Convenient moral blindness

Caroline Glick


May 4, 2010, 3:57 AM

Moral blindness in the face of evil is depravity. But in the upside-down moral universe of our world today, moral blindness has become a badge of honor. If you refuse to call evil by its name, then you are a moderate. And if you stand up to evil, you are yourself an extremist. 

The embrace of moral blindness as an emblem of sophistication is nowhere more apparent than among American Jews. Take recent events on US college campuses. This week the Washington Times reported that a large and vocal group of Brandeis University students are organizing to protest the university's decision to invite Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to give this year's commencement address.

In a Facebook initiative led by a student named Jonathan Sussman, several hundred students have joined the demand to disinvite Oren. Sussman claims that by inviting him, Brandeis is siding with "a rogue state apologist, a defender of (among other things) the war crimes and human rights abuses of the war on Gaza."

Sussman gained notoriety earlier this year when he sought to organize students to disrupt former UN ambassador Dore Gold in a debate the university hosted between Gold and Richard Goldstone. Sussman, a self-proclaimed Communist is a member of the anti-American Students for Democratic Society.


For their part, pro-Israel students have defended the administration's decision to invite Oren on technical grounds. In a dedicated Facebook page, Brandeis student Nathan Mizrachi wrote that protesting Oren is a "waste of time." While allowing that Oren is controversial, Mizrachi argued against protesting his speech by claiming, "anyone who is consistently contributing to our worldview in a dignified, widely respected manner - instead of idiots like Michael Moore or Fox News - is someone who merits our attention."

Mizrachi couldn't bring himself to argue that Brandeis was right to invite Oren. He couldn't be bothered to note that everything Sussman wrote is a lie. The most ringing endorsement of Oren's appearance that Mizrachi could muster in response to Sussman's latest attack was to say that it was a waste of time to protest his appearance and that  it "would truly be a disgrace to our university," if protesters were to shout Oren down at commencement.

No offense to Mizrachi but his Facebook counteroffensive is not exactly what most people would call a particularly heroic defense of Oren, Brandeis or Israel.

Unfortunately, this is more often than not what passes as a pro-Israel message these days in the US Jewish circles. Following the example communicated by the US Jewish leadership, 
supporters of Israel often act as if shouting down Israel advocates is wrong only because doing so is an assault on freedom of speech. It isn't that Israel is in the right and the Palestinians are in the wrong. It isn't that Israel is a just and moral society. It isn't that the IDF fights justly and morally and only in self-defense. It isn't that the Palestinians have taken all the lands Israel has given them and transformed them into terrorist enclaves or that they democratically elected Hamas - a genocidal terrorist organization -- to lead them. It isn't that there is not now and never was a Palestinian leadership willing to accept Israel's right to exist.

It's just that it isn't right to silence Israel advocates. It's against the First Amendment. Zionists have a right to express themselves too. 

But then, not all Zionists. And not too many of them. Take the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh for example. Abu Toameh was scheduled to speak at Tufts University last month. His talk, sponsored by Honest Reporting and CAMERA, was supposed to be held under the auspices of Tufts Friends of Israel. At the last minute, Friends of Israel cancelled his lecture. Abu Toameh was informed that the pro-Israel student group cancelled his talk as a preemptive move to avoid criticism from campus Arab groups. Tufts Hillel Director Rabbi Jeffrey Summit later wrote him claiming that the talk was cancelled due to an overabundance of pro-Israel speakers on campus.

The situation at Tufts and Brandeis, where pro-Israel students can't figure out why Israel should be defended and don't want to overload themselves with too many speakers defending Israel is downright wonderful in comparison to the situation at Berkeley. There Jewish students and faculty were galvanizing forces behind the divestment from Israel drive that passed overwhelmingly in the Berkeley student senate in March.

The divestment initiative, which called on the university administration to divest from General Electric and United Technologies for their joint projects with the IDF, was vetoed by the senate president. His veto was narrowly sustained in a later vote last week. In the meantime, the divestment drive has expanded to UC San Diego.

In an article published last month on the American Thinker website, UC Santa Cruz and UCLA professors Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith wrote that the divestment campaigns and the overwhelmingly anti-Israel atmosphere on campuses has made life extremely difficult and often frightening for Jewish students on campuses.

And yet, there has been no divestment of major Jewish donors from these institutions. There has been no demand that Hillel replace ineffective or anti-Israel administrators. There has been no demand that campuses fire professors like Berkeley Hebrew Professor Ruth Adler or Talmud Professor Daniel Boyarin who force their students to undergo anti-Zionist indoctrination in their classrooms.

Again and again, the official Jewish community and pro-Israel students' response to anti-Israel campaigns and often violent onslaughts is to mumble out a protest against their infringement on the freedom of expression. That is, for many US Jewish leaders and Jewish campus activists, the biggest problem with the Red-Green alliance of leftists and Muslims is that they deny pro-Israel students and speakers the right to express themselves.

The mendacity of the Red-Green alliance's claims against Israel, the bigotry of their increasingly open calls for Israel's destruction, their denial of the Jewish people's right to self-determination or even our right to define ourselves as a people all goes unopposed.

This is not a sustainable line of defense. This is not even the beginning of a defense - of Israel or of the rights of American Jews. But this state of affairs does explain very well why according to recent polling data, a half of American Jews under 35 would be okay with a world without Israel.

Some argue that what happens on the campuses is not important. What really matters is what happens in the grown-up world. Unfortunately, today we see that the depraved moral blindness of the classroom has brought about a situation where political leaders cannot recognize the moral depravity of the international community. And sophisticated grownups - and particularly American Jewish grownups -- cannot or will not make their leaders pay a price for their depraved support for evil.

