Diana West hits the nail on the head yet again:
Monday, Aug. 15, promises to be a great day for sharia, or Islamic law. It marks the end of the constitutional wrangling in Iraq, and the beginning of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Both events fought for, facilitated, even micromanaged by the United States — should expand the domain of Islamic law, which codifies female inferiority and religious inequality.I don't know a better way to quantify the two events. By day's end, Iraq, if it settles as expected on a draft constitution based in sharia, and Gaza, as a new sector of the already sharia-vested Palestinian Authority, will have joined the community of nations at odds with the free world.
That sounds crazy, too. But no more so than the thought of American troops fighting off Iranian-supported death squads to shore up a government led by a possible Iranian agent — Ibrahim Jaafari, the Iraqi prime minister and leader of the Tehran-allied Dawa faction. It sounds fantastic, but the notion comes from the serious-minded Carolyn Glick of the Jerusalem Post, who recently wrote: "Both US and Iraqi officials — Shi'ite and Sunni — have since the inauguration of the Iraqi Governing Council in the summer of 2003 stated repeatedly and matter-of-factly that he [Mr. Jaafari] is an Iranian agent." Mr. Jaafari spent years under Iranian protection during Saddam Hussein's regime; he also just concluded a three-day visit to Tehran where he sealed oil, military and tourism deals. I don't recall hearing any word on ending Iran's recognized sponsorship of terror and unrest in Iraq.
More craziness: The spectacle of an American secretary of state,
Condoleeza Rice, propping up the Holocaust-denying Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in the strategic dismemberment of Israel wrought by the mystifying old general, Ariel Sharon. The Israeli move includes not only the destruction or dismantling of 25 Israeli settlements and the relocation of 9,000 Israelis, but also the disinterment and reburial of 48 Israeli graves. Horrific yes, but not crazy. The threat of Muslim desecration of Jewish graves in the Gush Katif Cemetery is too real for Israel to allow the dead to remain where they rest. In 1948, Muslim armies captured the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem and turned tens of thousands of Jewish tombstones into construction material for roads, buildings, even latrines.Six of the 48 Gush Katif graves belong to residents murdered by Muslim terrorists. Five of them may well belong to members of the Hatuel family — the mother and four daughters who were shot to death last May at close range by Palestinian terrorists. They had been driving to a rally against the withdrawal, their car bumper sticker reading: "Uprooting the Settlements, Victory for Terror."
Read it all.
The only way to salvage anything out of this mess is to cover fully the violence, the hysterical scenes of triumphal celebration, the predictable screams, ululations of joy, shooting into the air, the accompanying speeches assuring one and all that "we drove the Israelis out" and all the rest of it. The more this is shown on television, the more it is reported, the more sobering -- one hopes -- the effect, not perhaps on all Infidels, but on some. And above all one hopes it will chasten those criminally irresponsible members of the Israeli government who did not oppose Sharon, who accepted every quasi-plausible line about how this would make Israel's position more secure, that this would relieve pressure in the West Bank, and so on and so idiotically forth.
Chances are, however, that Abbas is working night and day to dampen those screams of joy, those hysterical shouts of triumph, that shooting in the air, those exclamations of final triumph of the Jihad against the Infidel state of Israel. After all, he needs that $9 billion dollars the Infidels have promised.
And even though Saudi Arabia alone is taking in some $75 billion more this year than last year, you don't really expect the Saudis to donante money to their fellow Arabs -- do you? That's the Infidel Man's Burden -- jizya, jizya, jizya, lest the "moderate" Muslims in the PA and Egypt and elsewhere begin to get upset at the way those Infidels are treating them. And we can't have that.
Let's hope Abbas is not very good at crowd control. Let's hope the real spectacle is shown -- just the way it managed briefly to be on display for the cameras on Sept. 11, 2001, when the hysterical rapture of the "Palestinians" dancing for joy did manage to be captured on film, though the "Palestinian" police quickly seized as much film as they could, and prevented the handful of foreign journalists who were not "Palestinian" sympathizers from getting close to the celebrations.
There will undoubtedly be an animalistic frenzy, and the civilized world will never be witness to it. Just as the gangland wars between the PLO "police force" and hamas have been hidden from us. The arabs and their media proxies effectively control about 90% of what we see and hear.
Hugh;
Of all the things Palestinians lack, self-control(on both a personal and societal level) has to be right up there on the list. I have serious doubts that the Palestinians will be able to suppress the images of hysterical celebration. Unfortunately the MSM will spin it, or downplay it and if it makes the screens of the West it will be so obscured by the talking-head apologists and advocates of blameless victimhood, everywhere, that it will be a spent and blunted force. But this is a war of inches, if 1 in 1000, or(be still my beating heart) 1 in 100 get the message, progress is made. It does make you wonder though, with all the accurate info already available to the West, why should this story make a difference in it's perceptions of islam.
