Fitzgerald: A rich harvest of nonsense

There is a rich harvest today of nonsense about Lebanon.

CNN, like so many "news" channels and "news" programs, can never use its time to intelligently impart much of value. It just keeps rewinding the same tape, running again and again, as if images, with no context and no meaning assigned to them, necessarily tell us something. But if images, then why not show, for example, show pictures of Nasrallah and those black-balaclaved goosesteppers who have won the hearts and minds of so many among, not least, those people for whom CNN wishes us to feel sorry? Instead they endlessly show, again and again, the same pictures of a building that has crumbled, or some wailing hijabbed woman or hysterical man screaming imprecations at the Israelis, who so viciously, we are led to believe, so wantonly, so without-any-reason-at-all, simply came into Lebanon and started bombing Hizballah structures when everything was going so swimmingly, when the "new Lebanon" was back, and no one should have minded those Kalashnikov-clutching bezonians with their 12,000 -- or is it 15,000 -- missiles and vast network of bunkers, stocked with all sorts of military equipment, and their Iranian trainers, and their Syrian supporters.

No, that was supposed to be ignored by Israel. Israel had absolutely no right to do a thing about it, not a thing, no matter what, until such time as, in some coordinated assault with Iran and Syria, and whatever other Muslim group or state wished to join in, the full destruction and terror to be wrought by those 12,000-15,000 missiles could be suddenly unleashed. What nonsense.

And what nonsense also to hear from someone on NPR this morning, whom I took, through what he said and his accent, to be an obvious Arab agent, of the smooth, semi-plausible variety. He was calling, of course, for an immediate ceasefire. His reasons were that only after this ceasefire, that is, only after Hizballah had been permitted to escape to rain down murder another day and to strut in some parade held by it in its own honor, could the "root causes" of the conflict be addressed. Those "root causes," in this Arab agent's view, were obvious: whatever Israel had not yet surrendered by way of territory, it had to surrender. Whatever it had to do to win temporary Arab and Muslim acceptance, it had to do. Yet this, of course, would create a situation that would only advance the worldwide Jihad. Those who know their Islam look a bit beyond the Arab war on Israel to what is happening with Islam. They see non-Muslims suffering either directly under Muslim rule (as in Bangladesh or Indonesia or Sudan or Nigeria), or suffering attacks from local Muslims (as in Thailand or the Philippines or the Caucasus), or suffering from the as-yet only street violence, though on a massive scale (as in France), or from demands by local Muslims for changes in the very political and legal institutions that constitute Western advanced democracy. They see in Denmark the Muslim attempt to suppress free speech, and the other demands and bullying and intimidation and murder that we find in Holland -- Pim Fortuyn killed by someone who admitted he did it because of Fortuyn's opposition to Muslim immigration, Theo van Gogh murdered because of his movie "Submission"; Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders forced to live with armed guards and to change addresses constantly. They see in Italy the demand for removing the crucifix from every public place, the armed guards again whom the Italian journalist of Muslim Egyptian origin, Magdi Allam, requires. They see in Sweden the no-go city of Malmo. They see the appearance, at the highest levels of government, of naked antisemitism as one kind of appeasement of the Muslims, local and abroad -- look at Zapatero, look at so many Norwegian politicians (but not those members of the pro-Israel Christian party who have been threatened with death).

But we are carefully to keep our gaze not on Islam worldwide, not on all the instruments of Jihad. We are carefully to pretend that the war against the Infidel state of Israel has nothing to do with Islam, when it is all about Islam. Hamas and Hizballah are nothing but Islam. Al Qaeda is nothing but Islam. The war in 1948 was about removing the Jews from Dar al-Islam. Nasser presented this theme more in terms of pan-Arabism -- but what was pan-Arabism itself except a subset of Islam? It was the initial expression of Muslim pan-Islamic sentiment before the bonanza of the oil wealth (ten trillion dollars since 1973), which paid for mosques, madrasas, and worldwide propaganda and Da'wa, not to mention armaments galore. Then the nearly-simultaneous entry into Western Europe of large numbers of Muslims from different countries was accompanied by smug assumptions that Islam was just a different religion, rather than a complete politico-theological system. No one understood that its basis, its beating heart, was the duty of Jihad and the clear division of the world between Believer and Infidel, between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Yet had this been properly understood, and had the older generation of Western experts on Islam been heeded, this would have led to a much more circumspect policy regarding the dangerous Muslim entry deep within, and deep behind, what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines.

