Sunday, September 30, 2012

Eric Allen Bell Goes into Hiding

Mike L.

He writes:
I have been moved to a safe house while the FBI investigates numerous death threats against me, 3 Pakistani newspapers wrongfully published that I was "the filmmaker" behind "The Innocence of Muslims". An Islamic terrorist organization has ordered my death, and a bounty has been placed on my head. This rumor, associating me with the film, was intentionally planted by those who wish to silence me, after I published several articles, naming names and making connections between certain mosques, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. I will not be silenced. I may be physically in hiding, but I will continue to write these articles, use radio, and any and all media to expose the truth about Political Islam and those who try to advance this brand of tyranny in America.
For those of you who may not know, Eric Allen Bell is a filmmaker who has become persona non grata among progressives for daring to object to the radical Jihad.

He has now received numerous death threats.

Perilous times

geoffff

Your President threatens us all as surely as Neville Chamberlain did in 1938. 

It is a celebration of the ascent of civilisation that in a few weeks American Jews will have the opportunity to help vote him back in or out of office even as a new one thousand year Dark Age descends on the Middle East like an ocean fog.

Please vote him out of office for the sake of us all.  Not because you are Jews but because you are Americans.









hat tip Shirlee

cross posted Geoffff's Joint

Is This True or is it False?

Mike L.
The Jewish colonialists who began to invade Palestine at the end the 19th century perpetrated a deliberate ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian indigenous peasantry who had been living on their land for centuries; the policy was deliberately designed to cleanse the area of the Jewish State of its Arab population, and in the course of the War of Independence they carried out the planned deportation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Ultimately, how we view the conflict depends, at least in part, on the degree to which we agree with the above. It's taken from a piece by Erez Tadmor and Erel Segal called Nakba Nonsense. I am not familiar with either of these writers, nor have I read more than a few pages of the piece, itself, but the above quote strikes me as a very good example of what we typically call the "Palestinian Narrative."

It is certainly the case that large numbers of progressives, and progressive Jews, (pretending to be liberals) believe the above.  But it is either true or it is not true.  Or it is largely true or largely false.  If you are a Jewish supporter of Israel and you think that the above is largely true then you have a serious dilemma on your hands.  It means that the country that you support was born out of sin and that the anti-Zionists are essentially correct.  If Israel was born from the deliberate and pre-conceived ethnic cleansing of the local Arabs (they did not yet self-identify as "Palestinians") then Israel is pretty much everything that its worst critics say that it is.

If, on the other hand, the above is largely false (which it is) then it is incumbent upon supporters of the Jewish state of Israel to make it clear that it is false.  We need to stand up and remind people, particularly progressive-left detractors of the Jewish state of Israel, that the Arabs launched a genocidal war against the Jews in November of 1947 directly after the Holocaust.  If some Palestinians were kicked out of Israel at the time it was because the Israelis, unlike their dhimmitudenous Jewish counterparts elsewhere, believed in self-defense and were hell-bent on parrying Arab rapiers.

Our friend Daniel Bielak likes to say that we just need to tell the truth and while I recognize that "truth" is not so easily conveyed or understood, he is essentially correct.  We do need to tell the truth.  Let the historical record serve as a parry to Arab and progressive anti-Israel propaganda.  If the progressive-left actually stands for social justice, as they claim, then they need to stand with the Jews of the Middle East who remain under perpetual assault.  If, however, the progressive-left stands with the Arab Palestinians, which is more and more the case, this can only mean that they do not stand for social justice because it is the Palestinian national movement, itself, that absolutely refuses to accept a state in peace next to the Jewish one.

Almost entirely ignoring the history of the Jewish people under the boot of Muslim imperialism, progressives (under the influence of Arab and Soviet propaganda) are convincing themselves that Israel is a racist state that is oppressing the "indigenous" Arab population.  In this way they, much like the Nazis before them, paint the Jewish people as aggressors who must be stopped for the good of all humanity.

The progressive movement is, thus, playing an exceedingly dangerous game with the lives of Jewish people in the Middle East.  The Jews are a tiny minority in this world and we have seen very well what can happen when enough people convince themselves that we are the source of the world's problems.  Every time some progressives says that "Zionists" control the American media or government they are, in essence, repeating exactly the same kind of slander that the Nazis pointed at the Jews prior to the Final Solution.  Every time some progressive tells the world that the "Zionists" are oppressing the poor, "indigenous" Palestinians they are laying a stone of hatred toward the Jewish people, a stone that paves a trail to anti-Jewish slaughter.

If sometime in the future we get something that resembles another Holocaust it will be the Jews of the Middle East who will pay the biggest price.  Any future scenario involving large numbers of Jewish dead will be the result of Arab or Persian violence.  And if that day comes do not look to progressives for sympathy.

They will be the first to tell us that the violence against us is the richly deserved outcome of Jewish crimes.  If they tell one another that we are guilty as sin now, would you expect them to change their tune after the slaughter?  Paul Berman has noted that it was during the Second Terror War (intifada), in which over 1,000 Israelis were slaughtered and in which Israeli society endured the death-toll equivalent of a 9/11 every two weeks for several years, that progressive accusations against the Jews of the Middle East reached its highest pitch of hysteria.

Don't expect anything different the next time the Arabs or the Palestinians go on an anti-Jewish killing spree.

You won't get it.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Pat Condell's take on Islam


geoffff

This is Pat Condell's latest video. It's a week old which makes it geriatric and I like that.

I watched it within minutes of it arriving in my inbox and very nearly put it up right away as I usually do with Condell's stuff.

Something stayed my trembling mouse finger.. Watch the video and guess.



A week ago was the height of the Islamic global moron riot and world dummy spit competition.  Pat's video was  in the heat of the moment so I gave it a week to cool down to see what it looks like well .. now really..

Condell's perspective is global as it should be and as an atheist  he has no time for religion of any kind. Any secularist should feel the same when it comes to the affairs of state. Your God might speak to you but not to me, Simple really, There is no other way religion can be free,

He has disappeared the distinction between Islam and Political Islam  and now that Political Islam has spread so far and fast since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that brought this horror to power in Iran (so firmly and up front on the watch of Jimmy [no American soldier has died in a foreign war on my watch] Carter) how can you not?

Think how quick that was. 1979 Iran.

Now Political Islam is dominant or insurgent from Tunisia to Pakistan. Turkey. Egypt  Libya. Lebanon, Sudan and across Africa. Yemen.

 Just look at those dingos  right now gathered and jumping for poor bloody Syria to drop like a wounded exhausted possum from a tree and by Syria I mean the long suffering Syrian people.

They are all there waiting and doing their best to keep the fires burning.   AQ.   MB of course. You can be certain Iran and Hezbollah. They have cooked Assad's goose among them as you would expect them to and all that remains is the carve up.

But I digress.

Condell ignores  the vast number of Muslims who just want to practice their religion in peace and do so.. He also ignores those who would love to do so if they had the opportunity
.
Unfortunately they are all in Muslim countries.

There is an opportunity for free Muslims to turn this around.




cross posted  Geoffff's Joint Bar and Grill

Friday, September 28, 2012

Hardee Har Har

Doodad

(hat tip Sultan Knish)

Obama Peddles Comforting Lies at the UN, Reveals Delusional Thinking

Mike L.

