So much for the notion that political concessions -- such as withdrawing from Iraq -- would make Spain safe from al-Qaedist terror strikes. A month after the Madrid bombings, the newly elected Socialist government withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq, adding "The war [in Iraq] has been a disaster [and] the occupation continues to be a disaster. It has only generated violence." Bin Laden later hailed this move as a "positive initiative," adding his famous line "reciprocal treatment is part of justice," implying that, now that Spain has stopped "oppressing" Muslims, they are no longer a target. Apparently that's no the case; after all, al-Andalus is still part of the umma and needs "cleansing."
Spain remains Al-Qaeda target: report," from the AFP, October 20:
MADRID - Spain’s remains a target for Al-Qaeda four years after the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people, the intelligence service said in a report quoted by a Spanish newspaper Monday.“The counter-terrorist activities by the state security forces since the March 11, 2004 attacks shows that Spain remains a target of the Al-Qaeda network and its allies as well as a source of human resources,” the intelligence service said in a report, a copy of which was seen by the El Pais daily.
“Al-Qaeda has not lost sight of the global jihad and, in exchanges with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), it has told them to quickly attack local targets and reminds them that their real goal is to cross into Al Andalus,” it said.
Al Andalus is the Arabic name for the parts of the Iberian peninsula that were under Muslim, or Moorish, control for almost 800 years until the late 15th century.
The GSPC last year changed its name to Al-Qaeda’s Branch in the Islamic Maghreb.
In September 2007, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Al Andalus to be restored to the Islamic world, saying the first step needs to be the “cleansing’ of Spaniards and French from the Maghreb.
The Al-Qaeda inspired bombings on four packed commuter trains on March 11, 2004 killed 191 people and wounded hundreds of others.
Spanish courts last year ordered 21 people jailed for life over the attacks. Four have since been acquitted after appeals.
Spanish police last week arrested 12 north Africans suspected of links to the bombings.
On the To-Do List of those who impatiently seek to wage Jihad through violent means, Spain -- Al-Andalus -- stands very high. Yet in Spain itself, there has been little understanding of this, and Spanish bien-pensants of every stripe -- a nice blend of antisemitism of Right (the same Right that under Franco allowed the local Germans to hold public masses for Adolf Hitler) and Left (the Left that has chosen, temperamentally and intellectually, to believe deeply in the "Palestinian cause" -- which is merely the Jihad, re-packaged as a phony "national liberation" struggle. Reading the Spanish press, one finds near-universal and wilful ignorance of the real history, cadastral and demographic, of the sliver of land now known as Israel, and having ripped out of historical context, world and middle-eastern, the Arab Muslim war not only on the Jewish state, but on all non-Muslim and even non-Arab peoples in the Middle East and North Africa.
But there are exceptions. There are always exceptions. These are the people who, whatever their political background or leaning, have something else: a need to find out, and respect, the truth.
In Spain there is, among others, Pilar Rahola. She doesn't, as yet, quite go far enough -- she still talks about a "solution" to a war being made on an Infidel nation-state that has no "solution" but can be managed, through deterrence. But considering what she does say, and the poisoned atmosphere around her in which she persistently dares to calmly say it, she's a hero. Not the kind of hero that the maureen-dowds of this world (falling all over themselves comparing Colin Powell to the late Joseph Welch, who was a hero) could ever recognize, but a hero. Or heroine, depending on how gender-conscious you choose to allow your words to be.
Here is a recent interview with Pilar Rahola in Ha'aretz:
Look left in anger
By Roi Bet Levi
Tags: Spain, Pilar Rahola
She takes a phone call in her car late in the evening, on the way home from the radio station. From the mobile war room she is conducting two campaigns: On the one hand, she is fighting the busy midweek traffic in gridlocked Barcelona and, on the other, she is doing her best to continue to defend the good name of the State of Israel - a no-less-challenging task than dealing with the traffic problems in her hometown.
