Covenant Zone: hamas

Showing posts with label hamas. Show all posts

Thursday, September 30, 2010

More evidence there has never yet been a serious "Palestinian peace partner"

Today comes news of the latest in the long litany of revelations of how the Arabs have been fighting a century-long war against any Jewish state or political presence in the land of Israel, while getting a deeply naive West to consider Arabs potential "peace partners" or at least an equally-aggrieved party in a conflict that is dubiously styled the "Palestinian (or Arab)-Israeli conflict" - a term which assumes two parties equally desirous of conflict - when in fact what we have witnessed is a century-old Arab/Muslim war against the desire for a Jewish presence in the land of Israel/Palestine:

Hamas Reveals that Arafat Gave Green Light for 2000 War - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

We now know that Arafat - a man who never had any authority to recognize a Jewish state - was never a serious partner for peace, and was in fact someone who had to unleash violence the more Israel wanted to make concessions for peace. He had to do this for two reasons: 1)However "secular", he had no authority in what has always been an Islamically-dominated culture (the secular, after all, is just another, less ritualized, form of the sacred) to acknowledge any right for any kind of Jewish political presence in land that Islam has previously conquered and ruled. Arafat could play at making peace as long as this won his people useful concessions and foreign aid, but when it came to actually being asked to sign a deal that would recognize Israel, wrecking violence had to be unleashed as the only way out of a cultural impossibility. 2)In the Arab world view, those who sue for peace are seen to be weak and so deserve to be forced to submit.

None of this is to suggest that Israel doesn't have a moral responsibility to be always ready to negotiate and assist in various arrangements to facilitate Jewish life alongside Arab life, whenever the Arabs are serious about (in)formally recognizing the Jewish presence in Palestine. But Palestinian culture is today one where endless and widespread antisemitic libels and hatred are expressed as normative, where no one "serious" can acknowledge Israel's right to exist. For now, peace can only come as long as this Jew hatred is treated with the stony contempt and necessary force it deserves. The forceful reality of the Jewish presence in the land of Israel must be asserted until it is accepted, if only silently. One must not dream of final victories or final peace terms - there is only unnecessary violence in Utopian desires - but rather see that in fighting, step by step, for one's values and cultural presence, instead of showing fear and weakness, one engages the Other on a primitive level - the only realistic level in this case - and starts to create a reality, an order of shared existence that better recognizes powerful facts on the ground, and hence creates some degree of stability.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Blood libel as standard MSM narrative

This evening I decided to bite the bullet and see how the CBC - supported by Canada's taxpayers with a billion dollars annually - is reporting on the Gaza flotilla story. I knew it would be anti-Israel, but I was not expecting such utter and complete hatred of the Jew/Israel, depicted in officious tones as a fundamentally violent blood-sucker. The radio report began by saying that, unprovoked, Israel attacked with deadly force (who could believe such incredible fantasy, as if Israel just goes about randomly murdering people; and yet it was stated with absolute certainty and "authority"?). We were also told that Israel faces massive international critcism, with no mention of what Israel's friends are saying. We were told that this violence is troubling to friends and foes alike because it is not just a one-off but a pattern of repeated use of disproportionate force. And that was it. They picked up the report of a smarmy BBC p.o.s., Jeremy Bowen, and not a word from the pro-Israel side. Not a mention that this - the one ship that violently resisted the Israeli boarding party - was clearly a Turkish state provocation in the battle to lead the Umma by taking up the cause of Hamas. No mention that maybe some of the dead were killed by their own side in a hurry to have "martyrs" to flaunt before a credulous world.

It was a viscerally shocking experience that left me with a feeling no amount of intellectual study and understanding leaves, an experience of what it must have been like to be a Jew living under the most oppressively Jew-hating of modern states.

When opinion leaders in a country like Canada can fall so deeply into a bizarre narrative of unprovoked violence from evil Jews, we are all in serious trouble, whether we like Jews or not. Nothing good can come from such hatred but only the further erosion of a once free society.

But we must remember that no historical trend lasts forever (even if some evils, like Judeophobia, have always existed as long as there have been Jews). We must remain hopeful that narratives with some grasp on reality will one day gain ascendance and the horrible anachronism that is the CBC and the BBC will be put to their fitting ends by indignant tax payers. To this end, let us keep trying to promote writers and narratives that are not completely delusional. And let us even demand more and better from the state of Israel when it comes to defending itself. Israel should be on the offensive, making demands of Turkey for supporting (and apparently there are another two ships on the way) this attempt to crash a blockade of an armed enemy committed to the elimination of Israel (an act which should be seen as tantamount to war) and to get people killed in the attempt, as was surely desired.

To this end, I recommend another great piece from Barry Rubin.

See also Melanie Phillips.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Death Cult?

Up to 16 killed in Israeli attack on Gaza aid flotilla - The Globe and Mail

“This is a historic day … a day of freedom … a turning point in the battle to end the siege of Gaza,” said Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya on Gaza television. He sent his sympathies to the families of the dead and assured them the people would be viewed as “martyrs” in the campaign to liberate the Palestinian people.

For a Jewish perspective.

At least 10 activists dead, dozens hurt in flotilla clashes

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Belmont Club » Where the Old Flotilla Lay

Together those three developments — the shadow of the Iranian nukes, the missiles of Hezbollah and the loss of American support — may have fostered a regional perception that Israel is vulnerable. Certainly the flotilla organizers could not have been insensible to the rising pressure on Israel and were determined to exploit it, nor was it lost on the IDF that if they showed weakness in the face of the flotilla there would be more to follow. In one sense the flotilla put to sea on the perceived political tides and were met by IDF elements sailing on the contrary currents. The result was a clash inconsequential in itself, but not in the sparks that it may generate.
[...]
It’s about 3 am in Chicago and near enough that on the East Coast. Here’s the proverbial 3am call for good old Hillary and Barack Obama to field. Let’s hope they are up to it.

UPDATE: Pajamas has some good coverage; Findalis reminds us that those who support Hamas are complicit in a desire to kill all Jews everywhere.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hamas' War On Hope

A new YouTube video by the IDF "explains the background to operation Cast Lead, specifically the terrorist tactics that Hamas employs. It shows how Hamas smuggles in weaponry in order to arm itself and how it employs the civilian population and infastructure in order to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel. Hamas' use of human shields during operation Cast Lead caused many civilian casualties."

As a teen I walked away from my religious faith for many reasons; a small one had to do with all the stories of demonic possession I would read in the New Testament. How improbable, I thought. Evil spirits jealous of human potential for goodness, taking over a body in order to rot the soul within, by continually making it act against it's own best self-interest... how ludicrous, declared my teenage mind.

Today, my older self wonders instead, how else to explain the motivation of the palestinian leadership to wage war as they do? If their objective isn't to corrupt the souls of good people, by trying to force their opponents to kill other people's children, by finding every means available to cause their opponents to stain their conscience as they try to live a holy life, well what other possible agenda could fully explain such hellish behavior?

I cannot understand hamas' actions, their tactics, if their goal were purely material, that is, the annihilation of the state of Israel. Increasingly it only makes sense to me when taken as spiritual warfare, as a war against Hope, a war on the very Covenant between God and the People He chose to teach the rest of us what it means to resist material temptations that cause temporary pleasure in order to see, long-term, how to lead a godly life that may bring eternal nourishment to the soul.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Caroline Glick on the desire of Western appeasers to recognize Hamas

If you ever wondered why many Muslims actually believe that Islam will conquer all and rule the world...

...ON TUESDAY, Fatah strongman and the West's favorite son of Palestine Muhammad Dahlan tried to explain the facts of life to Hamas.

In an interview on PA television, Dahlan became the first senior Fatah official to openly admit that Fatah has never accepted Israel's right to exist. Dahlan denied reports that in the negotiations toward a Hamas-Fatah government, Fatah representatives are pressuring Hamas to recognize Israel. In his words, "I want to say in my own name and in the name of all my fellow members of the Fatah movement, we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist."

