Showing posts with label Islamism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamism. Show all posts

Sunday, January 22, 2023

Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad, by Professor Richard Landes, is a hard but important book to read. 
Landes does no less than directly taking on the orthodoxy of the liberal world that regards Israel as one of the worst human rights violators, that regards supporting the Palestinian cause as the archetype of progressive values, that regards the West as Islamophobic and institutionally racist. He challenges the reader - what if everything you have read is wrong, and I am right? 

The first part of the book goes into some detail on four episodes from the early 2000s. 

It is no surprise that one of those episodes is the  Al Dura affair, which Landes is one of the world's experts in. It was indeed the first blood libel of the new millenium, where the media unquestioningly accepted and promoted the idea that Israeli forces murdered the child Al Dura on TV and in cold blood. The French reporter, Charles Enderlin, who spread the libel wasn't there and he trusted the reporting of a Palestinian cameraman. Hours of footage from the same scene showed it was essentially a soundstage, where Palestinians were play-acting injuries. Yet almost no Western reporters questioned the story, as the Arab media ran the footage non-stop for days.

Occuring only two days after Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in 2000, the incident inflamed the Palestinians and the Arab world. Indeed, it would not be inaccurate to call the second intifada the "al-Dura intifada," as it almost certainly was the spark that kept the brand new riots going.And it was all a lie - it is impossible that the IDF could have shot the child from their position. 

The other incidents that Landes examines from the early part of the millenium are 9/11, the Jenin "massacre" that wasn't, and the Muslim world's reactions to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Landes uses each of these incidents as springboards into examining the West's reactions, which often were, as he notes repeatedly, stupid. On page after page, Landes gives scores of examples of this stupidity: the reluctance by media to use the term "terrorism," the constant repetition that Islam is peace, the bending over backwards to find fault with Western and specifically Israeli actions and ascribing them the responsibility for Islamist violence.

It is easy to forget the early aughts of this century, but Landes reminds us that just as today we will see Western progressives justify Hamas rockets by asking "what choice do they have?," the reaction to the tsunami of suicide bombing attacks in Israel during the bloody years of 2000-2004 prompted the exact same justifications by the same crowd. 

The other two major parts of the book examine the key players in pushing the bizarre mindset of Western self-blame and bending to the will of the Islamists (whom Landes terms "Caliphators") and the current outlook on the war between the West and apocalyptic Islam - and how the Islamists are winning the battle by disabling their enemy. On the way, Landes expertly analyzes the honor-shame culture and the zero-sum thinking of the Islamists as well as the stupid western tendency to project our own mindset onto them, even as they use our own strengths of self-criticism against us.

Throughout the book, Israel is the canary in the coal mine. By any objective standard, Israel is the most progressive and liberal state ever in an extended state of war. Its successful integration of a 20% Arab population as equals is far more successful than what we see in Paris or Malmo with a much smaller Muslim minority. Yet Israel is regarded, even by those other "enlightened" progressive European elites, as a "shitty little country" that has no right to exist. 

As I said, it is a hard book to read. The amount of information is sometimes overwhelming - and often infuriating. Landes also often peppers the text with gems that demand to be re-read. Happily, he chooses to use footnotes instead of endnotes so one can dig deeper into his often offhand examples.

I have some nitpicks too. I didn't see that he has a glossary of terms, many of which he created, until I finished the book, so one often sees his coinages like "Y2KMind" or "Caliphator" a hundred pages before he defines them in the text. I'm not as convinced as Dr. Landes of the millennialist component of Islamist thinking.  

The tone of the book is often more strident than objective, but it is hard to fault Dr. Landes for that, since the reader is apt to be upset along with the author. There is ample excuse to get angry while reading it.  And while Landes gives some general advice on what the West needs to do in order to recognize and defeat the enemy of Islamism, I wish it was more actionable. (I have written and spoken about how I think the Arab honor/shame culture can be used to Western advantage.) 

In general, though, this is an important book to read, and even those of us who are immersed in these topics will learn a great deal and see connections that we hadn't thought of before. 

Disclosure: I am friends with Richard, and this site is mentioned at least three times in the book.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Monday, November 28, 2022

From Ian:

IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Is Only "Polarizing" to Israel's Detractors
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) "working definition" of antisemitism is not polarizing to anyone other than Israel's detractors and antisemites.

The IHRA definition has been adopted by three dozen nations, at least six Canadian provinces and numerous states in the U.S.

The IHRA's detractors refuse to acknowledge that modern antisemitism is often tied to the Jewish State (e.g., Jewish soldiers being called Nazis).

