Canary In The Coal Mine

Islam’s Cultural Revolution

by Giulio Meotti  |  FrontPageMag.com  |  May 24, 2012

 

Mao’s Cultural Revolution was one of the darkest chapters of the 20th Century: communist zealots, known as “the Red Guards,” attached revolutionary messages to Buddhist statues; seventeen professors from the Shanghai Music Conservatory committed suicide; intellectuals were harassed in public trials during which they had to confess their “sins,” kneeling on makeshift rostrums; thousands of churches, temples and monasteries were demolished; ancient libraries went up in smoke; imperial ceramics were smashed and religious relics melted down. Millions of people were killed.

A new Cultural Revolution is now taking place in the Middle East, where Islam’s Red Guards are obliterating the non-Muslim heritage. If Mao’s Guards took inspiration from the “red book,” Islamic zealots have the Koran. Their targets are Jewish shrines, Christian churches, ancient monuments and  cultural masterpieces.

A few days ago in Timbuktu, Mali, Islamists destroyed the tomb of a Sufi saint, Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar. Timbuktu is known as “the city of the 333 saints”, classified as Unesco World Heritage Sites. Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam, but extremists believe Sufi shrines are “sacrilegious.” The UN cultural body didn’t raise its voice against this Islamic iconoclasm.

A few weeks before, Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, issued a religious fatwa, saying it is “necessary to destroy all the churches in the Arabian Peninsula.” The most important Muslim cleric in the land that gave birth to Islam called for the destruction of churches without his rule attracting any global condemnation.

While in Libya Jews have been throw out again after trying to restore Tripoli’s ancient synagogue, Egyptians are planning to block Israelis from making the pilgrimages to the tomb of a Jewish saint, Yaakov Abuhatzeira.

An Islamic mob destroyed the Institute of Egypt in Cairo, founded by Napoleon and containing 192,000 books and documents from as far back as the XIX century. Now, it’s gone. Napoleon’s legendary “Description de l’Egypte” is also lost (in 1822 Jean-François Champollion used this document to unveil the mistery of the hierogliphycs). Unesco, again, stood silent. As it stood silent when Egypt’s former cultural minister, Farouk Hosni, said he “would burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries”.

Like in Mao’s China, Islamic salafists are trying to ban ancient statues that dot Egypt and suggested that the pagan treasures “could be covered with wax”. The sirens that embellish the fountain of Zeus in Alexandria have already been deemed “inappropriate” by the Salafist party, which decided to “veil” them completely with a sheet. Salafi leaders are also terrifying liberal intellectuals by calling for banning the novels written by Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab Nobel Prize laureate for Literature who has been called “Egypt’s Balzac”, because his works “encourage drinking alcohol and using drugs”. Mahfouz’s novel “Awlad Haretna” is labelled as “atheistic”. Islamists also want to ban the greatest masterpiece of oriental literature, “One thousand and one arabian nights”, because it’s “depravity” and “offensive to the public good”.

In Israel, Palestinian Muslims are erasing any Jewish trace on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most holy site. In 2005 thousands of Arabs torched the synagogues in Gaza’s Katif Bloc. It was an orgy of hate, like that of the Red Guards. Twelve years ago, Arabs destroyed Joseph’s tomb, Judaism’s fourth holy site, smashing the stone structure and ripping it apart, brick by brick, as the Red Guards did with Tao’s temples. The arson attack on the Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho and the continuing gunfire at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem are two other examples that come to mind in the Israelo-Palestinian conflict.

Islam’s cultural revolution began when the Taliban destroyed the two wonderful Buddhas in Bamyan, Afghanistan. It was a turning point for a proto-Nazi ideology bent on the physical eradication of its enemies and their religious symbols. If Mao’s Red Guards destroyed the imperial Chinese heritage, Islam’s Red Guards want to cancel any non-Muslim trace in the Middle East. It’s a Koranic Inquisition.

 

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/24/islams-cultural-revolution/

Hollywood, FL - Police Investigating 'Judaica' Store Fire As Possible Hate Crime

From: WSVN-TV  |  VosIzNeias.com  |  December 3, 2011

 

Hollywood, FL - Police are investigating a suspected case of arson at a South Florida bookstore.

The fire broke out inside the Holyland Judaica store (Pictured) near 56th Avenue and Stirling Road, early Thursday morning.

