Posted on 10/16/2006 2:33:58 PM PDT by Dark Skies
In Acre this past weekend, what was supposed to be a joyous celebration of Simchat Torah degenerated into a near pogrom when for two nights an Arab mob physically attacked Jewish worshipers with crowbars, rocks and firecrackers, and verbally assaulted them with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slurs. The worshipers were students from the hesder yeshiva Ruah Tzfonit (Northern Wind) located in the mixed Jewish-Arab Wolfson neighborhood.
According to Rabbi Yossi Stern, who leads the yeshiva, "Each year we dance in the city's neighborhoods. On Friday, as we walked to where we planned to celebrate, the Arabs attacked us with rocks and firecrackers. We ignored them and kept walking to our destination."
Saturday night the attacks spun out of control. "We danced in a different part of town on Saturday night. As we returned to the yeshiva, the attacks began."
A group of some 100 Arabs attacked 60 or so yeshiva students with crowbars, firecrackers, rocks and dry blows. One of the students, a soldier on leave from the IDF for the holiday, was carrying his M-16 rifle. "He was being hit and his friends were being hit, and the Arabs kept touching his rifle. He felt that his life was in danger," Stern explains, "and so he shot a warning shot in the air to get them away from him."
According to Rabbi Stern, in the weeks that preceded the holiday, there was a marked rise in Islamic incitement of the Arabs in the neighborhood. "It was clear that there was organized incitement going on." Islamic flags were unfurled on homes and businesses. Posters of the mosques on the Temple Mount were hung throughout the neighborhood. Then, for the first time in the neighborhood's history, an Arab resident placed an enormous loudspeaker on his roof and began blasting the muezzin's calls to prayer five times a day.
Concerned about the possibility that the increased Arab hostility could lead to violence, Rabbi Stern contacted the police before the holiday and requested a police escort for the students during the holiday. The escort never arrived.
Once the soldier fired his rifle the situation degenerated still further. As the students fought their way to their yeshiva and holed up in their study hall, the Arabs surrounded the building and refused to leave. At this point, a large police contingent arrived at the scene. But, according to Rabbi Stern, the main thing that interested them was the shooting incident. The police seized the soldier's rifle and interrogated him for several hours before releasing him - without his weapon - to military police for further investigation.
RATHER THAN arrest the Arabs outside the yeshiva who were threatening further violence, or force them to disperse, the police demanded that the students leave the building through a back exit with police escort. The students refused. The stand-off continued for another three hours. At the end, the police agreed to escort the students to the bus station through the front door of the yeshiva. No arrests were made.
Rabbi Stern sees the riots as a watershed event in the city. "Until now the police and the municipal leaders tried to sweep these sorts of assaults under the rug and treated them as isolated incidents." Now, he hopes that a more systematic approach will be taken to contending with the increased hostility of the city's Arabs towards the Jews.
No doubt, such a reassessment is necessary. One only needs to look at what is happening today in France to understand what can happen if the police and political authorities maintain their refusal to enforce the laws towards Israeli Arabs without prejudice.
In France, some 2,500 French policemen have been wounded by Muslim attackers since the beginning of 2006. According to French police statistics, over the past month, 10-12 attacks against Jews have taken place every day.
The French police increasingly refer to the mob violence against them as an intifada, or a civil war. This week, a French patrol in a Muslim suburb of Paris was ambushed by a mob of some 30 rioters who attacked the police officers with tear gas and rocks. One of the officers was hospitalized with a shattered jaw.
The current state of lawlessness in the Muslim neighborhoods of France has been developing for the past several years. The French authorities' fears of the growing electoral power of the French Muslim community, their aversion to allegations of racism, and their hope to appease the Muslim minority and so avert further violence, have caused both the politicians and the law enforcement officials to refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and contend with it.
The reaction of the Israeli authorities to the rioting in Acre, like their treatment of organized Arab violence and separatism in general, is disturbingly similar to the behavior of their French counterparts. If allowed to go on, there is little reason to doubt that we will face the same problems as the French.
ISRAEL'S GENERAL policy of appeasement towards its Arab minority is nowhere more apparent than on the Temple Mount.
