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His lawyer is shocked too
Hassan Diab is a part-time instructor at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. Now he is wanted in France on multiple counts of murder, attempted murder and wilful destruction of property for by a bombing outside a Paris synagogue that killed four people in October 1980. The bombing was apparently the work of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is universally described as a Marxist/nationalist group. In this as in its other operations, however, it acted as either a willing or unwitting tool of the jihad against Israel.
In this article, we hear about what a terrific guy he is, how he would weep if he had to swat a fly, how he petted dogs and gave candy to orphans. We have seen this before. It was the Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler who told a group of SS leaders: “Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet -- apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written…”
Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? From their own perspective, and that of their friends and family, they probably were. And that is what makes what they did all the more chilling in the grotesque banality of its workaday evil. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational and good, and the murders were a means to that goal. It was not just a noteworthy achievement, but a necessity, for them to remain “decent fellows,” for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society (but what was in reality one that created a nightmare of fear and coercion and totalitarian control, as does Sharia). That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for -- in their view -- a goal that remained good.
Today’s jihad terrorists are likewise the adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that teaches them that murders committed under certain circumstances are a good thing. And those murders, here again, are not committed for their own sake, but for the sake of a societal vision hardly less draconian and evil than that of Hitler, but one also that portrays itself as the exponent of all that is good -- as the resurgent Somali jihad shows us yet again. But the continued reference to such people as “terrorists” pure and simple, and the refusal of Western governments, the mainstream media (both liberal and conservative, as I am being reminded yet again this week) and most law enforcement officials to examine their ideology at all, only reinforces the idea that these people are raving maniacs who are interested solely in chaos for its own sake. The society they want to build, and the means besides guns and bombs that they are using to build it, remain below the radar screen of most analysts. These people are just “terrorists,” interested only in “terror.” And so the clueless mainstream media is continually surprised when their friends and family affirm that they are nice guys after all. Decent fellows, like the genocidal family men of the SS.
"Ottawa prof accused in Paris bombing shocked by charges: lawyer," by Matthew Pearson for the Canwest News Service, November 15 (thanks to James):
OTTAWA - The Ottawa university professor arrested this week in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue is a devoted teacher who is shocked by the charges he currently faces, his lawyer said Saturday.Hassan Diab, 54, is wanted in France on multiple counts of murder, attempted murder and wilful destruction of property by an organized group after a bombing outside a Paris synagogue killed four in October 1980. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Special Operations, was blamed for the attack.
Rene Duval, Diab's lawyer, said his client has been in a state of shock since RCMP officers showed up at the door of his Gatineau home on Thursday with an arrest warrant.
"When you've never had any problems with the law and all of a sudden to be handcuffed and foot-chained and driven to RCMP headquarters and then to court, it's distressing," Duval said from his home in Trois-Rivieres, Que.
Yeah, I'll bet the people in the synagogue were a bit distressed, too.
Diab teaches part-time at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. His work keeps him busy full-time, and he's a devoted teacher who has the support of his students and the universities, Duval said."This is a gentleman who is a very professional person and, of course, everyone is surprised by this thing that happened. You will have a hard time finding someone who will say something negative about him."
Of course!
But both schools have been tight-lipped since the professor's arrest, and Leslie Laczko, chairman of the sociology and anthropology department where Diab was teaching a course this term, refused to comment.Diab is listed as a contract instructor in the department of sociology and anthropology on the Carleton University website.
Posted by Robert at November 16, 2008 7:12 PM
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Sure sounds like that professor down at the University of South Florida.
Posted by: savage_nation![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 16, 2008 7:48 PM
I hope the Law comes down on this professor like a ton of bricks.
Francophone Canadian resisters of jihad and sharia, and opponents of Islamic antisemitism, together with your counterparts in la belle France herself: this is your call.
This is a golden opportunity to do some consciousness-raising.
Besides letters to the editors of Canadian papers, making the sorts of points Mr Spencer has made in his commentary above, I think something more is called for.
Move heaven and earth to get hold of Jacques Ellul, 'Un Chretien Pour Israel' - it's in French, it's never been translated into English (except by me...unofficially...for my own edification).
And then, in suitable public places, but *especially* on the campus of the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, conduct public readings and discussion of selected chapters of same - the one on 'Propaganda' is particularly good, with his analysis of the PLO Charter, which - he concludes - is "a perfect expression of the Jihad". The chapter on 'antizionism and antisemitism' is devastating. Find someone to give the gist of the text in English.
In conjunction with that, in Canada, you should conduct a public reading of particularly telling excerpts from Bostom's "Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism"; a good bilingual speaker of French and English could probably take a stab at a simultaneous translation into French.
Oriana Fallaci's account, in 'The Force of Reason', of what she was told by George Habash, a key figure in the PFLP, could also be brought to people's attention; for the program he described to her (first Israel, then Europe, and the world) is unmistakably inspired by, guided by, the Jihad ideology.