They accuse those of us who defend the definition of being "right-wing" and of "weaponizing antisemitism" in order to defend Israel.

This is meant to undermine our efforts to protect ourselves against hate.

In the case of the IHRA definition, it's often the same people who call for universal rights and freedoms who oppose those very same rights for the Jewish people, particularly as they define their relationship with the State of Israel.

The IHRA definition is not "polarizing" to anyone other than those who either lack an historical understanding or are with an agenda to exacerbate the problem of hate and defame the Jewish state.
Anti-Israel activists and human sacrifice
In the anti-Israel context, there is the more recent case of Rachel Corrie. A college senior, Corrie became a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a terror-connected NGO that exploits foreign activists in service of the Palestinian cause. It is likely that she had already been indoctrinated in anti-Israel ideology, but the ISM almost certainly compounded it by orders of magnitude via a cult-like environment of hate.

Corrie lived for some time in Gaza, where she became infatuated with the people and decided that Israel was committing genocide against them, in which, as an American, she was complicit. In 2003, she knelt in front of an Israeli bulldozer, ostensibly in protest of a house demolition. The driver could not see her, and she was crushed to death.

She has, of course, become a martyr, and her letters and emails have been transformed into books and plays. Yet what they reveal is a deeply insecure and troubled young woman, possessed by existential guilt and desperate to redeem herself. Corrie’s death, in other words, was less a tragic accident than a kind of seppuku—a ritual suicide that she hoped, perhaps unconsciously, would be a moral expiation. She did not come to this conclusion on her own. She was the victim of unscrupulous people who wanted, or at least knew they were likely to acquire, a martyr.

One should not look away from what this means: Emotional blackmail kills. It is a kind of murder. Murder at third hand, perhaps, but murder nonetheless.

It is also part of a very ancient tradition. What the blackmailers are after, in the end, is the most primal of all forms of absolution: the human sacrifice. It is sometimes an emotional sacrifice, but far too often it is also physical.

From their origins in prehistory, such sacrifices were, almost invariably, expiatory acts. They were attempts to redeem a person or a community from their sins, to appease the gods and turn them away from stern judgment. And above all, such sacrifices made the victim a sacred object.

There are many among us, often young and vulnerable, who wish to become sacred objects and are told that if they sacrifice themselves, whether in life or in death, they will become so. It is tragic that many choose to believe this, but that does nothing to redeem those who lead them to the altar.

Judaism has always seen human sacrifice as an abomination, which indeed it is. We should not forget this admonition. No one, however righteous they consider themselves to be, has the right to demand such things from anyone. Like the priests of Moloch, those who use emotional blackmail of vulnerable individuals to achieve such an end stand accused.
Ye x Milo x Fuentes
Stop me if you've ever heard this one before:

Fueled by his hatred of Jews, one of the most recognizable black man of his era decided to forge an alliance with one of its most high-profile white nationalist, or, at the very least, the one whose juvenile stunts attract the most attention. One of the men behind the scenes who worked on arranging the meeting is himself Jewish, though he has long repudiated his heritage, is known to have engaged in antisemitism, as well as for being a grifter, and is distrusted by many in the movement. On the other hand, he has shown an uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with its leaders and keep the spotlight on himself. All of this revolving around grand political ambitions on both sides.

Obviously, I'm referring to the infamous 1961 entente of George Lincoln Rockwell, Malcolm X, and Daniel Burros which culminated in years of friendly relationships between the American Nazi Party and the Nation of Islam.

On June 25th, 1961, ten members of the American Nazi Party quietly arrived at the Nation of Islam rally in Washington, DC. In the Uline arena, they were surrounded by more than 8000 members of the Nation of Islam. They were not there to disrupt, attack the attendants, to protest the speech; instead, they were front-row guests. That night, Elijah Muhammad had called in sick, so Malcolm X took the stage to give the keynote speech in his stead. Rockwell contributed $20 to the cause and, while having his picture snapped by Jewish photographer Eve Arnold, he barked at her, 'I'll make a bar of soap out of you.' (She answered, "As long as it isn't a lampshade”).

At first glance, it would seem highly bizarre that members of the American Nazi Party, in full regalia and occasionally Sieg Heiling, would be tolerated amongst the Black Nationalist movement. Still, it more than made sense once you realized that they shared the same antisemitism and views on racial separatism. There was also a historical precedent; the units described as the most vicious, brutal, and antisemitic of the SS were the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, composed almost entirely of Muslims.

