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I'm not sure that terrorism would vanish without foreign support, or that the Arab/Jewish situation is analogous to that of France and Germany. Neither France and Germany had the jihad ideology continually enflaming matters, and that ideology will continue to exist once foreign support is removed -- weakened, to be sure, but still present.
In any case, there is some value in what Finnish analyst Antero Leitzinger says here. From "EXPERT INTERVIEW: Finnish Researcher Antero Leitzinger On Global Issues" in Global Politician, with thanks to Anthony:
RM: What do you believe are the obstacles to Middle East peace and why?AL: The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything. In South Lebanon, I saw once a large Hezbollah poster blaming the USA for "all our problems". This reminded me of the standard explanation by Soviet travel guides, who used to explain all their poverty by the sacrifices during the war, some 40 years earlier, although meanwhile, Germany and Japan had already recovered from the war. This type of reasoning is politically left-wing, a product of the Arab Socialism that dominated Middle Eastern societies far too long. The Arab world needs now a healthy right-wing reaction, strength to cope with the harsh realities of life, and rational assessment of what can be achieved at what costs. Maybe it was unjust, that the state of Israel was founded on Arab soil, but so are many things in the world, not least in history, and we still have to go on living. Many Arab governments have learned to live with the realities, and should be supported, while the common people still need to be educated for responsibility. It is in their own best interest. There should be no obstacles unless some people still want to carry unfounded hopes of easier solutions, like by further internationalizing of the disputes through UN resolutions, or terrorism.
RM: What needs to be done then to make a peaceful Middle East? What forces are stopping the peace movement, and what should be done about them?AL: Peace between Israel and Syria would provide the former with safe borders. Syria should also stop all its support for Palestinian terrorists. All the suicide bombers and masked gunmen in Che Guevara T-shirts, who keep appearing on Palestinian TV and funerals, should be eliminated forever. Terrorists do not grow on trees, and if their foreign support is drained out, they will vanish. The Palestinians would then feel free to lean toward their brethren inside the 1948 borders, the so-called Israeli Arabs, who have a long experience of peaceful coexistence. Together, they should form a strong moderate majority and marginalize the extremists. There is no reason, why Jews and Arabs would need to fight each other. Germans used to live much longer in antagonism toward the French and Poles, but now they are on friendly relations. In a few decades, we could look back to the Middle East conflict as a short crisis in a basically positive, long history.
Posted by Robert at January 20, 2005 7:41 AM
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Apologetics has always been important to the Arab cause. Even if the leaders of the countries are pragmatists they will gain nothing from enlightening their population to how pathetically weak they are compared to the outside world and Israel. this is the line conservatives in the Islamic world take.
the whole idiom of history is so important to the Islamic identity and even more so to the Arab one, that for the truth to be told could lead to a national catastrophe.
it needs to occur yet the only large and organized mainstream groups that have an alternative reading of history at the moment are the Islamists. thus the added urgency to promote the moderates into society, and to end the position that is occuring at the moment where the Islamists are the ones giving the debate its Parameters, forcing the conservatives to become more extreme and thus the population at large too. this is a one way street, there has to be another dialogue inserted here, and soon before society is polarized into extreme views, favouring the Islamists.
Posted by: hmmm![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 20, 2005 9:06 AM
'This type of reasoning is politically left-wing, a product of the Arab Socialism that dominated Middle Eastern societies far too long.'
...and people wonder why kj and giaour keep screaming the same mantra over and over?
Is this not proof that the nazis were also of the same class?
Posted by: Gary at January 20, 2005 10:43 AM
"The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything . . . This type of reasoning is politically left-wing, a product of the Arab Socialism that dominated Middle Eastern societies far too long."
I'm not so sure this is the source of that denial. I discern something similar in Israel among Sephardi/Mizrachi Jews (those originally from Middle Eastern societies).
Posted by: Paul at January 20, 2005 10:58 AM
This pretty much sums up the problem in Israel, and indeed, everywhere Islam goes:
The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything.
It sounds a lot like the Nazis, and it also sounds like a certain politically-aligned group of people I know here in America.
Posted by: kj at January 20, 2005 12:14 PM
KJ:
What was that you said you were going to be doing in your little sign-off on election day back in November... ...something like "knock a few heads", wasn't it?
Although I agree that too many bloggers are too fixated on left/right, it seems you're a bit into bullying, yourself.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at January 20, 2005 12:26 PM
The paranoia and denial might be laughible
if it wasn't for the number of innocent humans slaughtered for Islams cause to force sharia law on the world.
Live free or die!
Posted by: ala-sux at January 20, 2005 2:02 PM
'The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything'
Sounds a lot like the DNC. No wonder the left supports jihadists 'freedom fighters'!
Posted by: Gary at January 20, 2005 4:00 PM
From the Article:
The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything.
The Arabs or more exactly Muslims, for all Muslims are nothing more or less than Arabicised people, including the likes of Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam, Anglos and Blacks who convert, are indoctrinated by
virtue of their "faith" into denying self criticism, it is not political, it is a function of the ideology, then again Islam is intriniscally, and inherently by nature a political ideology, a ,b>conservative ideology, and in the eyes of Muslims a perfect ideology (google Islam Perfect Ideology), and thus it is not, cannot be wrong, or capable of modification or modernizing.
From Hmm
Parameters, forcing the conservatives to become more extreme and thus the population at large too
A conservative is one who is resistant to change, and is by nature (and definition) reactionary, The problem with Islam is that it is, of all ideologies, the most conservative of all.
Posted by: Gary
This type of reasoning is politically left-wing, a product of the Arab Socialism that dominated Middle Eastern societies far too long.'
