Israel and the Rest of the
World
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The Nazis invented the Jewish boycott, and went on from
there to the Holocaust.
The world excuses Islamic murder, but focuses on flaws,
often imaginary, on the part of Israel.
This is the wrong boycott in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
Everybody hates Israel. That is
not just accepted wisdom, it is a reality that chokes all rational debate
on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There are exceptions,
of course, such as Canada, but most of Western Europe has slipped from
support for Israel to support for the Palestinian cause, as if both sides
might not have valid claims to the disputed land.
Most Americans are enthusiastic
about Israel, but the U.S. government under Barack Obama, has, in recent
years, shown increasing antagonism. Unsurprisingly, not a single Muslim
nation likes Israel at all.
Many hate the Jewish state
precisely because it is a Jewish state -- there seems no other
reason why they might hate it. Many, in a display of true prejudice, have
never even visited it.
In the world in general, and
Europe in particular, anti-Semitism is growing at a rate not unlike the
1930s. It does not take much mental grip to see the link between that
escalation of the "oldest hatred" and the refined political and
religious rejection of Israel as the one and only state in the world that
deserves to be abolished. Or, as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once put it in
Farsi, "exterminated" (Umam-e Eslami bayad Isra'il-ra qal' o
qam' kard: The nations of Islam must exterminate Israel.)
In a Friday sermon, former Iranian
President Rafsanjani also made the statement, "If one day, a very
important day of course, the Islamic world will also be equipped with the
weapons available to Israel now, the imperialist strategy will reach an
impasse, because the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel
will wipe it off the face of the earth, but would only do damage to the
Islamic world."[1]
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While the world focuses on Israel's flaws
(often imaginary), in Saudi Arabia there are special roads for
non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina.
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But then, one might surely ask, if
everyone hates Israel, will it make the slightest difference if it
actually is wiped off the face of the earth? Will it matter if another
six million Jews are gassed or driven into the Mediterranean? If most of
the people on the planet hate Israel and want to see a massive
Palestinian state take its place, then who will weep if the Jews go and
the Arabs come and take over, as so many people now say they have every
right to do? Would it not be a blow for humanity, justice and people
everywhere if the oppressive, violent, and apartheid Jewish state were to
be removed from the earth?
Are you starting to feel a bit
uneasy about this?
Some might hold back from wishing
death on the Jews, but would not hesitate if someone else were to
kill them. Or force them to pack their bags and leave their homes to make
room for an army of Palestinian "refugees." If you hate Jews
enough, nothing may seem too bad for them, and no history of pogroms and
the Holocaust will be enough to dissuade you and your friends from doing
it all over again, or rejoicing that someone else is doing it for you.
The treatment—or rather,
mistreatment—of the Jews stands out in the modern era as the single
greatest emblem of man's inhumanity to man. From the Christian (and
post-Christian) West to the Islamic East, hatred of Jews has led to
unfettered cruelty, and a continuing refusal to accept any form of moral
or ethical constraint. However much Jews suffer, anti-Semites want them
to suffer more. However far Jews might try to run, their self-appointed
overlords will try to hunt them down and start the process of hate and
persecution all over again. However much Jews contribute to human
civilization, win Nobel prizes, develop cures for illness, create
remarkable films, set up hospital units worldwide to treat the sick,
irrigate the fields of the poorest farmers and change our lives for the
better — the haters sneer and lie and kill Jews with the same knives; and
every time a Jew is killed or wounded, dance on the same floors.
And what have the Jews ever done
to deserve any of this? Are the Jews really the masterminds behind every
war, every revolution, every economic disaster, every plot, even the
Holocaust itself? Yes, according to anti-Semites, either the Holocaust
never happened and was made up to secure Israel as a country for the
Jews; or else the Jews instigated it to force other Jews to flee Europe
to Mandatory Palestine, to take it over. Just read a few comments on
YouTube as a measuring stick for this mental illness.