Pilar Rahola, a Spanish-Catalan journalist and politician, is one of the most passionate and important commentators in the public discourse of the Spanish-speaking world about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. She writes three articles a week in the left-wing Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia (Catalan is the language of the autonomous region of Catalonia in northeast Spain, whose capital is Barcelona), publishes articles in leading newspapers in Argentina and Chile, and participates in countless TV and radio programs in both Spanish and Catalan. She also writes a blog on her Web site (www.pilarrahola.com). In addition, she has had the very dubious honor of having a puppet designed in her image in the Catalan version of the satirical British TV show "Spitting Image."
One-sided reports
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About 500 million Spanish speakers are exposed almost daily to biased and one-sided reports about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and to harsh, venomous, targeted and tendentious criticism of Israel's activities in Gaza and the West Bank. Only very few public figures and journalists paint the picture in a somewhat more balanced manner. As opposed to many of them, Rahola does not do so for religious reasons: She is not Jewish, and defines herself as a loyal member of the left and as a lapsed Catholic. Therefore she is also free of the right-wing, messianic fervor of which many of Israel's Christian supporters in the world are immediately suspected - even in the eyes of Israelis themselves.
Rahola, who turns 50 this week, has visited Israel dozens of times, has written hundreds of articles and essays in condemnation of Islamic terror and of the pathological anti-Israel stance - with its strong undertone of anti-Semitism - of the European left, and has been interviewed or has acted as moderator of thousands of TV broadcasts on political subjects. Nevertheless, this exclusive interview with Haaretz is one of the first times in which this interesting and impressive woman is being exposed to the general Israeli public.
"Apparently after so many years of being under attack, the Israelis are simply not used to being defended," explains Rahola, who has received many awards from Jewish organizations in South America, the United States (AIPAC) and Europe (B'nai B'rith of France), as well as from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "They are far more interested in outsiders who criticize them than in those who defend them, but it really makes no difference to me. I don't do what I do in order to be popular in Spain or in Israel, but in order to defend what I believe in."
What leads a "nice Catalan girl" to devote a substantial part of her career, and in effect her life, to defending a foreign and distant land?
Rahola: "There is a biographical explanation. I come from a family that suffered quite a lot because of its political views, like many other families in Spain. My grandfather's brother was the first person to be sentenced to death in Franco's regime. It was a family that was loyal to the Spanish Republic, which believed in the right of the Catalans to an independent state. Other family members served in the Spanish Parliament and were active in local politics in Barcelona, always on the left side of the map. I grew up in a home where I was taught to oppose fascism. The most blatant example of the horrors that can be perpetrated in the name of this ideology has always been the Holocaust of the Jewish people. In Spain they didn't speak about the Holocaust, but in my home, in the family dining room, it existed.
"I learned to speak my mother tongue, Catalan, in a totalitarian country that forbade us to speak it, I learned to love freedom under the dictatorship, I learned about the greatest tragedies brought about by fascism in a country that did everything possible to conceal them, and I had the privilege of knowing and loving the Jews without meeting even a single one of them personally. This tension between my beliefs and the environment in which I live continues to accompany me as an adult. I fight against the oppression of women in macho Spain, I do everything I can to arouse Europe's memory when it tries to repress it, and I insist on telling the truth in a society that is afraid of the truth."
Rahola's choice of words is not random. With a doctorate in Spanish and Catalan philology, she is aware of the power of language and of the ability that media rhetoric has to shape public opinion. "I don't see myself as a defender of Israel," she points out, "but as a defender of the truth. I have a great deal of criticism of various decisions of the Israeli government. I don't like what Israel has done over the years. But there's a very big difference between rational criticism of the government, of various activities of the government, and unbridled and criminal attacks against Israel's very essence."
'No choice'
Rahola had already begun to write about Israel when she was in her 20s, a short time after her first visit to the country. Afterward, to some extent, she abandoned her journalistic work (which also included coverage of the first Gulf War from Jerusalem) in favor of running a Catalan publishing house and writing books (both political works about women's rights, Catalan nationalism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and more personal books about her experiences as a mother of two adopted children , for example), and later in favor of a short-lived, but action-packed political career, as deputy mayor of Barcelona and as the only representative in the Spanish parliament of the left-wing party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. Her return to center stage in the public discourse in Spain and Latin America about the situation in Israel came after the violent events in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
"The Spanish media were exploding with anger and hatred for Israel. The newspaper headlines here spoke of genocide, ethnic cleansing and total destruction of Palestinian society. For anyone really familiar with the situation in Israel, there was no choice but to come out and choose sides. I was not only pro-Israel, but against the media manipulation, against the simplistic presentation of 'good guys and bad guys,' and mainly against the nihilism of Islamic terror.
