The title comes from the original WND piece, but in fact this is not a "shocker" at all. It is just another unsurprising and dispiriting bit of dhimmitude -- and confirmation of Bat Ye'or's Eurabia thesis. From WND, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
A top European Union official held a secret meeting in Gaza with the leaders of Hamas, in spite of EU denials to the contrary, in which he praised the terror organization's work, blamed terrorism on "Israeli occupation," referred to Hamas militants as "freedom fighters" and failed to contradict claims Israel was responsible for the September 11 attacks, according to transcripts of the conversation obtained by WorldNetDaily.There were some leaked reports of the 2002 meeting, but the transcripts for the first time expose what was discussed with Hamas and may shed light on various aspects of EU Mideast diplomacy.
The transcripts, seized from the Palestinian Authority Preventive Security compound in Gaza during Israel's 2002 Defensive Shield operation and released through Israel's Center for Special Studies, document a discreet meeting between Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in March 2004, and Alistair Crooke, the security adviser for Miguel Moratinos, then EU special envoy for promoting the peace process in the Middle East.
The meeting conflicts with a November 2004 statement issued by a spokeswoman on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana denying Solana or his staff ever met or held "direct contacts" with Hamas or other groups featured on the EU list of banned terrorist organizations....
According to the confidential transcripts, Crooke explained to Hamas leaders he requested the meeting, in part, because he was worried a speech to be delivered by U.S. President George W. Bush regarding American policy toward the Middle East might reflect negatively on the EU.
"We are currently in an extremely grave situation," said Crooke, according to the documents. "Europe doesn't know what President Bush is going to say in his speech to the Middle East. So far there are about 27 drafts of that speech, and there are disagreements in the American administration over that issue."
Crooke urged Hamas to keep the meeting private so that, the envoy explained, Israel and the U.S. could not take advantage of the conversation, according to the transcripts.
Crooke immediately voiced his appreciation of the terror group's welfare programs, which include schools and health care centers, and praised Hamas as an "important political factor."
He told Yassin and the other top Hamas leaders present: "The main problem is the Israeli occupation," explaining he understood it was impossible for Hamas to lower the level of violence unless Israel and the Palestinians were engaged in a political process....
Yassin responded he was satisfied with Crooke's "understanding" that the source of violence in the Middle East is Israel's "occupation," which Yassin said refers to the entire state of Israel, founded in 1948, not just the West Bank, which Israel obtained following the 1967 Six Day War....
Yassin told Crooke he was dissatisfied with an EU decision to place Hamas on an official list of terror organizations, suggesting the Europeans should support Hamas "the way you supported the [Muslim] fighters in Afghanistan."
Crooke replied Europe sympathized with the Palestinian people, adding, "I explained to Solana and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair that the status of Europe in the eyes of the Palestinians has started to decline. ... We do not consider Hamas' political wing to be a terrorist organization."
Crooke talked about different definitions of terrorism: "As for terrorism, I hate that word. I've spent some time in my life with freedom fighters like in Colombia."...
At the 2002 meeting, Yassin informed Crooke of his goal to replace Israel with a "true state" encompassing the entire territory of "Palestine," based on Arab and Islamic tradition and distanced from the corruption that Yassin said originates in Israel and the West.
Without addressing Yassin's comments, Crooke continued by stating the EU objected to Israeli settlement activity.
"There must be a total halt of the settlement [activity]," said Crooke.
Yassin then blamed Israel for the September 11 terror attacks.
"Time will tell that Israel knew [in advance] what happened in America, and that it was global Zionism that paralyzed the American security so that war could be declared on the Islamic world and [on] Hamas. Approximately 100-120 American Zionist agents [knew about it] and did not report it. I do not rule out the possibility that they attempted to induce Hamas [operatives] and other Islamic operatives [to do it]."...
Observers attribute the EU's traditional pro-Palestinian stance to its close economic ties to Arab countries and growing Muslim populations throughout Europe.
The EU previously adamantly denied meeting with Hamas, although in one interview, given to the BBC, Solana mentioned he had "had direct contact with Hamas, but not in the last few days."...
"Of course the EU is biased against Israel. This is nothing new," said a deputy from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office who was aware of the transcripts. "But to read [the Crooke] conversations is still shocking. The level of immorality displayed by it is very telling of the EU approach to the Middle East."
Juan Cole, Exposito, Ward Churchill and the others whom kj defends, must be cheering. Eh, kj?
