Important news from Howard:
Day Against Anti-Semitism and Terrorism (DAAT) - April 19, 2009 « Howard Rotberg: Second Generation Radical:
Day Against Anti-Semitism and Terrorism (DAAT) - April 19, 2009 « Howard Rotberg: Second Generation Radical:
This year Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, falls on April 21, 2009.Howard also notes:
The obscenity of Durban II - a hatefest of anti-Semitism in the guise of an anti-racism conference is scheduled right on Yom HaShoah, taking place from Aprtil 20 to 24 in Geneva.
I wrote about Durban I in my novel The Second Catastrophe and compared it, in its historical significance to the Wansee Conference during the Shoah.
There has been a severe increase in Islamic anti-Semitism following Durban I, which of course helped legitimize it.
Recent marches, supposedly in protest of the Gaza War have shown the anti-Semitic taunts, slogans and signs by the Muslim and leftist participants.
The internet is full of videos, and articles, about the horrible things being said and shouted at Jews, and the inevitable spill over into violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions.
The United Nations, of course, is not a solution, but in fact is a major part of the problem.
European nations, so disgraced by their actions and non-actions during the Shoah, today with Muslim populations ranging from 5% to 40%, see nothing wrong with the most hateful anti-Jewish speech and actions emanating from disaffected demographics, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
It is clear that the greater the Muslim population is in Europe, the more hostile life becomes for Jews. Many French Jews are convinced it is time to leave. English Jews are frightened.
As Barack Obama says one of the main themes of his Presidency will be to show the Islamic world how much America "respects" it and wants a "partnership", now is the time for Jews and their friends, worldwide, to stand up and say no to respect of anti-Semitic attitudes and actions. The Holocaust denial, and the use of Arab education systems, media and clergy to spread anti-Jewish sentiment is unacceptable.
We must demonstrate our view that this is unacceptable.
We must demonstrate on April 19, 2009, and show the world that we support the right of Israel to live in peace and not be threatened with genocide by Iran or its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah.
We must demonstrate and show Obama that respect is given to those who "earn" respect; otherwise the attempts at respect are misinterpreted as weakness and submission to the alien values of Islamist supremacy.
This year as Iran closes in on the completion of its development of nuclear weapons that it has pledged to use against Israel, and as Israel is the one country in the world that is chastened for defending its citizens against terrorism and bombing directed solely at civilians, it is time to ACT!
Our intentiion is to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people world wide to take to the streets in solidarity with the world's Jews including the nearly six million Jews of Israel. We must not allow another six million to perish.
We shall soon have a web site up and running devoted to the organization of this important event. We solicit the support of every human being who recognizes that the Jews of this world have always sought to improve this world. The contributions of the Jews to this world are out of all proportion to our numbers.
Now is the time to demonstrate, before it is too late.
NEVER AGAIN means that at the very least we should march on April 19th and show the strength of our numbers and the strength of our morality.
Moral equivalency, cultural relativism, and political correctness is EVIL. The world must choose - life over death, peaceful co-existence over genocide, goodness over evil.
April 19th is the time that the average Canadian and American can stand up for what is right and voice his or her displeasure with what is so obviously wrong. We are not "racist" in our attitudes on Muslims, but neither are we so racist against Jews that we shall tolerate blatant acts of anti-Semitism and incitement by Muslims.
Acts by a liberal democracy to protect its civilians from murder by totalitarian entities are NOT equivalent to acts by totalitarians against their own people and neighbouring civilians. Those who claim such equivalency are perverse.
To the Muslims --come join us in our peaceful country, but only if you reject violence and racism against Jews, only if you reject terrorism and suicide bombing, and only if you can stand strong against the minority in your religion that is seeking to impose a fundamentalist and supremacist agenda to defeat Western liberalism, instead of participating in it.
March with us in the most important demonstration ever to ensure that our children and grandchildren will live in freedom and dignity.
