An interesting comment on the relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism by Stephen Shenfield from the comment thread following Roland Nikles' An apologia for Ken Livingstone (What would Buber say?) at mondoweiss.net:
"Zionism... was steeped in anti-Semitism from the start. Zionists agreed with anti-Semites that the Jews were a foreign and unassimilable element in their host societies and that it was therefore natural, inevitable, and humanly understandable that they should be rejected and persecuted. They shared the anti-Semites' negative perceptions of Jews as they actually existed. That also meant that they hated themselves. Where they differed from the more thoroughgoing anti-Semites was their believe that at least some Jews could be rehabilitated and normalized through Zionist efforts. Hitler in particular did not believe this was possible; for him the only final solution of the Jewish question was extermination.
"However, Hitler cannot be equated with Nazism as such. In the 1930s there were Nazis, including SS officers, who thought Zionism could solve the Jewish question. A key figure in the attempt at a Zionist-Nazi rapprochement was Rabbi Joachim Prinz. I got hold of his book Wir Juden (We Jews), published in Berlin in 1934, i.e. under Nazi rule. The author himself apparently blocked publication of an English translation after his emigration to the US in 1937 - and no wonder. The book is a skillful synthesis of Nazi and Zionist ideas, with the 'German Revolution' presented as a model for Jews to emulate. It shows that the German Zionists did not collaborate with the Nazis for purely practical purposes - they also saw the two movements as ideologically complementary. Of all the tendencies of Jewish thought Zionism is and always was the closest to anti-Semitism. The hypocrisy of Zionists accusing other people of anti-Semitism on the flimsiest grounds is astounding."
Here's more on Rabbi Prinz by Israel Shahak:
"Dr Joachim Prinz, a Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he rose to be vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress and a leading light in the World Zionist Organization (as well as a great friend of Golda Meir), published in 1934 a special book, Wir Juden (We Jews), to celebrate Hitler's so-called German Revolution and the defeat of liberalism: 'The meaning of the German Revolution for the German nation will eventually be clear to those who have created it and formed its image. Its meaning for us must be set forth here: the fortunes of liberalism are lost. The only form of political life which has helped Jewish assimilation is sunk.'
"The victory of Nazism rules out assimilation and mixed marriages as an option for Jews. 'We are not unhappy about this,' said Dr Prinz. In the fact that Jews are being forced to identify themselves as Jews, he sees 'the fulfilment of our desires'. And further: 'We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and Jewish race. A state built upon the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honoured and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind. Having so declared himself, he will never be capable of faulty loyalty towards a state. The state cannot want other Jews but such as declare themselves as belonging to their nation. It will not want Jewish flatterers and crawlers. It must demand of us faith and loyalty to our own interest. For only he who honours his own breed and his own blood can have an attitude of honour towards the national will of other nations.'
"The whole book is full of similar crude flatteries of Nazi ideology, glee at the defeat of liberalism and particularly of the ideas of the French Revolution, and great expectations that, in the congenial myth of the Aryan race, Zionism and the myth of the Jewish race will also thrive." (Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, 1994, pp 71-72)
Compare the above with the following account of Prinz from the promotional website of the 2013 documentary, Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silent:
"In Berlin in the 1930s, the civil rights of Jews were systematically stripped away. A young rabbi refused to be silent. His name was Joachim Prinz and he set out to restore the self-esteem of the German Jews. Knowing the Nazis were monitoring his every word, and despite repeated arrests, Prinz continued to preach about the value of Judaism. He saved many lives by encouraging Jews to emigrate from Germany. Expelled from Germany in 1937, Prinz arrived in the United States, the land where democracy had supposedly triumphed over bigotry and hatred. Here, he witnessed racism against African Americans and realized the American ideal was not a reality. As rabbi of Temple B'nai Abraham in Newark, NJ and later as President of the American Jewish Congress, Prinz became a leader of the civil rights movement. Prinz worked to organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, declaring, 'bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.' Moments later, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech. Throughout his career, Prinz spoke out for justice, unconcerned with the popularity of his positions. He identified with the prophets, writing in a 1975 letter, 'Remember the Biblical adage, 'For the sake of Zion, I shall not be silent'." (Prinz's Story, prinzdocumentary.org)
Returning to earth:
"Said Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President of the American Jewish Congress in a resolution he introduced at the closing session of the group's biennial national convention in Miami Beach on May 18, 1958: 'We call upon the United States to take the lead in solving the Arab Refugee problem by pressing for the resettlement of the bulk of the refugees in the sparsely populated land of their Arab kinsmen'." (The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, Moshe Menuhin, 1969, p 142)
Showing posts with label Israel Shahak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel Shahak. Show all posts
Friday, May 13, 2016
Monday, September 3, 2012
Baruch Goldstein Trumps Rachel Corrie
"The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is deeply concerned by the verdict of Judge Oded Gershon that absolved Israel's military and state of the 2003 murder of American ISM activist Rachel Corrie. Rachel was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip. Despite the American administration stating that the Israeli military investigation had not been 'thorough, credible and transparent' and the Israeli government withholding key video and audio evidence, Judge Gershon found no fault in the investigation or in the conclusion that the military and state were not responsible for Rachel's death. Judge Gershon ruled that Rachel was to blame for her own murder and classifies her non-violent attempt to prevent war crimes as proof that Rachel was not a 'thinking person'. By disregarding international law and granting Israeli war criminals impunity Judge Gershon's verdict exemplifies the fact that Israel's legal system cannot be trusted to administer justice according to international standards." (From the ISM's response to the Rachel Corrie verdict)
Given that Israel's founding ideology - political Zionism - is a species of toxic, tribal nationalism, the very antithesis of the universal principles and standards enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and that its record in giving the finger to countless UN resolutions is legendary, verdicts such as that in the case of Rachel Corrie (and in many others over the years) are hardly surprising.