Take Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's decision to travel to New York this week to participate in the UN's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. It is clear that Ahmadinejad's purpose in travelling to New York is to ensure that the conference is a circus. Ahmadinejad means to make certain that to the extent a distinction is made between Iran's nuclear weapons program and Israel's purported nuclear arsenal, the distinction will claim that whereas Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal needs to be destroyed, Iran's interest in nuclear weapons is a justified response to Israeli badness.

Apparently anticipating his move, according to the Wall Street Journal US President Barack Obama has been discussing Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal with Egypt. According to the newspaper's account, the US is discussing Egypt's demand that the Middle East become a nuclear-free zone. A senior US official claimed, "We've made a proposal to them [Egypt] that goes beyond what the US has been willing to do before."

Some US Jewish groups have called for a protest of Ahmadinejad outside the UN building. Others have called on state delegations to stage a mass walkout during his speech.
But none have attacked the administration for agreeing to the false moral equivalence between Iran's nuclear program and Israel's nuclear program. None have condemned Obama for discussing Israel's purported nuclear program at a time when Iran -- that has declared its intention to destroy Israel -- is racing towards the nuclear finish line.

Then too, the American Jewish community is silent as Obama strong arms Israel into indirect, Obama administration-mediated talks with the Palestinians. It is silent even as it is widely reported that Obama has threatened Israel that if the Jewish state builds homes for Jews in Jerusalem or refuses to accept a Palestinians state by next year, Obama will impose his own "peace plan," on Israel. That is, the American Jewish community is all but mute as Obama does to Israel what Berkeley is doing to Israel.

The fact of the matter is that defending Israel against its enemies isn't a freedom of speech issue. It is an issue of right vs. wrong. Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It is a great ally of the US. Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem were legally allocated to the Jewish people by the League of Nations Mandate in 1922 and that allocation has never been cancelled or superseded. Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and neighborhoods in united Jerusalem are not illegal. The IDF did not commit war crimes in Gaza or anywhere else. Arabs are full citizens in Israel. When Israel fights, it fights to defend itself from aggression.

The aggression launched against Israel is conducted by societies and states that refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist. It is launched by societies and states that ignore the laws of war, that refuse to respect even the most basic human rights of their own citizens let alone of Israelis. The Palestinians have yet to find even one leader who is willing to accept Israel's right to exist or the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our land. 

This is the truth. This is where the defense of Israel begins. And it is the absence of this truth and this defense from the lexicon of Jewish American students and community leaders in recent years that has brought about a situation where the only reason not to attack Israel is because it is "a waste of time."

It is the absence of this truth and this defense that has enabled a situation where the President of the United States can maintain the support of the American Jewish community while allowing others to equate Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal with Iran's nuclear program, and while treating Israel as if it were the root of all the pathologies of the Arab world.

And if the truth about Israel continues to be ignored by American Jews, not only will Israel be imperiled. The sustainability of their own community -- that has embraced moral blindness in the name of moderation and sophistication -- will be called into question.


Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on May 4, 2010 at 3:57 AM

Jew-hating blogger kills wife, self

Friday, April 23, 2010

Elder of Ziyon

Once upon a time, when I would browse hate sites for easy blog material, I came across someone named Curtis Maynard.

Back in 2006 Maynard wrote an explicitly anti-semitic article for Mathaba.net. I also have posts about a pseudo-scholarly article justifying Jew-hatred he wrote for "The People's Voice."

His repertoire didn't end there, of course. He wrote for such esteemed outlets as Vanguard News Network and Rense.

Not surprisingly, his bizarre mindset affected his personal life as well, and when his wife sued him for divorce, he created blogs about her as well. (Also, his wife was Mexican, and his white-power friends had a field day making fun of him for that. I also see mention that he claimed to get STDs from his wife - and he posted pictorial proof on his wife-hate blog. Yecch.)

During the divorce drama, one of the people who followed bigots like Maynard in a forum wrote: "I would not be surprised if Maynard loses it and decides to go on a "spree" and harms a bunch of innocent people."

The dude was a prophet.

A couple of days ago, this pathetic excuse for a human being killed his wife and, during a police chase, killed himself:

LAKE JACKSON - A battle between divorcees turned deadly Wednesday night in Lake Jackson when a man killed his ex-wife and wounded his ex-step-daughter, then killed himself, police said.

Neighbors reported hearing shots fired at about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday in the 100 block of Post Oak. While Lake Jackson Police were en route, they learned that two people had been shot and the shooter had fled in a vehicle that was being followed by one of the neighbors.

The pursuing neighbor led police to their location with updates on his cell phone, officials said. The chase ended when the shooter – identified as 42-year-old Curtis Maynard – turned the gun on himself while driving, police said.

Officials said Maynard's vehicle left the roadway, swerved back and struck another vehicle, then came to rest on the opposite side of the highway at 499 Highway 288 North.

Back at the home in the 100 block of Post Oak, investigators found two victims. Maynard's ex-wife – 34-year-old Melissa Meza – was dead with multiple gunshot wounds, police said. Meza's 16-year-old daughter was also shot. She was life-flighted to Memorial Hermann Hospital in critical condition, police said. According to officials, her condition had stabilized Thursday.

I feel sorry for the wife and step-daughter as well as the other kids who were in the house.

Maynard's death doesn't bother me one tiny bit.

(h/t BEAJ, who was the subject of another of Maynard's rants on Rense. Sorry, I will not link to Rense.)

Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 9:53 AM  

The New Swedish Pogrom

American Thinker. com
By Thomas Lifson

Sweden was once upon a time known as a tolerant, civilized country. No longer. A lethal combination of Muslim and left wing "progressive" anti-Semitism is driving Jews from the city of Malmo, in fear for their lives, as violence is targeted at them solely because of their faith, and authorities do little to discourage it, and even seem to justify it.

Nick Meo of the UK Telegraph reports:

In 2009, a chapel serving the city's 700-strong Jewish community was set ablaze. Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated, worshippers were abused on their way home from prayer, and "Hitler" was mockingly chanted in the streets by masked men. [....]

Malmo's Jews, however, do not just point the finger at bigoted Muslims and their fellow racists in the country's Neo-Nazi fringe. They also accuse Ilmar Reepalu, the Left-wing mayor who has been in power for 15 years, of failing to protect them.

Mr Reepalu, who is blamed for lax policing, is at the centre of a growing controversy for saying that what the Jews perceive as naked anti-Semitism is in fact just a sad, but understandable consequence of Israeli policy in the Middle East.

While his views are far from unusual on the European liberal-left, which is often accused of a pro-Palestinian bias, his Jewish critics say they encourage young Muslim hotheads to abuse and harass them.

This is disgusting beyond words. Swedish posturing as guardians of human rights is now laughable.

Hat tip: John McMahon and David Paulin

Jihad and Genocide

Israpundit.com

Why I Have Written “Jihad and Genocide”

by Richard L. Rubenstein (February 2010)

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat at my desk happily putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of the second edition of Approaches to Auschwitz which I co-authored with Professor John K. Roth of California’s Claremont-McKenna College.[1] I began that morning with an enormous sense of satisfaction that I was finally completing my share of a very arduous task. At the time, I had devoted the better part of a career of half a century to research, writing and lecturing on the Holocaust and the terrible phenomenon of genocide.

At about 8:45 A.M., I turned on the TV for the morning news and learned that American Airlines Flight 11 had just crashed into the 110-story North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center (WTC). I understood immediately that the crash was no accident. On February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef, an Islamic terrorist, had detonated a car bomb under the same tower with the intention of toppling it into the South Tower, collapsing both towers and hoping to kill the 250,000 people at work in the structures. Yousef and his accomplices meant to commit mass murder in the heart of New York. They failed to bring down the towers, but six people were killed and 1042 injured in the attempt.[2] As I watched in horror, I knew that Islamic extremists, whom I shall henceforth identify as Islamists, had finally succeeded. My horror was intensified, if that were possible, when I watched United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the twin South Tower. Minutes later, I learned that yet another plane had crashed into the Pentagon, and that United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania failing to reach its target, which was apparently either the White House or the United States Capitol.

Within the space of little more than an hour, the United States had experienced the most devastating attack on its homeland in its entire history. The iconic structures of American financial and military power had been successfully assaulted and only the selfless bravery of the doomed passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 prevented a similar strike on the center of American political power.

Apart from sheer horror, my immediate reaction was to ask myself whether our book on the Holocaust had instantly become an exercise in futility. Without delay, I sent John Roth an e-mail message saying that, as important as was the Holocaust, it happened sixty years ago and we were facing a very real present danger. I told him that henceforth my efforts were less likely to be focused on the Holocaust than on the threat of radical Islam. John was supportive in his reply, but insisted that both were equally important.[3] He was, of course, correct. As is evident from much of the material in this book, there is more than a little affinity between National Socialism and Islamic extremism. As partners in World War II, both sought the utter destruction of the Jewish people, a project Islamists have never abandoned. As is evident from a multitude of hateful sermons, media propaganda, and street demonstrations, all too many of which are available on the internet, today’s Islamists have recycled some of National Socialism’s most vicious anti-Semitic propaganda while peddling the obscene canard that the Israelis are latter-day Nazis.

(See below for full review of this book)

Richard L. Rubenstein is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Bridgeport and Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at Florida State University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Jewish theology, the Holocaust and other issues including After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, The Cunning of History, My Brother Paul and Dissolving Alliance: The United States and the Future of Europe. His most recent book is Jihad and Genocide (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010)

Why I Have Written "Jihad and Genocide"

by Richard L. Rubenstein (February 2010)

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat at my desk happily putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of the second edition of Approaches to Auschwitz which I co-authored with Professor John K. Roth of California’s Claremont-McKenna College.[1] I began that morning with an enormous sense of satisfaction that I was finally completing my share of a very arduous task. At the time, I had devoted the better part of a career of half a century to research, writing and lecturing on the Holocaust and the terrible phenomenon of genocide.

At about 8:45 A.M., I turned on the TV for the morning news and learned that American Airlines Flight 11 had just crashed into the 110-story North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center (WTC). I understood immediately that the crash was no accident. On February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef, an Islamic terrorist, had detonated a car bomb under the same tower with the intention of toppling it into the South Tower, collapsing both towers and hoping to kill the 250,000 people at work in the structures. Yousef and his accomplices meant to commit mass murder in the heart of New York. They failed to bring down the towers, but six people were killed and 1042 injured in the attempt.[2] As I watched in horror, I knew that Islamic extremists, whom I shall henceforth identify as Islamists, had finally succeeded. My horror was intensified, if that were possible, when I watched United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the twin South Tower. Minutes later, I learned that yet another plane had crashed into the Pentagon, and that United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania failing to reach its target, which was apparently either the White House or the United States Capitol.

Within the space of little more than an hour, the United States had experienced the most devastating attack on its homeland in its entire history. The iconic structures of American financial and military power had been successfully assaulted and only the selfless bravery of the doomed passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 prevented a similar strike on the center of American political power.

