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Truth on Trial--What you can no longer say about our enemy in the terror war.
FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | October 31, 2005 | Phyllis Chesler

Posted on 10/31/2005 5:46:25 AM PST by SJackson

Are we winning the war against terror or more precisely, against the death-cult ideology of extreme hate that employs terror as one of its weapons? America, Britain and Israel have all committed significant sums of money to fight back militarily and to ensure civilian safety. However, we must fight another very hot war, one which will ultimately decide whether Western Civilization lives or dies. This is a war we are not winning and some argue that it is a war we have not yet even begun to fight.

I am talking about The Culture War, the war that must be fought to oppose the campaign of lies and propaganda that Islamists and western Stalinists launched against the West, beginning with Israel, arguably anywhere from forty to seventy years ago.

The Culture War is a very hot war: no prisoners are taken, no mercy is shown. And there are now penalties for trying to tell the truth about the danger of jihad or about the barbaric and pathological nature of militant Islam today. Indeed, if you try to discuss the Islamic religious and gender apartheid and its dangerous proliferation into Europe and North America (i.e. there have been honor killings in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Jersey City, Toronto, as well as all over Europe and in the Muslim world), this is what will happen to you:

If you tell these truths in the Arab and Muslim world, you’ll be beheaded, probably tortured, certainly jailed, exiled if you are lucky. Many Muslim and Christian dissidents have suffered precisely this fate. There are no more Jews there, the Islamist Caliphate has rendered the entire Middle East Judenrein long ago. Try to say this in Europe and you might be butchered, as Theo Von Gogh was, or simply imprisoned in purdah, veiled, or threatened, forced to go into hiding, or honor-murdered as so many Muslim girls and women are.

Try to tell the moral tragedy that the United Nations represents, or the even greater tragedy that the word “Palestine” has come to represent objectively, and therefore in a non-politically correct way, on European and on North American campuses, or on the increasingly left-dominated liberal media airwaves, and you may not be shot on the spot, but you will be slandered and called a “racist” and a “fascist.” I have been called both.

If you are a North American intellectual, you may not be imprisoned or be-headed but you will be heckled, mocked, and shunned. You might need security in order to speak. If you’re a feminist, you will no longer be taken seriously as an intellectual, nor will you be “heard.”

Expose the permanent Intifada against Western Civilization and against the Jews and you will be sued and driven into exile, as Oriana Fallaci has been, or sued and prevented from traveling to certain countries, as Rachel Ehrenfeld has been. You will be sued and silenced in all those places where you were once published, even lionized. Dare to say that the torturer and genocidal tyrant, Saddam Hussein, is on trial today only because of America and Iraq’s sacrifice and their bold vision of democracy and you will be called a reactionary, a liar, a fool, and the worse epithet of all: a conservative.

Both Western leftists and Islamists brandish many tools against America and Israel in this war. Their first weapon is the systematic misuse of language. Mainstream and liberal newspapers write about “insurgents,” not “terrorists,” whom they describe as “martyrs,” not “killers, and as “freedom fighters,” not as “well educated evil men.”

Anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrators, who are clearly and visibly filled with hate and rage, are described as “peace activists.” Anti-Semitism is legitimized, while the slightest criticism of Islam is banned because of the disallowance of “Islamophobia.” Telling the truth has become an offense which is unprotected by free speech doctrines, which instead protect the telling of lies.

I was once held captive in Kabul, Afghanistan. I experienced, first-hand, what life is like in a Muslim country, one that has never been colonized by the West. I learned that it was both foolish and dangerous to romanticize Third World countries. And, I learned first-hand, that evil and barbarism exist a priori, and are not caused by western imperialism or colonialism or by the “Zionist entity.” It’s where I also learned to reject the doctrine of multiculturalism, that teaches that all cultures are equal, formerly colonized cultures even more so. This leads to isolationism and non-interventionism and condemns millions of civilians to Islamist torture, terror and genocide.

