[Rhodes22-list] Politics AND Religion

[brad haslett]

Sorry for the violation of policy.  Just hit delete
NOW if your not interested.
 
 


  TORONTO STAR ===== 

http://honestreporting.com/a/r/321.asp 

"LATEST ATTACK ON JEWS BRINGS A DEAFENING SILENCE"

by Rosie Dimanno

There's no haven for Jews. Not within Israel and not
without. The earth is
stained with their blood: From an El Al counter in Los
Angeles to a beach
resort in Mombasa.

Their children, their elderly, their scholars, their
farmers, the diaspora
of their tribe -- all targets, at home and abroad.
Shopping for food,
riding a bus, strolling across a campus, dining as
families in
restaurants, dancing in clubs, worshipping in
synagogues. Not a blessed
place in all the world is safe.

The carnage in Kenya last Thursday is only the most
recent atrocity but no
doubt history will recall it as a defining moment in
the modern-day
Holocaust of Jews -- a point where all buffers of
presumed security were
breached, when the war of attrition against Israelis
went
extra-territorial, crossing geographical borders and
moral boundaries.
Those shredded bodies of vacationers who believed
themselves somehow
beyond the reach of homicide bombers are sad testament
to the reality of
their predicament. And the poor victims who were not
Jews, the Kenyan
dancers welcoming new arrivals to a holiday hotel,
they were but
expendable bit-players, the collateral damage of
Jew-hating terrorism.

Palestinians might revile Israelis as oppressors and
occupiers, might
bleat to the international community for redress of
their political
grievances. But Palestinians the world over aren't
hunted down like dogs.
Arabs the world over aren't targeted for
extermination. Muslims the world
over aren't murdered in packs. Humankind would not
stand for it. The
Pan-Arab alliance would not stand for it. Islamic
countries would not
stand for it.

Imagine, if Zionist terrorists armed with
shoulder-held rockets had
attempted to bring down a Saudi airplane, as
unidentified militants had
attempted to blast an El Al flight out of the sky over
Kenya, simultaneous
with the Mombasa bombing -- a two-pronged attack
suggesting sophisticated
planning and a network of operatives, with the
fingerprints of Al Qaeda
all over it. The reverse scenario -- Jew on Muslim --
would be grounds for
war, for a unified assault on Israel. And the West
would be hard-pressed
to interdict, to mollify.

Ah, but these are just dead Jews. And we are
accustomed to their dying. I
have been waiting, in the days since Thursday's
abominable attack, for
just one word of sympathy, of pity, from the Muslim
world. One note of
commiseration to emanate from inside the thousands of
mosques, one hint of
regret and empathy from commentators ever ready to
assail any Israeli
misstep and aggression. But the silence has been
deafening.

Islam, that great religion of peace, has had nothing
to say of more
murdered Jews. That silent majority that disapproves
of extremism, that
argues the Muslim faith has been ill-served by
militants who've twisted
every article of the Islamic faith -- not a murmur of
renunciation of
those who commit such travesties in their name. Where
is the rage?

If little in the way of revulsion might have been
expected from the
hostile nations that surround Israel, then surely a
word of consolation
from moderate Muslims in the West might have been
forthcoming. Yet I've
heard nary an utterance from the very same agencies
and organizations,
purportedly representing Muslims and Arabs, that are
so vigilant about
pouncing on any perceived racism or intolerance
against their people, even
in this country. Nothing from the Canadian Islamic
Congress, nothing from
the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association,
nothing from the
Palestinian-Canadian Student Society, nothing from the
Canadian Arab
Friendship Association, nothing from the Canadian
Society of Muslims. To
name a few.

Only the beleaguered Palestinians themselves, in a
poll taken before
Thursday's tragic events, have expressed weariness
with the whole campaign
of violence aimed at Israel, this as one lone voice --
a potential
successor to Arafat -- has declared that the intifada
must stop because it
has done nothing to further the Palestinian cause.

It's impossible to disentangle the war against the
Jews from the larger
Islamist war against the West. Assuredly, the misery
of Palestinians was
not what motivated the terrorist agenda of Osama bin
Laden and Al Qaeda.
Bin Laden, preoccupied with routing America's presence
in the Arab world,
militarily and culturally, paid only passing lip
service to the plight of
Palestinians in the occupied territories. At some
point, they became a
postscript to his anti-Western, anti-American screeds.
But others quickly
linked the micro-terrorism to the macro-terrorism, as
if to invest Al
Qaeda and like-minded terrorist networks to a more
palatable cause. And in
this they've been rather successful, with a
rationalizing argument that
offers endemic Islamic grievances on the one hand and
Israeli truculence
on the other. It is a sham of an argument, illogical
at its core, but
repeat a lie often enough and it will become the
lingua franca of
terrorism.

Israel, as it has learned from history, cannot depend
on any other nation,
any other alliance of nations, not even its great and
steadfast friend
America, to fight its battles, ensure its security or
avenge its dead. In
the same way Mossad tracked down and eliminated the
freed perpetrators of
the Munich Massacre in 1972, its counter-terrorist
experts will likely,
insofar as they are able, track down and eliminate
those who committed
Thursday's vile attacks. But this is a new generation
of global terrorism
and Israel's enemies -- like the West's enemies -- no
longer stand out in
a crowd. In many parts of the world, they are the
crowd. Islamist
pretenders, fomenting hatred in the masses, have made
sure of that. And
they are like cockroaches, scurrying out of the
geopolitical cracks - in
Saudi Arabia, in Yemen, in East Africa, in the
Philippines, in Indonesia,
even in America and Canada.