Apart from sheer horror, my immediate reaction was to ask myself whether our book on the Holocaust had instantly become an exercise in futility. Without delay, I sent John Roth an e-mail message saying that, as important as was the Holocaust, it happened sixty years ago and we were facing a very real present danger. I told him that henceforth my efforts were less likely to be focused on the Holocaust than on the threat of radical Islam. John was supportive in his reply, but insisted that both were equally important.[3] He was, of course, correct. As is evident from much of the material in this book, there is more than a little affinity between National Socialism and Islamic extremism. As partners in World War II, both sought the utter destruction of the Jewish people, a project Islamists have never abandoned. As is evident from a multitude of hateful sermons, media propaganda, and street demonstrations, all too many of which are available on the internet, today’s Islamists have recycled some of National Socialism’s most vicious anti-Semitic propaganda while peddling the obscene canard that the Israelis are latter-day Nazis.

In 1952, my senior year as a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, I was accepted for admission to Harvard Divinity School. The Holocaust had cast a very long shadow over my decision to continue graduate studies at an historically Protestant institution. The Holocaust had taken place in Christian Europe and was not without the support of important segments of European Christendom. I wanted to understand the history and the present status of the complicated and ambivalent relationship between Judaism and Christianity and Harvard Divinity School seemed like a good place to start.

The focus of my studies there was overwhelmingly Euro-centric. My most memorable experience was Paul Johannes Tillich’s course on classical German philosophy.[4] The son of a Lutheran pastor with a doctorate from the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Tillich served as a chaplain in the German army during the First World War. In the years immediately before Hitler’s coming to power, Tillich, then a professor at the University of Frankfurt, expressed his strong opposition to National Socialism in speeches and lectures. As soon as the Nazis took over, they dismissed him and he joined the faculty of New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Tillich’s course did more to enlarge my understanding of European Christian culture than any other course I took at Harvard.

One of the requirements of my degree program was to take a year’s work in a religious tradition other than Judaism or Christianity. In the academic year 1953-1954, I took a course on “Islamic Origins” followed by a course on the “History of Muslim Faith.” At the time, Islam seemed to be a remote curiosity that I was required to study. I certainly did not carry away from those courses the idea that any version of Islam could constitute a deadly threat to my people, my country, and my civilization. That would come later.

Unfortunately, neither I nor the overwhelming majority of Harvard students of the period had the slightest inkling of the writings of such Islamist thinkers as Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and Syed Abul A’ala Maududi (1903-1979). Uncompromising enemies of Western civilization, their quest for universal Muslim domination shaped the worldview of the perpetrators of 9/11 and may affect the lives and destiny of every man, woman, and child in the twenty-first century.

Ten days after 9/11, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of the United States Congress in which he sought to make a distinction between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the peace-loving Islamic mainstream. The president declared:

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith… Its teachings are good and peaceful. And those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying in effect to hijack Islam itself.[5]

Undoubtedly, in a moment of unprecedented national crisis, the president’s first responsibility was to calm a potentially explosive inter-religious situation. Nevertheless, in retrospect one can ask whether his statements or the somewhat similar sentiments expressed by President Barack Obama in Cairo on June 4, 2009 were accurate. In reality, Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group “hijacking” a religion whose “teachings are good and peaceful.” On the contrary, the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries of Islamic tradition. As Professor Mary Habeck has observed concerning Qutb, al-Banna, and Mawdudi, the spiritual mentors of contemporary radical Islam:

None of these theorists could have had any impact in the Islamic world if their arguments had not found some sort of resonance in the religion of Islam.[6]

My first hint that a version of Islam might constitute an irreconcilable menace came in the aftermath of the Six Day War of 1967. As that war approached, my wife Betty and I feared that the Arabs would be able to make good on their promise to drive the Jews into the sea. Ahmed Shukairy, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s first leader, predicted Israel’s “complete destruction” in the coming war” while Hafaz al-Asad of Syria promised to “destroy the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland.”[7]

Within a week Israeli forces had swept to the Suez Canal, occupied all of the West Bank, and had taken Quneitra on the Golan Heights, about forty miles from Damascus. Betty and I were determined to visit Israel as soon as possible. We arrived close to Tisha b’Ab, the mid-summer fast day that commemorates the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and the Romans in 70 C.E. For the first time since the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-136 C.E., the Temple precincts were in sovereign Jewish hands. When we arrived in Jerusalem, all the hotels in Jewish West Jerusalem were fully booked. Jews from all over Israel had come up to Jerusalem and were turning the traditional day of mourning into a day of rejoicing. We were advised to stay at the National Palace Hotel in Arab East Jerusalem. The hotel management was clearly in a state of shock. We were apparently their first Jewish guests. While they treated us courteously, they were understandably not happy about the circumstances that had brought us to them.

The morning after our arrival we decided to explore the Old City of Jerusalem which had been barred to Jews from 1947 to 1967. As we entered by the Damascus Gate, a thin, physically fit Arab in his early twenties offered his services as a guide. It was quickly apparent that he thought we were Christian. We had entered the Old City from the Arab side and, with her blue eyes and reddish blonde hair, Betty had often been taken to be Christian. Betty and I silently came to the same conclusion: we were eager to hear his opinions, not our own. For an hour and a half we listened to a hateful tirade against Jews and Israel. He made no secret about his determination to do anything he could to reverse the Arab defeat.

When the tour was over, I paid him and said, “I want you to know that we are Jewish.”

He was surprised but then said, “You people have long memories. What makes you think that ours are any shorter?”

“We don’t.”