Although, to their credit, a handful of feminist activists and journalists have sounded the alarm, once America invaded Afghanistan, these very activists, all Democratic Party operatives, swiftly opposed the military routing of the Taliban. And why? Because the expedition had not been undertaken, apparently, with women in mind. It’s as if they did not think that bin Laden’s terrorism kills women too.

I hold the Western academy, including the feminist academy, which has been utterly Palestinianized, responsible for failing to expose and condemn the realities of Islamic gender apartheid. I know feminist graduate students who are busy “de-constructing” the veil, polygamy and arranged marriage as possible expressions of feminist or female power—no different than the bikini. None have congratulated President Bush on his excellent choice of Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State and none have given her the slightest credit for her pro-woman, pro-human rights and pro-Israel speeches.

The number of lies being told in the Western academy and among western activists are literally beyond belief. Here’s one: Mohammed was really great to women, especially to one Safiya bint Huyay whom he married—even though she was Jewish. Yes. But first he beheaded her father and her husband and exterminated her entire village. And then he forced poor Safiya to convert to Islam before he married her. This disinformation campaign leaves me speechless.

Our own intelligentsia—our professors—are so politically correct and so multi-culturally relativist, that they refuse to call “barbaric” the act of stoning a woman to death because she was raped or because she refused to marry her first cousin. Nor will they denounce subjecting women to genital mutilation and public gang-rape as “barbaric.” Nor did American media commentators who showed the Palestinian lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000 describe the event, which they played over and over again, as “barbaric.”

The intelligentsia did not describe what was done to us on 9/11 as “barbaric” either. Indeed, I know American and European intellectuals who are convinced that America and Israel are the greatest barbarians of all, and that we deserved 9/11. According to Islamists and Western academics and journalists, Bin Laden is not an “Islamo-fascist." To them, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are the “Nazi fascists.”

And then there is that vast industry of Palestinian, Arab League and United Nations funded and distributed doctored footage and fake film massacres, fake gun battles, the faked death of Palestinian children at Jewish and Israeli hands. Our Islamist opponents have turned out this propaganda nonstop around the world.

As propagandists, they are far more sophisticated than Goebbels, and far more patient. We cannot afford to underestimate their skill at telling Big Lies. Islamists understood that if they funded madrassas in the East and Middle Eastern Institutes in the West, and if they funded the total Palestinianization of the United Nations and of every international human rights groups that in thirty to fifty years, they would have brainwashed generations to see things their way.

Islam is sacred -- it cannot be insulted. Imagined slights are as important as real slights. Lies have as much weight as the truth. Whether American military forces did or did not flush a Koran down the toilet does not matter. What matters is that Muslims thought they did. No penance is good enough to atone for this crime.

Millions of people have been systematically brainwashed against America, against Israel, against Jews, against women and against the western concept of truth, objectivity, truth-telling, and independent thinking. All are under siege.

We have a serious fifth column in our midst, one that has made common cause with Islamists against us, one that has been well funded by Arab oil billionaires for more than forty years. Now, George Soros too, a fifth column General who, for a variety of reasons, has actually been leading the cultural war against the West. They are fools—but they are dangerous fools. Do they think they will be spared because they are so politically correct? Do they think that they would enjoy the same freedom of speech in Mecca or Tehran that they enjoy in the West?

What must we do in the face of this tyrannical threat? We must rescue language. It must bear some relationship to the truth and morality. Everything is not relative. It is not all Rashomon. We must not allow our media or academics to continue to insist that Islam is not the problem, but that even if it is, that we cannot say so, lest we be deemed racist. We must teach the history of jihad against infidels, and the history of how infidels (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians) were treated under Islam. We must insist that criticism of America and Israel be balanced, not pathological, obsessive and cult-like as it is now. We must insist on civility in public discourse. We must model it for the coming generations.

We must fund seriously a collective effort to combat vulgar lies and vilification, the propaganda against us which has brainwashed countless generations.

