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A poster at Jihad Watch once wrote, "It [Israel] clearly has a death wish, so why even bother?"
Here are some reasons why one should bother:
1. Israel the country does not have a "death wish." It has had a series of leaders who have exhibited an ignorance of Islam and an unwillingness to grasp the nature of the menace, or all the ways in which that menace could be dealt with beyond mild military measures. Israel has never inflicted, and has never been allowed to inflict by the outside world, the kind of military defeat on the Arabs that would be a salutary lesson. In 1973 Nixon and Kissinger prevented Sharon, for example, from destroying Egypt's Third Army that Sharon's troops had trapped. Stupidity of leaders, and of many in the press and television, does not constitute a "death wish."
The same might be said, with greater force, about the peoples of Western Europe. The Israelis had Muslims already surrounding them, and within their country (where they did nothing to discourage them, of course). The ruling classes, political and business and intellectual, did nothing to prevent the large-scale settlement of Muslims within England, France, Germany, and other countries; they did nothing to educate themselves about Islam; they refused to listen to the handful of those who warned them (e.g., Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, Jacques Ellul, Jacques Soustelle). Does that mean that all of Europe has a "death wish" and we should wash our hands of it, forget about it? Sweden, with its awful ruling class? Norway, with its awful ruling class? Italy, with its awful ruling class (though not quite as awful)? France, with only the hope of so far so-so Sarkozy and Philippe de Villiers? England with -- England with whom, exactly?
2. The destruction of European Jewry by the Germans and by many other collaborators who enthusiastically joined in, pitching in to help with the killing or with the all-important rounding-up. Take, for example, the Rumanian Iron Guard, whose members hung Jews from hooks in the windows of kosher butcher shops, or the ordinary Germans who pitched in to go on "Jew hunts" if some had escaped from trains or camps. Think of the French police: how empty Drancy would have been like without the rafle of the Vel d'Hiv, without all they did, those police, in the Marais. Germans also aided in the looting of Jewish assets everywhere -- by gangs and by neighbors, who often turned people in so as to be able subsequently to help themselves to what was left behind. After the war, this could not be confronted. It was too terrible. It took decades for a slow thaw -- a civilizational thaw -- to cause people to begin to realize, to see, to stare in the face, the whole thing.
That did not last long, for it was too awful to contemplate. Fortunately for so many, and for the Arabs, the victory of Israel in the Six-Day War promptly provided a reason to depict Jews as villains, not victims. This found an eager audience of Europeans, who were already eager for psychological reasons to find fault with Jews so as to avoid thinking unduly about the behavior of many European peoples and states during the war. They were hardly wishing to believe -- it would not do -- that Jews were again victims, and they, the Europeans, were again not taking their side but abandoning them. But who had the oil? Who had the contracts? Who could pay for that army of Western hirelings? Who had the plausible if completely manufactured narrative that ignored the history of the Middle East and of historical Palestine, but that played on the notion of linking an invented "Palestinian people," supposedly unique, with a virtual "Palestine" that never existed in Arab or Muslim history?
The damage done to the morale of Europe because of the destruction of European Jewry has been great. If Western Europe, or the West generally, were after all that has happened to permit Israel to go under, Europe would not recover. This is true whether or not Israel’s leaders and most of those who fashion public opinion in that country remain unbearably and obstinately innocent of the real situation. Olmert is only the latest and the worst of those who have risen high; he is hardly alone.
3. The loss of Israel would fill the Arabs and Muslims with such triumphalism that their Jihad in Western Europe and elsewhere (including the Americas) would receive a gigantic boost. Some believe that if only they are thrown a sop, they will be content and go home. Not at all. The Qur'an and Hadith and Sira do not tell us that Muslims somewhere have read "be content with the Land of the Jews and leave the other Infidels alone." No. The duty is to make sure that Islam covers the globe; that Islam dominates, and Muslims rule.
The Infidels owe a terrific unacknowledged debt to Israel. Why? Because before the OPEC oil revenues and the complete end to colonialism (the French left Algeria in 1962; the British garrisons left the Persian Gulf sheikdoms in 1971), and before those OPEC trillions and before millions of Muslims were permitted to settle in Western Europe, the main Jihad that attracted the world's attention was the Lesser Jihad against Israel. In the West, Islam was seen -- especially by the Dulles brothers but also by their successors -- as a "bulwark against Communism." No one noticed what was happening within Muslim or Arab countries. In Lebanon, the Muslim war against the Christians was depicted as something else, and the Christians, massacred at Damur and so many other places, were referred to with the Homeric epithet "right-wing." Those "right-wing" Christians. It was a stupid adjective, stupid and misleading. But how soothing to the Western world not to have to comprehend that the Maronites of Lebanon, who had lived there before the Muslims arrived, before Islam was invented, were under assault, and would lose control of the last sure Christian refuge in the entire Middle East.