{Originally published at the Times of Israel.}

It's hard to know if in Barack Obama's speech to the UN today whether he was lying only to his audience or whether he was lying to himself, as well. Unlike some people, I do not assume malice on the part of this president. When Obama helped usher the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt, or as he allows the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weaponry, I do not think that he does so out of some malicious intention to see radical Islam thrive throughout the region. Rather, Obama's behavior is based on an ideology that he learned from people like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi. He is a progressive (pretending to be liberal) president who believes that the US, much like Israel, is, and has been, a racist, imperialist, colonialist, militaristic country. America, therefore, must look deeply into its own soul in order to confront, and expunge, the poisonous and violent tendencies of the past.

It is for this reason that Obama refuses to acknowledge radical Islam, continues to believe that the misnamed "Arab Spring" was about democracy, and draws a moral equivalence between the Jews of the Middle East and those who have sworn to murder them if it is the very last thing that they ever do. What the speech thus reveals more than anything else is Obama's delusional thinking on foreign policy and his chronic dishonesty on the problem of Iran.

Obama said:
It has been less than two years since a vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest the oppressive corruption in his country, and sparked what became known as the Arab Spring. Since then, the world has been captivated by the transformation that has taken place, and the United States has supported the forces of change.
And that's precisely the problem. The United States did, in fact, support the forces of "change," despite the fact that this change consists of a transition from military dictatorships to theocratic dictatorships grounded in Sharia and that must, of ideological necessity, oppress women, threaten Jews and non-Muslims, and murder Gay people outright.

Obama said:
We insisted on change in Egypt, because our support for democracy put us on the side of the people.
The problem here, of course, is that we are not supporting democracy in Egypt, but rather the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Brotherhood is not an organization devoted to democracy. Quite the contrary, in fact. The Brotherood is devoted to al-Sharia and is the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda. In this way Barack Obama reveals the fundamental contradiction at the very core of his thinking on foreign policy. He tells the American people that al-Qaeda is the enemy, yet he embraces the parent organization of the very terrorist group he claims to oppose. Such a policy is logically incoherent, blatantly contradictory, and reveals the cognitive dissonance within a squirming mind. One cannot support the Brotherhood while opposing al-Qaeda because the latter derives from the former and shares the same ideology of oppression.

Obama said:
More broadly, the events of the last two weeks speak to the need for all of us to address honestly the tensions between the West and an Arab World moving to democracy.
This is quite true, but it is also precisely what he is not doing. Obama is not honestly addressing the tensions between the West and the Arab world. If Obama was honestly addressing that tension he would acknowledge the rise of political Islam throughout the Muslim Middle East. Like most progressives (pretending to be liberals) he plays ostrich on this issue. Country after country throughout that part of the world has fallen to the Sharia. The rise of political Islam is the single most significant geo-political development since the fall of the Soviet Union and it has nothing to do with democracy beyond using the vote to gain power. One man. One vote. One time. That Obama continues to believe that the "Arab Spring" was about democracy shows us that he has learned nothing. It shows us the amazing depths of the man's self-delusion. He looks across the Arab world and sees the riots and the rapes and the murders and the mayhem that collectively make up the "Arab Spring" and he tells us that this is about democracy.

It isn't.

Obama said:
The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt – it must be claimed by those in Tahrir Square who chanted “Muslims, Christians, we are one.” The future must not belong to those who bully women – it must be shaped by girls who go to school, and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons.
Here again we see the essential contradiction at the very heart of Obama foreign policy. If the future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt, how is it that the Obama administration supports an organization that targets Coptic Christians in Egypt?  If the future must not belong to those who bully women, how is it that the Obama administration supports an organization that bullies women?  At its essence Sharia is hostile toward non Muslims and entirely misogynistic.  So, is Obama lying only to us or is he lying to himself, as well?

Obama said:
Among Israelis and Palestinians, the future must not belong to those who turn their backs on the prospect of peace. Let us leave behind those who thrive on conflict, and those who reject the right of Israel to exist. The road is hard but the destination is clear – a secure, Jewish state of Israel; and an independent, prosperous Palestine. Understanding that such a peace must come through a just agreement between the parties, America will walk alongside all who are prepared to make that journey.
Well, those are mighty fine words coming from the guy who wrecked the peace process to begin with. Furthermore, of course, the United States under Barack Obama is not walking alongside anyone when it comes to the long Arab war against the Jews. Instead, he pushed Israel to make unilateral concessions while requiring nothing whatsoever from the Palestinians. His one-sided, anti-Israel approach inclined the Palestinians to walk away from the table because they had no reason to negotiate with Israel while the US was pushing Israel to make concessions. By demanding "total settlement freeze" Obama made it so that dictator Abbas could require nothing less because he could not afford to look softer on Israel than the American president.

Finally, we get this:
the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
This is just false.

No one who has honestly watched this president do everything in his power to prevent Israel from protecting itself from a soon-to-be nuclear Iran could possibly believe that he is actually going to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry. All the evidence suggests that Obama is doing next to nothing to prevent Iranian nukes. The IAEA recently reported that the Iranian nuclear project is advancing at a rapid clip. Obama is not preventing Iranian nukes, but buying Iran the time it needs to complete those nukes.

If Barack Obama believes what he says above then he is delusional and if he doesn't then he is a liar.

I thinks that he's delusional. I think that he suffers from ideological blinkertude, but you will draw your own conclusions.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Speaking Of Photos

Doodad

Hmmmmmmm...of all the photos presumably taken of Bibi at the UN today AP and Reuters chose to highlight these two.

Disgusting.

From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel.

Mike L.

Robert Wistrich, the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, has a new book out describing just how it is that the progressive-left is betraying the Jewish people:
From Ambivalence to Betrayal is a historic review and analysis of the abandonment of the Jewish people by the left from the early 19th century until the present. It also relates to the extraordinarily disproportionate number of socialist thinkers and leaders who were of Jewish origin and seeks to explain what motivated so many of them, in the course of their utopian and futile efforts to “repair the world,” to abandon their people and their heritage and frenetically seek to deny their kinsmen the right to self-determination.
This is, of course, exceedingly odd given the fact that I have been repeatedly told that anti-Semitic anti-Zionism is not a left-wing phenomenon.  Apparently the world's foremost scholar on anti-Semitism disagrees.
The introductory essay is a brilliant overview of the contemporary Jewish political arena viewed in the context of the concurrent rise of Zionism, Communism, anti-Semitism and Nazism. It focuses strongly on the hypocrisy of the existing left, which has become obsessed with demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state.
The hypocrisy of the existing left which has become obsessed with demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state? Not possible, I say! The Jewish state of Israel has no better friend in the world than the international left!
Wistrich demonstrates the extent to which today’s radical anti-Zionists, despite purporting to represent the left, often share the identical obsessions and delusions concerning the alleged malignant influence of the Jews in the modern world as classical fascist anti-Semites.
What?! Wistrich is suggesting that progressive-left anti-Zionists might be... anti-Semitic?? Who ever heard of such a thing??
The concluding chapters review the anti-Zionist myths, many of which seem to have been directly replicated from Nazi propaganda and are today enthusiastically promoted by the Marxist Islamist alliance who regard Israel as the “Jew of the nations” fulfilling a dark preordained fate as an eternal scapegoat.
Marxist Islamist alliance?

