No Comparison: Shariah and Jewish Religious Courts

By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Many stealth jihadists pushing to have Shariah law instead of American civil law govern American Islamic communities are making the preposterous claim that Shariah Courts are similar to Jewish religious courts that observant Jews often use to adjudicate intra-community disputes. This is entirely inaccurate given that Shariah has as its goal the replacement of American law with Shariah, whereas Beit Din, Jewish religious court, limits its purview and has no intent or desire to flout American law.

Over 1800 years ago, the Talmudic Rabbi Samuel set the tone of how Jews were to interact with the laws of Babylonia, which had become the primary residence of the Jewish People after its exile from Israel.  His statement and decision has guided the Jewish community throughout their dwellings in new lands: “The law of the land is the law.” Rabbi Samuel understood, as did all subsequent rabbinic figures, that dwelling in a land and being a good citizen meant living by its laws and standards.

Naturally, many aspects of Jewish religious life differed from that of the host culture, such as the requirement to eat kosher food, observe the Sabbath and abstain from bread on Passover, and Rabbi Samuel would have been the first to reject any attempt by the State to prohibit our core religious observances. In the spirit of Render unto Caesar that which is his and unto God that which is His, Rabbi Samuel demarcated between religious law and civil law. His intellectual honesty lay in not allowing the subterfuge of categorizing civil law as “religious” law, which would have effectively nullified the whole concept of “The law of the land is the law”.

Rabbi Samuel certainly wished to preserve Jewish culture and ethnicity. Nonetheless,
the Head of Babylon’s Jewish community imbibed a deep respect and loyalty to his new country and would not allow zealots and separatists to lurch into a mode of cultural supremacy by erecting autonomous communities within the nation, which is accomplished when the purview of religious law is inflated to include that which is essentially civil and criminal law, something to be decided by the general public.

Eight hundred years later, as the center of Jewish life shifted westward to Europe, Rabbi Gershom of Germany expanded on the theme of “The Law of the land is the law.” He declared that because something is permitted in religious law does not mean a Jew should exercise that religious right if it is contrary to a fundamental standard and custom of the country where he now resides. So that even though the ancient Bible did not limit a man to one wife, henceforth Jewish men living in Europe could not marry as was done in biblical days, since European/Christian mores had rejected the simultaneous taking of multiple wives. Though polygamy was already centuries earlier culturally taboo among western Jews, Rabbi Gershom took the opportunity to prohibit it officially and legally to underscore the point that no particular ethnic community stands above and beyond deep-rooted national moral and ethical mores and standards.

Contrast this philosophy with that of shariah compliance where, for example, in certain European countries Islamic clerics are asking that the State welfare system subsidize the multiple wives of a Pakistani-born Muslim, or that of New Jersey where a lower court judge agreed not to hold a man liable for raping his wife, “reasoning” that his culture permits a man to force himself on his wife even though she vehemently protests her subjugation. Or the case of an 18 year old Columbus, Ohio girl whose wish to convert to Christianity is causing a risk to her life from her parents who claim that shariah does not allow her to become Christian. Jewish law intrinsically deplores what shariah here espouses, and no Beit Din would kow-tow to such rejection of civilized American societal norms.

The three cases mentioned above, some even criminal, stand foursquare against our American principle that women and children are not simply a man’s property. This isn’t simply a legalism but fundamental to our identity and to who we are as a people and nation. Having two sets of laws, one of which extends to Muslims the right to do that which is forbidden to all other Americans is a breach of the bedrock principle of Due Process, wherein our laws are applied equally to all, be it our rights or our prohibitions. Should we suddenly make one group of citizens more privileged than all others? That is not American, nor western. Equality under the law must transcend fashionable and often silly notions of multi-culturalism. Too much multi-culturalism leads to no culture at all, a society denuded of standards.

It has always been understood here that no one can claim a religious exception to civil and criminal rules that govern all. Religious freedom does not mean freedom from living by the civilized laws that constitute us as a people. That is exactly what Rabbi Samuel had in mind 1800 years ago when warning against those who would abrogate their fealty to civil and criminal law by claiming a special dispensation under religious law.

There are two areas where from time-to-time a Jew invites a Beit Din into his life. One is marriage and divorce. But here the Beit Din does not supersede routine civil law, rather it embellishes these events with certain required rituals, none of which offend deep-rooted social morality nor contradict existing civil law. After the divorced couple arranges their divorce settlement — finances, child custody questions etc. — the Beit Din’s scribe quilts on parchment a divorce document according to an ancient Hebrew text. Marriage is similarly preceded by written documents and blessings. These additions do not abrogate any civil laws, rather fall under the rubric of rituals that adorn and enrich each particular group within humanity.

The second is the arbitration process where two Jewish litigants decide to forgo the expenses of lawyers and protracted civil court proceedings and opt to have the Beit Din arbitrate and decide their business or monetary conflict. Courts are often pleased by this choice since it relieves them of yet another case on their heavy dockets. But even here, the Beit Din cannot pull out of left field some wild form of insular reasoning whose logic could not stand up in secular court. Nor would it ever arbitrate on criminal matters.

And herein lays an essential difference between those advocating shariah for Islamic communities as opposed to Beit Din in highly observant Jewish communities. Whereas, a Jew finds himself at a Beit Din once or twice in life, and for many never at all, shariah will dominate the individual within the community. He will live under shariah. Shariah is comprehensive, and coercive. It is the ultimate balkanization, wherein a mini nation lives within a broader nation. It is a seceding from the Union – yet with all the privileges of being in that union.

For stealth jihadists, shariah is the most effective way to Islamize a country. Through its imposition, it telegraphs that a nation has no unique and binding set of laws, mores and standards. That’s why radical multiculturalists love it. It helps brings down America.

Islamic shariah has a completely different aspiration than Jewish law. Jewish law has no world-wide ambitions. We don’t even seek converts. There’s one Jewish state, and a small one at that. Islam’s stated goal is to have the world live under shariah. It yearns for a world-wide caliphate, bringing all under Islam, individuals and nations.

Shariah announces that Islam is above and beyond the law. It is above country. Once allowed and implemented in Islamic neighborhoods, it reaches beyond and extends to ever growing areas where its adherents migrate, so that neighborhoods once under American law now must forfeit their American way of life if they wish to do business or be shielded from harassment. Shariah does not believe in Live and let Live, which has been the sweet anthem that has guided America. It demands changes in our schools, work places, swimming pools, and every facet of public and commercial life.

In England , for example, whole school districts now forbid pork in school cafeterias where Christian children still constitute the majority, and some districts won’t even teach the Holocaust because it “offends” anti-Semitic Muslims. Liberals call this sensitivity and accommodation. But it is capitulation; capitulation by emasculated multi-culturalists who feel that the only way to validate our western culture is by forfeiting it and submitting to those who wish to destroy it. Any ideology whose demands and stranglehold on civic and public life are so extensive and unyielding is theocratic in nature and thus incompatible with and dangerous to western life.

At one time, North Africa was not Islamic. Neither was Turkey, southern Asia, Indonesia, Central Africa, Persia, nor most of Iraq and Lebanon; nor were vast lands west, east and north of India. Nor were the Balkans. They are now mostly Islamic. Some fell to the sword of Islam. Others decided to be “nice guys” and allow shariah law in their countries for those few who demanded it. Now, tens of millions of them and their children must live under shariah law. Their heritage is gone

Political Islam is a greater danger than Hitler was

The Iconoclast

Wednesday, 22 December 2010,

“Political Islam is a greater danger than Hitler was”. Trento at the Assises contre l’Islamization in Paris

by Nidra Poller

Efforts to kill the anti-Islamization Congress in the bud not only failed, they provided an “excuse” for Agence France Presse to cover the event. An article in which the anonymous “journalist” admits that at least 800 people attended the all-day Congress, was headlined “Demonstration against the anti-Islam colloquium.” There were, reportedly, no more than 200 demonstrators. Apparently no high profile personalities led the charge against the anti-Islamization event, which was closely protected by a no man’s land of several hundred meters and a cordon sanitaire of policemen who, according to the AFP release, “filtered” people at the entry. So far the AFP release has been picked up by three of the four major national dailies: Le Parisien, Le Figaro, and Libération.

Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoë and the 12^tharrondissement police chief resisted pressure from a long list of leftwing parties and pro-Islamization organizations. However, two days before the event, the police department issued a solemn warning to organizers and speakers who, they claim, have been associated in the past with “initiatives” that disturb the peace. Agents present in the meeting hall would be attentive to any statement that might cross the line, for which speakers would be answerable in the French courts.

No solemn warning was addressed to the demonstrators. One of the participating organizations, Euro-Palestine, spearheads the BDS campaign here in France. Commandos film their illegal operations in shops and supermarkets and proudly post the videos on their site: http://www.europalestine.com/ Their call to oppose the “islamophobe fascists” on December 18^thapparently didn’t generate much enthusiasm among their islamophile fascist fans.

Mouloud Aounit, president of MRAP [movement against racism and for friendship among the people], interviewed this morning on the highbrow France culture (state-owned) radio station, declared that “these organizations” –associated with the anti-Islamization Congress–have been belching hatred for Muslims on their sites. “We know,” intoned Aounit, “that violent words lead to violent acts.”

STOP RIGHT THERE. Isn’t this the point where the handful of protestors and the hefty audience of today’s momentous event come to a meeting of the minds? Let’s hear that again: violent words lead to violent acts. And the Islamization of our society is marked, precisely, by an intolerable level of violence. And this violence is fomented by the hatred of Others inscribed in Islam. The violent words preached in far too many mosques explain why Europeans are becoming “intolerant” of the craze for mosque construction. Oskar Freysinger, initiator of the Swiss minaret ban referendum, was greeted, according to the AFP release, like a hero.

Aounit was followed, on France Culture, by a police official who explained that the pork and wine street party planned for the Goutte d’Or neighborhood on June 18^thwas banned because it was likely to disturb the peace. On the contrary, he said, the anti-Islamization Congress is held indoors. It is discreet. There was no big poster campaign. The document announcing the event is rather moderate. So authorities decided to respect the right of assembly and free expression.

Isn’t that the point? The other big Islamic issue this week is Muslim street prayers. Maxime Lépante of Riposte Laïque, major organizer of today’s Congress, has been posting videos of the prayers all year. They finally came to the attention of the general public when Marine LePen, daughter of the retiring president of the Front National, compared them to an “occupation” of our territory. (I’m covering this story for Family Security Matters here http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8167/pub_detail.asp). A pork and wine street party in a [Muslim?] neighborhood of Paris would be offensive, but hundreds of prostrate Muslims praying in the streets of a [French?] neighborhood of Paris is not? Pork and wine are provocative but “allahu akhbar” isn’t?

For a variety of practical reasons I was not able to attend  the anti-Islamization meeting… which is why I am here to inform you now, as the participants file out into a snowstorm. I will have inside information in the coming days. My attempts to follow the debates online were stumped but I see from readers’ comments on newspaper websites that many people were successful. I’m told that there were five thousand visits to the site.

And we can be proud that our friend Tom Trento (Florida Security Council) was quoted in the AFP release: “All the speakers focused on the ‘dangers’ of Islam. An American militant, Tom Trento, declared—according to the French translation of his speech projected on screen, that ‘political Islam’ is a greater danger than Hitler was.”

Speaking of “political Islam,” the UOIF is listed among the organizations that took part in today’s protest against the “Assises.” The UOIF is known to be a Muslim Brotherhood front.

We don’t intend to wait for proof that these guys are worse than Hitler!

Tags: Assises contre l’Islamization, Paris, AFP, Oskar Freysinger, MRAP, UOIF, Tom Trento, Florida Security Council

Al Qaeda Targets Austrian Copts

From the Baron:

Our Austrian correspondent ESW sends this report about the breaking news of Al Qaeda’s threats against Copts in Austria.

Fifteen Coptic Christians in Austria on Al Qaeda death list

by ESW, with additional reporting by S.M.S.

Today the Austrian tabloid ÖSTERREICH reports that a new Al Qaeda spin-off, Al Daula Al Iraqiyah Al Islamiyah (Islamic State of Iraq), has released a list of death threats against more than a hundred Coptic Christian human rights activists worldwide, including fifteen Copts living in Austria, five of whom are Austrian citizens.

William Tadros is one of the persons mentioned in the list. In an interview with ÖSTERREICH, Tadros reports that he informed the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Terrorism Prevention when he found out that his name was on the death list. “Al Qaeda wants to kill us because of what we are doing for the Christian minority in Egypt.”

FPÖ party leader Heinz-Christian Strache has written a letter to interior minister Maria Fekter asking her “not to remain inactive when Coptic Christians, who trust in our safety, are being threatened. The Ministry of Interior must act before there are victims!”

The new Al Qaeda group claimed responsibility for the massacre in a church in Baghdad in late October, which left more than 50 dead, as well as the recent suicide attack in Stockholm. The Baghdad massacre took place in direct correlation with the Egyptian Copts because they did not comply with a demand made by this Al Qaeda group. These two attacks prove that this group must be taken seriously. International intelligence services have added Al Daula Al Iraqiyah Al Islamiyah to their watch lists.

The exiled Copts are a danger and menace to the Islamists because of the Copts’ increasingly effective information campaign about the cultural genocide against Christians taking place in the Islamic world. Now that the Jews have successfully been expelled from Islamic countries, the Coptic Christians are next in line. It is the Islamists’ goal to establish a monocultural bloc ranging from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

The group’s website cites the following: “For this reason, the war ministry of the Islamic Iraqi Republic announces that all Christian centers, organizations and clubs with all of its members are deemed justifiable targets for our mujaheddin.” However, those in charge of the death list are targeting the entire free world. It is their explicit goal to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state in Iraq and to act against all Jews and Christians worldwide. The group’s homepage is found in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Tadros will “not be deterred by those threats. We will continue to fight for the rights of Christians.”

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Speaks At The Counterjihad Paris Conference

International Civil Liberties Alliance reports:

See more videos from the conference at Bivuac-Id.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to be here in Paris, the birthplace of modern European secular governance. And I am especially delighted to have been invited here by Gandalf, who founded the Alliance to Stop Sharia. Gandalf has been instrumental in shifting the focus of the European Counterjihad from Islam as a religion to the evils of sharia law.

Have you been accused of being an Islamophobe? A nazi? A xenophobe? A bigot? A misunderstander of Islam (copyright R. Spencer)? Have you been verbally attacked by well-meaning friends who belong either to the Leftist/Liberal spectrum and believe in the Religion of Respect and Anything Goes, or who in principle agree with you, but are sooo very afraid for you and suggest that you stop what you’re doing to stay alive. (What does that tell us about the Religion of Peace?)

I think I can safely assume that most of you, if not all, have at one point or another been subjected to some or all of the aforementioned accusations. I can certainly testify to that. But I can also tell you that I have been hauled into court to face trial for saying what I believe is the truth; a truth that many, especially those of the ruling elite, do not like to hear. Sadly, it seems that in a discussion, when one side has no real argument, he or she resorts to personal attacks. “This woman [as if I didn’t have a name!], she is a hate preacher. She can’t say that! She may be right, but she can’t say that!” Can’t say what? That sharia law is contrary to any of our secular laws? That its legal provisions include gender apartheid as well as killing of those who leave Islam or exercise the right to free speech. That sharia prescribes amputation of limbs and crucifixion even though Article 5 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights postulates that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Well, guess what? That is precisely what was eventually found in the charges!

In fall 2009, I was asked by the largest Austrian opposition party to hold a three-part seminar on the topic of Islam and the Islamization of Europe. I did this by quoting from the Quran, the hadith, the sunna. I also quoted well-known Muslim politicians like Erdogan, Ghadafi, Arafat, or the former Algerian prime minister. Little did I or the attendants know at the time that a young journalist had infiltrated and recorded the first two seminars without my knowledge. The left-wing magazine then decided to report me to the authorities, who in turn charged me with incitement to hatred. Let me quote the relevant paragraph:

By virtue of § 283 of the StGB, a person is deemed culpable of incitement:

(1) who incites or instigates in a manner liable to jeopardise public order an inimical act against a church or religious community established in the country or against a group determined by their affiliation to such a church or religious community, or to a race, people, tribe or state, or

(2) who agitates against or insults in a manner defamatory to human dignity or endeavours to condemn one of the groups defined in para. (1).

