Not an official document.
For information only.
December 2005
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27th January.
On 1 November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 60/7 designating 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
Following the adoption of the resolution, the Secretary General of the United Nations characterized this special day as “an important reminder of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten”.
The horrors of World War II sparked the creation of the United Nations. Human rights for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion is one of the fundamental mandates recorded in its Charter. At the inauguration of the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem (Israel) in March 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan recalled that “worldwide revulsion at the genocide -- at the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others -- was also a driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. The Secretary-General added that “the United Nations
has a sacred responsibility to combat hatred and intolerance. A United Nations that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism denies its history and undermines its future”.
27 January was chosen to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day as it marks the day on which the largest Nazi death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland) was liberated by the Soviet army in 1945. Several countries already observe this day to remember Holocaust victims.
For more information, please visit:
http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/discrim/race_b_ht_print.asp
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/ga10413.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sgsm9762.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sgsm9689.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sgsm9375.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2005/webArticles/un_seminars.html
This fact sheet has been issued by the Public Inquiries Unit,
Department of Public Information, United Nations.
Tel.: 212-963-4475; Fax: 212-963-0071; E-mail: inquiries@un.org
Website: http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Liberalism, Relativism, Cosmopolitanism: "Easier Said than Done"
[Where does Islamism fit into this equation? M.]
This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/gray
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Easier Said Than Done
by JOHN GRAY
[from the January 30, 2006 issue]
There is a strange presumption in recent thought about human values. When we think about basic issues in ethics and politics, it is taken as a given that we face a choice between liberalism and relativism. Believing that human values are cultural constructions that vary widely across time and space, relativists urge us to be conscious of difference. If they have a political message it is one of tolerance: "Don't try to impose your way of life on others; be sensitive to the claims of cultural minorities in your own society." Liberals, on the other hand, insist that there are requirements of justice or rights that apply to all human beings regardless of the communities or cultures to which they belong. The liberal political message is one of universalism: "The human species is--or may one day become--a single moral community in which the same values are honored everywhere." Either we commit ourselves to liberal universalism or we must embrace moral relativism.
There are many things wrong with this dichotomy. One of the most obvious is that it is highly parochial. Liberalism may look like the only game in town these days, but just a generation ago there were Marxists, anarchists, socialists and others who believed a systematic alternative to liberal society was desirable, imaginable and practically feasible. Further back in the history of thought, there were many versions of universalism--most of them nonliberal. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas all believed in universal values, but no one would call them liberals. Looking outside the Western tradition, the same is true of Confucian, Buddhist and Islamic thinkers. It is one thing to assert the existence of universal values, quite another to claim these values are in some sense liberal. It is also true that most relativists have not been greatly concerned with issues of difference. Often relativism has gone hand in hand with the idea that society is an organic whole--a highly dubious notion, which if it tends to support diversity does so only at the level of entire cultures. Herder and the Romantics celebrated the differences among peoples, but they were indifferent or hostile to the claims of cultural minorities.
The idea that we must choose between liberalism and relativism reflects the poverty of the contemporary political imagination and a disabling loss of historical memory. Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers is a welcome attempt to resurrect an older tradition of moral and political reflection and to show its relevance to our current condition. Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, seeks to revive cosmopolitanism, a view of humans as citizens of the world that was advanced by the Cynics in Greece in the fourth century BCE and elaborated by Stoic philosophers in Roman times. In Appiah's view cosmopolitanism has two intertwined strands: the idea that we have obligations to other human beings above and beyond those to whom we are related by ties of family, kinship or formal citizenship; and an attitude that values others not just as specimens of universal humanity but as having lives whose meaning is bound up with particular practices and beliefs that are often different from our own. Appiah sees this cosmopolitan perspective re-emerging in the Enlightenment and expressed in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Kant's idea of a League of Nations.
As a position in ethical theory, cosmopolitanism is distinct from relativism and universalism. It affirms the possibility of mutual understanding between adherents to different moralities but without holding out the promise of any ultimate consensus. There are human universals that make species-wide communication possible--and yet these commonalities do not ground anything like a single universally valid morality or way of life. Clearly this is a position that carries within it a certain tension. The idea that we have universal moral obligations is not always easily reconciled with the practices and beliefs that give particular human lives their meaning. Appiah recognizes this tension, and writes: "There will be times when these two ideals--universal concern and respect for legitimate difference--clash. There's a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge."
A large part of Cosmopolitanism spells out the philosophy that underpins this position. What Appiah has to say in defense of cosmopolitanism is eminently sensible, but it is in no way new. In a move that will be familiar to anyone who recalls the ideas about "open texture" and "essential contestability" that were at the forefront of philosophical debate about language and values a generation ago, Appiah suggests that moral discourse is essentially practical in character. It seeks to express our desires and shape the attitudes of others rather than to report the way things are in the world. Like other types of discourse, moral language requires the use of judgment, which means different people will use it in different ways; but that does not mean morality is subjective. Rather, it means the possibility of moral conflict is built into language itself. As Appiah puts it: "When we describe past acts with words like 'courageous' and 'cowardly,' 'cruel' and 'kind,' we are shaping what people think and feel about what was done--and shaping our understanding of our moral language as well. Because that language is open-textured and essentially contestable, even people who share a moral vocabulary have plenty to fight about."
Appiah argues that as a result of the influence of positivism, an erroneous view of moral language has come to be widely accepted. For positivists science is the model for all other modes of discourse, and since moral reasoning contains nothing like the procedures for verification and falsification that are found in science, ethics is bound to seem a second-rate form of thought. Quite correctly, Appiah maintains that a great deal of human discourse does not fit this positivist model. When people with divergent moral outlooks talk to one another about the good life, he suggests, they are usually not engaged in argument. They are best understood as partners in conversation--an open-ended encounter that can be useful and enlightening even if, as is commonly the case, it does not end in consensus. As Appiah elegantly puts it: "We enter every conversation--whether with neighbors or with strangers--without a promise of final agreement." We can enter into the moral worlds of others and come to see that we partake in a common humanity without ever converging on a shared morality.
Appiah's version of cosmopolitan ethics strikes me as being very close to the value-pluralism defended by Isaiah Berlin, and it suffers from some of the same weaknesses. The advantage of Berlin's view is that it can acknowledge rationally insuperable moral differences without falling into relativism. Contemporary relativists follow the ancient Greek Sophists in holding that judgments of value are matters of opinion. However, human life contains goods and evils that do not depend on our opinions. To be at risk of genocide or subject to torture is an evil for all human beings whatever their beliefs. These evils are not culture-relative, and protection from them is a species-wide good. Once we recognize this, we cannot avoid speaking of universal human values; but this is not the same as having a universal morality. As Berlin never ceased to remind us, the most fundamental human values can make conflicting demands in practice, and in some of these conflicts reasonable people end up with different views of what is right. That is one reason there are different ways of life.