Does this mean that when we saw the Mavi Marmara challenging Israel on the high seas that it actually did contain both progressives and Jihadis?! In other words, maybe I wasn't hallucinating at the time, because I am pretty sure that's what we saw. When I asked people how it was that a boat filled with Shaheeds seeking martyrdom in an effort to confront Jews on the high seas also contained a great number of progressives I was either ridiculed or ignored.

Well, I don't know about you, but for me it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that anti-Semitic anti-Zionism is predominately a left-wing phenomenon and, yet, somehow against all reason, we are still supposed to view the progressive-left as the home of the "good guys."

The truth is, of course, that the progressive-left has put Jewish people in the position of being forced to choose between the progressive movement and our own people.

For me that choice could not be any easier.

WTF Is This About?

Doodad

I love Drudge for keeping up with the news but today I saw something weird. There on the same page were these images of winking people.

Creepy, man!

Angry Arab Rats Out Iran

Doodad

Foul antisemite Angry Arab rats out duplicitous Iranian signs.


 "This has become consistent.  Iranian regime signs against Israel are deliberately mistranslated into English.  It says "Death to Israel" in Persian and Arabic, but it says "Down with Israel" in English. What gives? 

Like we didn't know what they REALLY wanted to say. Naturally, Angry Arab prefers the non-English versions.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Guess Who Came To Dinner?

Doodad

You would think that not one darn American would want to break bread with the genocidal, antisemite Ahmadinejad. You would be wrong. As a matter of fact, lots of Americans wanted to fete him at a fancy dinner. You may have already guessed who the usual suspects were.

The invited guests included leading members of most of the major U.S. anti-war coalitions and organizations, including the International Action Center, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, National Assembly to End U.S. Wars & Occupations, United National Anti-War Committee, Code Pink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, United for Peace & Justice, Al-Awda-New York and Women Against Military Madness of Minneapolis.

Also, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Just Foreign Policy Director Robert Naiman; MRZine.org Editor Yoshie Furuhashi; David Swanson of War Is A Crime.org; and Kenneth Stone of Hamilton, Ontario, representing the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War and the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Organizations that specifically focus on Iran included the Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), Women for Peace & Justice in Iran, StopWaronIran.org and the American Iranian Friendship Committee.

But while the president had met before, in 2008, with representatives of the peace movement, this was his first real opportunity to meet with longtime leaders in the Black struggle.

Poet/activist Amiri Baraka, a near-legendary figure in the Black liberation movement, was there with his wife Amina. Ramona Africa, a leading supporter of U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and Minister of Communication in The MOVE Organization, came with two other MOVE members.

Also Cynthia McKinney, the former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate; New York civil rights attorney Alton Maddox and his wife; longtime North Carolina community activist Shafia M'Balia; Washington, D.C., minister/activist Rev. Graylan Scott-Hagler; Million Worker March Movement Northeast Region Co-organizer Brenda Stokely; Pan African News Wire Editor Abayomi Azikiwe; and Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee leader Anthony Van Der Meer

An impressive list of far left assholes. Also a shame to see how some of the black community have embraced the idiot.
Abayomi Azikiwe of the Pan African News Wire had a similar assessment.
“I thought the significance of the meeting was that the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran had an opportunity to hear directly from people from the oppressed communities, from anti-war activists, about the plight of the people of the United States, and that that wasn't filtered through the corporate media,” he said.

“He heard directly about how they felt not only about conditions here, but about relations between the United States and Iran.  Most of the speakers spoke in solidarity with the people of Iran, from the standpoint that they saw the plight of the Iranian people as being similar to the plight of the people of the United States, that the people of Iran had been oppressed by and are still under attack by the U.S., just as African-Americans and other people opposed to U.S. policy are under attack here in the United States.”
 There is of course no mention of the deadly homicidal rhetoric that comes out of Ahmadinejad's mouth, only loving assessments like this:
Consistently caricatured in the Western media, the former university professor and mayor of Tehran comes across in person as an intelligent, thoughtful and deeply religious leader trying to find a common ground with his audience, while upholding the right of his country to be treated with respect in the international arena.
The Left's love affairs with murderous tyrants has always puzzled me.   This bunch not so much given the amount of Jew/Israel hate  many of that lot have spewed over the years. One main driver of this event was Veterans For Peace. Here's what its President, Leah Bolger had to say:

  1. The U.S. should announce that it will revoke the $3B it gives Israel every year in military aid, should Israel attack Iran.

  2. Insist that Israel be held to the same standards of openness and transparency that it demands of Iran with regard to its nuclear program, to include allowing IAEA inspectors into Israel, and signing on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

  3. Remove its Carrier Battle Groups, loaded with dozens of nuclear weapons, from the region. Discontinue “military exercises” in the area.

  4. Express full support for the Helsinki meetings in December, and the “Nuclear Free Middle East.” Pressure Israel to attend this meeting, which is scheduled for this December.

  5. Stop using U.S. veto power to protect Israel from being held accountable for its actions by the UN.

Blame Israel, 24/7. Bolger had nothing to say about Iran's constant antisemitic rants. No surprise there.

On Progressive Jewish Dhimmitude

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.}

Let me start by affirming that not all Jewish progressives are dhimmis and that Jewish dhimmitude is, largely, a matter of degree.  It is, however, the case that Jewish dhimmitude is a phenomenon that is far more prevalent on the progressive-left than it is on the conservative right.  While dhimmitude was (and is) an historically racist social arrangement that kept non-Muslims as oppressed minorities within Muslim societies over the last 1,400 years, it is also a state of mind.  Sometimes we talk about Jewish Stockholm Syndrome, but Jewish dhimmitude is the same thing.

Psychologist Kenneth Levin, author of the groundbreaking work, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege, put it like this:
Almost invariably there are parts of the population that accept the indictments of the besiegers in the hope that they can win relief and peace. This is a psychological response to being besieged, and Jews have been besieged for 2000 years. As Max Nordau wrote over a hundred years ago, the greatest success of the anti-Semites was that they had gotten the Jews to see themselves through anti-Semitic eyes.
The essence of Jewish dhimmitude is the acceptance of ferocious and unjust Muslim indictments against the Jewish people.  The behavior of the dhimmi, which is usually characterized by an overt hostility toward those of their fellow Jews who refuse to succumb to the condition of dhimmitude, flows from that premise.   In today's world it takes various forms including, most prominently, the tendency to blame one's fellow Jews for the failure of Arab and Muslim societies to make peace with their formerly oppressed Jewish subjects.

Instead of acknowledging the obvious, which is that the Palestinians do not want a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one, progressive-left Jewish dhimmis blame Arab intransigence on their fellow Jews in Israel.  Instead of acknowledging that the Palestinians have rejected offer after offer for statehood, going all the way back to the Peel Commission of 1937, they instead blame the Likud or the "settlers" or Avigdor Lieberman or Benjamin Netanyahu for Palestinian rejectionism.