Of course, I know the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
says all this (apart from the Holocaust slurs), but the Protocols
is a forgery;[2] and
not just a forgery, but a cheap and shoddy product of the Tsarist secret
police before World War I. Even though it is now more than a century
later, some people still treat this libel as Gospel, and write comments
on YouTube to prove that the Jews are the worst of mankind.
In
Arab countries, after many years, the Protocols is still a
bestseller. And Hitler's Mein Kampf, tagged in 2011 by
Waterstone's in the UK as the "perfect
Christmas present", in its electronic
form is selling hand-over-fist. How hurtful -- and deeply unjust -- that
is to Jews who have just made critical advances in medicine or saved a
Palestinian child's life when operating in an Israeli hospital, or
journeyed to Africa to teach better methods of farming, or travelled with
an Israeli aid team to Haiti or the Philippines to save yet more lives.
The
Jews are not the worst of mankind; they are like the rest of us, some
bad, some good, and some so talented they have left indelible marks on
every field of human endeavor. They have always been an underappreciated
force, above all in the realm of ethics. No religion has developed in so
well-structured a fashion as Judaism; its impact on Christian and Islamic
ethics is well attested. Without the Jews, a major force for good and a
barometer for moral concern would be taken from civilization entirely --
or is moral concern something the world would secretly rather do without?
The
irony is that it is precisely these prejudiced, conniving, and racist
haters of Jews -- including those who envisage the destruction of the one
and only Jewish state and those who conjure up a realistic threat of a
second Holocaust -- who have the arrogance to treat the Jews, including
the Israelis, as if they are the most prejudiced, the most conniving, the
most racist of all mankind -- and the most immoral -- and, of course,
deeply inferior to Christians or Muslims.
The
false piety of much Christian condemnation of Israel is matched only by
the cheap moralizing of the followers of Islam in their attacks, both
physical and verbal, on the Jewish state; or their failure to recognize
that Jerusalem was always a Jewish city; that there were two Jewish temples
there; and especially in the obsessive Palestinian refusal to recognize any
part of Israel as a Jewish entity, or to make peace with Israel, or even
to acknowledge that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the
Holy Land for three thousand years.
The
loss of Israel -- engineered as it would be by a coalition of
"progressive" Muslims and Western secularists, along with
anti-Semitic Christians and hard-line Islamists -- would not be a victory
for any of the values we hold dear. On the contrary, it would be one of
the greatest disasters to befall mankind. The values we consider highest
– such as peacemaking, neighborliness, cooperation, caring for the less
fortunate, for those of different religions, ethnicity, and mutual
defence against aggression – would start to crumble, and our sense of
human progress would weaken and lose its hold on our minds and hearts. If
we could do that to the Jews, a people of great deserving, who have done
so much for us, what might we then do to others? For even if the Jews
were gone, there would still be other, weaker people for us to persecute
and eliminate.
Does
such a prognosis seem inflated, even barely respectable? Israel, however,
did not emerge in the way most other countries have done, as an
expression of traditional boundaries, a containment of one or more
specific languages, a repository of a single culture, a place determined
by one king, one dominant holy man, or one parliament, or one body of
laws. Of course, Israel has had several of those things, beginning with
the establishment, on that same plot of land, of the oldest set of laws
after Hammurabi: the Ten Commandments and the earliest set of social
welfare laws.
Modern
Israel had the original acclamation of much of the international
community; it set up a democratic parliament, established a set of basic
laws, and, when other nations let boatloads of refugees sink at sea,
served the Jews as the only sanctuary, free from a persecution which
still exists to this day, and, sadly, which is once again being orchestrated
by people supposedly educated enough to know better.