Hollywood Fire Rescue responded to the scene of the fire. Smoke seeped into neighboring businesses, but crews were able to extinguish the flames before they could spread to the adjacent businesses. “We’re lucky that the damage here is not so big,” said Micha Edrei, a chef at a business near the bookstore.

The bookstore sustained major interior damage, and many of the holy books and other items inside the store were destroyed in the fire. “I’m shocked when I see it. It’s really a disaster here,” said Moshe Shaltiel, a friend of the book store’s owner.

According to officials, they are sure that the fire was intentionally set. Surveillance cameras in the area captured several people running from the rear of the store before the fire began, and it appeared as though someone kicked in the back door of the business. Neighboring business owner Yossi Gopin said, “They found that right before the fire started, two people ran out of the back doors.”

“They broke in from here,” Shaltiel said. “They probably put the fire there and ran away.”

Authorities are investigating whether or not the bookstore arson was a hate crime. “It goes to show you that you don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next,” said Gopin. “You just wake up one morning, and your entire life that you’ve been working on for 20 years is shattered.”

Investigators hope to process the surveillance video within the next few days.

If you have any information on this arson, call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS. Remember, you can always remain anonymous, and you may be eligible for a reward.

 

Source: http://www.vosizneias.com/96186/2011/12/03/holywood-fl-police-investigating-seforim-store-fire-as-hate-crime

An Ominous Reckoning

by Robert S Wistrich  |  JPost.com  |  November 7, 2011

 

The anniversary of Kristallnacht should serve as an opportunity for the West to wake up to the rampant anti-Semitism engulfing the Arab world.

Seventy-three years ago, on November 9, 1938, the murderous Nazi onslaught against the German Jews began with a nation-wide pogrom that smashed the fabric of their existence. Known euphemistically as Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”), this state-organized orgy of violence happened in peacetime. It involved the systematic burning of hundreds of synagogues, the destruction of approximately 7,500 Jewish businesses, the murder of nearly 100 Jews, and the deportation of another 30,000 male Jews to German concentration camps.

It was a crucial turning-point in Hitler’s “war against the Jews,” a major signpost on the road leading to World War II, which Nazi Germany would initiate less than a year later.

Nazi propaganda, already then, openly warned about the imminent annihilation of Jewry through “fire and sword,” though few in the West took these threats too seriously.

Today, there is no immediate danger of a new Kristallnacht in the Western world, although levels of anti-Semitism (hiding under the more acceptable mask of hostility towards Israel) have reached levels unprecedented since 1945. But in the Middle East, the hatred of Jews burns much more fiercely – both in Iran and in the Arab world.

Islamist anti-Semitism, in particular, is soaked in some of the most inflammatory motifs that made the Kristallnacht atrocities possible in Nazi Germany and only three years later provided the rationale for the mass murder of European Jewry.

For example, there is the pervasive exploitation in Arabic of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with its insistence on the reality of the “Jewish conspiracy for world domination”; there is a revival of the medieval Christian blood-libel against Jews, transplanted from Europe to the contemporary Arab-Muslim Middle East; and the mass diffusion of stereotypes about the Jews as cruel, treacherous and bloodthirsty colonialists seeking to destroy the identity and beliefs of the Muslim peoples.

To this, one must add the slanderous but widely popular identification of Zionism with Nazism and apartheid and the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians – a Goebbels-like propaganda lie that has also found a growing audience in the West.

However contradictory it may appear to some, the Zionismis- Nazism fabrication co-exists in the Middle East today with Holocaust denial on a broad scale. Indeed, in Ahmadinejad’s Iran, Holocaust denial has become a state-sponsored weapon in the regime’s efforts to win over the Arab street and indoctrinate its own people with anti-Jewish toxins.

THE INCREASINGLY entrenched anti-Semitism in the Arab world has not, unfortunately, been diminished by the “Arab Spring.” Earlier this year, Sheikh Yusuf al- Qaradawi, one of the most authoritative religious leaders of the Sunni Arab world (and especially esteemed by the Muslim Brotherhood), told a million Egyptians assembled in Tahrir Square that he hoped their mission would be to complete Hitler’s work. Al- Qaradawi, an immensely popular cleric, publicly insisted that the esteemed German Führer had been sent by Allah as a “divine punishment for the Jews.” Not long before, CBS’s foreign correspondent Lara Logan had been sexually assaulted and brutalized in the heart of Cairo by a mob of Egyptian men screaming “Jew, Jew, Jew.” Logan is not, in fact, Jewish. But this aspect of her ordeal was, typically enough, very much downplayed by both the American and European media.