In this way, Jewish dhimmis see the conflict through the eyes of Palestinians.  It is what I have referred to as The Palestinian Colonization of the Jewish Mind.  Instead of recognizing that there is no peace because the Palestinians do not want peace, but eventual victory over a previously subjugated Jewish minority, Jewish dhimmis accept Arab and Muslim and Palestinian racism against Jews as normative. Because they do so they thereby accept the Palestinian premise that it is the Jewish presence in Judea which represents the primary obstacle to peace.  Thus Jewish dhimmis affirm Arab racism against their fellow Jews and end up, unwittingly to be sure, justifying Arab violence against us.

One can only consider the presence of Jews in Judea as an obstacle to peace if one accepts the racist Palestinian notion that any future state of Palestine must be Judenrein.  Just as Barack Obama has accepted this violently anti-Semitic premise, so have Jewish dhimmis.

Another consequence of Jewish dhimmitude, however, is the chronic racism towards Muslims that is a direct consequence of the dhimmis' stance.  Because Jewish dhimmis tend to blame Arab and Muslim hostility toward the Jewish people on some subset of their fellow Jews, they also tend to attack and vilify and marginalize Jews who push back against Muslim Supremacism.  Islam, like all religions, has a supremacist side to it.  The difference is that, because Muslims outnumber Jews by a factor of 100 to 1, Muslim Supremacists represent a very significant number of people.  They are, in fact, the primary force behind the rise of radical Islam throughout the Middle East and even though they only represent some portion of Islam they still well outnumber the Jews whom they seek to oppress or kill.

When Jews who are not dhimmis speak out against radical Islam they are typically called "racists" or "Islamophobes" by Jewish dhimmis on the progressive-left.  In this way, Jewish dhimmis conflate regular Muslims with radical Jihadis.  When a Jewish person points toward Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Muslim Brotherhood and claims that these movements are genocidal and seek the oppression of women and the slaughter of Gays, they are pointing to a wide ranging, diverse, and international political movement.  What they are not pointing toward are Muslims as a whole.  They may wonder aloud if the supremacist trend within Islam is inherent to Islam, but they certainly recognize that many, many millions of ordinary Muslims are not involved in the Muslim Supremacist movement, which is the movement of radical Islam and the basis of the Muslim Brotherhood.

To suggest otherwise is to suggest that Muslims, as a group, are Jihadis.

And that, my friends, truly is racist.

Furthermore, of course, objecting to Muslim Supremacism, like objecting to White Supremacism, should be sacrosanct among people who care about universal human rights and if the progressive-left wishes to maintain anything that resembles moral credibility they must stop making apologies for this widespread racist and misogynistic movement.

Why is it that in today's world it is the left as much as, if not more so, than the right that is standing in opposition to social justice?

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Obama's Most Recent Snubbing of PM Netanyahu

Mike L.

I have not had much to say about Barack Obama's recent snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but I came across the following comment that rings true.

In a recent Jerusalem Post article about Obama's laughable claim that US will 'do what it must' to stop Iranian nukes, one commenter, mentioning the snub to Netanyahu, saw this response:
Jozek Niegorol  
So? He has not arranged the meeting with Danish Prime Minister either.
Which was followed by this very apt comment, I thought:
outre136  
Neither did he make the US relations with Denmark a major issue in his reelection campaign. Also, I do not remember him asking Denmark to give Greenland independence and stopping all construction there. And I have never heard Obama discussing whether Copenhagen is really the capital of Denmark (or may be it should be given some special international status, given that once Denmark dominated all of Scandinavia, and so Swedes and Norwegians can also lay some claims to it?) Also, I never heard Obama threatening or scolding Denmark.
Indeed.

Barack Obama is probably the least friendly president toward the Jewish state of Israel that we have seen in the brief history of that country.

As my dear 'ol dad would sometimes say, "I wouldn't trust that guy as far as I could throw him."

Latest Times of Israel Post

Mike L.

Obama Peddles Comforting Lies at the UN, Reveals Delusional Thinking

Obama's speech to the UN is incoherent and contradictory. One cannot support the Muslim Brotherhood, which he calls supporting "democracy," while condemning al-Qaeda as the enemy because the latter derives from the former and shares its essential ideology.

In this way, Barack Obama is either lying to us or to himself or both.

Also, of course, he's not actually preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons as we know from the recent IAEA report which confirms that the Iranian nuke project is moving steadily ahead.

Interpreting Violence

Mike L.

{Originally published at the Times of Israel}

How we interpret violence in the Middle East says much about how we view the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews there and how we tend to view Arab and Jewish cultures, more generally. Take the story of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens’ murder in Benghazi, Libya. The initial reports that I heard from the left press, as well as progressive-left websites like Daily Kos, claimed that concerned onlookers pulled him out of the wreckage in order to carry him to safety in the hopes that he might still be alive.
In more recent days, however, I am reading reports that these people did not carry him out of the wreckage in order to help him, but dragged his corpse through the streets triumphantly crying out “Alahu Akbar!” In Arutz ShevaPhyllis Chesler writes:
I have been looking at the photos and the brief video of Ambassador Stevens and I have spoken to two different Arabists, who assure me that the mob dragging Steven’s body are chanting a song of victory over one’s enemies and are praising God for it.
Chesler, a woman who lived for a number of years in an Arab country as a young woman, does not believe for one second that the Libyans were trying to help Stevens, but she does not go nearly so far as Mark Tapson in a Front Page Magazine piece entitled, “The Sexual Pathology of the Libyan Attackers.” Tapson writes:
Soon after the terrorist attack that left four Americans dead in Libya, reports began coming in that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was not only murdered by the Muslim mob, but also sodomized both before and after his death, and his corpse dragged through the streets. This grotesque defilement was willfully suppressed by the mainstream media…
It seems fairly obvious that the more well-disposed one is toward the Arab-Muslim world the more likely one is to believe that the Libyan’s sought to carry Stevens away from the site of violence and the less well-disposed toward the Arab-Muslim world the more likely one is to believe that it was a violent mob, even a mob who sodomized the man both before and after his death.  Since I have no way of knowing the truth of the matter I have decided, at least for the moment, to withhold judgment.
Nonetheless, it seems clear that this question of interpreting violence tells us much about how we view the Palestinians and the Jews in the conflict.  The more sympathetic one is toward the Palestinian people the more likely one is to interpret Palestinian violence, up to and including suicide bombings, as legitimate resistance against a racist, imperialist enemy.  The more sympathetic one is to the Jewish people, however, the more likely one is to interpret Jewish-Israeli violence as understandable reactions to Palestinian provocations.
We look at the same thing and we see something very, very different.  Progressives (pretending to be liberals) look at Jewish-Israeli violence and they see the iron boot of a militarist state.  Friends of Israel and friends of the Jewish people, however, tend to view Palestinian violence not as “resistance,” but as terrorism grounded in theologically-inspired race hatred towards Jews.
The question then becomes, what is the most reasonable way of broadly interpreting Middle East violence, both Arab and Jewish?  It seems to me that the only fair way of interpreting such violence is through looking at the numbers of people involved in the conflict on both sides as well as the history of Arab-Jewish relations in the region since the 7th century.
In terms of the numbers there are various ways of breaking it down.  At the moment there are 5.5 million Jews in the region along with 300 to 400 million Arabs.  From that perspective the Jews are a tiny minority surrounded by a largely hostile population.  From that perspective Jewish violence can easily be interpreted, particularly given the Holocaust, as a means of self-defense.  However, if we remove the Arab world, more generally, from the equation then we have a powerful Jewish state using violence against an allegedly oppressed minority, the Palestinians.  Is it the Jewish David versus the Arab-Muslim Goliath?  Or, is it the Palestinian David versus the Jewish-Israeli Goliath?
If you answer that question then you tell me almost all that I need to know about your views on the conflict.  But then, of course, there is history.  A pro-Israel Daily Kos blogger, dhonig, used to like to say that “History did not start in 1967.”  What he meant by that, of course, is that the conflict long precedes the Israeli re-acquisition of Judea and Samaria and that if we are to truly understand what is going on we must understand what preceded the “occupation” of the so-called “West Bank” and I heartily agree.
In fact, if we truly wish to understand the conflict we need to understand the nature of Jewish life in the Arab-Muslim world since the imposition of dhimmitude on the Jewish (and Christian) populations after Mohammad’s armies roared out of the Saudi peninsula in the 7th century.  The historical fact of the matter is that Jews living In Ishmael’s House, in some places and in some times had it considerably better than other Jews in other places and in other times.  The history of Jewish dhimmitude is long, but it is not monolithic.
Historian Martin Gilbert tells us:
At the core of the Covenant (of Omar – my note) was a promise to protect Jews and Christians – People of the Book – based on three essential benefits: security of life and property, freedom of religion and internal communal autonomy.  Each benefit was guaranteed provided certain conditions were met.  First and foremost among these conditions, dhimmis had to pay the jizya tax to the local ruler and accept the condition of ahl al-dhimma.