He was young, energetic, obviously intelligent. His English was excellent. It was all too obvious that he would never agree to peace with Israel under any circumstance. I had no doubt that there were very many more like him. Israel had won a battle, but with young men like that as enemies, it had not won the war. Moreover, I could see no material advantage peace with Israel might bring that would persuade him to work toward it.

Even after that encounter, I still believed that the Arab-Israeli conflict was primarily a dispute over territory that might with time, patience, and compromise be amenable to a viable solution both sides could live with. That appears to be the position of those who favor the so-called “two state solution” of two peoples “living side-by-side in peace and security” but who ignore the “Roadmap,” a step-by-step blueprint adopted in 2003 by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the “Quartet” (the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia).[8] Among the obligations the Palestinian Authority agreed to, but never implemented, as indispensable conditions for statehood were “an unequivocal end to violence, terrorism, and incitement” against Israel.[9] The fatal flaw of those who seek a two-state solution while downplaying the Roadmap lies in the fact that a critical mass of Muslims define the struggle against Israel as a defensive jihad “against the infidels who raid the abode of Islam.”[10] Put differently, such Muslims believe they are under an unconditional religious obligation to expel the Jews who, they believe, have forcibly taken possession of a portion of the abode of Islam.

Over the years, I met and came to know a number of Muslim religious leaders, regarded as “moderate,” who were willing to enter into dialogue with Jews and Christians at inter-religious conferences.[11] In no case did I ever meet one who did not look forward to the eventual demise of the State of Israel and the reincorporation of its territory into dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam. I am especially mindful of my encounters with two distinguished Muslim authorities, Professor Ismail al-Faruqi (1921-1986) and Sheikh M. A. Zaki Badawi (1922-2006). Professor al-Faruqi taught for many years at Temple University and made the claim that “Islam offers a perfect solution to the Jewish problem which has beset the Jews and the West for two millennia.” Elaborating on that “solution,” he described the conditions under which Jews would be permitted to live as an “ummah community,” that is, a religio-national community, under Muslim domination:

[Islam] requires the Jews to set up their own rabbinic courts and put its whole executive power at its disposal. The shariah (sic), the law of Islam, demands of all Jews to submit themselves to the precepts of Jewish law as interpreted by the rabbinic courts, and treats defiance or contempt of the rabbinic court as rebellion against the Islamic state itself, on a par with like action on the part of a Muslim vis-à-vis the Islamic court.[12]

What al-Faruqi failed to specify was that under such a regime Jews would be dhimmis, a humiliated subject people. Moreover, such a community would have no place for Reform, Conservative or secular Jews. Any rejection of Orthodox Jewish authority would make a person liable to the same punishment as a Muslim in rebellion against shari’a. Put differently, the penalty for non-compliance with rabbinic courts under the conditions of dhimmitude offered by al-Faruqi as a “solution” would be death inflicted not by Jewish but by Muslim authorities. As we shall see, al-Faruqi’s proposal is both moderate and humane in comparison with the “solutions” offered by more radical Muslim leaders.

Shieikh M.A. Zaki Badawi was a graduate of al-Azhar University in Cairo with a doctorate in Modern Muslim Thought from the University of London. He served as the principal of London’s Muslim College. In its obituary, the Guardian newspaper called him “Britain’s most influential Muslim.”[13] He was also an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. For a number of years, mostly in the nineteen-nineties, Betty and I attended international conferences at which he was also present. We were impressed with his urbanity, sophistication, and broad knowledge of world affairs. Normally, we sat with him and his wife at dinner, as we often did with Professor Faruqi. One evening, Zaki Badawi interrupted our train of conversation by unexpectedly bringing up the subject of Israel. "They'll really have to go, you know," he informed me. His wife, an English convert to Islam, added, "Like the Crusades." There was no point in arguing with him. Other Muslim scholars had told me the same thing, but none had his standing or authority.

Occasionally, I would ask my Muslim colleagues in dialogue, “Where would the Israelis go?” Inevitably, I would receive a formulaic response: “Back where they came from.” While some Western countries might accept a few especially talented Jews, if they survived a Muslim onslaught, the vast majority would find no haven anywhere. Moreover, because of the incessant demonization of Israel in left-wing, pro-Arab propaganda, whatever fate befell the Israelis would be reckoned as no more than what they deserve as colonialists and imperialists, if not latter-day Nazis. We discuss that defamation and its genocidal potentiality in the following chapters.

Zaki Badawi and the Muslim scholars who wanted to send the Jews back where they came from were not entirely forthcoming. They were highly intelligent, well-informed men who could as easily draw the lines between the dots as could I. They knew that a defeat of Israel’s Jews would result in their extermination, but they had no intention of spelling it out, at least in a Western language if not in Arabic. This was especially true of Zaki Badawi because of his position in Great Britain. While he was alive, on those ceremonial occasions at which Britain’s leading figures in religion appeared together, Zaki Badawi was the Muslim representative who appeared with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sachs. Zaki Badawi was too skilled a diplomat publicly to advocate a position on the Middle East with long-term genocidal consequences.[14] By the time I came to know him, I had no doubt that the Arab-Israeli conflict was as much a religious as a political conflict with a genocidal outcome should the Muslims prove victorious.

Moreover, there have always been influential opinion makers and government leaders in the United States and Europe for whom the establishment of the State of Israel was an historic mistake and who would welcome Israel’s demise as the real solution to the problems of peace and stability in the Middle East.

Evidently, when he served as Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon saw this as a potential danger. On October 11, 2001, one month after 9/11, he warned that the United States risked appeasing Arab nations the way European democracies appeased Hitler on the eve of World War II and with the same result. When Sharon introduced the memory of Neville Chamberlain and the Munich agreement of 1938 into the peace process, there were very few Western officials who openly advocated an end to the State of Israel. Nevertheless, he was apprehensive that some high officials were advocating a “solution” that would ultimately have the same result.