The crime is liable to a term of imprisonment of up to two years.
The outcry among the ruling elite in Austria was ear-splitting. High-ranked politicians, bishops, rabbis, and imams were asked to comment about the contents of a seminar they had never attended. A well-known Muslim university professor, asked by the magazine to analyze some of my controversial statements, even came to the conclusion that I am just like Osama Bin Laden!

In a matter of hours, my personal life was turned upside down. Some of my friends distanced themselves from by asking me to stay away from gatherings where Muslims may have shown up. The media completely ignored me and found the story of a Kosovar family blackmailing the government into granting them humanitarian asylum, after the umpteenth denial of the same, more interesting and captivating. “We do not see the need to report the idiocies of this woman [again, no name],” one liberal left-wing newspaper answered a curious enquirer. What does it matter that the Kosovar family broke the law and that I merely quoted the Quran? You can’t say that!

Interestingly enough, instead of silencing me, the magazine’s questionable actions have made me popular. All of a sudden, many people were outraged by what had happened to me and wanted to hear my side of the story. However, no one in Austria wanted to hear me; it was the Americans who were shocked, which was not surprising given the provisions of the 1st amendment of the US Constitution guaranteeing absolute freedom of speech, something we Europeans are in sore need of. I was invited to speak at the launch of the Freedom Defense Initiative, at the National Conference of ACT! for America, both in Washington DC. I spoke in Berlin at a rally for the Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa, as well as at the European Freedom Initiative rally in Amsterdam. The Danish Free Press Society in Copenhagen wanted to hear my take on freedom of speech. Just two weeks ago, I conveyed to my Israeli hosts the importance of Israel in the fight against Islamization. And today I am here in Paris to tell you about my trial. I was not silenced, nor will they ever succeed in silencing me!

By November 28, 2010, the member states of the European Union were required to implement an innocuous-sounding legal provision known as the “Framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia”, or, more fully, the “Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.” According to the final article of the Framework Decision, “Member States shall take the necessary measures to comply with the provisions of this Framework Decision by 28 November 2010.”

Why does this matter to the cause of free speech in Europe?

If you read the full text of the Framework Decision (which may be found in the legislative section of the EU’s website), you will learn that “Each Member State shall take the measures necessary… to ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable”. Such “intentional conduct” includes “conduct which is a pretext for directing acts against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.”

Based on what has recently happened to Geert Wilders and me — and earlier to Gregorius Nekschot, Jussi Halla-aho, and numerous others — we can all guess who will be punished under this provision of the Framework Decision: those who criticize Islam.

It was not until October that a court date was set for my case. I had to discover this fact in the press — in NEWS, the same left-wing magazine that brought the original complaint against me. I was not officially notified of my hearing date until several days later.

The evidence used against me at my trial several weeks ago was a transcript of a tape of my lecture, provided to the court by the same socialist magazine. It included words that were not spoken by me, and words that were not spoken in public, which therefore were not a violation of the law.

But my case is not really about the law. It is a political trial, and like the trials of Geert Wilders and Jussi Halla-aho, it is intended to silence someone who speaks out against the barbaric nature of sharia law.

Above all else, it is intended to discourage anyone who might consider following in my footsteps. The oligarchs who rule Europe are determined to prevent any frank discussion among their citizens of Islam and its legal doctrines.

These are the methods of a totalitarian state.

They are more successful than those of the Nazis and the Fascists and the Communists because they are accomplished quietly and peacefully, with no need for concentration camps or gulags or mass graves or the shot in the back of the neck in the middle of the night.

They are surgical strikes executed via our legal systems, and they are quite effective. Between the summary punishment carried out against Theo Van Gogh and the EU Framework Decision applied though our courts, there is no room left for us to maneuver.

We are systematically being silenced.

I am not a victim. I intend to stand up for what is right. I will defend what needs to be defended. Above everything else, I will exercise my God-given right to speak freely about what is happening. Freedom of speech is the single most important freedom we possess.

I am doing this for my daughter, and for her children, for those who will have to live in the world we are now preparing for them. I am doing what our grandparents should perhaps have done during the 1930s, when their own freedoms were under threat.

This is our time. This cup will not pass from us.

I am reminded of a passage in J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

It is an exchange between Frodo the hobbit and Gandalf the wizard, and it concerns the perilous quest on which Frodo and his friends have been sent.

Frodo says: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.”

Gandalf responds: “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

It is time for us to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
In speaking these words, I might be subject to arrest. I could be charged under the provisions of the Framework Decision, and extradited to the country that charged me using a European Arrest Warrant, escorted by the European Gendarmerie.

This is not an imaginary scenario; it is a very real possibility.

It is true that only a few people are likely to undergo such an ordeal. But it only takes a few people.

How many people have to endure what Mr. Wilders and I are enduring before everyone else gets the message?

How many examples have to be set before the rest of the European population understands the new rules, and is cowed into submission?

And we must remember to whom they will be submitting in the end. They will be submitting to our successors in Europe. They will be submitting to our replacements.

We must remember that the word for submission in Arabic isIslam.

When there are enough Muslims living in Europe — and it doesn’t have to be a majority of the population, just somewhere around fifteen or twenty percent — we will be living under Islamic law, and not the laws that presently govern us.

We will no longer enjoy what constitutional rights remain to us now. Our rights will be completely prescribed and delimited by sharia. Women will become the virtual chattel of men. Christians and Jews will be driven out or forced to convert to Islam. Atheists and homosexuals will be killed.

The European Union would consider these words to be “hate speech”. Under the Framework Decision, they would be classified as “racism and xenophobia”, and I could be prosecuted for saying them.

But they are in fact the simple truth.

Anyone can verify them by studying history. Anyone who chooses can read the Koran and the hadith and the Sunna of the Prophet.

Widely available official treatises on Islamic law confirm that my description is not “hate speech”, but a plain and accurate reading of the tenets of Islamic law.

It has become obvious that to tell the truth about Islam is now considered “incitement to religious hatred”.

It is now clear that non-Muslims who reveal the tenets of sharia law to the public are “denigrating religious teachings”.

If we meekly accept these rules, then we are acquiescing in the imposition of sharia law in our own nations. And I, for one, will not sit silently while this happens.

I don’t want my daughter to live under sharia.

Our time is short. If you and I do not envision an Islamic future for ourselves, then we must speak out now.

If we wish to preserve the right to speak and publish freely, then we must exercise it now.

I wish this need not have happened in my time. But it has.

We must make full use of the time that remains to us.

Thank you.

Shariah Law Enforced in Paris

“PARIS…LOST?”

PART 1

(4 MINUTE – VIDEO REPORT)

CLICK ANY PICTURE TO SEE

THE “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS!”

Undercover Video – Muslim Prayer – Paris Streets

THE SETTING

District 18 – Barbes

• Three “Maxime Lepante” teams

• Two teams – part of the Mosque

• One team – on the perimeter

• Prayer shut-down, every Friday, thousand’s of Muslims

7th Century Shariah or 21st Century Western Civilization

CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO SEE THE

“CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS!”

Terrorizing Our Own

Sultan Knish:

Terrorizing Our Own

Airline travelers flying the unfriendly skies are presented with two options, that are actually only a single option, to have themselves and their children degraded in public in order to spare Muslim feelings. That we have a ban on profiling travelers, but no ban on molesting or humiliating them, tells us everything we need to know about why we have the current system that we do.

In a war we terrorize the enemy. In a siege we terrorize our own. And we have been terrorizing our own for a long time now.

In 1999, we dropped thousands of tons of explosives on Yugoslavia, bombing trains, fuel depots, homes, bridges and people. We did that in order to give the Muslim drug dealing terrorists of the KLA their own state. Today that state is a gateway for drug trafficking and sex slaves into Europe, and a training ground for terrorists.

Since 1991, we have been bribing, intimidating and pressuring Israel to give the Muslim-Marxist terrorists of the PLO their own state. Flip open any newspaper and you can find articles and editorials dripping with outrage because after 18 years of terrorism, the terrorists still haven’t gotten their own state.

