WarSclerotic

Our World: The Age of Dissimulation.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK
11/02/2010 00:12

Rather than discuss the nature and threat of Islamic supremacism, the Western media, Western political leaders and academics deny it.

Years from now, when historians seek an overarching concept to define our times, they could do worse than refer to it as the Age of Dissimulation. Today our leading minds devote their energies and cognitive powers to figuring out new ways to hide reality from themselves and the general public.

Take US President Barack Obama’s senior counterterrorism advisor for example. On Sunday, John Brennan spoke on Fox News about the latest attempted Islamic terrorist attack on American soil.

Since the Obama administration has barred US officials from referring to terrorists as terrorists and effectively barred US officials from acknowledging that Islamic terrorists are Muslims, Brennan simply referred to the Islamic terrorists in Yemen who tried to send bombs to synagogues in Chicago as “individuals.”

Today, practically, the only individuals willing to speak honestly about who Islamic supremacists are and what they want are the Islamic supremacists themselves.

For instance, in an interview last week with Reuters, the Islamic supremacist Hamas movement’s “foreign minister” Mahmoud al- Zahar told the Christian West, “You do not live like human beings. You do not [even] live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?”

Al-Zahar also made the case for Islamic feminism. As he put it, “We are the ones who respect women and honor women … not you. You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don’t know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women.”

Finally, al-Zahar claimed that Westerners have no right to question Islam or criticize it. In his words, “Is it a crime to Islamize the people? I am a Muslim living here according to our tradition. Why should I live under your tradition? We understand you very well. You are poor people. Morally poor. Don’t criticize us because of what we are.”

Al-Zahar can sleep easy. The citizens of the West have rarely heard anyone in any positions of power and influence criticize Islamic supremacists “because of what they are.”

In fact, the most remarkable thing about al- Zahar’s interview was not what he said but that Reuters decided to publish what he said. By letting its readers learn what al-Zahar thinks of them, Reuters inadvertently gave Westerners a glimpse at the simple truth its editors and their counterparts throughout the Western media routinely purge from coverage of current events.

Rather than discuss the nature and threat of Islamic supremacism, the Western media along with nearly all Western political leaders and academics deny and dissimulate. Rather than address the threat, they accept the Islamic line and blame Israel for everything bad that happens in the world.

THE ONE group of people that can almost be forgiven for this crime against reality is the non-Muslims who live under Islamic rule. On Sunday, we received a grim reminder of the plight of such minorities with the Islamic terror attack on Baghdad’s largest church, the Our Lady of Salvation Catholic church.

As some one hundred worshipers celebrated evening mass, Islamic terrorists stormed the church. According to an eyewitness account, they walked straight up to the priest administering the mass and executed him. The Muslim terrorists then took the Christian worshipers hostage.

As Iraqi military forces stormed the church under US military supervision, the Islamic terrorists threw grenades at the worshipers and detonated their bomb belts. By Monday, the death toll had reached 52.

It will be interesting to see how Catholic officials in Iraq and throughout the world respond to this attack. At the Vatican’s Synod on the status of Christians in the Middle East last month, Emmanuel III Delly, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq proclaimed, “The population of [Iraq] …is 24 million, all Muslims, with whom we live peacefully and freely…Christians are good with their fellow Muslims and in Iraq there is mutual respect among them.”

As the noted Islamic expert Robert Spencer wrote last week in Frontpage Magazine, Emmanuel has not always been so outspoken in his praise of Muslim Iraqis. In 2008, when US forces were still in charge in Iraq, Emmanuel made a statement that more accurately reflected the plight of his co-religionists.

Then he said, “Christians are killed, chased out of their homes before the very eyes of those who are supposed to be responsible for their safety…The situation in some parts of Iraq is disastrous and tragic. Life is a Calvary: there is no peace or security… Everyone is afraid of kidnapping.”

Christian clergy in Muslim countries are so terrified of Islamic aggression that they systematically hide the truth of their oppression and often distort their own theology to win the tolerance of supremacist Islamic authorities. Spencer noted that the head of that Vatican Synod, Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, who presently heads the Eastern Catholic church in the US, and in the past served as archbishop of Baalbek in his native Lebanon follows a similar pattern of dissimulation.

