Big-time negotiators
False healers and woman haters
Masters of the bluff, masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see
Wears a cloak of decency — Bob Dylan, “Slow Train”
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served 18 years in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. In 2008 he was a foreign policy adviser to Ron Paul. He is also a venomous antisemite who has written, even in the age of Obama, that “Israel-firsters” are the “masters of the executive and legislative branches.” Well, here’s another charge of antisemitism for Giraldi.
And that’s the thing: in “Neo-Cons and Muslim Haters” at the antisemitic Veterans Today site (thanks to Maxwell), Giraldi (while misidentifying David Horowitz in the photo above — Horowitz is not in it) complains that “David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and Pamela Geller” are “leaders in the indictment of Islam” and also “not coincidentally, a vocal advocate of Israel and its policies.” He blames us for the Norway murders (find the truth here) and says: “They are the alligators in the swamp that they have created and are now frantically engaged in distancing themselves from their words and deeds.”
Actually, I am distancing myself from nothing, because I have done nothing. I never called for violence or anything but peaceful and legal activity, and so any violence supposedly done because of what I have written is no more my responsibility than the Beatles are responsible for the Manson murders. But of course Giraldi and others say that what I write is “hate” and thus the crossover to violence is not a big leap. Actually, however, this is a common charge but there is no hatred in anything I write, and I challenge anyone and everyone to find a single genuinely hateful statement I’ve ever written. On this page for eight years I have said this:
Any Muslim who renounces violent jihad and dhimmitude is welcome to join in our anti-jihadist efforts. Any hate in my books comes from Muslim sources quoted, not from me. Cries of “hatred” and “bigotry” are effectively used by American Muslim advocacy groups to try to stifle the debate about the terrorist threat. But there is no substance to them.
It is not an act of hatred against Muslims to point out the depredations of jihad ideology. It is a peculiar species of displacement and projection to accuse someone who exposes the hatred of one group of hatred himself: I believe in the equality of rights and dignity of all people, and that is why I oppose the global jihad. Those who make the charge use it as a tool to frighten the credulous and politically correct away from the truth.
Some time ago here at Jihad Watch I had an exchange with an English convert to Islam. I said: “I would like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc.” Is all that “anti-Muslim”? My correspondent thought so. He responded: “So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims.”
In other words, he saw a call for equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies, including freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, and equal employment opportunities, as a challenge to his religion. To the extent that they are, these facts have to be confronted by both Muslims and non-Muslims. But it is not “anti-Muslim” to wish freedom of conscience and equality of rights on the Islamic world — quite the contrary.
But what of Philip Giraldi and his ilk? They’re giving aid and comfort to the jihad that wants to see Israel destroyed utterly. Many jihadists in that area are frankly genocidal, including Hassan Nasrallah of Hizballah, who has said: “If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Now that is a real incitement to violence, and a genuine evil. And Philip Giraldi has the temerity, or the moral myopia, or both, to go on a Jew-hating website and try to take the moral high ground with us.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. — Isaiah 5:20