by Asaf Romirowsky
FrontPageMagazine.com*
February 14, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/896
* Cross-posted with permission

When Palestinians revealed their true colors electing Hamas to 74 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Arab world was dumb-struck. An Islamist terror group had finally snatched power from the ruling old guard and woke up the world to a new Middle East reality. But does Hamas’ victory really represent the decisive shift where Palestinian politics began going down-hill?

Historians and students of current affairs often compare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to that between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), in which an organization claiming to represent Catholics took up arms against Irish Protestants and the British. For decades, the IRA’s modus operandi was slaying thousands of innocent men, women and children. It also utilized terror tactics such as human bombs, which involved chaining one of its unfortunate victims to the steering wheel of a lorry laden with explosives, which was then exploded. The IRA was Western Europe’s most successful terror organization and has spread its malign tentacles across the globe. The parallels with Hamas are inescapable.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

“We support the NSA domestic surveillance program, but only if we get to score the political points.” This is the best the Democrats have to offer? It wasn’t that long ago that Ted Kennedy said of the program, “This is Big Brother run amok.” Now support for “domestic spying?” The Dems were briefed by the White House regarding the program’s details quite awhile ago, first seemed to forget, then remembered, sort of — but now that’s water under the bridge? Are cracks appearing in the party’s armor (not that there weren’t any in the first place). From the Washington Post:

Two key Democrats yesterday called the NSA domestic surveillance program necessary for fighting terrorism but questioned whether President Bush had the legal authority to order it done without getting congressional approval.

Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) said Republicans are trying to create a political issue over Democrats’ concern on the constitutional questions raised by the spying program.

Nothing like some good fence-straddling. Here’s the big but:

At the same time, the Republican chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees — Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), who attended secret National Security Agency briefings — said they supported Bush’s right to undertake the program without new congressional authorization. They added that Democrats briefed on the program, who included Harman and Daschle, could have taken steps if they believed the program was illegal. All four appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Roberts said he could not remember Democrats raising questions about the program during briefings that, beginning in 2002, were given to the “Gang of Eight.” That group was made up of the House speaker and minority leader, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and the chairmen and ranking Democrats of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

At the briefings, Roberts said, “Those that did the briefing would say, ‘Do you have questions? Do you have concerns?’ ” Hoekstra said if Democrats thought Bush was violating the law, “it was their responsibility to use every tool possible to get the president to stop it.”

This is just evidence of further splintering of Democratic ranks. Joe Lieberman, bless his heart, has publicly come out in support of the Iraq war on several occasions, and supports Bush’s war policy there. Imagine how Kennedy speaks of Lieberman behind closed doors.

Maybe the splintering is a good thing. The Democratic Party needs to find its footing and get itself out from under the domination of the Al Gore/Ted Kennedy types, who put self-serving, stuck-in-Vietnam, dogmatic, demagoguery above all else. I doubt that America’s center of the political spectrum, where her true wisdom lives, adheres to this far-Left diatribe. But who knows? The Right has been shooting itself in its collective feet — literally.

Until the Democrats embrace the center, unfortunately, we will not have a relevant opposition party.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

My tax dollars go to support National Public Radio — so it can grovel before the angry Muslim world? NPR is busily feeling guilty and apologizing to Muslim radicals for burning embassies, killing, and rampaging over a cartoon — a… cartoon… Here’s a snippet from NPR.org entitled, Caricatures of Muhammad: From Insult to Crisis:

Commentator Shibley Telhami says the protests reflect Arab suspicion and mistrust of the West — and also how easily an insult can escalate into a crisis.

The truth is that the folks at NPR are terrified of the terrorists — and Muslims who tacitly support them. They should be. 9/11 (3000 dead). Madrid (200 dead). London (50 dead). Bali (200 dead). Amman (57 dead). 300 trampled to death in this year’s Hajj, 1,426 killed in the 1990 Hajj, 251 in 2004, etc. Sudanese Muslims have slaughtered 180,000 black Africans. Kuwaitis ethnically cleansed 400,000 Palestinians in 1991. The list goes on and on and on.

But there is a big difference between a healthy, cautious fear, and a mindless, weak one, with denial added. NPR and its ilk would have us signing Neville Chamberlain-like “treaties” with Osama (it is called “appeasement”). As Bob Marley said, “Know your history; in the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty.”

Yes, please; we’ll do anything dear, angry Islamists — even give up our right to free speech. Just spare us from your terrorist wrath.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun*
February 14, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3386
* Cross-posted with permission

What are the long-term consequences of the Muhammad cartoon furor? I predict it is helping bring on not a clash of civilizations but their mutual pulling apart. This separation, which has been building for years, has dreadful implications.