For
civilization — any civilization — to work, there must be a core set of
values that crosses from one culture to another, acquiring on the way a
sort of universal validity. Small differences may exist between one
country and another, one language and another, and even one religion and
another. With few exceptions, people who belong to Western civilization
believe that it is absolutely wrong to take a human life (except in
life-or-death cases or self-defense). We strongly believe in human rights
even if we are not always observant of them. In general, Western
countries advocate and legislate for equality between men and women,
equal justice under law, an independent judiciary, and freedom of and from
belief. We attempt to expunge racism in its various forms from our
streets and businesses. We defend minorities, religious, political, or
gender-based. And free speech, we defend that too, even when it hurts us
to do so.
Islamic
civilization holds often starkly different values. A man's or woman's
life may be taken, often by beheading or stoning, for a wide range of
"sins," from heresy (really, free thinking; there, called
blasphemy) to adultery to apostasy (more free thinking). A Muslim also
may not be punished for killing a non-Muslim, or even another Muslim if
his intent is to further the cause of Islam. Although not Islamic
in any true sense, female genital mutilation and honor killings are far
from uncommon. They happen in the UK and the US, mainly within Muslim
communities – as well as in Muslim countries.
Perhaps
Islamic civilization would find the disappearance of the Jewish state a
satisfactory gift. But Western civilization might not wear this too well,
except for that part occupied by those who consider themselves as members
of the far left -- Stalinists, Trotskyites, anarchists and anti-Semitic
Christians who believe they do the will of God, and even Quisling Jews --
when they curse Jews and boycott Israel.
When
the Nazis took power, Germany seemed to be one of the most civilized
countries in the world, with a rich culture, a deep grasp of academic
achievement, and a growing mastery of science and technology. Within a
few years, the country had been reduced to the status of the most
barbaric of countries, the most abusive of human rights, perhaps the most
savage political entity in history. And not many years later, Germany was
in ruins, destroyed by the very totalitarianism it had used to impose
itself on the rest of Europe.
Across
the world, people came to condemn the great wrongs Germans had done to
mankind. Germans rebuilt their nation only by rigorously excluding that
tendency to totalitarianism. Yet today, young Germans march against
Israel and, in fighting Israel, fight the Jews. What conceivable right do
the scions of that black period and the years of wiedergutmachen
[compensation] have to treat Jews as untermenschen [subhuman] once
again, to march in the streets where the SS marched, to bellow as their
grandfathers bellowed, Juden Raus, "Jews out" -- out of
"Palestine," out of the Middle East, out of everyplace.
Whatever
its detractors may say, Israel declares loudly that it is a country where
the best Western values are honored, where democracy, the rule of law,
the creation of new laws through an elected parliament, the fair
treatment of all minorities, rights for women, for gays, for all
citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are demanded. But say it is also a
Jewish country based on Jewish ethics, and someone of limited intellect
will come along clutching a copy of the Torah, the Talmud,
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or anything else they can lay
their hands on, and declaiming that they can prove Judaism is a
bloodthirsty religion that has always worked to defeat and mistreat
non-Jews. In the past years, I have only known a violent and angry Islam;
yet the world is silent. The world excuses Islamic murder, but focuses on
flaws, often imaginary, on the part of Israel.
The
very establishment of a Jewish state stood for more than even its
founders guessed. It was open defiance of the universal impulse to
persecute and kill Jews.
Only
in their Holy Land could the Jews weave their own destinies at last --
and do. Israel thrives. They have won Nobel prizes and made some of the
greatest advances in science, technology, and medicine. Israelis create
world-class hospitals and universities. They have written more scientific
papers per capita than any other nation, and have saved children's lives
– Palestinian children's lives – in a dozen operating theatres, and sent
aid teams around the world to save yet more lives. Israeli
"apartheid"? Far from it. All facilities and opportunities are
equally open to all Israelis: Black, White, Arab, Christian, Jew --
everyone. Far more than in say, Saudi Arabia, where there are special
roads for non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina, or
where a Bible is not even allowed in the country. Or all the mosques
where every Friday congregants are told that Jews are the sons of pigs
and apes. It would seem that is racism; that is apartheid.
What
the destroyers of Israel would do is negate every one of Israel's
achievements and more, and leave a hole in the world, in their own world.