Nothing that has happened since then can be said to relieve fears. In fact, they have only deepened, as Europeans see the crime rate spiral due to Muslims often not merely criminal in act, but justifying their crimes (or having their imams do it for them -- see While Europe Slept) as helping themselves to the "Jizyah" that they are due. The rapes attributed to Muslims (70-80% of them are committed in Scandinavia by a Muslim population that is less than 5% of the total) can also be ascribed to the view that "Western women" are "asking for it" by not dressing as Muslim women are expected to -- essentially, these women are being punished by rape for not conforming to Muslim standards in their own non-Muslim countries.

Shall I go on? Shall we talk about the incidence of Muslim fraud, of the numbers of Muslims in England, for example, who live on the English dole but in Pakistan, in cities known to be full of people supported by that dole? Should we talk about the numbers of children, or the even greater numbers of children claimed, in order to get more benefits? What about the Muslim exploitation of the welfare system, of the free education and free health care? And what happens when Muslim men insist that they be the sole interlocutors for their wives in doctors' offices, or insist that surgeons turn their backs while operating on Muslim female patients? Do you need more stories from the front, by Western doctors and nurses, of what chaos, what expense, what a disruptive nightmare Muslim patients in the European system have become, and what resources they use up that are then not available for the Infidels who built, who paid for, who maintain the system?

"Root causes"? For the man, the obvious Arab agent, as I took him to be, who was talking about Lebanon, the "root cause" is always and everywhere what he demurely describes as the "Palestinian-Israeli" dispute. Not even the "Arab-Israeli" dispute. And not a single mention of the doctrines, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam, that are now a problem everywhere for non-Muslims -- not only the Jews of Israel. The Jews of Israel are merely the most covered, or mis-covered, of its victims, the first to face their own Lesser Jihad, even if it was not described as such. For who, until the day before yesterday, knew the first thing about Islam? Who, until yesterday, knew more than one or two things about Islam? Who, even today, in the corridors of power, or in the press or television, has actually taken it upon himself to thoroughly study what Islam teaches, what the Qur'an and Hadith offer by way of instruction and a Total Guide to Life? Who has read the Sira, the biography of Muhammad, that Perfect Man who is to be emulated in every respect, who took part in 77 attacks on Infidels, who approved of the killing of helpless prisoners, who swooped down on innocent farmers to kill them and take their wealth, who was well-pleased to hear of the murders of those who, such as Asma bint Marwan, mocked him in satiric verses? Should not this key figure in Islam be understood? Should not those who are making policy in Iraq, or in Europe, or presuming to pontificate about the Middle East, or about terrible Israel, be required to learn about Islam, about the 1350-year history of Islamic, Jihad-conquest? Should policymakers not learn about the 1350-year history, following upon the Jihad-conquest of Infidel lands, of the non-Muslims who were everywhere subjugated to Muslim rule? Should they not find out what that subjugation meant for them according not to the whim of some ruler, but according rather to the clearly-laid out rules of the Shari'a, the Holy Law of Islam?

None of that in this NPR interview with what I took to be an Arab agent of the soft-spoken, Rami-Khouri school. No, get that "ceasefire." Address those "root causes" -- i.e., whatever demands upon Israel that are as-yet unmet. Not a word about Israel possibly concluding that, having left all of Lebanon, and having left all of Gaza, and now having to fight on two fronts, both in Lebanon and Gaza, that just possibly the conclusion should be reached that withdrawal doesn't mean a thing, that the war against Israel has a "root cause" that is unassuagable, and that the "root cause" can be found in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. There is no further shrinking of Israel that can do anything except make Israel more vulnerable, and easily perceived as more vulnerable. And if that happens, then Arab Muslim triumphalism will take over. It was obviously already at work in Lebanon with Hizballah (convinced that Israel withdrew from Lebanon because "Hizballah made it"). For this Arab triumphalism, see Patai's The Arab Mind, see Sonia Hamady's The Arab Mind, see John Laffin's The Arab Mind. Find out what anyone who has dealt with the Middle East will recognize at once (not least our officers and men who have served in Iraq).

The speaker was unknown to me, but I assumed him to be an Arab islamochristian from his transparent attempt to avoid any discussion of Hizballah. He avoided any mention of how Hizballah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Ansar al-Islam, Gemaa Islamiya, were all groups that scarcely needed to be differentiated, for they were prompted by the same texts, shared exactly the same worldview, and could be expected not only to support each other theoretically, but to engage, whenever possible, in a mix-n'-match of personnel (which is why one found Pakistanis in PLO camps, or Chechens in Afghanistan, or Arabs all over Bosnia). They attack the same Infidels for the same essential reasons -- that they are Infidels, that they stand in the way of the only True Faith, that they are a barrier, in some way, to the requirement that no Infidel exist within Dar al-Islam as part of a sovereign Infidel state but only as a dhimmi, subject to the conditions historically imposed on all dhimmis.