Signs of disengagement are all around.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

All’s that has been done about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is hand-wringing and cheap talk. The appeasement has now born fruit:

Iran has restarted uranium enrichment work, UN diplomats have said.

They said it had begun feeding uranium gas into centrifuges - a first step in a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or bomb material.

Think about a nuclear-armed Iran. Its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged that Israel be “wiped off the map,” has denied that the Holocaust ever occurred, called for Israel’s Jews to be moved to Europe (ethnically cleansed), and has planned to host a conference to “prove” that Hitler’s extermination of Jews (and gypsies and gays) was a “myth.”

Just as frightening is the fact that Ahmadinejad views himself as the “Mahdaviat:” the “rightly-guided one” who will be “the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world.” He believes this as his radical Muslim theocracy pursues nuclear weapons technology.

From the Anti-Defamation League

Take a look at any typical newspaper in the Muslim world. Every day you will see offensive cartoon caricatures of Jews.

• Jews with fangs dripping blood
• Jews as shadowy figures hoarding money or gold
• Jews controlling the world

The Nazis used these anti-Semitic images as a license to kill. For decades they have appeared nearly every day in state-influenced media outlets from Egypt to Iran with one clear goal: to incite hatred against Jews.

While Arab and Muslim leaders attack offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in the free European press, their followers engage in horrific acts of violence - riots, assaults, embassies burned to the ground.

These same leaders have consistently refused to criticize or put a stop to the deeply offensive and dangerous anti-Semitic depictions in their own media outlets.

Speak out against this despicable
anti-Semitism!

ADL has launched an advertising campaign calling on Arab and Muslim leaders to:

• End the hypocrisy — condemn religious, racial and ethnic stereotyping of any kind
• Speak out and stop the vicious anti-Semitism in the Arab media
• Join us to fight demonization and prejudice wherever they appear

Join Us - Sign Our Pledge of Support

Let the world know, we are outraged and will fight against this hypocrisy!

By Andrew L. Jaffee

No matter how inflamed passions get, we (the West) must remember that there are decent, law-abiding Muslims out there, and that we have a responsibility to cultivate them and work with them, instead of kowtowing to the Islamist cooks. Some Danes have proved they are no better than the Muslim extremists now burning embassies, killing, and rampaging over the Mohammed cartoons. According to the BBC:

…Denmark saw about 25 Muslim graves desecrated in what police called a “backlash” against the uproar.

Vandals smashed only Muslim headstones in Esbjerg, west of Copenhagen.

What is this barbarity? These vandals cannot even let the dead rest in peace. If it is not one ruffian group, it is another, equally unacceptable.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com*
February 13, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3370
* Cross-posted with permission

How did the U.S. government perceive Islam as a political force in the old days? For an answer, I propose a look at a “confidential” 76-page study (declassified in 1979) published sixty years ago tomorrow by the Military Intelligence Service of the U.S. War Department.

The 1946 report, which I have posted online in pdf format (warning: it is a large document that may be slow to load), is the inaugural issue of a series of weekly reports titled simply Intelligence Review. This series presents “current intelligence reflecting the outstanding developments of military interest in the fields of politics, economics, sociology, the technical sciences, and, of course, military affairs.” Chapter headings in this first issue include: “Transition of Major Powers to Peacetime Military Systems,” “Manchuria: Soviet or Chinese Sphere?” and “Wheat: Key to the World’s Food Supply.”

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By Donnel Jones

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editoral. It calls for allowing Israel to join NATO in the face of Iran’s plans to make a nuclear bomb.

Of course the Europeans will object but here is one rationale for forcing Europe’s hand to allow the Jewish state to join:

Many Europeans will object that NATO is a geographic defense pact, but it has already expanded its field of operation beyond Europe into Afghanistan. If NATO is going to continue to be relevant, it has to adapt to confront new threats to global stability, and a nuclear Iran certainly qualifies. It’s fanciful for Europe to think it could stay aloof from an Iranian strike against Israel or the U.S., since the latter would surely retaliate and wider regional war would ensue. Iran is also developing ballistic missiles that will eventually have the capitals of Europe within range.

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SMCCDI (Information Service)
February 11, 2006

Millions of Iranians inflicted another heavy slap to the face of the shaky and unpopular Islamic regime by boycotting its “27th anniversary revolution celebration” by staying home, or far from the official gatherings.

The regime’s desperate leadership was hoping to bring millions in the streets by playing their nationalistic or religious feelings. But in Tehran, which was supposed to become a show room, the regime was unable to muster more than 70 or 80 thousand professional demonstrators and government employees and schools’ students. Many of them, such as most governmental employees, are known to be forced to participate in official gatherings and others are fanatics or paid demonstrators. Hundreds of buses had transferred thousands of such demonstrators to the Capital.