In addition to codifying existing rules, Abd al-Azziz formulated new ones.  Several of these were identical to laws against the Jews that were already in place in Christian Byzantium, but they were nonetheless new in the Muslim world.  There could be no building of new synagogues or churches.  Dhimmis could not ride horses, but on donkeys; they could not use saddles, but only ride sidesaddle.  Further, they could not employ a Muslim.  Jews and Christians alike had to wear special hats, cloaks and shoes to mark them out from Muslims.  They were even obliged to carry signs on their clothing or to wear types and colours of clothing that would indicate they were not Muslims, while at the same time avoid clothing that had any association with Mohammed and Islam… A dhimmi could not – and cannot to this day – serve in a Muslim court as a witness in a legal case involving a Muslim… Men could enter public bathhouses only when they wore a special sign around their neck distinguishing them from Muslims… Sexual relations with a Muslim woman were forbidden, as was cursing the Prophet in public – an offence punishable by death…

(Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, Yale University Press, 31 – 33.)
And so on and so forth.  This is the type of thing that Jews lived with under Arab-Muslim rule for 13 centuries until our liberation early in the twentieth century.  However good some Jews in some places may have had it as dhimmis, the institution of dhimmitude, at its best, was never better than the way African-Americans had it in the Jim Crow south and was often considerably worse.
When we look at the history of the Arab war against the Jews from the early twentieth century to the present it must be understood, if it is to be understood at all, within the context of the long centuries of Jewish abuse and oppression under the boot of Islamic imperialism.  When we think about the so-called “occupation,” i.e., the checkpoints that so humiliate Palestinians and the blockade of Gaza, we must understand that the Jewish state of Israel does not employ such methods out of a sense of meanness, or some irrational desire to punish the local Arabs, but out of a powerful sense of Jewish self-preservation and self-defense after centuries of abuse.
Furthermore, the conflict is not merely a conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews, but of the Arab nation, more generally, against the Jewish people of the Middle East.  If that were not the case, the Arab governments would not have waged war against us and they would have normalized relations by now, but they have not.
While I may not know at this point just what to make of the treatment of Ambassador Stevens by those who pulled him from the rubble, there is one thing that I know for certain.
The Jews remain a tiny, abused minority in the Middle East desperately trying to survive a deeply hostile majority population there that outnumber them 50 or 60 to one.
Anyone who doesn’t honestly understand that, doesn’t understand the conflict.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Get Rich Quick Scheme

Doodad



(hat tip Maggies Farm)

Catholics Under Arab Attack in Jerusalem

Mike L.

The Archdiocese of Jerusalem is reporting that for the third time in two years, the Christian housing complex of Bethphage has come under assault by local Islamic youth:
This occurred on Monday, August 20, from 8:00 p.m. to midnight when a group of fifty boys attacked the residential complex for 79 families which is part of a project of the Franciscans of the Holy Land. Following a brawl between young people of the Christian area and some neighbors, friends were called and they all attacked the complex, yelling, throwing stones, smashing cars and windows of houses. A number of residents were injured and one had to be hospitalized for treatment. ”They do so because they know that we will not respond with violence!” protested David Josef, a father of five children, as he emphasized: “This is the third time this happened to us in two years …”
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (Camera) notes that:
When an unknown individual spray painted the phrase “Jesus is a monkey” in Hebrew on the doors of a Trappist monastery in Latroun on Sept. 5, 2012, it made the papers all over the world. 
The desecration, thought to be perpetrated by an Israeli Jew angry over the evacuation of Migron in the West Bank, was covered in the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and a number of other news outlets, throughout the world. 
It was covered in Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, for example. CNN and NBC News also covered the desecration.
Yet for some unknown reason the international media ignores Arab-Muslim attacks upon Christians in the Holy Land.

How odd.

Perhaps Obama Needs to Burn an Israeli Flag on National Television

 

 Mike L.

I sometimes wonder just what it will take to convince Obama's Jewish supporters of the president's unfriendliness toward the Jewish state of Israel.  So far nothing has worked.  No matter how hard Obama tries to distance himself from Israel and downgrade that country's standing in the United States, Jewish progressives (pretending to be liberals*) remain firmly committed to the most anti-Israel American president in history.  Whether its wrecking the "peace process" and then blaming it on Israel or telling Jewish people where they may be allowed to live, and thus build, in Jerusalem or comparing the rise of an anti-Semitic genocidal movement in the Middle East to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s or allowing Iran to get nuclear weaponry, nothing that Obama says or does can convince these Jewish supporters that Obama simply does not much like the Jewish state of Israel.

Why none of this fazes Jewish progressives... pretending to be liberals... is hard to fathom.  We often cite Jewish Stockholm Syndrome as a possible explanation, but slapping a label on the phenomenon only means so much.  In truth, I do not have an answer for just why it is that so many Jewish progressives refuse to acknowledge obvious truths, but that they do so is plain to see.  In fact, as of yesterday, we have even more evidence of Obama's disdain for the Jewish state of Israel and it's all over the news.  In an interview with 60 Minutes Obama said the following:
When it comes to our national security decisions, any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people. And I am going to block out any noise that’s out there. Now I feel an obligation, not pressure but obligation, to make sure that we’re in close consultation with the Israelis on these issues because it affects them deeply. They’re one of our closest allies in the region. And we’ve got an Iranian regime that has said horrible things that directly threaten Israel’s existence.
Not only did Obama refer to Jewish-Israeli concerns about the coming Iranian nuclear stockpile as mere "noise" to be dismissed, he also downgraded Israel from our number one ally in the region to merely "one of our closest allies in the region." While the "noise" comment is both disdainful of Jewish safety concerns and spiteful to the state of Israel, what I am more interested in, I think, is Obama's notion that Israel is not necessarily our best ally in that part of the world.

