liberal, a liberal whom time forgot. Liberal, libertine, lib-lab or, moving along now in the alphabet, possibly a 33rd degree mason, a mugwump, a muggletonian, or a mousketeer, just to the right of Jimmy and just to the left of Annette Funicello. This party-game of blindfolding each other in turn, spinning whoever is "It" three times around, and then letting him or a not impossible her to run around to pin not the tail on the donkey (or elephant, or camel, or olive-tree or apple or cart or apple-cart dreaming of an upset victory), but some identifying label on someone else who then becomes "it" in turn, is no fun anymore. But fortunately, the cake is coming in right now, and the birthday boy has to make a wish, and then blow out the candles before they burn down making a mess of the frosting, so let's stop the game, and gather in the dining-room, and sing together in imperfect harmony.
And since you would like some reassurance that I am not a reactionary follower of Joseph De Maistre (from the same period and place, I would choose Benjamin Constant as both writer and political philosopher; and from this time and place, I detest Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan in equal measure), I would like to assure you that among figures in modern American political life I admire, the names Fiorello La Guardia, Henry Jackson, and Ward Connerly come immediately to mind. One ran on the "fusion"-- Republican and Liberal Parties -- ticket, one ran as a true-blue Democrat, and the third, I suspect, would now run as a Republican. As I understand these things, only one of the three will be able to run for office in the future. If he does, I'm for him.
Waterdragon52 -
thank you. I had missed that particular enormity. However, bad though the BBC is, Channel 4 - which is a separate broadcaster - is infinitely worse. They are the modish-left kind, both brainless and extreme. They make the BBC sound moderate, sensible, and open-minded.
Well, it isn't a problem the Presbyterian Church is against the war while some terror supporting groups are too (or are in the same coalition), but it’s a problem because religion shouldn't interfere with politics! That’s the one and only reason why the Presbyterian Church made a wrong decision, but you can't blame them some strange organisations are in the End The War coalition as well (while most groups in the coalition probably aren't supporting terror at all).
The tendentiously-named "End the Occupation" movement deserves analysis. The very word "Occupation" already gives the game away. For an occupying power by definition has no legitimate claim to the territory it occupies solely as a result of military conquest. Germany conquered much of France, and the Germans strutted about, heels clicking, the boulevards of Occupied Paris, which itself was in Occupied France. But all educated people know that the German claim was illegitimate.
But Israel's claim to Judea and Samaria (a/k/a to the post-1948 world, brainwashed by Arab propaganda, as "the West Bank") and Gaza is based not on mere military conquest, but on the successful defense, by Israel, against repeated attempts to snuff out its young life, beginning with the attacks by five well-armed Arab armies (three of them armed by the British, who as the Mandatory Authority were supposed to do everything in their power to "faciliate Jewish immigration" and "close Jewish settlement on the land" to bring about the establishment of the Jewish National Home -- and they betrayed, all allong the way, that solemn commitment to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations), and continuing with the 19,000 fellahin attacks from Egypt alone, between 1948 and 1956, and then with the constant efforts, empoloying every possible means, to destroy Israel, for as an Infidel sovereign state within the dar al-islam it was as unthinkable within the 1949 armistice lines (what the Arabs now call, forgetting that they never accepted those lines as permanent in the nearly 20 years when the offer was still on the table, as "the pre-1967 boundaries") as it is now, or would be if it were reduced to a small reservation the size of Tel Aviv. As for the "one-state solution," that is simply an attempt to bring about, through demographic means, the imposition of Islam -- Jews might remain, some of them, but only as dhimmis, owing whatever rights they did possess to whatever the Muslims chose to give them. That is the essence of dhimmitude.