In Bustros’s case, his prevaricating goes beyond false depictions of the plight of Christians. In his bid to win the favor of his Islamic supremacist overlords in Hizbullah, Bustros has regularly engaged in theological revisionism.

At last month’s synod, Bustros repudiated the teachings of the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and embraced the discredited supersessionist theology that Vatican II denounced. Bustros claimed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people and his promise to give us the Land of Israel “were nullified by Christ.”

In his view, “There is no longer a chosen people.”

Bustros did not simply assert a theological view at odds with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. He used his replacement theology to politically delegitimize Israel. Bustros said, “The theme of the Promised Land cannot be used as a basis to justify the return of the Jews to Israel and the expatriation of the Palestinians.” Bustros is set to return to Lebanon soon to serve as the archbishop of Beirut. The fact that he used his position as the head of the Vatican’s synod on the plight of Christians in the Middle East to earn him the protection of Hizbullah when he returns is made clear when his statements at the conference are compared to a speech he made in 2006, when he was still comfortably ensconced in the US.

As Spencer notes, in a speech Bustros made at St. Thomas University in Florida in 2006, Bustros minced no words about the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Addressing the Islamic precepts on relations with non-Muslims, Bustros said, “The doctrines of Islam dictate war against unbelievers….[T]he concept of nonviolence is absent from Muslim doctrine and practice….Peace in Islam is based on the surrender of all people to Islam and to God’s power based on Islamic law. They have to defend this peace of God even by force.”

FEAR OF Islamic massacres of Christians – like the one in Baghdad on Sunday – goes a long way towards explaining anti-Jewish and pro-Islamic pronouncements by Christian clergy in the Islamic world. But what can explain the West’s embrace of lies about Islam?

Why would people who do not live under the jackboot of the likes of Hizbullah, Hamas or their sister groups in places like Iraq obsequiously parrot untruths about Islamic history and theology and deny the very existence of Islamic supremacism?

The most notable case of such behavior in recent weeks came with the UN Educational, Science and Cultural Organization’s Executive Board’s declarations about Israel and Jewish history. At its October 21 meeting, the governing board of the UN agency charged with naming and preserving world heritage sites engaged in a shocking episode of historic revisionism in the service of Islamic supremacism.

UNESCO’s board issued five declarations regarding Israel. In addition to its routine condemnations of the security fence, Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and Israel’s refusal to give Hamas control over its border with Israel, UNESCO’s board asserted that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are all buried, is a mosque. Rachel’s Tomb, where Rachel is buried, is also a mosque, according to UNESCO’s governing body.

It is not surprising that UNESCO’s Muslim members pushed for these declarations. Islam is a supersessionist religion. It claims that all the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs as well as all the Jewish prophets, kings and judges were Muslim. It similarly claims that Jesus, Mary and the apostles were Muslims. It is standard Islamic practice to transform Jewish and Christian holy sites in lands conquered by Islam into mosques.

It is this Islamic practice that led Yasser Arafat to shock and disgust Yitzhak Rabin in July 1995 when he proclaimed that, “Rachel was my grandmother.”

Arafat’s statement was the first time that a Muslim leader in modern times claimed Rachel’s grave is a mosque. Arafat made his preposterous claim in the course of negotiations about the disposition of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Due to its significance to Jews, Israel demanded full security control over the tomb. Arafat based his counter-claim on standard Islamic historical revisionism.

While Rabin rejected Arafat’s baseless assertion, last month UNESCO’s executive committee, whose membership includes France, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Poland, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Italy, the US and India accepted Arafat’s wholly false rendition of the historical record. In so doing, they collaborated with an Islamic attempt to eradicate Jewish history.

Why would they do this? They are not bishops who have to worry that their communities will be annihilated if they step out of line.

No doubt, fear of Islamic terrorism fuels some of their behavior. But fear can’t be the full explanation. Most Westerners have no contact with Muslims. And Islamic terrorist attacks in the West are not a daily occurrence.

The West’s newfound obsession with Islamophobia probably also has something to do with it. Western elites are terrified of being accused of racism. This is particularly true when – as is the case with Islamophobia – the charge is leveled on behalf of people who were oppressed in the past by Westerners.