Just who does Obama consider to be a better ally?  Saudi Arabia?  Obama did, after all, famously bow to the Saudi monarch, but Saudi Arabia also spends millions of dollars on a yearly basis (or whatever the actual figure might be) spreading hatred toward both Israel and toward the United States.  Are they a better friend to the United States than Israel?  I certainly wouldn't think so, but that doesn't mean that Obama doesn't think so.

Or, perhaps what is more likely is that Obama had Turkey in mind.  Obama has claimed that Erdogan (unlike Bibi) is one of his favorite partners in the region, so maybe it is that country that Obama considers a better ally to the United State than Israel.  Of course, under Erdogan Turkey has joined the rising regional trend toward political Islam and now faces more toward Iran than it does toward the west, so it becomes difficult to see just how Turkey could possibly be a better ally to the United States than Israel but, again, just because I wouldn't think so, that doesn't mean that Obama doesn't think so.

Are there other possibilities?

It was under Obama's stewardship that Egypt went from the ally column to the not-ally column, as Obama himself has admitted.  Of course, that represents another very important Obama foreign policy failure that progressives (pretending to be liberals) just sweep under the rug in the hopes that people won't notice.  Those of us who participate on Israel Thrives do notice such things and tend not to appreciate it, but obviously Obama does not care what anyone thinks outside of the narrow American plurality he needs to win reelection.

So, what I am thinking now is that if Obama wishes to convince his Jewish supporters of that which couldn't be more obvious what he should do is simply burn an Israeli flag on the front lawn of the White House.  Wouldn't that be something!  He could call a press conference, burn the Israeli flag, smile for the cameras, and say something like, "Israel has no greater friend in the world than this president of the United States" as he stomps on the flames.

But, you know, I am convinced that even if Obama were to do such a thing, it wouldn't matter.

He'd still get the Jewish vote.

.
.
.

* Barack Obama supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  The Brotherhood is the granddaddy of political Islam, a movement that subjugates women, is genocidal toward Jews, and that kills Gay people outright.  It is difficult to see how any actual liberal would support a president who supports such a movement.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Will Israel Strike Iran?


geoffff

Caz asked  a little while back what I thought and I said I didn't know. Probably. I could have added nothing else seems to be working.

Should Israel attack Iran? In the shifting sands right now my firm opinion for what it is worth is no. At least not alone. It can't be done.

The truth is most of  the Arab world, Turkey and Europe would be delighted if the Israelis did the honours and did all the bleeding. Why wouldn't they? A nuclear Iran is just as much a threat to them as Israel. They would then turn on Israel like a dozen hyena packs on the edge of starvation.

It would be a trap. To hell with them. If it is to be done it is to be done with NATO.  Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states too would be welcome.. Best of all leave Israel out of it. Wouldn't that be nice?

Let them all dwell on the prospect of what a brave new world this will be the day the mullahs announce they have the war heads and the means to deliver them as far as London and have let off a big bang in the Iranian hinterland to prove it..

Maybe the newly reinstalled Taliban in Afghanistan will let them have what's left of those Buddhas as a ground zero test site.

Think what a wonderful world it will be. Just like the song. . A world in which the Nazis have nukes but so do the Jews. A world that has already forgotten that the eradication of the Jews was not even the beginning of the Nazis plans for the world. .

cross posted Geoffff's Joint

Father Dave Watch


geoffff


This will be an occasional posting on this form of clerical antisemitism as the mood takes.

At the risk of giving the puffed up little bully more credit and attention than he deserves there is something going on here that most certainly should be watched. Let me explain but first a few preliminaries.

David Smith is an ordained Anglican priest who has entered the secular world of politics in a substantial way.   In doing so he has forfeited any lingering notion of benefit of clergy and that most certainly includes respect and special dealing. The same goes for his colleagues. This is Australia and this is the 21st Century and he has bought into one of the most controversial, divisive and dangerous issues of our time.

These are real people whose lives are in the balance. They are not the playthings of the smug and morally supercilious with an agenda on the other side of the planet be they Christian or Communist or both..

On the other hand the fact that David Smith  is driven by a religious mind and indeed sees what he does as part of his mission on Earth is most certainly relevant. Especially in this case.

It is also  relevant that Smith is openly associated with the Socialist Alternative (although of course not a member -- they never are). Again especially in this case and not just because the Communist mind is just another example of the religious mind..

There is precedent of course.  We have seen this before closer probably to David Smith's English colleague, Stephen Sizer.  than Smith.


This gentlemen.

What A Pleasant Looking Man

Hewlett Johnson became the Dean of Canterbury in 1931 and was still kicking around in 1964 .It is difficult to imagine a period of more tearing moral challenge in our shared human blood raw saga since Moses said shove it Big Fella we will take our chances with the people smuggler in the desert and he was right at the centre of British religious and moral teaching. Johnson I mean. Regrettably not Moses.

What he taught was appalling


Over those 33 years, Johnson devoted the bulk of his astonishing energy to proving that Soviet Communism, especially as practised by Stalin, was heaven on earth: “While we’re waiting for God, Russia is doing it.” In his bestseller The Socialist Sixth of the World, which was published not long after Stalin’s most extensive programme of mass murder, he wrote: “Nothing strikes the visitor to the Soviet Union more forcibly than the complete absence of fear.”
No Communist outrage could put Johnson off his stride. He supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. In the face of all evidence, he praised the Soviets for their toleration of religion, excitedly reporting, after a private audience with Stalin, that the great man favoured freedom of conscience. He always refused to condemn Stalin. Neither would he condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

What a morally depraved man. Right up there with fiddling with the kids.

George Orwell said at the time that the first to go over to the Nazis when Paris fell would be the Red intellectuals and other Stalin pets. They did even before Paris fell..  The same would happen in London, he thought.. For certain he had in mind the Red Dean.

Stalin would have said that it was alright by him for Hitler to take Britain if he could as well  as Poland and France and therefore for certain it would have been alright by the Dean of Canterbury as well.  He would have kept his job. Indeed with the Duke of Windsor and many others he likely would have been in line for promotion to one or another of many suddenly vacant posts. .

Which takes us back to Sizer, Smith and company Is the comparison too harsh?

Yes it is. On Johnson.

 Johnson didn't have himself as a beacon of what to avoid when the dark dangerous side of the religious mind decides to dabble in the politics of the souls of millions. .

The ability to hold two or more mutually exclusive positions at the same time without any attempt at a temporal or other reconciliation while charged with the supernatural or superstitious is normal human thinking I guess as a day trip to Byron Bay and Nimbin will show.

Dull normal. But normal. Usually harmless and for many beneficial and probably we all practice a form of it. But usually in private between one or more consenting adults.

 When it comes to these men however it gets very sinister.

Take a look around their site and try to overlook that annoying little pop up with the bell.. It's all there. The same old names mostly from the same old  propaganda churns of the vicious hard left  that have been  feeding fuel on this bushfire since the sixties. . Even Counterpunch and. Information Clearing House. I bet Mondoweiss is there if you could bother looking.

I even found a repost of the worst blood libel account of the Sabra and Shabila camp massacres I have ever seen. None of it I will paste here. This muck is intended to inflame.

