FOUNDING NATIONAL MYTHS: FABRICATING PALESTINIAN HISTORY

by David Bukay

  As David Bukay points out, "By appropriating to themselves the values, traditions, and historical facts that belong to the Jews, Palestinians have managed to fabricate a 'legitimate' history and political traditions out of nothing while denying those of Israel." Quite an achievement, particularly when so much of their version is absurd, using historic and geographic facts in a farcical fashion. For example, they claim with a straight face that Jesus the Jew -- born well before Islam was invented and the Arabs invaded the area -- was their first shahid (martyr). And make no mistake. They have convinced many purportedly educated and knowledgeable people that this is so. At least, their Western comrades, including churchmen, have raised no objections.

THE RHETORIC OF NONSENSE: FABRICATING PALESTINIAN HISTORY

By: Alexander H. Joffe

  The Arab world insists that the history of ancient Israel and pre-Israel Canaan was the the history of the Palestinian Arabs and not of the Jews. Alex Joffe makes the important observation that this tells us much about how the Arab thinks as well as giving us "an insightful glimpse into the psyche of their willfully duped Western champions." He proceeds to explain that, in the context of Arab mentation and philosophy, what is important is the impact, however ridiculous the Arab assertions might be. It is something worse than a silly lie. It and the hoaxes such as the Jenin massacre and the lies protective of Islam are more ominous. They allow the Arab to acquire a virtual history more to his liking and in portraying the Jew as a modern upstart, brutal to boot, he assuages the guilt of Europeans who still feel complicit in the massacre of the Jews in World War II. Ignoring the absurdity, Europeans pay for conscience-assuagement by presenting the Arab as the innocent victim in a black and white morality play, wherein the Jew as white colonist treats the Arab as native brutally.

A CASE OF MYTH-TAKEN IDENTITY

Tabitha Korol

  Muslims haven't tried to change their barbaric ways. Instead, as Tabitha Korol writes, they have concealed them; whitewashed them; spoken bald-faced lies; intimated critics by yelling Islamophobia at any negative remark about Islam, no matter how accurate, no matter how mild; vandalized and destroyed religious emblems and places and renamed areas (calling Judea and Samaria the West Bank) in order to delegitimize their victims and deprive them of visual and verbal confirmation of their history. Like parasites they present other people's histories as theirs -- which, I suppose, is understandable, given their own history. Korol presents some of their fantastic claims and refutes them with facts.

UNDERSTANDING EGYPT'S SEXUAL INTERCOURSE LAW

by James G. Zumwalt

  James Zumwalt writes that with women now holding less than 2 percent of seats in the Egyptian parliament and Islamists in power, it is likely that the status of women will take another long step backwards in conformity with Sharia law. Ignoring the possibility a women might seek divorce because of spousal abuse, "Islamists argue [that] increased family law rights for women have been responsible for rising divorce rates and the demise of family unity. Under Mubarak, women were allowed to divorce without the consent of their husbands and were granted limited child custody rights." The age of consent to marriage will likely drop from 18 to 14. And what is truly bizarre, a draft law would allow a husband to have intercourse with his dead wife. But it should not be too unsanitary. He is only allowed intercourse within the first 6 hours after her death. There! Doesn't that make it alright?

DANGEROUS ILLUSIONS ABOUT ISLAMISM

Robert R. Reilly

  Robert Reilly refutes a recent op-ed by Reuel Marc Gerecht that made the optimistic black is white argument that Muslim fundamentalists are critical to "the moral and political rejuvenation of their countries" because they will clean the countries of communist ideologies so that eventually the Arab countries will evolve into democracies, just as the Europeans went from theocracy to democracy. As Reilly points out, upheavals don't necessarily lead to improvement. Previous barbaric wars in Islam against non-Muslims and other Muslims tightened Sharia's grip. Not one produced democracy. Moreover, Gerecht ignores that freedom of conscience, a prerequisite for secularism, is absent in Islam. Reilly concludes that the trajectory of Arab governance is unlikely to be heading toward democracy.

IS THERE ANY VALID SPACE FOR JIHAD IN THE MODERN WORLD?

by Babu Suseelan

  Babu Suseelan asks rhetorically whether there is room for Jihad in our high-tech modern world. He argues that "[t]hroughout its history, everything Mohammedans have touched has been marred with lies, wars, tyranny, massacre, and terror. Islamic blind faiths and its cruel principles cooked up by Mohammad have violently destroyed our original ethical concepts, moral principles and social structures. In fact, Islam is not a religion, but a closed, rigid political dogma fit only for invasion, war, terrorism, plunder, sex perversion, looting, massacre, oppression, abduction, kidnapping, beheading, and cultural destruction The blind followers of Mohammad have successfully twisted empathy, love, harmony, coexistence, pluralism and religious tolerance into submission, hatred, Jihad War and murder." Quite an indictment. Unfortunately, it isn't hyperbole. Suseelan urges we take drastic action now to secure our future.

