Victor Davis Hanson: ‘Response to Readership’ 12/15/04 on Bat Ye’or and Eurabia

Q: Are you familiar with the work of Bat Ye’or and the issue of Dhimmitude, as well as her more recent research into the issue of Eurabia? I tend to be somewhat skeptical of ‘conspiracy’ theories (not that her views on Eurabia are conspiratorial in the classic sense), but it does suggest some rather worrying possibilities with regard to European alliances with Arab causes (and personalities) and the long term implications this has for American-European relations.

Hanson: Yes, I am familiar with her work. She is not a conspiracist at all, but an empiricist, whose work is based on observation, facts, and logic: look at the demography of Europe; look at the history of Christians living under Muslims (going to Church in Saudi Arabia is not the same as worshipping in a mosque in Madrid); and read not what Western elites say about Muslim clerics, but what Muslim clerics themselves say. So, yes, she is a scholar and should not be dismissed because her views bother us because they are largely insightful. Europe has a gut-check time coming very soon as it ponders Islamic populations in its own borders, the admission of Turkey into the EU (in some ways very good for the US, a disaster for Europe), and nuclear missile capability of Iran. We shall see whether it reawakens or not.

Eurabia
The road to Munich…

September 11, 2001 was for millions worldwide a day of sorrow, pain, and profound sadness; a day of solemn solidarity, self-sacrifice, and prayer. For others it was a day of rejoicing, a revengeful exultation, a long-awaited triumphalism born from the death and suffering of thousands of innocent victims. They were saying: That'll teach them! America deserves it and must repent! And many were asking maliciously: Don't you have remorse for your wrongs? Why don't you ask yourself why you are hated? If we hate you, it can only be your own fault. Emerging from the ruin and distress which they had endured, Americans asked themselves: What have we done? We have been vilely attacked, yet we are accused. Why do they hate us?

And that's the snare. For iniquity engulfs those who hate, who kill — and not the hated victim. It is those who hate who are sick: sick from envy; sick from the frustration of having failed to achieve an absolute, pathological domination; sick from a schizophrenic lust for power. To heal these societies one must first diagnose the evil and not mask it under the excuse of "poverty" and "underdevelopment." Terrorism is not a consequence of poverty. Many societies are poor, yet they do not produce an organized criminality of terror. To subsidize societies which nourish ideologies of hate will not suppress terrorism, rather such pusillanimity will reinforce it.

America should not choose European ways: the road back to Munich via appeasement, collaboration, and dhimmitude. For decades at the instigation of France, Europe backed Arafat — the godfather of modern terrorism — as the champion of liberty, and their hero.

After the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil blackmail in 1973, the then-European Community (EC) created a structure of Cooperation and Dialogue with the Arab League. The Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) began as a French initiative composed of representatives from the EC and Arab League countries. From the outset the EAD was considered as a vast transaction: The EC agreed to support the Arab anti-Israeli policy in exchange for wide commercial agreements. The EAD had a supplementary function: the shifting of Europe into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity. The EAD operated at the highest political level, with foreign ministers on both sides, and the presidents of the EC — later the European Union (EU) — with the secretary general of the Arab League. The central body of the Dialogue, the General Commission, was responsible for planning its objectives in the political, cultural, social, economic, and technological domains; it met in private, without summary records, a common practice for European meetings.

Over the years, Euro-Arab collaboration developed at all levels: political, economic, religious and in the transfer of technologies, education, universities, radio, television, press, publishers, and writers unions. This structure became the channel for Arab immigration into Europe, of anti-Americanism, and of Judeophobia, which — linked with a general hatred of the West and its denigration — constituted a pseudo-culture imported from Arab countries. The interpenetration of European and Arab policies determined Europe's relentless anti-Israel policy and its anti-Americanism. This politico-economic edifice, with minute details, is rooted in a multiform European symbiosis with the Arab world.

-snip-

(Bat Yeor in National Review, October 9, 2002)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-yeor100902.asp

Isn't that cute?

Here's the Coalition's lead story on their website:

Good Turnout for Presidential Candidate Brown @ CPJ Meeting

"Presidential candidate, Walter Brown, came to a special pre-election meeting of the Coalition for Peace and Justice at the Charlotte Main Public Library on Saturday October 23. Mr. Brown, running on the Socialist party ticket, told a filled room that there was very little real difference between Bush and Kerry and that his platform offered a real change demanding an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Brown also gave a historical background of the Socialist party, which is deeply rooted in the democratic tradition. A question/answer followed his speech."

Isn't that cute?

Here's the Coalition's lead story on their website:

Good Turnout for Presidential Candidate Brown @ CPJ Meeting

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