Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Jews and Political Islam

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at News and Views from Jews Down UnderFree News of the World, and The Times of Israel.}


The rise of political Islam represents the single most significant challenge to the Jewish people in the world today.

Political Islam, as it is represented by such organizations as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, is a deeply malicious political movement that we in the west should be forcefully opposing.  This does not mean that the US should send in the military to take out all such organizations, but it does mean that they need to be recognized as enemies of the state and undermined in any reasonable way possible.

Unfortunately, what we have been seeing under the current American administration is just the opposite.  Instead of educating the American people to the fact that political Islam is deeply misogynistic, violently homophobic, genocidal toward Jews, and filled with hatred toward the United States and the west, president Barack Obama pledges the Muslim Brotherhood F-16 fighter jets and Abrams tanks.  Obama, thus, supported the rise of political Islam, rather than opposing it.

This is not a matter of opinion or interpretation, but of fact.  If you give someone, or some organization, money or helpful material goods such as - oh, say - heavy weaponry, then you are supporting that person or organization.  If you demand that such individuals or organizations be given a place around the political table, then you're are supporting that person or organization.

This conclusion is what I like to refer to as "common sense."

Just why it is that Barack Obama has supported political Islam is a question open to interpretation.  In my meanderings around the various political blogs and news sites, as they relate to the Arab-Israel conflict, people offer different reasons for why they think that Obama supports political Islam.  Some think that he is, himself, a crypto-Muslim and that he seeks to undermine the well-being not only of the State of Israel, but of the United States.

I do not think so.

I have consistently argued two points.  The first is that Barack Obama is not nearly so smart as his supporters have told us that he is.  The man is not dumb, of course.  One does not become the president of the Harvard Law Review without the requisite mental capacity.  Nonetheless, it must be admitted that for an American president to support the rise of political Islam is a remarkably stupid move.  So, why does he do it?

This leads me to my second point.  Ideology.  It is my belief - and, yes, this is a matter of interpretation - that Obama does what he does out of sincerely held ideological belief which he learned at the feet of people such as Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, and even Jeremiah Wright.

Barack Obama lives in the post-colonial universe of his imagination.  That is, like all such thinkers, he simplistically divides the world into a contest between "Oppressed Indigenous Peoples of Color" and "White Oppressors and Colonizers."  It is this simplistic moral equation that forms the background of Obama's education when it comes to foreign policy and it is this that best explains his terrible behavior as president of the United States on matters of foreign policy.

Nonetheless, his supporters within the American Jewish community will tend to support him no matter what he does.  Thus we see prominent individuals such as the late Ed Koch and Alan Dershowitz, both of whom consistently stood up for the State of Israel and in opposition to the rise of political Islam, supporting the Obama candidacy of last year despite the fact that Obama supports a political movement directly in opposition to everything that those gentleman stood for.

This is actually not a very difficult puzzle to solve and, yet, so many people either misinterpret what is happening or refuse to acknowledge it at all.  The former are the conspiracy theorists who think that Obama does what he does out of intent to do harm.  The latter, which make up the majority of the American Jewish community, simply refuse to acknowledge that which is before their very eyes.

American Jewish supporters of Barack Obama are generally blinkered by progressive-left ideology and by their own political loyalties.  This turns many of them - such as our recent guest - into rabid ostriches.  I have never seen such vicious ostriches, I have to tell you, despite the fact that I lived in Phoenix, Arizona for two years and they actually raise (and race) ostriches in that unusual state.  They refuse to acknowledge what is before their very eyes because to do so would erode their own political sense of themselves.

The problem, of course, is that by supporting Obama's foreign policy viz-a-viz the Arab-Israel conflict they thereby lend a verdict of kashrut on that which is anything but kosher.

One thing, in my considered opinion, that the Jewish people need is a sense of political flexibility.  If we are so enamored of the progressive-left and the Democratic party that it doesn't matter what they say or do as it relates to the Arab-Israel conflict, then we come to stand for nothing.  If Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are more important to Jews than Israel, itself, then we end up supporting policies, like sending weaponry to the Muslim Brotherhood, that are obviously detrimental toward the Jewish people.

Until we can think our way past ideological imperatives, we can never truly support our friends and family in the Middle East.

Until we do so we can never really stand up for ourselves.


12 comments:

  1. I have to say that, strangely enough, this piece is getting more play at Free News of the World than any place else.

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  2. Good news 1 and 2

    1. "Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told NBC News on Wednesday that his administration will never develop nuclear weapons and that he has full authority to make a deal with the West on the disputed atomic program.

    In Rouhani's first interview with a U.S. news outlet since his election, he also spoke to NBC News National and International correspondent/anchor Ann Curry about his initial interactions with President Obama, who sent him a letter of congratulations and raised "some issues."

    "From my point of view, the tone of the letter was positive and constructive," Rouhani said.

    "It could be subtle and tiny steps for a very important future. I believe the leaders in all countries could think in their national interest and they should not be under the influence of pressure groups. I hope to witness such an atmosphere in the future."

    http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/18/20561148-irans-president-rouhani-we-will-never-develop-nuclear-weapons?lite

    2. The check's in the mail.

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    Replies
    1. It's every man for himself, Doodad.

      As I look around, I see few that we can count on to stand up for the Jewry of the Middle East.

      This includes Israeli Jewish leadership and diaspora Jewish leadership.

      I'm thinking of moving to Baja and living on the beach.

      How about you?

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    2. Beach bum? Alrighhhhhttttttttt!!!!!