The links will continue to be posted, no matter what lies you wish to disseminate, about me or the subject material. We can't win if you want to keep one arm tied behind our backs- which is, first, to keep hammering away at the Academics who are indoctrinating the upcoming generations in the 'religion of peace,' islam. 2nd, to imform the masses, and Keep informing the masses, until they get the point and force changes. I will never understand your desire to defend those who are subverting students across the US, by somehow making it out that it is an attack on 'lib'ruls'. (proper spelling is 'liberal,' which is how I was taught to spell).
www.historytextbooks.org
Just when one thinks the EU couldn't possibly sink any bloody lower.....
*yuck!*
The answer to this "Palestine is rightfully ours" nonsense by Hamas, etc. is for the next Pope, as the head of the Church of ROME, to apologize and declare that the ancient ROMANS were wrong to expell the Hebrews from their homeland during the first two centuries, A.D., and that they are now to be given their stolen homeland back to them according its original 70 A.D. borders.
Trump that imprimatur, hummus eaters.
Yes they are freedom fighters. They are fighting against freedom. All they want is oppression on the unfortunate.
That was a good one, Umma. =)
Geoff
From the Hamas Charter itself:
Let these common brigands try to convince the grassroots defenders of Western civilization that they can be constructively engaged in any sort of dialogue save over the terms of their surrender. Until then, they can take up their grievances with the IDF."ROMANS were wrong to expell the Hebrews from their homeland during the first two centuries..."
--from a posting above.
The Jews were not expelled by the Romans, nor by the Byzantines. It is true that by renaming Judea "Syria palaestinorum" or "Syria of the Philistines" the Romans tried to effect the Jewish connection to the land -- just as the Arabs have done it in recent decades by absurdly appropriating to themselves both the toponym "Palestine" (which is simply how, in Western Christendom, the Holy Land was called) and inventing the "Palestinian" people out of the local Arabs who lived in the territory that, though it had been assigned to the Mandate for the creation of the Jewish National Home, was seized by the Egyptians and Jordanians in their war of aggression against the nascent Jewish state in 1948.
Jews continued to live in the Land of Israel (or the Holy Land, or Palestine) well into the period of the Muslim conquest. But for them, as for Christians (and Jews) elsewhere whose lands had been conquered by the Muslims, conditions as dhimmis proved so onerous, and the ruination of the country so complete, that many left. See Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634-1099.
Eventually of course, 90% of the world's Jews came to live outside the Middle East, in Europe -- though to read some authorities, it was only the influence of European antisemitism that led to the Muslim mistreatment of Jews.
But that mistreatment was different from, and independent of, European -- or Christian -- antisemitism. However, the anti-Judaism that, in the Spanish Inquisition (according to Benzion Netanyahu), metamorphosed into something like modern "racial" antisemitism, with investigation of the Conversos, and that emphasis on limpieza de sangre (purity of the blood, or racial purity), might owe something to the long Spanish encounter with Islam's peculiar ferocity and the religiously-sanctioned dissimulation that no doubt worried the members of the Inquisition. At least this is worth investigating.
Keep your eyes on Alistair Crooke. This supporter and apologist of Hamas, and adviser to Moratinos and Solana at the highest levels of the E.U., is more than an evil figure who deserves special mention in Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia." His new business is called
"Conflicts Forum." Look it up on-line. See what he and Patrick Seale (in the 1970s a giver of fascinating parties, with Arabs and British girls, at his house off Eaton Square)and Mark Perry and some others are up to. What are they offering, except their "services" to rich Arabs, who want to dampen out suspicions about Islam. He and his well-paid "consultants" will help promotve the "Dialogue of civilisatons" by shilling, essentially, for the Arab Muslm side.
Well done, Alistair. Those years in MI6 or whatever it was paid off. Now who is going to begin to update, but also improve upon, those books by John Le Carre, for the newest menace, or the menace that was for so long overlooked, because of the inability of the Western world to consider two different enemies at the same time. While we worried for almost a half-century about the Soviet threat, the threat of Islam -- which had only been quiescent from a lack of power and wherewithal -- was quietly growing. Le Carre won't do it himself -- given his moral blindness on Israel (and we all know what that implies), he will never cover the problem of paid agents of Islam.
But all those ex-diplomats, those journalists, those "scholars" of Islam, those ex-C.I.A. and MI6 agents now making their living giving "lectures" on the Middle East, on the wonders of Islam, and so on, or providing special "services" -- see that Conflicts Forum site one more time, and do stop to study it carefully -- to those rich Arab Muslim interests.