Dahlan went on to explain how the fiction worked. Arafat was the head of the PLO but also the head of Fatah. While as chairman of the PLO he recognized Israel and pledged to end terrorism and live at peace with the Jewish state, as head of Fatah he continued his war against Israel. Dahlan even bragged that to date, Fatah has killed 10 times more Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel's counterterror operations (the same operations the PLO committed to assisting) than Hamas has.

Dahlan explained that all Hamas needs to do is to follow in Fatah's footsteps. It should say that the PA government accepts the West's terms, but in the meantime, those terms will remain inapplicable to Hamas as a "resistance group." In that way, Dahlan explained, Hamas will be able to receive all the West's billions in financial assistance.

As he put it, "Do you imagine that Gaza's reconstruction is possible under the shadow of this bickering between us and the international community? [Gaza reconstruction] can only be dealt with by a government... that is acceptable to the international community so that we can... benefit from the international community."

Not surprisingly, Dahlan's statement went almost completely unnoted. Only The Jerusalem Post and one or two other Jewish publications and a few anti-jihadist blogs made note of it. The US, European and pro-peace process Hebrew media all ignored it. No government spokesman anywhere in the world commented on it.

Unfortunately, though, for the likes of Dahlan and his admirers in the West, Hamas isn't interested in joining Fatah's fiction. It refuses to say those magic words. So now the West looks for ways to lower its bar still further.

THE WEST'S nonresponse to Dahlan's statements, like its growing eagerness to treat with Hamas despite Hamas's unabashed refusal to even lie about its intentions, tells us something important about what the West is actually doing when it says that its paramount interest is to advance the so-called peace process. It tells us the same thing that the West's courtship of Damascus and Teheran tells us about what the West means when it speaks of peace processes.

Syrian President Bashar Assad this week told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper that he and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were just a stone's throw away from a peace deal last year. Last week Assad participated in what was supposed to be an anti-Iranian conference in Saudi Arabia.

Both of Assad's gestures were meant to make the Americans feel comfortable as they renew their diplomatic relations with Syria, cast aside their backing for the UN tribunal set up to investigate Syria's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, begin pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights, and recognize Hamas.

And just as Arafat understood that after he said the magic words the West would ignore his bad behavior, so Assad knew that Washington and Paris would pay no attention when upon returning from Riyadh he announced that Syria's relations with Iran will never be weakened. He knew they will never question his false account of his indirect negotiations with Israel. He and Olmert couldn't have been a stone's throw away from a peace accord, because Assad refused to have any direct contact with Israel.

If Damascus is the state equivalent of the PLO, then Teheran is the state equivalent of Hamas. Today, as the mullahs sprint toward the nuclear finish line, the Obama administration is pretending that the jury is still out on whether or not the Islamic republic wants a nuclear arsenal. As with Hamas, so with Teheran, the Americans have dropped even the pretense of requiring a change in Iran's rhetorical positions as a precondition for diplomatic recognition. The US now pursues its diplomatic reconciliation with Teheran with the sure knowledge that this peace process will lead to Iran's emergence as a nuclear power.

So the question is, if the American and European pursuits of peace with Fatah, Hamas, Syria and Iran have not caused them to change their behavior one iota, what are the Western powers talking about when they say that it is imperative to push the peace process or engage the Syrians and the Iranians? After all, Western leaders must know that these processes are complete farces.

Sadly, the answer is clear. Western leaders are not pursuing peace in these processes. They are pursuing appeasement. They call this appeasement process a peace process for two reasons. First, they know their countrymen don't like the sound of appeasement. And second, by claiming to be championing the noble goal of peace in our time, they feel free to attack anyone who points out the folly of their actions as a warmongering member of the Israel Lobby.

Center For Security Policy

Thursday, March 19, 2009

What are the limits to putting faith in freedom of speech?

Yesterday, B'nai Brith Canada released the following press release (received via email):

B'nai Brith Canada calls on Toronto police to investigate display of flags of all banned terrorist groups

TORONTO, March 18, 2009 - B'nai Brith Canada has called on Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair to expand its investigation into the display of flags belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a banned terrorist group in Canada. The Jewish human rights organization has asked Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair to include in his investigation the display of other terrorist flags, notably Hamas and Hezbollah, to determine whether Canada's anti-terrorism laws have been breached.

"We commend the Toronto Police for launching an investigation into the display of the flag of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group outlawed in this country," said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B'nai Brith Canada. "However, there have been many other instances of flags of other banned terrorist entities, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that have been in full public view at rallies, most recently early this year
during the period of the Gaza conflict. The appearance of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags at public rallies has often been accompanied by chants of 'Death to Jews'.

"We call on Chief Blair to expand his police investigation to include the display on our city streets of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags as well. We hope that other jurisdictions will also take similar action.

"The display of terrorist symbolism must be recognized as the promotion of a dangerous agenda of hatred and violence. Surely, the open promotion of such hatred runs counter to Canada's values of tolerance and respect for all people, and undermin

Today, Blazing Cat Fur was kind enough to forward me the following story:

Toronto, March 19 (IANS) Toronto police late Wednesday gave its clean chit to the use of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) flags by Tamil protesters at a rally here Monday.

Earlier, police had said they were investigating whether their action violated Canada’s new anti-terror laws.

A police spokesman said their lawyers found “nothing illegal” about the use of LTTE flags by the protesters. “The best advice that we have from our lawyers is that it does not contravene any law,” a spokesman was quoted as saying by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The LTTE flag features a tiger jumping through a ring of fire and two crossed rifles.

The current Conservative government banned the LTTE in 2006 for using suicide bombers and child soldiers in its goal for an independent homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils.

More than 50,000 Tamils had joined in a “human chain” in the heart of the city, urging Canada to lift its ban on the LTTE and seek support for an independent Tamil Eelam.

Justifying the use of the flag, Canadian Tamil Congress spokesman David Poopalapillai told IANS: “What we waved at the rally was the national flag of a future Tamil Eelam. It is not the flag of any organisation or the LTTE.”

He said: “Under the Canadian ban on the LTTE, one is (not) allowed to raise funds. But one is free to espouse any political cause in a peaceful manner. That’s what we did Monday in a peaceful manner.”

It is not the first time that protesters in Canada have waved the flags of banned organisations.

Supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas, which are also banned in Canada, have often waved their flags at protest rallies.

In fact, B’nai Brith, the national body of Canadian Jews, Wednesday urged the city police to expand its probe into the display of LTTE flags to include Hamas and Hezbollah.

It seems to me that it's for the best, right now, that the law distinguishes between funding terrorists and waving their flags, though I would argue the Tamil Tigers are not the same kind of terrorists as are Hamas or Hezbollah: the Tigers can still be taken somewhat seriously as a movement of national liberation that strives to build a viable state that will take responsibility for its people in the community of nation-states, that would one day, if successful, negotiate its existence along with Sri Lanka's. In contrast, I see neither Hamas or Hezbollah as really wanting a responsible Palestinian (or Lebanese) state that would negotiate with the realities of Israel's existence; rather they are fundamentally motivated by a desire to destroy Israel, and also to kill Jews wherever, according to some Utopian vision of a non-national world ruled by a renewed Caliphate and universal Sharia. In other words, those who wave the Hamas or Hezbollah flags are, to my mind, advocating genocide, not national liberation, and this, I believe, is how many Canadian Jews and others experience the sight of these flag wavers on our streets. It seems to me the Tamil Tigers, however evil, nonetheless indulge in suicide bombings for somewhat less Utopian or nihilistic reasons.

But such differences aside, I find B'nai Brith's position an interesting problem for us free speech advocates because in thinking how best to defend free speech I don't think we can have any general rules or principles that should be thought always to apply in all imaginable situations. And it's not a simple question of free speech needing to come to an end where incitement to violence (or fraud, libel) is happening, because how do you know where that line is: there are always degrees of incitement, or risk of violence, we have to weigh in allowing for free speech (keeping in mind that there is often a greater risk in not allowing for the mediation of tensions and resentments that free speech provides).