Now we’re terrorizing ordinary Americans for being critical of Islam. Drop a bible in the toilet, and you’ve created art. Drop a Koran in the toilet, and you’ve committed a hate crime. What’s the difference? Muslim privilege. Offending Jews or Christians results in strongly worded letters. Offending Muslims results in murder. And to avoid murder, we privilege Muslims. We give them special rights. We ban criticism of their ideology. We refuse to publish cartoons that will touch off their homicidal urges.

But we go beyond that still.

We molest 3 year olds in airports, because we can’t possibly screen Muslim terrorists. No, we must spread the abuse and humiliation to ordinary Americans, so that the people who are trying to kill us never feel bad about it.

The Christmas Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, got on board without even showing a passport. Meanwhile senior citizens with serious medical problems are being humiliated at checkpoints. The 9/11 attackers breezed through a system geared to move Saudis into the United States as fast as possible. And any attempt to shut down the pipeline from the Muslim world into America, triggers an instant revolt from universities that draw revenue from foreign students and companies which rely on cheap H1-B visa labor.

TSA security measures have not stopped a single terrorist. Their only purpose is to show that the government is “taking terrorism seriously”. And when the TSA rolls back the measures, as they are intended to by design, the politicians will take credit and the government will blame the next terrorist attack on the public for opposing tougher security measures. The people in charge don’t care either way. Their only interest is in covering their asses for the day when something does happen, so they can claim that the system worked. Until then they’re far more interested in how much money they can pick up from TSA unionization, than from stopping an attack.

The Muslim terrorists don’t care that much either. They’re not sacrificing any major assets on these attacks. The bombers they’re sending out are young and dumb. If they succeed, it’s a long shot and their backers will celebrate. If they don’t succeed, their backers will still celebrate because the long range plan is in motion. And the long range plans depends not on blowing up airplanes, but on terrorizing their enemies.

Muslims don’t need to actually blow up planes in order to terrorize Americans. All they need to do is to force Americans to live with the possibility that their plane might blow up. To make them live with the checkpoints, with the sense of helplessness and humiliation of tough security measures, and to pit them against their governments. And right now they’re laughing themselves silly in Riyadh and Tehran, every time there’s another TSA story coming down the wire. Because their endgame is working.

In a war, you terrorize the enemy. In a siege, you terrorize your own. The Muslims are fighting a war against us, while we’re living under siege. And terrorizing our own.

Muslim terrorists don’t expect to wipe out America with a bomb. Their goal is to break American morale. To shift the context so effectively that America will be willing to cut any kind of deal with them, in order to get things back to normal. The idea seems absurd right now, but it’s actually coming along really well.

A few months ago, the authorities decided that there’s no such thing as free speech when it comes to the Koran. Anyone who burned a copy of their own Koran was charged with being responsible for the Muslim murders of Americans. And that’s the essence of being a Dhimmi, to accept responsibility for the violence of your oppressors. That is the Muslim Privilege that Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus and millions of others have had to live with, while under the Islamic boot.

If we can give up free speech in the face of Islam, we can give up anything. You won’t see the Dutch cartoons of Mohammed appear in American newspapers. Articles that connect the Koran to Muslim violence are forbidden. Burning a Koran gets you fired by the State of New Jersey and fined by the State of Florida. And all that is only the beginning. It’s the start of what Muslims will demand from us.

But once we have gotten used to accepting any violation of our rights in order to stay safe, then we are walking along a shadowy bridge between the TSA and Islam. Between surrendering to the TSA in the name of security, to surrendering to Islam in order to gain a sense of security. And that is the road, that the bearded monarchs behind the terrorists want us to walk. At the end of the road is the choice between being a Dhimmi or a Muslim. To be one of the oppressed or the oppressors.

Countless peoples have had that choice offered to them throughout history. And those who voluntarily converted to Islam chose to be the oppressors, the killers and the slave-masters. That is what Islam really is, the historical legacy of a billion people who chose to brutalize others, rather than to be brutalized. To enslave others, rather than to be slaves. It is the poisonous dregs of the human soul, the choice that destroys your morality and humanity in the making of it. That is what being a Muslim really means.

That is what Muslim privilege really is. And we are living under it today. We are not only under siege by Islam, we are under siege by our own political and cultural elites who have already preemptively surrendered to Islam. Who refuse to fight a war, and instead wait for the siege to end.

Ali Sina, of FaithFreedom has courageously paraphrased Lincoln’s “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master”, by saying, “As I would not be a dhimmi, so I would not be a Muslim.” But many Western leaders are throwing their support to Islam. They are sacrificing other free nations and even the dignity and pride of their own people. They are voluntarily becoming Dhimmis, so that they can stay one step ahead of the tide. So that they can be the “House Negroes”, while their citizens can be the field slaves. They endorse the bigoted tenets of Sharia law, the oppression and the dehumanization of Islam, because they believe that Islam is inevitable.

That is the ugly truth at the bottom of it all. The reason why we are terrorizing our own, rather than terrorizing our enemies. You can see it in the pathetic appeasement of Islam, the acts of humiliation and degradation, the bowing and scraping before desert tyrants with hardly a single moral to their name. You can hear echoes of it in George W. Bush warning Christian leaders that it was impossible to fight all of Islam. You can see it in the various “Nation Building” and “Hearts and Minds” strategies being deployed at the expense of our soldiers’ lives. We can see it everywhere.

They believe that we can’t win. So they’ve already surrendered. The TSA measures aren’t meant to keep us safe, but to protect them from blame when the inevitable happens. To keep the public cowed and in their place, to avoid any violence during the coming “transition” from freedom to Islam. Terrorizing our own is the symptom of a siege state. Of rats crammed together in a box, biting each other and establishing dominance within the confines of their prison. The siege state is turning the free world into a prison. Terrified by Muslim demographics and the thought of breaking through the Overton Window of ideas that can’t be acted on, we are locking ourselves up in cages of our own making. And our new masters wait on the other side.

(Note: Illustrations for this article are satirical photoshops. This has not happened yet. But it’s only a matter of time.)

Islam was Born Out of Child Abuse and Rape

Sultan Knish:

Islam was Born Out of Child Abuse and Rape

The Senate recently unanimously passed the awkwardly named “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010“, which obligates the government to track child marriage rates globally and fund programs to reduce it in countries with a child marriage of over 40 percent. The act mentions only one Muslim country by name (Bangladesh), but it may be one of the most ‘Islamophobic’ pieces of legislation ever voted on by the United States Senate.

Islam is the only major world religion where child marriage has the religious sanction of its prophet. Mohammed ‘married’ Aisha, his most notable wife, when she was six years old. The marriage was consummated when she was nine or ten at the latest. Like so many marriages, it was the product of an alliance between her father and Mohammed. Aisha’s merchant father was Mohammed’s first ally outside his family, and went on to be Mohammed’s successor. That alliance was sealed with the sexual abuse of his little girl.

Such arrangements are still common in the Muslim world today, where little girls are treated as gifts to seal an alliance.

Islam was born out of the brutal rape of a little girl. As the mother of the Sunni Caliphate, Aisha is not just an incidental figure. Her marriage to Mohammed lies at the heart of Islam. The alliance between her father and her abuser made Islam viable by giving its prophet his first real power base. After Mohammed’s death, her father used that connection to the Chief Prophet of Islam, to gain the political upper hand over Mohammed’s son-in-law in the civil war that arose afterward. And it was her father who oversaw the codification of the Koran in its written form.

The spread of the Islamic faith and the codification of the Koran were made possibly only through the rape of a little girl. And there is no way around that. Which is why child abuse remains a permanent part of Islam. To disavow it, is to disavow Islam’s Prophet and his successor, whom Sunni Islam associates with the codification of their religion’s holiest book. Muslims cannot tolerate gently mocking cartoons of their prophet. They certainly are not about to put him aside so that no more 9 year old girls get raped.

And how could they? One of the most awful Hadiths depicts Aisha’s mother taking her from her swing set, wiping her face and then bringing her inside and putting her on Mohammed’s lap. While everyone else left, Mohammed “consummated” his marriage with her. Another describes her friends coming over to play with dolls… after her marriage. Still another mentions that she had originally played with his own children.

There is nothing terribly new here. Child abuse predates Islam. It is not uncommon in the West. But in Islam, it is an organic part of the religion itself. Even when Muslims attempt to inhibit it, they must resort to convoluted arguments that Mohammed was given special sanctions to do what he did, because he was on another level than ordinary men. And so they cannot condemn the act itself, only distinguish between Mohammed’s “high-minded” sort of child abuse and that of ordinary people.