 None of it should be accepted given the source but the astonishing thing is that beneath all the twisted hate mongering is one fact that cannot be denied. These appalling murders were carried out by Christians and not by Israelis. Father David Smith sees not the slightest historical irony in his casual palm off of responsibility on to the Jews.

It takes a certain kind of religious mind to be able to do that. One that should keep out of politics.

This filth is manufactured to incite hatred as surely as the Innocence of  Muslims. This priest is retailing war propaganda of the most vile kind in a way that not even Johnson did in his day. Like Johnson, David Smith is not a modest man.

Father Dave has a lot more explaining that he could be doing if he was in good faith. The main question that is begged has barely been scratched. . But this is enough for now.



cross posted   Geoffff's Joint 




Saturday, September 22, 2012

The Nerve of the Guy!

Doodad


The Egyptian President says "the United States needed to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state, if it hoped to overcome decades of pent-up anger."

Hopefully some strong Americans will tell him where to shove it.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Homer Votes 2012

Doodad


Clinton calls Libya killings a ‘terrorist attack’

Mike L.
US secretary of state says America will not rest until those responsible are brought to justice, stresses ‘offensive’ film doesn’t justify violence 
WASHINGTON (AP) — US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday said it was a “terrorist attack” that killed the American ambassador to Libya and three others. 
She added that the US would not rest until those responsible are brought to justice.
My. My. My.

That is big news, isn't it?

Can you imagine? A high-level official of the Obama administration daring to call terrorism "terrorism"? That is some sort-of concession, I have to tell you. All it took was the slaughter of 4 American diplomats in Libya and the storming of the US embassy in Cairo for the Obama administration to utter the word "terrorist."

Who knows what may happen next?

They may even decide to recognize the obvious fact that political Islam is an actual political movement throughout the Middle East that is hostile to the United States, that is genocidal toward Jews, that represses women and summarily executes Gay people and whose leaders include the mullahs in Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Barack Obama personally helped usher into power.

Again, wasn't this president of the United States also the president of the Harvard Law Review?

I think that it was Dennis Praeger who said something like, "That is an opinion so horrendously stupid that it could only be held by someone with an advanced education."

Now if they decide to actually prevent Iranian nukes, we'll have something.  Until then I remain unimpressed.

Yet Another Times of Israel Post

Mike L.

I am trying to figure out what to publish here, what to publish there, and what to publish elsewhere.

I have placed another piece at the Times of Israel because, quite frankly, it's a somewhat longer, somewhat more serious kind of piece than I have tended to do, particularly recently, and because it will get more eyeballs.

It's a piece called Interpreting Violence and its purpose is to place Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish violence (or reactions to that violence) within something that resembles the larger, and longer, historical context of the experience of Jewish dhimmitude in the Muslim world since the 7th century.

I want to thank those of you guys who drop in over there, because the support means a lot to me, but I also want to assure people that I have no intention of abandoning this joint.

Israel Thrives is my blog home, after all.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Riots, Murder, and Theocratic Screechings

Mike L.



{Originally published at the Times of Israel.}

I am always happy when one of our participants writes enough interesting material that I can front page it, because it spares me the necessity of doing so!

Dan Bielak gives us a few pertinent facts and asks a few pertinent questions around the recent riots and mayhem and murder and theocratic screechings coming out of the Arab Middle East.

Here:
- This film was on the internet for several months before these riots.    
- There are many instances of videos and images and writing which crudely and rudely criticize Islam.   
- Islamic supremacist organizations have been demanding the release of detained Islamic terrorists and have stated that these riots are part their demanding the release of detained Islamic terrorists.    
- These rioters were mobilized en masse simultaneously in many Muslim countries.    
- Many of these Muslim rioters were carrying mass-produced pre-made placards.    
- These rioters are presented as rioting -- and killing -- in response to a film; a film.    
- These riots occurred on 9/11.    
Why has this c-grade crudely-produced amateur particular film made by "a nobody" -- "an unknown" -- a non-famous, non-prominent, person -- and posted on the internet for several months been used by Islamic supremacist organizations as the pretext to launch these riots?      
Why has the Obama administration fervently explicitly said that these Muslim riots are not a response to any policies of the U.S. government, and that, "of course", these riots are not a response to any policies of the Obama administration, and that these riots were caused by this film, and these riots were caused solely by this film?    
Why has U.S. news mass media mindlessly repeated these absurd lies, and fervently propagated these absurd lies?    
Why has the response by the Obama administration to these Muslim violent riots been to verbally condemn this film, and to verbally condemn the maker of this film, and to say that "Islam is a great religion", and to arrest the maker of this film, and to dramatically stage their arrest of the maker of this film?    
----    
And, btw, although the film was crudely made, and although the acting of the film was bad, and although the film is unpleasant, and although the film may feel offensive to some people, the film was factually accurate.    
And, in any case:    
The United States has something called the U.S. Constitution and something called the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution -- and, therein, something called freedom of speech.
Indeed.

The Obama administration should never have suggested, or implied, that the riots and the mayhem and the murder and the violent theocratic screeching coming out of the Arab Middle East on 9/11 was due to some shoddy 15 minute video.

To suggest that Arabs are so crude and stupid as to riot merely because of a video made by some "nobody" is deeply racist and insulting to Arabs and Muslims. What I would submit is that the true cause of these riots is something much deeper and more reflective of the dysfunctional relationship between the west and the Muslim world.

It has much more to do with the fact that for centuries the Islamic empire was the very height of human culture, but has since been overshadowed by their European rivals. There is a great deal of resentment toward Jews and Europeans because in this "clash of civilizations" we have, for the moment, won. It's a simple equation, but scholars tell us that the failure of Islam to either conquer the west, or prevent the western incursion into Muslim lands, is the very source of radical Islam.

The youtube video was simply used, for political reasons by the Jihadi movement, to whip up hatred against the west and against us evil Jews, but it is not the root cause of anything. In the internal Islamic struggle between Jihadis and moderates, the Jihadis always gain an advantage when they can create hatred in the hearts of their fellow Muslims.

And that is precisely what this is really all about.

In truth, it has much more to do with their internal politics than it has to do with us.

New Times of Israel Piece

Mike L.

Israel Stands Up for Free Speech (Would Obama?)

An Israeli court rejected an Arab MK's request for a ban of Innocence of the Muslims.

Good for Israel.

Meanwhile, of course, the Obama administration, that paragon of liberal values, requested that it be censored.
Google Inc., which owns YouTube, has already blocked access to the film in Libya, India and Indonesia after deadly protests in several countries, but it has rejected a request by the White House to pull it from the site altogether.
Mike L.

I was reading a post by Daniel Greenfield wherein he recommended that we should all start making Muhammad movies. As an example of what one might look like he pointed to this homemade little video about Jesus as an example.

I laughed my ass off, so I thought that I would share.

Enjoy!

 

Oh, man, this is just too good!

Dr. Barry Rubin Has Some Words

Mike L.

Barry Rubin writes:
The problem in the Middle East is not mass revolutionary Islamist movements seeking to mobilize the masses, seize state power, expel U.S. influence, overthrow all non-radical regimes, wipe Israel off the map, and transform their own societies through Sharia dictatorships, despite the fact that they have been working on this project for a very long time and discussed it openly in thousands of articles, speeches, rallies, terrorist attacks, and other actions.