There has indeed been very little appetite in the West for reporting on the Jew-hatred that saturates the Arab world. Arab nations (not least, the Palestinians) are never held to the standard expected of the rest of the world when it comes to racism, sexism or Judeophobia.

Hence, precious little reference is made to the genocidal anti-Semitism that runs through the “Sacred Covenant” of the Palestinian Hamas, any more than the West was unduly concerned with Haj Amin al-Husseini’s role in the Holocaust of European Jewry. Haj Amin, a Hitlerian anti-Semite if ever there was one, dominated the Palestinian Arab national movement for nearly forty years, leaving a legacy of hatred that would poison the Middle East for decades.

The Arab demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state has continued uninterruptedly since 1948. It has yet to be challenged by the Arab revolutions of 2011. The leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, did nothing to improve the atmosphere by his recent denial at the UN that the Jews are a people with a profound historic connection to the land of Israel. His negation of Israel’s most basic rights and Jewish identity is of a piece with his brazenly racist insistence that the new PalestinianState should be “Jew-free.”

Nothing that has happened thus far in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia – where the Islamic movements have emerged greatly strengthened – leads me to believe that Arab anti- Semitism has been significantly weakened. The bogeyman of the “world Zionist conspiracy” is, unfortunately, still with us. Arab tyrants (as in Syria) continue to use it as an “opium for the masses,” but it also has powerful roots in popular Arab culture as well as in political Islam.

Even more sobering is the fact that the sickening anti- Jewish racism in Iran and the Arab world is nourished by so many Arab theologians, intellectuals, journalists, artists (See Image), deans of university faculties and so-called academic “experts.” In other words, the raw, primitive, street-hatred of the Jews has cultural and intellectual legitimacy among the educated elites, as it once did in Nazi Germany.

Over seven decades ago, Kristallnacht was an unmistakable warning to the rest of Europe as to where “eliminationist anti-Semitism” would lead. It went largely unheeded. Millions of non-Jews as well as twothirds of European Jewry would pay the ultimate price for this blindness. As Iran moves towards acquiring nuclear weapons and vows to annihilate Israel, will history repeat itself? Will the West remain silent? For Israel, the moment of reckoning comes closer by the day.

The writer is the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, 2010).

 

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=244737

"We Will Never Die"

Selections from the Palestine Statehood Committee Papers relating to their activities to rescue Jews from Germany and occupied Europe and to establish the State of Israel.

 

Source:  http://www.library.yale.edu/exhibition/judaica/masml.10.html

"We Will Never Die"

Selections from the Palestine Statehood Committee Papers relating to their activities to rescue Jews from Germany and occupied Europe and to establish the State of Israel.

 

Source:  http://www.library.yale.edu/exhibition/judaica/masml.10.html

Muslim Comic Series Aims to Break Through in US

by *Jeff Karoub, Associated Press  |  WashingtonExaminer.com  |  October 12, 2011

 

Comic book fans might call it a great origin story: In the aftermath of 9/11, a Muslim man creates a comic book series, "The 99," inspired by the principles of his faith. It builds a global audience and investors contribute millions for it to continue and expand.

In two vastly different cultures, Naif Al-Mutawa's (Pictured) tale hits a few roadblocks — "villains" if you will: Censorship from Saudi Arabia, home to the main Muslim holy sites; in the United States, a struggle to build an audience where free expression has been hampered by a post-9/11 rise in suspicion and scrutiny of all things Islamic.

For Al-Mutawa, it's evidence that tales like his are needed to counter hardline, intolerant ideologies of all stripes.

"That's one of the things that was most disappointing to me in the beginning," Al-Mutawa said on a recent visit to Detroit. "You have two birthplaces: You have the birthplace of Islam, which initially rejected it (and) the birthplace of democracy and tolerance, this country, that I'm now facing resistance in — the two natural places for this product."

Al-Mutawa's reputation in the Middle East and elsewhere has grown since the 2006 debut of "The 99," as well as its rollout into animation. The series is named for the 99 qualities the Quran attributes to God: strength, courage, wisdom and mercy among them.

