Half the Jordanian Parliament demands an end to diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. Iran, Pakistan have summoned their Dutch ambassadors demanding an explanation. Malaysia's crazy Muslim uncle Mahatir is calling for a boycott. Sudan's genocidal Al-Bashir is talking about human values. Cairo's center of Islamic theology Al-Azhar University is warning of "serious consequences".
Damascus - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir called on Muslims at an Arab summit in Damascus to "challenge those who insult" the prophet and proposed "a binding international charter" calling for the respect of religious beliefs. (a binding charter, I believe they call that Sharia)
"The offenses against our Arab and Islamic nations under the banner of freedom of expression are derogatory and defamatory and go against all human values," al-Bashir said. (as opposed to raping and murdering hundreds of thousands of people as al-Bashir's government has done)
Amman - Following the release of Geert Wilders' film Fitna, a group of 53 Jordanian MPs have delivered a petition to their government in Amman, demanding that it break all diplomatic ties with the Netherlands. They also want the Dutch ambassador expelled from the country. The Jordanian parliament consists of 110 members, 60 of whom were present when the petition was delivered.
Java - On the Indonesian island of Java hundreds of Islamic students took to the streets of the city of Magelang to protest against the film. Indonesia's Minister for Social Affairs Bachtiar Chamsyah had previously called for demonstrations.
Malaysia - Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad urged the world's 1.3 billion Muslims to boycott Dutch products. Foreign Minister Rais Yatim said in a statement late Saturday that Wilders "must bear full responsibility over the release of the movie and the consequences of his action." (a none too subtly veiled threat)
Cairo - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit called Wilders' film "a humiliation" to Islam. Egypt's Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi asked the Dutch government to do everything in its power to prevent Wilders from releasing his movie. "or the consequences will be severe."
Karachi - Police are tightening security around a Dutch consulate in Pakistan after Muslims angrily protested a Dutch lawmaker's anti-Quran film. About two dozen students burned an effigy of lawmaker Geert Wilders in front of the Karachi press club Saturday, a day after hundreds protested across Pakistan.
Bangladesh - "This totally unwarranted and mindless action can have grave consequences... because it will offend millions of Muslims around the world," a foreign ministry statement said on Friday. "Islam is a faith of peace which preaches patience and understanding," it said. (If Islam is so peaceful, patient and understanding, why worry about offending Muslims?)
In many ways history is a cycle of repeating events and it can be instructive to look at WW2 and the Iraq War to see how they overlap and what lessons we should learn from it.
While liberals commonly scoff at the comparison between WW2 and the Iraq War and prefer to dredge up their inevitable Vietnam references with even some conservatives joining in, the reality is that there is far more overlap between WW2 and the Iraq war than many realize.
Part of the problem is that most people have bought into the Spielbergized image of WW2 as a clean war with a clear enemy and for which victory brought a clean end. But the reality was quite different.
During the US occupation of Germany, American forces faced threats on two fronts. First the various elements of the Nazi party and particularly the SS, analogous to the Baathists in Iraq, also formed underground organizations with the aim of carrying on an active insurgency against America. The most famous of these was Operation Werewolf which functioned much like the original Sunni resistance did. In fact Saddam Hussein may have derived his plan for the Sunni resistance from Operation Werewolf. The irony then would be that both the US and the Baathists were replaying a modified version of a WW2 endgame with some tactical improvements.
The difference is that the United States was able to nip the various Nazi insurgencies in the bud far quicker than the United States was able to deal with the Sunni insurgency. The differences were made up because of vastly larger troop strength in Germany, much better intelligence and a wider grasp of the German language on the part of the American forces, making them much less dependent on native translators.
Now if the Nazis were the Sunnis in the equation, the Communists were the Shiites. The United States had initially allied with the Soviet Union and Communists had initially greeted them as friends, much the way the Shiites had cheered us. This however gave way to suspicion and planned violence as the Soviet Union then, much like Iran today, decided it wanted Germany for itself.
While Communist forces in Western Europe never exploded into the kind of open violence against American forces practiced by the Shiites in Iran mainly because the US successfully confronted and checkmated the USSR in Berlin, resulting in the Cold War. The American failure to do that with Iran combined with the extra destabilizing presence of Al Queda, a factor that did not exist in Germany (the equivalent would have been some international fascist terrorist supergroup) led to the disaster in Iraq today.
In short we have mostly put down the Sunni threat as we did the Nazi threat after several years, though after far more violence and a greater loss of life, but the Shiite threat now exists as the Communist threat would consume Western Europe for a long time afterward, as Iran like the USSR sits on the border and funds and promotes terrorism within while planning for war.
Communism's battleground shifted away from Europe, where Communist terrorists had dominated for decades before WW2 and though groups such as Bader-Meinhof would continue to be a factor, the USSR instead promoted terrorist groups in the Middle East and South America, which continue to be a threat today. History now repeats itself as Iran has been pursuing engagement in South America through Venezuela and may have a hand in FARC as well.
If you really want to see just how similar the times really are, consider the following piece of leftist defeatist reporting from John Dos Passos writing in Life Magazine and you'll find it reads like a carbon copy of a modern day Newsweek or New York Times story on Iraq.
The troops returning home are worried. “We’ve lost the peace,” men tell you. “We can’t make it stick.”
A tour of the beaten-up cities of Europe six months after victory is a mighty sobering experience for anyone. Europeans. Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. They cite the evolution of the word “liberation.” Before the Normandy landings it meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis. Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for one thing, looting.
You try to explain to these Europeans that they expected too much. They answer that they had a right to, that after the last was America was the hope of the world. They talk about the Hoover relief, the work of the Quakers, the speeches of Woodrow Wilson. They don’t blame us for the fading of that hope. But they blame us now.
Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. People never tire of telling you of the ignorance and rowdy-ism of American troops, of out misunderstanding of European conditions.
We know now the tragic results of the ineptitudes of the Peace of Versailles. The European system it set up was Utopia compared to the present tangle of snarling misery. The Russians at least are carrying out a logical plan for extending their system of control at whatever cost. The British show signs of recovering their good sense and their innate human decency. All we have brought to Europe so far is confusion backed up by a drumhead regime of military courts. We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease.
It will be interesting to see how the Iraq War will go down in history three decades from now. Remember that history repeats itself.
Parshas Shemini begins with the words Vayehi Beyom HaShemini. We learn that the opening Vayehi, And It Was, portends a mixture of tragedy and joy. As in Vayehi Yaakov, that saw Yaakov reunited and living with his son Yosef but in exile and as a prelude to slavery.
Shemini begins with the final dedication of the Mishkan, on the eight day after seven days of Moshe Rabbeinu performing the Avodah, bringing the Korbanot, Aaron steps into his role as Kohen Gadol, brings the Korbanot and as both brothers leave the Ohel Moed at the conclusions, they are privileged to see the Shekihna appear. A heavenly fire consumes the Korbanot. But Vayhei, though there is celebration there is also tragedy.
Two of Aaron's sons bring an alien fire and are killed by fire from heaven. Moshe tells Aaron that with this event the word of G-d, Bekrovai Ekodesh, has been fulfilled. Moshe warns his brother and the remaining sons not to leave, not to mourn and to eat of the Mincha. Aaron and his sons do all this and eat of the Mincha but the Seir brought for Rosh Chodesh, they burn entirely and Moshe demands an explanation.
Aaron's answer however is enigmatic, indicating that he had acted properly and seems to fully satisfy his brother. Yet is short on detail. The two most common explanations are that either the animal became posul or that only Kodshei Shaa like the Mincha were to be eaten, while Onenim, but not Kodshei Dorot. Yet this too leaves something out.
It's notable that the Pasuk appears to be engaging in a virtual pun, as Aaron and his two remaining sons, NaNotrim, are told to eat the Mincha, HaNotrot. Both Aaron's surviving sons and the Mincha seems to be described with the same term. But obviously it's not mere wordplay, there is a message and a point to it.