Eight months after their first public meeting, George Lincoln Rockwell addressed more than 12,000 black audience members at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, urging them to ally with Nazis to be truly uplifted. "You know we call you niggers," he addressed the crowd. "But wouldn't you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others all say behind your back?". He later praised the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad as the 'Adolf Hitler of the black man.'
The Decline of Islamism, and the Rise of the Muslim-American Far Left and Far Right
Born in St. Louis, Umar Lee (né Brett Darren Lee) converted to Islam at the age of seventeen, and was quickly drawn to its stringent Salafist form, and to Islamist political radicalism. He subsequently broke with extremism, although he remains a committed Muslim. In conversation with Dexter Van Zile, Lee discusses his own experiences—including a recent visit to Israel—and his observations about Islam in the U.S.
Islamism is no longer popular. Back in the day, it was very popular. . . . I attribute that to reality—the failure of the Arab Spring, the disaster of what happened in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Islamist politics has become so unpopular in the Muslim world that historians in 100 years are going to write that there was a 40-year period—from the mid-to-late seventies until the late 2010s—of Islamist political revival that faded away after the Arab Spring. In the U.S. we don’t see people talk about Islamist politics.

Conversion had some negative consequences [for me]—a period of extremism and Islamist politics—but it also kept me out of trouble and away from a criminal lifestyle. You have to remember that a very high percentage of guys who grew up where I did ended up addicted to drugs, or alcoholics. Many didn’t live to see forty and quite a few didn’t make it to twenty-one. For all of the problematic aspects of the Muslim experience in America, there is a track record of conversion keeping some men off the streets and clean.


On the subject of how American Muslims fit into contemporary political divides, Lee comments:
What you’re increasingly seeing in the Muslim community in America is a gender divide. You’re seeing that progressive politics [are] very popular, especially with women, especially young women. We know after 9/11 there was [a] leftward shift in the American Muslim community. . . . But you’re [now] seeing an insurgency led by men, particularly younger men, that are rejecting this progressive shift. They’re rejecting it in very harsh terms and going very far to the right. What you’re seeing in the Muslim community is—especially the young people—the left, and now this segment of the far right, are really taking up all the oxygen and moderate politics is very unpopular.

Unfortunately, there is more uniformity when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish state:
By far, the least popular thing you can do [in the Muslim community] is support Israel. I could get on video and drink liquor [or] smoke weed and people would say, “Hey everybody, no one’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.” I could be in a [pornographic film] and people would say, “Hey, well, . . . ” But support Israel? That is the worst thing that you can do.

When it comes to Israel, everyone is still unhinged. It doesn’t matter what segment of the communities they’re in. There are very few rational people. And even the rational people I talk to, [who] agree with me in private, won’t say anything in public.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022



Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, is taking the heat for the removal by the museum, of a large, floor-to-ceiling photo of the well-known meeting between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin El Husseini and Adolph Hitler. That the photo has disappeared from view is not in doubt. But what does the disappearance of the photo signify? 

Was its removal from public eye motivated by politics and political correctness, or was it more about museum function and management? 

More to the point: Was the photo removed in the first place?

Several important voices, for example Lyn JuliusEllie Cohanim, and Daniel Greenfield, have alluded to the removal of the photo as politically motivated. And in fact, the disappearance of the photo does seem political, even shockingly so. 

For one thing, the Bennett government coalition includes Ra’am, the Arab list. This is one of the larger factions of the coalition, and it is in Bennett’s best interests to avoid offending Arab sensibilities. Dani Dayan, meanwhile, is a Bennett appointee. Could Dayan be behind the removal of the photo in order to satisfy some injunction from above?

If so, preserving the government would have come at the expense of the public’s understanding of this grievous chapter in Holocaust history. Those who saw the photo while it was still on display, speak of its stark impact. There was Shalom Pollack, who said, “As a tour guide since 1980, I have visited the old museum numerous times and remember clearly how my tourists were shocked by the duo in the photo.”

Pollack described his efforts to get the photo reinstated:

When I wrote to Yad Vashem and asked why they removed the photo from the new museum, I was told that the new museum "concentrates on the victims and less on the perpetrators". However just a few feet from the small Husseini - Himmler photo is an entire wall of perpetrators - the architects of the "Wannsee Conference" that drew up the plans for the Holocaust.

I asked a number of local official Yad Vashem guides about the photo. They either did not know of it or said it was political and they did not discuss it with visitors. They were uncomfortable with my inquiry.