Similarly, the assorted versions of pan-Arabism -- Nasserism, Ba'athism -- were seen as alternatives to Islam, when in fact they were not alternatives at all. They merely displayed, for quite specific and local reasons, an emphasis on "Uruba" or Arabdom that was explicable given the impoverished state of the "Islamic world" and the fact that there were local stumbling blocks to pan-Islamism (including the lack of financial wherewithal). In Turkey Kemalists were in control; in Iran there was the Shah, trying in his maladroit way to emphasize the pre-Islamic past. Pan-Arabism was a version of pan-Islamism, a subset, which at the time seemed to be as much as one could hope for. Nasser or Saddam Hussein could dream of being King of the Arabs, but the idea of a much bigger operation, especially since for both Nasser and Saddam Hussein the most dangerous political opposition was mosque-based (the Muslim Brotherhood for Nasser, the Shi'a clerics for Saddam Hussein), was out of the question.
So until the early 1970s, the Lesser Jihad against Israel took up the time, attention, and money of the Arabs. Now that they have so many more resources, now that they have received ten trillion dollars from OPEC, and have seen millions of Muslims settle deep behind what Muslims regard as enemy lines, and have seen also how the inventions of the West -- audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite television, the Internet -- can be harnessed for the dissemination of Islam and for Jihadist propaganda (beheadings of Infidels, that sort of thing that is apparently an inspiring recruiting tool), the Lesser Jihad against Israel can be seen, correctly, as only one part of a worldwide phenomenon. (Of course, it is still the part that gets far too much attention.) All during that period until about 1973, the local Jihads within countries against non-Muslims continued, but without either Western support or sympathy or even comprehension for what those non-Muslims were enduring.
How often did any Western power protest the persecution of Hindus or Christians in Pakistan or of Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh? Ever? How many Western countries extended diplomatic recognition to the Christians of Biafra, as they tried to fight against what Col. Ojukwu correctly described (in the Ahaiara Declaration of 1969) as a "jihad" by the Muslims? How many Western reporters noted the steady pressure on Christians in what was always depicted as easygoing Indonesia, all batik and gamelans, when that was really Bali with its Hindus they were talking about, and not Aceh, not much of Java and Sumatra, where the fiercest Muslims lived?
Meanwhile, Israel's failure to identify its real problem was the product both of innocence on the part of many and calculation on the part of others. The Israelis knew no more about Islam than did most Westerners in, say, August of 2000. And after all, Israel hoped to find friends in the Muslim world, and it did, making alliances with Iran, which ended when the Shah fell, and more recently, an even briefer one with the army and secularists, but not the government or real Muslims, of Turkey. This did neither Israel nor the peoples of Western Europe any good. Had Israel all along understood that it faced a Jihad, albeit one disguised in all sorts of ways after 1967, it might have behaved very differently. (That Jihad was disguised by Arafat's use of islamochristians, who are always useful to disguise the essentially Islamic nature of the Arab refusal to accept Israel as a permanent presence, and by the invention of the "Palestinian people" with their supposedly "nationalist" cause.)
Now that some in Western Europe are coming to their senses about Islam, they will inevitably begin to realize that the steady suffusion of their media with anti-Israel propaganda has created a situation that imperils not only Israel, but themselves. And they will begin to see things differently.
Will a sufficient number of Israelis begin to see things differently, and become disgusted with many of their journalists, their unimaginative politicians, and their insensate holier-than-thou or terminally naive figures, such as Shimon Peres?
Whether they do or not, Israel cannot be allowed to commit suicide. To take and apply the phrase that used to be used by such committed haters of Israel as George Ball, Israel "must be saved in spite of itself." For its own good. For the good of the Western world's morale, and for continued access by Christians as well as Jews to the Holy Land -- which would not happen if Israel could no longer protect all the holy places and they fell under Muslim control. For that Muslim control today would not be the kind of lackadaisical control that was exercised by an indifferent Ottoman regime until World War I, when Mandatory Palestine was put under British, i.e. Christian, control. If the Muslims ever got control of the Holy Land again, that would be it. Perhaps the world's Christians do not care sufficiently, or do not realize all the reasons why they have a stake in supporting Israel to the hilt -- but they should understand this one.