The comic book spawned a TV series and 26 half-hour episodes of the 3-D animated version of the "The 99" have been sold to broadcasters. They are expected to be released early next year in more than 50 countries, and a second season is in production.

Al-Mutawa, a U.S.-educated psychologist from Kuwait, has been promoting "Wham! Bam! Islam!" a PBS documentary that tells the story of "The 99" from an idea hatched during a cab ride to its raising of $40 million in three calls for investors. The promotional push is supporting the animated series, the vehicle by which his company hopes to turn a profit.

"The 99" grew out of his childhood love of Batman, Superman and their superhero brethren, along with a desire to provide role models for his five young sons.

"Basically, 'The 99' is based on Quranic archetypes, the same way that Batman and Superman are based on Judeo-Christian and Biblical archetypes. And just like Batman and Superman are secular story lines, so too are 'The 99,'" he said.

"It seemed to me that the only people using mass media when it came to things to do with religion — at least my religion — were people who were doing very destructive things. So the question was how do I challenge that in a way that's secular yet cannot be dismissed as Western?"

Critics on both sides of the religious and cultural divide see subversion in Al-Mutawa's superheroes. Some hardline Muslims say the series subverts their faith by embodying the attributes in human characters, while a few non-Muslim American critics have labeled it sneaky Islamic indoctrination.

Al-Mutawa said it took investment by an Islamic investment bank to make his series "halal," or acceptable to Saudi officials. The nation's government-run broadcaster has since bought the rights to the animated series. So has The Hub cable network in the U.S. — though the latter has indefinitely postponed airing it after some critical columns and blog posts.

"One of the comments on the blogs that ended up delaying us was someone who warned that we can't let the Muslims brainwash our children like the Mexicans did with 'Dora the Explorer,'" Al-Mutawa said.

Still, he's measuring broader acceptance in other ways. Al-Mutawa worked with DC Comics last year on a six-issue crossover that teamed "The 99" with The Justice League of America.

"They start out with distrust between the two teams of superheroes — Superman punches one of my guys early on," Al-Mutawa said. "And then they figure out during the arc that it's the bad guys causing the distrust."

Robin Wright, author of "Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World," said Al-Mutawa has "been way ahead of the curve in figuring out how you challenge extremism and how you create alternative role models to Osama bin Laden or Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah's leader) for kids and adults."

Muslim characters are rare in U.S. comic books but there have been some inroads.

Marvel Comics has Dust, a young Afghan woman whose mutant ability to manipulate sand and dust has been part of the popular X-Men books.

"I don't view a Muslim superhero as avant garde," Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso said. "Muslims comprise approximately 23 percent of the world's population, and we like our comics to reflect the world in its diversity."

Dust wears a robe and veil to observe Muslim hijab, or modest dress. Another character, M, is a woman of Algerian descent who only recently revealed her faith in the pages of "X-Factor." Like millions of other Muslim women in the real world, she "does not observe hijab, and often dresses quite provocatively," Alonso said.

Other characters have not been so accepted. In late 2010, DC Comics introduced Nightrunner, a young Muslim hero of Algerian descent raised in Paris. He's part of the global network of crime fighters set up by Batman alter-ego Bruce Wayne. Conservative bloggers decried the move, noting that instead of tapping a native French person, they opted for a minority.

Frank Miller, whose dark and moody take on Batman in "The Dark Knight Returns" in 1986 energized the character, has taken a different tack in his latest work, "Holy Terror," which tells the story of The Fixer and his efforts to stamp out Islamic terrorists.

The graphic novel initially took root as a look at Batman's efforts to fight terrorism, something that grew out of Miller's experiences of being in New York during 9/11. As he worked on it, it became apparent that it wasn't suitable for the DC character.

"As I developed it and worked on it, the subject was too serious and the character's actions were not Batman," he said.

The book has been criticized as anti-Islamic propaganda, but Miller says that's not his notion.

"I lived through a time when 3,000 of my neighbors were incinerated for no apparent reason. I lived through the chalky, smoky weeks that followed and through the warplanes flying overhead and realized that, much like my character, The Fixer, I found a mission," he said.

As for "The 99," he said has not seen it but welcomes Al-Mutawa's efforts.

"I come in with my own very pro-Western-they-attacked-my-city-point of view," Miller said. "If other people have other points of view to bring in, I just welcome it."