Value-pluralism undercuts the claims of all universal moralities, including liberal morality. Like Berlin in some of his writings, Appiah seems to want to celebrate moral diversity and at the same time endorse the universality of liberal values. The result is that he is constantly pulling liberal rabbits out of cosmopolitan hats. In discussing the issue of gay marriage, for example, Appiah informs us that while most Americans are against it they don't quite know why, whereas for those who favor gay marriage it just seems right. He adds: "The younger they are, the more likely it is that they think gay marriage is fine. And if they don't, it will probably be because they have had religious objections reinforced regularly throughout life in church, mosque or temple." It's not clear how Appiah knows this to be true, but that is not the point. What some people end up feeling cannot decide a question of this kind. If many religious people preach against gay marriage, it is because they believe being gay is wrong. If others think that "gay marriage is fine," it is because they believe there is nothing wrong with being gay. The point is that one cannot avoid making a moral judgment, and this inescapably means accepting or rejecting certain religious beliefs. Those who favor gay marriage--as I do--do so because they reject the belief that being gay is in any way bad or wrong. Cosmopolitanism has very little bearing on the issue.
Appiah defends cosmopolitanism in the apparent belief that it tends to bolster liberal values, when in fact it is bound to be open-ended. Cosmopolitan thinkers may endorse some liberal positions, but this has nothing to do with the logic of cosmopolitan theory. As a political theory, cosmopolitanism is a doctrine of live and let live--a very different thing from liberalism as usually understood today. Appiah tells us that the cosmopolitan view was expressed in modern times in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, but actually it was most clearly held by thinkers who had no truck with declarations of rights. For Thomas Hobbes and David Hume the end of politics was not a regime of rights but peace--and they were ready to curb freedom whenever it posed a serious threat to the achievement of that end. Again, Michel de Montaigne is surely one of the great early modern exponents of cosmopolitan ethics. He affirmed a common humanity transcending differences of custom and tradition--and at the same time denied that any one way of life was best for everyone. These modern cosmopolitans were too aware of the intractability of human affairs to imagine that great human evils such as anarchy, war and tyranny could be overcome by seeking to make a single form of government universal. They believed--to my mind rightly--that pursuing such a goal would only add to the sum of human evils. Nothing could be more alien to these cosmopolitan thinkers than the missionary certainties of the kind of liberalism that seeks to establish one type of regime throughout the world.
Appiah believes that cosmopolitan theory has a special relevance today, and he succeeds in showing that this neglected and attractive tradition of thought deserves serious attention as a habitable middle ground between liberalism and relativism. Where he fails is in not exploring the points at which cosmopolitanism and liberalism diverge. Yet these are precisely the areas where a cosmopolitan viewpoint is currently most needed. As Appiah notes, contemporary thought is beset by the notion that we can live together only if we are alike. In international relations this idea is expressed in the prevailing belief that only regimes that respect human rights or practice democracy (it's not always clear which) can be legitimate--a view that has been used by the neoconservative right to justify the calamitous attack on Iraq. If we are to avoid similar disasters in the future, we need an account of legitimacy as applied in the society of states that is not just a recent version of liberalism writ large. Cosmopolitanism could surely help frame such an account, but it would have to be more willing to challenge current pieties than the version presented by Appiah.
============================================================================
This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/gray
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Easier Said Than Done
by JOHN GRAY
[from the January 30, 2006 issue]
There is a strange presumption in recent thought about human values. When we think about basic issues in ethics and politics, it is taken as a given that we face a choice between liberalism and relativism. Believing that human values are cultural constructions that vary widely across time and space, relativists urge us to be conscious of difference. If they have a political message it is one of tolerance: "Don't try to impose your way of life on others; be sensitive to the claims of cultural minorities in your own society." Liberals, on the other hand, insist that there are requirements of justice or rights that apply to all human beings regardless of the communities or cultures to which they belong. The liberal political message is one of universalism: "The human species is--or may one day become--a single moral community in which the same values are honored everywhere." Either we commit ourselves to liberal universalism or we must embrace moral relativism.
There are many things wrong with this dichotomy. One of the most obvious is that it is highly parochial. Liberalism may look like the only game in town these days, but just a generation ago there were Marxists, anarchists, socialists and others who believed a systematic alternative to liberal society was desirable, imaginable and practically feasible. Further back in the history of thought, there were many versions of universalism--most of them nonliberal. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas all believed in universal values, but no one would call them liberals. Looking outside the Western tradition, the same is true of Confucian, Buddhist and Islamic thinkers. It is one thing to assert the existence of universal values, quite another to claim these values are in some sense liberal. It is also true that most relativists have not been greatly concerned with issues of difference. Often relativism has gone hand in hand with the idea that society is an organic whole--a highly dubious notion, which if it tends to support diversity does so only at the level of entire cultures. Herder and the Romantics celebrated the differences among peoples, but they were indifferent or hostile to the claims of cultural minorities.
The idea that we must choose between liberalism and relativism reflects the poverty of the contemporary political imagination and a disabling loss of historical memory. Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers is a welcome attempt to resurrect an older tradition of moral and political reflection and to show its relevance to our current condition. Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, seeks to revive cosmopolitanism, a view of humans as citizens of the world that was advanced by the Cynics in Greece in the fourth century BCE and elaborated by Stoic philosophers in Roman times. In Appiah's view cosmopolitanism has two intertwined strands: the idea that we have obligations to other human beings above and beyond those to whom we are related by ties of family, kinship or formal citizenship; and an attitude that values others not just as specimens of universal humanity but as having lives whose meaning is bound up with particular practices and beliefs that are often different from our own. Appiah sees this cosmopolitan perspective re-emerging in the Enlightenment and expressed in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Kant's idea of a League of Nations.
As a position in ethical theory, cosmopolitanism is distinct from relativism and universalism. It affirms the possibility of mutual understanding between adherents to different moralities but without holding out the promise of any ultimate consensus. There are human universals that make species-wide communication possible--and yet these commonalities do not ground anything like a single universally valid morality or way of life. Clearly this is a position that carries within it a certain tension. The idea that we have universal moral obligations is not always easily reconciled with the practices and beliefs that give particular human lives their meaning. Appiah recognizes this tension, and writes: "There will be times when these two ideals--universal concern and respect for legitimate difference--clash. There's a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge."
A large part of Cosmopolitanism spells out the philosophy that underpins this position. What Appiah has to say in defense of cosmopolitanism is eminently sensible, but it is in no way new. In a move that will be familiar to anyone who recalls the ideas about "open texture" and "essential contestability" that were at the forefront of philosophical debate about language and values a generation ago, Appiah suggests that moral discourse is essentially practical in character. It seeks to express our desires and shape the attitudes of others rather than to report the way things are in the world. Like other types of discourse, moral language requires the use of judgment, which means different people will use it in different ways; but that does not mean morality is subjective. Rather, it means the possibility of moral conflict is built into language itself. As Appiah puts it: "When we describe past acts with words like 'courageous' and 'cowardly,' 'cruel' and 'kind,' we are shaping what people think and feel about what was done--and shaping our understanding of our moral language as well. Because that language is open-textured and essentially contestable, even people who share a moral vocabulary have plenty to fight about."