The Mincha that they are to eat is the remaining Mincha that had not been burnt, just as the two surviving sons, were the remaining sons who had not been burnt. Moshe describes the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, not as punishment but as glorification, much like a Korban. Like the Mincha, part had been burnt and part remained for Aaron. When Moshe warns them about leaving with the oil on them, as there is oil on the Mincha, the implication is that they too will die. This is what is done with a Korban that becomes Posul, to be burnt outside. So if they leave, they too will be burned outside and what has been a Mincha will become an entirely Posul Korban, which could altogether invalidate the entire Miluim.
Aaron and his sons eat the Mincha and the Korbanot which are Kodshei Shaa. Even though the sons are regular Kohanim and Onenim. But they are Onenim over the deaths of Nadav and Avihu and Nadav and Avihu were themselves a Kodshei Shaa Korban, so to speak, a one time event. Both those deaths and the special status of Elazar and Yithamar were unique events, Shaa. By contrast the Seir of Rosh Chodesh was a Kodshei Dorot and as far as the Dorot were to be concerned, Kohanim Onenim could not consume Kodshim. The holiness of the hour had been gained at great cost, like the reunion of Yosef and Yaakov, a terrible price had been paid. But it was a temporary price. The achievement that had been gained however was one for generations.
As a practical solution, here is also the download flash file saved on Mediafire, which can be reuploaded to a number of services.
Fitna is finally out and Network Solutions' boneheaded attempt at panicked censorship has given the movie millions in free promotion, building anticipation for a movie that few Americans had heard of. It just goes to show that liberal attempts at censorship can quite effectively be exploited and used to turn the tables on them and get the word out on what they were trying to censor. It's a lesson worth learning.
LiveLeak finally pulled the movie, but not before benefiting from the traffic, it's up at Google Video above. And if it should get taken down, there are plenty of other places it can and will go up. The truth cannot and will not be silenced.
Meanwhile the fallout from Saddam agent Muthanna Al-Hanooti is continuing to shake up many of those politicians who have all been too willing to get in bed with the enemy.
The world meanwhile continues to heat up. From Tibet where China is beginning to repay the humiliation of its negative publicity with brute force. It should serve as a reminder of the real nature of China, a brutal Communist dictatorship currently swallowing up American jobs and American industry at a frightening rate.
In Iraq, the showdown with Al Sadr and by extension with Iran may finally be here, as Iran has turned Sadr into a puppet, just as it did Nasrallah, aimed at the Iraqi government and the United States. With Iranian trained and armed enemies overrunning the Iraqi police and military and the United States already in the fight, this might well spill over into a larger conflict with Iran.
The media of course has seized on the chance to crow about the failure of the Surge. But that too is nothing new. That same media viewed the battle of Fallujah as a defeat and has done its best to ignore the aftermath. But if we win at Basra and in the Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, the US will have broken the backs of both Sunni and Shiite terrorism and be that much closer to the real Mission Accomplished.
And you can be sure that if a Democrat is elected President, the media will give him, her or it full credit for it.
Meanwhile via Tundra Tabloids , has an excellent article that links Islamic anti-semitism to Mohammed and the Koran. Those asking us to respect the Koran, are legitimizing Islamic anti-semitism and must take responsibility for the Muslim hate crimes against Jews that follow. In Muhammad’s Spittin’ Image
Thus Maimonides (d. 1203), the renowned Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician, as noted by historian Salo Baron (from Baron’s essay entitled, “The Historical Outlook of Maimonides,” in Proc of the Amer Acad for Jewish Res, vol. 6, 1934-35, p. 82), emphasizes the bellicose “madness” of Muhammad, and his quest for political control. Muhammad’s mindset, and the actions it engendered, had immediate, and long term tragic consequences for Jews—from his massacring up to 24,000 Jews, to their chronic oppression—as described in the Islamic sources, by Muslims themselves:
Following an apparently prevalent usage [Maimonides] calls the founder of Islam a “madman,” [meshugga] with both religious and political aspirations, who failed to formulate any new religious ideas, but merely re-stated well-known concepts. Nevertheless, he attracted a large following and inflicted many wrongs upon the Jews, being himself responsible for the massacre of 24,000. Following his example the Muslims of the subsequent generations oppressed the Jews and debased them even more harshly than any other nation.
Sixty-three years ago, the Allied air forces bombed the German city of Dresden into oblivion, accelerating the final defeat of the Nazi regime and bringing a rapid end to the Second World War just four months later. Today’s Islamofascist Jihad is gaining ground against the non-Islamic world and the Islamists are on the threshold of obtaining nuclear weapons. The failure of the West, including the USA, Europe and Israel, to recognize and deal seriously with this existential threat could have catastrophic ramifications for the future of mankind. It is therefore educationally imperative to review the concluding events of World War II and thus gain a better perspective of how fascist national cults have been successfully dealt with in the past...
Second, the Allies in World War II ultimately realized - in contrast to another modern mantra: “There is no military solution - only a political solution” - that existential wars have only military solutions, which dictate the political reshuffling that follows. In the wake of the “political solutions” early on in Hitler’s methodical push to take over Europe, which strengthened Germany with Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslavakia, and Japan with southeast Asia, the Allies belatedly focused on military victory...
1. Focus indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively not just “terrorism,” but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Islamic Sharia law even by peaceful means.
Part of the reason for men like Barack Hussein Obama, who hate the nations they purport to wish to lead, is that the world has been experiencing a war on the family and decent, top notch values for a few generations now. It has been replacing those values with falsehoods and lies shored up by nonsense and irrational thinking. ( I am more inclined to believe that such men wish not to lead but to dismantle from within)
Barack Husseins mother left him with her parents to pursue her career in anthropology. His father was also gone and his step father far away and seemingly uninvolved. His early training in madrassa school was in a religion that is one that is virulently intolerant and skewed badly in rational thought. Each of the parents was unusual and rebellious. It is no wonder that Barack has no problem in accepting the outrageous Pastor Wright as a 'father figure'. Barack's mother believed that marriage and family are “not particularly essential or important” and it shows today in his choices and beliefs as it showed in her own choices. Lack of family values fuels hatred and a sense of entitlement. Lack of family brings it's own evils.
Over at Samurai Mohel, a post on a hate campaign by a messianic cult led by one Eddie Beckford against Jews in Arad.
In the latest news from the Vatican, Pope Benedict is said to be seriously considering Barack Obama's petition for sainthood, filed on his behalf by what are said to be 500 very guilty white people from Idaho.
As proofs of Obama's sainthood, they cited his ability to make the tone deaf lip sync, cause Republicans to feel bad for Hillary, bring hope and change just by talking about it and heal the sick using only billions in taxpayer money.
The Vatican which has been experiencing problems in its interfaith relations with Muslims is said to be seriously considering shipping Obama his official golden halo via UPS.
Jeremiah Wright Proclaims Hatred for "Snow White Eskimo Bastards"
In yet another outburst certain to embarrass sainthood candidate Barack Saddam Obama, Trinity Church pastor Jeremiah Wright delivered an angry sermon denouncing Eskimos as "Snow White Eskimo Bastards".
"And don't get me started on the white man, the whitest man of all, the Eskimo. He lives among the snow. He gets two thousand a year from Alaska, the whitest place on earth, while the black man in Illinois has to pay taxes. Those snow white Eskimo bastards are out there on our backs just like the Dwarves, the Italians and the Jews. Don't let no one tell you this ain't no racist country. Every damn Mick, Wop, Hebe, Spic, Chink and Jap in Amerikkka is full of racist hate against me just because I am a black man."
Obama declined to comment except to say that Wright's views don't represent his, but that he will continue attending Wright's church with his family and sending Wright's church lots of money.
