The world has grown weary of the Islamist's creed

From Haaretz: "To the Westerner who 'understands' the terrorist", by Bradley Burston

"Last week, when Israeli forces drove into Gaza, and some 120 Palestinians were killed, many of them were gunmen, but with children making up another sixth of the total, one grieving father spoke with quiet eloquence, saying "Other places in the world, when this happens, there is a great outcry. When this happens here, the world is silent. No one cares."

He's right. The world has grown content to let Palestinians die. The reason is not simple callousness. And it is not, as Hamas proclaims to its followers in Gaza, that the Jews control the world media and world finance, and thus Western government as well.

The reason is terrorism.

The world has grown weary of the Islamist's creed, that only the armed struggle can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the only proper resolution is the end of Israel.

Even the Israeli left, which for decades championed the Palestinian with courage and determination, has, in large part, had it with the Palestinians. The reason is terrorism. The reason is murder. The reason is that the rulers of Gaza are people who see an intrinsic value in the killing of Jews for the sake of increasing the number of dead Jews in the world. The rulers of Gaza cannot bring themselves to accept the concept of sharing the Holy Land with the Jews.

The best that the rulers of Gaza can do, is to bring an end to hope among their own people and ours as well.

They believe that the Jewish state is temporary, and that they Jews will soon abandon it to Islamic rule.

After all this time, you'd think they'd know the Jews a little better."
Decent people in the West have indeed grown thoroughly weary of the Islamist's creed. The lack of sympathy is such that, in spite of the usual hype, very few attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Europe last week. About 200 gathered in Paris and less than ... 100 in Brussels (photo).

Guarded at every single synagogue service or communal event

Melanie is spot on. The situation is the same in other countries in Europe. By way of illustration, this is what the Lisbon synagogue looks like from the street - there are less than 2000 Jews left in Portugal!

From Melanie Phillips' blog:

"Last night I attended the annual dinner of the Community Security Trust, the organisation that provides the astounding degree of security now needed to help protect Britain’s tiny Jewish population against attack. Sitting there listening to the appeal for money to finance this organisation, and watching the video of what it does and why it is needed, I was struck afresh by the shocking nature of this situation. The video showed Jewish schools in Britain being fitted with bomb-proof windows, Jewish children in Britain being taught how to fend off attack. Jews in Britain are now attacked more frequently than any other minority group.

Although racists have always attacked each and every minority group and that situation has not changed, the fact remains that minorities such as Hindus, Sikhs or Muslims don’t need to be guarded at their communal events; it is only Britain’s Jews for whom that is considered a necessity, and they are guarded at every single synagogue service or communal event. Indeed, the street outside the London hotel where last night’s dinner was held was knee-deep in police and CST volunteers.

I was sitting with some very decent people, non-Jews, of the kind who might have been called in a different age the backbone of England. Did they not think that all this was quite extraordinary? I asked them. Shameful, they said; absolutely shameful and appalling; and they shook their heads in sorrow that such a thing should be the case in Britain in 2008, that British Jews should be at such risk that the task of guarding them was quite beyond the regular police and had to be undertaken in large measure by a standing force of Jewish volunteers.

At this dinner the guest of honour was David Cameron. He made a simply outstanding speech ripping into the moral bankruptcy of the useful idiots and worse who are appeasing Islamism in Britain - a speech of a strength, clarity and passion that I had not heard before. It marked a notable step change in Tory policy on terror and Islamism. It was basically a speech which said in effect ‘They shall not pass’ and it threw down the gauntlet to the government which has effectively been prostrating itself before the Islamists instead."

From David Cameron's speech:
"During protests against the conflict in Lebanon, we witnessed the nauseating sight of well-scrubbed, middle class English people… marching through central London holding placards that read ‘We are all Hizbollah’. That is the extremist mindset in action. These are the same people who urge a boycott of Israeli goods and academics… while saying nothing about China, Iran or Zimbabwe. Unless we challenge such attitudes and expose them for the morally-bankrupt nonsense they are… they will spread through the body politic and become the received wisdom of millions…"

For Belgian Minister Israeli military operations in Gaza are "shocking"

Le Soir reports that, at a press conference held in Ramallah on Tuesday, Belgian Minister for Foreign Aid, Charles Michel, stated that operations conducted on Saturday in response to Hamas terrorist attacks by the Israeli army in Gaza were "shocking". The Minister conceded that "Israel is entitled to security and that rocket attacks against cities are unacceptable", but added that "the Israeli response is excessive and disproportionate. It goes against international human rights law". He stressed that "As a politician and a minister of the Belgian government, I represent our country and am the bearer of this message". Mr. Michel's statements are at odds with those by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's (BBC): "Ms Rice said the US was concerned about the toll of innocent life, but blamed Hamas for triggering the bloodshed." And: "The people who are firing rockets do not want peace, they sow instability, that is what Hamas is doing." See : Zan Studio of Ramallah - anti-Israeli artists invited to Belgium

"Anti-Semitism is an elusive and protean phenomenon", Christopher Hitchens

From Christopher Hitchens' review of Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori in The Atlantic:

"Anti-Semitism is an elusive and protean phenomenon, but it certainly involves the paradox whereby great power is attributed to the powerless. In the mind of the anti-Jewish paranoid, some shabby bearded figure in a distant shtetl is a putative member of a secret world government: hence the enduring fascination of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. (...)