Appiah argues that as a result of the influence of positivism, an erroneous view of moral language has come to be widely accepted. For positivists science is the model for all other modes of discourse, and since moral reasoning contains nothing like the procedures for verification and falsification that are found in science, ethics is bound to seem a second-rate form of thought. Quite correctly, Appiah maintains that a great deal of human discourse does not fit this positivist model. When people with divergent moral outlooks talk to one another about the good life, he suggests, they are usually not engaged in argument. They are best understood as partners in conversation--an open-ended encounter that can be useful and enlightening even if, as is commonly the case, it does not end in consensus. As Appiah elegantly puts it: "We enter every conversation--whether with neighbors or with strangers--without a promise of final agreement." We can enter into the moral worlds of others and come to see that we partake in a common humanity without ever converging on a shared morality.
Appiah's version of cosmopolitan ethics strikes me as being very close to the value-pluralism defended by Isaiah Berlin, and it suffers from some of the same weaknesses. The advantage of Berlin's view is that it can acknowledge rationally insuperable moral differences without falling into relativism. Contemporary relativists follow the ancient Greek Sophists in holding that judgments of value are matters of opinion. However, human life contains goods and evils that do not depend on our opinions. To be at risk of genocide or subject to torture is an evil for all human beings whatever their beliefs. These evils are not culture-relative, and protection from them is a species-wide good. Once we recognize this, we cannot avoid speaking of universal human values; but this is not the same as having a universal morality. As Berlin never ceased to remind us, the most fundamental human values can make conflicting demands in practice, and in some of these conflicts reasonable people end up with different views of what is right. That is one reason there are different ways of life.
Value-pluralism undercuts the claims of all universal moralities, including liberal morality. Like Berlin in some of his writings, Appiah seems to want to celebrate moral diversity and at the same time endorse the universality of liberal values. The result is that he is constantly pulling liberal rabbits out of cosmopolitan hats. In discussing the issue of gay marriage, for example, Appiah informs us that while most Americans are against it they don't quite know why, whereas for those who favor gay marriage it just seems right. He adds: "The younger they are, the more likely it is that they think gay marriage is fine. And if they don't, it will probably be because they have had religious objections reinforced regularly throughout life in church, mosque or temple." It's not clear how Appiah knows this to be true, but that is not the point. What some people end up feeling cannot decide a question of this kind. If many religious people preach against gay marriage, it is because they believe being gay is wrong. If others think that "gay marriage is fine," it is because they believe there is nothing wrong with being gay. The point is that one cannot avoid making a moral judgment, and this inescapably means accepting or rejecting certain religious beliefs. Those who favor gay marriage--as I do--do so because they reject the belief that being gay is in any way bad or wrong. Cosmopolitanism has very little bearing on the issue.
Appiah defends cosmopolitanism in the apparent belief that it tends to bolster liberal values, when in fact it is bound to be open-ended. Cosmopolitan thinkers may endorse some liberal positions, but this has nothing to do with the logic of cosmopolitan theory. As a political theory, cosmopolitanism is a doctrine of live and let live--a very different thing from liberalism as usually understood today. Appiah tells us that the cosmopolitan view was expressed in modern times in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, but actually it was most clearly held by thinkers who had no truck with declarations of rights. For Thomas Hobbes and David Hume the end of politics was not a regime of rights but peace--and they were ready to curb freedom whenever it posed a serious threat to the achievement of that end. Again, Michel de Montaigne is surely one of the great early modern exponents of cosmopolitan ethics. He affirmed a common humanity transcending differences of custom and tradition--and at the same time denied that any one way of life was best for everyone. These modern cosmopolitans were too aware of the intractability of human affairs to imagine that great human evils such as anarchy, war and tyranny could be overcome by seeking to make a single form of government universal. They believed--to my mind rightly--that pursuing such a goal would only add to the sum of human evils. Nothing could be more alien to these cosmopolitan thinkers than the missionary certainties of the kind of liberalism that seeks to establish one type of regime throughout the world.
Appiah believes that cosmopolitan theory has a special relevance today, and he succeeds in showing that this neglected and attractive tradition of thought deserves serious attention as a habitable middle ground between liberalism and relativism. Where he fails is in not exploring the points at which cosmopolitanism and liberalism diverge. Yet these are precisely the areas where a cosmopolitan viewpoint is currently most needed. As Appiah notes, contemporary thought is beset by the notion that we can live together only if we are alike. In international relations this idea is expressed in the prevailing belief that only regimes that respect human rights or practice democracy (it's not always clear which) can be legitimate--a view that has been used by the neoconservative right to justify the calamitous attack on Iraq. If we are to avoid similar disasters in the future, we need an account of legitimacy as applied in the society of states that is not just a recent version of liberalism writ large. Cosmopolitanism could surely help frame such an account, but it would have to be more willing to challenge current pieties than the version presented by Appiah.
============================================================================
Article by Pete Fisher (USA) about Islam.
I don't know whether Pete Fisher has any specific knowledge or insight into this subject matter.
However, while passionately criticizing extreme Islamism, he does seem to be level-headed in his approach to the fact that it is difficult to appease the extremists. No one can argue with that.
N.B.When one talks about "Islam", it is like talking about Communism, Fascism, Evangelism, Anti-Semitism or many other political cum religious cum racist ideologies. It is a collective noun about a phylosophy, not about individuals or communities where the practice of the Moslem religion is their private and personal way of life. One must be aware however, when reading below and all other objective refs., that incitement to hatred of "the other" is very easily incorporated into the practice of this religion at every level,- if allowed to proceed unchecked.
In Eastern Europe, up to WW2, the Christian Churches in the rural areas, preaching to the uneducated peasant masses, far too often referred to the Jews as "Christ killer", "God killers", and many other similar "blood libels" and epithets. Frequent pogroms were the result. Thus Nazi Fascism had a fertile breeding ground in which to fester!
As with the Holocaust, Islamic terrorism did not develop like spontaneous combustion!
MM.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Why Islam Can Never Be Appeased_ _*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Pete Fisher .
[/Pete Fisher is a concerned citizen in the Chicago area who has written
several articles on the economy, educational system, politics, and
religion. He has been featuredon several sites such as RenewAmerica.us,
Chronwatch.com <http://chronwatch.com/> Blessedcause.com
<http://blessedcause.com/>, Michnews.com <http://michnews.com/>,
mensnewsdaily.com <http://mensnewsdaily.com/>, The Rant.us
<http://rant.us/>, and has been circulated on various other sites
worldwide. He is a 6 year veteran of the Armed Forces. ]
2006/01/14
I have to shake my head in disbelief just about every day when I listen
to people who have no clue about Islam or what is happening all around
the world.
I still have a very hard time buying into the claims by many of our
politicians and media that this is somehow a peaceful religion. This
does not mean that every Muslim out in this world is violent. I am not
saying that at all. But what I AM saying is that Islam is the perfect
spring board for violent acts of every kind and is simply unchecked by
its own members.
This week in Mecca we can watch the video from Memri
<http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=991>
http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=991 where in
the height of the Muslim spiritual Hadj, the holiest time and
holiest site in all of Islam, are Muslims screaming
for the death and mutilation of all infidels, but specifically
Americans and Jews. They cry to their god for
our hands to be chopped off and to be murdered
while thanking Allah for his greatness.
And in Mount Arafat this week the people who were on
Hadj were told that there was a huge holy war against
Islam ongoing in this world right now,
according to the Grand Mufi of Saudi Arabia.