Al-Mutawa called "Holy Terror" par for the historical course for Islam.

"There's no denying that terrible things have happened in the name of my religion — as they have in the names of most religions, if not all religions," he said. "As human beings, we're a little bit lazy. We don't like to change the schemas in our minds. We like to fit new information into existing schemas. That's why to some people anything to do with Islam is going to be bad."

*Matt Moore contributed to this report from Philadelphia.

Source:  http://washingtonexaminer.com/entertainment/music/2011/10/muslim-comic-series-aims-break-through-us

Soccer Star Arrested for Publicly Displaying Jesus Tattoo in Saudi Arabia

by Ray Downs  |  Global.ChristianPost.com  |  October 12, 2011

 

A Colombian-born soccer player was allegedly arrested in Saudi Arabia for publicly displaying a tattoo of Jesus on his arm, demonstrating how the Islamic kingdom's strict body Shariah laws can clash with foreign athletes' cultural attitudes.

According to Colombia Reports, Juan Pablo Pino (Pictured), who plays for Saudi Arabia's Al Nasr soccer club, was arrested by Saudi moral police for publicly displaying his tattoo while at a shopping mall with his pregnant wife in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Pino has a large tattoo of Jesus on his forearm.

Shariah law does not allow tattoos to be publicly displayed, no matter what they are, and Pino has since apologized for breaking Saudi law, expressing "deep sorrow" for his actions.

This is not the first time that tattoos got a soccer player in trouble in Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Romanian soccer player Mirel Radoi of the Al Hilal team drew criticism when he kissed the tattoo of a cross he has on his arm after scoring a goal, the Catholic News Agency reported.

According to the Arab News, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Amri, imam of Al-Rajih Mosque in Jeddah, said tattoos are forbidden in Islam and considered sinful because the Prophet Muhammad said that they are an attempt to change Allah's creation.

Although tattoos are illegal in Saudi Arabia, that does not mean the Saudi people are not getting their bodies inked. Like most things that are illegal, a robust underground business for tattoo-seekers exists in the secretive Muslim country.

The Arab News also reported that Filipino tattoo artists are operating illegally in Saudi Arabia, providing Saudis tattoos from makeshift parlors in their homes. Tattoo-seekers pay upwards of 70 percent more than the going rate in other countries because tattoo artists are so difficult to find.

Piercing is also illegal under Shariah law, and many Saudis go to the same Filipino tattoo artists to get their piercings done. However, due to the underground nature of the business, many places are unhygienic and users run the risk of contracting Hepatitis B and C, the Arab News reported.

Source:  http://global.christianpost.com/news/soccer-star-arrested-for-publicly-displaying-jesus-tattoo-in-saudi-arabia-57976/

It Isn’t Israel in Danger of Disappearing, It’s The People Who Think That Way

by Barry Rubin  |  Gloria-Center.org  |  October 6, 2011

 

“…never send to know for whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee.”

–John Dunne

Rome, Italy

I’m standing on the edge of the Roman Forum, by the Arch of Titus. This is the marble structure built by the Empire to commemorate the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple about 1941 years ago. Legionnaires are shown carrying off the Menorah and other items from the sanctuary. The inhabitants are sold into slavery, The Jews are finished.

Well, not really. Today, the great empire has long vanished and Israel is not just a living country but by every social, economic, and security standard a successful country.

In the late 1960s, more than 40 years ago, the Palestinian and Arab leaders were certain that Israel would not survive. The fact that they were completely wrong has not prevented a whole new rash of contemporary speculations.

The PLO view, shared by virtually all Arabs at the time, was very clearly defined. The two main points boil down to the following. First, Israel would not survive because there was no real basis for such a state and people. Second, the Arabs would destroy it using various strategies.

Here is the ultimate quote from Yasir Arafat in 1968—that’s 43 years ago–on why this would work:

Terrorism would “create and maintain an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel….The Israelis have one great fear, the fear of casualties….”

The PLO’s attacks would “prevent immigration and encourage emigration….to destroy tourism, to prevent immigrants becoming attached to the land, to weaken the Israeli economy and to divert the greater part of it to security requirements.” This would “inevitably” prevent Israel’s consolidation and bring its disintegration. The final step would be “a quick blow by the regular armies at the right moment” to finish Israel off.