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By Donnel Jones

In what way does an uncivil society differ from a civil one?

The Danish diplomats “have provisionally left Syria because Syrian authorities reduced their protection to an unacceptably low level”, the foreign ministry statement said.

And this.

Damascus has not commented on the departure of Danish diplomats.

In the first instance you have a situation that is similar to that occurring before going to war: withdraw your diplomats from the enemy’s turf. Yet not entirely. The diplomats are leaving “provisionally.” It need not be a permanent departure and as with much having to do with burying one’s head in the sand, Denmark’s actions are taken in the belief, shared by the mute press and governments like Britain’s, like ours, that this unpleasantness will pass and we can, eventually, get back to business.

If only this were so.

In the second instance you have the essence of dictatorships: silence.

We are in a war with parameters being defined by the enemy and our reactions to them. It is an asymmetrical war wherein the enemy, without the big killing toys, has to apply pressure on our society’s “weakest links.” That is, the aspect of our society that makes it open, not silent.

Terrorism is asymmetrical because it is used when there are no armed forces available to invade a country or defend against invasion. It strategically applies itself to our society’s most prized features: its open borders, free commerce, open forum, and the other amenities of a free people. Destroying 10 million square feet of office space is possible through open borders, targets commerce, and seeks to shut down all dialogue and reason.

With the exception of open borders where there has been some narrowing, September 11th failed to take out commerce and kept an open forum (e.g. free press- whatever either side says about the other) intact.

This time, through a brilliant propaganda campaign, the open forum is beginning to close down with the suppression of cartoons that offend Muslims. One can talk endlessly about the history of political correctness that makes this unfortunate development in a way very predictable, but it is useful to remember why our concessions work on our enemy’s behalf and to our detriment. Daisy cutters don’t work against this kind of warfare. It’s asymmetrical.

The new attack comes asymmetrically: through mob hysteria, boycott, and murder. Not September 11th, but the world-wide Muslim revolt against cartoons published in the West, is gradually closing down the open forum. Free speech threatened by neo-McCarthyism? What about Flemming Rose who was told to take an indefinite leave of absence from the paper, Jyllands Posten, after he published the Muhammad cartoons with the blessing of that paper? What about chants and threats of death to those who likewise express themselves? How about such demonstrations made possible under the very right to free speech that the demonstrations seek to destroy? (Talk about “post-modern” irony!) How about the media organs that remain silent in the face of sheer ruffian behavior?

So much for “Good Night and Good Luck.” Neo-McCarthyism?

McCarthy was an evil ass who got what he deserved, but why are the Islamists not culpable, not held responsible for their own actions?

Why assume, for even a moment, that we should be silent because they demand that we not blaspheme for fear of offending them and suffering their wrath?

Who would have thought that America at large, en masse, would surrender its press and have it stay silent, yes, silence, in the face of calls for the death of those who dare practice the rights to free speech and a free press?

What happened to the spirit of opposition against clearly demonstrable oppression and irrational aggression?

Why is it more than ironic, more than “post-modern,” that Denmark withdraws its diplomats from two Muslim countries even though there is no formal declaration of war?

It is an asymmetrical war and we better adapt fast to know how to fight it. Because the tactics we are now using are appeasement in the current situation, regardless that we have troops in Iraq.

The silence is deafening.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

On the surface, it was gratifying to note a peaceful protest by Muslims against the Mohammed caricatures today in London’s Trafalgar Square. Peaceful assembly and free expression are the means by which civilized societies work out internal differences. But was today’s demonstration truly a spontaneous, lawful expression of free speech, or carefully orchestrated, public relations damage control for Islam? Despite the PR, the protest’s official slogan was “United against incitement and united against Islamophobia,” and speakers displayed the usual radical Muslim misunderstanding of free speech:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The EU has swung into quick action. It plans to completely surrender to Muslim extremists who want to quell free expression, one of democracy’s most hallowed rights. This is completely frightening:

In an interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the charter [media code of conduct] would encourage the media to show “prudence” when covering religion.

“The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression,” he told the newspaper. “We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.”

This is the “message” Mr. Frattini is sending (my translation):

Dear Muslims:

All’s you have to do to silence the West, and force your beliefs down our throats, is to kick up a tantrum, and we will quickly sell out our most cherished values. Anything, please, to spare us from your terrorist wrath.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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By Donnel Jones

What we really have with the Muslim uproar over the publication of Danish cartoons offering satirical depictions of Muhammad and the gang is simply this: a brilliant PR campaign against the West.

And it’s working.