"I believe in the right of the Palestinians to an independent state, but I believe that the best way to defend this right is to condemn terror, the worship of death and destruction, and the pathological hatred of Israel as a state and as an entity. In the Spanish and South American media one can find only victims - the Palestinians, of course - and hangmen, the Israelis, who else? I, as a journalist and a member of the left, must fight against this lie."
Your friends on the Spanish left will say that they are the ones who are really fighting for the truth.
"The left has always spoken about the fact that its main task is to improve people's lives. But many leftists have created a grotesque and monstrous version of this worldview. The dictatorship of the left is the twin of the dictatorship of the right. I have always been concerned about fascism, but I am just as concerned about the dogmatic thinking of the left, which rejects independent thought and public debate, and replaces ideas with slogans.
"In the conflict in the Middle East - which is not limited, as many in Europe would like to think, to Israel and Palestine alone, but is related to the situation in Syria and Iran - most European intellectuals stop thinking and only repeat empty cliches. This anti-Israel bias of both the left and the media is a disguise for anti-Semitism. No other country is the target of such hatred and of such belligerent criticism. No other country receives repeated threats to its existence from other members of the United Nations, while the world remains silent. The reasons for that can be found in both distant and recent history.
"Classical, cultural anti-Semitism has ostensibly been rejected by the left in Spain, but unfortunately it flows in our DNA, even though there are almost no Jews in Spain. We drank and ate anti-Semitism during our religious ceremonies, in the religious schools where we studied, in our folklore. My father used to tell me that as a boy, he would run around with a toy pistol and 'hunt' Jews, and that my grandmother used to say about women she hated that they were 'uglier than a rabbi,' although she didn't even know what a rabbi was. We must not think that we aren't influenced by this anti-Semitism and that we have put it all behind us.
"Nevertheless, this anti-Semitism doesn't really worry me. What worries me is that in the name of solidarity, justice and the search for freedom, the European left has justified the anti- Israelism of the Stalinist left for many years. That's what shaped the path of the left in Spain, for example. It saw Israel as an enemy, an invader, the right hand of the Great Satan - the U.S. The intellectuals who are now attacking Israel from the left grew up on this type of thinking.
"The left betrays its principles. It is not fighting against the major dictatorships, it is not fighting for the rights of the genuinely oppressed. It is obsessive in its criticism of the U.S. and Israel, and while it is preoccupied with them, it has neglected hundreds of thousands of dead in Darfur, for example. That is the major and genuine disgrace of the left, not the situation in Israel.
"To all that we must of course add the Spaniards' sense of guilt about what happened to the Jews during the Spanish Expulsion, and mainly during World War II. And our deviant way of dealing with that is to attack Israel, of all countries. Because the worse Israel is, the less guilty we are. The attacks against Israel are our way of clearing our conscience, and that's something I definitely can't accept."
Favoring the 'weak'
In Barcelona, your hometown, there were many demonstrations in which Catalan youths, wearing kaffiyehs, took to the streets and shouted extremist slogans against Israel and the U.S., two stable democracies. I didn't see any demonstrations against the dictatorship in Syria or against Iran's treatment of homosexuals. These young people were not Stalinists, so why are they taking to the streets?
"In the universities of Barcelona there is undoubtedly a very harsh anti-Israel discourse. Recently the Spanish Ministry of Education published a survey on the subject of immigration, in which high-school students were asked which minority is the most hated and threatening. Most of the students chose the Jews, without ever having met a single Jew in their lives.