Why was a ceasefire necessary? Not only because without it one could not address those "root causes" but because "time was on Hizballah's side." Curious, I thought, that the speaker, so clearly on Hizballah's side, so ardently wishing to prevent Israel from damaging or cutting down to size that organization, would make such a statement, as if he genuinely feared that Hizballah would win. But of course he did no such thing. It was obvious that what he fears is not that Hizballah "will win" but that it won't win, that Israel will be successful in damaging it sufficiently so that even the current pusillanimous Lebanese government, or one without the hysterically melodramatic Siniora. Siniora, by the way, does not wear well. He thinks he is quite an orator, but it is painful to listen to him. He has behaved terribly in his undignified presentation of -- of what? Not of the case for Lebanese Christians, or Lebanese Druse, or for the old order in Lebanon. That order, quite deliberately, does not wish to change the old long-established system by which the Christians maintained themselves, and which, if it were to be traded in for Bush-Rice "democracy," would mean the end of Lebanon for Christians, and its inevitable transformation into one more hideous Muslim state, of by and for those Muslims.

And finally there was the so-called Iraq connection. Somehow we are supposed to believe, according to this speaker, that Israel's attempt to attack and weaken those who straightforwardly and unambiguously announce that they exist in order to destroy the state of Israel, somehow makes the task in Iraq harder, or the Iraq situation influences Lebanon, or something. What exactly was unclear. But of course the Iraq tarbaby, that fiasco, will continue to be a fiasco, from the viewpoint of countering the Jihad, as along as we persist in spending money and materiel, and expending lives, in an effort, both vain and stupid, to prevent the natural fissures, sectarian and ethnic, from working to our advantage, by helping to divide and demoralize and weaken the camp of Islam.

Of course, this speaker on NPR, this "expert" on the Middle East, never once mentions Islam, the fons et origo of everything that happens there, the gorilla in the damned room, the thing which so many in Washington keep trying not to notice, just as they keep trying not to notice that whatever happens in Iraq is much less significant than what happens in the countries of Western Europe if islamization through Da'wa and demography is permitted to continue, not halted, much less reversed.

None of that from our "expert" whose sole purpose is to halt the Israeli response. Not the slightest desire to point out that if "terrorism" is to be fought, then Israel was doing it correctly, in a way that serves as a model, and not as a distraction or an obstacle.

Finally, at the end, I found out the name of this "Middle East expert." He had served in the Clinton Administration, I learned, as its "expert" on Middle Eastern matters. The same Clinton Administration that had taken as its "expert" on Islam, one is horrified to recall, one John Esposito, the venal apologist who runs that Arab-funded "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding," and who hails as his "ustadh" (teacher) the late El Farooqui, and who claims as a colleague and collaborator that would-be suicide bomber (as he announced on British television) the sinister and violent Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas supporter through and through. Tamimi, of course, is also the subject of respectful interviewing, though by the BBC rather than NPR. (You can catch his latest public rant at www.littlegreenfootballs.com.)

The name of this transparent promoter of the Arab side who served "in Clinton's second term as a "Special Assistant on the Arab-Isareli conflict" -- you know, during that period when Arafat became the most frequent foreign visitor at the White House, and peace was being made, was just around the corner, was right here, until it wasn't, and that was when Robert Malley in Op/Ed after Op/Ed carefully, cleverly, explained that really Arafat had not been given everything on a platter, really the whole thing was being quite misundrstood. And now Malley, still at it, directs (with underlings in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo and "Tel Aviv" -- you know, because it is important for the Malleys of this world to make sure that "Tel Aviv" and not "Jerusalem" is identified as Israel's non-capital capital) the Middle Eastern (meaning: Arab-Israeli, Palestinian-Israeli, call it what you will but don't mention Islam, conflict) subdepartment of the International Crisis Group.

Ah. So that's who it was. Not some Lebanese shill for Hezbollah, or an editorial writer for The Daily Star. Not some former ambassador, of the Murphy or Walker variety. Suddenly, the whole interview, the whole shtick, became clear and the NPR interview held no more surprises. The anagnorisis. The shock of recognition. Not exactly in the classical, Edmund-Wilsonian sense of the word, but close.

Posted by Hugh at July 27, 2006 9:02 AM
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