All of these things failed. More immigrants came than expected and were successfully integrated. People weren’t frightened into fleeing. Casualties were absorbed and limited. The country became economically successful and militarily victorious. Thus, today Israel is stronger—far stronger—than ever.

And who were the biggest losers in this conflict? Naturally, Israel has lost a great deal, especially in lives. But the biggest losers have been the Arabs who wasted resources, lost more lives, faced repeated humiliations, and ended up with dictatorship and stagnant societies. And they will be the biggest losers if they spend the next 60 years playing the same game.

And if Arab states that were relatively united and had a superpower sponsor couldn’t destroy Israel in 60 years how are they going to do so today? With Israel outpacing its neighbors on every index of social and economic development, with so much oil money spent without really advancing Arab societies, who has the advantage today?

Remember what happened in 1948. True, all the Arab states invaded the new state of Israel But they didn’t coordinate with each other and all wanted to grab territory for themselves. With Iran and Turkey all jostling for power and leadership today, the conflict and disorder is intensified.

Yet now there is a revival of the claim—sometimes among ill-informed well-wishers, more often among antagonistic haters—that Israel might not survive. This is based partly on wishful thinking, partly on ignorance. Underlying these factors, however, is a basic disbelief that Jews are a people and can be a state.

And that reflects a lack of knowledge—often among Western Jews themselves—about Jewish history as well as a naïve acceptance of anti-Israel propaganda, claims that have proven to be false for decades.

Actually, then, the shoe is on the other foot entirely from what is being claimed. It is not Israel’s existence that is threatened but that of its adversaries and in some ways of Western Europe, too.

Its enemy neighbors and near-neighbors are about to embark on a decades’-long horrifying series of civil wars: Islamists against Arab nationalists; Sunni against Shia Muslims; economic collapse; and much more. Syria is on the verge of an inter-communal bloodbath; Egypt faces not some bright new economic dawn but a terrible reckoning. At some point the oil will run out with much of that wealth squandered. Recent discoveries even suggest that Israel itself will be a rising exporter of petroleum and natural gas.

Periodically, some radical Muslim writes that if only each Muslim would kill one Jew then Israel would vanish. High hopes are held for nuclear weapons that Iran still doesn’t have. But such schemes never get off the ground. Indeed, it is Arab nationalism that is endangered with extinction under a wave of revolutionary Islamism. By leaving the path of pragmatism for that of doctrinaire Islamism, Turkey is likely to lose the success it enjoyed for so many decades.

There is not one regime in a Muslim-majority country that should feel confident about its future; not one such state whose continued existence can be taken for granted.

In contrast, there are only two ways Israel might perhaps disappear. First, it might happen if Arabs and Muslims dropped radicalism, ideology, and bickering to concentrate on technological and economic progress for 50 years, only then turning on Israel. That would require, for example, the Palestinians quickly dropping all of their rejectionism and demands to make a compromise agreement with Israel that they had no intention of keeping.

Yet quite the opposite is happening now. It is radicalism, not pragmatic development strategies that is in control. Besides, the problem is that a focus on material development and moderate democracy would erode Arab and Muslim tempers to the point that they would no longer want to engage in such a foolish and futile life-and-death struggle, which is why the Islamists reject that approach.

The other way Israel might be wiped off the map is if its leaders heeded the advice they are getting from the West. That’s the irony of the situation. Those stubborn, stiff-necked people are not going to doom themselves by implementing the mistaken ideas told to them by Western media, experts, intellectuals, and governments who claim such policies are the road to safety.

Part of the problem here is that all too many Western intellectuals no longer believe in fighting—or even sacrificing–for your country; patriotic pride or nationalism or religion; or even the nation-state itself. Consequently, while many Arabs and Muslims don’t believe Israel can exist because of contempt for Jews and belief in the superiority of their nations and religion, many Westerners now believe in the wickedness of their countries and religion and the unviability of the national model.

In thinking about Israel, both these opposite arguments amount to the same thing. Yet they tell more about those having these ideas than about Israel.

When a European cabinet minister says his country has no distinct culture and another urges the locals to be nice to Muslims so they will reciprocate after they take over; when a European country’s counterintelligence chief .tells me his country has no future, and a quartet of professors from another remark to me over cocktails that they believe their country is finished, is it Israel that is in danger of collapse?