But Aisha is only the most notable example of the exploitation of women and little girls that was a major factor in the rise of Islam.

Islam was not only born out of the rape of Aisha, but out of the rape and slavery of countless women captured by Mohammed’s forces. The rape and abuse of those women was a recruitment tool for Islam. While Muslims who fight to conquer and subjugate non-Muslims are promised 72 virginal demon women in paradise, for many of the practically minded that was not enough incentive. They wanted their reward now. Mohammed’s forces looted the property of those they conquered and subjugated. But also kidnapped and sexually abused their wives and daughters.

When some of his men objected to raping married women in the presence of their husbands, Mohammed received one of his ever convenient revelations from Allah, which dissolved the marriages of captured women making it completely legal under Islamic law and morality for them to be raped. This is not just some ancient practice, it is used as sanction today to justify the rape of married women in the parts of the world both under and not under Islamic law.

The Burqa arose because of the need to distinguish between women who were married to Muslims and could not be touched, and all other women. By covering their bodies and faces, Muslim women showed that they were off limits. Other women on the other hand remained subject to assault. Rather than practice morality, Mohammed’s men made a point of marking their ‘property’ with a brand. The Burqa was that brand. It still works that way today. When Australia’s Grand Mufti justified the gang rape of Australian girls, he did it by comparing them to uncovered meat who were to blame for what happened to them. Women who adopt the Burqa and submit to Islam are moral. Those who do not are whores.

To Mohammed and his bandit raiders, women were another form of loot. Islam expanded by force and to recruit men to fight, they had to be offered some incentives. The chance to seize women, without having to pay a dowry or negotiate tribal alliances, or even marry them at all, provided them with a real incentive. Being able to grant divine sanction to any act, no matter how depraved, let Mohammed and his men do whatever they wanted.

Islam’s Prophet had been forced to marry an older woman for financial reasons, but after her death spoke constantly of finding a “young girl to play with”. From kidnapping and raping women to marrying his son’s wife to molesting a little girl who still played with dolls– Islam allowed Mohammed to indulge his worst impulses. Mohammed reached such a level of arrogance that when he wanted to set aside one of his wives’ marital rights, he received yet another convenient ‘revelation’ from Allah. At which point the Koran records Aisha as saying, “O Allah’s Apostle I do not see but that your Lord hurries in pleasing you.” Here the true nakedness of Islam is revealed. Mohammed’s Allah was nothing more than his pimp.

Islamists depict their religion as a defense against decadence, but their own prophet wallowed in decadence. Islam was a means of getting what he wanted, from women to wealth. While the prophets of other religions had tried to appeal to men’s higher impulses, Mohammed understood all along that he had to go lower than that. His religion legalized theft and rape. Demeaned women and destroyed entire cultures, all so that he and his men could profit from their misery. That understanding gave Mohammed the leverage he needed to destroy a region where religions and cultures had formerly co-existed, and turn it into the base of global terror.

Had Mohammed been a decent man, there never would have been an Islam. Had he been wealthy and powerful enough to engage all his appetites to their fullest, there would also have been no Islam. Islam exists only because Mohammed wanted more than he had. And didn’t want to work for it. The campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing created a religion of terror, but it was done in the service of greed. Like so many tyrants, from Hitler to Kim Jong Il, Mohammed had a vastly inflated ego completely out of proportion to his actual abilities. And like them, he knew that cunning and ruthlessness would take him further, than righteousness and hard work ever would. He saw his opponents as weak because they were unwilling to do what he did. And that made them easy prey. Mohammed and his men did not win because they were stronger. Certainly not because they were more righteous. They won because they were willing to do anything to win. And those they fought weren’t.

Unlike most dictators though, Mohammed’s legacy did not die with him. It was encoded in the Koran, carried forward by warlords and caliphs, by numberless tyrants who kill and enslave in the name of the Koran. His contempt for women and girls is also a part of that legacy.

When discussing the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010, Senator Durbin rose to give two examples, one from Afghanistan and one from Yemen. Again the word Islam was never mentioned, but it doesn’t have to be. H.R. 2103, S. 987 is an unstated and unconscious challenge to the Islamic way of doing things. It will likely be useless, and may also funnel money to “faith-based organizations” that will probably be Islamic, but it is another reminder of the vast gap between the civilized world and Islam.

Yemen, which Durbin mentioned, ranks as the country in the world with the worst gender gap. Norway on the other hand ranks as the country with the least gender gap. As Islamic immigrants have flooded Norway, the vast majority of rapists in Oslo are Muslim. And the majority of rape victims are Norwegian. Wherever it goes, Islam carries with it the toxic baggage of Mohammed. And inevitably rape and child abuse follow. There is no way around that. Islam was born out of child abuse and rape. It cannot exist without it.

Die Erfindung der Islamophobie

Thema: Essay
Die Erfindung der Islamophobie
Von Pascal Bruckner

13.12.2010. Kritik an Religion ist nicht Rassismus. Der Begriff will einschüchtern. Vor allem aber will er all jene Muslime zum Schweigen bringen, die den Koran in Frage stellen und die Gleichheit der Geschlechter fordern.

Ende der siebziger Jahre haben iranische Fundamentalisten den Begriff der Islamophobie erfunden, den sie sich von der “Xenophobie” abgepaust haben. Sein Ziel ist, den Islam zu etwas Unberührbarem zu erklären. Wer diese neu gesetzte Grenze überschreitet, gilt als Rassist. Diese einer totalitären Propaganda würdige Begriff lässt absichtlich offen, ob er auf eine Religion zielt, ein Glaubenssystem, oder auf die Gläubigen aller Herren Länder, die ihr angehören.

Aber ein Bekenntnis lässt sich so wenig mit einer Rasse gleichsetzen wie eine säkulare Ideologie. Zum Islam bekennen sich wie zum Christentum Menschen aus Arabien, Afrika, Asien oder Europa, so wie Menschen aller Länder Marxisten, Liberale, Anarchisten waren oder sind. Bis zum Beweis des Gegenteils hat jedermann in einer Demokratie das Recht, Religionen als rückständiges Lügenwerk zu betrachten und sie nicht zu lieben. Man mag es legitim oder absurd finden, dass manche dem Islam – so wie einst dem Katholizismus – misstrauen und seinen aggressiven Proselytismus und totalen Wahrheitsanspruch ablehnen – aber es ist kein Ausdruck von Rassismus.

Spricht man von “Liberalophobie” oder “Sozialistophobie”, wenn jemand gegen die Verteilung von Reichtümern oder die Herrschaft des Marktes eintritt? Oder sollten wir den 1791 von der Revolution abgeschafften Straftatbestand der Blasphemie wieder einführen, wie es Jahr für Jahr von der “Organisation der Islamischen Konferenz” sowie dem französischen Politiker Jean-Marc Roubaud gefordert wird, der schlechthin jeden bestrafen will, “der die religiösen Gefühle einer Gemeinschaft oder eines Staates herabsetzt”? Offene Gesellschaften setzen auf die friedliche Koexistenz der großen Glaubenssysteme und des Rechts auf freie Meinungsäußerung. Die Freiheit der Religion ist gewährleistet, die Freiheit der Kritik an Religion ebenfalls. Die Franzosen, abgeschreckt von Jahrhunderten kirchlicher Herrschaft, wünschen Diskretion in Glaubensfragen. Getrennte Rechte für diese oder jene Gemeinschaft zu verlangen, die Infragestellung von Dogmen zu begrenzen, wäre ein Rückschritt ins Ancien Regime.