What, after all, would take the place of Israel? Another failed state, riven
by strife, characterized by failure, poverty-stricken, dependent, just
another victim of the authoritarian Arab way of governing? Is that
something that will set civilization towards new horizons? It is up to us
to keep the lights on, to place civilization against barbarism, to put
our minds and bodies between Israel and all who mean her ill.
[1] "Iran Calls for the Destruction of Israel," Intelligence and Terrorism Information
Center, Center for Special Studies, Special Information Bulletin,
November 2003, citing Khabar TV, December 14, 2000. Cited in Joshua
Teitelbaum, What Iranian Leaders Really Say About Doing
Away with Israel, Jerusalem Center for Pubic Affairs.
[2] See David
Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in
Shaping Modern History, London, Jonathan Cape, 2009, pp. 22-48.
Radical
Islam's Intimidation in Kosovo
The
Attempt to Destroy Alma Lama
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"Society in Kosovo has two
options, either to fight the evils within it of crime and corruption, or
to remain on the margin of democratic countries... The cause of democracy
has been betrayed by many people, including some who won seats without
deserving election to them." — Alma Lama, Member of Parliamentary
Assembly from the LDK Party, Kosovo
The name of
Alma Lama, a feminist political leader in the Balkan republic of Kosovo,
is unknown to Americans and Western Europeans. That is unfortunate,
because Lama has taken a necessary, strong stand in favor of women's
rights. Although Kosovo is under U.S. protection, the legacy of Yugoslav
Communism and recent radical Islamist infiltration have merged to foster
incidents of aggression against dissenters.
Ostracism is
a common form of intimidation employed by the Stalinist left. While
fascists and Islamist extremists act typically against their opponents by
direct physical assault, Stalinists in the West have reserved such crude
methods for the few opponents they consider genuinely dangerous to them.
They prefer, when they can, to isolate their critics by oral slander and
gossip, supplemented by printed libels, with the aim of discrediting them
and preventing a wider audience from paying attention to their views.
Alma Lama,
interviewed in Kosovo in late in February, represents such a case. Born
in Albania, she graduated from the University of Tirana in language and
literature, then in 2002 went to Kosovo, where she contributed to media
agencies[1]. She also
visited the U.S., honing her professional skills by participating in the
Women in Public Service program sponsored by the State Department at
Wellesley College, in 2012. Mainly, however, she worked for leading
Albanian language media, including the public Radio Television Kosovo
(RTK) and the most popular broadcaster in Albania, Top Channel; and
became known as a promoter of investigative reporting in the Western
style, basically unknown in the region.
Lama was then
solicited in Kosovo to join the Self-Determination Movement, led by a
charismatic radical philosopher, Albin Kurti, who had been active in the
political wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the 1998-99
NATO intervention, and imprisoned in Serbia after the war. He launched
the Self-Determination Movement (known in Albanian as LVV) in the first
decade of the 21st century, with a message of resistance to foreign
meddling in Kosovo -- a message welcomed by many.
It was often
said, before the decline of professional journalism and the rise of
advocacy polemics, that journalists should not work for politicians or
become political activists themselves; many referred to such actions as
"crossing the line." But as public attitudes polarized, such
instances became common, and the temptation to become involved in "a
cause" has been strong, especially in ex-Communist countries such as
the successor states of former Yugoslavia. Moreover, the Serbian
onslaught against the civilian populations of Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Kosovo compelled journalists to take sides.
To many,
including Lama, Kurti, seemed the only honest political figure in Kosovo.
She joined LVV, and when the movement became an electoral party and
presented her among its candidates for the Assembly of Kosovo, the
national legislature, she was one of 12 members elected in 2010. The
success of LVV at the ballot box was a surprise to some observers, who
had not realized the depth of the disaffection Kosovar Albanians felt
toward local politics.