Crooke was recalled by the British when they realized what he was up to. But strangely, he has not yet been charged with anything -- shouldn't his current "Conflicts Forum" and its clients be looked into just a bit by some investigative journalists? And will such people continue to receive visas to this country, or will their brand of defending and protecting terrorists -- see the record of what he said at his meeting with Yassin of Hamas above -- require their being put on the Watch List, and no longer able to enter this country?
That would be a salutary lesson. What if all those now on the Arab Muslim take were to be kept from entering the United States -- and what if a few of the more aware countries even in Europe were to follow the American example?
Eventually, even the dream of buying a half-timbered house, or even just an oast house, in Sevenoaks, from those grateful Arab Muslim clients, might be deferred. Especially, of course, if one is risking having one's every act monitored by journalists, or even by one's former colleagues at MI6 who, for some reason, continued to work for their own country, and for the good of the West, and not for the Jihadists everywhere.
Please -- go to the website of Conflicts Forum. See if you think I am unduly suspicious -- or not.
I thought I would cut-and-paste the homepage right here, so that even if you do not go to the Conflicts Forum website for a closer study, you would have something immediately available. You will see at once what the whole thing is about --for visitors to Jihadwatch, the tranpsarent attempt to work on behalf of Arab and Muslim interests should be clear. It is all here: the appeal to "overcoming current barriers between Islam and the West" -- which of course means working to continue to ensure that Westerners do not find out what Islam is all about.
Here goes:
"Conflicts Forum is a UK-based independent, non-profit, multinational organisation that operates between societies and inside centres of power to help its partners and clients achieve objectives in an increasingly interdependent world. Its members are based on five continents.
It is a forum hosting professional people united by a common interest in overcoming current barriers between Islam and the West. These people have extensive grounded experience in zones of conflict across the globe.
The principal aim of Conflicts Forum is to establish new understandings of Islam and of political Islam in the West and to challenge the prevailing western orthodoxy that perceives Islamism as an ideology that is hostile to the agenda for global democracy and good governance.
Conflicts Forum seeks also to stimulate a new and rigorous understanding of armed political action, its causes and its varied nature, and to distinguish between this and what has been labelled as “terrorism”.
At Conflicts Forum we believe there is a need to change the ways in which we, the West, engage with the Muslim world; we need to recognize the "Other".
We need to promote rapprochement with the Muslim world; and work at mutual listening: we need dialogue between our peoples, and this dialogue should be the basis for our communication with other cultures.
We reject the proposition that we share no values or that the values of others in some way threaten our own existence.
Conflicts Forum aims to educate the wider public, to work directly with policy makers, to develop the policies that reflect a greater understanding of the developments within Islam, and that work with the grain of the culture and ethos of the setting in which they may be applied.
Conflicts Forum members work closely with governments and those who influence them, including the media, to highlight its analyses and engender support for its policy advice.
Conflicts Forum members – including prominent figures from the fields of politics, diplomacy, cultural relations, business, academia, religion and the media – are directly involved in helping to bring the work of the organization to the attention of high-level policy-makers around the globe. Conflicts Forum raises funds from governments, charitable foundations, companies and individual donors.
Latest Activities
In April 2005 the UK based newspaper The Independent cited Conflicts Forum in a top-ten of policy think tanks in the United Kingdom. Conflicts Forum appeared alongside other international think tanks such as Demos, BT Futurology Unit, the Fabian Society and Adam Smith Institute in the article promoting 'inspired notions' and the 'brains brigade.'
In March 2005 Conflicts Forum held the first of its Dialogue sessions under the title of Islam and the West: Opening the Way to Peaceful Dialogue. The sessions were held in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and attended by leading figures from a number of Islamic movements including: Jamia'at al-Islami in Pakistan, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hizb Allah.
Western attendees included Former government and intelligence officials, opinion formers and academics. The event generated new connections and considerable press attention. The Dailogue process will be taken forward with the next event scheduled for later in the year.
Since a Press Launch in London and Beirut in December 2004 Directors and Associate Members of Conflicts Forum have been engaged in various initiatives including: The Doha Debates broadcast on BBC World and hosted by Tim Sebastian in Qatar, an interview on the BBC HardTalk programme, lectures to: The Chester Beatty Library Conference on Understanding Islam, Transatlantic Perspectives on the Middle East Conference at Cambridge University, the Defence and Security Forum, the Grimshaw Society at LSE, and the Mountbatten Society at the Maritime Warfare School.