Some of Bat Yeor's essays in Mr Spencer's anthology, 'The Myth of Islamic Tolerance' - for example, essay number 11 'Euro-Arab Anti-Zionism' - or essay 57, 'Israel, Christianity and Islam' - might also be read, and perhaps, with Mme Bat Yeor's permission, circulated in poster or pamphlet form.
Start making noise, people!
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 16, 2008 8:00 PM
What people in America are not familiar with, is the fact that France has been dealing with Islamic and pro Islamic fundamentalist terrorism since the 60's. Carlos the Jackal was not a Muslim but fought for a Marxist and for free Palestine terror organizations.
Carlos the Jackal is the ultimate link between far left anti-semitism and Islamic imperialism. He even threw a hand grenade into a crowded Parisian restaurant, killing 2, injuring many more, this is juts one of his acts of barbaric random terror. He specialized in grenade terror. Throw and go.
How has France been dealing with Islamic militancy since then? Well, they've allowed in a couple million more muslims.
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/people_jackel.html
On a side note, I find it rather odd, considering the vastness of the US, the ease to travel around and the access to some major weaponry and DIY explosives, that we haven't seen a Carlos the Jackal type terror unit. Sure they've been some amateurs out there but why no random bombings, etc? Are the people of the US more aware of strangers in their community or more vigilant? Have the people of the US just been lucky so far? 9/11 aside, but the US has seen no major attack since. This has me very worried.
at November 16, 2008 8:05 PM
This also sounds like Professor Bill Ayers, and Professor Rashid Khalidi. What harm can they do in an academic setting? Other than helping to bring about the overthrow of the nation and its constitution from within, that is?
Posted by: Karl2 at November 16, 2008 8:22 PM
"When you've never had any problems with the law and all of a sudden to be handcuffed and foot-chained and driven to RCMP headquarters and then to court, it's distressing," Duval [Hassan Diab's lawyer] said from his home in Trois-Rivieres, Que....[H]e's a devoted teacher who has the support of his students and the universities, Duval said....."This is a gentleman who is a very professional person and, of course, everyone is surprised by this thing that happened. You will have a hard time finding someone who will say something negative about him."
He's "never had any problems with the law" yet "all of a sudden" is "handcuffed and footchained and driven to RCMP headquarters...its distressing." He's "a devoted teacher." He's "a gentleman." He's a "very professional person." And "you will have a hard time finding someone who will say something negative about him."
Ah yes. The idiotic irrelevancies.
Hitler was a vegetarian. He loved dogs. He loved children, provided they were blonde Aryan children.
Stalin was a wonderful fellow, the Father of his Country and, come to think of it, his Countrymen, who could always be counted on, and if you only saw the outpouring of grief in March 1953, it certainly outdid the outpouring of grief for FDR, in scope and duration.
As for Chairman Mao, one simply can't say enough about his splendid qualities. Why, his calligraphy alone is so distinctive and heart-wraming, tht the ideograms on the sign advertising the Yenching Restaurant in Harvard Square are, or at least used to be, written in the exact calligraphic style of Chairman Mao. And where shall we begin with his natatory abilities, and his deep concern for the Chinese people?
And Germany all through the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and 1980s and 1990s, in numbers ever-diminishing of course, because of Father Time and Mother Nature, had all kinds of men, some of sober mien, fine upstanding fellows, even some of them with those heartwarming crinkles around the eyes, who were liked by all the neighborhood, and few would have guessed, and many would not have cared, what those men did on the Eastern Front, or the Western, in the years 1939-1945, or even, some of them, before the war began.
It's the same story.
Never caused any problem. Never swatted a fly. Never did any damage. Why don't you leave him alone? For god's sake, how far back must we go in our insensate urge to wreak a cruel revenge? And will punishing Diab, after all these years, bring anyone back anyway? What good would it do to punish him now?
But there was that bomb at that synaogue, and the people killed by, it is charged, among others, Mahmoud Diab, who managed to escape jusice all these years. For the evidence against Diab must have been very strong, even overwhelming, for the RCMP to come knocking on his door.
And no one of sense should for one minute treat with anything but disgust those who seem to think his being a "caring" teacher -- or whatever it is some seem to think mitigates what is charged, that Hassan Diab participated in the mass-murder of people at a synagogue in Paris, on the rue Copernic, in October 1980.
Posted by: Hugh at November 16, 2008 8:32 PM
It was the Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler who told a group of SS leaders: “Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet -- apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard.
...................
"To have gone through this..."--notice, there is no thought for what those poor victims, rendered into those hundred, or five hundred, or thousand corpses, have "gone through". Nor is their any thought for what any of their surviving loved ones may have gone through, either.
Notice, too--in the surprise and shock over Professor Diab's arrest, and hand-cuffing, and foot-chaining, and being taken to RCMP headquarters, and to court--there is *no actual denial of the charges*, at least in the above article.