There's more one could say, but that will have to do as a brief and preliminary answer to the question, which one hopes was merely rhetorical: "if [Israel] has a death wish, why even bother?"
For every conceivable reason under the sun -- for our own mental and moral stability, our physical and civilizational survival. That's why.
Posted by Hugh at February 17, 2007 10:01 AM
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Well said..thank you Hugh.
Posted by: storagemanager![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 17, 2007 10:24 AM
I feel exactly the same way about France. Despite a century and a third of megalomania, treachery, America-hatred, Jew-hatred, and stupidity from the French political leadership and the Quai d'Orsay, the French people and culture must be preserved. We owe it to ourselves to preserve the Louvre, Chartres, Rheims, Descartes, de Tocqueville, all of it.
Posted by: Infidel33 at February 17, 2007 1:34 PM
I was that poster.
How long ago was that, six months, a year?
at February 17, 2007 1:36 PM
Israel does not have a death wish. BUt, Israel should be preparing to deal it out...an attack is coming...
Posted by: exsgtbrown at February 17, 2007 1:42 PM
Off topic:
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/latimes216.htm
at February 17, 2007 1:45 PM
"The Infidels owe a terrific unacknowledged debt to Israel."
Indeed. And to further expand awareness of our debt, I offer another facet:
"One of the things that set the ancient Jews apart from their contemporaries was their more humane treatment of both women and children, in particular, female children (who were greatly devalued in the ancient world). It is not so much that their standards were higher as compared with the modern West, but by the incredibly cruel standards of the day. I believe that this is one of the factors that allowed the Jews as a group to vault ahead of others despite the constant vilification and scapegoating that has dogged them right up to the vile editorial pages of the New York Times.
In my opinion, it can surely be no coincidence that the most humane place in all of the Middle East is surrounded by barbarians who wish to extinguish it in the exact degree to which they systematically abuse their own children.
In the Claremont Review on child sacrifice, the author recalls Golda Meir’s famous remark about how “peace with the Palestinians will be possible when they love their own children more than they hate the Israelis. In saying so, she touched upon a fundamental difference between pagan and biblical religion: the presence or absence of child sacrifice.... Many ancient peoples believed in sacrificing a child to an angry god like Moloch or Baal in order to avert misfortune. Today, thousands of Muslims believe that sacrificing their children as ‘suicide’ bombers in a crowd of people pleases their God Allah. More, Islamic terrorists invite the death of children by placing their military and political headquarters in residential areas which they know their enemies will strike.”
[...]
Naive secularists believe that if we can only eliminate religion, then we will end up with a scientific and rational worldview. Not so. Eliminate religion--specifically, Judeo-Christian religion--and pagan magic rushes in to fill the breach. If your three eyes are opened, you only see it everywhere.
As the writer puts it, “Paganism has the advantage of being older than Christianity, the faith which arouses most of the hatred of the pseudo-intellectuals of our time.... Much of Islam today seems to have more in common with the pagan religions which preceded its founding in the seventh century. No clearer case of child sacrifice exists now than radical Islam’s cult of suicide bombings...” Who is that voice telling Muslims to murder children--both their own and others'? Could it be the same voice that told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? No: could it possibly not be the same voice?
Here's one of Moloch's stenographers, speaking live to you from the pre-Abrahamic bowels of history--from the contemporary Muslim Middle East: "What else is there for a man but to sacrifice his son for his religion?"
As a psychologist, I see the story of Abraham and Isaac as a primordial, archetypal tale of how barbarous pagans stopped listening to their psychotic, child-hating "god," and instead took a right turn in history, discovered the God of Love, and became the Jews that we know and love.
That little crack of light that opened up in antiquity runs in a straight line to us. Another line leads to contemporary Islam and its allies among the international Left. It is so obvious, and yet people do not see. This occasionally causes me real despair, as if the foundations of the West are being eroded in plain sight."
[...]