Obama Strongly Supports Israel's Right Not to Exist
In a landmark speech being touted by Jewish liberals, Arab terrorists and Neo-Nazis alike, Barack Notamuslim Obama strongly affirmed his ongoing commitment to supporting Israel's right not to exist.
"For too long we have not had a real dialogue about Israel in this country," the candidate said. "For too long being Pro-Israel meant being Pro-Likud. I strongly support Israel by supporting the entire comprehensive menu of options for Israel's existence. While many politicians support Israel's right to exist, too few have the courage to affirm Israel's right not to exist, as I do."
Obama's latest speech, produced in consultation with his closest foreign policy advisors, McPeak, Samantha Powers, Zbignew Brezinski, Benedict Arnold, Blackbeard the Pirate and Satan, is said to point to a new direction for the Democratic party.
"Obama's speech was deeply insightful and courageous," said Boged Megadef of the Untied Federation Alliance of Intermarried Limousine Liberals. "I didn't understand any of it because I was busy gazing soulfully into Barack's eyes while pretending he was only speaking to me, but I'm glad that we're all on the same page in supporting Israel's right not to exist."
For most of the world freedom of speech is only an ideal that does not exist in reality. In Canada, England, Australia, Israel, Sweden and most of the first world countries that people think of as "democratic", many forms of religious and political speech are subject to the law. And those who find themselves on the wrong side of speaking out against Islam have been questioned, put on trial and in some cases even sentenced.
One of the few places in the world where you can still say anything you want without fear of government reprisal is the United States. But free speech remains unheard without a forum. And the media's grip over information makes that hard to come by offline.
No law or protests were needed to censor the Mohammed cartoons in the United States. The media willingly did it themselves, just as they've eagerly parroted the propaganda of every terrorist from Gitmo to Baghdad to Jersey City to Gaza to Kabul. They've done it willingly just as they continue to call terrorist supporters, moderates and to call the terrorists themselves, activists.
The internet is the last territory for freedom in the United States and the world. That's why the case of Geert Wilders, the Fitna movie and Network Solutions is so important. And it is a case that affects every blogger and website that has spoken out against Islamic terrorism.
The latest reports already show that mainstream media outlets gobble up far too much internet traffic in comparison to independent sources. If the internet is set to go the way of the media, if on top of that companies like Network Solutions lend a hand to a campaign against Anti-Jihadist websites, then the internet will begin looking like Huffington Post or DailyKos.
Defending the internet against the P.C. Jihad means defending the flow of information. There are plenty of lessons to be learned about distributing and promoting Fitna from everyone who has challenged the system and won.
A centralized website is not what really matters, decentralized distribution does. With the rise of video sharing websites and the continued dominance of Bit Torrent, it's almost laughably easy to distribute such a movie, especially now that the media itself has generated the publicity for it.
First release the movie via BitTorrent. Then once critical mass has been reached, go for the video sharing sites.
YouTube is only one option and the crudest option, as it offers small screen size, small file size low video quality, a heavy Islamist presence and entrenched moderation. Its only advantage is a sizable user base.
There are dozens of others, from Veoh to Google Video to Metacafe to DailyMotion. Where should the video go? Everywhere. The more distribution, the better. There's no need to centralize distribution, when you can distribute it instead. As long as the site has a user base and allows embedding, it's worth a shot. Generate lots of smaller clips to promote the movie itself.
If the video gets taken down, a dozen people can easily volunteer to reupload two copies for every one that gets taken down. Maintain file directories on free file sharing sites such as Filedropper, Mediafire, EatLime (which is as close to Bittorrent as a file sharing site can get) or Drop.io or any one of a dozen similar sites. Use those directories as the data sources for reuploading new copies to the video sharing services.
Much if not all of this can be done independently by bloggers and by just plain people on the internet with very little coordination, just a call for action from prominent sites when the time is right.
Use social media to promote the movie. Use websites such as Overstream to create subtitles for different languages. Learn about the other free tools that are out there and that can help. MediaConverter is great at converting formats and turning online flash videos on YouTube into editable video files that you can use to download and transform videos. This let me quickly remake the Obama campaign commercial videos without spending too much time on it.
We're not old line media and we shouldn't act like it. Those who are out to suppress free speech and criticism of Islam and political correctness want easy targets, people they can isolate, stifle, pin down and destroy. The power of the internet lets us form communities that prevent them from doing that. Only when we unite, can we truly begin fighting back.
Even as Chinese troops are shooting monks in Tibet, neither the Human Rights Council nor the UN Security Council have anything to say about it. That isn't surprising because China is after all on the UN Security Council and a 2009 member of the Human Rights Council.
Instead the UN Human Rights Council for the last two years has dedicated itself to one thing to the virtual exclusion of everything else, promoting the Islamic war on Israel with its endless parade of lies and smears. This is the attitude that not only discredited the original commission, but it has resulted in harsh criticism from two successive UN Secretary Generals as it became increasingly clear that the Council was interested in only one country, Israel. It has even alienated and angered left leaning human rights groups and NGO's who are Anti-Israel but nevertheless disgusted by the way that the Muslim Anti-Israel agenda has hijacked the council's mission with endless tirades about the Palestinian Arabs while ignoring actual human rights abuses by the council member nations.
The Beijing Olympics were meant to be to China what the Berlin Olympics in 1936 were to Hitler and the Munich in 1972 to the German Republic. A chance to show off the new China as a world power in a favorable light. Instead much like the Berlin and Munich Olympics, 2008 turns back to 1936 and 1972 as bloodshed once again reveals the ugly truths behind the power. And in doing so it reveals the unity of the Olympics and the United Nations for the sham that it is.
The 1936 Olympics proved to be a parade ground for the Nazis and the 1972 Olympics a chance for Arab terrorists to preen their bloody feathers before the world. The Bejing Olympics have become not about a frothy display of fireworks, athletics and some Bejing skyscrapers, but about the brutal reality behind the facade. And the world has nothing to say about it.
An Israeli air strike on a wanted terrorist responsible for a dozen murders produces worldwide condemnation. Chinese troops shooting Tibetan monks produces a pained uneasy grimace and perhaps a call for restraint that everyone knows will go unheeded. With Tibet in the spotlight and Tibetans resisting the Chinese and Muslim occupation of their country, the UN remains silent as the grave. Europe mumbles. The State Department issues a statement and shuffles its feet.
What the Tibet model truly demonstrates is that real occupiers and human rights abusers can and do get away with it. Just as Turkey is set to enter the EU despite the fact that it seized and occupied territory belonging to Greece. It's only countries that resist occupation by powerful nations, as Israel has, that in turn are besieged and condemned.
The idea of human rights on the world stage is nothing more than a facade for power plays, a propaganda tool in the hands of the powerful. As China stages its own version of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the world troops to participate, the hypocrisy of discredited organizations like the UN is on display as well as a reminder that they have long since outlived their usefulness as anything but social networking for corrupt diplomats. It's time to let them go.
What causes a culture, a people, a nation to hate itself? This is a viral question for those of us living in First World countries threatened by the rising tide of Islamic terrorism and migration because it is readily apparent that the growing threat we face would not exist were there not an active liberal and left wing agenda to encourage the destruction of entire nations and appease and apologize for their terrorist acts.
Understand that mindset requires understanding the evolution of national and cultural self-hatred in the West. Where did it originate and what drives such a nakedly self-destructive mindset?
Traditionally dissatisfaction with a country was a personal dissatisfaction due to a sense of being oppressed or deprived. This was a selfish yet practical approach, as the individual is best suited to determining the ways in which the system of government has failed to live up to his expectations.