...and people wonder why kj and giaour keep screaming the same mantra over and over?
Is this not proof that the nazis were also of the same class?
Is that a slam or support. If a slam it is unjustified. Islam defies the conventional meaning of left and right, as we know it in the US, I've had to go great lengths (to no avail) to prove that there are indeed believing
Muslim Marxists, and there are Marxist parties in practically all Muslim countries.
Marxism is not incompatible with Islam, for both are eqalitarian, in fact the Iranian Marxist party Mujtahid e-Khalq, which is the bane of the Mullahcracy in Iran, is also active in Iraq attacking our troops and Iraqi's.
The party is not only Marxist but Muslim.
If we are every going to unite and confront the evil of Islam, we have to step outside of our little boxes.
Personally I'm non plussed and at my ropes end, I get called a NAZI by "left leaning types" on another forum, and a Jew by Muslims and their antisemitic dhimmi's on another forum, and who knows what
the opinion of me is on this blog.
Gary says again:
Sounds a lot like the DNC. No wonder the left supports jihadists 'freedom fighters'!
And what does the right do? It supports the man who is butt buddies with the Saudis, who are the principal
financiers of terrorism and Islamic propigation via "charities".I'm talking of George Bush and the Saudis.
Did you not read his speech where he referred to the Koran, have you not seen pictures of him in Mosques with mullahs, did he not deliver a speech from a mosque?
Salman Rushdie, by the way, would be considered a leftie, in America.
What do you think you are achieving by constantly alienatitng the left, if we are going to preserve our
secular western democracy, we need to get over this team mentality of left v right and find a way to
pull the left over to our side, and that might mean give up on the notion of turning this country into a Christian version of Iran..
There is no left v right in the war against Islam, and it is a war, Islam declared a war on Dar al Harb, at
the outset, and I've seen damn few Muslims who are willing to back off and embrace a secular western democracy, and the noise from the right indicates that their is a growing clamor to embrace a western theocracy.
I don't want my grandchildren pledging allegiance to an Islamic Republic of America, one nation under Allah, by the same lights pledging allegiance to one nation under god is of the same ilk.
A theocracy is a theocracy, and the antithesis of what this country was.. a secular western democratic republic.
What is needed is an intellectual tool, or ideology, a way of thinking that will preserve and protect this once great nation, without caving into the extremes of left or right.
The problem with the left needs to be explored, as does the problem with the right, but it can't be done
by people mired in the swamp of left or right.
Leftists, from what I can gather, are motivated by beliefs of equality, and they see the world through
blinders of economics and class, rightists are motivated by their own sets of beliefs, everyone sees the world through the filters of their own woes, and what they perceive serves their own self interest.
BTW, consider this Gary support for free speech is self protection and not support for Jihadists.
Being against the invasion of Iraq was common sense, self protection. Saddam did not present a threat to the US or Israel (Israel with it's excellent intelligence service knew that), all that the invasion of Iraq has done is to stir up the hornets nest of Jihadis, and where before there thousands, now there are tens if not hundreds of thousands.
If George Bush, the RNC, and the right, especially our Senators and Congressman, really want to fight a war on terrorism, then they are going to have to call the devil by it's name - Islam, and start from there, but your president is in bed with the Muslims, especially the Saudis, so who is the real friends of the Jihadis? George Bush and the RNC, or the left. And did not Wolfowitz laud Iraqi Ayatollah al Hakim
"Paul Wolfowitz was the special guest at a memorial service in Arlington, Va., for an influential Shiite cleric killed in a car bombing in Najaf, Iraq. The deputy defense secretary hailed Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim as a "true Iraqi patriot,".....His Islamist political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and its 15,000-man militia had been funded by Iran, a member of President Bush's "axis of evil."......
Chalabi, a Shiite, had worked openly with Iranians for many years, most prominently through his contacts with SCIRI [Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq], which was known to be an arm of Iranian intelligence. In fact, SCIRI was active in Chalabi's INC from 1992 through 1996 and was named in the 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act, signed into law by President Clinton, as one of the opposition groups that the United States should work with to topple Saddam...
BTW Gary, on another forum where I am the only member that effectively and consistently takes on the Muslims, the forums master of taqiyyah also complained about my "mantras" one of which is that man creates his god in his own image, and then uses him as ventriloquist dummy to fulfill his needs and assuage his fears. You might not care for that mantra, but it has more than a ring of truth, and if I had said that Muslims use Allah as a ventriloquist dummy, you would probably agree. So you and the Muslims agree about me, and I'm complimented
Posted by: Giaour at January 20, 2005 11:06 PM
at January 20, 2005 11:09 PM
"The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything."
From the above quote replace " Arabs " with " Republicans " and take scapegoats as a obvieously a reference to " liberals " and you pretty much have the state of politics in America today.
It is a crude infantile outlook that will only play into the hands of the jihadist. I stongly suspect the jihadist have on their agenda a civil war erupting within the United States it's self. They are being greatly aided in this effort by conservatives spewing out a daily torrent of hatred on talk radio against " liberals " and " democrates ". This hatred being directed against American citizens will only create a climate condusive to civil strife as the jihadist are in fact trying to engineer themselves.
---Nossy
at January 20, 2005 11:55 PM
They have pushing around a trojan horse for a long time, actually since time, and they have infiltrated the world long ago but suddenly now is the time to implement the sticky trap.
Ignorance must rule them.
Posted by: Chuck at January 21, 2005 5:39 AM
Giaour~ what's your point?
Posted by: Gary at January 21, 2005 4:19 PM
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