SWING LOW SWEET SHARIA

by Nidra Poller

  Nidra Poller examines the arbitrariness of the media's reactions in situations that are fairly similar. They insisted on interviewing Gilad Shalit while he was still in Hamas control but they didn't delay the release of the Arab terrorists by a minute. Consider their very different reactions to the killing of the Libyan Mouamar Gaddafi and the waging of the Iraq war. "The media hated the Iraq 'war.' They loved the Libyan 'liberation.'” So they showed no humanitarian horror at the huge number of collateral deaths and the destruction of property when Gaddafi was slaughtered. There was no talk of "disproportionate force." NATO could do no wrong -- at least for a day. In Morocco, Islamists, now called Moderates, are suddenly acceptable, even though they can't be told apart from the bad Islamists of a year ago. So taken are the media with the illusion of a changing-for-the-better Middle East, they are incapable in seeing that the winner is inevitably sharia. They've even used their ability to make an event seem significant on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and ignored the signs this street theatre is in part courtesy of those promoting Islamization of the Western world. As Poller writes, "[t]he unalterable goal of Islam is to impose sharia" and it never stops. But the media are too entranced by the Siren Song of the world they imagine is being birthed to care.

STUDYING ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS

by Phyllis Chesler

  Glossy Islamophilic programs are sprouting up all over the place. Because they are given on campus, they are often taken seriously, though few qualify as scholarly. Georgetown University, for example, has a cottage industry in publishing texts that airbrush the history and ideology of Islam; these fairy tales are sold to the public as authentic information. Jewish Studies programs, in contrast, are usually bolder and explore many aspects of Jewish history and ideology without fear of restriction. So what happens when unfettered scholarship steps on a Muslim toe? Phyllis Chesler writes about what happened at Yale, when its Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) examined "Islamic Judeophobia and specifically ... Iranian genocidal Judeophobia." It took only a few complaints that ISGAP's research was racist for Yale to decided the subject threatened its "scholarly commitments" (read: who needs a bunch of Muslim kids rioting and oil sheiks withdrawing big-bucks funding?) and closed it down. As Chesler concludes, "Antisemtism is as virulent, threatening and genocidal as it has ever been and the need for a Charles Small and an organization like ISGAP, that is not afraid to seek the truth, is more pressing than it has ever been."

DR. JASSER'S PANGLOSSIAN KORANIC GLOSS

by Andrew G. Bostom

  There are many ex-Muslims who will critically assess Islam but a practicing Muslim willing to adapt his religion to conditions very different than the ones in which it was born is rare. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and a pious Muslim, has declared himself to be such a person. In fact, he started an organization with the promising name of American Islamic Forum for Democracy. It has two important goals: (1) the separation of mosque and state; and (2) maintaining Islam as a religion, not a political ideology. He has recently written a book that Dr. Andrew Bostom examines in this essay. It is disappointing that Jasser asserts, contrary to fact, that the Koran doesn't encourage conversion to Islam, enforced or voluntary; that the Koran does not "sanction the jihad conquest of non-Muslims, including their subjugation and justified humiliation"; that the Koran does not "affirms Islam's triumphant supersessionism, vis a vis both Judaism and Christianity"; that the Koran doesn't encourage the elimination of other religions and their artifacts. If the assertions made by Dr. Jasser on the theory and practice of Islam were true, there would be no need for an organization whose preachings, if followed, would eliminate hostile and bloody Muslim attempts at takeovers of host countries. "No drastic reforms [would be] required of mainstream, institutional Islam."

THE BROTHERHOOD’S USEFUL IDIOTS

by Caroline B. Glick

  Caroline Glick provides us with a blow by blow description of the events in Egypt from the first hope-filled days when the populace led by idealistic secularists overthrew Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship. Her essay could almost be entitled: How the West was won. Except this is the Arab Middle East and -- to get to the bottom line -- the good guys lost. Instead, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), has emerged as Egypt's dominant power, positioned so it will likely move the Army aside just as it ran circles around the heterogeneous groups who expected the fall of the dictatorship would automatically usher in a secular democracy. The idealists hoped and assumed; the MB had a goal: the formation of a rigidly islamic Egypt that is completely sharia-compliant. It planned realistically and implemented a series of actions designed to reach this goal. Glick isn't telling us a happy-ending Cinderella story but it is important we understand what happened and how it was that the MB, seemingly against the odds, raked in the chips. When things settle down, they will take on their next task: attacking and terrorizing Israel. They will have the use of sophisticated equipment, courtesy of the United States. They will have the services of a well-trained military, courtesy of the United States. They have the good wishes and financial support of President Obama, who sees them as a force for moderation. They will have no problem disregarding the much-praised peace treaty with Israel. It will become just another casualty of the Arab Spring.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN THE ARAB WORLD AND ISLAMIC COMMUNITIES IN WESTERN EUROPE

by Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center

  This is a general summary of what's happening -- and what the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is making happen -- in a large chunk of the world. "It deals with the nature of the movement in each country, its relations with the various regimes and evaluates its chances of exploiting regional unrest to its own ends. It also examines the Muslim Brotherhood's branches in Western European countries and the implications of its activity for both internal European affairs and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." ITIC's tone is moderate but you can figure out whether the MB is as moderate as the media proclaim it from small touches such as "In the Palestinian Authority Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, ... in a series of violent military maneuvers it overthrew Fatah and the Palestinian Authority and took political and security control of the Gaza Strip." ITIC updates this summary from time to time and it makes an excellent reference to hold onto.