It was the reformers of the 19th century who turned the equation upside down. These men and women emerged from the privileged classes with a passionate interest in the plight of the poor and the downtrodden. Their focus however was not on private or public charity but on changing the system itself that they felt was responsible for causing poverty and oppression. Such ideas were not new but the widescale adoption of them by members of the privileged classes was. While many of them did indeed mean well, the practical consequence of this mindset was a way of thinking that held society and the government accountable for all the evils that occurred in its midst.
The match was struck in the 18th century as the fundamental gap between the American and the French revolutions exemplified the difference between two worldviews. The American revolution settled for opening up the process on the basis of political equality and allowing people to find their level accordingly. The French system by contrast turned to an endless pursuit of revolutionary justice with the aim of creating an ideal society free of oppression and social ills only to give way to the inevitable bloodshed in the name of insuring dogmatic purity. The left wing revolutions that would continue for centuries afterward had this in common with the revolution of the reformers. Whereas the American revolution had sought an end to unjust laws and embraced minimal government, the ideologues of the French revolution viewed the establishment of an ideal government and ideal laws as the proper aim of mankind.
In the 19th century as social revolution brewed in Europe and immigration transformed American cities virtually overnight, the hour of the reformers came and political machines and ideologies grew strong. The reformers of the privileged classes went out to the poor and the newcomers seeking to aid them. Sometimes their work of the reformers genuinely improved life for a few but in the meantime, social aid and social reform were becoming their own religion, particularly among liberal Protestants.
The 19th century had a growing Bohemian class that made for a perfect breeding ground for political activists and the growing free time possessed by upper class women yet balanced against the restrictions placed on them and fused with the worship of the feminine as spiritually purer and nobler than the masculine unleashed the social reformers. Out of this heady brew came many turbulent ideas but above them all was a growing sense of the wrongness of the society and the nation. And in place of patriotism came a perpetual other-directed sense of outrage toward countries and societies that are directly reflected in the liberal and left wing mindset today, stocked by the theological and political grandchildren of those activists and reformers.
What made this mindset particularly explosive was that it was other-directed. Frustration with governments has always existed throughout history but what began in the 18th century and exploded in the 19th century was that sense of two countries and two classes of people, the privileged and the oppressed with no room in between. For the first time in history, a sizable section of the upper classes had come to hate their own countries on behalf of the oppressed. But who were the oppressed?
For the sons and daughters of upper and upper middle class wealth the oppressed were not simply disadvantaged people, they were an ideal, grimy and yet innately noble, violent and explosive because of their native openness of spirit, childlike and yet possessed of great simply wisdom. The oppressed were mysterious and tantalizing, exotic in their alienness and compelling in their foreignness, for the oppressed were the noble savage. There is no way of knowing to what extent this was not merely a political response but a sexual one as well, as youthful rebelliousness often is, but it set the template, the double standard that would hold the country accountable for everything and the oppressed for nothing. After all when reform failed to achieve a full ideal state of being, revolution was the only way and violence was all that could be reasonably expected from the oppressed.
It did not take long for the oppressed to migrate from merely being the domestic poor to the ultimate noble savages, the third worlders being colonized and forcibly civilized by their nations' militaries. The same attitude continued to hold as the oppressed were virtuous regardless of what they did and the government and the military and the nation was at fault for the innate evil of its ways. At the core of the dichotomy between civilization and the noble savage was the idea that only civilization embodied in governments and nations was a free actor while the noble savage had been left devoid of choices and options, a theme clearly repeated throughout 19th century and early 20th century literature.
The double standard treated the noble savage as childlike and unable to do anything but lash out in return. Even his violence, his rapes, his murders and massacres, was 'innocent' because it lacked guile and free will. The noble savage like a dog backed into a corner could not be expected not to bite, even when the targets were completely innocent, even when they included the same reformers and activists who had come to help them. The noble savage had become the antithesis of civilization's original sin, that of daring to exist and to perpetuate itself through oppression, greed and war and as such his crimes were virtues, his terrorism a fight for freedom and any action taken against him was criminal and brutal because it only further repressed him and lowered his condition.
If all of this sounds familiar today, it should. This is the mindset of the left and the double standard in the face of the Jihad. It is the same mindset that treats war and the imprisonment of terrorists as unjustified while viewing the terrorists attacks themselves as justified by the actions of the country itself. The noble savage today comes wearing a bomb belt and demanding compliance with his beliefs, but to the above mindset, this is his right. Even if his religion is crude and his tactics brutal, his cause is just because he is a member of an oppressed class downtrodden by Western civilization.
As the youthful radicals became adult liberals, the mindset slowly percolated and became the dominant view, especially once liberals were forced to compete with radical Anarchist and Marxist movements and in the process slowly took on a pale imitation of their views and policies. And the West walked the slow road toward self-hatred as its artistic, political and academic elite became comprised of men and women who despised their own civilization and revered the noble savage. Once that was accomplished, they became the teachers and the leaders who taught children, set policy and created the entertainments that furthered this same meme into the mainstream. And that is where we are at today.
To resist a trend, it is important to first understand it. Know your enemy is the foremost commandment not only of war but of political and intellectual struggle. To understand why so many millions think the way they do, is the first step to changing them.
From the stoning of cars to the Mercaz HaRav terrorist attack to the stabbing of Rabbi Yehezkel Greenwald, the next wave of terrorist attacks is converging on Jerusalem. This is no coincidence or random collection of attacks, it's the next phase in the Palestinian Arab agenda.
After Annapolis when the surrender of the West Bank and Gaza are all but done and Jerusalem is the point of controversy on the table, it was inevitable that Fatah, Hamas and the witch's brew of terrorist groups operating out of the PA territories would next turn their attention to Jerusalem and the Galilee. As had been predicted.
The daily rocket attacks are the Palestinian Arabs making war on Israel. The rising attacks in Jerusalem are the next phase of the Intifada within Israeli territory. Israel had been warned both by its own security experts and Zionist politicians as well as by Hamas that if Israel withdraws from Gaza, the next phase will simply move deeper inside Israel. That is what has begun to happen now. The use of a Galilee name for the terrorist organization that took credit for the Mercaz HaRav attack foreshadows the next phase of fighting in Jerusalem and the Galilee.
While the American and Israeli governments continue to misunderstand the nature of the enemy, the war draws closer and the ring draws tighter. In Iraq the United States has slowly and painfully learned that most terrorist groups consist of a small gang often centered around a family, ex-military or organized crime connection. Much like American organized crime. The more sophisticated gangs have a political leadership with limited authority who provides the guiding strategy and philosophy and most of all pays out the money.
Unfortunately those lessons have not been brought home to Gaza and the West Bank where the political leadership of Fatah and Hamas continues to negotiate as if they were national governments instead of middlemen between the money and arms providers in Tehran and Riyadh and the armed gangs in the streets who may be loosely affiliated with Fatah or Hamas depending on who has the most money and the network of gang alliances at that moment.
The idea of negotiating a state with Fatah and Hamas is as absurd and horrifying as negotiating the handover of Los Angeles to the Crips and Bloods. And yet that is exactly what's going on as the magic of international diplomacy and willful blindness has transformed gangs of armed thugs doing the bidding of foreign terrorists into a national movement so long as they have enough spokesmen in suits and ties handling the money and detailing strategy.
The Hamas takeover of Gaza showed how absurd the American idea of attempting to map national ideas onto armed gangs of terrorists. Not only did all the money invested in arming and training Fatah terrorists prove absolutely useless, but many of the Fatah affiliated gangs actually chose to side with Hamas once it was clear that Hamas had the upper hand. The battles between Hamas and Fatah were more in line with Al Capone than any actual war, quick sporadic gang shootouts near strategic locations followed by retreats. Captured gang members were brutally tortured and executed. The State Department looked on baffled only because they insisted on pretending that Hamas and Fatah were political factions, but they were simply each a collection of armed gangs and political opportunists who tried to control the gangs.