We need a War Room effort to counter the Big Lies. We need international radio and television channels to educate people. We need to teach people about intellectual diversity and tolerance.

This country has birthed two significant waves of feminism. We must now take that feminist vision global. We need our foreign policy to contain serious provisions about women’s rights abroad. Otherwise, democracy cannot and will not evolve or flourish in Muslim countries.

The way I see it, everything is at stake. This is a time when we must all be heroes. We must all stand up to evil in our lifetime. We must acknowledge that Islamist terrorism is evil and has no justification. We must teach this to our children. We must support Muslim and Arab dissidents in their fight against Islamic tyranny and gender apartheid. We can do this. We must do this. Otherwise, we will die, and our history and our values and our entire way of life will die with us. If we fail, we will betray all that we believe in as a free people.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: culturewars; jihadists; phyllischesler; propaganda; wwiv
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To: Justanobody
I was going to leave out "for the most part", but I didn't want to be too cynical. LOL

I guess that's why YOU have the "attitude" problem.

Don't get too close and don't EVER turn your back on them!

61 posted on 10/31/2005 9:23:11 PM PST by jan in Colorado (God Bless The Troops!)
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To: Justanobody

Either one has something to do with that bodily area. Either one works for the purpose.


62 posted on 10/31/2005 9:24:14 PM PST by RandallFlagg (Roll your own cigarettes! You'll save $$$ and smoke less!(Magnetic bumper stickers-click my name)
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To: jan in Colorado
Yeah, my attitude ... prolly needs some adjustments!

The last time I turned my back on those things I was assaulted. I learn fast.

63 posted on 10/31/2005 9:25:41 PM PST by Just A Nobody (I - LOVE - my attitude problem! WBB lives on.)
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To: RandallFlagg; jan in Colorado; Fred Nerks
So ... we are taking votes on Enemedia.

What say y'all?

64 posted on 10/31/2005 9:27:29 PM PST by Just A Nobody (I - LOVE - my attitude problem! WBB lives on.)
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To: Justanobody

ENEMEDIA!

THE ENEMEDIA!

Why didn't I think of that? LOL!


65 posted on 10/31/2005 9:38:09 PM PST by Fred Nerks (See my bio page for link to pdf download; THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD.)
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To: Justanobody; RandallFlagg; Fred Nerks
Enemedia? Hey, it came from a fellow Coloradan...I like it!
66 posted on 10/31/2005 9:38:39 PM PST by jan in Colorado (God Bless The Troops!)
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To: RandallFlagg; Fred Nerks; jan in Colorado

"THE ENEMEDIA!"

Looking good. In keeping with this theme, take a look at this.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1513047/posts


67 posted on 10/31/2005 9:43:56 PM PST by Just A Nobody (I - LOVE - my attitude problem! WBB lives on.)
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To: jan in Colorado

Well, I saw your name on the "Messages" page and got curious.


68 posted on 10/31/2005 9:52:28 PM PST by RandallFlagg (Roll your own cigarettes! You'll save $$$ and smoke less!(Magnetic bumper stickers-click my name)
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To: Justanobody; Fred Nerks
On the up side, if we share a brain, it is not really plagiarism, is it?

Well...there's also the fact that you gave me permission to use it without revealing my "source." But now you had to go and mention Karl Rove....Hmmmm....I don't want to be any more of a target than I already am! ;o)

You know, as a now "well known" lawyer recently wrote,

"The connections are deep beneath the soil and cannot be seen on the surface, but when, in fall, the temperature and conditions change, their leaves turn RED, in CLUSTERS because their roots are connected."

Just remember, in front of the Grand Jury or when questioned by a Federal investigator, the memory goes blank...

69 posted on 10/31/2005 9:53:05 PM PST by jan in Colorado (God Bless The Troops!)
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To: Justanobody

I saw that article earlier. Brilliant.

ENEMEDIA!