We are now finding that Saddam did provide
for terrorist training, we
see evidence that Syria was involved
in goading Iraqi terrorists into
action, we see recruiting in Europe and
Canada as well as the USA . We
see Muslims worldwide who refuse to live
as their host nations live, but
rather demand those nations bend to the will of Islam.
Rapes have become
the crime of choice for many Muslim
men living in Australia and Europe,
where violent crimes in many of these
countries has risen to heights
unknown before the Islamic immigration
into those nations.
The Palestinians will never be satisfied with
the way Israel has bent
backwards trying to appease them.
They still scream for blood, and they
still train their children in the ways
of death and slaughter.
Iran has snubbed their nose at the IAEA
and the rest of the world with
its cat and mouse tactics on nuclear technology.
They claim they need the power, but in truth, the population
of Iran has never been the
concern of the mullahs running the place.
All they care about is pushing
Islam as a world power and desire the technology
to use it as a terror threat when they deem it necessary.
Islam has no concern for human rights if one looks
around the world.
There are no storms of people protesting the rapes
and oppression by the
millions, even when perpetrated on Muslims,
by Muslims. They have no care for the Sudan
where they shoot at innocent women and children as
they drink from the muddy Wadi because they have no other source of
water due to Muslims destroying their lives, land and population.
The funny thing is, Muslim women have written to me telling
me the wonderful rights they have,
all the while being forced to wear a head
cover and not even being able to drive or
shop without a male escort.
And the Saudis are concerned that when we report
such inane and evil events that we as the West are
chasing people away from Islam.
However, this to me is the typical Islam double s
tandard and total lack
of responsibility so prevalent in the religion.
Like not long ago in Sydney where a well known
Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed publicly condoned
raping of women by saying they had no one to blame
but themselves. It is not the fault of the Muslim male;
it had to be the fault of the victim.
Much like the Democrats in America ,
the criminals did what they did for
any other purpose that by personal choice.
Whether it is their
upbringing, abuse, poverty, wealth, illness, being bullied,
all lame excuses that have actually been
used in our courts.
And because of this like minded philosophy,
Islam can never blame itself for its own
shortcomings or actions.
If one of them rapes, it was the fault of the
victim for wearing no socks.
If a school house got bombed and children
slaughtered in innocent blood,
it was the fault of the village or
country not accepting Islam that made them bomb it.
If Palestinians are starving in dire poverty
due to Arafat having skimmed the coffers
and pocketed the money,
then it must be the Jews who
are not allowing them into Israel .
If the Jews do not want them in
Israel because they cannot abstain
from terror and crime, then it must
be an agenda against Islam and Jihad
must be waged. It can not be that
they are simply terrorists and like Jordan
and Syria before Israel ,
they are not wanted due
to their proclivities.
In the mind of Islam, anything that is not
Islam is the fault of their
people starving, the fault they fight each
other, the fault they use acts of extreme cowardice
to make a political point. It is the fault of
all others on Earth that they refuse to help
their own and the image
they put to the world.
It is NOT the West chasing people away from
Islam. It is Islam chasing people away.
It is the actions of Muslims, it
is the writings of the Koran and Hadiths,
etc. that keep people away from Islam.
It is the silence of Muslims when their own commit
acts so diabolical it would take the Devil
himself some trouble to devise.
It is the chaos within Islam and the chaos
it creates without that make
human beings shake their heads in disbelief
at the horrors committed in
the name of their god. But we who are
civilized can never teach those
who refuse to hear.
It is simply easier for Islam to blame
the rest of the world for the
evil it creates and commands through the Koran.
It is much easier to hide behind the lies than to look
at the deceit within. It is easier to
write off the starvation, blood letting,
and lust for murder with (crooked interpretations of)
Koranic passages than to actually become
human beings that care for one another.
It is easier for Muslims around the globe to say nothing
while their own walk this Earth spewing evil. It is easier for
many to believe that just
because a few of the billions do not act like this;
it may have enough peaceful elements to actually
be placed in the Great Religion category.
But those who have befriended Islam have
been bitten badly by the ones they reached to.
France , Spain , England , The Netherlands, Finland ,
Canada , USA , and many African nations have learned
the price of treating them like decent and civilized people.
They have been attacked from within, they have been
demanded to change laws that favor Islam,
they've seen crime rates rise, and they have
been berated by these people.
This is a simple thing really. It stems from a great
arrogance that Islam and only Islam is to survive
on Earth at any cost. Though arrogance is evident
in other religions to some extant, it is the
mainstay of Islam and because of this millions are
enslaved by Islam and millions die by the hand
of the followers of Mohammed.
And because of this, Islam can never be appeased.
It is never enough until they dominate.
It will never be enough until they make all the
laws. It can never be enough as long as there
are those who refuse to buy into Mohammed
and his more than 6,000 satanic verses called Koran.
It can never be appeased until it is fully dominant,
or until it does not exist to create the evil it does
on a daily basis.
I love my fellow man, and I love animals,
but even a rabid dog is shot
to protect the townsfolk from the death
a bite can bring about.
However, while passionately criticizing extreme Islamism, he does seem to be level-headed in his approach to the fact that it is difficult to appease the extremists. No one can argue with that.
N.B.When one talks about "Islam", it is like talking about Communism, Fascism, Evangelism, Anti-Semitism or many other political cum religious cum racist ideologies. It is a collective noun about a phylosophy, not about individuals or communities where the practice of the Moslem religion is their private and personal way of life. One must be aware however, when reading below and all other objective refs., that incitement to hatred of "the other" is very easily incorporated into the practice of this religion at every level,- if allowed to proceed unchecked.
In Eastern Europe, up to WW2, the Christian Churches in the rural areas, preaching to the uneducated peasant masses, far too often referred to the Jews as "Christ killer", "God killers", and many other similar "blood libels" and epithets. Frequent pogroms were the result. Thus Nazi Fascism had a fertile breeding ground in which to fester!
As with the Holocaust, Islamic terrorism did not develop like spontaneous combustion!
MM.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Why Islam Can Never Be Appeased_ _*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Pete Fisher .
[/Pete Fisher is a concerned citizen in the Chicago area who has written
several articles on the economy, educational system, politics, and
religion. He has been featuredon several sites such as RenewAmerica.us,
Chronwatch.com <http://chronwatch.com/> Blessedcause.com
<http://blessedcause.com/>, Michnews.com <http://michnews.com/>,
mensnewsdaily.com <http://mensnewsdaily.com/>, The Rant.us
<http://rant.us/>, and has been circulated on various other sites
worldwide. He is a 6 year veteran of the Armed Forces. ]
2006/01/14
I have to shake my head in disbelief just about every day when I listen
to people who have no clue about Islam or what is happening all around
the world.
I still have a very hard time buying into the claims by many of our
politicians and media that this is somehow a peaceful religion. This
does not mean that every Muslim out in this world is violent. I am not
saying that at all. But what I AM saying is that Islam is the perfect
spring board for violent acts of every kind and is simply unchecked by
its own members.