So it is a question of what kind of freedom can be tolerated in a given time or place, with a given assumption of risk, and thus of knowing what kind of time or place you're living in. I would imagine that when a once free nation becomes home to, say, ten or more percent of people who are committed Islamists, people who are committed to replacing the liberal constitution with Sharia law, you can't both seriously defend the existence of a free society and still admit the same freedom to wave genocidal terrorist flags, as you might have done when there was no serious threat of constitutional overthrow.

In other words, free speech may be the best way to keep a society open and to avoid conflicts stagnating and building up, with no ready way to release pressure, with none of the mediation and insight into reality that comes with free speech. In most times and places, free speech may well be the best way to avoid a social conflict ever leading a society towards civil war. But when constitutional overthrow or civil war is a clear enough possibility on the horizon, the tolerance for incitement, political or tactical organizing, and public provocations, inevitably will or should change to some degree.

In other words, the defense of free speech is not best done in abstract metaphysical language that attempts to build an all-purpose model of reality that can be applied in all times and places; rather our defense of freedom has to be tied to a way of thinking that is always modeling the reality in front of us, in the here and now. The cry of "free speech" must be tied to an understanding of the need forever to fight to maximize or reveal the yet untold uses of freedom, given that there will always be people who resent and try to limit human freedom because freedom threatens their model of reality.

What's more, while we have a high obligation to allow people freely to argue through the resentments and philosophies that have evolved within our own society - we need to allow ways to work through the conflicts that have evolved as part of our nation's history - I don't think we have the same need or obligation to import from other countries all manner of belief, especially in respect to people who would overthrow our constitutional system. I don't think the same degree of freedom of speech needs to be granted to imported revolutionary ideologies as we might grant to our home-grown would-be revolutionaries.

But to what degree, in this global village, are ideas or anyone really outside our system of democratic rule? There is now a single global economy and communications network; does that mean we are now a single global civilization? I think it probably does; but that still does not mean, it seems to me, that each and every nation has to entertain freedom for all ideologies that would overthrow the nation's constitution. It depends, not on some abstract principle, but on an ongoing engagement with reality and risk. The problem is that we live in an age when "risk" is often invoked by our control-freak elites to justify all kinds of unnecessary government strangling of our freedom. Unless we have a government that loves and respects our freedom, because it sees itself as representative of same, those of us fighting for a free society will tend to defend the freedom of all even at the risk of providing fertile ground for the kinds of Islamist movements that are actively suppressed by many states in the Islamic world. So, I think we need to learn about and dance through this reality with more than one possible move or idea in mind.

In any case, I am interested in what readers think of B'nai Brith's proposal.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Michael Ignatieff on Israel Apartheid Week

Carl in Jerusalem has a bit of video from Arabic al-Jazeera, an interview with Hamas terrorists in Gaza. One of them says

"...Then the [Israeli] forces started entering the town, and our fighters moved back in there as well, setting up booby traps. Each man booby-trapped his own home, so all of Gaza was set to explode. We were ready to die on our own soil in our very own houses. I was ready to fight from my home."

So what does one say about people who would sacrifice their own families and then look to the world to rail against Israeli atrocities? Here's Michael Ignatieff, unelected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in today's National Post (HT Catfur):

Throughout our history, Canadians have strived to understand each other across the solitudes that have broken other countries to pieces. Our common national purpose has been built on our diversity.

We respect differences — of opinion, nationality, race and creed. We abandon that respect at our peril.
“Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW), now underway on university campuses across Canada, betrays the values of mutual respect that Canada has always promoted.

International law defines “apartheid” as a crime against humanity. Labelling Israel as an “apartheid” state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.

Criticism of Israel is legitimate. Attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity is not.
IAW is part of a global campaign of proclamations, boycotts and calls for divestment, which originated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Like “Durban I,” IAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are — Israeli and Jewish.

IAW goes beyond reasonable criticism into demonization. It leaves Jewish and Israeli students wary of expressing their opinions, for fear of intimidation.

No Canadian should ever have to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe. All Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.

The Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees has joined the chorus of denunciations of Israel on our campuses. The CUPE Ontario resolution passed last week to boycott Israeli academics is an unacceptable violation of academic freedom.

Canada enjoys strong academic, economic and cultural ties with Israel and Israeli institutions, and these relationships benefit both our countries. Collaborative research between Canadian and Israeli academics is mutually rewarding, and should be encouraged. The CUPE resolution is an attack on the free exchange that is at the heart of our university system.

The Liberal Party of Canada condemns the CUPE resolution in the strongest possible terms.
[...]
Political leaders should also take care not to deepen the distrust between Canadian communities over the Middle East. Politicians who use the ongoing conflict in the Middle East as a wedge to divide Canadians for their own political gain can succeed only in accentuating acrimony and deepening tensions.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict evokes passionate disagreement. It should not damage academic freedom and it should not divide Canadian communities. We can move forward if we work together to promote the common objective of Canadian policy ever since 1948 — a secure Israel living side-by-side in peace with an independent Palestine.

Is that moral clarity, two-faced hypocrisy and moral relativism, unrealistic wishful thinking? You be the judge. I would ask, how can you not divide Canadians, to some extent, if some of them support the likes of Hamas, as some do?

Friday, February 06, 2009

B'nai Brith waking up to the nature of their fellow "stakeholders" in the Canadian Human Rights Commission

B'nai Brith may be discovering another point of disagreement with the Canadian Human Rights Commission: the latter's labeling of the Canadian Arab Federation as a "stakeholder" (see Blazing Cat Fur and Covenant Zone: Canadian Human Rights Commission and Greg Felton: how many degrees of separation?).

Not only has the CAF been publishing the likes of Greg Felton and been involved in distributing antisemitic fliers at the 2006 Liberal party leadership convention, but its leader has lately taken to calling our politicians "professional whores".

And this is the organization that receives government funding to help "settle" immigrants and "fight" hate crime.

B'nai Brith has now sent out the following press release (received via email):

'Canadian Arab Federation on notice for dissemination
of pro-terrorist propaganda from abroad,' says B'nai Brith Canada

TORONTO, February 5, 2009 – B'nai Brith Canada has called for a full investigation of Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) activities, following the discovery that the organization disseminated pro-terrorist propaganda in a January 16th email sent to subscribers to its Gaza Daily Bulletin. Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani had apparently unwittingly shared the CAF newsletter's video links that promoted terrorism in an email to her parliamentary colleagues, for which she was rebuked by her Party leader Gilles Duceppe and by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"This is a clear case of a Canadian-based organization actively involved in the promotion of pro-terrorist propaganda that should be of concern to everyone," said Frank Dimant, B'nai Brith Canada's Executive Vice President

"Links to video clips distributed by CAF featured prominently disturbing images of Hamas operatives undergoing terrorist training, photos of young children being indoctrinated into violence, and the image of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in exile in Syria, rallying his followers. The recurring images of the flags of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two terrorist groups outlawed in Canada and many other countries around the world, smacks of the promotion of terrorist objectives, ideologies and methods.

"It is unconscionable that CAF, which bills itself as a mainstream Arab organization actively involved in the settlement of new immigrants to this country, has engaged in this type of activity.

"We call on CAF to accept full responsibility for its actions and to voluntarily come forward with the firm guarantee that the organization will refrain in future from the dissemination of hate propaganda that glorifies terrorism. Should it fail to do so, the Government must then step in and take appropriate steps to safeguard the Canadian public from the impact that such dangerous propaganda can have and its direct contribution to the ever-growing problem of radicalization and extremism, both at home and abroad."