They kill Jews. They kill Americans. They kill
Australians who had the
temerity to push rampaging Indonesian paramilitaries
out of East Timor, a
predominantly Catholic fledgling state. They kill
Kenyan dancers and civil
employees. They kill French engineers. They blow up
skyscrapers and bring
down airplanes. They do all this with Allah's name on
their lips.

And some day, I fear they'll come for you.


===== NEW YORK POST ===== 

http://honestreporting.com/a/r/322.asp 

"A SINGLE WAR"

by Max Boot

December 2, 2002 -- There is at least one silver
lining in the ghastly
carnage in Mombasa, Kenya: The homicidal swine who
turned the Paradise
Hotel into an inferno blew away the illusion that
Israel's war on
terrorism can be separated from America's.

This is a myth treasured by many in the U.S.
government, especially at the
State Department, who believe that America is right to
use overwhelming
force against its enemies, but that Israel should show
"restraint" no
matter the provocation. While America roots out the
source of our
terrorist problems in Afghanistan, Washington sternly
admonishes Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon that he must not touch a hair of
Yasser Arafat's
head -- even though Arafat is at least as much
responsible for terrorism
as Mullah Omar once was.

This attitude reached new heights of absurdity after
the targeted killing
of six al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen by a CIA-operated
Predator unmanned
aerial vehicle. State Department spokesman Richard
Boucher took pains to
argue that there was absolutely no comparison between
this action and
Israel's targeted killings of terrorists, which the
U.S. government
continues to condemn.

But what if the people attacking America are also the
people attacking
Israel? If it turns out that al Qaeda was responsible
for the Kenya
attack, as now appears likely, this conclusion will be
inescapable. Yet
the evidence already strongly pointed in that
direction long before last
week's bombing.

One only has to think back to 9/11: The suicidal
attacks on America caused
great grief in Israel - and undisguised joy in the
Palestinian
territories.

Though Arafat took pains to quash coverage of pro-al
Qaeda demonstrations,
the Palestinian reaction was hardly an aberration.
Remember that in the
1991 Gulf War the Palestinians also openly rooted for
America's enemy,
Saddam Hussein.

It's more than a matter of rooting interest, however;
there are also much
closer connections between anti-American terrorists
and anti-Israeli
terrorists.

At the broadest level, both groups represent an
extremist Islamist
ideology that revels in suicidal attacks and seeks to
inflict maximum
civilian casualties. The 9/11 hijackers were similar
in spirit to those
who tried to blow an Israeli airliner out of the sky
over Kenya with SA-7
missiles.

Not all Palestinian terrorists, much less all
Palestinians, are Islamists
-- but fanatical groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad
are at the forefront
of the current Al Aqsa intifida.

Within extremist Islamic circles, hatred of America
("the Great Satan")
and Israel ("the Little Satan") go hand in hand. The
Islamists even debate
which is their greatest enemy: Some argue for America,
on the grounds that
Israel is merely an outpost of the "Crusader" empire
centered in the
United States; others suggest that the "Zionist
entity" is the greater
threat, on the grounds that a Zionist conspiracy
secretly controls the
U.S. government. But there is no denying that the two
are closely linked
in the Islamists' minds because both countries stand
for everything they
detest: religious freedom, women's rights, democracy,
pluralism.

Thus Hezbollah (Party of God), the Iranian-sponsored
Lebanese terrorist
group, has carried out major operations against both
Israel and America.
Hezbollah is believed to be behind the blowing up of
the U.S. embassy and
the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the
kidnapping and killing of
numerous Americans in the 1980s, and the bombing of
the U.S. Khobar Towers
barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996. At the same time,
Hezbollah has waged a
relentless war against Israel from its bases in
Southern Lebanon, a war
that has not slowed down even after its ostensible
provocation (Israel's
occupation of part of Lebanon) ended in 2000.

Many observers wrongly focus on the divisions between
terrorist groups.
Some, such as Hezbollah, are Shiites. Others, like al
Qaeda, are led by
Sunnis. Still others, such as the Popular Front for
the Liberation of
Palestine, have secular leaders. But even rivals
cooperate in their common
campaign against Israel and the West, much as
disparate terrorist groups
of the 1970s and 1980s (the Baader Meinhof Gang, Red
Army Faction, Irish
Republican Army, etc.) worked together under the
tutelage of Communist
intelligence services.

The modern Islamist movement began with the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt in
the 1950s-'60s, but has since spread throughout the
Middle East and
beyond, from the Palestinian territories to Pakistan.
All these groups see
themselves as fellow jihadis (holy warriors) for the
Dar al Islam (house
of Islam) against the Dar al Harb (house of war - or
all non-Islamic
societies).

If we are ever to defeat them, we must see them as
they see themselves. If
we do, we'll realize that the Israeli conflict is not
a "distraction" from
the war on terrorism -- it is the war on terrorism.

(Max Boot is the Olin senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations
and author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and
the Rise of
American Power.)


























======================================







 










 
____________________________________________________

 

       
 

  

 
  
 


 


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com