Diplomats and political leaders usually express their views with a measure of finesse, but not always. For example, speaking to an audience in Alexandria, Egypt in May 2004, Michel Rocard, France’s Socialist Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991, called the establishment of Israel “an historic mistake” and described that nation as a "unique and abnormal…entity that continues to pose a threat to its neighbors until today.”[15]

The ambassador asked, “Why should the world be in danger of World War Three because of those people?” Similarly, shortly after 9/11, the late Daniel Barnard, Ambassador of France to the United Kingdom, declared at a private London gathering, that the current troubles in the world were all because of "that shitty little country Israel." [16]

What is seldom discussed publicly by the Western elites who see Israel’s demise as the solution to the problems of the Middle East is the likely fate of Israel’s Jews were the Muslim ever to achieve that objective. One reason for the reticence may be a pervasive amnesia concerning why so many Jews came to Israel in the first place. Starting in the eighteen-eighties, there was a direct correlation between the rise of European anti-Semitism and the decision of so many Jews to uproot themselves and migrate to Palestine.

When the war ended in May 1945, all of Europe had become a charnel house for the Jewish survivors. Unwelcome in the countries of their birth, an estimated 250,000 found shelter under miserable conditions in Displaced Persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Their number was augmented by Eastern European survivors who, when they attempted to return to their homes, often found that they were returning to deadly pogroms.[17] Apart from all national and religious sentiments, the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine, was the only community that unconditionally welcomed the majority of both the survivors of the Holocaust and the Jews from Arab lands who were forcibly expelled by government action and mob violence in the post-World War II years.[18]

For many Jews, the Holocaust, the expulsion of approximately 900,000 Jews from Arab lands, and the return of the Holocaust survivors to Palestine exemplified a fundamental theme in Jewish religious experience, exile (galut) and return. Certainly, the Shoah demonstrated the most extreme perils of galut; return to the Land of Israel represented fulfillment of the dream of the end to exile. Unfortunately, return from exile could only be achieved by a war that involved a new exile, the flight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from the land in which some, but by no means all, of their ancestors had been domiciled for centuries. Not without reason, the Arabs called their defeat in 1948 al-Naqba, the catastrophe.

Regrettably, I am enough of a student of history to know that civilizations often have their beginnings in military combat. In the era of St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.) and St. Ambrose (340-397 C.E.), for example, North Africa, Rome, and Milan were part of one unified, Roman-Christian world known as Romania.[19] With the Umayyad conquest of North Africa in the seventh century, that world was split apart by the success of Islamic arms. Similarly, without the reconquista, Christian civilization would never have been reconstituted in Spain.

Undeniably, Palestine’s defeated Arabs had real grievances, but all too many of their leaders offered the Jews who had settled in the Land of Israel only the choice of expulsion or extermination. We see this in the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its acronym HAMAS, a document all too often ignored by political leaders who contend that the inclusion of Hamas in the so-called peace process is indispensable.[20] The Covenant clearly and unambiguously states that Hamas’s long-term objective, the destruction of the State of Israel and the extermination of its people, is grounded in an unconditional religious imperative regarded as binding on all Muslims. Unfortunately, there are high-ranking proponents of the so-called peace process within the governments of the European Union and the United States who argue that with the proper inducements Hamas can either be persuaded to change its position on peace with Israel or can join a Palestinian government led by Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestine Authority. Such a government, they claim, could credibly foreswear terrorism and provide the basis of “two nations living side-by-side in peace and security.”

I have never forgotten the following scene in Eli Wiesel’s memoir Night:

My neighbor, the faceless one, said:

“Don’t let yourself be fooled with illusions. Hitler has made it very clear that he will annihilate all the Jews before the clock strikes twelve, before they can hear the last stroke.”

I burst out:

“What does it matter to you? Do we have to regard Hitler as a prophet?”

“I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in any one else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all of his promises, to the Jewish people.”[21]

Hitler kept his promise until the total collapse of the Third Reich. Today, there are leaders throughout the Islamic world who are once again making the same promise. There are also those in the West who ignore the renewed expression of those promises and urge Israel to come to terms with the very people who pledge publicly and unconditionally to destroy them. For Israel to follow such counsel would be suicidal. If the Holocaust has any meaning for Jews it is that they must believe those who promise to destroy them especially when they actively seek, as does Iran, the weapons with which to do so. They at least are telling the truth and intend to keep their promise if they can.

The Gaza war of 2009 gave Israel yet another taste of what to expect from the United Nations and the so-called international community if it agrees, as many are urging them, to a two-state solution without the safeguards spelled out in the Roadmap. Without those safeguards, sooner or later Israel would find that its people are subjected to rocket attacks and other forms of aggression coming from groups within the newly independent Palestinian state. In divided Jerusalem rockets could be launched from Arab neighborhoods a few blocks from their Jewish counterparts. Palestinian authorities would, of course, deny that they are responsible, but the rockets would continue sometimes sporadically, sometimes rapidly. If Gaza is the model, the Israeli government would try to refrain from retaliation until its own population had enough and demanded action. When the effort to put an end to the attacks finally comes, the provocations would once again be ignored by the so-called international community and Israel would be subject again to virulent demonization not only from angry Muslims but from the media and left-wing academic circles throughout much of the Western world. During the Gaza war of 2009 there were calls for another Holocaust and the restarting of the gas chambers in the street demonstrations in many of the cities of the Western world, as well as in sermons, cartoons, and other propaganda especially in the Arab media. Ironically, a dishonest peace would be worse than honest recognition that the conflict cannot be resolved under present circumstances.