These demonstrations are NOT against individual Muslims but only against totalitarian entities in the Middle East, and those confused Muslim spokesmen in North America who seek to impose alien values on a liberal democratic society.
Farewell, dear readers, as I leave you with nearly 170 posts from last August, many containing essays of mine.
The shunning of my work by the mainstream Jewish organizations continues.
The situation for Jews continues to deteriorate. I somewhat naively felt that my writing and my ideas could make a small difference in this terrible world.
But in our world, it is marketing, it is images, it is sound bites, it is PR that rules....
And so, as I take up the position as Chairman of the April 19, 2009 Day Against Anti-Semitism and Terrorism, I feel that I moving on to another stage in the battle; and make no mistake, a battle it is.
We shall take to the streets; we shall be peaceful, we shall be non-racist, we shall be respectful of all laws and regulations, but we shall be in the public eye, we shall be in the "face" of the public; and we shall get our message across - anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Israelism is wrong and is unacceptable. Those who use double standards against Israel will be exposed. Those who think that freedom of speech is only a one-way road will be overcome; those who come to America to create sharia law and isolation and ghettos of jihadist militancy shall be addressed.
This is the natural evolution of my thinking as a Second Generation Radical.
Never again.
30 comments:
This is reprinted at No Dhimmitude.
Sound and fury.
Adding some more thoughts:
The problem is a clash between rock and hard place.
That is: Israel must defend against attacks. The "Attackers" feel they have a reason to "attack."
Between these superficial ideological walls exists the middle.
And there IS a middle. Perhaps THE Middle, for all mankind.
It sounds very much as if you reserve two distinct standards when it comes to racism and violence. You abhor racism when its directed towards jews but make all sort of silly and oreintalist generalizations about the muslim world. Violence and genocidal rhetoric emenating from Palestinians must be damned while the actual destruction and policide of the Palestinian people through massive state violence and occupation is sanctified as alright and moral. Count me out on this protest fellas
I see that we are described as "heartless and brainless." I must assume the first regards Charles, and the second, Truepeers. That leaves me as the "Rightwing religious bigot."
Do other blogs get such... levels of commentators?
Your obsession with Muslims borders on pathological. It's rhietorical tropes are no different in fact from Osama Bin Laden's. What's obvious here is that we're dealing less with a clash of civilisations than a clash of ignorance
There is the example Eowyn refers to: The sound and the fury, signifying nothing.
If you had an argument, you would by now have written it.
As opposed to the idea Palestinians in specific and Arab in general have some genetic predisposition for violence and that the only way to deal with them is to employ the language of death. The world is a tad bit more complicated than that.
The problem with smug talk about orientalism and invoking a pox on both Jew and Pali houses is that the one making it thinks himself above all that; he refuses to identify let alone make the choice between good and evil, or between lesser evils, thinking he can float forever in some kind of relativism, protected by what exactly?
the actual destruction and policide of the Palestinian people through massive state violence and occupation is sanctified as alright and moral.
-but this is an insane description of the reality; Israel could wipe out the Palestinians if it exercised anything near its full powers; but it does nothing of the sort, after 60 years of being threatened with extinction by the Arabs. Israel has to use violence but it always attempts some kind of measured response. Don't think it's measured, well give us a compelling account of reality instead of mindless grief about death and destruction and you can maybe have a conversation, not that you really want one, I'm guessing....
And as for "genetic" violence, quit quoting Bill Moyers and do a little thinking for yourself. What is frequently objected to on this blog in regard to Islam when we talk of tribal culture is not some kind of race, but a way, a certain form of ritual behaviour, with which people understand their world and the responsibility of the individual to the whole. There are plainly different ways of organizing societies around sacred values and these have great consequences for the levels of violence in the world. It is insane to look at fundamental cultural differences and not see that they are more and less in the vanguard of human freedom and modernity.
Here's a good, brief post I just read that points out there are very real differences in what Islam and Christianity holds sacred. It's short; have a read; and try and see if you can offer an intelligent criticism of it instead of going off into these silly cliches and personal rivalries which you someho think might pass for intelligent deconstruction of the evil occidentocentric hegemon.