Oh, no, the problem is that a guy in California made a video on You-Tube that nobody ever saw. Therefore the main task is to apologize, explain, and keep trying to make friends with the ideologically determined revolutionary Islamists who take each concession as help toward their winning and see every American vacillation as a weakness that urges them toward more aggression. These are people who never lack an excuse to kill you.
This basically speaks for itself. The Obama administration helped usher radical Jihadis into power in Egypt and now turns a blind eye to the actual reason that we saw all those riots and murders and rapes and mayhem emanating from the Arab world.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Humanitarian Racists Defame Muslims

Mike L.

The ever controversial Pamela Geller is gaining headlines concerning a pro-Israel, anti-Jihadi advertisement that will soon run on the New York City subway system.

This:


In the Jerusalem Post we read:

Islamophobic advertisements sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) are expected to appear next week at 10 New York subway stations after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost a federal court ruling to stop them, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The irony, of course, is that while the advertisement is not the least bit "Islamophobic" calling it "Islamophobic" is, in fact, highly bigoted toward the Muslim people.

The advertisement reads as follows:

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.

And just who is it that is defined as "savage"? Jihadis, that's who. You know, the same people who just slaughtered four American diplomats in Libya. Geller is absolutely correct. Jihadis are savages. They are people who are willing to use extreme violence in order to promote the Sharia, the genocide of the Jews, the murder of Gay people, and the oppression of women.

Sounds pretty savage to me.

You know who the ad does not refer to?

Muslims.

It is the people who insist that the advertisement is "Islamophobic" who are conflating savage Jihadis with ordinary Muslims.  And that, my friends, truly is racism.  When they claim that this advertisement is "Islamophobic" the clear implication is that Muslims, in general, are Jihadis.  They aren't.

In this instance it is not Geller who is being racist, but those who object to the advertisement on grounds of racism who are being racist.

The irony is delicious... and just sooo typical.

Occupy Mohammed

Doodad

That's not what they are calling it, but they could and heck maybe we should start such a movement. Fearless French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, already the victim of one Muslim attack, has published "blasphemous" cartoons of the Prophet causing the French Gov't to shut down some 20 schools and embassies in Islamic countries in anticipation of Muslim outrage. Now that's what I call freedom in action. So far there has been no midnight knock on the door for any of the magazine's staff. Good for France.

You know maybe this is the cure for the thing. All Western nations shut down their embassies etc until Muslims get over their rage over every little "insult," while magazines and individuals flood the media and internet with toons and movies and everything else they want to. Get it out of their systems...Occupy Mohammed! Time to bring Muslims into the real world already experienced by Jews and Christians everyday in modern society where all is questioned, probed, insulted etc. including religious beliefs and sacred cows.

OCCUPY MOHAMMED!!!!!!

This is Hokey



But why the heck not?

{A Tip 'O the Kippa to CiF Watch.}

Brief Notes: Simple Truths



Mike L.

Mitt Romney seems to have annoyed some on the left when he claimed, rightly, that the Palestinians do not want peace. The fact of the matter, of course, is that the Palestinian leadership wants eventual victory, not peace, because if they wanted a state of their own in peace next to the Jewish one they could have had that many times over.

It is long, long past time to acknowledge some simple and obvious truths that somehow elude so many progressive-left Jewish supporters of Israel and the result is that the Jewish people are essentially held hostage. We are held hostage to what I like to call the Oslo Delusion. The Oslo Delusion posits that there is still something going on called a "peace process" and that if only Israel would do this, that, or the other, then the poor, oppressed Palestinians will finally agree to autonomy and self-determination and will stop teaching their children to despise Jews. I have never in my life heard of an oppressed people who absolutely refuse to give up their oppression unless every single demand that they make is met.

But here is yet another simple, obvious truth that seems, somehow, to elude so many people.

Mahmoud Abbas is not the "president" of anything. Not if you consider the position of president to be an elected position. Abbas' term ran out years ago. He is therefore dictator Abbas and should be referred to as such.

And that's really all I have to say on this fine morning, yet it never ceases to amaze me how intelligent people can delude themselves so completely. Sort of like fizziks who refuses to acknowledge that BDS is a movement coming out of the progressive-left. That particular truth is so obvious that it boggles my mind that anyone who follows the Arab-Israel conflict could miss it.

In any case, it's dictator Abbas, not president Abbas.

OK?

Good.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

We Are Standing Up for Our Human Rights

Mike L.

I like to think of Israel Thrives as simply a way to think aloud about a topic that is very important to Jewish people and to those who care about the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel. I like it when people present alternative viewpoints here if they do so in a manner that is not insulting or nasty because it helps me to clarify ideas in my own mind.

In a recent comment to Stuart, I wrote this:

What we've been seeing since the anti-Jewish pogroms of the 1920s is a continuation of anti-Jewish racist policies that goes back to the time of Muhammed.

When we stand up for Israel, therefore, we are standing up for our civil liberties.

This strikes me as a key point and one that we would do well to bear in mind.

Those on the left who oppose Israel, or who think that Israel is unjust to the Palestinians, do not understand this. They think of tiny Israel as some sort of western behemoth in the Middle East.

It isn't.

The whole Zionist project was about securing our freedom and our human rights after 2,000 years of persecution and 1,300 years of dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism. In this sense, all Jews, both Israeli and diaspora, owe the Zionists a tremendous debt. The redemption of the Jewish people came at the expense of their blood, after all.

The reason that Israel does what it does is because it lives within the crucible of continuing Arab-Muslim hostility, a hostility that goes back to the days of Muhammad. The Jews of the Middle East are, and have been, a tiny persecuted minority doing whatever they can do to protect themselves and their children from the murderous hostility of the region's majority.

Perhaps this is too obvious to even express, but it seems to me that we need to keep it in mind. All Israel wants is to be left the hell alone. The Jews of the Middle East have no desire to oppress anyone. The reason that there are checkpoints in Judea and Samaria (and, yes, we should give up the Jordanian term "West Bank") and the reason that Israel maintains a blockade of Gaza is because the Arab majority in that part of the world absolutely refuses to leave those Jews in peace. Were it not for ongoing Arab and Muslim hostility toward Jews there would be no "occupation." What we think of as the occupation is nothing more than Jewish efforts at Jewish self-defense from a hostile population that outnumbers us 50 or 60 to 1 in that part of the world and 100 to 1 worldwide.

We need to remind ourselves, and to remind others, that when we stand up for Israel we are standing up for our human rights. There was a time when the progressive-left respected that. They certainly respected it when Black people stood up for their own rights during the Civil Rights Movement and the movement for Black Power. They respected it when Latinos stood up for themselves in the Brown Power movement and when women and gay people stood up for themselves in Second Wave Feminism and the contemporary LGBT movement.

If the progressive-left refuses to stand with us in our movement for national liberation, despite the fact that we always stood with them, then they throw their own values in the gutter. They also, consequently, should lose our support.

Whether anyone likes it or not, the Jewish people will stand up for our rights to self-determination and self-defense.

And that, to my mind at least, is precisely what Israel (G-d love it) is all about.

Happy Rosh Hashanah.