This week in Mecca we can watch the video from Memri
<http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=991>
http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=991 where in
the height of the Muslim spiritual Hadj, the holiest time and
holiest site in all of Islam, are Muslims screaming
for the death and mutilation of all infidels, but specifically
Americans and Jews. They cry to their god for
our hands to be chopped off and to be murdered
while thanking Allah for his greatness.
And in Mount Arafat this week the people who were on
Hadj were told that there was a huge holy war against
Islam ongoing in this world right now,
according to the Grand Mufi of Saudi Arabia.
We are now finding that Saddam did provide
for terrorist training, we
see evidence that Syria was involved
in goading Iraqi terrorists into
action, we see recruiting in Europe and
Canada as well as the USA . We
see Muslims worldwide who refuse to live
as their host nations live, but
rather demand those nations bend to the will of Islam.
Rapes have become
the crime of choice for many Muslim
men living in Australia and Europe,
where violent crimes in many of these
countries has risen to heights
unknown before the Islamic immigration
into those nations.
The Palestinians will never be satisfied with
the way Israel has bent
backwards trying to appease them.
They still scream for blood, and they
still train their children in the ways
of death and slaughter.
Iran has snubbed their nose at the IAEA
and the rest of the world with
its cat and mouse tactics on nuclear technology.
They claim they need the power, but in truth, the population
of Iran has never been the
concern of the mullahs running the place.
All they care about is pushing
Islam as a world power and desire the technology
to use it as a terror threat when they deem it necessary.
Islam has no concern for human rights if one looks
around the world.
There are no storms of people protesting the rapes
and oppression by the
millions, even when perpetrated on Muslims,
by Muslims. They have no care for the Sudan
where they shoot at innocent women and children as
they drink from the muddy Wadi because they have no other source of
water due to Muslims destroying their lives, land and population.
The funny thing is, Muslim women have written to me telling
me the wonderful rights they have,
all the while being forced to wear a head
cover and not even being able to drive or
shop without a male escort.
And the Saudis are concerned that when we report
such inane and evil events that we as the West are
chasing people away from Islam.
However, this to me is the typical Islam double s
tandard and total lack
of responsibility so prevalent in the religion.
Like not long ago in Sydney where a well known
Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed publicly condoned
raping of women by saying they had no one to blame
but themselves. It is not the fault of the Muslim male;
it had to be the fault of the victim.
Much like the Democrats in America ,
the criminals did what they did for
any other purpose that by personal choice.
Whether it is their
upbringing, abuse, poverty, wealth, illness, being bullied,
all lame excuses that have actually been
used in our courts.
And because of this like minded philosophy,
Islam can never blame itself for its own
shortcomings or actions.
If one of them rapes, it was the fault of the
victim for wearing no socks.
If a school house got bombed and children
slaughtered in innocent blood,
it was the fault of the village or
country not accepting Islam that made them bomb it.
If Palestinians are starving in dire poverty
due to Arafat having skimmed the coffers
and pocketed the money,
then it must be the Jews who
are not allowing them into Israel .
If the Jews do not want them in
Israel because they cannot abstain
from terror and crime, then it must
be an agenda against Islam and Jihad
must be waged. It can not be that
they are simply terrorists and like Jordan
and Syria before Israel ,
they are not wanted due
to their proclivities.
In the mind of Islam, anything that is not
Islam is the fault of their
people starving, the fault they fight each
other, the fault they use acts of extreme cowardice
to make a political point. It is the fault of
all others on Earth that they refuse to help
their own and the image
they put to the world.
It is NOT the West chasing people away from
Islam. It is Islam chasing people away.
It is the actions of Muslims, it
is the writings of the Koran and Hadiths,
etc. that keep people away from Islam.
It is the silence of Muslims when their own commit
acts so diabolical it would take the Devil
himself some trouble to devise.
It is the chaos within Islam and the chaos
it creates without that make
human beings shake their heads in disbelief
at the horrors committed in
the name of their god. But we who are
civilized can never teach those
who refuse to hear.
It is simply easier for Islam to blame
the rest of the world for the
evil it creates and commands through the Koran.
It is much easier to hide behind the lies than to look
at the deceit within. It is easier to
write off the starvation, blood letting,
and lust for murder with (crooked interpretations of)
Koranic passages than to actually become
human beings that care for one another.
It is easier for Muslims around the globe to say nothing
while their own walk this Earth spewing evil. It is easier for
many to believe that just
because a few of the billions do not act like this;
it may have enough peaceful elements to actually
be placed in the Great Religion category.
But those who have befriended Islam have
been bitten badly by the ones they reached to.
France , Spain , England , The Netherlands, Finland ,
Canada , USA , and many African nations have learned
the price of treating them like decent and civilized people.
They have been attacked from within, they have been
demanded to change laws that favor Islam,
they've seen crime rates rise, and they have
been berated by these people.
This is a simple thing really. It stems from a great
arrogance that Islam and only Islam is to survive
on Earth at any cost. Though arrogance is evident
in other religions to some extant, it is the
mainstay of Islam and because of this millions are
enslaved by Islam and millions die by the hand
of the followers of Mohammed.
And because of this, Islam can never be appeased.
It is never enough until they dominate.
It will never be enough until they make all the
laws. It can never be enough as long as there
are those who refuse to buy into Mohammed
and his more than 6,000 satanic verses called Koran.
It can never be appeased until it is fully dominant,
or until it does not exist to create the evil it does
on a daily basis.
I love my fellow man, and I love animals,
but even a rabid dog is shot
to protect the townsfolk from the death
a bite can bring about.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Israel Propaganda.
Many writers hide their antisemitic and/or anti-Zionist-pro-Arab sentiments behind the mantra of being against the policies of the Israeli Government!
This contention never sits well with most sensible Jewish people around the world who are aware that nothing except the annihilation of the Jewish State and its people will satisfy the anti-Semites and the enemies of Israel.
Those who object to a specific action or policy of the Government of Israel are usually very specific in their objection. They can see both sides of the problem and will be careful not to give succor only to the other side!
Below is one good reply to those attacking Israel.
MM
-----------------------------------------
Israeli actions not cause of unrest
By David DRESCHER
AlligatorOnline
January 13, 2006
http://www.alligator.org/pt2/060113column.php
I find it strange that Robert Heck and David Reznik, in their attempt to slander the state of Israel in Wednesday's paper, could not find a single fact to prove or back up their skewed and anti-Semitic view of Israel and the history of the Jewish state. How could one write such a scathing attack on a nation, claiming "institutionalized violence" and "repressive military violence" without citing a single act of it?
The violence I have been seeing, along with most Americans, is the public slaughter of innocent men, women and children in venues such as pizzerias, nightclubs and buses. The oppression I have seen includes repeated attempts by every major Middle Eastern Arab nation to destroy Israel since it became a state by United Nations mandate in 1948.
The original UN partition of Palestine allotted the Jews in Palestine a significantly smaller landmass than what is now present day Israel - land where Jews were the majority of the population. Immediately following the UN resolution, Arab riots claimed the lives of 271 Jews. Immediately following the May 14 Declaration of Independence, the five Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq invaded the small sliver of land that was Israel with the intent of annihilation.