"In the past, Catalans identified with Israel because it was an example of a persecuted nation that had succeeded in establishing a state after many years, but today young people are choosing the 'weaker' side. The question is why they don't think that dozens of people killed in an attack on a bus are victims, and why they think that the terrorist from Islamic Jihad who blew himself up is a hero. After all, if we were talking about a terrorist from ETA, from the Basque region, they would condemn him. The answer to that lies in the anti-Semitism they imbibed in childhood, in their anti-American professors at the university, and in the media that poison them against Israel. There is no question that this attitude is now very fashionable in Spain.
If it's a matter of fashion, is it possible that hatred of Israel will also go out of fashion?
"That's what we're trying to do, that's what we're fighting for. Meanwhile, unfortunately, anyone who is not anti-Israel immediately becomes suspect. I have often been asked how I can be a member of the left and support Israel. My answer is always the same: How can someone be a member of the left and not condemn terror sharply and openly? How can anyone think that liberation underlies extreme Islamist ideology? How is it possible to remain silent in light of the grave situation of women's rights in Arab countries? How can it be that the entire Arab world is living under one dictatorship or another? How is it possible to call all that a leftist worldview?"
Has your aligning yourself with Israel removed you from the camp of the Spanish left to which you once belonged? Have you felt excluded, perhaps even threatened?
"Independent thinking is lonely and hostile territory. When someone goes his own way and is not swept up in the mainstream, he is more exposed to dangers. I receive threats to my life, I'm slandered and I'm always under suspicion. I've lost close friends because of my opinions - but only those opinions about Israel. In the past I sharply criticized Spanish society for its discriminatory attitude toward women, for the terrible bullfights, an almost sacred issue in Spain, and for various economic and social issues, and no friend ever turned his back on me for that reason. But when it came to the Israeli issue, I paid a price for it."
Did it harm your political or journalistic careers?
"I really can't complain about being shortchanged. I have a large number of readers, who identify with me or oppose me, but always want to read more of my articles. In fact, when I abandon the subject of Israel for a while, there will always be someone who will beg me to write about it again. My viewpoint has placed me in a very central place in the Spanish media. I believe that that is proof of the fact that if someone believes in what he says and backs his words with facts and with logical arguments, he will always find someone to listen to him and someone to agree with him."
Today, when you see women with senior roles in politics, like Carme Chacon, the Spanish defense minister, Rachida Dati, the French justice minister, or Tzipi Livni, who is trying to form a government in Israel, do you miss politics?
"There's something very encouraging about that. Tzipi Livni can bring a great deal of hope for a positive change in Israel with her to the job of prime minister, but if she doesn't do her job successfully, I won't forgive her just because she's a woman. Personally speaking, I'm not considering a return to the political arena. In my opinion this is not the time for politicians. It's the time for journalists and intellectuals. It's true that there is now a crisis in the area of independent thinking; instead of discussions, there is shouting, but for just that reason, we are in need of spokespeople for independent thinking, and I believe that that is something that I'm good at, and that I have to continue to do. I'm not considering giving up writing, speaking, and if necessary even shouting my truth."
Let's face it. Al Quaeda represents mainstream Islamic thought, which is why it has been able to operate for years in Afghanistan and Pakistan despite huge rewards offered for leaders such as Osama Bin Laden. Not only that, but Islamic belief is, and always has been, that the whole world needs cleansing, and that jihad is every Muslim's religious obligation until that objective is met. The USA is on the list and we are not going to find safety by appeasing the jihadists through the election of someone who seeks to unite the socialist movement with the jihadist movement and overthrow the established order. After the November elections, the USA, the last best hope for the continuation of the last 2000 years of civilization, will probably fall into the hands of the bad guys through the naive votes cast by millions of "good" people who do not understand what is going on here or where it is leading us. And where 51% of the electorate seems to be leading us is back to the catacombs.
Call me evil, but I halfway think Spain deserved it for voting Socialist and giving in to Al Qaeda. They, in their ignorance, thought that appeasement would keep them safe. Let this be a lesson to the Left and to those who would sell out the right or in any way pander to jihadists. Mwhahahahah. At least they're leaving Rome alone.
I once went to Egypt in part to become immersed in arabic. I met a man that had studied philosophy, we discussed various topics lightly, and of course the Iraq war became a subject that naturally led to 9/11. He had made a good impression on me, a gentle person, married, with child, and was always kind, so I was quite surprised how easily rolled off his tongue that Israel was behind 9/11. He wouldn't believe otherwise.