There is an old joke: “It doesn’t matter what faith you are, so long as you’re ashamed of it.” Islam is supposed to be a “shame culture.” If so, one wonders why they always act so shamelessly. Perhaps because they are angry victims of their own childhood shame--projected into the West that "shames" them--and the Left is always willing to assist a fellow self-made victim.??Will we survive the religiously cracked and the secular crock? As has always been the case at every point in the traveling catastrophe known as history, it will be a nail-biter."
Source: Robert Goodwin, clinical psychologist and author of One Cosmos Under God
______________
In a seperate commentary, Bob wrote at his blog One Cosmos:
If I were president, I would simply say: "you [Palestinians] are animals -- which is to say humans reduced to a state of nature -- so the best we can offer you at this time is a cage.
However, should your population begin to show rudimentary signs of humanness, then we might talk about a state. But monsters are not 'given' a state. They are given Nobel Prizes.
Monsters only take states, and this is something we cannot allow you to do, any more than we intend to solve our crime problem by turning San Quentin prison into the 51st state of the union" .
at February 17, 2007 1:45 PM
"The Israelis knew no more about Islam than did most Westerners in, say, August of 2000."
OK. I have to admit that to me that is hands down, the most shocking part of your post Hugh. IQ studies confirm that Jews (or at least Ashkenazi Jews) are the most intelligent people on the planet. Their accomplishments in the intellectual sphere, so grossly disproportionate to their actual numbers, confirms the likelihood of that indeed being the case.
And yet up until August of 2000 they knew nothing about Islam? Despite being on the front lines of the global jihad for over half a century and submitted to dhimmitude for centuries prior to that? Despite that direct, personal history they thought it was a "religion of peace" just like most westerners who had had very little contact with Muslims, at least for some centuries), until 9/11 woke them out of their ignorance?
I see your attempt to provide some plausible explanation of that statement, but something just doesn't make any sense there. If that statement is true, then I feel that it is an exceedingly strange thing indeed and something which requires more explanation.
Posted by: Caroline at February 17, 2007 5:26 PM
Oh. And I certainly agree with the substance of the rest of your post. Not just about Israel but also about France and Britain, and Holland and Sweden and Germany and India. Infidel33's post is right-on. Petty feelings are all too human. I understand those feelings because, well, no surprise there - I'm human! I feel that way too sometimes. But it's a bad and wrong tendency that needs to be resisted. I very much appreciate when citizens of some of those countries that some posters here, perhaps out of frustration, so cavalierly dismiss, come on here and post to remind all of us that those are real human beings who are being lumped in to take the fall for what their leaders have done. Maybe many of those citizens are indeed ignorant. Some are certainly evil, yes, but most of them? No. It's not possible. Certainly most of what causes or perpetuates evil is actually ignorance, rather than outright malevolence. In the future, when I need to be reminded of that fact, I will simply recall what we did to the Serbs in the Balkans and how I personally happened to agree with that policy at the time.
Posted by: Caroline at February 17, 2007 5:47 PM
The memory of Israel that is seared into my mind came from a trip to a tavern. There was this drop-dead beautiful woman with a beer in one hand and an automatic rifle in the other. A slightly more fuzzy memory from later that night was a bunch of guys with sidearms jumping to traditional music. Israel does not have a death wish. I predict that Israel will teach the Iranians that you don’t bring a 15-kiloton warhead to a big-boy nuclear exchange. 'Never Again'.
http://www.bigbrassblog.com/index.php?blogid=1&archive=2007-2-9
at February 17, 2007 5:51 PM
You wrote:
Israel the country does not have a "death wish." but then later you say: Israel cannot be allowed to commit suicide, thereby implicitly accepting that very premise, since I don't think that anyone without a death wish would commit suicide.
You wrote:
... the question, which one hopes was merely rhetorical
Well, I believe you made that assumption back then also, and I think I gave you a response too. Can't be sure though, since I can't query the comments.
at February 17, 2007 5:51 PM
It is possible for a country to commit suicide without its citizens quite understanding what is going on, and certainly not because they have some kind of collective "death wish" -- quite a doubtful idea to begin with.
Stupidity will do it. So will timidity. So will cupidity. The governments of Western Europe that admitted into the midst of their countries so many millions of Muslims, now busily entrenching themselves, and overbreeding, and solidifying their positions as best they can, taking full advantage of every possible benefit offered by generous Infidel taxpayers, and at the same time assaulting, sometimes literaly (as in the "quartiers chauds" now no-go for the police, and Infidels, all over France).