This week, a Jordanian government official let it be known that without debating the issue in public, the Olmert government has approved the construction of a fifth minaret on the Temple Mount. On the face of it, this is not something the general public should care about. What does it matter to Jews if the Muslims build a fifth minaret?
The problem is that the Islamic Wakf, which effectively acts as the sovereign on Judaism's holiest site, has for years been systematically destroying the remains of Jewish temples on the Temple Mount and intimidating the police and political authorities not to apply Israel's law - which mandates free access and religious worship by all religions to sacred sites - on the site. The construction of a fifth minaret is a clear attempt on the part of the Wakf to fill the Temple Mount with mosques and so prevent all Jewish worship and block any attempt to build a synagogue on the site.
Rather than deny the request, or condition its approval for the construction of a fifth minaret on the parallel construction of a synagogue or, at the very least, the permanent opening of the Temple Mount to all worshipers from all religions in accordance with Israeli law, the government has apparently agreed to the building request.
The authorities' actions in Acre and Jerusalem expose a dangerous reality: Without notifying the public, Israel's political and law enforcement leadership have enabled the establishment of two separate rules of law exist side by side in Israel today - one for Jews and one for Arabs. The police in Acre over the weekend, who enforced the law against the soldier who shot his rifle in the air, refused to enforce the law against the Arab rioters.
Rabbi Stern believes that the lesson from the attacks against his students this weekend is that the police must enforce the law fully and without prejudice to all Israelis. He is right. The application of two different laws to Jews and Arabs has not led to increased integration but to increased segregation.
Last month the Harry Truman Institute at Hebrew University conducted a poll of Israeli Arabs in the aftermath of the war in Lebanon. Sixty-eight percent said they care about Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah, and 70 percent said they think that Nasrallah cares about them.
The cowardly refusal of state authorities to apply the law in the same manner to both Arabs and Jews, has contributed greatly to the unraveling of our common Israeli identity.
While Israeli Arabs who wish to be fully integrated into Israeli society find themselves isolated and intimidated, irredentist forces within the Israeli Arab community such as the Islamic Movement and the Adallah organization which demand communal autonomy rather than individual rights for Israeli Arabs, have gained unprecedented power and influence.
Many who applaud the police's prejudicial enforcement of the law do so in the name of the liberal value of equality. But what we see as the consequence of this prejudicial behavior is not the enhancement of equality, but the empowerment of illiberal, violent forces in the Arab Israeli community who far from advancing coexistence, have effectively debased the concepts of both equality and the rule of law to the detriment of Arabs and Jews alike.
Thx!!!
"RATHER THAN arrest the Arabs outside the yeshiva who were threatening further violence, or force them to disperse, the police demanded that the students leave the building through a back exit with police escort. The students refused."
The Israeli government bends over backwards for muzzies about as much as the US does. Is western civ too polite to survive?
Sounds like the young folks aren't as PC as their elders.
A change in attitude that will be necessary for the survival of Israel.
And since when is flying the flag of one's country considered incitement? Oh, that's right, if it involves Muslims.....
The French police increasingly refer to the mob violence against them as an intifada, or a civil war. This week, a French patrol in a Muslim suburb of Paris was ambushed by a mob of some 30 rioters who attacked the police officers with tear gas and rocks. One of the officers was hospitalized with a shattered jaw. The current state of lawlessness in the Muslim neighborhoods of France has been developing for the past several years. The French authorities' fears of the growing electoral power of the French Muslim community, their aversion to allegations of racism, and their hope to appease the Muslim minority and so avert further violence, have caused both the politicians and the law enforcement officials to refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and contend with it.But as Chirac once said, this is serious, because these are assaults against French citizens, rather than against Jews. :'(
FLAWED MEN AND FLAWED INSTITUTIONS
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
February 21, 2002
Moral and intellectual anarchy reigns in Israel. The country is slipping toward the abyss. Although this anarchy could be significantly mitigated by the reform of Israel’s political and judicial institutions, much more will be necessary to save Israel from oblivion. As I have shown in my book DEMOPHRENIA: ISRAEL AND THE MALAISE OF DEMocracy, a hitherto unrecognized mental disorder permeates Israel’s ruling elites, a disorder that is infecting the general public.
