Posted on 05/24/2004 6:02:26 PM PDT by SeenTheLight
There’s been a lot of talk since 9/11 about anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination, and yet according to actual hate crime statistics, it is Jews who have had the most to fear. According to the FBI’s Hate Crimes Statistics Report for 2002, there were 155 anti-Islamic incidents and 931 anti-Jewish incidents. And as anyone who follows these developments knows, the majority of these anti-Jewish acts were perpetrated by Arabs and/or Muslims.
Of course, the media has remained largely silent on this issue, preferring instead to stick to their usual script of brown victims and white oppressors. But Jews themselves do not have that luxury. In contrast, many young Jews who never before encountered anti-Semitism are now reading daily about synagogue burnings, blood libels, grave defacements, school fire-bombings, and the cold-blooded and deliberate murder of Jews. They are also experiencing hatred on a personal level for the first time.
My own brush with anti-Semitism, in the post-9/11 landscape, first came while counter-protesting at ''peace'' rallies in San Francisco leading up to the war in Iraq. Most of the vitriol was couched in anti-Israel terminology, such as the hysterical accusations of ''genocide'' displayed on signs and the ''Intifada'' T-shirts worn by members of the crowd. On one occasion, I was called a ''Zionist pig'' for daring to wave an Israeli flag. But it was the Arab teenager with the ''Kill the Jews'' sign that made the most lasting impression.
Actually, I became aware of Arab anti-Semitism long before 9/11, mostly through my neighborhood grocery stores. San Francisco has many such corner stores, the nicest of which are owned and run by Arab-Americans.
A former neighbor of mine made the mistake one day of engaging in a political conversation with our local Arab store owner. Somehow the subject of Australians came up and she mentioned in passing their attitude towards the British. Not knowing she was Jewish, the man nodded in agreement, saying how much he hated Jews. Dumbfounded, she simply walked out the door without comment. From then on, the store became known as the ''Jew-Haters.'' We continued patronizing the place, joking about how we were going down to the ''Jew-Haters'' for some milk or a loaf of bread. But our casual indifference concealed a real fear--evident in the fact that we both tucked our Star of David necklaces into our shirts whenever we went in after that.
I later switched neighborhoods and hence corner stores, but in a cruel twist of fate, it turned out the ''Jew-Haters'' owned another store in the vicinity of my new address. A friend of mine, who isn’t even Jewish, ended up in an argument one day with the owner, who blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks and conjured up the conspiracy theory that 4000 Jews stayed home that day on a tip from Mossad. My friend pointed out how ludicrous these accusations were, but to no avail. Not being able to stomach giving money to the ''Jew-Haters'' any longer, neither of us returned to the store
Years later, I still frequent my local, Arab-owned corner stores, mostly out of necessity, but also because, ironically, they provide the friendliest service in the city. But in the back of my mind, there lingers a nagging question. I can’t help wondering if they would be as friendly if they knew I was a Jew? In fact, I wonder if they would want to slit my throat if they knew I was a Jew? As the young men behind the counter smilingly hand me my change, such are the thoughts that go through my mind.
Having lived most of my life as a tolerant, egalitarian type, I dislike feeling this way, but I’ve read too many passages like the one in the Koran where Muslims are instructed not only to avoid befriending ''disbelievers,'' but to kill them as well. I’ve seen the videos of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, both Jews, beheaded like animals by calm, cool, Arab terrorists. I’ve seen the photos of Palestinians triumphantly holding up their Jewish-blood-stained hands, and dancing gleefully in the streets--the heads and remains of Jewish soldiers held aloft. But it is the story of Sébastien Selam, the young Jewish DJ in France who was murdered last year by his Arab neighbor, that haunts me the most. The two young men had been friends, but after slitting Sebastien’s throat and mutilating his face with a fork, the Arab youth simply said, ''I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven.'' How one reconciles a sense of humanity with such callous indifference to life, is a question I continue to struggle with.
The mundane nature of evil has confounded mankind throughout history and the current situation is no exception. Today’s ''monsters'' could very well be the shopkeeper down the street, a neighbor in your building, or even someone you think is a friend. And for Jews in particular, such realities raise difficult questions. All too often, these concerns go unspoken for fear of giving offense, but the rising bodycount should add some perspective. We have seen where such willful ignorance has led in the past. Can we really afford to go down that path again?
Ah yes the religion of peace...looks like a hate/ violence cult to me...
http://memri.org/video/
A chip seeking a shoulder found yours.
Salt the fields and erase the city. Roughly.
Where and when were you to see such a terrible sight.
Where and when were you to see such a terrible sight.>>
I worked for several years with the US Army headquarters in Multinational Division (North), Tuzla, Bosnia. In the city of Tuzla, the international community, through the International Committee for Missing Persons in the Former Yugoslavia, built a facility for storing and identifying the remains of more than 4000 Bosnian Muslim men who were exterminated in an act of genocide by the Bosnian Serb Army at Srebrenica. One of my duties was to work with a committee of individuals who organized the peaceful burial of the identified dead at a newly built cemetery in Srebrenica. This task required that I work with the facility to help organize the cemetery. The cemetery was finally dedicated last year after approximately 1100 of the bodies had been identified.
"Let him be accursed."
Originally used as an epithet toward Protestants in the official documents of the Council of Trent, it is most applicable to those who advocate the extermination of funny people who just aren't amurrican enough.