Israel's problem is merely longer-running, and the disease more advanced, than in the countries of Western Europe. At least the Israelis, who have fought war after war for their survival, and who have done so despite enormous odds, odds made all the greater, in the last 30 years, by the highly successful Arab propaganda campaign, centering on this non-existent "Palestinian people," and on disguising the Lesser Jihad against Israel which remains what it always has been and always will be: a clear attempt to destroy an Infidel nation-state, whatever its size, because the very existence of that state, on land once part of Dar al-Islam, and even in the midst of the Middle East, is an affront, a wound to Arab and Muslim sensisibilities, that cannot be permitted. And the destruction of Israel would be a sign of triumph indicating the future triumph, through Da'wa and demographic conquest, of the historic rival and enemy of Islam, what Muslims still think of, even if Westerners do not, as Western Christendom.
So it is possible not to have a "death wish" and still, through stupidity, timidity, and cupidity (the Esdrujula Explanation which has been posted here many times before), to promote, in slow motion, by not taking the most obvious measures to protect yourself, something that might be called national suicide.
Will the nations of Western Europe identify the problem? Will they learn enough about Islam in time? Will they have the wit to realize that they owe it to all those who created the civilizational legacy -- and I don't mean Britney Spears or hip-hop or raves -- that they possess but seem unable to comprehend and therefore appreciate, much less protect -- to prevent the takeover of their countries, through Daw'a and demographic conquest, and do whatever it takes, including a European version of the Benes Decree (google "Jihad Watch" and "Benes Decree" for more) which should hardly offend anyone who knows what is at stake.
Posted by: Hugh at February 17, 2007 6:17 PM
The ruling classes, political and business and intellectual, did nothing to prevent the large-scale settlement of Muslims within England, France, Germany, and other countries; they did nothing to educate themselves about Islam; they refused to listen to the handful of those who warned them (e.g., Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, Jacques Ellul, Jacques Soustelle).
You should also mention Peter Scholl-Latour who's been talking about islam ever since I can remember. In Germany he was the lone voice in the wilderness when I grew up. His logic always made a LOT of sense when I matched what Mr. Latour said to what the Mahometans were saying and [not] doing.
at February 17, 2007 6:25 PM
In some senses, the mess Europe is in, can be for a large portion be blamed on Charles de Gaulle
Despite the fact that the USA had saved his country from being run by Germans, de Gaulle had a deep dislike of American culture, American power.
And he put his input into founding the original 6-country European Union : Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg & Italy which was designed with 2 aims in mind:
(i) to prevent Germany starting another world war
(ii) to counterbalance the USA
But he also started the policy of working with Arab countries and large-scale immigration from Algeria. I dont think for a minute he dreamed where this would wind up.
at February 17, 2007 6:57 PM
Caroline,
I agree with you. Neither Hugh nor Robert have provided a plausible explanation for the problem of Western myopia. Robert, in fact, has not provided any explanation at all, as far as I know (which is better than purveying an insufficient one), while Hugh has provided an explanation numerous times, in different chatoyancies. But Hugh's Esdrujula Elves just don't seem sufficient to match the depth and breadth, let alone the bizarre quality (which you pointed out with specific respect to Jewish cultural intelligence and long-standing experience with Muslims), of the phenomenon they are meant to explain: the widespread Western myopia to the Problem of Islam, further exacerbated by a widespread Western hostility and resistance to correcting that myopia. I think Hugh is minimizing the problem to more manageable proportions, or he is failing to appreciate its unmanageably pervasive proportions -- not necessarily the same thing. Either way, the diagnosis won't help much if it's confusing symptoms with etiology.
Posted by: remote_control at February 17, 2007 7:36 PM
No clearer case of child sacrifice exists now than radical Islam’s cult of suicide bombings...”
Very insightful... Something so obvious yet I never made that connection....
Posted by: adobe at February 17, 2007 8:39 PM
Off topic:
Western life led me to drugs: Muslim
Posted by: ummahnewslinks at February 17, 2007 8:48 PM
"The Israelis knew no more about Islam than did most Westerners in, say, August of 2000."
If that statement is true, then I feel that it is an exceedingly strange thing indeed and something which requires more explanation.
Last week, this essay, FrontPagemag interview with Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI), offered some insight .
What accounts for the almost psychotic aversion to knowledge about Islam? Beyond fear is the realization that political Islam is profoundly foreign to us.When Islam burst out of Arabia into a decaying Byzantine world, the unbelievers recorded it as an Arabic invasion.