Who’s really facing the abyss? That doesn’t mean destruction will come to Europe’s existing states and societies but it does mean they are more likely to go than Israel is. You want to talk about demographic threats? In Europe, the majority is often having children at half the rate needed for mere replacement of the existing native population..

Yet all of this also shows why Israel is the key to understanding today’s world. Israel’s survival shows that democratic societies can fight and defeat dictators and totalitarian ideologies, Western religions do have a continuing place in Western societies and nation-states are still a viable—perhaps the most viable—way to organize many political structures.

That’s precisely why so many are working so hard to demonize and discredit Israel. If people in the West understand what Israel is and what it is doing, they will comprehend the value of those approaches and values. And if they understand how Israel is lied about and mistreated they will comprehend much wider problems with the people, ideas, and institutions governing their own lives today.

Incidentally, do you know what the Roman Empire did with the Temple treasures? It melted them down, sold the gold, and used the money to build the Colisseum, where bloodshed distracted people from their material and spiritual deprivation. Somewhere in there is an analogy to the twenty-first century world.

Source:  http://www.gloria-center.org/2011/10/it-isn%E2%80%99t-israel-in-danger-of-disappearing-it%E2%80%99s-the-people-who-think-that-way/

Dutch Doctors Urge End To Male Circumcision

by Roberta Cowan, Reuters  |  Reuters.com  |  September 23, 2011

 

Egyptian Circumcision.

 

AMSTERDAM - Dutch doctors want politicians and human rights groups to speak out and discourage the practice of male circumcision in the Netherlands because they say it is a "painful and harmful ritual," and a violation of children's rights.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 boys are circumcised in the Netherlands each year, mostly for religious reasons and not always with an anesthetic, according to the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) which represents surgeons, pediatricians, general practitioners and urologists.

"We want to discourage male circumcision, because it is an unnecessary procedure with complications, which violates the integrity of the child," Lode Wigersma, a spokesman for the association, told Reuters on Friday.

"This is not an innocent procedure, we see complications in about 5 percent of the cases, as well as some long-term and psychological implications," he said.

Male circumcision involves the removal of all or part of the foreskin of the penis. It is a ritual obligation for infant Jewish boys, and is also a common rite among Muslims, who account for the largest share of circumcised men worldwide.

The Dutch medical association has urged religious leaders to find alternative rites of passage that are not irreversible and which are not painful for the child.

The practice of female genital mutation has been prohibited by law in the Netherlands since 1993 for all ages.

Last year the Dutch medical association released a report against the practice of circumcision of male children for non-medical reasons, hoping to initiate a public discussion.

Now it is appealing to Dutch politicians to speak out against the practice to help "gradually change the mentality" in society and among religious groups that circumcise their boys.

The doctors group said that contrary to popular belief, circumcision can cause some minor as well as serious complications including bleeding, infection, urethral stricture as well as panic attacks, which it says are particularly common.

It said there was no medical reason to surgically remove a part of the genitals of healthy babies and young children, who are too young to give their consent to the procedure.

The Dutch doctors are not calling for a circumcision ban, for fear the practice will be driven underground.

"We also understand that it (circumcision) is a deeply embedded religious habit so we don't expect it to be over in a few years, so our appeal is if you want to do it then have it done by a doctor with anesthesia," said Wigersma.

The majority of male circumcisions in the Netherlands are done in special circumcision clinics by doctors using anesthetic on Muslim boys between 5 and 7 years, according to Wigersma.

Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, President of the Dutch Association of Rabbis, said only about 50 male Jewish babies are circumcised in the Netherlands each year.

He disputed the 5 percent complication rate, and said there have not been any problems in the Jewish community due to strict rules about how and when circumcision takes place.

"According to Jewish law, you have to do it (circumcision) the Jewish way," Jacobs said.

The doctors' recommendation to end the practice of circumcision is likely to be controversial given that it involves both Jewish and Muslim traditions.

In a rare show of unity in June, the Dutch Muslim and Jewish communities -- numbering about 1 million and 40,000 respectively in a total population of 16 million -- condemned the government's proposed ban on the religious slaughter of animals as a violation of their religious freedom.