While B'nai Brith does not raise the issue, those of us interested in the postmodern "human rights" world view must wonder if this latest incident is just another piece of evidence that either the Canadian Human Rights Commission (or BB for that matter) doesn't fully know what it is doing, doesn't know the logical end point of the left-liberal "human rights" world view, founded in reaction to the Holocaust: postmodern Political Correctness, when fully revealed, reveals itself as a new form of antisemitism, of rivalry over Jewish historical priority, in this case over the symbol of the unquestionable victim of the "Nazi/Jew" dynamic, the genocidal event that is remembered more than any other for revealing the unquestionably evil capacity of a modern Western society, implicating all its professions and most of its members. This postmodern competition over the most horrific revelation of Jewish historical centrality is why we now see the many incredibly hateful and insane comparisons of Israel with the Nazi state.

Or, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission and other PC elements in Canadian government know and accept its own latent antisemitism in pandering to this hate's Arab-"Canadian" avatars?

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Grand Wizards of Oz

A picture of a few words is worth a ... well, a lot. Thanks to Gramfan at JihadWatch.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/nazis_needed/

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Pro-Hamas Demos Turn Ugly Throughout Belgium; Pro-Israel Rallies Don't

One side burns flags, the other waves them. In Belgium, however, the flag-burning side are escalating the flames of rage beyond mere symbolic acts... What follows are a series of translated articles from the Belgian media over the last week on the bad fruit falling from the pro-Hamas tree.

Things are getting so bad that it has resulted in the government having to raise the threat level scale normally used for measuring terrorism:

The [Foreign Affairs Crisis Center] decided to raise the level of alert due to the impact that Israel's actions in Gaza are having in Belgium. "The participation in the organized protests increases with each day. We recognize that the situation is becoming more explosive", notes Peter Mertens. He therefore decided to increase attention and keep a closer eye on Israeli and palestinian interests in Belgium.
Concretely, this means that "the police presence would be redirected and added to, as necessary." A meeting will be held [last Tuesday] with the Anvers and Brussels police to determine which groups might require additional security precautions.
Mr. Mertens specifies that the threat level has nothing to do with risks from terrorism, and is more the case of a threat against public order.

No doubt incidents like the one taking place on Friday, January 2nd, led to this decision to ratchet up security precautions throughout the nation. At an anti-Israel demonstration of a thousand people on the steps of the Brussels Stock Exchange Friday afternoon, young protestors launched a volley of stones that damaged six cars. A store window was also smashed after the protest. No arrests were made.

The Belgian city of Charleroi, previously given its 15 minutes of infamy through the shocking 2004 suicide bombing of Charleroi resident Muriel Degauque in Iraq, saw the results of this increase in security in action, as the forces of law and order succesfully prevented several dozen masked youths from engaging in vandalism at the tail-end of an anti-Israel protest:

A pro-palestinian protest gave way to several outbursts Saturday afternoon, in the neighborhood of Ville-Haute, in Charleroi ...
Several hundred protestors first gathered together while displaying banners at la place Charles II. A delegation submitted a statement of protest to burgomeister Jean-Jacques Viseur.
This part of the protest went without incident.
However, as the protest dispersed, several dozen youths, several with their faces masked, hurtled down the nearby rue de la Montagne, threatening to smash windows, but were prevented from doing so.
The police had taken the precaution to equip themselves with water pumps but these ended up not being necessary.... Local police made several arrests likely to lead to a hearing by the deputy public prosecutor in court.

Last Monday, January 5th, unknown persons started a fire in front of a Brussels synagogue, blackening the front door. Investigators were not certain about how the fire started, but discounted the possibility of it being a molotov cocktail. The spokesperson for the police suggested, through a tactless analogy, that it might simply be a case of practical jokers taking advantage of the situation in Gaza to throw a little "oil on the fire"...

2 molotov coctails were, however, found among the 93 protestors arrested at a spontaneous, unauthorized "peace" protest in Antwerp two days before, on Saturday January 3rd. They had text-messaged each other about the protest, but made no provisions with authorities to seek the proper permits for their public demonstration; the police, in consultation with Anvers mayor Patrick Janssens, told the gathered crowd to leave, arresting those who would not disperse as directed.

This protest ended better than the one which took place in Antwerp on Wednesday December 31st. Anti-Israeli protestors descended upon Antwerp's Jewish community, which had been heavily defended by a strong police presence. (Watch the following (Flemish-language?) tv news account of the incident, as of the 1:00 mark...)

A protest undertaken on January 9th with the participation of a left-wing Belgian political party turned into a bit of a mess thanks to the undisciplined exuberance of the "anti-violence" protestors in attendance. Almost a thousand people had assembled on that late Friday afternoon at the place du Marché in Liège, where the crowd's spontaneous pro-jihad chants drowned out the official speakers' standard anti-war rhetoric:

The protest went on through a certain confusion, as the organizers' speeches were rendered inaudible by the more virulent cries coming from a core group of young protestors. In-between the "Israel assassin", "Zionist terrorist", "Bush, Olmert, assassins", one could also hear praising the glory of hamas, hezbollah and jihad. ...
The Ecolo party had announced its participation in the protest... the green party announced that they had proposed a resolution demanding that Europe put pressure on Israel for an immediate cease-fire, a proposition that will be tabled in the Chamber's foreign relations commission this coming January 13th.

Police in Brussels are very concerned about a scheduled protest this coming Sunday, January 11th. Over 100 organizations, including Belgian political parties such as the environmentalist Ecolo party, the center-left cdH (Humanist Democratic Centre) and the Socialist Party, are participating in an event expected to draw several thousand protestors. Expectations from the organizers are that the numbers will in fact top those of their previous protest in Brussels on Wednesday December 31st. Because of the bad publicity resulting from their previous efforts, thoughtful guidelines are being established by the organizers:

The League of Belgian Muslims (LMB) has asked the participants to not burn flags during the protest, and to not shout "certain slogans".
...
Policing measures will be very important. Sensitive areas such as synagogues and certain embassies will be secured...

In the middle of all this flag-burning, stone-throwing, and pro-jihad chanting, Belgium's Jewish community organized a demonstration in support of Israel. The CCOJB ("Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives de Belgique", the "Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium") held a pro-Israel rally in front of Iran's embassy in Brussels. From the CCOJB's official site:

1,000 people were in attendance to denounce the responsability of Iran in supporting the terrorist organization Hamas. CCOJB President Joel Rubinfeld and federal deputy Denis Ducarme delivered speeches offering their support for the populations [Israeli and Palestinian] in the region who are taken hostage by Hamas and its backers in Iran.

Need we even ask, if police found any molotov cocktails among these protestors..? Was there even a remote chance that they would burn flags, riot, and storm the embassy in a fit of violent rage..?

"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs from thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit..."
__Matthew 7:16-18

Friday, January 09, 2009

A Night of Hope. And Zeal.

Johnathon Narvey has a short piece up on the rally last evening on the pro-Israel meeting in Vancouver, Canada. Here's the first paragraph:

The proud supporters of Hamas, including so-called "peace activists" formally allied with religious extremists, seem to own our streets in Vancouver and other Canadian cities of late. It's not all bad news; I joined a protest Thursday evening in solidarity with Israel as it continues to bring the war to Hamas' home turf.
http://jnarvey.com/2009/01/09/canadian-politicians-support-israel/comment-page-1/#comment-4535

There was an over-flow crowd at the Schara Tzedek synagogue last evening, maybe a thousand people, the centre seats, both sections on either side, and the balcony filled to capacity and beyond, a few people in the foyer. As some would leave, others would enter and take their places. They came, this large congregation of concerned people, to show support for Israel in this time of need. The need is to show support of Israel. Shameful as it is, too few are doing so. Many support the handful of hate-gorged HAMAS protesters who stood across two street corners to bleat a poorly constructed rehash of the old '60's chant, "Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?" Today's hippie-wannbes came up with the dysphonic, "Hey, Hey, Israel. How many kids did you kill today?"