I wondered if associating Palestinian Arabs with Nazis was no longer politically correct since the Oslo accords with Arafat in 1993.

Undeterred, Pollack looked for a more sympathetic ear. Dani Dayan was a son of the right. For six years, Dayan had chaired the Yesha Council, which represents Judea and Samaria, settlements and settlers. Pollack thought he might have finally found an ally in Dayan:

Today there is a new chairman of Yad Vashem,

Mr. Dani Dayan came to the position with "right wing" credentials, so I renewed my efforts. I wrote to him asking that he return the photo and asked for a meeting with him about the subject. I was refused a meeting and told that there will be no changes made.

I then encouraged people to write to Yad Vashem and request that the photo be returned. The letter writers were made to understand that there never was such a photo. Emails began bouncing back to the senders. I enquired with Yad Vashem and was told that they changed the email address. I was told the new one and the letter campaign resumed.

Knowing of Pollack’s determination to reach Dayan, his brother found a way to put the two in touch:

In mid-November 2021, Mr. Dayan addressed a well-known and affluent synagogue in Westhampton, NY. My brother, a member of the community, approached Mr. Dayan and told him of my concern. He said he was aware of it and assured him it is not political. My brother asked if he would meet me. He agreed and so I received a call from his office for a meeting.

At the meeting Dayan told me he did not meet with me earlier because he did not like the tone of the letters written to him. He told me that "no one will lecture him on Zionism and love of Israel. His credentials speak for themselves." That is true, which is why I had expectations.

He claimed that I was interested not in historical record but the politics of the Jewish - Arab conflict. I said it was both, which he did not accept. He added that Yad Vashem is not a museum of the Arab - Jewish conflict, that Husseini played only a tiny part in the Holocaust and did not warrant more space than he has in the museum.

Next came a denial that the photo was ever displayed to begin with (emphasis added):

[Dayan] told me that he is in charge and won't bring the photo back, if there ever was one. His advisor chimed in: “There was never such a photo." She asked me if I had photographic proof and I reminded her that it is forbidden to bring cameras into the museum. I asked her if the many signed testimonies of veteran guides that I have gathered is proof enough and she said it was a possibility.

Mr. Dayan was frustrated that I continued to hold firm to my position. I told him that there are growing numbers of people, Jews and non-Jews, who want the truth not be hidden at Yad Vashem and the photo returned. He asked that I leave his office.

Who was right about the photo? Pollack, or Dayan’s advisor? Dayan’s official statement appears to back assertions that the photo has never been on display at the museum (emphasis added):

To anyone who mistakenly believes differently, the facts are that the picture of the meeting between Adolf Hitler and the Mufti was never displayed in the old historical museum at Yad Vashem (it does, however, appear on the Yad Vashem website).

Here is where Dayan flubbed it. This was a denial of a fact and it made Dayan look bad, as though he were lying. He was also insulting, as much as calling those who said they saw the photo, liars.

Dayan had an important platform that gave him the chance to make things better, but he’d only made it worse. Hence the communal umbrage.

Mort Klein of the ZOA came to the fore to defend Pollack:

The decision by Yad Vashem to remove the photo of the Mufti tying him to Hitler did not go over well with Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton Klein, who “slammed the museum and its head Dani Dayan for an ‘appalling’ censorship of history.” Klein didn’t mince words, nor should he have done so, since the decision by Yad Vashem has worrying implications, particularly given the contemporary rise in Islamic antisemitism throughout Europe and North America.

From Breitbart (emphasis added):

“I can vouch and state as a matter of fact that I, Morton Klein, personally saw that picture on Yad Vashem’s wall when I was there,” he asserted.

Though photography is forbidden in the museum itself, the author of the recent op-ed attacking the museum gathered twenty signed testimonies of veteran guides over the last month attesting to the photo’s original presence, before it was allegedly removed and never returned during renovations in 2005.

Other voices have testified to having seen the photo in the “old” museum, prior to renovations, contradicting Dayan’s denial:

Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem David Cassuto, a longtime member on the museum’s council, told Breitbart News on Sunday that the photograph was absolutely part of the museum’s previous exhibition.

“I remember it; I saw it there,” Cassuto said, as he expressed his bafflement as to why it was ever removed. 

“They have to bring it back and out it in a prominent point in the exhibition,” he added.

Cassuto, who met with Dayan over the issue last month, disregarded Dayan’s denials. 

“[Dayan] has no idea because he was not there at the time.”

Ephraim Kaye, who served as the director of international seminars for educators from abroad at the museum for over 25 years, also confirmed the prior display of the photograph and its subsequent removal.