Der Begriff der Islamophobie hat mehrere Funktionen: Er leugnet die Realität einer islamistischen Offensive in Europa, um sie besser zu rechtfertigen. Er attackiert den Laizismus, indem er ihn mit einem Fundamentalismus gleichsetzt. Vor allem aber will er all jene Muslime zum Schweigen bringen, die den Koran in Frage stellen und die Gleichheit der Geschlechter fordern, die das Recht einklagen, einer Religion abzuschwören, und die ihren Glauben friedlich und nicht unter dem Diktat von Bärtigen und Doktrinären leben wollen. Also stigmatisiert man junge Mädchen, die den Schleier ablehnen, also geißelt man jene Französinnen, Deutschen oder Engländer maghrebinischer, türkischer, afrikanischer, algerischer Herkunft, die das Recht auf religiöse Indifferenz einfordern, das Recht, nicht an Gott zu glauben, das Recht im Ramadan zu essen. Man zeigt mit den Fingern auf jene Renegaten, liefert sie dem Zorn ihrer Gemeinschaft aus, um jede Hoffnung auf einen Wandel bei den Anhängern des Propheten zu unterdrücken.

Auf weltweiter Ebene wird ein neues Meinungsdelikt konstruiert, das stark an das Vorgehen der Sowjetunion gegen “Feinde des Volkes” erinnert. Und unsere Medien und Politiker geben ihren Segen. Hat nicht der französischer Präsident selbst, dem wahrlich kein Lapsus zu schade ist, die Islamophobie mit dem Antisemitismus verglichen? Ein tragischer Irrtum. Rassismus attackiert Menschen für das, was sie sind: schwarz, arabisch, jüdisch, weiß. Der kritische Geist dagegen zersetzt offenbarte Wahrheiten und unterwirft die Schriften einer Exegese und Anverwandlung. Dies in eins zu setzen heißt, die religiöse Frage von der intellektuellen auf die juristische Ebene zu verschieben. Jeder Einwand, jeder Witz wird zur Straftat.

Schändungen von Gräbern oder religiösen Einrichtungen sind selbstverständlich eine Sache für die Gerichte. In Frankreich betreffen sie in erster Linie christliche Friedhöfe oder Kirchen. Überhaupt sollte man in Erinnerungen rufen, dass das Christentum heute unter allen monotheistischen Religionen diejenige ist, die am stärksten der Verfolgung ausgesetzt ist – vor allem in islamischen Ländern wie Algerien, dem Irak, Pakistan, der Türkei oder Ägypten. Es ist leichter, Muslim in London, New York oder Paris zu sein als Protestant oder Katholik im Nahen Osten oder Nordafrika. Aber der Begriff der “Christianophobie” funktioniert nicht – und das ist gut so. Es gibt Wörter, die Sprache verderben, ihren Sinn verdunkeln. “Islamophobie” gehört zu jenen Begriffen, die wir dringend aus unserem Vokabular streichen sollten.

Pascal Bruckner

Aus dem Französischen von Thierry Chervel

Der Artikel ist zuerst in Liberation erscheinen. Wir danken dem Autor für die Abdruckgenehmigung.

URL dieses Artikels
http://www.perlentaucher.de/artikel/6639.html

Geert Wilders’ Speech in Tel Aviv

Gates of Vienna

Geert Wilders’ Speech in Tel Aviv

Below is the text of the speech given today in Tel Aviv by Geert Wilders. Update: Thanks to Brian of London for the photo.

Shalom chaveriem,

Let me start by saying that it is with great sadness that I share your grief over the deaths of more than 40 brave Israelis who lost their lives — many while trying to save others in the great fire near Haifa. My country, the Netherlands, is amongst other countries helping to put down this fire, which is threatening the lives and property of thousands of your compatriots. I offer my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who perished. My thoughts are with them.

Israel is an immense source of inspiration for me. When I came to your country for the first time as a teenager, I lived here for a year.

I am not ashamed to stand with Israel, but proud. I am grateful to Israel. I will always defend Israel. Your country is the cradle of Western civilization. We call it the Judeo-Christian civilization with good reason.

Israel is often being treated unfairly. The world looks at the plight of the Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza, and other places, and many blame Israel. The UN claims that there are over 4.7 million Palestinian refugees, and many blame Israel. These voices say the Palestinians should be allowed to return to “Palestine.” But where is Palestine? Many say Israel must solve the problems of Palestine. But is Israel guilty of the plight of the Palestinian refugees?

My answer is “No.” The Arab leaders are to be blamed — and Islam is to be blamed. Let me first tell you why, and then I will tell you where Palestine can be found.

At the end of World War II, there were 50 million refugees. Today, all the refugee problems dating from before the 1950s have been solved. All, except one — the problem of the Palestinians.

Why did this problem not get solved? The reason is simple: Because the Arab countries did not allow it to get solved. And because Islam does not allow it to get solved.
In May 1948, the number of Jews in the Arab countries was estimated to be close to 1 million. Today, fewer than 8,000 Jews are left in the entire Arab world. In 1948, the Arab countries forced the Jews out and confiscated their properties. More Jews fled the Arab countries than Arabs fled Israel. Where are the Jewish refugee camps? There are none.

So, why are there refugee camps for Palestinians in areas surrounding Israel? Because the Palestinians were not welcomed in the neighboring Arab countries. There was no Arab solidarity; the refugees were forced into camps and slums, where many of their descendants still linger today.

Under international definitions the status of refugee or displaced person only applies to first generation refugees. However, the UN makes an exception for Palestinians. Descendants of Palestinian refugees are granted the same refugee status as their ancestors. Consequently, the number of so-called Palestinian refugees registered with the UN increased from 711,000 in 1950 to over 4.7 million in 2010. These refugees are being used as a demographic weapon against Israel.

Instead of blaming the inhospitable Arab regimes, many blame Israel.

My friends, the blame should be laid where it belongs: with the Arab world. The Jewish refugees built new lives for themselves. They did what millions of refugees have done in the course of history, including, in the 20th century, the Germans who had to leave Sudetenland and the lands east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, the Hungarians who fled Transsylvania, the Greeks who were ejected from the Aegean coast of Anatolia, the Hindus who fled the Punjab.

With each generation, the resentment of these refugees and their descendants slowly fades away. Time heals all wounds. Acceptance of the new situation is the norm.

Islam, however, conditions Muslims to hate Jews. It is a religious duty to do so. Israel must be destroyed because it is the homeland of the Jews.

Influential Islamic scholars, such as Muhammad Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the most prestigious center of Muslim learning, call Jews “enemies of Allah.” Tantawi, who died last March, was generally considered a moderate by the Western media and policy makers. But how did this “moderate” address a delegation of Palestinian Muslims who visited him in 2002?

He urged them to intensify suicide attacks against Israelis, stating that every so-called “martyrdom operation” against — I quote — “any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land.” — end of quote.

Nizar Qabbani, one of the most revered poets in the Arab world, praised the madness of those who are blinded by an ideology of hatred. In his poem Ode to the Intifada, he wrote: “O mad people of Gaza, A thousand greetings to the mad. The age of political reason has long departed. So teach us madness.”

Thát is the nature of the Islamic enemies confronting the Jews — sheer madness.

Israel, on the other hand, is a beacon of light; it is like a Hanukkah menorah whose lights have been kindled in a region that until 1948 was engulfed by darkness.

Friends, Israel is not to blame for the situation in the Middle East. The problem is Islam’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Only last month, Fatah concluded its convention in Ramallah by declaring its blatant refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

The problem is also our Western leaders’ refusal to understand that Israel is the West’s canary in the coalmine: If the Jews are denied the right to live in freedom and peace, soon we will all be denied this right. If the light of Israel is extinguished, we will all face darkness. If Israel falls, the West falls. That is why we are all Israel.

But as long as the West refuses to understand how the Palestinians are used as a weapon against Israel, it will not be able to see who is truly to blame; it will not be able to see that it is not Israel’s duty to provide a Palestinian state — for the simple reason that there already is a Palestinian state and that state is Jordan.
Indeed, my friends, Jordan is Palestine. Take a look at the map of this part of the world after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Both contemporary Israel and contemporary Jordan were part of the British Mandate of Palestine.

In 1922, the British partitioned Palestine into Cisjordan and Transjordan — the latter comprising 78 per cent of the territory of Palestine. The British handed that territory over to their ally, the Hashemite strongman Abdallah ibn Hussein. Abdallah was the son of the emir Hussein bin Ali, guardian of the Islamic holy city of Mecca. The Hashemites belong to the Quraish tribe — the tribe of Islam founder Muhammad. They are a foreign body in Palestine.