I slid up and down the staircase in the snow to the main entrance where I presented my opened-up bag for inspection, assuming that would be required to allow me in; but to my surprise, no go: the bag had to stay outside or me too. I stuffed books in my coat pockets till I ran out of room, and then carried the rest in my hands. I looked for friends and associates inside the lobby, seeing many people friendly but none known to me. I made my way indoors and spotted one person I know-- and one I knew. Nobody's perfect, and maybe that one is me. So I sat near the one I know, and chatted up the man next to me. I didn't know what to expect from the evening, and I was looking for friends rather than at the programme for the evening. I might have benefitted from doing the latter, as the former was a bomb.

I found myself in a subdued and, dare I say it? a kind of normal and friendly gathering of people who came to listen to intellectuals speaking and to watch videos from Israel. I'm always pleased by that, but I got caught entirely off-guard by the singing the national anthem sprung on me: I stood up and began the first words of "America the Beautiful" [ :o ] before I realized I'm not in America. Canada, to my embarrassment, has a national anthem of its own, which I don't know the words to. I did get lucky, though, because it was followed by a solemn singing of Hatikvah. I could at least mumble my way through that in Hebrew. Canadians are either extremely generous or very complacent about the folks they let into this place to stay for far too long. Well, God Bless Canada. Then began a series of sitting down and standing up again over the course of a few hours, sometimes to clap for speakers, sometimes for prayer, sometimes, (I do wonder,) only to circulate the blood. And memorable? Two things: the man sitting in front of me who chuckled halfway through an anecdote, (impressing me with his cleverness in knowing what was coming down the proverbial road long in advance of its arrival), and the singing of Hatikva. And the other second thing memorable was the feeling of calm and hope that settled through the group as we lived there together in peace for a few hours. My last rally-going was one filled with hate that filled me with hatred, a pro-HAMAS rally. This pro-Israel rally, a misnomer for it, this gathering of people in a state of hope and peace, was beauty in itself. I remember this feeling from other occasions. I want to live with that feeling all of my life. Another second memorable thing I recall was the low-key singing of what I am pleased to call a Jewish gospel tune, a thousand middle-class people singing a joyous tune like those I attended at the Pentecostal church in New Orleans when I was a boy, though here, unlike the Black ladies and the fire-and-brimstone preacher singing Gospel!-- Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!-- I saw among the thousand, a hundred Chasidic men looking like band members from Z-Z Top slowly dancing along and singing and living a Love. A Love and the Hope. Hatikva.

What do you do with a dozen creepy lunatics on the street corner who threaten these people and their children with murder?

Zeal? Hamas is the Arabic word for zeal. I'm happy to say that many Christians have gotten over that particular evil, most of it directed at Jews over the centuries. The last second thing I remember, and the one thing I'm going to forget as much as I forget my math lessons, is the dhimmi Anglican who had to pose as a nice guy in touch with his sensitivities and who expressed them for us in public and ya ya.

But though that kind of thing isn't for me, neither was the gathering I attended meant for me: it was for people concerned about their lives and the lives of their children, about the lives of those under threat of death by jihadis and lunatic Left dhimmi fascist anti-Semites, and plainly, demonstrably stupid people who involve themselves in a struggle they do not understand. Zeal abounds among the hate-filled, but I witnessed none of it inside the synagogue, even among people who are living with the threat of murder, even among those who know family and friends have been murdered by those who love zeal over life, who hate for its own sake, for the sake of zeal itself. Those people I sat with, they have Hope. And that is the last thing, second to none, I will remember from the evening. Hatikva.

Hebrew	Transliteration	English translation
כֹּל עוֹד בַּלֵּבָב פְּנִימָה	Kol 'od balleivav penimah	As long as in the heart, within,
נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה,	Nefesh yehudi homiyah,	A Jewish soul still yearns,
וּלְפַאֲתֵי מִזְרָח, קָדִימָה,	Ul(e)fa'atei mizrach kadimah,	And onward, towards the ends of the east,
עַיִן לְצִיּוֹן צוֹפִיָּה;	'Ayin letziyon tzofiyah;	An eye still gazes toward Zion;

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ,	'Od lo avdah tikvateinu,	Our hope is not yet lost,
הַתִּקְוָה בַּת שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִם,	Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim,	The hope of two thousand years,
לִהְיוֹת עַם חָפְשִׁי בְּאַרְצֵנוּ,	Lihyot 'am chofshi be'artzeinu,	To be a free people in our land,
אֶרֶץ צִיּוֹן וִירוּשָׁלַיִם.	Eretz-tziyon vy(e)rushalayim.	The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Clever lines

Irwin N. Graulich:

Europe learned absolutely nothing from WWII. Instead of learning that decent, moral nations must "fight evil," the Europeans learned that "fighting is evil."
[...]
Next, we have the UN--that infamous massage parlor located on First Avenue in New York City. Several NYC politicians have suggested turning it into a homeless shelter, which would certainly do a great deal more good for society. Evil does not disturb the UN. Israel disturbs the UN!
[...]
21st century technology has given rise to visual terrorism where one shows dead families in a UNRWA school without the context of Hamas terrorists shooting grenade launchers from windows. CNN leads this new propaganda group with names like Christian Amanpour, Ben Wedeman, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Rick Sanchez and Don Lemon---all of whom have shown a particular bias against Israel for defending itself from terrorism.

Had these so called reporters been covering Dresden during WWII, the Allies would have been forced to stop their attacks and Americans today would be speaking German or would be lampshades. Of course, we would hear the American point of view and the Nazi point of view, a sign of media fairness. And good ol' Larry King would be interviewing Herr Hitler with all of the necessary respect he deserved.
[...]
Has there ever been a war where the opposing army actually called civilians on the telephone, dropped leaflets, sent emails or text messages in order to warn them to get out of harms way? It sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone--yet no one focuses on this incredible moral action by Israel. I mean rubber bullets--the Israeli army invented them out of a deep sense of compassion and morality.

Sorry, Americans and moral people everywhere are much smarter than that--after all, have you seen the deformed, incinerated and horrific baby pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet, any decent human being knows it was the Atom Bomb that ended WWII, saving many more lives in the long run. That is the sad reality of war. Who told you there is no military solution to some things?

And why the uproar in the Arab and Muslim world today? Because "honor" is the most important value in their lives--and those pathetic weak Jews just keep wiping the floor with them at every turn. Israel continuously shames every Arab and Muslim country by defeating them in battle or defeating them in progress.
[...]
The lives of average citizens in most Arab and Muslim countries are horrendous. Dictators from Syria to Lebanon to Iran to Gaza need to blame their horrible living conditions on someone--and naturally it cannot be the dictators they worship and fear.

The eliminationist agenda

15 000 expected to march tomorrow in Toronto under the banner of "Israel Must Not Exist Any Longer" (and we don't care how many martyrs we have to have to promote and realize our fantasy: we can imagine no other world). (SDA)

How many Muslim-Canadians will sign off on what is for many a matter of divinely-ordained hate mongering? How many of the marchers will be left dhimmi fascist non-Muslims? One of the positives of actions such as Israel's attack on Hamas is that it allows us to gather such necessary intelligence, that we might build up our defences in the fight for modernity in Canada. There will be a lot of Muslims, one expects. And if this observation of Rene Girard's is right, there will be a lot of ldf nincompoops out to prove their multiculti embrace of the Other/other in order to validate themselves as the righteous not clouded in ethnocentrism. We might see them differently however:

We are so ethnocentric, says Girard, that we think that only others can be in the right when claiming the superiority of their own religion:

"Islam maintains a relationship with death that convinces me that this religion absolutely fails to engage with ancient myths. Islam's mystic relationship with death makes death even more mysterious. Islam is a religion of sacrifice. The Christian, however, doesn't die to be imitated. We have to remember the words of Christ to Paul: 'Why are you persecuting me?' In Christianity, which destroys every mythology, there is a constant dialectic between the victim and the persecutor; in Islam, this does not exist. Islam eliminates the problematic victim. In this sense, there has always been a conflict between Christianity and Islam. In Islam, the most important thing is missing: a Cross. As in Christianity, Islam rehabilitates the innocent victim, but it does so in a militant way. The Cross, on the contrary, puts an end to the ancient and violent myths. The Cross is the symbol of the inversion of violence, of the resistance to lynching. Today the Cross opposes the Dionysian sacrifice of the new myths. Christianity, differing from Islam, prohibits sacrifice."