Having spent most of my career writing and teaching about the Holocaust, I now find myself once again confronted by sworn enemies of the United States and Israel who have promised to exterminate my people. With knowledge gained over many decades, I feel I have no option but to take these people at their word.

That is why I have written this book.

---

[1] Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy, 2^nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).

[2] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 201-203.

[3] I am grateful to Professor Roth for his e-mail of 21 Mar. 2009 in which he helped to clarify our correspondence.

[4] Richard L. Rubenstein, Power Struggle: An Autobiographical Confession (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 154-169.

[5] “Transcript of President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001” CNN.com./U.S. (12 June 2009).

[6]Mary Habeck, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 41. See also the measured comments by Robert Spencer on the alleged “hijacking” of Islam, “Johns Hopkins professor: Jihadists' ‘definition of jihad is quite different from that generally accepted by Muslims today,’” Jihad Watch, 17 May, 2007, (13 June 2009).

[7] Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 78.

[8] The text of the Roadmap can be found at “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” United States Institute of Peace, 30 Apr. 2003.

[9] “Statement by incoming Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman at the ministerial inauguration ceremony,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1 Apr. 2009, <>;see also Jeff Jacoby, “In Israel, A Voice of Realism,” Boston Globe, 5 Apr. 2009, <>.

[10] Ayman al-Zawahiri, “Loyalty and Enmity” in Raymond Ibrahim, ed. and trans., The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), 93. Al-Zawahiri cites Ibn Taymiyya (1263 – 1328) as his authority.

[11] The proceedings of one such conference, a Jewish-Muslim dialogue held in Cordoba, Spain, are to be found in Charles Selengut, ed., Jewish-Muslim Encounters: History, Philosophy and Culture (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2001).

[12] Ismail R. al-Faruqi, “Islam and Zionism,” in John L. Esposito, ed., Voices of Resurgent Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 265.

[13] Jack O’Sullivan, “Zaki Badawi,” The Guardian, 25 Jan. 2005.

[14] Nevertheless, there was one genocide to which Zaki Badawi was indifferent. I was informed by a British friend who had been active in raising the awareness of the British public about the mass murder in Darfur that when he sought the support of Zaki Badawi, the latter responded that he had no interest in the sub-Saharan victims as they were in really polytheists and not Muslim.

[15] Ryan Jones, “French Official: Israel’s Establishment a Historic Mistake,” Jerusalem News Wire, 20 June 2004.

[16] Barbara Amiel, “Islamists Overplay their Hand, But London Salons Don’t See It,” Daily Telegraph (UK), 21 Dec. 2001.

[17] Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006).

[18] Ya’akov Meron, “Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol. II, No. 3, Sept. 1995.

[19] Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 17.

[20] For example, in the spring of 2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a New York Times columnist, “Hamas must be represented at the negotiating table. Only then can you get a solution.” Roger Cohen, “Turkey Wants U.S. ‘Balance,’” New York Times,6Apr. 2009, <>.

[21] Eli Wiesel, Night, trans. Stella Rodway (New York: Avon Discus Books, 1969), 91-92.

Richard L. Rubenstein is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Bridgeport and Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at Florida State University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Jewish theology, the Holocaust and other issues including After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, The Cunning of History, My Brother Paul and Dissolving Alliance: The United States and the Future of Europe. His most recent book is Jihad and Genocide (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010)

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Is Judaism racist? If so, what’s wrong with that?

Israpundit. com

February 4, 2010

The House of Lords by a 5 to 4 decision have decided that Judaism is racist. They didn’t actually say it but that is what their decision amounts to. Jews can no longer base admission requirements to a Jewish school on whether your mother was Jewish. In essence the State is not allowing Jews to determine for themselves who is Jewish. This decision could have much wider implications. For instance, if an Orthodox Rabbi refused to marry a couple because the bride or groom wasn’t halachically Jewish, could the courts force him to?

Even if your mother was not Jewish you could become a Jew after you reach 13, by undergoing an orthodox conversion. Thus Judaism is not racist.

When the law says that religious law must not violate Human Rights Law, we accept that because honour killings or wife beatings for example, should not be allowed. In general, the state has taken upon itself the right to decide what is moral. This decision goes beyond what is moral in the name of morality. How does one draw the line between these too things? It is good that the law proscribes discrimination in a public place. But is a Jewish school a public space. Christians ask the same question when the law won’t let them refuse to hire a gay teacher for their schools.

First “Zionism is racism” and now “Judaism is racism”.

Who Is a British Jew?
David Pryce-Jones, COMMENTARY MAG

[..] Following the ruling of the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks, the Jewish Free School decided that E did not qualify for admission because Mrs. M’s conversion did not pass the test of Orthodoxy, and therefore their son was not deemed Jewish by the standards of the Jewish community of Great Britain. For the past 2,000 years or so, Jews have considered themselves Jewish by virtue of a Jewish mother—that is, by matrilineal descent.Mr. M decided to sue the school on grounds of discrimination under the Race Relations Act. Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, a London weekly that is almost an official voice for Britain’s Jewish community, expressed the sudden anxiety that things might well get out of hand: “This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history. It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”[..]

Conference in the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

Pilar Rahola, another great heroine

A speech given by Pilar Rahola at the Conference in the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

Jews of Six Arms, speech by Pilar Rahola*

A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.

They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking against Israel is free. And so, cultured people when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts of outrageous things.