The campaign against the freedoms of the West is so successful that, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we have American newspaper editors cowering in their offices, hoping the Muslim maelstrom will pass without it swallowing them. And their hope for being spared resides in their choice not to exercise the freedom to publish the cartoons. This is not only sad but infuriating. American journalists are neither brave nor free. They are craven and enslaved—and by their own hand. Yes, there’s the blogsphere and it just may be the only place where such freedoms are practiced, but the mainstream failure to publish in defiance of the Islamist mob is what is being noticed in the Middle East. As honor is something Middle Easterners cherish (and something we apparently have forgotten with the excesses of liberalism), the refusal to publish is seen as weakness, cowardice, and surrender. I have to say, just this once and for the record, that I, hopefully for the last time, agree with the Islamists!

Not even the horrible accounts of torture by American GIs nor even the incompetence of Rumsfeld’s Iraq post-invasion could arouse the Islamist beast into a critical mass of hostility toward the enemy—us. What Bush’s fumbles failed to achieve, the Danes have performed splendidly. As we all now know, the cartoons were published on the FRONT PAGE of an Egyptian newspaper last October! No riot in sight. No protest. No death to Mubarak. But of course not. That would land them in jail or worse. But one can rail against the West with impunity because, there, liberties are taken for granted, only to be thrown away out of fear.

A very sad day is upon us. Bush neither has the charisma nor the political capital nor the ability to launch a counter-campaign. He tried by appealing to the Iranian people during his SOTU but at that point, knowing full well we are bogged down in Iraq, his words sound good but will have little effect. The fourth estate cannot pick up the slack of our government, foregoing their responsibility to tell the truth, especially in a time of cultural and political emergency.

Meanwhile the words of imams and demagogues carry great weight in the enemy camp. The Islamists are rethinking their tactics. No one can say they will stop using terrorism. Another September 11th or worse could be around the corner, but there is a far more effective weapon the Islamists are using and it is working: ignite fury among the Muslim masses and have them intimidate a bulwark of American democracy: its free press.

With this new tactic the Islamists are, as of now, winning the war.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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By Barak, netWMD Guest Contributor

Here is a must-read by Charles Krauthammer that misses an important point… Why is there not a single suggestion from the "moderates" for a general agreement not to publish cartoons insensitive to all religions? Wouldn’t that seem to make sense? The reason is that anti-Semitism is fundamental to the Islamists. For example, Hamas, universally accepted in the Arab world, has a section of its charter devoted to the "Protocols" forgery. This controversy has nothing to do with fairness or sensitivity. It has to do with the insistence of Islamists on the principle of the primacy of Islam, and a second-class status (dhimmi) for others. We do not understand this because the West cannot conceive that anyone could openly espouse inequality as a principle.

For example, Muslim law (sharia) has universally insisted on inequality for non-Muslims in every facet of society as a specific technique of humiliation and assertion of Muslim primacy. See this must-read for details: The Unreported Legal Abuse of Non-Muslims in Islam.

I have seen no source that has articulated this point. Many commentators, such as this article by Krauthammer, have pointed out the "hypocrisy" of this protest. The best of the "people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones" observations has been this one by Tom Gross: Drawing a Line Under Hypocrisy. Unfortunately, it is wrong. Hypocrisy means to espouse a principle and then not follow it. We are just not listening to the demands. Islamists do not seek religious sensitivity; they demand the primacy of Islam. That’s what the "V" symbol represents in this picture.

Muslim cartoon protestors are not hypocritical, hypersensitive or ignorant, as is nearly universally believed in the West. If it were, the solution would be to act with extra sensitivity and also publicize Western tolerance of Islam. Enormous numbers of apologies have been proferred so far, including a new one from a Norwegian newspaper. The greatest example of this approach so far was the Danish cartoonist who donated money from the sale of his cartoon to Muslims as a way of proving he means them no harm.

Here is a piece that makes this case explicitly:

Threats to kidnap European diplomats and the armed takeover of the EU offices in Gaza are foolish and self-defeating. Those EU offices have disbursed over $3 billion to the Palestinians, and are one of the few life-support systems they have. If a poll were taken among Europeans today, there would probably be a considerable majority for leaving the empty offices to the gunmen and keeping the money for deserving causes in Europe.

One alternative use for those EU funds would be an education campaign to explain carefully to newspapers in the Arab world why their vicious cartoon depictions of Jews, and their now hackneyed way of depicting Ariel Sharon as Adolf Hitler, is in
appalling taste.

Westerners do not get it. Islamists do not care about what Westerners see as "appalling taste." Such an "education campaign" would have no effect. What is needed is a paradigm shift. The solution is found at the bottom of this previous entry.

Special Report: Danish Cartoons

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