Surprise, surprise, evidence of more "Pallywood" photoshopping being gobbled up by the Western blood-loving press

Trouble is, there isn't even any blood on this "live ammo"-struck demonstrator/victim. Hell, I guess, a "victim" is a victim; if that's what you worship you put the "photo" up. It's a week old but I haven't had lot of time to surf lately: Breath of the Beast nails NPR: Can Public Broadcasting Really be THIS Contemptible?

UPDATE: Via SDA who have the video in question:

The segment with Gilbert shows him and another doctor badly faking chest compressions and other life-saving measures on a live boy faking death in what can only be described as political theater. The video claims to be filmed by the brother of a Palestinian teen that claims the boy was one of two purposefully killed by a missile fired at them by an Israeli drone as they played.

[...] CNN editors who swallowed the story of the poorly-acted video unquestioningly—no doubt because it fit the anti-Israeli narrative familiar to CNN viewers and critics—have now pulled the video without explanation, correction, or retraction.

It has also been determined that the videographer who filmed his brother's "death" is the general manager of a company that hosts web sites for Hamas.

Fake but accurate! While the video is gone, the story remains up at CNN.

What is the battle in Gaza about?

There are a couple of good (if not complete) answers in today's Canada Free Press. First, Ari Bussel writes:

The fight has transferred to new fronts, the world over. Demonstrations throughout the USA and Europe are showing the true face of anti-Semitism, the real hatred for Israel and the Jews. Here is a report by a law enforcement officer in Los Angeles who visited Israel for the first time less than a month ago:
Thanks for the updates on what has been gong on. I think a lot of us have a much better understanding of the situation since our trip. Over here (in LA) we have been dealing with about three protests a week at the Israeli Consulate. It’s pretty heated on both sides of the debate (Israel supporters on one side of the street and Palestinian supporters on the other).

I was amazed to see the women and children from the Palestinian side run across the street and curse and give the finger to the Israeli side.....and most of these kids were under 10 years old. We also saw someone flying the hezbollah flag and place it on a traffic light among other flags.

The outright support of a terrorist organization (one that had killed numerous Americans) in the US like that sickened me. It makes me wonder what people are truly thinking and supporting behind closed doors. Anyway, stay safe.
You are all soldiers on the front line. You are all fighting for the world, for all the freedoms we have grown so accustomed to enjoy. The front line in Gaza and the 26- mile radius around it – current reach of rockets - has extended. You are now involved – in Los Angeles and New York and Miami, in London and Paris and Antwerp, in South Africa and New Zealand and Australia, in Hong Kong and Japan and Taiwan--and there is no backing out. With clarity of thought and moral conviction, we march together forward. We must be victorious.

Second, Beryl Wajsman gives a good account of the enemy and the essential point: this is a war against the West and modernity and freedom, not simply or ultimately about Israel, the country that is doing our fighting for us:

Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Brigades and all the other proxies of Iranian murder have but one common aim. The destruction of Israel and the killing of all “infidels”, Christian and Jew. It is written in their charters and they should be taken at their word. They care not a whit for their own people because their power derives from the culture of death that they perpetrate against their own citizens using state faith as a weapon of submission. Their challenge is not only to Israel, but to the west at large. The Islamists that are marching in western cities are directed by shrewd and murderous operatives of regimes spawned in the dark ages of history. Israel is but the frontline of civilization. And Israel is once again fighting the west’s war first.

No nation can sit idly by while 7000 rockets over six years are hurled at it. Even Egypt closed its borders to the murderous Gazan regime. Journalists speak of Hamas as the duly elected government of Gaza. Yet they conveniently forget to mention that Hamas only got elected because they killed or drove out most of their Fatah opponents prior to the vote. It was a putsch as brutal as any the world has seen in the post war era.

To those who argue for cease-fire and negotiations, let them explain how to negotiate with an enemy that swore peace if Israel withdrew from Gaza, yet attacked with greater vehemence once Israel did. To those who advocate a truce, let them answer what to do with an enemy that broke the truce brokered not by the west but by their Arab cousins in Egypt. To those who advance claims for compromise and common ground, let them respond how to find common ground with an enemy that interprets every peaceful gesture as weakness and an invitation for attack.

It has been said that Hamas seeks to rebuild Gaza. Then why did it destroy all the infrastructure, waterworks, greenhouses and industrial plant left by Israel? It has been suggested that Hamas merely needs funding and it will be peaceful. Then why is it that even the Arab League, flush with petrodollars, has given nothing. The answers are simple. Hamas willingly lives in destruction and desolation because it abides by the creed of division, discord and death. And with this creed it happily terrorizes its own people and the world. This is the mirror of the “caliphate” that these theocratic tyrants and their allies would impose on the free world.

President Kennedy pronounced in his inaugaural address that “civility is not a sign of weakness and sincerity is always subject to proof.” Hamas has always taken civility for weakness and its sincerity has never been proven. It is time to eradicate this evil from the earth.

On this, see also the blog of our reader Findalis:

...the confrontation is not between Hamas with its rockets and Israel. The confrontation is between Hamas, as one of the entities that compose radical Islam, and the free world. Its declared goal is to establish a world Islamic caliphate as part of an anti Semitic ideology that also calls for the annihilation of the Jews. Explanations will follow. And since political Islam has already annihilated millions without any announcement, we should take it seriously when there is an announcement about annihilation.

Is Hamas part of the global Jihad? Section 7 of the organization’s manifesto explains that it is not a local movement, nor even a national movement. The heading is “The global nature of the Islamic resistance movement.” And later, “Because the Muslims are spread throughout the entire world, the movement is global.”

Is this a movement that calls for the annihilation of the Jews? That is what is written in a continuation of the same section. “The messenger (Mohammed) said, “The Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees, and then the stones and the trees will say, ‘Oh, Muslim, Abd Allah, there is a Jew who is hiding, come and kill him.” And this is in addition to blaming the Jews for all the wars in the world, for world domination, etc.

Sheikh Muhsin Abu Ita stated on the Al Aktza channel that “The annihilation of the Jews is a wonderful blessing.” Dr. Ahmed Bahar, acting chairman of the Palestinian parliament stated that “the Jews are cancer, and they and the Americans should be destroyed to the last person.”

According to the Palestinian constitution, this man, Bahar, will become the head of the Palestinian Authority if Abu Mazen ceases to function. Dr. Yunis Al Astal, a member of the Palestinian parliament, one of the senior Hamas officials, who served as dean of the faculty are of Shariyah and chairman of the Islamic Law Department at Islamic University, stated that the annihilation order is a matter for our time and not for the future.

The book by Dr. Matthias Kuntzel, “Jihad and Jew-Hatred,” elaborates on the annihilation ideology of radical Islam, including among Hamas. We have not yet succeeded in imparting this awareness to the world. It is still not too late.
This is already starting with Muslims all over the world calling for a second Holocaust against the Jews in every nation of the world.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Israel, the mythic state of Palestine, and gambling

This post is much indebted to an unpublished essay written by a friend a few years ago. Should he pass by, my thanks as usual.
--------------------

Two things jumped out at me reading the Globe and Mail Wednesday morning. 1) There are at least some Palestinians (loyal to Fatah), facing down some cold and bloody reality, who can speak what seems to be a good degree of truth:

"Hamas works for Iran. They brought us back to the Stone Age," says Mohammed Abu Zakari, 48, who lost one of his legs after a Hamas shooting in the civil conflict. He has left his wife and 12 of his 13 children behind in Gaza. His 13th child, 19-year-old Ahmed, is with him, another Hamas victim whose ankle has been reconstructed.

"I'm happy to see them eradicated," he said, blaming Hamas for the carnage and destruction now taking place in Gaza.