But while fear of the charge of Islamophobia does play a role in Western kowtowing to Islamic supremacists, the West’s aversion to the perception that it is oppressing those it once oppressed fails to provide an adequate explanation for its willingness to collaborate with Islamic supremacist attempts to blot out Jewish history. The West’s history of oppressing Jews is far bloodier and longer than its record of oppressing Muslims.

In the end, there is only one credible explanation for the West’s willingness to lie about the nature and goals of Islamic supremacism. There is only one credible explanation for the West’s willingness to collaborate with Islamic supremacists as they purge the historical record of the Jewish roots of Western civilization. There is only one explanation for the West’s willingness to accept the Islamic supremacist assertion that Israel is to blame for Islamic aggression against Jews and Christians alike.

But if I mention anti-Semitism, I will be attacked as a paranoid Jew.

caroline@carolineglick.com

British Foreign Secretary to hold secret Iran talks while in Israel – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

William Hague arrives in Israel on Tuesday for his first visit since being appointed foreign secretary in Britain’s recently elected Conservative government.

By Barak Ravid

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday evening, will hold a secret roundtable discussion on the Iranian nuclear program on Wednesday morning with a long list of senior Israeli officials involved in this issue.

This is Hague’s first visit to Israel since being appointed foreign secretary in the recently elected Tory government, and the roundtable discussion is being held at his request. His goal is both to gain an in-depth understanding of the Israeli government’s positions on this issue and to hear assessments of Iran’s nuclear program firsthand from senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials.

	British Foreign Secretary William Hague
	Photo by: Reuters

The closed meeting is scheduled to take place at the British ambassador’s residence in Ramat Gan, and those invited include Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Shaul Chorev. Other Israelis on the guest list include Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

But it seems that at least some of the ministers will skip the roundtable, because it apparently will conflict with a cabinet meeting.

The British embassy said Britain shares Israel’s concern about the threat posed by nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands and holds regular discussions with Israel about this issue, but cannot at this stage discuss the details of the secretary’s schedule for the visit.

Britain and France have spearheaded the battle against Iran’s nuclear program in the European Union. After the UN Security Council approved a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran in June, London and Paris worked hard to get the EU to approve additional sanctions of its own against Iran, which it did in late July.

Israel and Britain cooperate very closely on Iran in both the intelligence and the diplomatic spheres. This cooperation is particularly noteworthy given the two countries’ deep differences on the Palestinian issue.

And Britain’s new ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, is an expert on the Iranian nuclear issue. He dealt with it both when he served as deputy head of mission in Britain’s embassy in Tehran a few years back and in his most recent post before coming to Israel, as principal private secretary to then-foreign secretary David Miliband.

One thing Hague will be looking for at Wednesday’s roundtable is Israel’s assessment of how effective the new sanctions against Iran have been.

Two weeks ago, Ayalon and a group of senior Israeli intelligence and defense officials were in Washington for a strategic dialogue that dealt solely with the Iranian issue. At that meeting, the Americans opined that the sanctions had succeeded beyond their expectations, thanks to widespread cooperation by many countries worldwide.

The Israelis agreed that the sanctions had been more effective than anticipated and were causing economic hardship in Iran that had increased political pressure on its government.

Nevertheless, the Israelis stressed, there is no evidence so far that the sanctions are causing Tehran to rethink its nuclear program, and they certainly have not caused it to stop enriching uranium. That is undoubtedly the assessment they will repeat to Hague tomorrow.

Kadima MK calls on German gov’t to confront Iran.

FRANKFURT – Kadima’s director-general and MK Yohanan Plesner told over 1,000 Israel supporters on Sunday at a historic German conference titled Together for Israel, devoted exclusively to promoting solidarity and security for the Jewish state, that “we need a Germany that not only talks the talk, but a Germany that will face the Iranian threat.”

Plesner echoed the criticisms of many of the speakers and participants who argued that the German government was not meeting its international responsibility to stop Iran’s alleged drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

“German companies are profiting from Iran,” Plesner said. “It is in Germany’s interest – not only morally and ethically – to face Iran before it becomes a nuclear threat. This is a real threat, and this real threat requires real action.”