OSAMA BIN LADEN ON THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

by Thomas Joscelyn

  For those of us accustomed to easily-defined separations in ideology and tactics between contending groups, the relationship of Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) can be confusing. They are often at odds and hurling mutual insults, but they are fighting on the same side against the Syrian regime. This essay by Thomas Joscelyn clarifies some of the confusion. The main point to remember is, as Joscelyn writes, "[t]he disagreements between the Brotherhood and al Qaeda are largely tactical, not ideological or strategic." Practically speaking, it suggests they are willing to defer acting on their own differences until their mutual goals are reached. Nor matter how much Islam's apologists attempt to persuade us that the MB are moderate Islamists, Raymond Ibrahim's dictum remains valid: "Moderate Islamist is oxymoronic, since to be "Islamist," -- to be a supporter of draconian Sharia -- is by definition to be immoderate."

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN AMERICA: A VIDEO COURSE

by Mark Tapson

  Mark Tapson discusses an important new resource to help us fight off Civilization Jihad -- a term that describes the non-violent attacks on our civilization and our way of life. The Center for Security Policy (CSP) has developed a series of videos called "The Muslim Brotherhood in America" that details the activities of the MB infiltration and how this furthers their jihad against the West. It examines the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its spinoffs into our security and regulatory agencies, our military and counter-terrorism groups -- and even into the White House, itself. As Tapson concludes, the course is "both an essential guide to comprehending the depth and breadth of the threat posed to America by the MB and a useful plan of action to counter that threat."

THE HORROR AND THE PITA

by Spengler

  Much of Egypt's population has little margin between minimal survival and actual starvation. So a rise in grain prices could push the country into chaos. In this essay, Spengler examines the role of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which, in these uncertain times, has increased instability by encouraging demonstrations against Saudia Arabia. This was biting the hand that previously had promised money to feed Egypt. The Brotherhood apparently believes it is better to have a economic crisis now while they can still place blame on the Egyptian military than later, when they themselves are fully in control. Spengler writes that "...Egypt is in a classic pre-revolutionary situation...with a vanguard party ready to dislodge a disintegrating civil society, and replace it with totalitarian party rule at street level. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest political party, is poised to ride to power on the back of this crisis." Already it controls bread and fuel prices. Already people hoard; commodities are unavailable; and Egypt is running out of cash. An Israeli reader, Aryeh Zelasko, reminds us there is something like a silver lining, a tarnished silver lining, to these ominous clouds: "We [Israelis] are actually very fortunate to have enemies like this. Their hatred for us (and nearly everything else in the world) is so profound that they will even cut their own throat if the blood will annoy us. They are only months away from massive starvation and all they can concentrate on is whom to insult." Or it might be that the Brotherhood just didn't want to waste a good crisis, even a manufactured one.

EGYPT GAZA POWDERKEG

by Yaakov Lappin

  Yaakov Lappin writes about the future of Egypt's cold peace with Israel, which may be finished for several reasons. Since the Arab Spring with the regime change in Egypt and turbulence in Syria, terrorists -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda-affiliated groups -- have installed themselves in the Sinai Peninsula with large caches of munitions, weaponry and rockets and have started firing rockets into Israel. Egypt's army is more concerned about losing control of Cairo than the Sinai; it will confine its struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to Cairo and Egypt's political institutions. The MB, which is beginning to show its power overtly and whose philosophy is to start wars and to attack in order to further Muslim dominance, will welcome a Hamas-Egypt alliance that boldly attacks Israel. After all, the MB fathered Hamas; they share the same ideology. And Hamas, now chased out of Syria, will have more elbow room in which to operate. This means that Israel will no longer confront terrorist attacks just from Gaza, but from Gaza and the Sinai, which are already linked via in-place tunnels. It is ironic that Israel gave up both Gaza and the Sinai unilaterally in the interests of peace and now will likely have a fierce fight to neutralize them.