The beauty of not censoring fools is the world can see them for what they are.
Above we see a half-wit trying to play at intellectual, alluding poorly to Woody Guthrie, referring obliquely to dhimmi Edward Said, and impuning us with adherence to some kind of 19th century social darwinisim. It's not informed, intelligent, or interesting. But it does illustrate the basic leftard's mind at work.
I think I'll delete this when I get back to it. I'm bored by being sick of these fools.
I might add that since we are in ignorance one might have thought that the wise one who can see past our clash of bigotries might have thought it his *duty* to throw some light on us rather than just scorn. I'm kind of hoping he will leave at least a taste of his fine insights into the nature of Islam, etc. today. If she doesn't I can only assume it is because she holds dearly her own self-image as being above us ignorants and won't risk it being sullied by the likes of us.
Sorry but you guys play inthe swamp and therefore invite the kind of treatment I've put out. A broader debate cannoit occur within the context of the racist premises you lay out. As for my name, this, fellas, is what inspired it. It's a performance which cannot help but warm my heart. Sing along, you sing it, we'll give you the words
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=3YlLtmMV8zs
Is this The Return of 'Plagiarism Bimbo?' Sure reads like it. But these morons are all pretty much from the same can.
Anyone who refers to the great secular humanist and premient scholar Edward Said as a dhimmi is really beneath contempt and obviously deeply rooted in a perverse pathology posing as analysis. Enough said about that.
That shows anyone who actually reads the canon just how fucking ignorant and bigoted this mentardo is.
I hope we can take your word for this being your last word.
Now now Dag, there's no need to let the ignorant luxuriate in the righteousness of being called a f'n idiot. Just delete commments that come from those who seek to destroy, not add to, conversations.
What I find amusing is not simply the childish need for a charismatic literary hero, one who has been so roundly revealed as a typical academic con artist, with limited knowledge, should anyone care to Google Said's name and read a little of his many critics, but also this: not only do allegations of racism have to be launched as the typical excuse to avoid a discussion that might reveal the world is not the fantasy one has constructed, but after yabbering on about how we reduce the complexity of the Islamic world to hateful mutterings, she has the nerve to worship "orientalism" which is precisely just such a tool for reducing complexity to a standard victim figure.
Sad and funny in a way: these people's story can only be imagined as comedy. Even when they're deadly they confirm the death of tragedy, and you should treat them accordingly.
I'll leave my irate comment there so others can see that I too am not always better than my ignorant pos opponents. What's fair for them is fair for me.
Ill-tempered as I might be at times in dealing with fools, I can and do back up my statements with years of careful study. Plagiarism Bimbo can't lay any such claim. Though she might.
Yeah but Said was a plagiarist so she is at least playing to form. But this article has him as a plagiarist of PLO propaganda. You might call that dhimmitude, but no, damnit, for some that's honest to goodness plagiarism, a fraud in his own right!
Straight from Daniel Pipes website, a failed academic who seesm to think that Middle Eastern Studies departments should act as an arm of US foreign policy. And this is supposed to be the final word on an academic whatever your opinion on him has had such a profound impact a whole range of fields and interests over the past few decades. You guys are too funny
Who said anything about the final word; you can find a thousand more critics if you want.
The thing is, you have to want to think for yourself. There are two pretty definitive signs that you a young academic going with the crowd: one, you worship Ed Said; two, you join the speech-silencing mob outraged by that ambivalent, mild commentator Pipes. I have never understood why Pipes has become the ultimate black hat for you guys; there are far more Islam-critical commentators out there. Pipes keeps professing that moderate Islam is the answer. So he has given some advice to politicians, so what? Your man Said was an arm of the PLO - literally, when he was caught posing for the cameras chucking stones. But then stoning a modern military is maybe your idea of a serious foreign policy? When are you going to take responsibility for the Palestinian addiction to martyrdom you are helping to promote?