Quoting Azzam Pasha, the secretary-general of the Arab League at the time: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
Following the Arab armies' defeat and the establishment of Israel, the following for an independent Palestinian state was weak and seemed to have no backing -- the reason being Arabs living in what is now the West Bank were completely content to remain under Jordanian rule. It was the Jordanians who had the problem with taking responsibility for those Arabs living in the disputed territories.
In 1967, Israel found herself under attack from her Arab neighbors when Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon invaded with the backing of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait and Sudan. Again in 1973, the Arabs invaded Israel on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur.
There seems to be a trend in the violence and oppression the world has witnessed in the Middle East -- Arab attempts at Jewish annihilation.
I find it laughable that Heck and Reznik could compare Israelis with the Nazis, especially considering the most influential Arab leader in Palestine prior to 1948 was Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, an outspoken anti-Semite responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Jews throughout Palestine in the 1920s. The mufti was responsible for the mobilization of Nazi support groups throughout the Muslim and Arab communities and actually met with Hitler in November 1941. He helped recruit 22,000 Muslim volunteers to the Schutzstaffel, the German secret police.
It appears that the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip do have a boot to their heads, but the boot isn't Israel's. It belongs to their own corrupt Arab leaders who have been sucking them dry for years.
________
David Drescher is a microbiology sophomore.
This contention never sits well with most sensible Jewish people around the world who are aware that nothing except the annihilation of the Jewish State and its people will satisfy the anti-Semites and the enemies of Israel.
Those who object to a specific action or policy of the Government of Israel are usually very specific in their objection. They can see both sides of the problem and will be careful not to give succor only to the other side!
Below is one good reply to those attacking Israel.
MM
-----------------------------------------
Israeli actions not cause of unrest
By David DRESCHER
AlligatorOnline
January 13, 2006
http://www.alligator.org/pt2/060113column.php
I find it strange that Robert Heck and David Reznik, in their attempt to slander the state of Israel in Wednesday's paper, could not find a single fact to prove or back up their skewed and anti-Semitic view of Israel and the history of the Jewish state. How could one write such a scathing attack on a nation, claiming "institutionalized violence" and "repressive military violence" without citing a single act of it?
The violence I have been seeing, along with most Americans, is the public slaughter of innocent men, women and children in venues such as pizzerias, nightclubs and buses. The oppression I have seen includes repeated attempts by every major Middle Eastern Arab nation to destroy Israel since it became a state by United Nations mandate in 1948.
The original UN partition of Palestine allotted the Jews in Palestine a significantly smaller landmass than what is now present day Israel - land where Jews were the majority of the population. Immediately following the UN resolution, Arab riots claimed the lives of 271 Jews. Immediately following the May 14 Declaration of Independence, the five Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq invaded the small sliver of land that was Israel with the intent of annihilation.
Quoting Azzam Pasha, the secretary-general of the Arab League at the time: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
Following the Arab armies' defeat and the establishment of Israel, the following for an independent Palestinian state was weak and seemed to have no backing -- the reason being Arabs living in what is now the West Bank were completely content to remain under Jordanian rule. It was the Jordanians who had the problem with taking responsibility for those Arabs living in the disputed territories.
In 1967, Israel found herself under attack from her Arab neighbors when Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon invaded with the backing of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait and Sudan. Again in 1973, the Arabs invaded Israel on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur.
There seems to be a trend in the violence and oppression the world has witnessed in the Middle East -- Arab attempts at Jewish annihilation.
I find it laughable that Heck and Reznik could compare Israelis with the Nazis, especially considering the most influential Arab leader in Palestine prior to 1948 was Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, an outspoken anti-Semite responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Jews throughout Palestine in the 1920s. The mufti was responsible for the mobilization of Nazi support groups throughout the Muslim and Arab communities and actually met with Hitler in November 1941. He helped recruit 22,000 Muslim volunteers to the Schutzstaffel, the German secret police.
It appears that the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip do have a boot to their heads, but the boot isn't Israel's. It belongs to their own corrupt Arab leaders who have been sucking them dry for years.
________
David Drescher is a microbiology sophomore.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
INDEX OF POSTS
Previous Posts
Leunig's cartoons in the Age:OPEN LETTER.
Is Disengagement from the Arabs the Answer for Israel?
ISRAEL AT ITS BEST
The General: History Interrupted.
Bukovina (now Ukraine)- Romania's Holocaust.(2.)
Bukovina (now Ukraine)- Romania's Holocaust.(1)
NEW: Secessionists in the West Bank?
Tribute to PM Sharon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, Pres. Union of Progr. Judaism
On the Loss of Ariel Sharon as PM
Also be prepared for the unlikely: ISRAEL'S DILEMMA.
Leunig's cartoons in the Age:OPEN LETTER.
Is Disengagement from the Arabs the Answer for Israel?
ISRAEL AT ITS BEST
The General: History Interrupted.
Bukovina (now Ukraine)- Romania's Holocaust.(2.)
Bukovina (now Ukraine)- Romania's Holocaust.(1)
NEW: Secessionists in the West Bank?
Tribute to PM Sharon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, Pres. Union of Progr. Judaism
On the Loss of Ariel Sharon as PM
Also be prepared for the unlikely: ISRAEL'S DILEMMA.
Leunig's cartoons in the Age:OPEN LETTER.
LEUNIG RESPONDS TO CRITICISM.
The cartoonists' lot: holding the mirror to a fractured world Michael Leunig January 13, 2006
URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/01/12/1136956298009.html
--
MY RESPONSE: Leunig doesn't get it!
Dear Sir,
I am sorry you weren't there at that J. Museum function,- I was there and wished that you had been too. We could have personally debated the rights and wrongs of your political cartoons.
Unfortunately, by putting your personal interpretation into the daily paper, it gives me and the Jewish community the impression that you are in collusion with the enemies of the State,- be it Israel, American or our own here.
Sorry,- I still think that you can put your point of view in a less offensive way. Even if you see things differently, as many people do, it is not good enough to mimic the mortal enemies of a people,- be they the anti-Americans, anti-Australians or anti-Israelis or plain anti-Semites. They gleefully copy you to support their own biases and real hatreds.
Please see the analysis below of the Arab "Hate Industry".
You don't represent them surely, - you portray us,- yourself, the Aussies, the Jews, the Israelis and today the Americans,- but in their image.I rarely see you satirising any of the enemies of our peoples.Therein lies the problem.I don't think that you quite understand our emotional reactions to your cartoons,- we often liken them to what Goebels did in the '30s in Germany and would have approved and used today!
Some of us remember those days and where they led!There has to be some sort of "in context" analysis even in cartooning! Yours,
M. M.
The JewishTimes Australia has another response.
http://www.jewishtimes.com.au/content/view/233/190/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
Dr. Reuven Erlich
Director
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S) Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the
Center for Special Studies (C.S.S)
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center Newsletter Attached please find information about :
The Hate Industry http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/as_e0106.htm
Monitoring anti-Semitic publications issued in the Arab countries: two anti-Semitic books published in Egypt in 2005 preach hatred of the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the Zionist movement (with no distinctions made between the three) and provide religious Islamic sanction for violence against them
Download PDF file
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is the educational and documentary center of the national memorial site of the Israeli intelligence community. It is located at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S.), at Gelilot near Tel Aviv, and specializes in information about intelligence and terrorism. It regularly releases exclusive information on its Internet site, both in Hebrew and English (http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/default.htm), a large percentage of which is based on original Palestinian documents captured by Israeli forces.