Similarly, the invasion of Eastern Europe was by Turks; the invasion of Spain was by Moors.
Arabic, Turk, Moor, Saracen, Barbary pirate . . .never did they actually name the invader or link the threat to islamic hegemony.
Mohammed killed every single intellectual or artist who opposed him. It was fear that drove the vast majority of the media not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, not some imagined sensitivity. Fear is a fabulous basis for ignorance. . .
Our first clue about the dualism is in the Koran, which is actually two books, the Koran of Mecca (early) and the Koran of Medina (later). The insight into the logic of the Koran comes from the large numbers of contradictions in it. On the surface, Islam resolves these contradictions by resorting to “abrogation”. This means that the verse written later supersedes the earlier verse. But in fact, since the Koran is considered by Muslims to be the perfect word of Allah, both verses are sacred and true. The later verse is “better,” but the earlier verse cannot be wrong since Allah is perfect. This is the foundation of dualism. Both verses are “right.” Both sides of the contradiction are true in dualistic logic. The circumstances govern which verse is used. This dualistic ethic is the basis for jihad. All of Western logic is based upon the law of contradiction—if two things contradict, then at least one of them is false. But Islamic logic is dualistic; two things can contradict each other and both are true. No dualistic system may be measured by one answer. This is the reason that the arguments about what constitutes the “real” Islam go on and on and are never resolved. A single right answer does not exist.
At this point, even the term 'fear' is replaced with 'politically correct'.
Thanks to Spencer, Fitzgerald and crew, I know better now. Due to the remarkable advances in instantaneous global communication - as displayed on this board - scores are waking to the real inconvenient truth daily - an advantage infidels did not enjoy in the previous 1400 years of islamic threat.
Posted by: justamomof4 at February 17, 2007 10:09 PM
"
Israel the country does not have a "death wish."
Hugh :
" Israel has never inflicted, and has never been allowed to inflict by the outside world, the kind of military defeat on the Arabs that would be a salutary lesson. In 1973 Nixon and Kissinger prevented Sharon, for example, from destroying Egypt's Third Army that Sharon's troops had trapped. Stupidity of leaders, and of many in the press and television, does not constitute a "death wish."
ABSOLUTELY ! ABSOLUTELY !! ABSOLUTELY !!!
GOD BLESS ISRAEL !!!
at February 17, 2007 10:48 PM
Yet another facet uncovered over at the American Thinker:
February 17, 2007
Beyond Self-hating
By Rachel Neuwirth
"The most potent weapon in the arsenal of the Arab and Islamist extremists seeking the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people has always been, not bombs, not guns, not missiles, not aircraft, not even the barbarism of suicide-homicide bombers,--but propaganda. Their massive and unrelenting propaganda campaign over the past sixty years has depicted Israel as a vicious, conspiratorial aggressor against, and oppressor of, the Arab people, and "world Jewry" as parties to and supporters of this conspiracy by "Zionism" and "the Zionist entity."
Most of the world has come to accept this big lie, as well as the thousands of smaller lies that have been used to construct it like the individual stones that form the Great Pyramid of Giza. Unfortunately, many Jews, including Israeli Jews, have come to accept it, too. Anti-Israel propaganda has been given so much credence within Israel itself that it has sapped the will of the Israeli government and sections of Israel's people to resist the incessant, murderous terrorist campaign waged against them. The acceptance of the Arab-Islamist "narrative" by many Israeli politicians, journalists, and scholars has been the principal cause of the endless, suicidal concessions that one Israeli government after another has made to the terrorists since 1993. Israel is dying a slow death by poisoning from this propaganda."
[...]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/beyond_selfhating.html">http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/beyond_selfhating.html
Posted by: Malinois at February 17, 2007 11:20 PM
The Israeli Left is as oblivious of the threat of Islam as is the Left in the rest of the world. This is not to take a swipe at the Left but to try and understand why Israel appears to look at its fight with the Moslem Arabs is not being part of the world-wide jihad.
Since 2001, more and more Israelis have recognized the "Palestinian" drive to destroy Israel and make it into an Islamic cesspool--as they have done in Gaza=--is part of that jiahd. The majority of Israelis, however, are lagging far behind the knowledgeable sector.
Regard for world opinion and catering to the US administration--under the perceived threat of UN sanctions--has made Israel hesitant to crush the hyenas yapping at its periphery.
