Much written and said about the Middle East has always been fantasy. But nowadays the proportion of fantasy to reality is higher than ever. And number one on that list is the war hysteria with Iran.
Israel may have to attack Iran some day. But not this week, month, or even year. That’s true for very good reasons.
Iran doesn’t have deliverable nuclear weapons. It is not about to have deliverable nuclear weapons. Israel is not about to attack Iran. The United States is certainly not about to attack Iran. The whole idea that the leaders of Iran are crazed suicide-oriented people who expect the twelfth imam to arrive next Thursday is simply not true.
Want to know how to talk to an Islamo-fascist and expose his soft-spoken but dangerous agenda to spread Sharia’s barbarity (Islamic “law”)? Just watch this excellent exchange. The Islamo-fascist publicly admits he wants Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist — non-Muslim “infidel” — Americans to live as third-class citizens (dhimmis) under Sharia. He admits he wants to destroy democracy. He gets told to shove off, as it should be:
Is the problem Islam or Islamism? Muslims or Islamists?
These and related questions regularly foster debate (see the exchange between Robert Spencer and Andrew McCarthy for a recent example). The greatest obstacle on the road to consensus is what such words imply; namely, that Islamism and Islamists are “bad,” and Islam and Muslims are good (or simply neutral).
Some observations in this regard:
Islamism is a distinct phenomenon and, to an extent, different from historic Islam. The staunch literalness of today’s Islamists is so artificial and anachronistic that, if only in this way, it contradicts the practices of medieval Muslims, which often came natural and better fit their historical context.
Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award Friday for an image of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen. … the image has religious ‘almost Biblical’ overtones and noted its resemblance in composition to Michelangelo’s Pieta — but in a Muslim setting. …”
“Almost Biblical.” Not… even… close… Comparing Michelangelo’s Pietà to some snapshot of a burqa-ed Muslim woman holding some injured Yemeni street protester is an ideal example of Westerners wearing rose-colored glasses. Many Western “intellectuals” are bending over backwards to placate the largely violent and intolerant Muslim World, because they want to believe in an “Arab Spring.” The Pietà “analogy” is not an analogy at all. It is political correctness gone mad.
The burqa-ed woman is wearing latex gloves, for Christ’s sake! Is she afraid of being soiled by or soiling the wounded man she’s holding? Why is the woman covered from head to toe in black, except for an eye-slit? Because Islamists are so repressed a la Freud that they can’t trust themselves to look upon their own women. The burqa is the sure sign of the third-place status of Muslim women — they can’t drive, work, or be seen to varying degrees depending on what dysfunctional Islamic country in which they reside. Yemen ranks worst in the world according to The Global Gender Gap Report.
Jesus was a man of peace. His mother Mary stood by his side through the worst of times — and she didn’t wear a burqa or latex gloves. “Jesus publicly included many women as his disciples” (see here also for Biblical citations). When Jesus rose from the dead, the first person he appeared to was Mary Magdalene.
So to you “jurors” for selecting the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award: You got it wrong. It’s a photo — and not the best I’ve ever seen. Do you morons remember who Michelangelo was and what he accomplished — like his David? Michelangelo’s work was sublime, not the product of some digital, idiot-proof, one-shot camera.
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:
The Washington Post’s editorial writers ought to read their own newspaper. Monday’s lead editorial bemoaned the fact that having illegal aliens go to the “back of the line” is deceptive since there is no “line” for them:
Among the second wave of Arab Spring uprisings that followed Tunisia, Syria was the most spectacular “out of the blue” that suddenly arose in the face of the media and analytic community. Just days before Deraa exploded with protests last March, some analysts were still scrutinizing Syria’s circumstances and declaring the country to be immune from the Arab Spring. Nor did reporters who visited the country spot signs of a brewing storm.
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.
It’s axiomatic that the nation’s leading pollsters, in what amounts to a tacit conspiracy, have for years falsified their reports about the deep disquiet an overwhelming majority of the American people feel about our broken immigration system. This near-universal disinformation has played a key role in the effort on the part of the political and fiscal elite to prevent immigration from emerging as a major national political issue. With the exceptions of Zogby and Rasmussen, their carefully engineered push polls have permitted pro-amnesty presidents, politicians, pundits, clergy, activists, etc. to peddle the lie they enjoy popular support.
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. …
One of the principal beneficiaries of the Arab uprisings has been Al Jazeera television. Viewers are praising the English and Arabic channels’ comprehensive coverage of the revolts while the Obama administration continues to court the network as part of its signature foreign policy goal of improving ties with the Arab and Muslim worlds.
So the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, both known genocide-promoting, Israel-hating, and Jew-killing bands of thugs have signed a “reconciliation deal.” So what? They hate each other as much or more than they hate Jews. They’ll never make with peace with Israel, no matter that morons like Defense Secretary Leon Panetta scream that Israel, a civilized democracy, is the party which needs to, “Get back to the damn [negotiating] table,” with two, not just one, group of homicidal maniacs. Palestinian blood-hatred against Israelis has been well-documented for years; they’ve been killing Israeli Jews, Arabs, Druze, Christians, etc., for years — yet the drum-beat persists that Israel needs to make concessions. Don’t believe me? Listen to the latest evil vitriol of Hamas in its own words (e.g., “We harvest the skulls of the Jews”) for yourself, courtesy of MEMRI:
The so-called “Arab Spring” continues to transition into a “Christian Winter,” including in those nations undergoing democratic change, such as Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis dominated the elections — unsurprisingly so, considering the Obama administration has actually been training Islamists for elections.
Ahmed Rehab, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR’s) Illinois chapter of the infamous Islamist-terrorist-supporting group, is having yet another bad day.
It seems that Ray Mauro had the nerve to write the FrontPageMagazine article “Illinois State Government’s Muslim Brotherhood Love Affair” detailing the truth behind some of the odious characters appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to his “Muslim American Advisory Council.”
Recently, French Islamists (presumably) firebombed the office of French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo for its speech. Simultaneously, Charlie Hebdo’s website was also taken down in a cyber-attack by a Turkish hacker. The firebombing and hacking occurred just one day after the magazine, which has a history of equal opportunity offensiveness, cheekily announced that the Islamic Prophet Mohammed was going to be a guest editor for this week’s edition, “(i)n order fittingly to celebrate the Islamist Ennahda’s win in Tunisia and the NTC (National Transitional Council) president’s promise that Sharia would be the main source of law in Libya.”
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