In the featured article at FrontPage this morning, I discuss genocide-endorser Jumanah Imad Albahri’s non-retraction and non-apology:
Jumanah Imad Albahri, the Muslim student at the University of California at San Diego who last week endorsed a new genocide of Jews, has now issued a statement – and as is characteristic also of jihadist communiqués these days, it’s a masterpiece of disingenuousness and attempts to claim victim status.
Albahri started out by saying – apparently unequivocally – that she wasn’t for what she said she was for last week: “Allow me to begin by stating that I do NOT condone murder, I do NOT condone genocide, and I do NOT condone racism under any circumstance whatsoever against Jews or anyone else.” And what’s more, “these accusations are lies that I refuse to allow David Horowitz and his allies to perpetuate in their irresponsible and hateful smear campaign against those who disagree with or differ from them.”
Lies? What lies? It’s useful at this point to recall how Jumanah Albahri rocketed to fame in the first place: it all started when David Horowitz, during the question-and-answer period after his talk at UCSD, asked Albahri: “The head of Hizballah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For or Against it?” Albahri, enunciating her words clearly and forcefully, responded with a forthright endorsement of genocide: “For it.”
But now that she has become the poster child for Islamic neo-Nazism, the idea that she condones genocide is a “lie” and David Horowitz is perpetrating a “smear campaign.”
Poor Jumanah, smeared by her own words!
Albahri’s disingenuousness and finger-pointing only increases as her statement goes on. She dismisses as “ridiculous” the charge that she is anti-Semitic. Why? Because, Jumanah Albahri piously informs us, “I am a Semite.”
Very well. Let’s not waste our time arguing over nomenclature. Albahri is herself a Semite, and so could not be anti-Semitic? Fine. Allow me, then, to pose the question in a slightly different way: is Jumanah Albahri a Jew-hater? Would it be reasonable to think that she is, after her avowal of the fact that she wants to see the Jews gather in Israel so that Muslims don’t have to hunt them down elsewhere? Or would that be “ridiculous”?
Displaying her own fine grasp of the ridiculous, Albahri goes on to portray David Horowitz as the real villain of the piece: the problem, you see, is not that she endorsed genocide, but that “Mr. Horowitz spent an hour indiscriminately attacking liberals, students, Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians, utilizing verbiage that completely departed from an academic tone and delved into hate speech–especially labeling groups and individuals that support Palestinian rights ‘terrorists.'” One might think that given Albahri’s own endorsement of mass murder on a global scale, she might be more understanding about Horowitz’s use of the word “terrorists,” but she is apparently not that self-reflective.
After several paragraphs of puffery, filled with ad hominem attacks against David Horowitz and Palestinian claims to victim status, Albahri finally offers an explanation of how a poor victim soul such as she was manipulated by the demonic Horowitz into endorsing genocide:
“Towards the end of the exchange, I became emotional. I could no longer hear Mr. Horowitz speaking and so did not even hear his injection of Hezbollah’s credo of ’rounding up’ Jews in his last tangent. I could no longer contain my anger at being implicitly and improperly labeled a terrorist, an anti-Semite, and a proponent of genocide. The answer I was coerced into giving grossly misrepresented my beliefs and ideologies.”
Those who are tempted to believe Albahri’s claim that she was “coerced” into saying she favored the mass murder of Jews should at this point watch the video again. Watching it makes it impossible to believe that she could not hear what Horowitz was saying, or that she was coerced in any way into answering the way she did. Perhaps sensing this, she goes on to attempt yet another explanation: she did say it, but she didn’t mean it:
My answer, “for it,” in the context in which it was said does NOT mean “for” genocide. I was referring to his initial question that asked me for my position on Hamas, a topic that for his own political reasons he was relentless in pursuing. “For it” was not a legitimization of Hezbollah’s or anyone else’s credo for that matter that Jews should be exterminated. In fact, Mr. Horowitz’s intent was to entrap me with his barrage of questions so that he could avoid answering my question, and construe any answer that I would provide as anti-Semitic, genocidal hate speech in order to further his political agenda.
Here again, watching the video makes this position impossible to sustain. Horowitz formulated his question clearly and pointedly. Albahri shows no signs of confusion or disorientation, and answers Horowitz’s question as deliberately and forcefully as he asked it.
And so finally, does Jumanah Albahri condemn Hamas? She does not. “My opinion of Hamas,” she explains, “is not as simple as condemn or condone, ‘for it’ or ‘against it.'” She opposes “the killing of civilians,” without explaining whether she endorses the common Muslim view that there are no civilians in Israel, and concludes:
“I condone Hamas in its ambition to liberate the Palestinian people. I condone Hamas as the duly elected representative government of the Palestinian people granted governance in an election overseen by our ex-President Jimmy Carter; and characterized as fair, open, and fully democratic. I condone Hamas in its desire to end the inhumane siege of the Gazan people. I condone Hamas in its struggle to free the 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children unjustly locked away in Israeli prisons.”
Albahri sums up: “It seems that in Mr. Horowitz’s logic, my support of freedom, peace, and justice makes me a ‘terrorist.'”
No, Jumanah. Your support of genocidal Jew-haters makes you a terrorist, or at very least a terrorist sympathizer….