One wonders if the "End the Occupation" people find anything curious about their insistence that in their worldview, there would be two rules: one would be for all states, everywhere, that have managed to win a war against powerful aggressors; the second rule would apply to tiny Israel alone. Who today thinks that it was wrong to awared the sudtirol, now the Alto Adige, to Italy after World War I, even though 97% of its population consisted then of ethnic Germans? Who thinks it was wrong, except German revanchists, for Czechoslovakia, in recovering the Sudetenland after World War II, to expel 3 million ethnic Germans on the grounds that they represented a permanent security risk, even thoush Germans had been living there for 600 years? Who thinks it was wrong for Poland to be awarded much of East Prussia? Or who thinks it wrong that the Russians kept Kaliningrad (nee Koenigsberg)? Who would deny any of the borders throughout the world, settled by war? For a minimum consistency must be observed, and if it is not, one has a perfect right to point out that curious inconsistency, and to suggest that reasons other than fairness are in play when it comes to calling Israel's possession of the small territory it kept from its 1967 feat of arms an act of "occupation."
And there is yet another claim, entirely separate from that by which many European states claimed the territory they did in the aftermath of World War II. That is the Mandate for Palestine, about which everyone seems to think they can forget. Why? That was a solemn undertaking by the League of Nations, and for some reason the promise to create an "Arab State" and a "Jewish State" out of the Ottoman Empire, as well as a "Kurdish State" and an "Armenian State," has been forgotten, as the Wilsonian principles were whittled away and 80 years of Arab propaganda has caused many to believe that the Middle East and North Africa are "the Arab world" and all the many non-=Arab and non-Muslim peoles, once so numerous, and existing still -- Copts, Maronites, Berbers, Kurds, Armenians, and many smaller peoples and creeds -- have no real place. That is what islamization, and arabization, has done, in its 1350 years of conquest, slowly asphyxiated or converted or killed or expelled or driven into voluntary exile all other peoples. But is it not something that decent people, or people who like the idea of real human variety, as opposed to the feigned and phony "diversity" that the age demands. The same people who so shrilly cry for "diversity" everywhere in Europe and North America, and hide behind its putative virtues to assault and destroy the very idea of intellecutal merit, and of political and social coherence , become strangely supportive of a complete lack of diversity in the Middle East, and inattentive to those Berbers, Kurds, Copts, Armenains, Yazidis, Circassians, and -- Jews -- all of whom have a perfect right to exist, not on sufferance, and not as dhimmis, and not, where they are Muslims, as subservient to Arab supremacist ideology.
In the article posted above one reads the following:
"End the Occupation is a large coalition. Some member organizations are legitimate religious groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee."
How innocent that sweet exemptng of the American Friends Service Comittee, and how completely off the mark. For as all who have been following it for years well know, the "American Friends Service Committee" in everything to do with the Middle East was long ago catpured by people who have as much in common with the expressed ideals of Quakerism as did Yassir Arafat or Ahmed Shukairy before him, or Mahmoud Abbas after him.
The moving spirit of Middle Eastern matters at the American Friends Service Committee, its genius loci or more accurately, diabolus loci has for decades been one Joe Gerson, a long-in-the-tooth radical. He has been at it, this tireless old leftist, hating America and especially Israel, for so long. The Soviet Union collapses. Terrorism, one of the weapons of the Jihad to spread Islam and to cause it "to dominate and not to be dominated," extends from Israel across the globe. The Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they're only made of clay, but oh my dear -- Joe Gerson's mind may stay, secure in its obstinacy, its refusal to take in the real world, with all of its difficulties, dangers, imperfections. America is bad, Israel even badder and getting huger all the time; la lutte continue. Besides, he is always on the side of the angels. How does he know? His personal bible tells him so.
His views are no different, or perhaps even more sinister, than those of David Duke. His reason for being is not the “Palestinians” for if those “Palestinian” Arabs were locked in mortal combat with anyone else – Ruritanians, Freedonians – he would not care one whit. His struggle to delegititmize Israel is not only to get at Americ-sorry, Amerika, the West, capitalism, and so on, but to get at it through Israel. Classic left-wing antisemitism, which too many seem to have forgotten about, or forgiven.
You will not find the gersons, storks, roths, and suchlike worrying about the environment, though one might have thought that would be a classic, profit-vs.-people kind of morality play, pure capitalism against the rest of us, the birdwatchers and nature lovers. No, they realize that environmentalism meets cutting down on fossil fuels, and cutting down on fossil fuels means limiting the power of Saudi Arabia (which does not exercise them in the least, nor does the imposition of the Shari’a, nor the mistreatment of women or of homosexuals – as long as it is done by Muslims) and the rest of the Islamic world. And their hatred is so pure, these Comintern-grading-into-Islamintern functionaries. They would rather see the West undone, which depends on the continued OPEC-supplied revenues, even if it means continuing to ravage the natural environment.
