http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0109/steyn011209.php3
Jan. 12, 2009 / 16 Teves 5769
The 'oldest hatred' lives, from Gaza to Florida
By Mark Steyn
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators
yell "You are the brothers of pigs!," and a protester complains to his
interviewer that "Hitler didn't do a good job."
In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, "You need a big
oven, that's what you need!"
In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, "Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!"
In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of
dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year's Day. The
channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from Jan. 1,
2009, but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they
were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely
while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate
work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the
Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas,
France-2 says the footage was broadcast "accidentally."
In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are
attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted
by 20 youths taunting, "Palestine will kill the Jews"; in Villiers-le-Bel, a
Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, "Jews must die."
In Helsingborg, Sweden, the congregation at a synagogue takes shelter as a
window is broken and burning cloths thrown in. in Odense, principal Olav
Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local
school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and
shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store. in Brussels, a
Molotov cocktail is hurled at a synagogue; in Antwerp, Netherlands, lit rags
are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel
in Britain, "youths" attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.
In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security
procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports "fears"
that "Islamic extremists" are drawing up a "hit list" of prominent Jews,
including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse's record producer and the
late Princess of Wales' divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that
Islamic nonextremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation
and other impeccably respectable "moderate" groups have warned the
government that the Israelis' "disproportionate force" in Gaza risks
inflaming British Muslims, "reviving extremist groups," and provoking "UK
terrorist attacks" - not against Amy Winehouse's record producer and other
sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets
of, ah, more general interest.
Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinians are the most
comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the Earth. For the past 60
years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab
League, the PLO, Hamas and the "global community" - and the results are
pretty much what you'd expect.
You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead
Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame
to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for
Israeli-bound rockets, and to the U.N. refugee agency that turns a blind eye
to it. And, even if you don't deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their
infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing
is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor
to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the "Palestinian
Authority" has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the
nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian
"nationalist movement" has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in
running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both
sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this
was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long
ago.
So, as I said, forget Gaza. And, instead, ponder the reaction to Gaza in
Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As
the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that
criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are
further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is
a wee bit more of a stretch.
Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its
very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let's take a state that came
into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved
far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of
Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But
the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of
anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.
But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do
with Israeli government policy? Just weeks ago, terrorists attacked Mumbai,
seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The
police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and
their controllers make for lively reading:
"Pakistan caller 1: 'Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your
phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.'
"Mumbai terrorist 2: 'We have three foreigners, including women. From
Singapore and China'
"Pakistan caller 1: 'Kill them.'
"(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and
telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering
voices.)"
"Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims." Tough for those Singaporean
women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu
populations in London, Toronto and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted "Muslims
must die!" or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls.
CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups' eternal bleating about "Islamophobia" is
in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, "moderate Muslims"
in London warn the government: "I'm a peaceful fellow myself, but I can't
speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced Western democracy
you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it."
But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class
essentially shares the same view of the situation - to the point where state
TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli "war crimes."
As I always say, the "oldest hatred" didn't get that way without an ability
to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless
cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a
conventional nation state, and now they're hated for that. And, if Hamas get
their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated
for something else. So it goes.
But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the
poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada:
O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness.
You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness.
The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is
even more deranged - and in the end will prove just as self-destructive.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
-Winston Churchill
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list,
[email protected].
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
[email protected]
http://www.intellnet.org
Post message: [email protected]
Subscribe: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: [email protected]
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has
not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of
The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT
YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of
intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods,
techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other
intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use
this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,'
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