Source:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/23/us-dutch-circumcision-health-idUSTRE78M3R620110923

Circumcision Makes You Crazy. So Holland Moves To Stop It.

by Abigail R. Esman, Contributor  |  Forbes.com  |  September 19, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ancient Egyptian carved scene of circumcision, from the inner northern wall of the Temple of Khonspekhrod at the Precinct of Mut, Temple of Karnak, Luxor, Egypt. Eighteenth dynasty, Amenhotep III, c. 1360 BC. Photographed February 5, 2005, by Lasse Jensen

Calling the practice “a violation of human rights “ and a precursor to mental illness, Holland’s Royal Society of Medicine is encouraging  the country’s parliament to place a ban on male circumcision.

Of course, such proposals come up regularly – there’s one out now in San Francisco, for instance – but they are usually the work of political groups; after all, the idea of banning circumcision is itself politically based.  That it comes from a medical association, however, suggests something significantly more sinister, if for no other reason than the fact that the arguments they offer to support the measure fly in the face of actual science.  In other words, doctors in the Netherlands have clearly put themselves in a position of being willing to put public health at risk in order to achieve racist, political ends – and to lie in order to do so.

And it’s not just the doctors. Indeed, the move, coming on the heels of a so-called “modified ban” on kosher and halal slaughter, demonstrates just how far Europe has come in its response to what it sees as a threat on Western democratic  values posed by its growing Muslim population; increasingly,  as I argued after the Norway massacre, Europe is at serious risk of transforming itself into a white, Christian supremacist state in its efforts to avoid becoming an Islamic one.

According to the Dutch medical society, for instance, circumcision — practiced by Dutch Muslims and Jews and standard procedure for almost all newborn males in the USA, can result in castration (just how many times does thathappen, I wonder?) or death; cause infections; create “mental anguish”; cause sexual problems (we all know about Einstein’s sexual issues, right?), and more.   And here’s the kicker: “no medical association anywhere in the world,” they claim, endorses male circumcision for health reasons.

Oh, no?

This, of course, is an outright falsehood, and surely they know it.  In fact, the California Medical Association, faced with a similar proposal, recently wrotethe following statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee: “”From political to religious, there are many differing views on the practice of male circumcision.However, in the medical world, the CMA has long endorsed the concept of newborn circumcision as an effective public health measure.” (Italics mine.)  And a 201o statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)declares that while it does not necessarily recommend routine neonatal circumcision, various trials since 2005 show that “circumcision decreases human immunodeficiency virus acquisition by 53% to 60%, herpes simplex virus type 2 acquisition by 28% to 34%, and human papillomavirus prevalence by 32% to 35 % in men. Among female partners of circumcised men, bacterial vaginosis was reduced by 40%, and trichomonas vaginalis infection was reduced by 48%.” The policy of the AAP therefore indicates a strong awareness of “evidence of long-term health benefits of male circumcision.”

Meantime, Holland’s wise doctors have yet to issue any formal statement about the far more serious problem of the country’s enormous infant mortality rate (among the worst in Western Europe) and high breast cancer fatality rate  (the fourth highest in Europe, and rising).

To be sure, the KNMG, or Royal Dutch Medical Association, has not called for an outright ban on the procedure; they are far too politically clever for that. Claiming that such a ban would only put the practice into the hands of the unskilled, they have rather recommended a “change in mentality” among those groups which practice circumcision in the Netherlands – namely Jews and Muslims, those same minority groups which happen also to be affected by the ban on ritual slaughter.  Because what this is really about is not health at all, but culture. As radical Muslim groups increasingly put pressure on Holland’s politicians to change policies in order to accommodate their religious preferences – from censoring art exhibitions to (speaking of medicine) requiring that female Muslims be treated only by female physicians (an effort that thankfully failed) — indigenous Dutch are responding with a stronger nationalism and a tightened grasp on their Christian roots – even to the point of mangling the truth.

Nonetheless, you have to hand it to the KNMG for ingeniousness. At a time when far-right groups push for closing Europe’s borders, when the Netherlands in particular has developed the toughest immigration laws in the West – requiring even Americans, Australians, Canadians, and other non-EU nationals (except Swiss and, ironically, Turks) to pass a citizenship course simply for a green card or long-term visa,  organizations like the KNMG, along with the passage of bills against halal and kosher slaughter, offer the same outcome with none of the controversy: no one but a European Christian would want to come and live there, anyway.  Call it ethnic cleansing, 21^st century edition. And counting.

Source:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailesman/2011/09/19/circumcision-makes-you-crazy-so-holland-moves-to-stop-it/