IRAN AND OBAMA'S SYRIA HESITATION

by John Bolton

  In the arithmetic of the Middle East, an Israeli soldier who kills a single Arab child acting as a human shield for terrorists is committing a crime against humanity and the U.N. convenes its delegates who declare Israel must cease and desist entire operations. By the same math, an Arab country such as Syria may kill its rebellious citizens by the thousands and the same U.N. will spend months negotiating with Syria's king and never get much beyond a stern warning and a decision to reconvene. And Prez Obama, who had no problem killing off the Libyan king, Moammar Gadhafi, who didn't threaten our security, "seems paralyzed:... he is committed to a U.N. process almost certainly doomed to failure; and [more to the point]... he fears taking on the real nemesis in Syria, namely Iran's ayatollahs," who prop up the Assad regime. He doesn't seem to understand that diplomacy will never stop Iran. Iran is actively our enemy, determined to do us serious damage. Allowing her to acquire nuclear capability would have serious consequences locally in the Middle East and globally. Bolton concludes that "we may have to wait for a more resolute president," but events might not wait.

FORGET SYRIA — NEUTRALIZE IRAN

by David P. Goldman

  In Syria there are some players that care about Syria as Syria. They want to keep the regime. Or change the regime. But for most of the other combatants, the civil war in Syria is a proxy battleground where Sunnis and Shiites duke it out, where Russia shows muscle, where the Muslim Brotherhood tests out a takeover opportunity, where the American administration tries to stack the deck for the MB embedded among the rebels. David Goldman makes the rational suggestion that prolonging the conflict is useful in many way for the proxy players and interested onlookers, including us. And if, per chance, one wanted to deal with Syria, the way to do it is "to beat up the dog’s owner, namely Tehran." As he points out, "Iran is the threat, not Syria. The scandal is that the administration has done nothing to neutralize the Iranian threat." How right he is.

WINDS OF WAR?

by David Meir-Levi

  David Meir-Levi has written a remarkable article exploring the possibility that Israel might soon need to fight a nine-front war, a war where all the barbaric nightmare monsters in the neighborhood gang up on Israel. As he suggests, "Israel now seems to be close to that situation." He looks at Iran, Hezbollah, the Sinai inhabited by various terror groups, Egypt, Hamas, Fatah and Syria. He is even willing to tackle a group many ignore: the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who are, for the most part, disloyal. And of course, there are the brain-washed Arabs in the Territories.

NEW BEGINNING

by Al Skudsi Bin Hookah

  The Middle East may be engulfed in chaos and strife. It may see populations massacred by their own leaders. It may be creating new refugees running for their lives. The governments taking over from the corrupt dictatorships are not what the West and many democrats in the Middle East were hoping to see. They are totalitarian and fundamentalist. But not everyone is upset by the new regimes. Hamas members such as al Skudsi Bin Hookah see this as an invigorating experience, a time of new beginnings and renewed energy to fulfil their mission: to smash anyone and any group of people that stand in the way of their recreating the Caliphate.

JEW-HATRED IN NORWAY

by Bruce Bawer

  Norway may be earning itself the title of most overtly anti-semitic country in Western Europe. Its leadership mouths platitudes about having "a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying in schools" but ignores documented attacks on Jewish students. Instead, the politicians lash out at those, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who complain. Bawer notes that "... while Norwegian officials ... are terrified of offending Muslims, they are not terribly worried about offending Jews." The situation is not improved by the unmitigated stupidity of the Wiesenthal Center in protesting against Islamophobia while ignoring that "a disproportionate number of anti-Semitic acts in Norway are committed by Muslims" who have been taught Jew-hate from childhood. The Center also has had nothing to say about how the reflexive solidarity of Norway's multicultural elite with the Muslims contributes to creating an antisemitic climate. This does not help encourage Norway to change its ways.

THE LAST DAYS OF JEWS IN THE ISLAMICIZED EUROPE

by Giulio Meotti

When the New York Trade Center and a chunk of the Pentagon were destroyed by a bunch of Muslim Arabs, the Muslim community in America was immediately given absolution. Their dancing in the streets and their joy at the destruction were ignored. We were immediately reassured that Islam was a religion of peace. People sheltered them, ran errands for them, invited them to kaffeeklatsches. They were not blamed for the evil done by their coreligionists. In Toulouse, France, recently a Muslim on a motorcycle slaughtered three people and injured many others at a Jewish school. The Muslims are sufficiently numerous there; they don't need protecting. They are increasingly in control of their environment. They can riot and disrupt at will. As Giulio Meotti points out, the Toulouse killing set off antisemitic incidents across France. You can't blame them on publicity in the media. The press has barely mentioned the spate of antisemitic incidents. Seventy years after the Holocaust, now fueled by the unabashed Jew hate of the immigrant Muslims, European antisemitism is again overt and virulent. And Jews are leaving.

GERMAN CARTOON RIOTS: CLUBS, BOTTLES AND STONES

by Soeren Kern

  Soeren Kern writes about another, more recent, incident where Muslims violently protested the public presentation of a cartoon of Muhammad. To sum it up: An anti-Salafist group in Bonn has rally, holding banners depicting Mohammad. Muslims riot and attack German police trying to separate the two sides. Police arrest many Muslims and then release most of them. German politicians talk a good line about the Salafists being anti-democratic, but in general, as Kern puts it, "German authorities have sought to silence the peaceful critics of multicultural policies that allow the Salafists -- who say they are committed to imposing Islamic Sharia law throughout Europe -- openly to preach violence and hate." One would almost think one was in Israel, where Jewish police almost always defend Arab thieves, vandals and attackers and blame their Jewish victims.