Now the next stage of the gang war is to seize new territories, Yerushalayim and the Galilee. Negotiations after all have minimal impact on an armed gang, which knows only law, the iron law of force. Each negotiation in good faith with terrorist gangs is really a surrender and a betrayal by a nation of those citizens it abandons to the brutality of the terrorists.
In the face of human evil people often demand, "Where is God?"
But as Purim should teach us the real question is never where is God, but where is man. God is always where he needs to be. Our concern is not with where is God but where is man.
On Purim a near genocide of the Jewish people took place that was averted and though we celebrate it while giving thanks to God, we never see His hand clearly at work in it. There are no great open miracles. The earth doesn't open up, the sea doesn't part, the sky doesn't rain fire and the mountains don't tremble. Instead a seeming minutia of events on the part of human add up to bring salvation.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the temple and the fading of prophecy from the world, Mordechai and Esther confronted a world of men that had with its persistence of evil driven away God. For thousands of years God had sought man in grand and open ways. Now man would have to seek God by understanding that he is present even when he appears to be hidden.
Esther and Mordechai understood what most did not, that God was where he should be, it was man that was absent and so they committed themselves to a course of action, not because they were confident that it would succeed, indeed Mordechai explicitly states that it may not, but because they were confident that God would nevertheless find a way to bring about salvation through someone. Perhaps through them. Perhaps not. Like Daniel and his friends, he had faith in God and in the need of man to stand up for what was right, without the confidence of invulnerability.
Esther and Mordechai's question was not where God was. They understood the need for man, for men and women, to do what they could. Megillat Esther, the Esther signifying Hastir or hidden, was the bridge from the world of the Temple and the Prophets and the accompanying open miracles to a world in which God appeared hidden and his miracles discreet. The miracles of Chanukah and Purim were the bridge to that world in which God appeared distant but that challenged us to find him in the salvations both great and small, from the escape from genocide to the rising of the sun to the filling of the needs of every creature. From a world of open miracles we had seemingly declined to a world of miracles that were just as open but no longer obvious because they were part of how God had been running the world all along.
Recognizing God requires not only requires recognizing Him as the God who can disrupt nature in open miracles but who underlies nature. While the lack of grand miracles that disrupt the natural world may seem like a diminution but it's also a chance to achieve a greater understanding of God and to take action.
The question continues to be asked, "Where is God." But God continues on. As always it's human deficits that are at issue. It's we who need to find ourselves and find our place in the larger picture. And we do that by standing up for the right things and rather than blaming God by demanding to know "Where is God" taking action to make things right.
Whether it is the Holocaust or Israel, the question is not where is God. But where is man? That too is what God is waiting for and has been waiting for all along.
Since it's Purim, I'll be attaching three of my more humorous videos to this post. Beginning with this one, Prozac for Muslims.
Purim is a holiday where people dress up in costumes for one day a year. Most of the politicians and the terrorists are dressed up in costumes hiding their real nature. Over the last few weeks Obama's costume has been partly torn away and is looking more than a little tattered. Evil hides best in the darkness, behind a smiling mask, a sympathetic tone of voice and a promise to help.
Meanwhile the war goes on. The rockets continue to fall in Israel and across America and Europe hidden terrorist cells continue burrowing under the surface of the nation. The war goes on in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in less clear and obvious places.
Until victory comes the war always goes on and we must never forget, but sometimes we must unload the burden of the present for the memory of the past or the hope for the future or simply the joy of the moment in the knowledge that we are alive, that our loved ones are still with us, that our nations are great and prosperous and that these are the roots of our nature and the things for which we fight for.
And when that's done there's nothing to bring a smile out like mocking some of our enemies.
I appeared this Friday on the Gathering Storm and it's up for anyone who wants to listen. Thanks to Always on Watch for the gracious invite and to both for my time there.
Debbie Schlussel meanwhile is covering the story of Rabbi Ohana's beating which is being strategically underreported by the mainstream press.
New York City saw a spate of similar attacks of Muslims on Jews in Brooklyn and the only thing that has stopped them was a strong crackdown by Rudy Giuliani. There are parts of Brooklyn, especially around Atlantic Avenue, that are effectively miniature Dearbornistans. And no one is keeping an eye on them.
The 18-year-old boy who grabbed the kippa left the subway station and ran into the street, where he was hit by a car, breaking his leg.
While Ohana chased the boy, the other teenagers began chasing him, screaming "Allah akbar."
"They screamed at me, 'Did you see what happened to him because of you?'" said Ohana, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical assistant who works in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Two of the Arab boys then started kicking and punching Ohana in the face.
"As soon as they started screaming, I understood [the attack] was racial," said Ohana.
The crime is being investigated as aggravated harassment and a possible bias crime, according to a New York Police Department spokeswoman. "I am almost sure it will be charged as a hate crime," said the spokeswoman.
"I'm sad that this kind of attack is coming to New York after seeing this in Israel," said Ohana. "An Arab teenager attacking a Jew for being a Jew scares me as a Jew."
Ohana said one police officer brushed the incident off as a case of a teenager who "doesn't know what 'Allah akbar' means.
This bounces off one of the more unusual things I saw at this Thursday's rally in front of the Israeli consulate. A Zionist version of the usual protest gear with Golda replacing Che and what looks like a Keffiyeh crocheted in Magen Davids. I'm not sure if that kind of co-opting the enemy's protest clothing is a smart move or not. I can see both sides of it.
The main reason Israel should never expel journalists, say government and military officials when one broaches the matter, is because Israel would be consumed by international outrage over such supposedly fascistic tactics. I’ve always been skeptical of this claim: journalists, in my experience, are far more concerned with their own careers and notoriety than they are with defending the supposedly inviolable principles of their profession (for which many reporters operating in Israel don’t have much regard in the first place). My sense of things is that, especially among foreign correspondents, maintaining access is the preeminent interest.
The argument that Israel cannot afford to alienate journalists runs contrary to the fact that it certainly has not hurt the Palestinian to have have threatened, kidnapped, and even converted journalists covering the Palestinian territories.
Finally closing this Purim roundup on a lighter note with the Jihad is Hump video that started it all.
The Sushan Times - All the Craven Treason That's Fit to Print ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jewish Leaders in Sushan Disavow Anti-Haman Smear Campaign
by Boged Megadef
Prominent Jewish leaders in Sushan have taken great pains to distance themselves from a smear campaign against popular Persian Vizier and possible future monarch, Haman HaAggagi after a whispering campaign raised rumors that Haman is an Agagite who hates Jews.
"We the moderate Jews of Sushan condemn the spreading of any such rumors regarding Haman." said Rodef bar Zevel of the Jewish Sushanite Federation. "Haman has longstanding ties with the Jewish community and we strongly support his progressive tax and confiscate policies. There is no evidence whatsoever that Haman hates Jews aside from some completely irrelevant lottery thing he's running."
Nevertheless a secret memo has been leaked to the Forewart in which a leading member of the JSF warns that Haman may implement policies hostile to Jews and the return to Israel once in power. The JSF executive board however has disavowed the memo.
Haman's executive order to wipe out the Jewish people is only the latest unfortunate development in the ongoing cycle of violence between Jews and Agagites that began when the Jewish extremist Samuel beheaded the Agagite monarch.
The Jewish community has reacted in various ways to the royal order to have them exterminated. Moderate Jewish leaders such as the JSF board have been quietly reaching out to the palace to learn if there is anything they can do to have the order annulled. They urge against any public protests or inflammatory rhetoric that could only worsen the situation.
"Quiet diplomacy is the order of the day," said an unnamed source in the JSF. "What we have here is a misunderstanding that we can correct by listening and correcting the grievances that led us to this point. It's important not to make any noise or cause any trouble. Instead Jews should go out of their way to befriend their neighbors, perhaps send them little gifts with polite note cards asking them not to kill them."