American money goes to the ME, Saudi money goes into the markets, real estate, and commodities of the West. Even their brothers don't aid muslims. Go figure.
Hugh wrote..."cover the violence fully." He is so right. That is exactly what should happen. Sadly, what will probably happen with media coverage is a couple of quick shots of crowds waving flags and a young male with some ability in English to tell the cameras what a great victory it is...of course, the cameras will cut away when he follows up that remark with, "Today Gaza, tommorow Jersusalem."
people seem to be missing the strategy being played out regarding the Israeli withdrawal from the "occupied" territories.
By doing so, both issues, "palestinian statehood, and withdrawal of Israel from so called "occupied territories" are removed. These are both situations that have soured world opinion against Israel, regardless of how wrong headed it is.
What do you supposed will happen next? Does anyone expect these jihadists to keep the peace for any length of time? Of course not. But something will change, world opinion. Israel will be completely justified in responding to Jihadist aggression, and the "Palestinians" ( I know, no such thing) will have no legitimate cause. We know that Egypt never wanted their lands back, which while under their control never had a "Palestinian" living in it, and they certainly won't want any part of it when Abbas fails to control his Jihadists either.
Think of the withdraw as temporary, and the people evacuated for safety's sake during the upcoming violence. Israel will be completely justified fighting from it's rightful borders, and world opinion will support them, and change drastically against Islamic Jihad.
Mullahmasher
As Hizbullah demonstrates daily, there are a never-ending stream of reasons for waging eternal war against Israel. For Hizbullah -- at the moment -- the "reason" is that Israel is occupying the Sheeba Farms region (part of Syria, according to the UN). But if Israel evacuated Sheeba Farms tomorrow, Hizbullah would find some other pretext for continuing the war.
The UN has already ruled that Israel will continue to be considered an occupying force after the Gaza withdrawal due to its control of air space and coastlines. And the Gaza evacuation will still leave Israel "occupying" the West Bank. Beyond this, the Palestinians and their useful tools in the leftist media consider Israel to be a racist "apartheid" state which discriminates against its Arab population and should be forced to repatriate the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who fled Israel in 1948 along with their 3 million descendants (as per UN resolution 194).
In other words, the Palestinian Arabs and their coterie will ALWAYS insist they have a "legitimate cause" against Israel and world opinion will follow suit as long as it continues to be molded by the BBC, Reuters, and UN GA resolutions. All the Palestinians need do is what they have done so successfully for the last 60 years -- remain intransigent and refuse a final settlement.
Ah, what a simpler time the world was for my parents generation, when the newsreel at the Saturday matinee (for there were not yet televisions to feed us the 5 second sound bites the MSM now prefers in place of real in-depth news coverage), no hesitation was made to show the despotic quintessence of evil with raised fist flying spout
while the frenzied crowds chanted repeatedlyMuch simpler times indeed.
"Five of [the graves] may well belong to members of the Hatuel family..."
For those who only get their news from the major U.S. networks:
Terri Hatuel was a pregnant mother driving her four young daughters in Israel. Their car was stopped by "Palestinians". They were pulled out of their car, and shot in the head at point blank range, while one of the "Palestinians" videotaped it for posterity.
They were not accidental "collatoral damage" during an attack on a military target. They were unarmed civilians that the "Palestinians" purposely and gleefully executed purely because they were non-Muslims.
Diane West is so right, Aug. 15th 2005 will be a dark dark day. Our leaders are taking us down the exact wrong path right now.
Look at the faces of the Hatuel family.
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/72
Think of the withdraw as temporary, and the people evacuated for safety's sake during the upcoming violence. Israel will be completely justified fighting from it's rightful borders, and world opinion will support them, and change drastically against Islamic Jihad.
Mullahmasher, oh how I wish what you are saying would come out true, but, alas, this is purely wishful thinking on your part. If the 'world opinion' hasn't yet realized the difference in the moral stand of the Israelis with respect to the Arabs; if people still choose to equate the measured retaliatory actions of the Israeli security forces with the absolutely demonic stance of the Islamic suicide bombers; if people still can't tell the difference between people who revel in killing innocent families like that of the Hateul's and those who are willing to treat even their sworn enemies with love and patience... I just don't see how this action by the Isrealis will do anything to convince such closed minds. All I see is that another few years down the line we will have yet another group of people like us, on a similar webdiscussion panel like this one, discussing why it makes sense for Israel to parcel off yet another piece of its territory to the Arabs in order to sway public opinion to its side.
Meanwhile, the Islamic jehadist machinery will continue to commit horific crimes like the murder of the Hatuel family members... whilst the fr--ging world bodies just sit passively by, unmoved and uncaring.