DON’T LET AMERICA IMITATE A BURNING EUROPEAN UNION

by Bruce Thornton

  There is the old fable about the boy sent to market. He brings back a dog in a brown paper bag and is lectured that he should have put the dog on a leash. The next errand is to bring back bread. He puts it on a leash and drags it along the dusty road. Told the bread should have been tucked in his hat, he comes home with melted butter the next errand. The point is that what is appropriate under previous circumstances may not be currently useful. Bruce Thornton writes of the inappropriate application of the evils of nationalism under Hitler to today's Europe. The politicians pump up the virtues of the European Union (EU), asserting "that supranational institutions and laws would replace the nation-state with its divisive particularities of custom, culture, religion, and language." No such parliament has yet done so, not the League of Nations, certainly not the U.N., and not the E.U. Nor will it, given the individuality of the member nationalities. The differences in attitude and work-ethic have become blatantly obvious in the current currency crisis. The Germans wouldn't bail out Greece unless Greece adopted an austere budget. The result has been greater disparity and little relief for Greece. While some cling to the "utopean dreams of absolute equality, prosperity for all, and a cost-free dolce vita", many have forsaken rosy platitudes and assert it is every country for itself. Thornton points out there is an important lesson here for us in America: "we should take warning and fight against those like Obama who see the EU as a model to follow."

THE DARK SIDE OF PARADISE

Fjordman

  [Note that this article was written in 2006. It holds true, except that, on the one hand, Muslims control more enclaves that exclude non-Muslims and, on the other hand, some right-wing politicians who have campaigned against Muslim immigration have actually been elected. These objectors to immigration are thoroughly reviled by the multiculturalists, who continue to dominate the government, the media and the cultural institutions. ]

Until around 1995, the Swedish population was ethnically homogeneous. They looked the same; they thought the same. They had a state envied for its generous benefits for the unemployed and underemployed. But as time went on and more Swedes were seduced away from their Protestant work ethic to a welfare mentality, the State began finding it difficult to sustain a social structure with more-outgo-than-income, and with a growing number of make-work rather than make-money jobs. Some politicos saw -- and see -- increased Muslim immigration as the solution, even though statistics would indicate this immigration has not contributed income. Instead, it "has greatly contributed to bringing the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy." But instead of confronting the damage the massive Muslim immigration had done to the country -- "rapidly declining social harmony and increasing insecurity" as well as a high number of robberies, rapes, attacks on Jews, vandalism, arson and increased welfare costs -- debate has been almost entirely silenced. As a reader, Zerosumgame, put it, "The government and media are paralyzed by political correctness. So there is little to prevent the increasing influx of unassimilatable Muslim immigrants into Sweden-- as into all of Western Europe -- from, as Fjordman writes, 'transforming the continent into a post-Western entity some call Eurabia.'"

MUSLIM VOTERS CHANGE EUROPE

by Soeren Kern

  There is a simple indicator of the power of the Muslims in Europe. The growing power of the Muslim population in western European countries was clearly seen in the recent French election. As Soeren Kern writes, "Muslims cast the deciding vote that thrust Hollande into the Elysée Palace... it is a preview of things to come." 93% of the votes of the resident 5-6 million Muslims who voted (1.7 million votes) went to Hollande. Muslims responded to Hollande's promise of amnesty to some 400,000 illegal Muslims. Muslim residents without French citizenship will be allowed to vote in the 2014 municipal elections. Moreover, the Socialists have promised them generous welfare benefits. Add to these tangible benefits, "[i]n the ideological sphere, Socialists and Muslims generally share a mutual antipathy for traditional Judeo-Christian values. Although many Muslims oppose the secular agenda of the Socialists, most Muslims wholeheartedly support Socialist multicultural dogma, which they are leveraging to promote the Islamization of Europe." Voting as a solid bloc -- and they will -- they will keep the Socialists in power indefinitely. Or at least, until they feel ready to take power directly.

IT IS TIME FOR THE EUROPEAN MULTICULTURALISM WORM TO TURN AT LAST

by Babs Barron

  Barbara Barron writes that since Geert Wilders won his case in court, the Dutch government has begun instituting measures that will resist Muslim immigrants taking advantage of the prevailing multicultural ideology to impose its particular lifestyle over Holland. But even if the measures to protect "the rights of all Dutch people against Islamic encroachment" succeed, "Europe and the rest of the non-Muslim world, ... [are] far too ready to cave in to Islam's exaggerated sense of entitlement, far too often underpinned by a subliminal (and sometimes explicit) sense of threat and menace if it does not get its own way." In England, France and cities in Sweden, Muslims infiltrate an area until they dominate it, then declare that it is exclusively for Muslims, no non-Muslims allowed. They continue to expand the enclave by harassing periphery non-Muslims to move out, enlarging the areas where the host Government has no control. "The rest of Europe, if not the world, needs to follow [Holland's] example and soon."