No absurdity is too absurd for these people. In Iraq, despite all the evidence of the innocent idealism of the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project (altogether too innocent and expensive and dangerous for my taste), they still describe it as an example of American imperialism. It is too bad that someone forgot to tell the American government that real imperialists don’t spend $300 billion to rescue others from monstrous dictators, and real imperialists don’t spend money on territories they are capable of seizing and holding, but try to exploit those territories; and real imperialists don’t stay in order to provide the locals with every convenience, and to prevent them from killing each other.
Nothing, no study of Islam or of Muslim treatment of non-Muslims, must be allowed to get in the way of their worldview, And they are apologists for Islam. Neither Joe Gerson, nor Joe Stork, nor Irene Kahn, of the American Friends Service Committee, and Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, respectively (but not respectably), has ever expressed outrage and anguish about the massacres of Hindus in Bangladesh, the destruction of thousands of churches in Indonesia (that will be left up to the Barnabas Fund), the attacks on Christians in Pakistan, or on Buddhists and Hindus all over southeast Asia, or about the disguised Jiyza of the Bumiputra system in Malaysia, or the genocide (not "civil war" between "contending parties" -- how transparent, and misleading, are the phrases employed by the BBC, NPR, The New Duranty Times, The Washington Post), nor about the massacres of Christians and destruction of churches in Nigeria, nor the genocide in the southern Sudan, nor slavery in Mali, Sudan, Mauritania, and if they were ever to utter a peep, it would be in a way that carefully avoids mentioning Islam.
There is a good website, www.ngo-monitor.org, where the full scale of the mendacity of many of these well-haloed but essentially vicious organizations, having been seized from within by those who have no intention of promoting real justice or real peace, though these are their two favorite words, can be seen. Visit it, and help to publicize its efforts.
The Northern Presbyterian Church (later the core of the UPCUSA) was the first major American Protestant denomination to purge its "fundamentalists"; and has gone downhill ever since. It is an employer of left-wing agitators in its denominational bureaucracy while its people in the pews now average 55 years or more in age. However, even forty years hence, when it will probably be a small sect for actual numbers (after most of its membership dies off), it will still be able to hire radicals to make noise and pretend to represent "religious" Americans because of the large endowments given it in the early 20th century.
There. I've changed a few things in TypeKey, and seem able to get in again.
Hugh, good stuff, thanks.
And thanks Doctor Phibes and others for putting the point that one can have a left or a liberal understanding of issues, and still be against islamic and arab colonialism and expansionism.
Many of my erstwhile buds have lost their senses, and support that which aims to kill them and destroy their world (islam ++)- they are part of the mainstream left. They have bought a strange package of anti americanism, anti free enterprise, anti globalism, white people have ruined the world, Israel is a colonial exercise, progress is bad, peace at any cost/the west is the cause of war,etc.
Such stupidity drives all but the naive, stupid and young away - i hope.
Great discussion, thanks everyone.
The issue of the survival of western civilization brings all sane people together, has me supporting, politically, people like Bush, to my surprise, and puts all our lesser disagreements into perspective. The same thing is happening internationally, bringing India, China, Russia and other previous incompatibles, into flexible alliances with America, Europe etc.
Does this let me post?
presbyterian constituents are probably becoming disuaded by theie leaders, in our lifes as christians knowing that Jesus Christ paid for our sins and paved the way for MORALITY we are taught knowingly that Israel is chosen by GOD and we pray that someday they come to realize Jesus as the Messiah and accept HIS all knowing truth.
blasphemy begets one thing.
Perhaps JW types should bone up on (google) Dominion Theology, aka Christian Reconstructionism. It's roots are in Calvinism, Orthodox Presbyterianism.
The movement is stealth, and has infested the Christian Right, many are Domionists are have adopted the Dominionist theology and goals, without even knowing it. It has infested the Council for National Policy, the American Enterprise Institute and much of the "patriotic" (especially Christian) right wing.