Of course when Jews do achieve actual power, like the famous Rothschilds, they often become the targets of even more envy than other plutocrats. Political anti-Semitism in its more modern form often de-emphasized the supposed murder of Christ in favor of polemics against monopolies and cartels, leading the great German Marxist August Bebel to describe its propaganda as "the socialism of fools." Peter Pulzer’s essential history of anti-Semitism in pre-1914 Germany and Austria, which shows the element of populist opportunism in the deployment of the Jew-baiting repertoire, is, among other things, a great illustration of that ironic observation. And then there is the notion of the Jews’ lack of rooted allegiance: their indifference to the wholesome loyalties of the rural, the hierarchical, and the traditional, and their concomitant attraction to modernity. Writing from the prewar Balkans in her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West noticed this suspicion at work in old Serbia and wrote:

"Now I understand another cause for anti-Semitism; many primitive peoples must receive their first intimation of the toxic quality of thought from Jews. They know only the fortifying idea of religion; they see in Jews the effect of the tormenting and disintegrating ideas of skepticism."

The best recent illustration of that point that I know comes from Jacobo Timerman, the Argentine Jewish newspaper editor who was kidnapped and tortured by the death-squad regime in his country in the late 1970s. In his luminous memoir, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, he analyzes the work of the neo-Nazi element that formed such an important part of the military/clerical dictatorship, and quotes one of the "diagnoses" that animated their ferocity:

"Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space."

The three cosmopolitan surnames involved in this anti-Trinity, it was made perfectly clear to Timerman between thrusts of the electric cattle prod, were considered to be no coincidence."

Caricature from the antisemitic Viennese magazine Kikeriki (1912)

Durban II: Just Say "Non", Judeosphere

Judeosphere makes this appeal - you can sign the petition by sending an email to Ligue Internationale contre le Racisme et l'Antisémitisme (LICRA) licra@licra.org

"On Feb. 27, a petition was sent to the French newspaper Le Monde, signed by such prominent figures as Alan Finkielkraut, Claude Lanzmann and Elie Wiesel.

The letter denounces the rise of anti-semitism in public forums and urges Western democracies to follow the example of Canada and refuse to participate in the second UN-sponsored conference against racism known as Durban II.

You can read the full text of the letter and the growing number of signatories here. Some excerpts:

"At Durban, in South Africa, the global conference against racism was held under the auspices of the United Nations, in the very city where Gandhi began his career as a lawyer. It is in the name of human rights that "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" was chanted; and it is in the name of cultural relativism that there was silence on the discrimination and violence committed against women.

The great political crimes have always needed words to lend themselves legitimacy. Words presage action. From Mein Kampf ... to Stalin to Pol Pot, examples abound that justify the necessary extermination of the people’s enemy in the name of a race, in the name of the workers’ emancipation or in the name of some divine spiritual order. Totalitarian ideologues have replaced religions. … On September 11, 2001, several days after the Durban conference, it was in God’s name that the worst terrorist crime in history was committed.

Either democracies get their act together, following Canada's example, who just announced its refusal to participate in Durban II, recognizing that it risked being "marked by expressions of intolerance and anti-Semitism," and cease to abstain from or vote for resolutions contrary to the universal ideal of 1948, or religious obscurantism and its trail of political crimes will triumph under the good auspices of the United Nations. And when the hateful words are transformed into acts, nobody will be able to say: "We didn’t know.""

Let’s be reminded of the role played by some European NGOs at Durban, namely the Coordinating Committee for NGOs on the Question of Palestine (ECCP), a Brussels based association of NGOs cooperating with the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, headed by a Belgian Pierre Galand, who is still busy demonising Israel. Pierre Galand is the Chairman of the Belgo-Palestinian Association and, amazingly, in 2006 was appointed Chairman of the Belgian francophone secular movement (Centre d’action laïque) , a member of the International Humanist Ethical Union (IHEU)!!!
NGO Monitor Special Report: "Pierre Galand (Belgium) Using Political NGOs to Promote Demonization & Anti-Semitism in the UN & EU"
Philosemitism: "Israel on trial in Brussels - a prelude to Durban II?, The latest in a long list of initiatives in Europe to demonise Israel"

There is evidence proving the AL-Dura event was staged for the cameras, Danny Seaman

Statement on the al-Durah affair by Danny Seaman, Director of the Israeli Government Press Office, to Guysen International News, from Augean Stables:

"In the very least France 2 is guilty of poor journalism. Charles Enderlin failed to meet the professional journalist’s minimum standard of verification, before accusing Israel of killing the boy a-Dura. There is enough independent evidence proving the A-Dura event was staged for the cameras.