Close to 800 Jews have been murdered, and many thousands more have been wounded and maimed for life since Oslo 1993. More Jews have been murdered under the premiership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon than under any of his predecessors. Israeli governments have murdered the sense of justice in this country. Let us try to understand this.
To murder the sense of justice—the consequence of tolerating Arab terrorism via the government’s policy of self-restraint—is to destroy the natural instincts of normal human beings, especially the instinct of self-preservation. That instinct is also undermined when Israeli prime ministers shake the bloodstained hands of Yasser Arafat. These pedestrian politicians have destroyed Jewish pride or honor, which cannot but emasculate Jews and render them incapable of persevering in a protracted conflict.
When the sense of honor and of justice no longer animate human beings, they sink toward the subhuman level, where moral distinctions vanish. Venerable beliefs and values dissolve. Family values disintegrate. Gender differences collapse. Authority declines. Children no longer respect their parents. The foundations of civilization crumble. Barbarism returns, only now it is armed with technique.
The sense of justice and of honor are constantly under attack by Israel’s political and judicial elites, and this is destroying civic virtue and civilized behavior. The revolting example of a score of Knesset members abandoning their parties, in 1999, when their seats became vulnerable and joining some rival party produced no public outrage, no movement for reform. And what of the parties that rewarded this betrayal? This betrayal reveals not only the flawed character of many members of Israel’s parliament but of the flawed nature of the parliamentary electoral system.
Another example: When judges of the Supreme Court issue decisions that encourage perversion and permissiveness and even subversion in a country at war, one has to wonder not only about their unwisdom but about their connection with reality, hence their sanity. That they should legitimize gay marriages, that they should criminalize the spanking of a child, that they should quash the indictment of an Arab Knesset member who praises terrorist attacks against Jews—all this signifies more than abysmal ignorance of the prerequisites of civilized society. I see here degeneracy, a leveling of moral distinctions, a will to self-destruction. Thousands of years of human experience mean nothing to these judges who, in their arrogance, have no understanding of what primitive instincts had to be overcome before mankind emerged from barbarism to civilization. But the arrogance of the Supreme Court is a consequence not only of the conceits and superficiality of contemporary education, but also of its mode of appointment! Do not expect intellectual modesty from a court whose judges are accountable to one, a court that virtually appoints itself.
That the Knesset, i.e., the legislature, which enacted the law establishing the Supreme Court and has the power to reform this so-called High Court of Justice, allows it to legislate immorality, to undermine authority, and to encourage murder, is further evidence that the Knesset consists, to no small extent, of irresponsible fools and scoundrels.
The same may be said of Israel’s Chelm-like Government, which demonstrated its inanity or insanity by proclaiming self-restraint against Arab barbarians a form of strength—thereby manifesting the Supreme Court’s indifference to the murder of Jews. But again, this is not simply a matter of flawed human beings, but also of the flawed system of multi-party cabinet government, whose ministers, rather than risk the lost of their power and perquisites, risk the lives of Jewish men, women, and children!
This infamous regime must be erased!
http://www.newswithviews.com/israel/israel11.htm
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Acre (or 'Akko' as it's called in Israel) is where I had my eye-opening experience while I was in the army, nearly 20 years ago. I had a relative that lived in Akko who was friends with a local arab-israeli family. They invited us to visit one evening and as we were both Canadian, and spoke english with each other, they mistakenly assumed that I spoke neither Hebrew nor Arabic, so they spoke freely in my presence, not realizing I *could* understand them.
The patriarch of the family arrived and they filled him in (in the hebrew/arabic that is commonly spoken by residents) and when he heard that I was a soldier, a discussion ensued with respect to the "future", wherein he asserted that the next generation of Jews was going to be in a lot of trouble because "our children will take up the jihad and rid the country of Jews, once and for all".
It took a lot on my part to not react, and continue pretending that I didn't understand. Not that "reacting" would have changed anything, but it has made it easier for me to parse events since then.
"MEN" WITHOUT CHESTS REVISITED
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
December 2002
During aristocratic ages, man's moral center of gravity is the chest -- the seat of "honor." A gentleman's honor was more than mere probity, and far more than prestige. As late as the 18th century, the lexicon defined "honor" as a quality that "supposes in a gentleman a stronger abhorrence of perfidy, falsehood, or cowardice, and a more elevated and delicate sense of virtue, than are usually found in [ordinary decent men]."