As an additional service, the Center now sends out information electronically;
We would appreciate your comments and suggestions about both this newsletter and our Website. Yours sincerely, Dr. Reuven Erlich (Colonel, Ret.) Director The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
Telephone: +972-3-7603579
Fax: +972-3-7603790
Email: info@intelligence.org.il
----------------------------------
HonestReporting.com (13/1/06)
A MEDIA U-TURN OR GROSS HYPOCRISY?
While the late conversion of some media outlets to a more balanced and fairer treatment of Sharon is welcome, HonestReporting notes how the media's attitude throughout Sharon's career has been infected with opinion and prejudice that has significantly contributed to the campaign of demonization against Israel. As illustrated by some of the examples in this communique, this trend still exists in many quarters.
The sudden u-turn of many of Sharon's detractors demonstrates the fickleness of a media that has promoted its own opinion of the truth with utter disregard for the consequences. This power to shape perceptions and mould public opinion reinforces the need to hold the media accountable for its work.
The thoughts of HonestReporting are with Ariel Sharon and his family and we urge readers to remain vigilant and to respond to further media distortions of his history. (See the Jewish Virtual Library for a detailed biography.)
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.
HonestReporting
The cartoonists' lot: holding the mirror to a fractured world Michael Leunig January 13, 2006
URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/01/12/1136956298009.html
--
MY RESPONSE: Leunig doesn't get it!
Dear Sir,
I am sorry you weren't there at that J. Museum function,- I was there and wished that you had been too. We could have personally debated the rights and wrongs of your political cartoons.
Unfortunately, by putting your personal interpretation into the daily paper, it gives me and the Jewish community the impression that you are in collusion with the enemies of the State,- be it Israel, American or our own here.
Sorry,- I still think that you can put your point of view in a less offensive way. Even if you see things differently, as many people do, it is not good enough to mimic the mortal enemies of a people,- be they the anti-Americans, anti-Australians or anti-Israelis or plain anti-Semites. They gleefully copy you to support their own biases and real hatreds.
Please see the analysis below of the Arab "Hate Industry".
You don't represent them surely, - you portray us,- yourself, the Aussies, the Jews, the Israelis and today the Americans,- but in their image.I rarely see you satirising any of the enemies of our peoples.Therein lies the problem.I don't think that you quite understand our emotional reactions to your cartoons,- we often liken them to what Goebels did in the '30s in Germany and would have approved and used today!
Some of us remember those days and where they led!There has to be some sort of "in context" analysis even in cartooning! Yours,
M. M.
The JewishTimes Australia has another response.
http://www.jewishtimes.com.au/content/view/233/190/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
Dr. Reuven Erlich
Director
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S) Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the
Center for Special Studies (C.S.S)
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center Newsletter Attached please find information about :
The Hate Industry http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/as_e0106.htm
Monitoring anti-Semitic publications issued in the Arab countries: two anti-Semitic books published in Egypt in 2005 preach hatred of the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the Zionist movement (with no distinctions made between the three) and provide religious Islamic sanction for violence against them
Download PDF file
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is the educational and documentary center of the national memorial site of the Israeli intelligence community. It is located at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S.), at Gelilot near Tel Aviv, and specializes in information about intelligence and terrorism. It regularly releases exclusive information on its Internet site, both in Hebrew and English (http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/default.htm), a large percentage of which is based on original Palestinian documents captured by Israeli forces.
As an additional service, the Center now sends out information electronically;
We would appreciate your comments and suggestions about both this newsletter and our Website. Yours sincerely, Dr. Reuven Erlich (Colonel, Ret.) Director The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
Telephone: +972-3-7603579
Fax: +972-3-7603790
Email: info@intelligence.org.il
----------------------------------
HonestReporting.com (13/1/06)
A MEDIA U-TURN OR GROSS HYPOCRISY?
While the late conversion of some media outlets to a more balanced and fairer treatment of Sharon is welcome, HonestReporting notes how the media's attitude throughout Sharon's career has been infected with opinion and prejudice that has significantly contributed to the campaign of demonization against Israel. As illustrated by some of the examples in this communique, this trend still exists in many quarters.
The sudden u-turn of many of Sharon's detractors demonstrates the fickleness of a media that has promoted its own opinion of the truth with utter disregard for the consequences. This power to shape perceptions and mould public opinion reinforces the need to hold the media accountable for its work.
The thoughts of HonestReporting are with Ariel Sharon and his family and we urge readers to remain vigilant and to respond to further media distortions of his history. (See the Jewish Virtual Library for a detailed biography.)
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.
HonestReporting
Is Disengagement from the Arabs the Answer for Israel?
Dr. Alex Grobman (see biographical notes at end.)
That Jews need to be "disengaged" from the Arabs is not a new idea. In July 1937 the British issued the Palestine Royal Peel Commission that concluded: "An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single State."
Expelling Jews from their homes in any part of Israel or in the disputed territories will not solve the Arab/Israeli conflict. How do we know? The Arabs have been quite explicit in explaining why the conflict persists. PLO spokesman Bassam-Abu-Sharif and other leaders claim, "The struggle with the Zionist enemy is not a matter of borders, but touches on the very existence of the Zionist entity." In other words, it does not matter whether Israel retreats to her 1967 borders, those mandated by the UN in 1948 or the 1949 cease fire lines. As long as the Jewish State exists, the Arabs are determined to bring about her demise.
Deporting Jews from their homes is also illegal. Writing in The New Republic on October 21, 1991, Professor Eugene V. Rostow made this clear when he declared, "[UN] Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until ‘a just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces ‘from territories’ it occupied during the Six-Day War--not from ‘the’ territories nor from ‘all’ the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip."
In another essay in which he investigates the Arab claim for self-determination based on law, Professor Rostow concludes, "the [British] mandate implicitly denies Arab claims to national political rights in the area in favor of the Jews; the mandated territory was in effect reserved to the Jewish people for their self- determination and political development, in acknowledgment of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land. Lord Curzon, who was then the British Foreign Minister, made this reading of the mandate explicit. There remains simply the theory that the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have an inherent ‘natural law’ claim to the area."
"Neither customary international law nor the United Nations Charter acknowledges that every group of people claiming to be a nation has the right to a state of its own. International law rests on the altogether different principle."
In the absence of a peace agreement, how can one legally or morally justify forcing Jews to leave their homes? What did the Jews do to warrant this treatment? They were encouraged by Israeli administrations to establish residences and business in the area. Isn’t expulsion penalizing the victim, while rewarding the aggressor? And when peace negotiations do begin, wouldn’t it be better to have a presence in the area as a bargaining chip ?
Another concern must be that expulsion clearly demonstrates that the Arab Intifada was not fought in vain. If the Israelis retreat under fire as they did in south Lebanon, the Arabs will once again see that terrorism is the most effective means to ensure acknowledgment for themselves, their goals, and to achieve their objectives. According to a joint Israeli-Palestinian Public Opinion Poll in June 2005 conducted by The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 45% of the Israelis and 72% of the Palestinians believe that Ariel Sharon's decision to remove Israeli settlements from Gaza is a triumph for the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel, compared to 52% among Israelis and 26% among Palestinians.