Never make a comment on FR without the new word, I'm putting it on my tagline.


70 posted on 10/31/2005 9:56:20 PM PST by Fred Nerks (THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS MAINSTREAM MEDIA. IT'S ENEMEDIA !!!!!)
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To: jan in Colorado
the memory goes blank...

Ummmm, excuse me, are you speaking to me? And you are...?



;*)

71 posted on 10/31/2005 9:59:22 PM PST by Just A Nobody (I - LOVE - my attitude problem! WBB lives on.)
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To: Fred Nerks; RandallFlag; jan in Colorado
It's a deal!

Gee, Mr. Nerks - I love your new tagline. ;*)

72 posted on 10/31/2005 10:00:43 PM PST by Just A Nobody (I - LOVE - my attitude problem! WBB lives on.)
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To: RandallFlagg
I saw you on a thread a while back about Tom Tancredo, which is how I knew you were from Colorado.


I saw Congressman Tom Tancredo last weekend at Denver University at this event...http://www.cairco.org/


The protesters were out in force but it was a great forum and they even spent a little time shooting down referendums "C" and "D"
73 posted on 10/31/2005 10:07:36 PM PST by jan in Colorado (God Bless The Troops!)
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To: jan in Colorado

"You went to jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover -- Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—-and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby."

Hey, that's not fair, this (above) is what he (the famous lawyer) said in his note to the famous ENEMEDIA journalist.


It's funny how that cluster of Aspens turned in the courtroom...could it be their roots were connected?


74 posted on 10/31/2005 10:07:42 PM PST by Fred Nerks (THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS MAINSTREAM MEDIA. IT'S ENEMEDIA !!!!!)
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To: jan in Colorado

Yeah. I miss all the fun these days.


75 posted on 10/31/2005 10:08:42 PM PST by RandallFlagg (Roll your own cigarettes! You'll save $$$ and smoke less!(Magnetic bumper stickers-click my name)
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To: Fred Nerks; Justanobody

FRED!!!!! You weren't suppose to tell any one I went to jail! And I Live out west, I don't vacation there! You better get your story straight or you will be joining Mr. Libby.

Oh, the aspens are now BROWN...all over the ground!


76 posted on 10/31/2005 10:14:31 PM PST by jan in Colorado ( Don't ever talk to the ENEMEDIA...it might get you indicted!)
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To: jan in Colorado

I don't remember. Who are you? Is this something you read in the ENEMEDIA?


77 posted on 10/31/2005 10:19:28 PM PST by Fred Nerks (THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS MAINSTREAM MEDIA. IT'S ENEMEDIA !!!!!)
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To: jan in Colorado

You went to jail???


78 posted on 10/31/2005 10:20:37 PM PST by Just A Nobody (I - LOVE - my attitude problem! WBB lives on.)
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To: BenLurkin
BenLurkin writes:
Force Westernization upon them everywhere.
Nothing else will work.

You're right, of course.

In the war between Islam and The West, the measure of "victory" is simple:
Them, or us.

There is no "in between".
Them, or us.

I prefer us.

Either Islam must perish, or The West _will_ eventually perish.

One or the other must be victorious, through nothing less than the destruction of the other.

Our only consolation is that _we_ did not wish for, nor did we start this war. It was forced upon us by Islam, the avowed enemy of civilization and progress.

But even though we didn't start this struggle, we must find the intestinal fortitude to see it through to its end, no matter where that journey takes us. We face a war that may be the bloodiest and longest the planet will ever know - the Armageddon.

If we do not find those strengths, it is Islam that will "finish" us.

- John

79 posted on 10/31/2005 10:30:50 PM PST by Fishrrman
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To: Justanobody
I've been outed!!!!!!!

FYI...."went" not "in"! LOL

80 posted on 10/31/2005 10:31:56 PM PST by jan in Colorado ( Don't ever talk to the ENEMEDIA...it might get you indicted!)
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