A gentleman's honor was therefore his most sacred possession. An insult to such a person, if unanswered, could result in his and his family's ruin. The manly response to offended honor was the duel.
As mankind became less aristocratic and more commercial, dueling, as an affair of honor, was outlawed. The clash of steel was replaced by libel laws, the violation of which might entail monetary loss rather than loss of life.
With the ascendancy of the consumer society, however, man's center of gravity has descended from his chest to his abdomen. Laws against defamation of character have lost much of their efficacy, especially now with unrestrained freedom of speech and press, the pride of flatulent democracies.
Indeed, so sacred and secure are the print and electronic media in an era of unfettered freedom of expression, and so prohibitive is the cost of a libel suit, that certain well-placed individuals can engage in character assassination without risking their lives or their fortunes. Enter "men without chests."
Men without chests are the product of consumptive as opposed to deliberative democracy. Those who control the political institutions and communications media of an all-consuming democracy do not engage their opponents in honest democratic debate but rather seek to destroy them by verbal voodoo. i.e., by one-word slanders. And they do this while posing sanctimoniously as democrats. In fact, it is precisely in the name of "democracy" that one can now defame an individual without fear of retribution.
A recent and most notorious victim of this abuse is the late Rabbi Meir Kahane (himself a talented word-monger), who was constantly reviled as a "racist" and a "Nazi." Any Lilliputian can resort to such vilification, and the media, especially in Israel, will gladly purvey the slander, free of all restraints -- legal, political, or moral. Never has pusillanimity, now garbed in righteousness, enjoyed such protection by the laws and institutions of society. Honor is the first casualty of abdominal democracy.
More interesting than Kahane is the hysterical hatred he aroused among Israel's political and intellectual Yahoos. It were as if this one man and his Kach Party constituted a serious threat to the power, prestige, and privileges of those who have long dominated Israel's political, economic, military, educational, and cultural institutions! And so, when Rabbi Kahane was elected to the Knesset, these men without chests hastened up and down the country trying to indoctrinate high school students and soldiers with the fatuous slogans of "democracy" on the one hand, while slandering Kahane as a "racist" on the other. (The same sort of hysteria and defamation followed the tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.)
I said that the first casualty of abdominal democracy is honor (so odiously displayed by those who clasped the bloodstained hands of Yasser Arafat). The second casualty is truth, which is why I referred to those who called Kahane a racist or a Nazi as "Yahoos." For to use the language of Swift's Houyhynhnms -- who have no word for falsehood -- Yahoos "say the thing which is not," namely, the truth about the militant nature of Islam and the Arabs' deeply ingrained hatred of Jews.
I am alluding to Israel's anti-racist legislation, which makes it a criminal offense to tell the truth about Israel's domestic enemies. Thus, suppose some full-chested Jew was to recount the well-documented fact that Arab leaders can easily inflame Muslim masses, who add to a religious fanaticism, a latent hatred of Jews. And suppose he reminded people of how 62 percent of Israel's Arab citizens openly supported Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War despite his threat to incinerate Israel including themselves. Furthermore, suppose he uttered these truths because he believed -- rightly or wrongly -- that it would be in the best interest of democracy for the government of Israel not only to prohibit Arab parties that pursue Arab nationalist aims, but to disenfranchise any Arab who, by word or deed, denies Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state. That Jew could be imprisoned for five years under the so-called anti-racist, but really anti-Jewish, legislation in question.
To be sure, a government that possessed, along with a modicum of honor, the courage to adopt the policy just mentioned, would surely be committed to making Israel an authentic Jewish State. This would have a profound affect on Israel's Arab inhabitants. The more Israel became Jewish, the more Arabs would leave the country, though I dare say many would remain, secure in their personal , civic, economic, and religious rights.
On the other hand, given a government consisting of men without chests, Jews who advocate such a policy will be shamelessly slandered as "racists." How strange, when one considers these words of a most famous political Zionist: "We shall try to spirit the penniless Arab population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries while denying them any employment in our own country."
The author of this statement is none other than Theodor Herzl, the man whom Israel's Declaration of Independence refers to as the "spiritual father of the Jewish State"! Herzl, it seems, did not belong to the species of "men without chests."
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Push them into the sea..
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