“Everyone remembers the picture of the Mufti and Hitler, it was towards the end of the museum — it was there,” Kaye told Breitbart News. “It was up until 2005 when we closed the old museum and opened the new one.” 

Dayan is certainly not culpable for the original decision not to exhibit the Mufti/Hitler photo in the refurbished museum. That happened in 2005, when Dayan was not on the scene, as Cassuto rightly states. Nonetheless, reading Dayan’s statement is to understand why the subject blew up. 

This could have been handled so much better. But Dayan is new to the job. And Israelis are notoriously bad at public diplomacy.  

In light of Dayan’s statement/denial, it was not unreasonable for the public to presume that Arab sensibilities were at least a partial factor in the disappearance of the photo of Hitler and the Mufti. If true, that's a shocking thing: a Jerusalem Holocaust museum putting history into hiding to keep Bennett’s government intact.

The disappearance of the photo is viewed as the museum downplaying or minimizing the importance of the Mufti-Hitler meeting. The museum looks culpable of purposely hiding history. Dani Dayan, who represents the museum, looks as though he is capitulating to Arab and woke sensibilities by refusing to find a way to restore the photo to public scrutiny.

But what if he isn’t?

I spoke to Dr. Elana Heideman, Holocaust scholar and Executive Director of The Israel Forever Foundation. Heideman suggests that the controversy may not be a controversy at all. I reviewed with her what other writers are saying. She reminded me that each of these parties has a particular focus: “Mine is integrity of memory. If you want to make an issue, then it should be for using this as an example of the danger of extracting details that are uncomfortable to contemporary rhetoric. And that this should raise questions not only in Jerusalem, but everywhere, as to the complete exclusion of any reference to the Muslim/Nazi connection and shared ideology.”

Heideman described the exhibit, which I had not seen. It was true that the photo of the Mufti and Hitler was floor-to-ceiling, but Dr. Heideman told me that in the former exhibit, each photo had had a corresponding same-sized photo on the opposite wall. That salient fact had been omitted from most other accounts I had read. Reading the op-eds, I had been under the impression that the photo of the Mufti and Hitler was the only large photo in the exhibit, and perhaps the largest photo in the entire museum, or at least one of the largest.

Discussing this with Heideman was confusing for me. She had me contemplating the idea that I’d gotten hung up on the word “removal,” when the photo had not been “removed” so much as not placed on exhibition in the new museum. The refurbished museum had all new exhibitions. According to Heideman, all the voices speaking of removal imply that the photo was displayed in the museum and subsequently taken down for the sake of political correctness. 

Heideman, who knows about these things, mentioned that it takes a lot of thought to create new exhibitions, and how best to present the museum’s holdings to the public. That the photo is not currently on display, does not exclude the possibility that it will be on display in the future. A new exhibition may even be in the works. It would take a lot of thought and planning to create an exhibit on the Muslim-Nazi connection with maximum impact on visitors to the museum. 

In other words, maybe shifting stock is just what museums, do. And in fact, that’s exactly what this museum did. They put up other things instead. Just not that thing.

What Heideman said made me pause and think about how it would be a difficult and complicated conversation to have. How should we portray the Muslim-Nazi connection to museum goers? How might we best teach the subject in the classroom? How much space do we give to this part of Holocaust history? One chapter in a textbook? Ten?

Every chapter of Holocaust history, in fact, requires a difficult conversation for educators and others who strive to engage the public on the subject. As Dayan suggested in his statement, it may be legitimate for a museum to consider how large a part the Muslim connection plays in the greater scheme of the things:

Research shows that the meeting between the Mufti and Adolf Hitler had a negligible practical effect on Nazi policy. Attempting to pressure Yad Vashem to expand the exhibit on the Mufti in the Holocaust History Museum is tantamount to forcing Yad Vashem to partake in a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is alien to its mission.

But while it's legitimate for a museum to decide the best way to utilize its inventory and space, it's also legitimate for museum accusers to want that photo back up, not only because it is an important part of history, but because it still has relevance for us, today.

Pollack said so to Dayan's face:

He claimed that I was interested not in historical record but the politics of the Jewish - Arab conflict. I said it was both.

We are supposed to learn from history, lest we repeat it. But wokism means that if we talk about the  Muslim/Nazi ideology connection, we're accused of Islamophobia. This is similar to the way we are now not allowed to say that the vast majority of antisemitic attacks in New York have been perpetrated by blacks. The facts may be facts, but bringing them to light is definitely construed as racist in the prevailing zeitgeist. 