Lama remained
an LVV deputy in the Assembly until 2013, when she broke with its
parliamentary delegation[2] soon after Kosovo Muslim women were assailed
by an Islamist extremist, Imam Irfan Salihu. Salihu was relieved of
duties at his mosque in the southern Kosovo spiritual center of Prizren,
as described in The Weekly Standard in June 2013, after he erupted in a diatribe
against Kosovo Muslim women, whom he deemed insufficiently observant of
Islamic morals as he prescribed them. He railed against them as alleged
"prostitutes" and called on husbands to abandon them. Salihu
criticized only the supposed immorality of women, not of men.
Although its population is at least 85%
Muslim, Kosovo is defined constitutionally as secular. For example, the
headscarf and religious instruction are excluded from public schools.
Women including Kosovo president Atifete Jahjaga are prominent in
official capacities, but dress according to fashionable Western norms.
Salihu was condemned by women from the three main parties in the
Assembly. Lama, representing LVV, Teuta Sahatçiu from LDK, and Vlora
Çitaku, the Kosovo minister for European integration and a former deputy
from the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), which is made up of prominent
KLA leaders, joined other female Assembly members in denouncing Imam Salihu.
Lama, however, said she was then shocked when
LVV leader Kurti, who had been known throughout his career as an atheist,
proposed a political opening to a tiny Islamist entity, the Justice Party
(PD), which had only three seats in the 120-member Assembly and was
apparently modeled on the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Kurti and LVV refused to defend Lama against
attacks by the Islamists, and, according to Lama, LVV further called for
protecting the headscarf and introducing religious lessons in state
schools, just as the Islamists demanded. Lama, who says she is not
religious but respects the rights of believers, stated that as a feminist
she refuses to accept any compromise with restrictions on women's dress
or other habits.
The shift by Kurti toward the Islamists,
coming so quickly after the crude assault on the reputation of Kosovar
Muslim women by Salihu, was not only surprising, it seemed both
opportunistic and unproductive. An alliance with Islamists would not
improve LVV's political chances, but could harm its credibility as a
principled party. (Kurti and the rest of the LVV leadership, previously
cooperative with media efforts, have failed to respond to requests for
interviews.)
In addition, Lama said, "The influence of
Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood is political suicide for
Kosovo." She explained a paradox about life under past Serbian rule
that had previously been mystifying: the terror regime of Slobodan
Miloševič had allowed mosques to remain open in Kosovo, meanwhile expelling
local Albanians from their jobs, excluding them from schools, and denying
them health care. The intention of the Serbs, according to Lama, was to
divide the Albanians along religious lines and to reinforce the image of
the latter as Islamists.
Lama's rejection of complicity with Islamists
is hardly unique in her environment. On February 19, media in Albania and
Kosovo published an interview with Veton Surroi, a leading journalist and
author; it was entitled, "The 'anchor' of the Albanians must be set in
Berlin, not in Ankara." He criticized the regional intrigues
of the current Turkish administration, noting drily that, "the
Erdogan idea of democracy is rather different from that of Europe."
Similarly, on February 24, Koha Ditore
[Daily Times], the high-quality Kosovo journal of record, founded by
Surroi, printed a column by Ramiz Lladrovci, "Serbian ideology and Wahhabism, two major risks for Kosovo;" it warned that, "the Islamist
movement, oriented firmly toward Wahhabism… is already present in Kosovo,
but is advancing, with its leaders, both known and unknown, becoming more
aggressive, and more vocal in their interference in people's lives...
political leaders, even including Albin Kurti, take care not to offend
such groups." Lladrovci charged that officials of Serbian
intelligence agencies, whom he identified by name, had long established a
network of collaborators inside the Kosovo Islamist movement.
Thus Lama departed from LVV and, after
reflecting, joined LDK's Assembly group. The reaction to her evolution,
as she recalled it, was appalling. Her former party associates insulted
and shunned her. Muslim radicals threatened her on e-mail and social
networks. People who had been trusted as friends responded to mention of her
with crude slurs. One said in an interview that someone should
"nail" her, and topped it with unprintable sexist epithets.