Meanwhile however extremist members of the outlawed "Sanhedrin" group have been reportedly making other preparations. JSF public relations executives urge anyone aware of any lawbreaking by the Sanhedrin to immediately report them to the police.
Extremist Rabbis Accused of Plotting Violence, Extremism
by Boged Megadef
In the wake of the turbulent events of the past year that saw the Jewish people condemned to death only to have the verdict reversed, many moderate Jewish leaders remain concerned about the threat of violence from extremist Rabbis. Though the royal decree technically calls on Jews to rise up and slay those who may have been plotting to kill them, Rabbi Azaf Sheker of Temple Beth Shalom has condemned any such action as Un-Jewish.
"Rising up and killing those who would kill us only perpetuates the cycle of violence," Rabbi Sheker said, "isn't it better that we set an example for them by not killing them, so that next time when they think about killing us, they'll feel ashamed and maybe decide not to kill us."
Rabbi Sheker, like many moderate Jewish leaders is greatly concerned about the threat of violence from Jewish extremist Rabbis, particularly the well known Sanhedrin leader Mordechai.
"Look, I like everyone in the community has been disappointed by the formerly progressive administration of Artaxerxes, which under Haman made a substantial commitment to raising taxes, which has now gone right wing and appointed a rabid right wing extremist like Mordechai as the Vizier.," Rabbi Sheker said. "Right now we're doing everything we can to calm down the situation and prevent any violence. No matter what the King or extremist Rabbis like Mordechai who still think the Torah is the word of some deity. So Baal willing, we can all this sorted out."
However despite Rabbi Sheker's reasonable words of reason, many Jewish households are reportedly stocking up on weapons and preparing for a fight. The JSF has responded by putting out a call for volunteer human shields in its youth division in order to prevent fighting.
Lead among the human shields is Tikkun Silverstein who heads up the JSF's elite Conflict Resolution Team.
"Death to the Zionist occupiers of Sushan," Tikkun Silverstein screamed moderately from atop the barricades, "the oppressed Agagite people will still triumph. Tikkun Olam ! Death to the right wing fascists. Haman must be avenged. Resisting us only furthers the cycle of violence!"
Few Agagites however seemed interested in heeding his call. Most hung around dispiritedly before heading home again.
"Violence never solved anything," said Rabbi Sheker, "it only perpetuates the problem. So this time we fight and we win, we'll just have to do it all over again a few decades from now anyway. Isn't it better to see their side of things, understand why they hate us, internalize it and hate ourselves as much as they do so perhaps they'll have mercy on us and learn to mildly tolerate us?"
Everyone knows campaign commercials are really phony. And Obama's are phonier than most. The carefully selected shots of white voters, no black voters allowed in Obama campaign commercials, the scripted forced laughs, the sympathetic smiles, the feeling like he's about to begin selling you some machine for $19.95 that makes creamed, sterilizes your laundry and vacuums your home.
But like the shiny new car with the bad engine and the funny smell in the backseat and the windows that won't close, Obama's image loses 50 percent of its value when it's actually driven off the lot. Like any advertising, Obama's is about selling you not a President but the "idea of a President."
Obama's campaign commercials are vague Oprahesque infomercials for Obamalogy, the cult of Barack Obama. So here to bring a dose of reality to the phony Obamaworld, is the remix of Obama's commercials for a look at the real face of the Obama campaign.
Finally some real honesty from Barack Hussein Obama as he speaks in the worlds of his "spiritual compass" the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
After Obama's phony charade of a speech that was right up there with Nixon responding to Watergate by calling for a national dialogue on privacy and then saying he couldn't disown the Watergate burglars anymore than he could his own grandmother who used to eavesdrop on him. A speech as phony as if Bill Clinton had responded to his affair with a White House intern by calling for a national dialogue on monogamy.
You don't call for a national dialogue when you were the one who got caught doing something wrong and then try to wrap the whole mess up by offering everyone victim status and telling them the real enemy are the corporations-- whose heads are donating money to Barack's campaign and in some cases are chairing his campaign.
It's beyond dishonest. It's slimy and sleazy.
Obama's speech like his entire campaign was based around glib sophistry, on an inability to accept responsibility dressed up in the clothing of a postmodern liberal moralist.
So my preacher is a rabid bigot who hates the country? Let's have a dialogue about it. Let's talk about race in America. Let's talk about anything but the fact that I spent 20 years at the feet of a man who lives and breathes hatred for this country. And if we have to talk about it, let me begin spreading the blame around first over white people and then some evil corporations and smudge the whole thing together until everyone is shaking their heads and the Gordian Knot has been tied messily but showily around the whole question.
When Don Imus got in trouble, Obama didn't call for a national dialogue on race. He didn't say that he couldn't disavow Imus anymore than he could disavow Jeremiah Wright or his grandmother. He called for Imus to be fired. We're supposed to give Jeremiah Wright a pass on his hate because he has good qualities but not Imus. Why? Because Imus is white and Wright is black? No, it's not that simple. Because Wright is close to Obama and Imus isn't.
And that's what Obama's sham of a national dialogue on race comes down to. Obama's friends get a pass from him. Anyone who isn't a part of his close inner circle though had better watch their mouths.
Obama couldn't choose his grandmother but he could choose his pastor. And he did. And the real reason he can't disavow Wright is because there's enough overlap between his views and Wright's. It's what his association with Wright testifies to far more eloquently than the endless collection of American flags he draped behind him to cover his own soiled sheets.
We don't need a national dialogue on race. We need a national dialogue on how much fraud and deception we're willing to accept from politicians, how many glib speeches we're willing to tolerate in place of accountability, responsibility and character.
Catch a politician in an affair and he'll remind you that we all have moments of weakness.
Catch a politician taking bribes and he wants you to remember that we're all human.
Catch a politician lying and he'll tell you that we all make mistakes sometimes.
The greatest deception of a politician in trouble is to turn his own error, mistake or crime into some general statement about the human condition that we're all supposed to empathize with. Stripped to the bare bones, that's what Obama's speech comes down to. That's all it comes down to.
Share and enjoy the videos and make some of your own for the Obama "Campaign of Hate" remix and I'll be happy to put them up. Share and enjoy.
The futility of violence in modern conflicts with terrorism does not spring from the impotence of force that can't help but create a self-sustaining cycle of violence, as liberal pundits and "head in the clouds" philosophers like to contend -- it comes about because of an insufficiency of force.
What is impotent is 'compromised force', force with its hands tied behind its back by rules of engagement, by international diplomacy, by human rights protesters and liberal politicians who don't care a whit for the victims of terrorism but whose heart bleeds at weekly press conferences for the terrorists themselves.
Time and time again America and Israel have had their hands tied behind their backs by those same forces while the terrorists have been given free range to kill, knowing that no matter what they do, they will still be entitled to a warm cell, a lawyer and three meals a day and that if one hair on their poor little heads is harmed, one fingernail is roughly clipped or if one of those infidel women whose job it is to deal with them so much as raises their voice to them, Amnesty International, the ACLU and every ambulance chasing lawyer, microphone chasing activist, postmodern artist, newspaper columnist and activist reverend will be screaming bloody murder from here to the North Pole.
To hell with them all. Force works. Force is what has settled war after war. Righteous force in a righteous cause is the only true guarantee of freedom and the only real defense against an enemy. And our enemies know that which is why they have done the most to undermine it, which is why the regimes that shelter them continue to play a double game, which is why the object of the enemy and their domestic allies has been to turn pacifism into righteousness and to demonize those who would resist them.
It is only when our hands are tied, when we are unable to not simply strike at the terrorists but to strike them down, that there is a cycle of violence. It is only when we fight half-heartedly and fight with half-measures that a cycle of violence exists, because the terrorists each time manage to escape to fight another day.