He added that he hopes that “Germany will have the guts and wisdom to send a clear message,” because Germany and Israel share the same values.

Speaking to a diverse group of over 80 organizations including pro-Israel Christian groups, Yoram Ben-Ze’ev, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, declared that this was the first time that he had “spoken in front of so many friends of Israel in Germany.”

Ben-Ze’ev criticized the “tendency in Germany to delegitimize” Israel and the “negative reporting” about the Jewish state in German press.

In addition to Iran’s foreign policy, a German parliamentary resolution from July, which many observers view as tainted by anti-Israeli bias, dominated many of the conference panels and discussions at the Frankfurt event. The resolution, which was passed unanimously by all German parties, called for an independent investigation of the violence on the Mavi Marmara and an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza. The resolution slammed Israel for allegedly violating the principle of proportionality during the May 31 incident in which nine Turkish activists were killed by Israeli naval commandos who were violently attacked while boarding the ship.

Gitta Connemann, an MP from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who voted for the resolution, said “it cannot be the message of this event that the German Bundestag is positioned fundamentally against Israel.”

Connemann and MP Jerzy Montag, a Green Party MP who passionately defended the resolution, are members of the German-Israeli parliamentary group set up to foster greater cooperation between the two countries.

Montag and Connemann were noticeably irritated by the criticisms of the pro-Israeli crowd, including Jochen Feilcke, the head of the German-Israeli friendship society in Berlin Potsdam, and Prof. Gert Weisskirchen, a former Social Democratic Party MP and leading expert on European anti-Semitism.

Feilcke reminded the German lawmakers that Merkel had told the Knesset in 2008 that Germany should not provide “advice” from outside and interfere in Israel’s security objectives.

Feilcke, a former CDU MP, termed the resolution “counterproductive, and it does not serve the security interests” of Israel. Weisskirchen said “it is not the function of the Bundestag” to attack Israel, and he could not recall a time in which such a “turning point” in terms of German-Israeli relations took place.

Israeli diplomats have previously criticized Montag for his pro-Palestinian advocacy work instead of focusing on his role as chairman of parliamentary group devoted to advancing Israel’s security.

Lothar Klein, a CDU city councilman from Dresden and former MEP, explained the support of resolution as coming because “many of the members of the German parliament orient themselves toward public opinion,” which is largely anti-Israel.

Klein, one of the key supporters of Israel in the state of Saxony in eastern Germany, criticized Germany for being the “most important trade partner of Iran.”

Montag’s attempts to defend the resolution prompted a wave of boos from the packed auditorium. His fellow Green Party MP Volker Beck, who also voted for the resolution, was met with displeasure from the audience for his focus on lifting the Gaza blockade and criticizing Israeli settlements during his talk.

Responding to Beck, Sacha Stawski, the key organizer of the conference, defended the blockade and said the “background of the Gaza blockade is not mentioned,” adding that Israel could not allow weapons to be delivered to Hamas, an act which the blockade prevents.

Ben-Ze’ev insisted that “the settlements are not the main problem.”

Stawski told The Jerusalem Post that “we wanted to send a signal outside and inside that Israel is not alone.”

Dieter Graumann, vice president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews in Germany and probable successor to its current president, Charlotte Knobloch, sharply criticized German MPs for visiting Iran in October and meeting with regime figures who repress women. Graumann singled out Claudia Roth, who purports to be a feminist but said that she had subjugated herself to the mullahs by wearing a head scarf. He called the German legislators’ trip a “scandal” for meeting with Teheran’s parliamentary chairman, Ali Larijani, who denied the Holocaust in Munich in 2009, and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who opened the Holocaust denial conference in 2006.

Graumann called the German-Iranian trade relationship a “disgrace” because Germany was conducting flourishing business with the “world champion of anti-Semitism.” Graumann said the German Green Party informed him that “if we do not conduct business with the Iranians then others will do it.”

He insisted there was a “wall of silence” among German politicians from all parties in and trade associations about their business deals with the Iranian regime.

FrontPage Magazine » Israel’s Warning » Print.

Posted By P. David Hornik On November 2, 2010 @ 12:45 am In FrontPage | No Comments

While these days the focus is understandably on Al Qaeda, alarming news has also surfaced about Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group that is clustered near Israel’s border and has taken control of Lebanon.