Dov Hikind has spoken of the need to change this dynamic:

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former longtime Democratic New York State assemblyman Dov Hikind said that there is “a problem with many young people in the black community, but not just young people.”

He pointed to antisemitic comments made by Joan Terrell-Paige, a member of the Jersey City Board of Education, following the Jersey City antisemitic shooting, who alleged that “brutes of the Jewish community” had “waved bags of money” at black homeowners, and alleged that “six rabbis were accused of selling body parts.”

Hikind also noted that members of the Hudson County Democratic Black Caucus, representing elected officials at the state, county and local levels in New Jersey, said that while it did not agree with “the delivery of the statement” made by Terrell-Paige, they said that the issues she raised “must be addressed and should be a topic of a larger conversation” between the African-American and Jewish communities.

“This is unreal,” said Hikind. “This to me indicates something much deeper at play. Whatever it is, we shouldn’t be afraid to discuss it.”

The Mufti-Hitler photo may or may not have been removed with conscious political intent, but on whichever side you fall in the debate, it is the way Dani Dayan handled things that drew public scrutiny, especially in regard to his response to the complaints. Dayan had a platform. Still does. His statement should have been seen as an opportunity to correct or at least redirect the narrative to avoid harm to the museum. That is his job.

Instead, he denied the photo had ever been there, when he should have refrained from mentioning this at all. There are lots of things he could have said. He could have made a forceful statement and said that the photo had not been hidden from view.

He could have said that the museum was taking time to consider how best to use the photo in a future exhibit on Muslim-Nazi relations--true or not.

But he said none of these things. Dayan blew it. And that put winds in the sails of the idea of “removal” as opposed to “not currently on display.”

Dayan should have registered how his behavior and statement would look and feel to the public. That floor-to-ceiling photo had made a strong impact. People noticed its absence. They feel a loss. They feel as though we, as a people, scuttled an opportunity to confront the world with a shocking and important image that helps make our tragedy real to them. 

As an inexperienced spokesman, Dani Dayan created a massive PR blunder. His statement is not as it should be and stands to this day on the Yad Vashem website as a giant gaffe. It should not have gone down this way. Dayan's actions have only fueled public outrage and lent it credibility.

This leads to the thought that Dani Dayan may have been good at minor politics, but he quite frankly sucks at his new job. This issue is not going to die an easy death. It is only getting worse. 

But there is still one thing the museum can do to fix things, with or without Dani Dayan:  

Find a place to display that photo on the walls of Yad Vashem.

And soon. 




Tuesday, October 08, 2013

From AFP:


A Saudi court sentenced a preacher convicted of raping his five-year-old daughter and torturing her to death to eight years in prison and 800 lashes, a lawyer said Tuesday.

In a case that drew widespread public condemnation in the kingdom and abroad, the court also ordered Fayhan al-Ghamdi to pay his ex-wife, the girl's mother, one million riyals in "blood money," lawyer Turki al-Rasheed told AFP.

Blood money is compensation for the next of kin under Islamic law.

The girl's mother had demanded 10 million riyals.

Ghamdi's second wife, accused of taking part in the crime, was sentenced to 10 months in prison and 150 lashes, said Rasheed, who is the lawyer of the girl's mother.

Ghamdi was convicted of "raping and killing his five-year-old daughter Lama," he added.

The girl was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, activists said. She died several months later.

Ghamdi, a regular guest on Muslim television networks despite not being an authorized cleric in Saudi Arabia, had confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, human rights activists said earlier this year.

Randa al-Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl's back was broken and that she had been raped "everywhere".

Reportedly, Ghamdi had tortured and raped his daughter after he had doubted her virginity.
Oh, why didn't you say that he tortured and raped her repeatedly to maintain family honor? Now the sentence makes sense! Those slutty five year olds, turning on their fathers like that. How dare they!

In fact, this sentence is an improvement over what originally happened in this case.

Last February, Ghamdi was released from prison altogether because a judge figured the blood money was enough punishment for him. Apparently, an international outcry caused this re-sentencing.

This also shows the importance of shaming Arab countries into causing them to act like normal human beings, even if they fight it all the way.


Thursday, October 03, 2013

  • Thursday, October 03, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
From the Derby Telegraph, last week:
WOMEN teachers at Al-Madinah School in Derby claim they are being told to cover their heads and shoulders with a hijab – an Islamic scarf – whether or not they are Muslim.

This is one of several complaints made by staff to their unions at Al-Madinah School, which is currently under investigation by the Education Funding Agency for alleged irregularities over its grants.