When cruise missiles are fired at empty tents in Afghanistan and bombs are dropped on empty buildings in Gaza, then there is a cycle of violence. When terrorists are put on trial and their lawyers smirk and claim that terrorism is justified in the very halls of justice of the nation which their clients have made war on, then there is a cycle of violence. When soldiers are then put on trial for killing terrorists while terrorists are freed to go back to killing soldiers, then there is a cycle of violence.
When we hold back the might of our arms, when we restrain the fury of our people, when we treat the terrorists as human beings, when we seek for a diplomatic solution while doing just the bare minimum necessary to keep them in check -- then and only then is there a cycle of violence.
To end the cycle of violence, kill the perpetrators of the violence. Restrain not the hands of soldiers from the work of protecting the nation and the world. Fight them by any means and on any terms. Ignore the humanitarians, perish the pundits, forget the whining politicians. The only time the public cares about what they say is when the war is being lost and the cycle of violence exists, because they were listened to in the first place.
The liberals tie the hands of the military in order to lose wars in the first place. They preach, scream, screech, rant, inveigh, demand and protest in order to prevent the war from succeeding. They do it enough to force a compromise in the use of force. They invent atrocities and make a great screeching noise whenever one really does occur. All of it is done for one reason, to tie down those who destroy the enemy so that the war is stalemated, so that a cycle of violence exists, so that the public begins to feel that further fighting is futile and are finally ready to listen to their poisonous treachery which by now has come to seem like sage advice.
Imagine a group people going on a boating trip. John favors the trip and prepares for it while Mark is opposed and constantly speaks out against it, warning that it will be a disaster. John brings along a great deal of food while Mark harries him insisting that all that food is unnecessary. John compromises and leaves a great deal of the food behind. A few days pass and the food has all but run out. Mark blames John for getting them into this mess, even though he was the one who insisted on reducing the food. Yet John is equally at fault for listening to him. Just as we are at fault for ever listening to the liberals in the first place, for giving their chatter about rights and the moral high ground any credence in the first place.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is with superior violence, while we repeatedly find ourselves locked into the cycle because the use of violence itself has been locked down just enough to prevent the destruction of the terrorists in the first place.
Given a free hand, the retaking and securing of Gaza would be a matter of weeks for the IDF. The destruction of the insurgency in Iraq, which was backed and controlled out of Iran and Syria, could have been ended in a month. Instead of unleashed force, what we got was the bicycle of violence, in which you pedal slower and slower, while the very people telling you to pedal slower keep pointing out that you aren't reaching your destination and declaring that this is proof that they were right and the destination cannot be reached in the first place.
There is no cycle of violence but the one we create through inaction. A cycle of violence is not inevitable, it is the product of apathy and a failure to act against the terrorists.
The showdown with Olmert at Jabel Mukaber (in time may that name be blotted out) in Yersuahalyim is yet another road sign in the implosion of a government helpless to fight terror and yet determined to crush its own political opposition. Like every gang of left wingers who have scrabbled to power on lies and deceit and the backing of their media friends, they are anti-democratic and incompetent at everything but stealing the country blind and shrieking constantly about the dangers of right wing extremism.
The reality of their crimes though is creeping up on them and not Shas or any of their other partners in crime will be able to keep them in power forever. It is a race between the survival of Israel and the eviction of Olmert, Barak, Ovadya Yosef and the rest of that gang of liars, thieves and appeasers from power.
On Monday afternoon, four days after Ala Abu Dhaim waged mass slaughter at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva before being killed by an IDF soldier and police, the succa-like mourning tent that the prosperous Palestinian family has put up around the balcony is hung with a couple of dozen posters of the terrorist. With the golden Dome of the Rock as background, the photo shows him young, clean-cut, smiling.
"The Islamic movement of Jebl Mukaber in Al-Kuds [Jerusalem] announces that the shahid [martyr] Ala Abu Dhaim has given his soul in a heroic act," the posters read.
The schools, public organizations and many of the stores in this Muslim village of about 25,000, which at certain points sits very literally a stone's throw from the Jewish neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv (East Talpiot), are closed in mourning and solidarity with the murderer's family... the demonstrative shutdown of public life in the village since Ala Abu Dhaim walked into Mercaz Harav and, with a assault rifle and two handguns, fired more than 500 bullets at the cowering yeshiva boys, killing eight of them and wounding nine.
Sitting in my car, Jamal says that from talking with "dozens and even hundreds" of Jerusalem Arabs in different homes, at work, at cafes, in the street and from reading and hearing comments in the local and foreign Arab media, he finds overwhelming support for Abu Dhaim's atrocity.
"Ala has become a hero," he says. "Not just in Jebl Mukaber, but throughout the Palestinian territories and the Arab world."
An acquaintance told him of hearing an Arabic radio show in which Arab girls called in and said that if Abu Dhaim had survived, they'd marry him. "I didn't hear that myself, but I believe it," says Jamal.
Most Arabs seem to feel outright pride over Abu Dhaim, Jamal observes. This was the boldest Palestinian attack on Israel in a long time. "Of course they won't say this publicly or on camera, but when they're sitting together, watching the news, you see in their reactions that they're really proud of it. I'm talking about ordinary people, and I'm sure it's the same with Palestinian academics and journalists - if they aren't proud, they aren't opposed, either.
For example, says Jamal, the terrorist's father, Hisham Abu Dhaim, is a surveying engineer "who does a lot of work for the Jerusalem Municipality. I know him very well. He has about twice as many Israeli friends as Palestinian friends."
The municipality, however, denies the connection. "Hisham Abu Dhaim of Jebl Mukaber does not do work for the Jerusalem Municipality. He is a private building contractor," the city maintains.
The name Jebl Mukaber means "the hill of the one who says Allahu akbar - God is great," says Cohen. The name comes from the traditional belief that Omar ibn el-Khattab, who conquered Jerusalem for Islam in the seventh century, uttered the words when he first saw Jerusalem from a hill where the village now stands.
Orthodox Jews likely remember Noah Feldman from his deceptive New York Times Magazine article written in a snit after he claimed that he and his girlfriend were edited out of his school's reunion photo. The assertion turned out to be false but this not stop Noah Feldman from writing a hatefilled tirade of an article which falsely claimed that Jewish doctors could not treat non-Jews and tried to link Yigal Amir to his old Yeshiva. While the piece read like something that might have been written by David Duke on a bad day, the New York Times not only printed it but ignored the OU's demand for a retraction after the Jewish Week demonstrated Noah Feldman's blatant deceptiveness.
But hating Jews is just a companion for Noah Feldman's love of Islam. Not only did Noah Feldman major in Islamic Thought but in his new career at the New York Times Noah Feldman has become a chief apologist for Islam and for promoting the rise of Muslim tyranny in the Middle East and Europe too.
You can think of Father Michael Pfleger as the white Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Not only does Father Michael Pfleger have a longstanding association with Wright and his Church, he has longstanding ties to Louis Farrakhan, so much so that Farrakhan has even spoken at Father Michael Pfleger's St. Sabina church.
Like Wright, Father Michael Pfleger has close ties to Barack Hussein Obama and Father Michael Pfleger's endorsement appears on Obama's faith endorsements page, where Jeremiah Wright's used to be... before he became too much of an embarrassment.
Father Michael Pfleger however has gained notoriety for more than his embrace of Farrakhan, he also became infamous when at a rally with Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson, he threatened to "snuff" politicians who supported gun rights.
Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s Church, went way over the top this week. During a protest against Chuck’s Gun Shop, Father Pfleger twice threatened to “snuff out” the shop’s owner and threatened the same fate for legislators who oppose his position on gun control.
“We’re gonna find you and snuff you out,” Fleger said about the gun shop owner, likening the man to a “rat.” He later repeated his threat to “snuff out” the owner.
“We’re gonna snuff out legislators who are voting [garbled] against our gun laws and we’re coming for you because we are not going to sit idly.”