In 1946, Transjordan became an independent state under Hashemite rule. In November 1947, the United Nations proposed to partition the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine. The territory between the Jordan River and the sea was divided into a Jewish and an Arab part. The Jewish representatives accepted the UN partition plan, but the Arab representatives refused. In an attempt to “drive all the Jews into the sea,” they began the 1948 war — which they lost.

They took revenge, however, on the Jews in East Jerusalem and the rest of Cisjordan — the ancient provinces of Judea and Samaria — held by the Arab forces. This entire region was ethnically cleansed of all Jews. Even the names of Judea and Samaria were wiped off the map and replaced by the ridiculous term “West Bank.” A river bank of over 40 kilometers wide. I come from a country full of rivers, and there the river banks are only a few dozen meters wide.

Israel, including Judea and Samaria, has been the land of the Jews since time immemorial. Judea means Land of the Jews. Never in the history of the world has there been an autonomous state in the area that was not Jewish. The Diaspora of the Jews, which began after their defeat by the Romans in AD 70, did not lead to the departure of all the Jews from their ancient homeland. Jews had been living in the Jordan Valley for centuries until the Arab invaders drove them out in 1948, when the provinces of Judea and Samaria were occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, which abbreviated its name to Jordan in 1950.

And until 1967, when Israel regained the ancient Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, no-one, not a single Islamic scholar or Western politician, ever demanded that there be an independent Palestinian state in the so-called West Bank.
Must Israel trade land for peace? Should it assign Judea and Samaria to another Palestinian state — a second one, next to Jordan? My friends, let me be very clear: The conflict in the Middle East is not a conflict over territory, but rather an ideological battle.

People are mistaken when they assume that giving up Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem and letting the Palestinians have it, will end the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. In 2005, Israel sacrificed the settlements in Gaza for the sake of peace. Did it get peace?

On the contrary, because the conflict is essentially ideological, the situation worsened. Because the conflict is ideological, territorial concessions are counterproductive. Ideologies cannot be defeated by concessions. They are encouraged and emboldened by it.

Ideologies must be confronted with the iron will never to give in, “never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty.” That is the lesson which the world learned from Winston Churchill when he confronted the evil ideology of nazism.

This conflict here in the Middle East is not about land and borders, but about Islamic jihadism opposing Western liberty. From the moment that Israel was founded, the Arab leaders have rejected every partition plan and every initiative for a territorial settlement. The Islamic ideology simply does not accept the concept of a Jewish state. Neither Hamas nor Fatah are willing to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland. No territorial concession on Israel’s part can ever change that.

Israel’s ideological enemies want to wipe Israel out as a nation. They simply deny the Jewish state the right to exist and to live in peace, dignity and liberty.

For the sake of its own survival and security, Israel needs defendable borders. A country that is only 15 kilometers wide is impossible to defend. That is the strategic reason why Jews need to settle Judea and Samaria.

Therefore, the Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria are not an impediment to peace; they are an expression of the Jewish right to exist in this land. They are tiny outposts of freedom, defying ideological forces which deny not only Israel but the entire West the right to live in peace, dignity and liberty.

Let us never forget that Islam threatens not just Israel; Islam threatens the entire world. Without Judea and Samaria, Israel cannot protect Jerusalem. The future of the world depends on Jerusalem. If Jerusalem falls, Athens and Rome — and Paris, London and Washington — will be next.

Thus, Jerusalem is the main front protecting our common civilization. When the flag of Israel no longer flies over the walls of Jerusalem, the West will no longer be free.

However, a peaceful solution must also be found for the many Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere. Each year, hundreds of millions of euros and dollars are spent on the Palestinian refugees in international aid.

The financial assistance, however, did not provide the refugees a new home, a place to live and build a future for their children and grandchildren. It is obvious where this place should be. It should be Palestine, just as, after the Second World War, the obvious place for the German refugees from the East to go to, was Germany. Since Jordan is Palestine, it is the duty of the Jordanian government to welcome all Palestinian refugees who voluntarily want to settle there.

Until the late 1980s, Jordan’s Hashemite rulers did not deny that their country was Palestine. They said so on numerous occasions. In 1965, King Hussein said: “Those organizations which seek to differentiate between Palestinians and Jordanians are traitors.” As late as 1981, Hussein repeated — I quote — “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”

In March 1971, The Palestine National Council, too, stated that — I quote — “what links Jordan to Palestine is a national bond […] formed, since time immemorial, by history and culture. The establishment of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine is illegal.” — end of quote.

By the late 1970s, however, the Arab authorities began to differentiate between Jordanians and Palestinians. What was previously considered to be treason and illegality suddenly became the propaganda line.

In March 1977, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein admitted in a candid interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw: — I quote —

“Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot lay claim to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” — end of quote.

In 1988, as the first Intifada raged, Jordan officially renounced any claim of sovereignty to the so-called West Bank. In recent years, the Jordanian authorities have stripped thousands of Palestinians of their Jordanian citizenship. They do so for two reasons.

First, because the alien Hashemite rulers fear that the Palestinians might one day take over their own country. And second, because stripping Palestinians of their Jordanian citizenship supports the falsehood that Jordan is not a part of Palestine. And that, consequently, the Palestinians must attack Israel if they want a place of their own.

By arbitrarily reducing thousands of their citizens to statelessness, the Jordanian authorities want to force the Palestinians to turn their aspirations towards the establishment of another Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. This decision is a great injustice committed by the Hashemite rulers of Jordan — this foreign clan which the British installed.

I am not naïve. I am not blind to the possibility that if Jordan were to be ruled by the Palestinians, this might lead to political radicalization in Jordan. However, a continuation of the present situation will most certainly lead to radicalization. We need a paradigm shift. If we keep thinking along the same lines as we have done so far, no peaceful solution of the Palestinian problem is possible without endangering the existence of Israel and disrupting the social and economic fabric in Judea and Samaria. Resettling millions of Palestinians in these small provinces is simply impossible and is not going to happen.

To the skeptics, I say: What is the alternative? Leaving the present situation as it is? No, my friends, the world must recognize that there has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946, and it is the Kingdom of Jordan.

Allowing all Palestinians to voluntarily settle in Jordan is a better way towards peace than the current so-called two-states-approach (in reality a three-states-approach) propagated by the United Nations, the U.S. administration, and governing elites all over the world. We only want a democratic non-violent solution for the Palestinian problem. This requires that the Palestinian people should be given the right to voluntarily settle in Jordan and freely elect their own government in Amman. If the present Hashemite King is still as popular as today, he can remain in power. That is for the people of Palestine to decide in real democratic elections.

My friends, let us adopt a totally new approach. Let us acknowledge that Jordan is Palestine.

And to the Western world I say: Let us stand with Israel because the Jews have no other state, while the Palestinians already have Jordan. Let us stand with Israel because the history of our civilization began here, in this land, the homeland of the Jews. Let us stand with Israel because the Jewish state needs defendable borders to secure its own survival. Let us stand with Israel because it is the frontline in the battle for the survival of the West.

We must speak the truth. The truth that Jordan is Palestine, the truth that Samaria and Judea are part of Israel, the truth that Jerusalem may not fall, the truth that Israel is the only democracy in a dark and tyrannical region, the truth that Israel is the linchpin of the West.

Of course, I am just a foreign guest and should be modest. Israel is a democracy and I respect every decision which its people and government will make. But I am proud to be here and grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts and beliefs with you.

Because it is here that our civilization is under attack as we speak. It is here that we, men and women of the West, must show our resolve to defend ourselves. It is here that Israel has lit the light of freedom and that Europeans and Americans must help the Israelis to keep that light shining in the darkness. For Israel’s sake and for the sake of all of us.

Toda raba… And shalom to all of you.

Whatever happened to freedom of speech?

Dailymail.co.uk

By Max Hastings

We live in a democracy in which it is widely supposed that anything can be said and anything done – at least by celebrity ­television performers.

Yet within politics, freedom of speech is more drastically constrained than ever before. Seldom have those who govern us been so much inhibited in what they feel able to say or write, not by legislatively-imposed censorship, but by a smothering blanket of supposed propriety and oppressive liberal values.

Until Thursday, former Tory MP Howard Flight enjoyed a lower recognition rating than your average park pigeon. He sprang to fame, or rather plunged into notoriety, by making some explosive remarks during an interview prompted by his newly-awarded peerage.