‘HAARETZ’ VERSUS THE JEWS

by Martin Sherman

  This is a call by Martin Sherman for the Zionist endeavor -- the reclamation of the ancient Jewish homeland -- to be allowed to prosper. This is a call for the voice of the majority of the Israelis to be heard and not be drowned out by, as Sherman puts it, "an insignificant minority view" of post-Zionists who dominate "the legal establishment, the media and much of academia." "Having eviscerated the Zionist political parties of any resolve and self-confidence, and emboldened by the reticent response of their adversaries, the post-Zionists have now set their sights on the symbols of Jewish sovereignty... the spiritual roots of the Zionist movement." Sherman takes the discourse away from the politically correct worry that a Jewish state complete with Jewish symbols and Jewish values might make its Arab citizens uncomfortable, possibly even humiliate them. Sherman points out that "Arabs in Israel who feel their national identity is incompatible with political realities and the conduct of public life have many options. Demanding that the victors relinquish their ethos to accommodate the defeated is not one." Fundimentally, this is a call for Jewish self-respect.

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT ISRAEL

by Daniel Greenfield

 Israel has been stabbed by the media so many times for so long and so unjustly, it reacts lethargically if at all. For the most part, it seems to have adopted a 'liars will always be with us' attitude -- even when the stories the media distribute aren't just distorted but clearly indicate that the writers and photographers and editors and producers willingly participated in yet another Arab hoax and/or baseless attack on Israel. In this essay, Daniel Greenfield lays out the ideational props the Western reporters move around in different contortions when writing about Israel (the bad guys) and the Palestinian Arabs (white as the driven snow). He does so in a precise and bitterly calm way that is as convincing as it is disturbing. One would like to come up with counter examples. But it hard to do so. Reporters in Israel, whether Jew or Gentile, write as enemies of the State and its people. As for Muslim reporters, they don't even have to be in Israel to supply their readers with nonsensical falsehoods and downright hoaxes about the only place in the Middle East standing strong against the Islamacist's desire to establish a universal caliphate. The Muslims have a mission. What is puzzling is why the Jewish and Christian minions of the Western press act as dishonestly as they do.

BEFORE WE LOSE CONTROL

by Guy Bechor

  Guy Bechor writes of a new type of warfare. Africans have been swarming illegally into Israel, increasingly so as time goes bye, not as refugees -- although they are so misrepresented -- but as economic migrants, wishing to improve their lives. They are unlike the large number of well-behaved Filipinos, Thai, Sri Lankans and other guest workers who fit easily into Israeli society. Instead, like the Muslim immigrants in Europe, the African immigrants, mostly Muslim, are aggressive and confrontational. They invade public parks, harass women, expect free health care and automatic visas, disrupt neighborhoods, commit crimes and create public health problems. It is a sad fact that many NGOs and agencies who don't wish the Jewish state well encourage immigration while charging the government with racism in a well-funded effort to change the demographic balance and make Jews a minority in their own state. There is also the unpalatable fact that these migrants are themselves racist and hold women in low esteem. Bechor points out this influx is a problem that requires urgent attention before it, like America's problem with illegals from Mexico, becomes intractable.

There is an addendum: excerpts from an essay by Nurit Greenger, which fills in some details.

ISRAEL'S PEACE DISEASE

by Daniel Greenfield

  Daniel Greenfield writes of Israel's obsession with what is unlikely to materialize: peace with those committed to slaughtering them. Forsaking logic, forsaking reality, forsaking experience with the worth of an Arab promise, forsaking the knowledge that one can't make a binding contract with those who don't believe a contract is binding, feverishly, Israelis continue to pursue peace. "Israel doles out fortunes in money, land and power in exchange for the promise of peace and an end to the violence... tomorrow, always tomorrow." Peace recedes as they approach; irrationally, they -- at least their leaders and the leftists -- continue to pursue it. There is no way they can create peace -- except the peace of death -- and there is no way the Arabs will cooperate in a genuine peace. Israelis are so besotted, so hungry to invent rational excuses, they don't listen to themselves coldly cataloguing the facts. They listen to the siren song of the friends of the Arabs, goading them on to try harder, to fashion the mirage of a peace partner, to ignore reality, to blame themselves, to beg for peace. This doggish attitude -- the more suicidal the plan, the more it is considered moral -- is so ingrained that even when they are given solid evidence that the land is theirs and there is no reason to give it away, they prefer to stay in the comfort zone where they live happily ever after next to their wonderful neighbors, the terrorists of Hamas and Fatah and al-Quada and Islamic Jihad and so forth and so on.