Furthermore, 51% of the Israelis and 66% of the Palestinians believe that the Intifada and armed confrontation has helped Palestinians achieve national and political objectives that negotiations could not have achieved. Israeli settlers share these perceptions with the Palestinians. 72% of the settlers think the disengagement is a victory for the Palestinians and 77% believe the Intifada has helped them achieve political goals.
As to the long term possibility for a political solution to the Israel/ Palestinian conflict, 46% of the Palestinians and 36% of the Israelis believe that there never will be a political settlement, 29% of the Palestinians and 31% of the Israelis think that this goal can only be realized either in future generations or in the next generation, 19% of the Palestinians and 27% of the Israelis expect it will be achieved in the next decade or within the next few years.
In a recent interview, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who presided over the retreat from south
Lebanon and the failed Camp David 2000 Summit, said that Sharon surrendered to terror after realizing that his attempts to curb the violence had failed. Barak believes that the disengagement policy is flawed because even after the Israelis evacuate their armed forces and civilians from Gaza, international law dictates that Israel will be held accountable for everything that occurs there.
Barak further claims that president George Bush did not promise Sharon that Israelis will be allowed to remain in Gush Etzion, Givat Zev, Ariel, and Maaleh Adumim. Israel will not be allowed to remain in this as a reward for leaving Gaza. Behind closed doors, Barak says, Americans will tell you that this in not true. "The public is being deceived," he asserts. Why? Because "Sharon is not strong enough to tell the Israeli public the truth." Sharon and Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz have replaced the former Mossad chief, the head of the security service, IDF Chief of Staff, and the National Security Advisor, and appointed people who support disengagement.
Sharon is not being honest about the security fence either, according to Barak. The communities behind the fence will be abandoned. Several areas of the fence have been left open allowing terrorists access to Hadera, Afula, Be'er Sheva and Tel Aviv. Sharon has also lost the city of Ariel, and soon Maaleh Adumim.
Equally disturbing is the admission by Moshe Ya’alon, former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff that the IDF did not participate in most of the discussions that formulated the expulsion plan. Only after the Americans and Egyptians were informed of the arrangement did he learn about it.
After his recent meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Sharon once again called upon the Arabs to adhere to their agreement to stop the terrorism, violence and provocation, dismantle the terrorist organizations, collect their weapons and carry out organizational changes as a prerequisite to resuming the diplomatic process. Unless the threats are backed up with action, the Arabs will be even more encouraged to continue flaunting their agreements, if there are no consequences.
Another problem not openly discussed is that once Jews have been transferred out of the area, other Jewish communities will be exposed to Qassam rocket fire and terrorist infiltration. In January of this year, Colonel Uzi Buchbinder, head of the Home Front Command's civil defense department, warned that 46 western Negev communities would be within range of enemy rockets and terrorist attacks after the retreat.
That the Arabs will not be swayed in any way by Israeli withdrawal should not come as a surprise. As political scientist Shlomo Avineri observes, the Arabs see themselves as the only "legitimate repository of national self-determination" in the region. They do not accept that national groups in the Middle East have the same right to self-determination that they have properly demanded for themselves. This exclusivity "borders on political racism," and should not be tolerated in the Middle East any more than it is Europe."
A few examples he points out will illustrate the problems Arabs have with minorities. The Kurds have a different language, culture and customs than the Arabs, and the Iraqi and Syrian governments (and the non-Arab Muslims in Turkey and the Persians in Iran) have oppressed them for decades. Yet no Arabs have ever asked that the Kurds be given the right to self-determination. In 2005, when the international community supports the establishment of a state for the Palestinian people, no Arab moderate or academic has requested comparable rights for the Kurds.
The Berbers in Algeria and the Christian Maronites in Lebanon are similar situations, he continues. The Darfur region of Sudan can be added to this group. Arab militias, with the support of the Arab dominated government in Khartoum, have committed what UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called "ethnic cleansing" against the indigenous black population.
The refusal by the Sharon government to explain adequately the reasons for giving up land and transferring Jews in response to repeated terror attacks against its citizens, the failure to engage the Israeli public and politicians in an open dialogue about the implications of this policy, and its unfortunate success at fomenting distrust, alienation and hatred among various segments of the population does immeasurable damage to the Jewish people and weakens the Israeli and the American war on terrorism.
Before Israel "disengages," there should be legal and moral justifications for uprooting Jews who have not violated any Israeli or international statue. When the Arabs are willing to accept the existence of the Jewish State and live in peace with her, then negotiations about future borders should be discussed. As long the Arabs want to destroy Israel, concessions only convince them that terrorism, rather than negotiation, is the best method to achieve their goal.
It appears that we have not progressed much since 1994, when Aharon Megged, the respected writer and supporter of the Labor Party, complained: "Since the Six Day War, and at an increasing pace, we have witnessed a phenomenon which probably has no parallel in history: an emotional and moral identification by the majority of Israel's intelligentsia with people openly committed to our annihilation." He also saw a trend by them "to regard religious, cultural, and emotional affinity to the land...with sheer contempt." "You make peace with your enemies," they incessantly proclaim, yet as Professor Edward Alexander observed, "it is clear that they can far sooner make peace with enemies wearing keffiyehs than with enemies wearing yarmulkes and tefillin."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Grobman’s most recent book is Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post War Europe [KTAV]. He is also co-author of Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened? (University of California Press, 2000) His next book Zionism=Racism: The New War Against The Jews will be published in 2005.
Alex Grobman is an historian with an MA and Ph.D. in contemporary Jewish history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is president of the Institute for Contemporary Jewish Life, a think tank dealing with historical and contemporary issues affecting the Jewish community. He is a member of the academic board of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, a contributing editor for Together magazine.
Dr. Grobman established the first Holocaust center in the U.S. under the auspices of a Jewish Federation in St. Louis, Missouri and served as its first director. He also served as director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angles where he was the founding editor-in chief of the Simon Wiesenthal Annual, the first serial publication in the United States focusing on the scholarly study of the Holocaust. Dr. Grobman edited Genocide: Critical
Issues of the Holocaust, a companion to the Center's Academy Award winning film Genocide. The book can be found on the Simon Wiesenthal Center website.
Dr. Grobman is the author of Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains
and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948, and editor of In Defense of the Survivors: The Letters and Documents of Oscar A. Mintzer AJDC Legal Advisor, Germany, 1945-46. His book with Michael Shermer, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened, and Why Do They Say It? was published by University of California Press in Berkeley in 2000. In 2002, it was published in Italian and in paperback.
He has also edited three guides for educators: Anne Frank in Historical Perspective, Those Who Dared: Rescuers and Rescued, and a guide to Schindler's List. "Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2003" was written with Dr. Rafael Medoff in December 2003.The "Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey-2004 was published December 2004. In April 2004, he and Rabbi Jack Bemporad wrote an analysis of Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ.
Battling For Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post-War Europe was published by KTAV in 2004.
His next book, Zionism=Racism: The New War Against The Jews, will be published in 2006 by Myths and Facts.
-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)