Is Professor Diab shocked and surprised because he is charged with such a terrible crime, which he is entirely innocent of--or is he shocked and surprised because, after having gotten away with this awful crime for 28 years, that he is finally, at long last, having "problems with the law"?
at November 16, 2008 8:56 PM
Here, from 'The Force of Reason', is Oriana Fallaci 's account of her interview with that supposed secular 'christian' or 'marxist' revolutionary, George Habash, of the PFLP, janissary of Jihad, and his exposition to her of the longterm project that he and his fellow servants of jihad had in mind. An Arab supremacist world-conquest project - note the references to 'the Arab nation' - that owes very little to Marx and much to Mohammed.
"The enlightenment came in Beirut when I interviewed his (Arafat's) rival George Habash; the man who carried out the bloodiest terrorists' attacks in Europe.
"His rival. Because, while a conscientious bodyguard protected him by pointing his submachinegun at my head, with absolute clarity Habash explained to me that the Arabs' enemy was not Israel alone: it was the whole West.
"America, Europe: the West."
"Among the targets to hit he cited in fact Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland.
"And now read carefully, please, don't miss a word of what he said.
"' Our {the Arabs', indeed, the Muslims' - dda} revolution is a part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine," he said. "The time has come to admit that we want a war like the war in Vietnam. That we want another Vietnam and not only for Palestine but for all the Arab countries."
'Then he said:
'"The Palestinian problem is not an aside problem. A problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities. Palestinians are *part* of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will.
'"America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best has yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West."
'Finally he said, "To advance step by step. Millimetre by millimetre. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the entire planet."'
'Yes, my eyes opened because of George Habash. The trouble is that they didn't open completely, and know why? Because...I believed that Habash referred only to the terrorist attacks, to the massacres.
'I didn't understand that talking about the war on the West, about the strategy to be expanded, he did not mean the war waged with weapons and that's all.
'He also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens.
'Step by step, millimetre by millimetre. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determinedly, stubbornly, patiently.
'In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism, Drafts of Agreement's demands.
' The Islamic holidays, the five prayers' interruptions, the halal meat, the face covered also on the identity papers, to begin with.
'The Islamic marriage, the polygamy, the stoning of women, the assets to remove from the museums and from the archives and from the libraries, to go on..."
[The Force of Reason, pp. 131-33].
Such was George Habash of the PFLP, and that was his program. If Hassan Diab belonged to the PFLP, then that was his program also.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 16, 2008 10:39 PM
Let's not be too hasty to jump on this band-wagon, and let's remember Horace Rumpole's "golden thread of English (and Canadian) justice": that a man is innocent until proven guilty. I presume that the French have good reasons to ask for this guy to be extradited, but let's wait and see what they are.
One of the articles about this noted that Hassan Diab is a fairly common name. A look at just the first 3 pages of a Google search turned up seven other H. D.'s: an architect in Dubai, a geologist in Arabia, an actor, a Dane (no occupation given), two physicians in the U.S., and a professor of engineering in Lebanon. The last, incidentally, was a student at U.Leeds in 1980
at November 17, 2008 12:04 AM
Academia= TERRORIST SANCTUARY &SUPPORT CENTER!
Posted by: CHOI at November 17, 2008 1:13 AM
"Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? From their own perspective, and that of their friends and family, they probably were. And that is what makes what they did all the more chilling in the grotesque banality of its workaday evil. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational and good, and the murders were a means to that goal. It was not just a noteworthy achievement, but a necessity, for them to remain “decent fellows,” for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society (but what was in reality one that created a nightmare of fear and coercion and totalitarian control, as does Sharia). That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for -- in their view -- a goal that remained good."
Robert, i beg to differ. Funny, this is a second time today i post about the same thing on two different message boards. I see it as a serious misconception that can potentially jeopardize fight against various forms of evil: the idea that the perpetrators of evil are really not evil at all (and such thing perhaps doesn't even exists) but a good people with good intentions who by some cosmic reason became severely deluded into thinking that the good goals they have will be achieved by perpetrating a certain evil.
The whole idea (when it sincerely believed of course) is based on the fact that perpetrators always say good things about themselves and their motivations and bad things about their enemies. It just can't be that given that Nazis say that they are "decent fellows" they are really evil scum and the reason they say it is that no one (and especially not scum) enjoys giving themselves bad names (indecent, evil, not caring etc). Well the thing is that it can and is happening every day. I have never ever saw a person doing a minor or major evil thing without this person, when confronted, start pouring all kinds of excuses, portraying himself in the right (he was forced, he had good intentions, others are no better etc) and it doesn't matter to him how far he will depart from reality. He doesn't care much about saying true things. If you want some soft examples of this phenomenon just watch "Cheaters".
There is big gaping hole between being truly decent and compassionate person and affirming these things about oneself (moreover the latter characteristics in my experience is a good indicator of the absence of former).
Posted by: AlexD
at November 17, 2008 6:59 AM
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