The movement is essentially anti Semitic, the Presbyterians believe like James Jordanthat the Jews really are not Jews (i.e., descendants of Abraham), the Khazar theory. Jordan wrote of this in an essay "Christian Zionism and Messianic Judaism.
The Tribulationists, the Christian Zionists like Jerry Falwell,who believe that the Jews are no longer God's chosen people, but will become Christians in the last days of Armeggedon, after 2/3rds of the Jews in Israel perish.
BTW, I'm one of those "liberals" (but can't call myself a leftist as I fought all of my life against Marxism, nor can I in my old age call myself a rightist, as they are non thinking, brain dead reactionaries), but a liberal that is pro Israel and "Islamophobic".
Israel has a right to exist, as much as America has a right to exist, and the true Islamic goal is to wipe out the Jewish state (via "right of return") and make Israel a Muslim state named Greater Palestine with what Jews survive the pogrom living under Shari'a.
I doubt that any Jew would tolerate that, once they get a whiff of dhimmitude (not even the leftist Jews), and that would add about 5.5 million Jews to the American and European Population, which might not be a bad thing for America and Europe, the west needs a wake up call as regards the real threat of Islam.
Rb sez:
You have it all backwards RB, it isn't anti Christianism that motivates the hard left, but
the Marxian concept of eqalitarianism a classless society.
The left wears economic blinders, and they believe that all the ills of the world are caused by unequal distribution of wealth, exploitation of classes.
Contrary to your opinion, Islam and Marxism are actually cut out of the same eqalitarian classless bolt of cloth. There are more Communist Parties in the Muslim countries than in the west. (Google it for yourself I did). The Iranian Mujahdeen e-Khalq, a violent resistance movement to the Mullahcracy is both Marxist and Islamic. It was run out of Iran and given shelter by Saddam (because it was anti Mullah - the Iraq Iran war)
Islam teaches (but doesn't practise) that all men are brothers, all men are equal (except of course for the mujtahid who enjoy socioeconomic power, wealth and status at the expense of the fellah).
That which binds the Islamist and the left is the Marxian concept of a classless society and the ideation of the equality of men.
The hard left of course is ignorant, brain dead, and wears blinders just like you guys on the right.
As regards "anti globalism" as a middle class, well to do American I too an anti globalist, because globalism simply equates to the outsourcing of the US economy, and the eradication of the working middle class. Not to mention the ill will incurred internationally as the globalist pillage and rape the economies of third world countries, with unfair trade practises, impossible demands and privatization of even community water pumps in small villages. People who earn no money at all, have to drink from polluted streams and rivers, if they can't afford the few coins needed to fill up water jugs at the town pump.
The IMF forced Bolivia to privatize it's water, which it then sold (cheaply) to Bechtel, and that put the screws to the Bolivian peasant, and there was a revolt over water. Bolivia revoked the contract and now has to pay Bechtel millions, which it doesn't have, and all because the IMF demanded that Bolivia privatize it's water.
And the first thing the provisional government did in Iraq was to privatize it's services (guess who bought them at bargain basement prices?)Answer: Bechtel Corporate invasion of Iraq, and Haliburton as well, making big money off base building, pipeline construction, oil production and public construction, and you wonder why Iraq's are infuriated and want us to end the "occupation".
You would be too if another country liberated you, then stole your resources and charged you what amounts to a fortune, for services the government once provided. No problem if there were jobs, but there aren't because these same contractors have been outsourcing the jobs to foreign companies and laborers, like Nepalese and Turkish drivers, Egyptian, Yemeni and Kuwait and Jordanian Laborers, to the Philipinnes any place that they can find labor that will work for vitual peanuts.
Waterdragon52: Berman says it's because the liberal mind (a philosophy that emerged during the Enlightenment) simply cannot contemplate the medieval, illiberal mindset. Harris's findings are similar.
I already read Berman's book, and found it astonishingly shrewd.
However, American libertarianism had also, to say, an Enlightened leg, and didn't fall in that mindset gap trap; John Quincy Adams understood swiftly the Mahometan problem at the moment it arose:
"John Quincy Adams Knew Jihad", By Andrew G. Bostom,
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15201