I've coined the phrase "Death Hippies" to sum up the protestors who mindlessly support all and any terrorist activity directed against Modernity; I've coined the phrase "Conformity Hippies" to capture the fools who blindly follow the fashions of the Left, regardless of how evil those might be; and now I think the time has come to unveil the last neo-logism: "Death Groupies," referring to those who are so stupid in the head they can't even get the cliches right, the ones who get most of the fashion statements just a little bit wrong, who are, in effect the nerds of Death Hippiedom.
So this series of comments with the moron above is paying off after all. Death Groupies. I should be rich.
Profound I tells you, profound.
I have not posted lately, but still reading along when I can. This thread has given me a real good laugh...
I love it when leftards talk. There is something amusing about non-intellectuals trying to intellectualize things. Or when dummies try to debate people with some intelligence. It is like a car wreck – a total disaster but you just can not look away.
I don't think you should delete any of their stuff. The more they talk, the dumber they sound.
But on a serious note,
One major flaw in leftist ideology is that they start out with their conclusions, and then form their arguments and research to back up this conclusion, ignoring facts and evidence along the way that disprove everything they are claiming. In fairness, the right is sometimes guilty of this as well, but I think the right is more honest in its research. The right will at least address and respond to counter arguments, usually with some integrity. The left will throw in clichés and unverifiable claims to back themselves up.
I haven’t heard what the left is saying now about that UN school in Gaza that Israel supposedly bombed when it was full of civilians seeking shelter. How do they explain that the school is still standing, and people who were in side the school now verify that the school was not in fact hit, and that not a single one of them was killed? Doesn’t this evidence lend towards contradicting their allegations that Israel was deliberately targeting UN schools and civilians? Doesn’t this also support what intelligent people have known all along, that Hamas and the media are lying about what went on on the ground in Gaza? I’ll bet the leftards have not changed their allegations but are taking the approach of “don’t confuse me with the facts.”
The paramount responsiblity of academics is to engage in free and open inquiry. It seems to me that McCartyite outfits like Campus Watch which encourage students to keep tabs on their professors and monitors academics who express critical or dissenting views regarding American foreign policy are themselvves an affront to academic freedom. That Daniel Pipes a failed academic is the founder of such a group is particularly contemptable. He may say that the "problem is radical Islam" and the solution is "moderate Islam" but much of his sloppy work suggests that for him it's very much a distinction which makes no difference.
As for Edward Said the fact that you can get all riled up by the symbolic stone he threw--in Lebanon!--yet remain utterly calm about the collective punishment of Palestinian, is, to me, quite revealing. I think Christopher Hitchens, ironically given his transfromation, best captured the spirit and humanity of the man when he said that "if Edward's personality had been the human and moral pattern or example, there would be no "Middle East" problem to begin with"
I'm with you, Witness: the more this idiot writes the deeper she gets into the obvious moral insanity of the average psychopath. And that's a lesson all should see for what it is.
The drivel above is obviously the writing of a teenager who has no informed or articulate ideas nor understanding of much of anything about the real world, as shown by the continuous ad hominem attacks, the ridiculous appeals to authority and popularity, and the dearth of argument. I'm happy to let the fool stand this time, but next time I post on the up-coming demonstrations against jihad and Left dhimmi fascism, that kind of moronic spam goes as fast as I see it.
The excellent Citizen Warrior has a new thought-provoking article about the multiculturalist dogma that 'all cultures are equal' . The article was actually so thought-provoking it set me to thinking of whether there is any logical argument that can demonstrate the inequality of cultures, and it occurred to me that different cultures can be thought of as 'sets' of beliefs and customs which may or may not overlap.
If we apply set theory to multiculturalism, then Judeo-Christian civilisation can be shown to be superior to Islam, because when examined closely, Islamic culture is seen to be nothing other than an impoverished subset of Judeo-Christian culture. Consequently, Islamic culture cannot add anything to ours, it can only subtract and destroy.
