For the second time in a few months we have seen a crazy global Israel-About-to-Attack-Iran Story. I don’t want to go into all of the details but this tale is an example of how the media has just lost it completely due to a combination of laziness (reporters don’t really do research or check sources); agenda; ignorance; and good old sensationalism. Partly, too, it arises from the difficulty of the mass media in dealing with the Internet media era and the difficulty of the Internet media in achieving decent journalistic standards.
A couple of months ago a level of hysteria was reached on the basis of three stories:
It is the far-flung, easternmost island of Greece, 80 miles from Rhodes, 170 miles west of Cyprus, but just 1 mile off the coast of Turkey. Kastelorizo (in Greek, Καστελόριζο; or officially Megisti, Μεγίστη) is tiny, comprising just 5 square miles, plus some yet smaller, uninhabited islands. Its 430 inhabitants are way down from 10,000 in the late nineteenth century. The Lonely Planet travel guide has picked it as one of the four best Greek islands (out of thousands) for diving and snorkeling. There’s no public transportation from nearby Anatolia, only from distant Rhodes by airplane or ferry.
When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they promptly demolished the Aztec capital (Tenochtitlan) and built a cathedral on top of the natives’ great and most important twin temples — the city center. Did the desecration/destruction of Tenochtitlan and slaughter of the Aztec people legitimize the Spanish conquest of the great Valley of Mexico? Of course not. The Spanish were greedy, murderous thugs. Similarly, Arabs invaded and destroyed Jerusalem in 691 A.D. and built their al-Aqsa mosque on top of the indigenous Jews’ most holy place. So yippee for the Arabs?
So now we find that Muslim Arabs point their fannies at the “sacred(?)” al-Aqsa Mosque during their daily prayers. That’s a strange way for showing reverence for the “third most important” Muslim shrine. It’s plain silly. Watch for yourself:
I’d like to share with you a secret. Every day I read and hear things by people who claim to be experts on the Middle East. I have read them on the land; I have read them on the sea; I have read them in the air.
And they will never surrender to reality. Here are the two main causes of error:
–They think the Middle East is just like the West so they can extrapolate from their own experience. When someone would say, “If I were Yasir Arafat, I’d….” My response would be: Stop right there. I must run out to the corner store and get a pack of cigarettes. I have never smoked a cigarette. And I kept on running. You are not Arafat or Khomeini or Saddam Hussein or whatever and unless you have some understanding of how they actually think–and not your own Western pragmatic interpretation of what they should think–there’s no sense in discussing it.
In 2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal donated $20 million dollars each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities. In the years since, Georgetown has earned considerably more press for its use of the prince’s largesse, through which it renamed an extant center founded in 1993 as the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). This is due in no small part to the efforts of the center’s director, John Louis Esposito, America’s foremost apologist for ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam. The result of the Saudi-Esposito lash-up has been the emergence of ACMCU as an academic institution that promotes vigorously the “Palestinian narrative” and hostility to Israel.
It’s not every day that someone like the U.S. secretary of defense forecasts an ally’s move but this just happened when Leon Panetta said that he believes, in the paraphrase of a Washington Post reporter, that “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June.” Thoughts on this unusual statement:
On a single day, the New York Times has been known to publish anywhere from two to six anti-Israel articles, editorials, op-ed pieces, and letters. Today, I see a new danger arising in their pages.
After spending a year proclaiming the triumph of democracy and the miracle of the Arab Spring and, as PM Netanyahu has just noted, refusing to document the existential danger in which Israel finds herself, the Newspaper of Record has now begun the process of normalizing Islam in North America and Europe. Its pro-Muslim “multicultural” agenda is, paradoxically, another form of racism, but I quibble.
Iran is quickly becoming the cause celebre and darling of the Left. On a Canadian campus I recently listened to Zafar Bangash, director of the Islamic Society of York Region, make an outrageous defense of Iran and scathing attack on Western civilization — Imperialism, according to Bangash, is the greatest problem in the world, Iran, however, has been assigned favourite victim status by Bangash. He was being sponsored by leftist groups, Islamic students, a Jewish anti-Israel group called Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), and the “Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War.” That last group concentrates on only one country for very special critical treatment — Israel.
Between 1967 and 1993, just a few hundred Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza won the right to live in Israel by marrying Israeli Arabs (who constitute nearly one-fifth of Israel’s population) and acquiring Israeli citizenship. Then the Oslo Accords offered a little-noted family-reunification provision that turned this trickle into a river: 137,000 residents of the Palestinian Authority (PA) moved to Israel in 1994-2002, some of them engaged in either sham or polygamous marriages.
Israel has two major reasons to fear this uncontrolled immigration. First, it presents a security danger. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet security service, noted in 2005 that of 225 Israeli Arabs involved in terror against Israel, 25 of them, or 11 percent, had legally entered Israel through the family unification provision. They went on to kill 19 Israelis and wound 83; most notoriously, Shadi Tubasi suicide-bombed Haifa’s Matza Restaurant in 2002 on behalf of Hamas, killing 15.
Google speaks with a forked tongue. The Internet giant is a hypocritical company, censoring valid news because of political correctness while at the same time urging its customers to act to oppose those whom want “the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.” Google has shut down the venerable Palestinian Media Watch’s (PMW’s) YouTube account because PMW dares to translate anti-Jewish violent hate-speech produced by Palestinian media from Arabic into English. This is not the first time Google has stifled PMW — the Internet portal has also permitted, “YouTube [to] host… genocidal antisemitic videos.”Important point: There’s a difference between 1) exposing hatred for the purpose of enlightening the public, as PMW does, and 2) groups whom are actually posting videos to promote hatred. Does Google understand this?
Here’s the scoop: “In response to yesterday’s PMW video-bulletin which showed the PA Mufti’s speech that Muslims’ destiny is to kill Jews, YouTube has frozen PMW’s account. All PMW videos are working except this one but the account is frozen and PMW cannot upload new videos for the next two weeks.” WRITE TO GOOGLE AND ASK THEM TO PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH.
PMW is pleased to report that YouTube has reopened PMW’s account. Thanks to those of our subscribers and supporters who contacted YouTube on our behalf, the video of the PA Mufti saying Muslim destiny is to kill Jews is once again available for viewing. …
Jews and HIndus have both been victims of attempted extermination by Islamics. Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists. But today, most terrorists are Muslims. A speech to Hindu youth in Pune.
On January 8, 2012, I delivered a rather passionate speech in Pune, India via Skype. I was invited to do so by “Youth 4 Panun Kashmir.” The organizers were especially interested in my drawing parallels between Israel and India, Jews and Hindus both of whom have, historically, been genocidally exterminated and driven out of their holy places.
As Canada (my country) knows all too well, when you get in bed with an elephant, you get squashed. Canada now has a semi-independent foreign policy with respect to Israel (we favour Israel over violent Islamic states but the USA has begun to distance itself away from Israel) and Canada has found a way to make its own decisions despite having such a large and domineering neighbour. We have found a way to develop our own economy and society while finding mutually beneficial arrangements with our largest trading partner (and we are the USA’s largest trading partner).
For the first time in forty years, Israel is not the American president’s favorite Middle Eastern ally. Instead, that role is played by Turkey’s government.
This would not be such a bad thing if we were talking about the “old” Turkey, the secular republic. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s favorite adviser among the regional leaders is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pretend all you want but Obama really dislikes — hates? — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and truth be told Netanyahu has done nothing to deserve that treatment.
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