Mahmoud as-Shatat, 23, a former student leader for Fatah, agrees. "Hamas consider us infidels," he said. "They brutalized us, their own people. I have no sympathy for them."

And what of the pictures on TV showing the ordinary people of Gaza being shelled?

"Hamas shoots from between houses," Mr. as-Shatat said. "They hope Israel will fire at them and kill some civilians."

An uneasy quiet then settled over the room.

Mr. Abu Nahel broke the silence: "I want those who shot me to die," he said. "But those are our families being shelled," including the fiancée he left behind in Gaza City."

2) I was wondering whether the Globe picked, for its letters to the editor page, an example of the more pathetic attempts at reasoning that it has received in support of CUPE Ontario (the union, led by terrorist sympathizer Sid Ryan, that represents, among others, teaching assistants and sessional instructors in the province's universities) and its call to ban Israeli academics from teaching in Canada:

AJAMU NANGWAYA

January 7, 2009

Toronto -- As a doctoral student, academic worker and a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, I stand in solidarity with the call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions. As Canadian academics, the minimum that we can do to help force Israel to comply with United Nations resolutions on the national self-determination of the Palestinians is to boycott academic and cultural institutions.

The call for a boycott is not about academic freedom, but the freedom of the Palestinians and their right to not be the recipients of collective punishment.

-------------

National self-determination? How is it possible for Sid's legions to be so trapped in a fantasy of their own self-righteousness not to see that invoking "national autonomy" in the context of Hamas-controlled Gaza is to make an utter sham of the concept of national self-rule? Islamist and tribal war lords, ruling over you with deadly force in the best of times, and hiding in your basement, firing and drawing fire on innocent victims in the worst, are not compatible with any plausible account of national self-determination. And it is not just because Hamas brutally murder or maim anyone they suspect of opposing their rule (see story above), but because they refuse on principle to act like any kind of responsible national government would. They refuse to negotiate the existence, or anything much else, of a much more powerful neighbor, in the hope that one day they can "negotiate" from strength. And they don't have to come to terms now with the hard reality, for them, of the existence of Israel as a demographic and military force, because they are protected from being wiped out by unlimited warfare by a Utopian ideology - the shrieks that come from the world when Israel does anything that can count as "disproportionate response" - promoted at the UN and by much of the Western left-liberal elite.

Endless people can make their careers championing some non-existent "peace process" only to give the likes of Hamas the ability to pretend as if it is the UN's or someone else's responsibility to "negotiate" their grievances vis a vis Israel, to act like a judge according winner status and hefty remuneration to an obviously aggieved party in a lawwuit. It is a useful stalling opportunity because at heart Hamas has nothing to say to Israel, beyond short-term truces and pragmatic deals, about living together in the long term.

Those who cry about the necessary evil that Israel does - and it is evil - in trying to enforce a rule of deterrence and punishment for those who use civilians as human shields, or even those who allow themselves to be used as shields, to provide victims/"martyrs" to feed the narrative of the anti-Israel forces in the global media and in our universities, are really the ones who are actively promoting the conditions, not for peace, but for an endless toll of just such casualties, all in the name of a "process", so that the likes of Hamas can continue to exist and never have to engage with the realities of living like a responsible state or nation in a world of other nations, dealing with the reality of human conflict and pursuing self-interests in a more or less rational and transparent manner. Hamas, with its Muslim Brotherhood ideology, opposes our Western-led, now global, modernity. It is not interested in playing a part in the kind of international order that is compatible with modernity and the now single global economy.

The fantasy of the CUPE crowd - the fantasy that they are working in the cause of peace and, in the long term, some new Utopia, can only survive as long as anyone takes their silly little threats, a pathetic version of the Hamas terrorist rockets, seriously. It should be all too apparent to people that what the potential Israeli academic teaching in Canada threatens, to CUPE union masters, is not any serious moral position. Rather what is threatened is the validity of a certain kind of magical thinking that is common to both CUPE and Hamas thugs. This is the kind of magic that is commonly found among postmodern academics sure in their ideologies that reality is little but a construction of one or another human's will to power.

Consider first, Hamas, who say: I'll shoot rockets at you, Israel, but if you respond and cross the line into my territory, well, you don't know what's going to hit you. This kind of threat is magical because it works, for no obvious reason, as long as the threatened take the threat seriously, not knowing what one side or another is really capable of doing when push comes to shove.

As for CUPE's share in the Global Intifada's magic act, the union chiefs (in what may be for them a typical bargaining tactic) threaten: yo, Israeli academics, openly and publicly fight against your government, support the present (anti) reality of Gaza, i.e. support our fantasy of there being a responsible movement for national government in Palestine, that Israel somehow refuses to recognize, or we'll ban you from teaching here. We must protect the Gazans (and our students), from ever having to leave a certain fantasy bubble and deal honestly, openly, transparently with Israeli reality, its demographic and military presence in the "aboriginal" Palestinian "homeland". Real negotiations are risky - believe us we know - so let's pretend it's Israel that has always historically refused to deal in good faith. It's better to threaten and see what kind of reality we can create without negotiation, without free intellectual inquiry in our universities.

As we will suggest below, this is not just about Israel, but a larger reality about the nature of nation-states that CUPE academic ideologues really wish to keep at bay, lest it destroy their magical fantasies about constructing a world without war.

For both parties, Israel is to be approached, "negotiated", not by any responsible goverment coming to terms with the reality of Israel as the only truly modern economy and military in the middle east, but by threats that hope to work magic: cross our line in the sand and we'll go hysterical!!

So, since I'm short on time, let me try to make the point in hysterical guise (imagine late night in the grad student housing):

"We'll ban Israeli books next, and internet sites, and oppressive Jewish symbols: that'll teach our students and the world about national self-determination. How dare they determine to go war, to kill; no nation has the right to do that, if not in perfect UN-sanctioned, proportionate, tit for tat..."

Dreaming now:

We'll be cheering at our rallies: "UN UN UN, big mama with cool jobs in New York, Geneva, Gaza, and other cool towns: give every child her share of the pie... hell on those who grow powerful and create social differences by actually succeeding in the oppressive global economy."

"Oh look at the victims, what's the latest death count?"

"Imagine, a world without smug Jew-y, Yankee nations: ban ban ban!"

"Israel, you don't know how mad a CUPE girl with the hots for Sid Ryan can get! (Heteronormative guilt aside, err on top...)"

Threats, like those from a union of teaching assistants calling to ban all Israeli academics, that rely on a certain magic to work really appeal to our fantastic imagination. Consider, for example, "Know your limit, play within it": that's that avertising slogan the British Columbia government uses to appear responsible, to assuage its guilt over encouraging our (former?) citizens to become fantasizing gamblers in our now ubiquitous lotteries and casinos. Of course, while appearing to assert responsibility, it is really also a legitimization and call to gamble, within limits, to gamble but without real risk.

A little fantasy of striking the big one may be fine if you're an occasional gambler, spending your entertainment allowance where you like. Time and money spent at the opera is not for everyone. But it's not really the occasional entertainment that the guilty government's slogan targets, for the most part. And, seriously now, what's the good of telling a gambling addict "know your limit, play within it"?

Alternatively, one might tell the addict, you might one day just stop the madness, cold turkey. Or, if you can't do that and things become really unbearable, as one day they will, maybe you have to embrace a lesser evil, break right through your limit, sell everything, lose the kids, wife, and job, and enter a new domain where you might, amidst loss and unimaginable trial, find that you can/must now (facing hard reality fully at last, beginning to distinguish and live a new necessity, getting the upperhand on your fantasies) break free of your addiction and become a new, responsible, person by negotiating a new personality in sync with a hard reality you never dared admit could exist as such, as long as you obeyed the divine law: know your limit, play within it.