I'm well familiar with them. I suggest you read the results of the United Nations investigation into the extermination of Muslims at Srebrenica, where you can read first hand where people who think like you do when given weapons and a free hand are willing to commit murder in the name of remaining muesselmannerfrei.
Immediacy and distance both contribute to fanatic hatreds -- the immediacy of seeing many fellows slaughtered fires up such hatreds, and the distance in time or space from the site of such massacres and conflicts allows what may seem to be more fanatic entiments to be expresssed.
You yourself are affected, afflicted by that immediacy of exposure to horrific hate and violence. You have inculcated the virus of fanatic hatred in yourself. In shows in your inappropriate response to the Cato quoters.
Advocate extermination, get called a Nazi. It is not rocket science.
You are aware that muslim fanatics murdered 3000 Americans on 9/11? >>>
Don't you dare lecture me. Unless you lost family in the attacks 9/11 cost me far more than it did you.
Americans do not exterminate the innocent. And "the innocent" includes those who are not directly participating in combat operations against the United States. If you support the extermination of the helpless, for WHATEVER reason, you are not an American, but in truth, morally indistinguishable from the Nazis.
You yourself are affected, afflicted by that immediacy of exposure to horrific hate and violence. You have inculcated the virus of fanatic hatred in yourself. In shows in your inappropriate response to the Cato quoters.>>>
Which makes you, who may have watched two episodes of "The Holocaust" in the 1970s and a rerun of Schindler's List on TV, better qualified to comment on genocide than someone who had to clean up after it directly?
A sting means the wasp stung.
I think our differences are primarily based on different assumptions about whether Islamism is a threat: you do not seem to regard Islamism as a threat to civilization and I do.
On that assumption, I regard the extermination (yes, extermination!) of Islamistscum as necessary to protect civilization.
If it were simple to distinguish between "good" moslems and Islamistscum, then there would be no problem. However, the evidence suggests most moslems tacitly support the Islamofascists, cheer them on, and, in many cases, even harbor them. The images of the Palestinian women ululating and dancing in the streets with joy after 9/11 will remain indelibly etched in my consciousness along with the images of the planes flying into the Twin Towers and people, some of whom I knew, falling out of the windows to their deaths. Of such stuff is implacable hatred made. Yet, as I said before, the instant moslems truly renounce their desire to rule the world and assist us in getting rid of the Islamofascistscum, then I'll lay down the sword. Until then, I have thrown away the scabbard.
Thanks.
You mean when the UN troops who were supposed to protect the moslems funked the job and let the Serbs loose?>>
That is EXACTLY what I am saying.
I think our differences are primarily based on different assumptions about whether Islamism is a threat: you do not seem to regard Islamism as a threat to civilization and I do. >>
It is based on the fact that I can tell the difference between Islamists (a tiny minority of fanatics) and Muslims (a large number of people which includes women, children, old people and a hell of a lot of people who are completely indifferent to their faith).
We have to DEFEAT the islamists without EXTERMINATING the Muslims.
By your logic I should exterminate every single white American because one of them was Tim McVeigh.
Well, we're getting closer. I believe firmly (Cato's Ceterum censeo) that the Islamists MUST be not merely defeated, but DESTROYED (esse Delendam. While, ceterus paribus, I would prefer to do this without exterminating all (or, more realistically, even a substantial number of) Moslems, in the absence of an absolutely reliable method of distinguishing "good" moslems from islamists, I am not prepared to accept any significant risk that any substantial number of the islamists have been missed and remain alive to do Western civilization harm.
Again, I think we differ in our assessments of the seriousness of the risk to civilization as well as the ease with which islamists may be detected, isolated, and exterminated.
My reading of the Koran (in translation since I have no arabic), various islamic works (all in translation), books on the history of islam by non-islamic scholars, as well as my general background as an intllectual historian of modern Europe, lead me to conclude that the islamist reading of the Koran is not an unusual one, or one inconsistent with the religions governing documents. I suspect that is why very substantial numbers of moslems either support or are pleased by the islamists. I believe most moslems still believe it is islam's destiny to rule the world, placing everyone under shaira law that was barbaric even when promulgated in the Dark Ages. I think that must be strenuously opposed.
If there are, as you suggest, a large number of ... [Moslems] which includes women, children, old people and a hell of a lot of people who are completely indifferent to their faith, then let them distance themselves actively from the islamists and renounce jihad and any desire to shove their religion down the world's throat. As I said before, moslems who clearly distance themselves from the islamists, and that means no aid to them and assisting the West in destroying them, should of course not be harmed in any way. I'm not talking about a genocide at all, I'm talking only about the destruction of a threat to civilization. Make it clear you're no threat, and be safe. Associate with those who are clearly a threat, and you run the risk of being destroyed in the process.
This, of course, represents utterly specious reasoning. Not only was McVeigh not harbored, he was caught, tried, convicted, and executed for his crimes.
Contrast that with the fact that Osama bin Laden to this day is being harbored by moslems in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and supported by large numbers. No white Americans danced in the streets to celebrate McVeigh's crimes in the manner of the Arab women and children who celebrated the attack on the United States on 9/11.
To exterminate, or even to kill large numbers, of completely innocent Muslims to get the Islamists would deprive us of all civilization and make us completely indistinguishable from Bin Laden and all other Nazis. Which is what I am saying.
One does not burn down a barn to kill a rat. Oh, you can do it if you want, but it costs you the barn and shows you to be an idiot.
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