Every aspect of present-day Islamic culture that appears to be different from our own is in fact already contained within our culture, it's just part of the subset of beliefs and customs marked 'history'. For example - tribalism, theocracy, punishment by amputations, repression of women, honour killings, blasphemy laws etc - we've been there and done that and given it up centuries ago.
As with adolescent vandals, those who lack creativity can only express themselves by destruction, and Muslims are very good at destroying the products of other civilisations (known as 'Jahiliyya') . Remember the Buddhas of Bamiyan!
If you look carefully at the process of Islamification in Europe, you'll see that nothing is being added (apart from babies and mosques), but much is being taken away. Almost every Muslim demand is culturally destructive and 'subtractive' rather than 'additive'. They want to remove pig statues, ban alcohol, curb free speech, stop teaching art, music, drama, biology and other 'un-Islamic' subjects in schools. And the mere presence of Muslims in the West reduces the quality of life, with security restrictions on travel; and kaffir women and children in Muslim-infested cities unable to move and play freely for fear of sexual predators.
In contrast to the subtractive impacts of Muslims on Western civilisation, Muslim clerics in in Dar al-Islam are paranoid about the addition of aspects of Western culture such as fashion, music, toys, cinema, art, science etc to their own, which they refer to as 'Westoxication'
So, no matter what the multiculturalists tell us, Islam cannot bring 'cultural enrichment' to the West - it can only bring cultural impoverishment.
To say that Muslim immigrants are worthless is to overvalue them. In fact they have a negative cultural worth, because their attempts to Islamify the West are an attempt to reduce the rich culture of a superior civilisation to a depleted and restricted subset.
When you refer to upcoming demonstration, I imagine you mean those get together you arrange of about 2 to 3 people under the guise of opposing fascis, but in reality in support of larger "civilised" powers crushing and strangelling those that they rule? Right those are some demonstrations. For all the complexity you claim this site reads like a dumbed down version of Huntington's thesis on top of some superfial psychobabble posing as the profound. Appealing to authority is a tactic you should avoid anyhow because unlike 30 years about the historiography of Israel/Palestine is far more complete and the facts are simply not on your side. Now wonder you're forced to blabber on about global jihad, dhimmi's, "death hippies", and so on. Oh well
Well, I wanted to know why Pipes is such a scapegoat for the left, and now I have part of an answer, though, knowing nothing about Campus Watch, I wonder if CW came before or after the great Pipes demonization campaign.
We have to keep in mind that for the contemporary North American left, McCarthyism is still, two generations later, an absolutely central event for its understanding of all that is sacred, the martyrdom that revealed the nobility of the cause. Now we conservatives wanting to get at fundamentals don't have to get in the grovelling game of re-examining just how many of McCarthy's "Communists" were or were not actually in service of the Soviets. For the moment, it is enough to recognize that this event of martyrdom is what the left holds absolutely sacred.
But it's for just this reason, it would seem, that all kinds of questions would probably have to be avoided. For the non-academic audience, it would seem that the one Middle East scholar who regularly gets demonized, shouted down beyond all reason, is Pipes. So who are the real McCarthyites? Now I know nothing about Campus Watch, but I take it is a civil society organization that has zero state power behind it. The academy and its graduates, on the other hand, are tied to the state in all kinds of ways. So when figures in civil society call for observation and accountability, that's McCarthyism? But when the academy demonizes Pipes, that's not?
Anyway, what's wrong with being publicly accountable for what one is teaching? Wouldn't academic freedom be buttressed, not harmed, by such accountability, if conducted properly? I mean, the academy has its own victims, scapegoats, for starters; and if it were called on this, surely that would have a liberating effect on speech and thought.
It's not like there is any question about who controls hiring and tenure in the universities: the "progressive" left, for the most part. Does the public have no interest in what is being taught in an environment where Middle East oil money is seeking all kinds of influence? How is an academic free if he doesn't want to go along with those interested in pursuing and mollifying Saudi cash?