Conflicts Forum will soon facilitate the first in the series of key Dialogue Initiatives between principal figures from Islamist groups and the West. The inaugural event will be a ‘listening exercise’ in which Conflicts Forum aims to foster mutuality through cultural translation in both directions. This event will attempt to finds ways out of the disconnection that currently characterises fractured relations between Islam and the West."
None dare call it treason?
Well, I don't know about that.
I mean -- what would you call it?
I've spent some time in my life with freedom fighters like in Colombia."...
We call them drug-traffckers or "narco-terrorists".
Scary, but not surprising. Looks like also left-wing academics have become more bold in normalizing and presenting in acceptable, even positive terms, not just "Islam" or "moderate Islam" but now also "political Islam" and "Islamism". I'll post some links that'll give you a taste:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KAY/is_1_8/ai_n12934989
- a commentary on a book written by "a scholar of the Frankfurt school", obviously looking for a leftist-Islamist grand vision of a world revolution. Some quotes:
"Susan Buck-Morss reminds us that an engaged public must take on Islamism as a discourse, or a way of understanding and giving meaning to the world. ... She asserts that Islamism is not a pathological worldview used by evil fanatics to destroy other ways of life but rather a political discourse. Islamism is ... a diverse and fragmented politicization of religion and culture in which people explore and figure out power relationships, postcolonialism, capitalism, modernity and Western hegemony.
... If both Western progressive and political Islamic thinkers/activists could recognize a shared commitment to understanding power, then that very communication would pull together a leftist movement dedicated to radically democratizing the world."
Note the word "democratizing".
Note also that the commentator thinks that a distinction between Islamism and terrorism is so obvious it shouldn't even need to be mentioned: "it is especially disturbing that... Buck-Morss finds it necessary to make the disclaimer: "Islamism is not terrorism.""
Another example is from some US anthropologists, defending e.g. the Taliban and political Islam and opposing e.g. Salman Rushdie (for these authors, the fact that the mullahs gave him a death fatwa is obviously not enough to justify calling them "fundamentalist"):
http://www.fathom.com/feature/190136/
Quote: "Rushdie's statements are also misleading in their portrayal of contemporary Islamic movements, or what he refers to as fundamentalism. A large sector of the Islamic movement, pace Rushdie, is neither against a multi-party political system, nor universal suffrage and accountable government. In fact, in many parts of the Muslim world (such as Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and Tunisia), Islamic political parties contest elections when allowed ... In Egypt, for example, the Labor Party (Hizb al-Amal), in coalition with one of the major Islamist organizations in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood, regularly floats candidates in local and national elections."
- which is supposed to prove that the Brotherhood is indeed a democratic organization, and anyone who claims otherwise is a prejudiced racist bigot who just does not have a clue. (according to this logic, Hitler was also a democrat)
Just remember Orwell: repeat a lie many times enough...
I so hope that that the French will vote the new constitution down.
I am afraid if UK does or Denmark does, it won´t count, they just modify it a bit then pushes on.
There are many reasons to this:
But this one is way enough:
Common foreign policy represented by foreign policy commisary.
This means that once France and Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Spain have decided their foreign policy, The rest of Europe must follow.
I don´t count this as being in the interest of us here.
To think some COSTLY bureaucratic, centralized autocratic entity, infamous for it´s lack of insight and understanding and it´s laizzes faire attitude towards democracy, can make decisions that will bridge the differences in politics and national sentiment of all countries to a uniform standard is utter folly.
Unfortunately most of our elite spite evidence are still fully convinced of their dream, the idea of Eu state in my opinion is a bigger problem than the immigration issue, which is a problem, and especially will be due, to very same effort.
The conflict Club, a strange name for yet another society that seeks to undermine great britian for the profit of its members.
But of course Englands history is peppered with such clubs, some limitng their activities to just the supply of cheap meals for their members (Wimbledon tennis club)
however during the war a similar club bent on disseminating the propaganda of Dr Joseph Goebbels.
It operated from a white russian tea room in South Kensington and called itself the Right club.
Its head was Archibal Ramsey, a notorious racist MP and ex Guard's officer.
As a result of the activities of Anna Wolkof and its penetration of MI5, the Defence of the realm act was passed by the war cabinet in 1940.
British was peppered with nazi sympathisers and apologists at the highest echelons of society.
But when Britain reacted these traitors were swept away and prevented from obstructing the war effort.
Now we are witnessing the same subversive occurences on behalf of the Arabs. let us hope we ultimately will react as we did under Winston Churchill.