The State of Israel has tremendous respect for the media. Many media organizations from the Arab world, not to mention Iran, work freely in Israel. Allowing them to work freely in Israel does not imply that we in anyway agree with there positions. Like every democracy, Israel provides absolute freedom to the press and does not remove press credentials from journalists very easily. This is especially true for journalists working for a respected organization like France 2. Enderlin is fully aware of this and hides behind it in an attempt to distract attention away from his obvious professional failure.

The fact that Charles Enderlin still has press credentials from the State of Israel attests to the strength, character and tolerance of Israel’s democracy, not the quality or integrity of Charles Enderlin’s report on that day. The question is not why he still has press credentials from the State of Israel but rather, why is he still employed by France 2?"


On the al-Dura affair:

Spotlight On L'affaire al-Dura, by Tom Gross, from Backspin.

The Daniel Pearl Standard, by Judea Pearl, from WSJ:

"At the time, it was not clear whether she [the Pakistani Consul] was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny's murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent de-humanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004, when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the video tape of Danny's murder.

Al Dura, readers may recall, is the 12-year-old Palestinian boy who allegedly died from Israeli bullets in Gaza in September of 2001. As we now know, the whole scene is very likely to have been a fraud, choreographed by stringers and cameramen of France 2, the official news channel of France. France 2 aired the tape repeatedly and distributed it all over the world to anyone who needed an excuse to ratchet up anger or violence, among them Danny's killers.

The Pakistani Consul was right. The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel's murder, as well as for the "tsunami of hate" that has swept the world and continues to rise."

Why keep apologising to the Jews?, Alex Agnew

There is a belief that, with Hitler’s death and the end of Nazism, the ancestral hatred of which Jews were the object in Europe became a thing of the past. But reality reminds regularly and brutally that this is not the case, though it must also be said that most Europeans (like the Prince de Ligne who warned in 1801 that "this 1800-year-old anger has lasted long enough") do not subscribe to such obnoxious views.

It has been reported that a popular Flemish magazine, P-magazine, carried an interview of comedian Alex Agnew who made statements that reflect the familiar and, by now, 2008-year-old "anger":

"And why should we keep apologising to the Jews who let themselves be killed in concentration camps, instead of fighting with a weapon in their hands as my grand-father did (he was an English soldier)?".

Surely, Alex Agnew must joking. Apologies? Who has so far apologised for the slaughter of six million European Jews - of which one and half million were children? How many survivors have received a letter expressing regret for the murder, gassing, torture, deportation, spoliation of their relatives?

Did Gypsies and other victims of the Nazis and their accomplices also let themselves be killed rather than fight with a weapon in their hands? Who has apologised to the Gypsies? Who talks about their martyrdom? What were they guilty of other than being born?

"I live among Hassidic Jews in Berchem. And sometimes I think: "If they have always behaved themselves in the way they behave themselves towards us nowadays, I am not surprised at the fate meted out to them several times in the past."

If one accepts Alex Agnew’s warped reasoning, then the victims of wars, massacres, religious or racial persecution, colonialism are the guilty parties whereas their tormenters and executioners deserve our understanding.

In 2001, P-magazine published a disturbing poem by Rudolphus De Groote entitled "The free-thinker ":

"I do not like the shape of the country of Israel.
To me, its shape is far too thin and far too long.
It makes me think of a tapeworm.
I do not like Israel’s policies.
To me, they are far too bloody
and have no respect for the native population.
It makes me think of a tapeworm.
I do not like the Jewish religion of the country of Israel.
To me, this religion is too arrogant and parasitic,
it relentlessly exploits feelings of collective guilt that
have lasted for over half a century.
It makes me think of a tapeworm.
I am not anti-Semitic.
Israel deserves such a qualification. (…)
Since its creation in 1948, Israel has
Transformed anti-Semitism into a popular culture
and state terrorism into a trademark. (…)
Israel has exploited to the full
[literally: milked the cow to the very last drop]
the anti-Jewish sentiment it ascribes to others, and
has turned it into a shield to cover the carnage it perpetrates. (…)
Slowly but surely, Europe is liberating itself
from the penitence which has been inflicted on it
since World War II.
It is indeed odd that it has taken so long
for the world to realize that one genocide
does not justify another.
An umpteenth monument, museum or memorial, erected
under the pressure of the Holocaust industrialists
will have no effect whatsoever.
Moreover, it is indecent to dance on the corpses of one’s ancestors. (…)"