Posted by: unicorns62000 at February 18, 2007 1:16 AM
"they refused to listen to the handful of those who warned them (e.g., Jacques Soustelle)"
why would they listen to terrorists (a member of the OAS) like Soustelle?
Posted by: pureevil at February 18, 2007 4:03 AM
Jacques Soustelle on Islam:
« L'islam est peut-être la religion la plus aisément acceptable pour la raison qu'elle est d'une simplicité élémentaire, qui fait d'ailleurs son succès. Vous remarquerez que l'islam conquiert constamment de nouveaux territoires en Afrique. Pour le Noir animiste, soumis à une multitude d'interdits, de sorciers, etc., l'islam est en effet une délivrance. Par sa simplicité, il permet de devenir membre à part entière d'une religion prestigieuse, et sans problèmes majeurs. Regardez en revanche les difficultés qui se présentent au non-chrétien pour devenir chrétien, au non-juif pour devenir juif. Outre la conversion intérieure, tout un enseignement est nécessaire pour adhérer à une religion complexe, dont les dogmes sont précis. L'islam est d'une simplicité telle qu'en quelques instants, pour ainsi dire, un païen peut s'y convertir et devenir un respectable musulman. »
Posted by: pureevil at February 18, 2007 4:12 AM
Above has been posted, in French, an observation by Jacques Soustelle about how easy it was for Islam to spread in Black Africa. For those who had complicated religious practices could turn them in for the simplicity of Islam. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, there was no need to actually study in order to become a Muslim. One did not need to know a thing. One had only to recite a phrase – the Shehada – in the presence of a Muslim witness, and then one had become, voila – a Muslim. And having become a Muslim, one now had a new identity, which was symbolized by the taking of a Muslim, Arab name, and then all sorts of exciting other changes – those five-a-day prayers meccatropically delivered, that sense of being part of a ready-made umma, and now having not only the right but the duty to take from, to lord it over, all those who were not Muslims. The ease with which one becomes a Muslim, the total ignorance of real Islam that is permitted and even, at times, encouraged, reflects what Islam always was: a faith designed not to save souls, but to acquire recruits for the army of Islam.
Who was, some may ask, Jacques Soustelle? That the question has to be asked even by young people in France disturbs.
Jacques Soustelle, whom I met several years before his death, left his post as director of studies at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes in 1955, to serve as Governor-General of Algeria for one year. He had been a Resistance hero, and a well-known student of the religions of pre-colonial Mexico (his study “The Four Suns” can still be obtained). He understood that the French in Algeria had brought a period of what might be called civilization, establishing a school system, and even universities, and agricultural development (including vineyards), and semi-decent treatment for minorities (the loi Cremieux in 1870 removed Jews from application of the Islamic law and put them under the protection, as French citizens, of French law). For a while, he even thought that to head off the coming disaster for Algeria – of booting out the French and losing, over time, what civilization France had brought with it -- had – that a policy of “integration” of some of the Muslim Arabs might be possible as a way of winning over the most enlightened Arabs. Reality soon forced him to be disabused of that idea, and one hopes that the same idea, now revived in France (see Sarkozy) as the way to deal with the current invasion of France by Arabs primarily from the Maghreb, especially Algeria, will be seen as offering the same false hope, this time in France itself, from which the French cannot boot themselves out, but already find themselves, in many parts of France, a beset and often bullied, even terrorized, majority.
Soustelle opposed De Gaulle’s policies in North Africa and his anti-American and anti-Israel machinations (see Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia” or the recent study of French foreign policy by David Pryce-Jones, “Betrayal”). His name was blackened and young French people, knowing nothing of his heroism during World War II, nor of his scholarly work and reputation, nor of his intelligent replies to the fashionable (see “Lettre d’intellectuel”) will have an entirely false image of Jacques Soustelle. If they wish to recover their own past, and their own political sanity, they might start with his own writings on Algeria.
at February 18, 2007 12:16 PM
If Israel falls, and I think it will after the nuclear attack we await, then bring all the surviving Jews to the States. Better yet, bring them all to Minnesota. We'll trade out 10 cab drivers for every diasporic Jew coming in.
We'll even throw in a duly elected Moslem representative to sweeten the deal.