Uncensored: Open debate rages at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park

He denounced government benefit cuts as likely to make the middle class have fewer children and the underclass breed more: ‘Well, that’s not very sensible.’

Headlines screamed. David Cameron fumed, Labour raged, The Guardian revelled in the furore. The ‘guilty’ man apologised. Here was another day, another ‘gaffe’, less than a week after Tory veteran Lord Young was forced to resign after telling the nation it had ‘never had it so good’.

Shocking, isn’t it, the wicked things these politicians say? The funny part starts, however, when we examine the words of Howard Flight and Lord Young.

 

More…

• AMANDA PLATELL: Don’t let the hypocritical Earl spoil the big day
• JAN MOIR: Not so jolly hockey sticks at the St Trinian’s riots
• TOM UTLEY: When I was a teacher my pupils marked me down as an unstable lunatic. But would Mr Gove’s soldiers do any better in the classroom?

It is a statistical fact that the middle class have fewer children than the underclass, because the former assess their own ability to raise and educate them, and the latter seldom bother.

As financial pressures on the middle class intensify in the years ahead, it is indeed highly likely that some parents will decide to have fewer children, because they cannot afford them.

The truth of Lord Young’s remarks is equally evident: the British people enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle than at any time in their history.

Whether we shall be able to maintain this happy state is another story, and again the middle class has cause for special alarm. But Young was correct to assert that we ‘have never had it so good’.

His words nonetheless cost him his ­government job. He committed the most heinous crime of a modern politician: he told the truth, but in terms unacceptable to the commissars of the liberal establishment.

We claim that we want our ­rulers to be honest, but in ­reality modern politics is ringed by a vast minefield of Things We Know, But Are Not Allowed To Say.

The term political correctness has become a cliche, but identifies something real. In every aspect of our lives, lines are drawn which politicians and even the rest of us cross at our peril, because a raging pack of truth-deniers will spring at our throats.

Examples? Let us start with the NHS. The idea that healthcare must be absolutely free for everybody has been elevated to a neo-religious principle, which David Cameron treats with more respect than the prayer book.

Every intelligent study shows that Britain’s present NHS structure is not indefinitely affordable. People treat their own health more responsibly if they have a financial stake in adopting a sensible lifestyle, however small. Sooner or later, Britain must move to an insurance-based system or go broke.

But it is deemed suicidal for ministers to admit this. No MP who wants to keep his seat will say that all but a handful of obese people eat too much and exercise too little – that their ghastly condition is their own fault.

More than that, no canny politician suggests that any misfortune in life is the victim’s own fault. It is a fundamental tenet of our society that somebody must be blamed for everything that goes wrong, in order that they can be sued. A whole new breed of vulture lawyers has arisen, to fulfil this purpose.

Politically correct? Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams called the Government’s benefit cuts immoral

The Archbishop of Canterbury, that supremely foolish Welsh windbag Dr Rowan ­Williams, has denounced the ­Government’s impending ­benefit cuts as not merely ­mistaken, but ‘immoral’.

Dr Williams offers no hint of any constructive ideas about how the unaffordable cost of the current welfare state is to be curbed: like Labour’s front bench, he merely proclaims the wickedness of cutting welfare entitlements, as if these were enshrined in Magna Carta.

Rights, rights, rights – the word is abused almost daily by people who should know better, to foreclose debate about how Britain can pay its way through the 21st century, and about what rewards should be conferred on those at the bottom of the pile, heedless of any obligation to strive for themselves.

Another taboo subject is immigration. Almost no frontline politician dares tell the truth about something that has changed this country more irrevocably than two world wars.

Nor are we allowed to say that as long as we are members of the EU and subscribe to the European Convention on Human Rights, pitifully few avenues are open to ministers by which the flow of migrants can be stemmed. It is also these days essential to pretend to think well of Islam, and pay the occasional visit to a mosque.

Any minister who said publicly ‘Race relations in Britain might be in better shape if more ­Muslims who live here showed a willingness to join our culture and adopt our values’ would be out on his ear next day, denounced on front pages as a bigot. It is unacceptable to assert that if newcomers want to come and live in Britain, they will live happiest and fit in best if they dress and act British.

Selection in education is a ­litmus test, which no candidate for high office can flinch from, or rather address honestly. David Cameron has closed the door on new grammar schools and is apparently also against any selective schooling system.

The Left and the education establishment denounce these things as elitist, anti-egalitarian, discriminatory.

Some of the mud sticks even to those who argue the rational case for apportioning children to schools and classes according to their abilities and willingness to learn.

It is acceptable for women politicians to speak ill of men, but an ambitious male politician who knows which way his bread is ­buttered will say nothing about the opposite sex, except how wonderful they are.

He will not admit, for instance, that some women shamelessly milk employment law to ­pursue bogus claims of sexual ­discrimination; that few pretty women in the workplace fail to make the most of their looks; that extending maternity leave, never mind paternity leave, is potty.

One of the least attractive spectacles in British politics is that of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband vying with each other to demonstrate their credentials as good parents, running the kids to school and taking paternity leave.

As a voter, I don’t want anybody who has chosen to run the country at a time of crisis to be messing about with Lego. I want him dealing with our problems, not his children’s. If a man wants to play the good dad, he should choose another career.

But now the entire front rank of British politicians has agreed to play the parenting game, what future candidate for high office will dare break ranks and say ‘This job is too important to waste time changing nappies’?

The silly myth must be sustained that people filling the most demanding offices in the country should also do their bit about the house.

In 2010, it is suicidal to make any statement that might invite a charge of discrimination: I doubt whether any member of the Government could long keep their job after suggesting publicly that gay adoption or IVF treatment for ­lesbians is a bad idea.

Says it all: The current comedy ‘The Kids Are All Right’ about a couple of lesbian parents

The title of the current comedy movie The Kids Are All Right, about a couple of lesbian parents, says it all. Many of us do not think ‘the kids are all right’: but we would have no future at Westminster if we declared as much.

Consider what would be said about an MP who argued that it is tough for BA to run a popular airline with stewardesses who are allowed to work until they drop, in competition with Singapore ­Airlines and their kind, who employ only young and pretty ones.

He or she would be in even deeper trouble if they suggested that breast-feeding babies in ­public places is anti-social.

The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, recently took much stick for his alleged blunder in saying that those who want to have a lot of children should think more about taking financial responsibility for them, which most of us think a statement of the obvious.

It is politically perilous these days to assert that the aspirational middle class deserve to succeed because they work hard, use their money sensibly, make the most of education, and accept responsibility for their actions.

It is even more hazardous to say that some of those who fail in life do so because they dismiss those principles.

At a more frivolous level, every politician must enthuse about Harry Potter, Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, or find themselves denounced for being ‘out of touch with the public’.

Can you imagine David Cameron admitting in an interview, as did Harold Macmillan when he was prime minister, that he spent his leisure hours reading the Victorian novels of Anthony Trollope?

If you want to end a promising career fast, tell a TV audience that you hate football. Worse still, suggest that Joanna Lumley is not the fount of all wisdom about public issues and should stick to acting.

We allow and even expect our rulers to offer obeisance to the vacuous culture of celebrity, when we should have the sense instead to demand that they behave like serious people with serious ­values. We might even applaud if they wore ties in ­public, rather than flaunt open-neck shirts to ­emphasise their informality and ‘accessibility’.

The BBC, with its overwhelming power to set the agenda and ­influence values, bears a significant responsibility for driving our politicians into an iron cage of political correctness.

Not merely its news coverage but the entire ethos of the BBC’s ­output reflects the values of the liberal establishment – the Rowan Williams view of life, if you like.

The knowledge that BBC correspondents will treat any minister’s deviation from the PC path not as an error but a career-threatening gaffe goes far to explain why traditional rights of free speech are now so rarely exercised at Westminster.

Both Howard Flight and Lord Young were foolish to say what they did in the way they said it, especially at a time when the ­British people’s tolerance is strained by financial crisis and looming spending cuts.

But the wider becomes the gulf between obvious realities – or at least, reasonable points of view – and our politicians’ willingness to express these, the worse it must be for us all.

Freedom in Britain is not today threatened by law or official ­censorship, but by an oppressive liberalism which is almost equally pernicious.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1333542/Whatever-happened-freedom-speech.html#ixzz16vmlmVLr