A member of the teaching staff told the Derby Telegraph that women were being told to sign new contracts that say they must wear hijabs and that girls are told to sit at the back of classes.

It is understood that the new contracts for staff also include rules about not taking non-halal food into the school and not being allowed to wear jewelry.

Mr Raine added: "There are worries over practices concerning the discrimination between male and female pupils in the school, with the girls being told to sit at the back of the class regardless of whether they can see the board properly."

The school, which occupies space at Norman House, Friar Gate, where primary-age children are taught, and Midland House, Nelson Street, for secondary children, was set up in September 2012.

The then head teacher, Andrew Cutts-Mckay, who has left after less than a year in post, said at the time that the school was being set up so that "the timetable will be flexible with time for Islamic teaching but pupils will be able to opt out of this and there will be a chance to learn about other faiths".

He said the school would "honour all faiths" and that he envisaged a school where 50% of pupils are Islamic and the other half were not.

Sue Arguile, branch secretary of Derby National Union of Teachers, said: "This school was first launched as based on Muslim principles and not as a Muslim school.

"If the school is not sticking to the original reasons behind why it was set up, then it does call into question whether public money is being used properly and for its intended purpose."
The Daily Mail adds:
Jane is a good school teacher and proud of it. She lives in a handsome, detached house surrounded by neatly mowed lawns on the outskirts of Derby, with her husband and three pet cats.

For nearly 20 years, she has taught history, geography and religious studies in schools throughout the East Midlands city. In all that time, there has never been one word of complaint against her from head teachers, parents or pupils.

‘I feel I do a good job and always wear a business suit with trousers or a sensible skirt in school. It is a sign of respect for my profession and sets a good example to the children.’

Yet, one day in October last year, she returned home from the classroom in tears to her husband, a successful businessman. To her horror, she had become embroiled in a furious row at her school over what she wore to work.

The Islamic Al-Madinah school in Derby, one of the newest of the Government-sponsored free schools, had asked her to dress modestly, covering her hair and ensuring she did not show any flesh apart from her face, hands and feet.

She abided by the request — or so she thought.

For earlier that October day, wearing a grey suit with a skirt well below the knees, thick knitted black stockings, calf-length boots and her long brown hair completely covered, she stepped into a lift at the school with a male teacher.

To her shame, he looked her up and down and told her that she had failed to observe ‘common decency’. The two inches of leg hidden in the 100 denier stockings which showed between her boots and the hem of her dress were ‘abhorrent’, he warned. Her discreet outfit was, he deemed, ‘figure hugging’ and immodest.

‘That encounter in the lift with this Muslim male teacher made me feel like a slut,’ Jane says today. ‘It was the final straw. '
The webpage for the school says, improbably:


The entire idea of a public Islamic school seems odd, but one where even the basic principles of society are spurned is outrageous.

Anyway, the school was just closed, at least temporarily, after a health and safety inspection.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

News out of Egypt is unreliable, to say the least, as the pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood sides hurl nutty accusations at each other.

Egypt's Youm7 newspaper quotes unnamed senior Egyptian officials as saying that the new head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Ezzat, had fled to Gaza several weeks ago and is now overseeing a new mini-army of  Gaza militants and1500 Muslim Brotherhood soldiers and smuggled from Egypt into Gaza through tunnels.

These troops are being trained with Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades, according to the rumors, and they are in two areas of Khan Younis. It is being funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and is receiving weapons from Turkey, smuggled to Gaza through Cyprus, including anti-tank missiles.

The rumor gets a little more fantastic when it says that some of the weapons are stolen from both the Egyptian and Israeli armies.

(What is true is that Mahmoud Ezzat has not been seen for several weeks, since he was appointed in his new role. The idea that he is directing operations from Gaza is a bit far-fetched, though.)

The commenters are taking this seriously, though, with one suggesting that it is time for the Egyptian army to hold its own "Cast Lead" against Gaza, damn the civilian casualties.

Even though the story seems filled with holes, the fact that it even gets such prominent play in Egypt (and even gets leaked by Egyptian officials to the media) says volumes about how Hamas and Gaza itself is regarded as an enemy.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

I just found this fascinating article from the Palestine Post, August 22, 1948:

Robert Martin, who had been in the Arab States since the outbreak of the Palestine war, went to Cyprus to file dispatches on the situation which the Syrian military censors refused to pass for transmission.