* 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 *
Marxism, based on a series of books and essays comprising fake histories and fraudulent arithmetic, blinds its followers. What a perfect match for Islam. This is why it is so sad to review the political leadership in Israel these days. The blind leading the blinded.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at February 18, 2007 3:00 PM
You wrote:
"Now that some in Western Europe are coming to their senses about Islam, they will inevitably begin to realize that the steady suffusion of their media with anti-Israel propaganda has created a situation that imperils not only Israel, but themselves. And they will begin to see things differently."
I'm not sure I see the evidence for this, as anti-Israel (and pro-Muslim) propaganda continues unabated. All those journalists, politicians, and academics raised taught to embrace Eurabia and all its trappings will not be able to make the intellectual journey back at this late date.
at February 18, 2007 3:04 PM
justamom: "Arabic, Turk, Moor, Saracen, Barbary pirate . . .never did they actually name the invader or link the threat to islamic hegemony."
justamom: "Thanks to Spencer, Fitzgerald and crew, I know better now. Due to the remarkable advances in instantaneous global communication - as displayed on this board - scores are waking to the real inconvenient truth daily - an advantage infidels did not enjoy in the previous 1400 years of islamic threat."
justamom - I think you're right. Imagine having no internet and also the cowed press to depend on for our news even now!. I can't blame those who are actually out there in public, afraid to say what is really going on. It is Islamic violence that accounts for this ignorance over 14 centuries. That is the REAL inconvenient truth (I still want that on the front of the t-shirt! Just have the t-shirt say "The REAL inconvenient truth" jihadwatch.org (I like the new subtle implication in your post that fear of Islamic violence is the "real" inconvenient truth that nobody wants to talk about), and oh yeah - "Nobody's dhimmi" dhimmiwatch.org on the back. Sure, I'll keep plugging for the t-shirt I would be willing to wear, and why not?)
But I think you are correct. The only thing that is different this time around is the internet, which, by permitting anonymity, is the first thing historically speaking which allows infidels to connect the dots and talk out loud to eachother without actual fear of violent reprisal.
Remind me again who invented this thing? I know it wasn't Al Gore but whoever it was, is owed a debt of gratitude that is simply too huge to repay.
Posted by: Caroline at February 18, 2007 6:19 PM
"that a policy of “integration” of some of the Muslim Arabs might be possible as a way of winning over the most enlightened Arabs. Reality soon forced him to be disabused of that idea"
what is your opinion of the Muslim harkis who fought for France against other Muslims?
Posted by: pureevil at February 19, 2007 5:02 AM
The "integration" that Soustelle thought, in the mid-1950s, might work, was intended for the Muslim elites who might share power: in Algeria, not in France. By "harkis" one means those Algerian Arabs (and Berbers) who fought in units against the FLN. Their numbers included those whose families had traditionally been in the Frecnh army, those who were settling scores with the FLN for family members killed, and other motives (some may have dimly or clearly recognized the advantages of French rule and French order). The FLN had given guarantees made in the Evian Accords to protect the Europeans (French mainly, but also those whose ancestors had come from Spain or Italy long ago) and the harkis; both promises were broken. The Europeans left en masse, recognizing quickly their obvious fate under Arab Muslim rule; it took the French government some time to rescue the harkis, but hundreds of thousands (with their families) arrived.
Your question requires a knowledge of what has happened to the "harkis" have done in France in the past 45 years. Have some harkis fully integratedinto French society, by dropping Islam which is, of course, the obstacle and the permanent menace? Has their mistreatment by other Arabs and Muslims ("Zidane Harki" as a taunt) made them more or less susceptible to such integration? And are the results mixed? I have no information about this, but could do research -- and so could you.
I assume that someone in the French government is trying to figure out what appeals can be made, what campaigns subtle and unsubtle can be waged, to make Islam less appealing. The clear connection between political despotism and Islam, economic stasis and inshallah-fatalism, social backwardness and the mistreatment of women and inculcation of permanent hostility toward, and contempt for, non-Muslims, the limited means of artistic expression that reflects what is proscribed in Qur'an and Sunna, the discouraging of free inquiry that reflects the habit of mental submission in Islam -- all this should be widely discussed, firmly fixed in the brains of the French Infidels, and then possibly, beginning with harkis and also with the Berbers, whose resentment of the Arabs should be encouraged, by encouraging them to understand that Islam is a vehicle for Arab cultural, linguistic, and other forms of imperialism. That is what is needed. Some simple truths, that should be obvious, but apparently, are not.
Posted by: Hugh at February 19, 2007 8:39 AM
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