With that kind of violent mindset and hateful rhetoric, it's no surprise that Father Michael Pfleger is so close to Louis Farrakhan. Or that he's used violent rhetoric when threatening critics of Obama.
So Father Pfleger is out with a warning: "Do not touch this man," he says, "for if you do, you will answer to us all."
Or that he's tried to carry water for him. Father Michael Pfleger like Jeremiah Wright has a close relationship to Farrakhan and a close relationship to Obama. A closer one than he does to his own Cardinal Francis George who has questioned whether he should even be a priest and at one point reassigned him entirely.
Father Michael Pfleger ministers to Saint Sabina, an African American Catholic church a short distance from the Nation's main mosque, Mosque Maryam.
I've known the minister (Farrakhan) both as someone who I have great respect for as a prophetic voice, as a mentor but also as a friend and as a brother. We've become very close friends over the years. Our families have been close; he's shared dinner at my house as I have at his many, many times. He has preached from our pulpit here at this church on three different occasions. We've worked together on issues not only for this community but in the city and in the nation.
Not content with hosting one rabid racist and anti-semite, Father Michael Pfleger also turned St. Sabina into a forum for Al Sharpton, who was responsible for a number of murders of Jews and non-Jews. Harry Belafonte showed up at St. Sabina also to blame America for 9/11. .
"We move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want, overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be paid for it — look at 9/11.
Sept. 11 "wasn't just Bin Laden. Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy."
In September 2002, Father Pfleger led a rally at the Dirksen Federal Building condemning the destruction of Arafat's compound
Obama and Pfleger share a longstanding relationship of 20 years, like Obama and Wright. And like Wright, Michael Pfleger is described as Obama's moral compass.
Friends and advisers, such as the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in the Auburn- Gresham community on the South Side, who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep that compass set, he says.
"I always have felt in him this consciousness that, at the end of the day, with all of us, you've got to face God," Pfleger says of Obama. "Faith is key to his life, no question about it. It is central to who he is, and not just in his work in the political field, but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father.... I don't think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is."
The Rev. Michael Pfleger has been closely involved in Obama's campaign, hosting faith forums for Obama and Obama, like Farrakhan, found Pfleger's St. Sabina's pulpit convenient for his political agitation, in violation of election laws.
One of those long-time supporters was Rev. Michael Pfleger, the politically active leader of St. Sabina Church. He gave Obama's campaign $1,500 between 1995 and 2001, including $200 in April 2001, about three months after Obama announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs.
And so one hand washes another and one radical kicks back to another.
As Fr. Michael Pfleger describes it, Obama joined a Church in order to gain credibility during his organizing days. The same might apply to Pfleger himself who appears to be as much of a Priest as Rabbi Michael Lerner is a Rabbi. His pulpit is a convenient forum for his left wing political agenda. Much like Obama's supposed Christian faith.
After his mother was remarried, to an Indonesian Muslim, and the family moved to Indonesia, Obama went first to a Catholic academy and then a public Muslim school open to students of all beliefs.
But he was largely indifferent toward religion until he moved to Chicago in 1985 for a job organizing impoverished South Side residents in campaigns for better jobs, schools, and housing. As the recent college graduate went from church to church to enlist clergy in his causes, he heard an oft-repeated refrain: What church do you belong to?
"He really came here with a very strong passion about how can we change things, and he understood the churches as being a vehicle for doing that," recalls the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of the Saint Sabina Church, a Catholic church on the South Side, who has known Obama since his early days in Chicago. But he also "realized that with some churches there would be a credibility issue if he were organizing churches but didn't have a home church."
It helps with that Presidential run too. Unfortunately the clergy Obama has chosen to closely associate himself with seem to repeatedly focus on men like Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, whose anti-american politics coincide with his and who embrace Farrakhan. It becomes too much of a coincidence for Obama to try and pretend that his closest spiritual mentors hold different beliefs than he does that he was not aware of. Not when they were and are this up front.
For credibility's sake Obama is willing to join a church. And for credibility's sake, he's willing to disavow the churches he's joined when they become politically inconvenient. With Rev. Michael Pfleger, it's no longer possible to play the defensive race card. It only remains to admit the truth.
Update May 29/08 - Pfleger at Trinity Church
Three months later, Obama finally jettisons Pfleger. Of course I'm sure this was a huge shock to Obama. Right. Pfleger's endorsement is now off the website. But don't worry, the one thing Obama does not have a shortage of is hate filled ministers.
The media and the international community has one set of moral rules for terrorists and a second set for those who fight them. While civilized people understand the fundamental moral gap between terrorists and the police and military forces fighting them, the self-proclaimed guardians of our moral high ground repeatedly reverse that gap, damning even the most elementary military tactics and demanding that we respect the civil rights of terrorists -- while excusing the crimes and atrocities of the terrorists themselves as merely "reactions" to our oppression of them.
In other words we can't have the moral high ground, so why bother trying for it?
The liberal definition of moral high ground is dependent on the tactics we use and the originating causes of the violence. The conservative definition of moral high ground is rooted in our purpose and the nature of the enemy.
While liberals concentrate on means and causes, conservatives concentrate on ends and the dualism of good against evil. It's an unbreachable gap for as long as liberals remain indoctrinated in their belief in the fundamentally evil nature of civilization and conservatives remain committed to the defense of civilization.
The attempt to achieve some sort of middle ground by limiting interrogation techniques to waterboarding or providing comfortable conditions at Gitmo and maintaining a legal process throughout has failed utterly, because as usual any government tactic to fight terrorism, no matter how moderate, is immediately compared to Nazi Germany and fascism. It's a pointless argument that can only be won by common sense or a blunt object.
It's not a debate that can be won so there's no point in bothering with it. Defending a nation against the Islamic threat is rooted first and foremost in the right of a people to survive. Today that is a real threat in Israel and Europe which are under relentless attack by Islam, yet too many Israelis, Americans and Europeans are invested in preserving some sort of moral high ground. But our moral high ground comes not from the choice of tactics but from the fact that we are defending our nations and fighting for their survival. The defense of home and hearth is the only moral high ground we need.
All options are on the table for our enemies and that means all options should be on the table for us. We are not merely facing a war, we are facing every sort of atrocity followed by demographic overrun and an eventual choice between eradication and enslavement. In the face of that horror, some flee, some collaborate and some stand their ground.
The first option taken off the table should be any need to comply with some imaginary moral high ground. The media and the UN and the EU have increasingly legitimized the tactics of terrorists while delegitimizing the tactics of those fighting against terrorism. There is no benefit to maintaining a "purity of arms" or to constantly show our moral superiority to the enemy when the cost is so enormous.
The equation for fighting terrorism need not be put in terms of moral superiority but in the basic self-interest of self-defense. If the moral high ground is gone, so much the better. We never needed it anyway. We only need to know what we're fighting for and why. The moral high ground debates bog everything down in the swamp of justification and counter-justification, in arguments over acceptable violence and unacceptable violence.
If liberals and terrorists feel that all violence is acceptable for Islamic terrorism, why shouldn't we make the identical argument in reverse. Take the limits, the boundaries off the table. After all the only real incentive for every moral development in Western warfare was that each side had an interest in protecting itself from the other side by taking a tactic off the table. Muslim terrorists have never been forced to cope with this because we are bound by far more rules than they are. Yet the unrestrained reality of naked force may be the only way to show them why restraint is not only moral but in their own interest after all. They've opened the door to violence but only going through that door can help them learn the need to shut it.
Half the Jordanian Parliament demands an end to diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. Iran, Pakistan have summoned their Dutch ambassadors demanding an explanation. Malaysia's crazy Muslim uncle Mahatir is calling for a boycott. Sudan's genocidal Al-Bashir is talking about human values. Cairo's center of Islamic theology Al-Azhar University is warning of "serious consequences".