Of course, you might also ruin yourself trying to break out of an addiction held and sustained within limits. Freedom is a risk, so you might, if you're a Palestinian gambler, or a CUPE/Sid's Angels Associate, want to consider signing on to the UN terrrorist-to-post-national Utopia (slogan: One Umma, One Caliphate!) "national self-determination" insurance policy. CUPE Ontario has a bunch of whizz kids crunching the actuarials for their dissertations... ("government-backed mortgages for the disenfranchised in the new America", oops, wrong table... "life expectancy for those in UN-brokered peace processes where one or another "responsible" government encourages the martyrdom of its people to the righteous cause of anti-nationalism, i mean anti-Zionism [per dollar-year of "foreign aid" payments to warlords]").

Alternatively, you might grow a new respect for normal reality which would include the possibility of a self-ruling nation courageously breaking a stand-off involving its inevitable slow death (waiting for the bombs to grow bigger) and doing now the evil necessary to leave addicted people speechless, but eventually forcing them to rethink their ability to deny a hard reality and thus maybe, just maybe, start a new page in hopes of developing a new narrative.

But, oh, the allure of just another throw of the dice, to play the fantasy state projected by "international actors", the sovereignty that does not have to recognize its neighbor's legitimacy, or mere reality, it's hard cold presence, and yet not fear military defeat, in a glorious refusal to join the modern world where nation-states are responsible to the banal needs of real people in real places and not to an idealized past projected onto the future, like the Palestinian refugees of 1948's right of return by UN-sponsored time machine to quiet and pleasant olive groves.

Know your limit, play within it, or else we'll ban you from teaching here until your admit guilt and sign on to our risk-free doctrine of international self-determination: welcome to the mind of the Ph.D./union thug, fighting for the post-national empire in 2009. And this is what their kids are saying:

As Jewish youth, we are diverse, but we are unified in our solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza.

Some of us are students. We are outraged by the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza city, as well as other civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and mosques.

Some of us are Arab-Jews and people of colour. We stand against Israel's racism, which has been enshrined in Israeli law, and privileges its Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish ones. This apartheid state views Palestinians as an expendable people, no more than collateral damage.

Some of us are queer. We reject Israel's branding of itself as the only safe place for queer people in the Middle-East while it targets gay and lesbian Palestinians and renders life unsafe for millions of others.

Oh to be gay in Gaza! I can see it now. But the fantasy continues:

Some of us are Israelis living in Canada. [Some of us want CUPE jobs!] We are calling for a solidarity that stretches beyond borders and nationalities. Israel's violent actions will only serve to further isolate the state and its citizens from the rest of the world. By calling itself a Jewish state and committing war crimes in the name of Jews everywhere, Israel makes the world even less safe for Jews, leading to an increase in animus towards Jewish people around the world.

Even though there have been approximately 100 Palestinian deaths for every Israeli killed by rocket fire, we recognize that Israeli Apartheid also leads to Israeli casualties. The blame for these deaths lies with Israel – if there were no occupation and no apartheid policies, there would be no rocket fire.

The only thing that stands between us and a Utopia where we could be truly gay Jews, is Israel.

But why is it always about Israel? Why are Canadian unionists only now marching the streets in hate rallies? There could be more deaths in any number of supposed border and land conflicts around the world tomorrow, and no Canadian pseudo-teachers in CUPE Ontario will call for a ban on, say, Indian or Pakikstani academics over Kashmir, or on one or another African tribe over the mass killings in and around the Congo. I doubt one could even get heard at CUPE calling for a ban on academics associated with the Mugabe regime, let alone the oppressive governments in places like Cuba or China. Ban on Sudanese teachers? The victims of the Israelis are always more special. The (Palestinian, Jewish, and international) victims of the Palestinians mostly unheard of.

We often argue that anti-Zionism is but a form of antisemitism. And it most usually is a new form of antisemitism. But we might also consider that Israel is hated not merely or perhaps even primarily because it is Jewish (in all but one respect) but because in order to survive it has to stand up to the drug-dealer's friendly mode for ruling compliant people. It has to question our addictions. When Israel hears a cheery, "get your daily dime bag, know your limit, play within it", it is not quite the same as for those of us who never have the unique local medical problem that gets one close to a deadly overdose. Israel's existence is always balanced on the knife's edge where it has to say to the cheery slogan: well maybe today but maybe also we have to say no longer tomorrow. No more yes to magical incantations that demand reality perform according to wish. Instead of knowing our limit, and playing by your rules, maybe we have to act against an intolerable evil so as to bring into being a new, open-ended scene with all kinds of uncertain possibilities, full of risk and likely some amount of tragic death. We may have to go first, to act on our own initiative, on our account of ethics and human decency, without permission from New York or the scholars of CUPE Ontario. We may have to start something meaningful, of world historical import, that you will be merely left to respond to. Jews going first; second, gentiles calling Sid Ryan, right after than Ban ki-Moon fellow! Sorry, but we have no choice.

Israel (and similarly America) is hated more than any other party to a bloody conflict because it represents, better than anyone else can, the possibilities that flow from firstness in the context of a modern nation-state, from a responsible exercise of national freedom with all the capabilities of a military staffed by educated people with initiative. It represents the antithesis to all the Gnostic energies that went into building the UN, the EU, the casinos of British Columbia, and all the other institutions of the Western left-liberal state since World War II in a vain attempt to deny that potentially deadly human conflict, with an uncertain meaning and future, will always be with us.

People hate Israel to deny, in their own minds, some such hard reality, to forego participation in a humbled humanity that requires not Utopian thought but realistic thinking to mediate the inevitable quantum of evil in this world. And realistic thinking requires realistic agents capable of responsible, transparent, and accountable actions. And to this end, we can imagine no institutions more effective, however less than perfect they are, than those of the modern, democratic, self-ruling nation-state. This is because only such states can truly be representative of ordinary people.

This is why the children of CUPE Ontario propose to demand Canadians hear their cries about who can and cannot teach in "their" universities. Because if we turn a blind ear to their incessant whine about Israeli evil, we condemn their religious and careerist fantasy (working in post-national institutions). (I recently chatted with a professor of Canadian history, teaching in a leading Canadian university, and he told me of his deep hatred for all "myths" of national identity. So, I wondered, what narratives or morals of Canadian history was he possibly teaching: non-belief or fantasy belief, the belief that humanity can be organized by the eternal deconstruction of the victimizing myth, so that nothing ever happens that is not somehow sanctioned from on high as proportionate...?)

Orthodox Islam has a similar problem with any kind of responsible Jewish political life in the lands it claims as its own. Its problem with Israel is not simply a dispute about land or colonization, or any of the other figures of blame we frequently hear about: we know this because even if all presently Jewish-owned land were given to members of the Umma, it will never be imaginable for today's Orthodox Muslims, in organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, that Jews wield any kind of distinctively Jewish power or rights alongside Muslims in an Arab "nation" (an impossibility for which even today's "secular" Palestinians show implicit respect). Islam's problem with Israel, at root, is that it contains Jews who don't want to be dhimmis. Islamic law, and by extension most of Arab culture, cannot conceive of a Muslim nation of Palestine living, in some open-ended history, regularly negotiating power with co-citizen (or neighbor) Jews (in control, say, of Jerusalem). To imagine or live any such thing would be to change the God-given law, and to deny the narrative of Palestinian victimization. For once you admit some non-dhimmi role for Jews, you begin to allow little thoughts regarding the possibility that what they have been doing up to now is at least in some ways a legitimate anticipation of that role.

Until this impossibility in the Arab and Islamic imagination changes, all the pretense at participating in a "peace process", in a one or two state solution, is a sham, a stalling tactic that waits for the day Israel can be wiped off the map, or "negotiated" into dhimmitude.

And this kind of dogmatism can only change when people refuse, responsibly, to know their limit and play within it. Sometimes the evil must be faced, the irresponsible "law" of the UN or some Koranic school must be broken, and new things be allowed to emerge on new scenes with new possibilities. There are times when a certain violence is the lesser evil - and the killing it may involve is indeed evil - and as such something in which we should all seek our part, though maybe it is up to those whose survival is most on the line - those for whom evil is right at hand - to take the lead in smashing pre-ordained limits.