STUPIDITY – ON STEROIDS

by Martin Sherman

  Martin Sherman asks why the land-for-peace formula is still proposed, given its "accumulation of past failures" and "the accumulating evidence of its future implausibility?" Devout two-staters attribute the lack of peace to every sort of reason and its opposite. For example, they now claim the unilateral Gaza withdrawal in 2005 was an abysmal failure because it wasn't "the product of a negotiation process – the acknowledged impossibility of which was presented as the need for unilateral measures in the first place." But as the 'let's try' wheel has rolled, leaving one peace formula and then another in the mud, Israel is again being encouraged to agree to all Palestinian demands pre-negotiation. This latest is frightening not just because its solemnly-phrased absurdity would lead to intractable problems for Israel and new Arab demands but because it was suggested by some Israelis in prominent positions. Sherman has a suggestion that might actually bring peace to the region: don't push out the Jews from Samaria and Judea; pay the Arabs to leave. By asserting its legal sovereignty over Samaria and Judea, Israel would prevent the area becoming a "giant South Lebanon" -- a big step forward.

THE RULE OF LAW

by Paul Eidelberg

  In a real sense a run-away and unelected judiciary has usurped the power Israeli voters believe is invested in the Knesset. It has followed its own ideological interpretations of the Rule of Law. As Paul Eidelberg explains, this is fundamentally due to a lack of a Constitution. Israel doesn't have one. It relies on a set of Basic Laws, ad hoc implementations and the competence and basic decency of its elected officials. Eidelberg argues that what is needed is radical reform of Israel’s entire system of governance. "Israel needs leaders committed to the reconstruction of the very foundations of the state, leaders armed with profound knowledge of institutions—the kind needed to make Israel a Jewish commonwealth capable of conquering her enemies." In part 2, Eidelberg provides a detailed example how reviving the Rule of Law would affect the prosecution of public officials on trial for criminal activity.

ISRAEL @ 100 -- A LOOK AHEAD

by Brandon Marlon

  Brandon Marlon points out that modern Israel at 64 had done amazing things in developing ways to help mankind. But, naturally, there are areas that could stand improvement, ranging from customer service to electoral reform. He also suggests major changes in how Israel responds to her hostile neighbors. It is time that she asserted her sovereignty over Biblical Israel.

CAN LEFT-WING JOURNALISTS REALLY BE FAIR?

by Fjordman

  Fjordman disputes the oft-proclaimed assertion that left-wing journalists don't let their personal views influence how they report the news. Simultaneously, they believe that a right wing commentator can not be neutral. As a consequence, the reading public can not be blamed for thinking that mass murderers on the right acted upon the information they received from the right wing, but left wing mass murderers had personal motivations having nothing to do with their informational sources. Together with this self-deception, they imagine themselves saving the masses from the evils of right wing propaganda. It is not a recipe for providing the public with the information it needs to handle real-world crises.

'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS' IS TOTALITARIAN MIND CONTROL

by David Kupelian

  David Kupelian argues that far from being an instrument encouraging politeness, civility and sensitivity, political correctness is "an insidious frontal attack on common sense and conscience through language manipulation." As a case in point, the Islamic Jihad that declared war against the West using multiple means including mass terror attacks is called by the American government "man-made disasters, losing in the process all association with Islam, primitive barbarism and religious fanaticism." As Kupelian points out, "our civilization is literally being turned upside-down through the strategic redefinition (and therefore transformation) of our society's operating principles." He provides us with a selection of phrases whose new meaninglessness go far to proving his theme.

WHITEWASH OF SHARIA CLIMBS THE BESTSELLER LISTS

by Bruce Bawer

  Aided by enthusiastic reviews in the New York Times and other mainstream newspapers, yet another pretty fantasy about Sharia law has become a best seller. This one by Sadakat Kadri is awash in reverence about the Koran and that most perfect of men, Muhammad, and his purported conversations with Allah. The analytic level of the writing is captured in Kadri's summary: [Muhammad "had more access to eternal wisdom than any other human being who had lived." What makes this article by Bruce Bawer so enlightening is that in this astringent critique of the Kadri book, he not only lets the gas out of Kadri's book, he also spells out some of the techniques employed by the fabulist writers on the Koran and Muhammed. May it inoculate you against the latest epidemic of sugar-coated propaganda about Islam.