The French daily Le Figaro reports ^[1] that Hezbollah’s arsenal now numbers 40,000 missiles, and that the organization fields over 10,000 fighters. Le Figaro also gives details on three Hezbollah units tasked with maintaining and transporting the missiles, and on Syria’s close involvement in the whole enterprise.

The article says that last January one of the three, Unit 108—in a move picked up by U.S. intelligence—received a delivery of 26 Syrian M-6002 missiles somewhere between Damascus and the Syrian-Lebanese border. While Unit 108’s main barracks are near that border, it also has a base near Damascus Airport for handling weapons shipments from Iran.

Le Figaro quotes the French Defense Ministry as saying Israel might strike Unit 108’s sites in Syria.

The paper also says the Syrian army has its own Scud missile base near Damascus. And while Syria denies having supplied Hezbollah with Scuds, satellite images seem to show Hezbollah operatives being trained in their use at the base.

Ron Ben-Yishai, veteran military analyst for Israel’s largest daily Yediot Aharonot, ascribes much significance to the report and writes ^[2] that “whoever provided [Le Figaro] with sensitive intelligence information” had reasons for doing so.

One of those, Ben-Yishai says, is:

to slam the facts in the face of international public opinion, so that the UN, the West, Arab states and the global media won’t pretend to be surprised if and when Israel undertakes powerful, destructive strikes. Such actions would target the immense rocket and missile arsenal in Lebanon, as well as the states that contributed to establishing it, that is, Lebanon and Syria.

Ben-Yishai goes on to note that in recent months Israel has been conveying that point to the international community, including declassified maps ^[3] of how Hezbollah stores weapons near schools, hospitals, and homes in southern Lebanese villages. Hezbollah thereby wants to make it hard for Israel to attack the targets, while also setting Israel up for “war crimes” accusations if it does.

“We can therefore assume,” writes Ben-Yishai:

that Israel, apparently in cooperation with France, is also behind the latest French report. France views itself as holding responsibility and special ties with Lebanon, and the information leaked by the French Defense Ministry…constitutes a message to Lebanon and Syria in and of itself.

While such messages, according to Ben-Yishai:

will not bring about the termination of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal, they serve Israel’s deterrent power and are supposed to grant it legitimacy for “disproportional” acts should such strikes be required in Lebanon, and possibly in Syria as well.

A few more points should be added.

First, as even erstwhile strong Obama supporter Marty Peretz observes ^[4], the Le Figaro report further underscores the total failure of Obama’s attempt at “engagement” with Syria. The notion that Damascus could be wooed out of the Iranian-led alliance with soft words and promises of money, friendship, and the Golan Heights has once again been exposed as delusory as Syria’s collusion with the terror axis only tightens.

Second, the Le Figaro report adds another nail or two to the coffin of Security Council Resolution 1701, which formally ended Israel’s summer 2006 war with Hezbollah and “called for…the establishment [in southern Lebanon] of an area free of any armed personnel…other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL.” 1701’s rapid demise—if remembered at all—into a bitter joke is notable at a time when there is talk of foreign forces monitoring the West Bank after an Israeli pullout. UNIFIL is still active in southern Lebanon—which meanwhile has turned into a terror hub and forward base of Iranian expansion. For Israel, the same fate for the West Bank would be even worse.

Third, the situation as revealed in the article also has bearing on whether the U.S. should continue its military assistance to Lebanon. That aid was suspended by Congress last August after a Lebanese-army sniper killed an Israeli commander in an unprovoked incident. It is increasingly recognized that, while there are indeed moderate elements in Lebanon, they no longer count, with even the supposedly neutral Lebanese army having gone over to the radical side. Further military aid, then, not only “risks” but is certain to strengthen the side inimical to the West.

And finally, it bears repeating that the current baneful situation in southern Lebanon and the country as a whole is an outcome of Israel’s 2000 withdrawal. In that regard, Israel has itself to blame for the danger it now faces. Still, the momentum for the retreat came in part from internalization of the worldwide pressures for Israeli concessions—pressures that continue to this day. Israel is signaling that it should not, once again, be blamed if it has to clean up the mess.