He summarizes his impressions as follows:


A tragically unexpected and potentially dangerous result of the conflict in Palestine is the increasing trend among the Arabs toward meek acceptance of nationalistic, totalitarian governments. 


The Arab League was formed in 1945 to protect the independence of all Arab countries...But critics of the League believe that it is tending to become Islamic rather than Arabic.


One minor point of evidence is that the former Lebanese Foreign Minister, Kamid Frangieh, a Maronite, had never been permitted to attend a League meeting. When the League's Military Committee assembles, the Lebanese Chief of Staff, Gen. Fuad Shehab, a Christian, is barred, and his place is filled by a Moslem officer of inferior rank.


Other critics believe that the League ismoving away from its former professed ideal of promoting regional unity and democracy, and has become fundamentally a bulwark against the West. If true, the League will become the spokesman of reaction rather than of progress.


In the eyes of some Arabs, the chief offenders are the youth groups, especially the Young Men's Moslem Association and the Moslem Brotherhood, whose leaders are in part graduates of Al Azhar University. Under their guidance, Islam is tending to become more and more a retreat into the past, breaking away from everything that is Western and progressive. They preach Moslem orthodoxy, and in their minds religion and politics are inextricably entwined. They have progressed beyond the mere acceptance of the constitutional provision that "the religion of the state is Islam" and now look to the State to bar all outside thought or culture.


Self--centered and feudalistic, this concept of Islam inevitably denies the oppressed people in the Arab States any improvement in their status. For these interpreters of the revived Islam are linked up with their landlords, who are the keystones in the feudalistic family, tribal and social system.


Martin's major mistake, of course, was to attribute this pivot towards Islamism as being a reaction to Israel. (Linkage has been around a long time!) After all, even he admits that the banning of Christians from meetings was happening from the beginning of the League, and the League's apparent first decision was to boycott Jewish products - not Zionist, but Jewish - back in 1945.

Even so, his description of radical Islam of 1948 is remarkably similar to what we are seeing in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world 65 years later.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

  • Thursday, August 15, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
From AFP:
As Britain puts airport staff on alert to spot potential victims of forced marriage, one campaigning group says the trick of putting a spoon in their underwear has saved some youngsters from a forced union in their South Asian ancestral homelands.

The concealed spoon sets off the metal detector at the airport in Britain and the teenagers can be taken away from their parents to be searched -- a last chance to escape a largely hidden practice wrecking the lives of unknown thousands of British youths.

The British school summer holidays, now well under way, mark a peak in reports of young people -- typically girls aged 15 and 16 -- being taken abroad on “holiday,” for a marriage without consent, the government says.

The bleep at airport security may be the last chance they get to escape a marriage to someone they have never met in a country they have never seen.

The spoon trick is the brainchild of the Karma Nirvana charity, which supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honor-based abuse.

Based in Derby, central England, it fields 6,500 calls per year from around Britain but has almost reached that point so far in 2013 as awareness of the issue grows.

When petrified youngsters ring, “if they don’t know exactly when it may happen or if it’s going to happen, we advise them to put a spoon in their underwear,” said Natasha Rattu, Karma Nirvana’s operations manager.

“When they go though security, it will highlight this object in a private area and, if 16 or over, they will be taken to a safe space where they have that one last opportunity to disclose they're being forced to marry,” she told AFP.

“We’ve had people ring and that it’s helped them and got them out of a dangerous situation. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do with your family around you -- but they won't be aware you have done it. It’s a safe way.”

The charity is working with airports -- so far London Heathrow, Liverpool and Glasgow, with Birmingham to come -- to spot potential signs, such as one-way tickets, the time of year, age of the person and whether they look uncomfortable.

“These are quite general points, but there are things that if you look collectively lead you to believe something more sinister is going on,” said Rattu.

People who come forward can be escorted out of a secure airport exit to help outside.

Marriages without consent, or their refusal, have led to suicides and so-called honour killings, shocking a nation widely deemed to have successfully absorbed immigrant communities and customs.

Officials fear the number of victims coming forward is just the tip of the iceberg, with few community leaders prepared to speak out and risk losing their support base.

One woman, whose identity was protected by Essex Police in southeast England, was forced to get married in India.

She said she was threatened by her father “because he said if I thought about running away he would find me and kill me.”

“I was shipped off with a total stranger.

“That night I was raped by my husband and this abuse continued for about eight and half years of my life.”

She eventually fled.

Last year, the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with some 1,500 cases -- 18 percent of them men.

A third of cases involved children aged under 17. The oldest victim was aged 71; the youngest just two.
Two?!?!

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