MORE SHAMEFUL BBC PROPAGANDA AGAINST ISRAEL

by Robin Shepherd

  Robin Shepherd views BBC personnel as "overwhelmingly in thrall to an obsessive anti-Zionist bigotry which appears to know no bounds." Considering their treatment of Israel, that's actually rather mild. When it comes to Israel, one associates the BBC with the bludgeon, the machete, the hatchet. Allowing for differences in time and place, the BBC treats Israel -- and increasingly, Jews -- much as Mohammad's marauders treated their chosen victims. They have such blood-letting lust, they even will base a story (aka attack) on the pronouncements of Richard Falk, who, when it comes to Israel, incorporates in himself the viciousness distributed among multiple BBC minions. To really pin down Falk's credentials, allow me to point out he is Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights at the U.N. He is outrageously bigoted even for that organization. He condemns Israel's killing of a single Arab acting as a shield for a terrorist as a heinous crime, but is silent when Fatah kills its own citizens for selling property to Jews or when Hamas severely punishes its own people for deviating from the increasingly harsh superimposition of Sharia law. UN Watch described him well, saying "While [he] appears highly qualified and well versed in the language of human rights, the reality is that his twisted moral vision negates the basic principles of human rights, recasting tyrants, terrorists and teachers of hatred as heroic victims resisting colonialist oppression."

FDR USED THE JEWS

Rafael Medoff

  Rafael Medoff writes of the interview he had with Benzion Netanyahu in June 2009, who was in the U.S.A. during the 1940, actively working on gaining support to rescue the European Jews, who were being massacred by the Nazis and their cohorts. Netanyahu was asked about the attitudes and support -- or non-support -- of the then president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, congressmen and leaders of major Jewish organizations. The interview reinforces what history in retrospect confirms: despite the adoration of the American Jews, "Roosevelt was only superficially sympathetic to the suffering of European Jewry." He had no interest in saving them from certain death. And too many Jews who had reached positions of power in the government and as leaders in the Jewish community did little to push the Administration to rescue the European Jews.

PASSENGERS ON A SHIP TURNED BACK FROM ITS JOURNEY: 64 YEARS LATER, EXODUS SURVIVORS MEET FOR LUNCH

Sherry Gavanditti

  In violation of their mandate to help the Jews develop their homeland, the British curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine as much as they could during the 1930s and 1940s. Sherry Gavanditti writes of two Holocaust survivors who suffered through the evils perpetrated by Nazi Germany and then, together with the other 4500 Jews aboard the Exodus 1947, were subjected to gratuitous cruelty when the British refused to allow the passengers off the boat bringing them to Palestine. The passengers were returned to Europe, to Germany of all places. The two later fought in the Israeli War of Independence, when the newly-created State of Israel was invaded by its Arab neighbors. Gavanditti writes of the meeting of these two men some six decades later.

THE “IASI” POGROM: A SOLEMN JEWISH ANNIVERSARY

by Jerrold L. Sobel

  Jerrold Sobel has compiled a graphic image of what he accurately describes "as one of the all time most heinous pogroms ever to have befallen the Jewish people during their remarkable but often calamitous history." It occurred June 1941 in Romania, when the Jews "were isolated and differentiated by the Romanian authorities. To avoid the mobs, houses of Christians were marked with crosses, all Jews were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothing, Jewish men were forced to dig ditches in the Jewish cemetery, Jewish homes and shops were broken into and looted, Synagogues burned, random acts of violence against Jews in the streets were commonplace throughout the city." When the savagery subsided, between 280,00 to 380,000 Jews had been killed.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NAKBA

by Robert Werdine

  Robert Werdine writes about the attacks by the Arabs in the spring of 1948, even before the State of Israel was declared. The Jewish defenders of one of the settlements in the Etzion Bloc were overwhelmed, surrendered and were slaughtered while they satas prisoners. All the Jews living in Jerusalem's Old City who weren't killed were expelled, the houses and synagogues were deliberately destroyed, and the gravestones in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives broken and used as building material and stepping stones to the latrines. The object was to kill or expel the Jews, so that not one Jew remained. The object lesson was not lost on the Jews, who had little military material or training but understood their choice was to defend themselves or suffer annihilation. For those who know the realities of the Arab assault, the romanticized fantasy of the nakba, where innocent Arabs were thrust out into the world as refugees, loses much in the telling.

A DIFFERENT HISTORY OF DISPLACEMENT AND LOSS

by Matti Friedman

  When Israel became a State, its Arab neighbors invaded it; and in so doing created two sets of refugees. One set consisted of the Arabs who fled Israel as well as each and everyone of their children and their children's children and their children's children's children, plus anyone living in Arab countries with any sort of claim, however flimsy. After more than 60 years, few of the original group are left. But, unlike any other refugee group in the history of the world, their numbers continue to grow because the U.N. declared they are entitled their food, their education and their health care. It's the least it can do to console them for the unhappy fact that they weren't able to destroy Israel. The second group of refugees was created when state-sanctioned mobs in almost all the Arab countries, angry that a bunch of uppity Jews had dared to reclaim land the Arabs knew for sure belonged to them, attacked the Jewish residents. It didn't occur to the U.N. to help these refugees, even though many came of families that had been rooted in the region long before Muslim marauders invaded the Middle East. But then, it wasn't necessary. Israel took them in, and very soon, they were not longer refugees. They were Israeli citizens. Matti Friedman tells the story of some of the Jews living in Aleppo Syria, when Israel became a state.