When reminded that in America "nail her" also has a sexual
connotation, he said, "Do that, too." Another accused her of
being anti-Muslim, although a leading Kosovar Sufi was quick to express
his respect for her.
Lama pointed out that the propaganda against
her by Muslim radicals alleged she had become an apostate from Islam, and
deserved the death penalty. Although she is an elected legislator, she
requested police protection, which continues. At the end of the
interview, she mentioned her anxiety about going home on her own late at
night.
Notwithstanding the defamation she faces, Lama
continues working productively and conscientiously for her
fellow-citizens. Last year, the Kosovo Assembly passed a law she had written and proposed, to shield
journalistic sources -- perhaps the most advanced such regulation
anywhere in the world. The shield law covers "printed media
(including brochures, posters, leaflets, magazines and newspapers),
film/video records, radio transmissions and television transmission,
audio recording and reproductions, transmissions of services by
messages." Its guarantees extend to "cameramen, photographers
and their support staff, such as drivers and translators, etc.," as
well as self-employed news-gatherers. Safeguards are established on all
work materials including "documents, notepads, sound or film
cassettes, recordings, video, photographs or other unpublished means."
It further establishes a right to silence by
journalists for protecting sources, both in court and during criminal
investigations. Journalists may be compelled to identify sources only to
prevent a homicide, based on a court order, and after appropriate legal arguments.
Absent such a procedure, "searches of houses, buildings of media
companies, or any online public communication company, news agency, cars
of these companies or agencies, or homes of journalists" are
prohibited. Journalistic source content is even shielded when it is
received from a third party who has obtained it illegally, if journalists
choose to remain silent.
Lama has continued her media dialogue with the
Kosovo public. On February 24, 2014, in the Kosovo daily Zëri [The
Voice], under the title, "Building democratic culture," she wrote, "Society in Kosovo has
two options, either to fight the evils within it, crime and corruption,
or to remain on the margins of democratic countries, where failure and
dysfunction dominate... [O]rdinary citizens tend generally to shift blame
from themselves to politicians, whom they view as the bearers of crime
and corruption... but a comprehensive means to exit a corrupt system is
required... Votes are said to be for sale – meaning the purchase of
intentions and a conscience... [Electoral] commissioners arrange deals
among the parties, trade off votes and candidacies, and discuss who pays
the most... [Deputies] who are illiterate or have finished no more than
middle school, or with criminal records, use the parliament to shelter
their crimes."
Her criticism of political venality
articulates the grievances heard among millions of people in ex-Communist
countries today, most notably in Ukraine, but also in the Balkans,
especially Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. She warned in Zëri
that in Kosovo's elections "the cause of democracy has been betrayed
by many people, including some who won seats without deserving election
to them." She identified the manipulation of the electoral
commissioners as the main problem, especially in remote villages where
local officials distribute votes in advance among parties. She called for
public counting and scrutiny of ballots, by all commissioners acting as a
group, in the presence of observers from civil society, as well as the
Central Electoral Commission, rather than in the closed company of their
party adherents. She pointed out that Albania has adopted such practices,
producing a significant increase in electoral transparency. Finally, she
warned that foreign embassies in Kosovo cannot secure the integrity of
voting, and that no international power can erect a democratic state or
culture in Kosovo, despite the vast payments they have distributed there.
Lama concluded, "The time is now for
every citizen to be held accountable in the vote, to abandon the
mentality of voting according to family or clan affiliation, for young
people to clean up the parties, with each party renouncing the
deformation of the citizens' wishes, and for all institutions to
guarantee fully elections that are free and fair, while they now stand at
the edge of crisis."
She deserves support around the world.
[1] Such as
the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, United Press International, The
Washington Times, and BBC News.
[2] After some months as an independent
legislator, she eventually joined the conservative, non-violent
Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), which unlike LVV and other leading
forces in government, had not been involved in the KLA.
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