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  3. There have been innumerable treatises on why the left does what it does vis a vis Israel

    Nick Cohen - "What's Left"
    Nick Cohen - "You Can't Read This Book"
    Paul Berman - "Terror and Liberalism"
    Paul Berman - "Flight of the Intellectuals"
    Deborah Lipstadt - "Beyond Belief"
    Deborah Lipstadt - "Denying the Holocaust"
    Walter Laquer - "The Terrible Secret"
    Walter Laquer - "The Changing Face of Antisemitism"
    Laurel Leff - "Buried by the Times"
    David Wyman - "The Abandonment of the Jews"
    Pascal Bruckner - "The Tyranny of Guilt"
    Pascal Bruckner - "The Temptation of Innocence"
    Pascal Bruckner - "Tears of the White Man"
    Robert Abzug - "America Views the Holocaust 1933-45 A Brief Documentary History"
    Jean-Francois Revel - "Last Exit to Utopia"
    Jean-Francois Revel - "Antiamericanism"
    Jean-Francois Revel - "Without Marx or Jesus"
    Giulio Meotti - "A New Shoah"

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    1. Trudy, this is a terrific list.

      I am familiar with Berman and Meotti and, to some extent, Bruckner.

      But thanks for this list because I am always looking toward alternative voices.

      I guess the question at this point for me is, what difference does it really make?

      If the Jewish people cannot really bring themselves to stand up for the Jewish state then why should anyone else give a shit?

      If diaspora Jewry tends to think of those of us who are opposed to political Islam as vile "racists" and if the Israeli government has so little regard for their own people that they let loose Jewish murderers for the great privilege of sitting in a room with Mahmhoud Abbas for the purpose of getting swindled by Fatah, then advocacy becomes pointless and analysis becomes forensics.

      Forensics.

      I am beginning to believe that if this site continues it will be about commenting upon the slow long strangulation of the Jewish soul.

      I used to think that Israel represented the vitality of the Jewish spirit, but I am not seeing it.

      I don't see it in the diaspora and I do not see it within the Israeli government.

      What I see is pussitude.

      What I see is not death, but failure and weakness and stupidity.

      The Jews of the Middle East in the 20th century did something remarkable. They actually revived our language and our homeland and our ancient culture.

      Despite their technological prowess, I have no such faith in the Jews of the 21st century.

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    2. "Begin on Saturday, Finish on Sunday" by Ali Salim

      http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3943/begin-saturday-finish-sunday

      Delete
  4. Compare that to these idiots

    http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/conference-cancelled-but-questions-remain/

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  5. ..As seen elsewhere Dr Lustik's NYT Sunday front page Op-Ed on how the solution to everything is a more or less final one e.g. a Jew, in 2600 words telling us that when we wipe out Israel things will be great.

    http://honestreporting.com/new-york-times-op-ed-pushes-demise-of-jewish-state/

    http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/09/15/the-depravity-of-the-anti-israeli-left/

    Normally I expect that sort of thing from the old Trotskyist dead enders at "The Forward" or their newer version at +972Rag. And trust me, the Times is about as anti Israeli as any mainstream paper in the US today. But calling for genocide, that's a new one for Obama's paper of record.

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    Replies
    1. I gave up on the NYT with Judith Miller and the Iraq war, which is to say, I gave up on it from a left-wing viewpoint around the time that I was still a friendly participant on dkos.

      What I didn't quite realize then was that the NYT obscured the Holocaust for the Jewish people in the middle of the 20th century.

      And, thus, I came to despise the NYT.

      If the NYT had actually stood up for the Jews of Europe then American Jewry would have had the information that they needed to pressure the Roosevelt government to bomb the tracks, but they didn't and he didn't care.

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  6. It begs the question of what you mean by 'political Islam' which in their own sense of it is a bit like saying Communist Communism. Islam does not have a curtain between church and state between politics and faith between one country and the next between the innocent and the guilty. There is really very little in the sense of actual tolerance or anything approaching western views of plurality. Either you're a good Muslim, a near-slave or you're dead.

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    1. Among those of us who oppose political Islam what you have raised is perhaps the primary question.

      Is the problem Islam, itself, or the politicization of the religion?

      A humanitarian racist like Jon Segall would claim that even raising such questions demonstrates "Islamophobia."

      What I think on this particular issue is that it has 3 parts.

      1) The religion of Islam.

      2) Muslims, themselves.

      3) The attempt by a significant number of Muslims to politicize the religion for the purpose of recreating the caliphate or making the religion the basis of the state.

      I am opposed to number 3.

      Is the religion of Islam ideologically inconsistent with political Islam? Does political Islam represent a small number of "extremists" as Barack Obama would claim?

      I would say "no" to both questions.

      Nonetheless, it's not the religion, itself, which bothers me nearly so much as the attempt to impose it upon the rest of us. You may claim that this is the nature of Islam and if you made such a claim you would find both history and Islamic ideology to be an ally, but we cannot make an enemy of all Muslims.

      There numbers are far too large and our numbers are far too small and, furthermore, it would represent a terrible injustice to the Muslims that I have known in the US who have no interest in resurrecting the caliphate and who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace as they pursue their individual interests.

      Thus I talk about political Islam.

      It is, I hope that you would agree, not a big problem in the US, but a serious problem in Europe and absolutely vile, violent, racist, and toxic in the Middle East.

      Political Islam is the foremost political movement throughout the Middle East and it must be opposed.

      One cannot in any meaningful way stand up for the well-being of the Jewish people if one is too cowardly, or too stupid, to speak out against political Islam.

      We need your help and I, for one, very much appreciate it.

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