Secondly, and this relates to this article, was a TV show I saw that clearly was about Islamic issues that discussed Spain. I knew Islam conquered Spain long ago and was called Andalusia, because Ibn Arabi was from there and I wanted to study his works. As the program continued it mentioned the proportion of muslims in Spain, that it was growing, and that that was good, or at least that's my impression of it. Later as I watched and read about Islam in the news, whether on Jihad Watch, memri.org, or elsewhere, the impression I got was that muslims dearly wish, apparently first and foremost among European nations, to reclaim Spain, as it is in some of their eyes really theirs to begin with.
So, I'm not surprised anymore that muslims want Spain, but am surprised that the Spanish and other Westerners can't even see what I wasn't trying hard at all to see, rather came upon me.
Pilar Rahola is a fascinating woman. Thanks for the article, Hugh.
One can only hope that the countries of the world begin to realize that there is no negotiating with Islamists. They don't want to negotiate. They don't want their fair share. They want it all. Any attempts to placate them (Condi, George?) are a waste of time and effort.
(Condi, George?)
Forgive my failure to observe protocol.
(Madam Secretary, Mr. President?)
Once again the ignorant ahve been fooled into thinking there can peace or any negotiations of a positive nature, when trying to deal with islam and the radical islamofacists. Alot of us knew that Spain's attempt would backfire and just end up meaning nothing EXCEPT for more death and destruction at the hands of islam. Spain did not learn from the first hostile takeover by islam.
Thanks, Hugh for bringing this brave and interesting woman to our attention. It is no wonder anymore how the elite and intellectuals see and hate Israel. Old pattrens are repeating themselves,and lest the world allow themselves continuing to be fooled and lied to about Israel by these so called intellectuals and snobs. History can and will repeat itself. The EU is turning their collective backs on Israel and islamofacism. The EU has alreday seen many dire consequences of what happens when you allow islam and islam immigrants in, and it may be too late already for Spain and Europistan.
Seconding Cornelius - thanks Hugh for introducing us to Pilar Rahola.
Jihadwatchers who have Spanish or Catalan may like to visit Pilar's blog and offer her encouragement and further information. I wonder whether she has encountered the Spanish translation of Mr Spencer's "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades"?
Any plans for a Spanish translation of 'The Truth About Muhammad'? Anyone out there with the skills to attempt a *Catalan* translation?
When I read that interview with Rahola, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
When she said *this* -
"Independent thinking is lonely and hostile territory. When someone goes his own way and is not swept up in the mainstream, he is more exposed to dangers. I receive threats to my life, I'm slandered and I'm always under suspicion"
and *this* -
"I believe that that is proof of the fact that if someone believes in what he says and backs his words with facts and with logical arguments, he will always find someone to listen to him and someone to agree with him"
I couldn't help but be reminded of Mr Spencer.
One by one, as Western civilisation is put to the test, those who might poetically be called (to borrow a wonderful phrase from J K Rowling) 'The Order of the Phoenix' step forward from out of the shadows, and place themselves in the gates of the City, with the Jews, Israel, all of western and more broadly, human, civilisation behind them, facing the vast looming shadow of the Third Jihad
The first notes of warning were sounded by Jacques Ellul and Bat Yeor; Bat Yeor is still at it, refusing to give up, refusing to fall silent.
Then Oriana, on 9/11, heard the summons and, dying, poured out her final four books - sounding the horn-call, as in Tolkien's epic, 'Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!'. Summoning up a world of suppressed memory: "Mamma li turchi!"
Now we find that there is Pilar Rahola. There is Magdi Cristiano Allam.
And in politics, Geert Wilders - who has read, and honors, Oriana and who, like Oriana, like Rahola, like Allam, *knows* in his bones that Israel, the Jews, Jerusalem, Zion, must not be abandoned, must not be sacrificed to the Jihad.
As far as anti-Semitism goes, it's a Ribbentrop-Molotov alliance worldwide - one has Judeophobic forces on the racist fringe allied with Leftist fellow-travellers of the Pali cause.