The charge of McCarthyism is of course absurd but it helps us understand something about the implicit alliance between this (I'm pretty sure) atheist leftist and Islamic fascism: Neither side really wants their beliefs open to examination and discussion, at a time when it was never more important for truly free discussion of our faiths. They insist on some fanatic separation of "church" and state, so that they will never be accountable for what they teach the young, however hateful, however delusional, however divorced from reality.
Why is it so important to call Pipes a failed academic? Just because he gets a lot more attention than your average academic, resulting in jealousy? No, it's clearly much more: he is a symbol of what can't be allowed: accountability in a free market environment. And the most desperate allusions to McCarthyism will forever be held sacred to insure this never happens.
Once again, we see that there is no real interest in sharing a conversation about reality, about inviting heretical "failed" (non)academic voices to the table.
It is ultimately all about what we hold sacred. Witness is of course correct that the "right" is often home to people reticent to see things that don't fit their favored narrative. But he is also right that this is relatively a bigger problem on the left where an official atheism makes for a greater self-righteousness and a need to believe in Gnostic political religions and to demonize sophisticated Judeo-Christian traditions for promoting humility as a road to a full and meaningful apprehension of the reality that exists beyond our egos.
How perfect an illustration is this: I think Christopher Hitchens, ironically given his transfromation, best captured the spirit and humanity of the man when he said that "if Edward's personality had been the human and moral pattern or example, there would be no "Middle East" problem to begin with"
-how can anyone seriously believe in some vision of a humanity that will not always come into conflict over our competing desires? How can anyone, not least someone who professes to understand Islam, seriously believe that the creation of modern Israel could not have created a problem in the ME?
There will always be conflict in the world, given the basic mimetic nature of human desire, and those who will always fail to provide us with suitable conversations for mediating our difficult human reality in relatively non-violent ways will be those who can believe in Utopian nonsense and political divinities.
We at this blog call people names in hopes of calling people to a shared conversation about reality; much of the left call people names so that they don't have to lower themselves to have any such conversation with the "redneck" riff raff.
To say that Muslim immigrants are worthless is to overvalue them. In fact they have a negative cultural worth, because their attempts to Islamify the West are an attempt to reduce the rich culture of a superior civilisation to a depleted and restricted subset.
-you may critique Islam, in alliance with the totalitarian left, as a corrosive force for freedoms in the West; but don't fall ito the trap of demonizing individuals as "worthless". It's nonsense and it doesn't do anything to help our side in a debate where we have to win people over to a higher set of values. There is no freedom in a mob. There are all kinds of Muslims working in the West, creating value. You should be able to recognize this reality alongside a recognition of that which is destroying value. Some things are a little complex and paradoxical. Muslims live in a reality that can never be satisfactorily captured or understood by Islam and its rituals, and so there is much more to them than you might like to think.
but in reality in support of larger "civilised" powers crushing and strangelling those that they rule?
-bullshit: what we demonstrate for is a world where people can share membership in a common modernity, where people are not endlessly reduced to victimhood by a leftist culture that needs the Palestinians to be addicted to martyrdom because the left cannot come to terms with modernity in anything other than a victimary religion. I would like to see nothing more than a responsible Palestinian leadership negotiating peaceful co-existence. I know that is what most Israelis want and the endless demonization of them as some kind of bloodthirsty monsters is beyond all reason. It is pure antisemitic hate.
As for Huntingdon, I suppose you have memorized the lines for critiquing him and are desperate to unleash them on us. But you don't have a very good grasp of what I think on the matter. I don't put my arguments in terms of a clash of civilizations because I favor an understanding of the world in which today there is only one civilization, one global economy, mediated by a political order of several hundred states and nations. The problem with Islam is not a clash of civilizations but a clash between those well incorporated in modernity and the global economy and those not well incorporated even though they have no choice but to live within this single global civilization and economy. The terrorists, and their leftist supporters, are those who hate this fact so much that they will do all they can to destroy the modernity in which they feel trapped. If they succeed the death toll might even wake you up.
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