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that those of us, who do not demonize Israel have, is that there exists no debate on the conflict. All that exists is the banner; there’s no exchange of ideas. We throw slogans at each other; we don’t have serious information, we suffer from the “burger journalism” syndrome, full of prejudices, propaganda and simplification. Intellectual thinkers and international journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn’t exist exist. That is why, when someone tries to go beyond the “single thought” of criticizing Israel, he becomes suspect and unfaithful, and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel, reduced to a simple mass of murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel.

For example, the Medieval Jew accused of killing Christian children to drink their blood connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which has created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the DNA of the Western anti-Semite, which produces an efficient cultural medium. But what beats in the conscious? Why does a renewed intolerance surge with such virulence, centered now, not against the Jewish people, but against the Jewish state? From my point of view, this has historical and geopolitical motives, among others, the decades long bloody Soviet role , the European Anti-Americanism, the West’s energy dependency and the growing Islamist phenomenon.

But it also emerges from a set of defeats which we suffer as free societies, leading to a strong ethical relativism.

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom wherever there was injustice. It was the depositary of the utopian hopes of society. It was the great builder of the future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking these utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out good and evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.

This historic treason to freedom is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like the Israeli singer Noa, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, the left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Israeli Defense Forces, but applauds Hamas’s terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis.

It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder. A year ago, at the AIPAC conference in Washington I asked the following questions:

Why don’t we see demonstrations in Europe against the Islamic dictatorships?

Why are there no demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of Muslim women?

Why are there no declarations against the use of bomb-carrying children in the conflicts in which Islam is involved?

Why is the left only obsessed with fighting against two of the most solid democracies of the planet, those which have suffered the bloodiest terrorist attacks, the United States and Israel?

Because the left no longer has any ideas, only slogans. It no longer defends rights, but prejudices. And the greatest prejudice of all is the one aimed against Israel. I accuse, then, in a formal manner that the main responsibility for the new anti-Semitic hatred disguised as anti-Zionism, comes from those who should have been there to defend freedom, solidarity and progress. Far from it, they defend despots, forget their victims and remain silent before medieval ideologies which aim at the destruction of free societies. The treason of the left is an authentic treason against modernity.

Defeat of Journalism. We have more information in the world than ever before, but we do not have a better informed world. Quite the contrary, the information superhighway connects us anywhere in the planet, but it does not connect us with the truth. Today’s journalists do not need maps, since they have Google Earth, they do not need to know History, since they have Wikipedia. The historical journalists, who knew the roots of a conflict, still exist, but they are an endangered species, devoured by that “fast food” journalism which offers hamburger news, to readers who want fast-food information. Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place. Of course one must keep in mind the pressure of the great petrodollar lobbies, whose influence upon journalism is subtle but deep. Mass media knows that if it speaks against Israel, it will have no problems. But what would happen if it criticized an Islamic country? Without doubt, it would complicate its existence. Certainly part of the press that writes against Israel, would see themselves mirrored in Mark Twain’s ironical sentence: “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please”.

Defeat of critical thinking. To all this one must add the ethical relativism which defines the present times: it is based not on denying the values of civilization, but rather in their most extreme banality. What is modernity?

I explain it with this little tale: If I were lost in an uncharted island, and would want to found a democratic society, I would only need three written documents: The Ten Commandments (which established the first code of modernity. “Thou shalt not murder“ founded modern civilization.); The Roman Penal Code; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And with these three texts we would start again. These principles are relativized daily, even by those who claim to be defending them.

“Thou shalt not murder” … depending on who is the target, must think those who, like the demonstrators in Europe, shouted in support of Hamas.

“Hurray for Freedom of Speech!”….. , or not. For example, several Spanish left-wing organizations tried to take me to court, accusing me of being a negationist, like the Nazis, because I deny the “Palestinian Holocaust”. They were attempting to prohibit me from writing articles and to send me to prison. And so on… The social critical mass has lost weight and, at the same time ideological dogmatism has gained weight. In this double turn of events, the strong values of modernity have been substituted by a “weak thinking”, vulnerable to manipulation and Manichaeism.

Defeat of the United Nations. And with it, a sound defeat of the international organizations which should protect Human Rights. Instead they have become broken puppets in the hands of despots. The United Nations is only useful to Islamofascists like Ahmadinejad, or dangerous demagogues like Hugo Chavez which offers them a planetary loudspeaker where they can spit their hatred. And, of course, to systematically attack Israel. The UN, too exists to fight Israel.

Finally, defeat of Islam. Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, use youths as human bombs. Let’s not forget: They kill us with cellular phones connected to the Middle Ages. If Stalinism destroyed the left, and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred towards the Jew.

In the crossroads of these defeats, is Israel. Orphan and forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, and rejected by a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? NO. But all present-day anti-Semitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” And Albert Einstein added: “The World is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”. This is the double commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.

* For those of you not familiar with Dr. Rahola, she is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament.

Pilar Rahola has published several books in Spanish and Catalan and is a columnist in La Vanguardia, Spain; La Nación, Argentina; and Diario de América, USA. Rahola appears frequently on television and has taken part in several university lectures. From 1987 to 1990, she was director of the Catalan publishing house Pòrtic, and as a journalist, she covered the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, the Balkan Wars, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a politician, Rahola was the only member of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in the Spanish Congress of Deputies in 5th and 6th Spanish legislatures. She also served as vice-mayor of Barcelona. Rahola also participated in several committees of investigation, especially those related to political corruption such as the comisión Roldán. In 1996, she left Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya to join Àngel Colom and Joan Laporta in a new political group, the “Partit per la Independència”, but after this failed, she concentrated on journalism and writing. Her areas of interest include women’s rights, international human rights, and animal rights. In recent years she has attracted controversy in Spain for her critical support of Israel and Zionism.