Posted on 10/16/2001 6:17:16 AM PDT by vrwc54
I read today that a Newsweek poll in Pakistan found that 48 percent of Pakistanis believe that Israel was behind the September 11 massacre. Reports from around the Middle East also show this to be a widespread belief among Arabs and Muslims. It is also echoed by the defeatist factions on the far left and the far right in this country.Prince Alaweed responded yesterday to Rudy Giuliani's heroic return of the Saudi prince's blood money in these words: "The whole issue is that I spoke about their position [on the Middle East conflict] and they didn't like it because there are Jewish pressures and they were afraid of them." This quote was to the newspaper Okaz, according to the New York Post. Alaweed knew exactly how to explain the affront to his native audience.
There is only one word for this sickness and it is anti-Semitism. Somehow, we have not yet named the psychosis that affects large numbers of Muslims. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, whatever Tony Blair naively believes. The overwhelming majority of Arab Muslims do not want an accommodation with Israel. They want its obliteration and the expulsion or murder of every Jew that lives there.
This anti-Semitism is openly fostered and fomented by many of the "moderate" Arab regimes we are now busy cozying up to. It is widely believed across the Muslim world - from the Philippines to Morocco to the denizens of our own native Muslim, Mr. Farrakhan.
One of our greatest mistakes in the past few years has been to avoid calling this what it is: a sickness that only half a century ago was responsible for the greatest crime in the history of mankind. Why, one wonders, have no Western leaders confronted this ugly truth and condemned it? What hasn't the Pope?
The rhetoric of bin Laden is not simply fundamentalist. In its structure and paranoia, it is not so different from the doctrines propagated by Hitler. These bin Laden-supporting Muslims want non-Muslims expelled from a wide swathe of Arab territory. They want Lebensraum, and the primary victim of such Lebensraum will once again be the Jews. Israel may not be the first cause cited by bin Laden but it surely is a critical one.
It seems to me that our squeamishness in naming and recognizing this phenomenon is blunting our ability to confront it. Once again, we are faced with an expansionist, terrorist ideology that uses the demonization of Jews as one of its major rallying cries. What more do we need to know?
I'm glad we finally have some writers indicating exactly what this is. An anti-Jew mentality and ideology is a fundamental feature of Islam and particularly in Arab Islamic countries.
That's an answer or solution? Maybe the right kind of faith which doesn't encourage Jihads is the answer. And remember, the biggest slaughter houses in the last century were perpetrated by atheistic regimes - the Soviet Union under Stalin and Red China.
What about all the "Poland First," "Russia First" and "Yugoslavia First" people we see on Free Republic? Why do you leave them out?
Ok, ok.... We need to think America First, not Poland First, Russia First, Yugoslavia First, Armenia First, Belize First, Brunei First, Congo First, Dutch Antilles First, Fiji First, Guinea Bissau First, Indonesia First, Kazakhstan First, Luxembourg First, Mozambique First, Papua New Guinea First, Sao Tome First, Swaziland First, Trinidad & Tobago First, Mugobugo First, West Samoa First, Shangri La First, UkiBooki First, etc., etc.
Does that about cover it?
That's a good question.
They were a bunch of Hitler appeasing isolationists, whom most Americans despised and shunned. America Firsters Charles Lindbergh and Joe Kennedy ended up disgraced, their reputations in tatters. Their "America First" rantings just covered up their bigotry.
Yelling America First has nothing to do with putting the USA above all, which most Americans do automatically, and that loyalty is not in question because they feel a connection on some level to their family roots in another country (as JFK did Ireland.)
It's just more Pat Buchanan-style bigotry, which is why Pat is basically a pariah.
Yes, Islam is "anti-semitic" (altho Arabs are semites.) But "hating Jews" (the proper phrase, not the epicene and inaccurate "anti-semiticism") is undifferentiated from hating Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Bhuddists, atheists and other infidels.
The mistake A.S. is making, and which he made in his recent article about this being a "religious war," is that he does not see the original rationale for Islam. Sullivan, equating Islam with his experience of Christianity, mistakenly thinks that this is all some sort of misunderstanding which nicer people can clear up.
The Jews are objects of hatred, but no less so than all infidels. Moslems focus on the Jews only because Moslems seek to divide the infidels, and they see an opening in America's support for Israel. It is a "wedge" issue.
Moslems hope we will give up on the Jews, because the price for supporting them will become too high to pay. Then, the Moslems will take over more territory. But the territory will be no more significant in the long run, than mere acreage. The territory they want, is not only the Earth, but also the death of infidels.
Sullivan is too constricted and a-historic in his pov. The Crusades where not imperialist, they were a reaction to jihad.
Sullivan, a brilliant man, is here not seeing the big picture. Islam's hatred is intended for all everywhere. If even smart men like Sullivan buy into the mere "anti-semitic" view of Islam, then they have successfully given their prospective killers the signal that the West has given up.
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