As an indication of the depth of the problem, it is worth revisiting the case of Israel's Anders Behring Breivik, Baruch Goldstein. On February 25, 1994, Goldstein, a member of Rabbi Meir Kahane's terrorist Kach organisation, opened fire on worshippers in a Hebron mosque, killing 29 Palestinians and wounding 125. Only a blow to the head by a fire extinguisher ended the massacre - and his life.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Goldstein and his massacre, he was "denounced by mainstream Orthodox Judaism" and "widely described as insane by Israelis." One is left with the impression that Israel's reaction was somehow comparable to that of Norway's following Breivik's Utoya Island massacre. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth, as Israeli scholar and human rights defender Israel Shahak reveals in his penetrating study, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1999/2004). Some excerpts from Chapter 6, The Real Significance of Baruch Goldstein, serve to contextualise Judge Gershon's verdict in the Corrie case :
"Israeli policies, directed towards Palestinians, other Middle East Arabs (perceived by Zionists as non-Jews) and people of other nations, are only explainable by assuming that they are based upon anti-Gentile feeling. The anti-Gentile feeling is strongest among the most religious Jews but exists as well in this secular milieu. This is the reason why support for Goldstein in 1994 and 1995 had a sequel in the excuses by many Israeli leaders for the slaughter. These excuses were thinly disguised by mostly hypocritical expressions of shock." (p 98)
"[Yediot Ahronot journalist Nahum] Barnea reported: 'Within hours a whole edifice of rationalization was built, according to which Goldstein [a military doctor] had allegedly been under unbearable mental pressure, because he had to attend so many wounded and dead [persons], including Arabs.' The men who propagated this lie knew that Goldstein had refused to treat Arabs. Barnea continued: 'Thus, the Arabs were made guilty for what he could not avoid doing. The implication was that the Arabs assaulted him rather than the other way around and that he really acted for the benefit of the Arabs by letting them finally realize that Jewish blood could not be shed with impunity.' This brazen lie was maintained as long as possible before being abandoned without apology. The propagation of such a lie reveals the influence of Jewish fundamentalism upon the secular parts of the Israeli establishment." (p 99)
"An even greater example of Jewish fundamentalism's influence upon the secular part of the Israeli establishment can be detected in the official arrangement of Goldstein's elaborate funeral at a time that the deliberate character of the massacre could not be denied. The establishment was affected by the fact, widely reported in the Hebrew press but given little place in the foreign press, that within 2 days of the massacre the walls of religious neighborhoods of west Jerusalem (and to a lesser extent of many other religious neighborhoods) were covered by posters extolling Goldstein's virtues and complaining that he did not manage to kill more Arabs. Children of religious settlers who came to Jerusalem to demonstrate sported buttons for months after the massacre that were inscribed: 'Dr Goldstein cured Israel's ills.' Numerous concerts of Jewish religious music and other events often developed into demonstrations of tribute to Goldstein. The Hebrew press reported these incidents of public tribute in copious detail. No major politician protested against such celebrations.
"President Weizman expressed more extravagantly than others his sorrow for the massacre. Weizman, as reported by Uzi Benziman in his March 4, 1994 Haaretz article, was also engaged in lengthy and amiable negotiations with Goldstein's family and Kach comrades concerning a suitably honorable funeral for the murderer. Kiryat Arba settlers, many of whom had already declared themselves in favor of the mass murder in radio and television interviews and had lauded Goldstein as a martyr and holy man, demanded that General Yatom, the commander responsible for the Hebron area, allow the funeral cortage to parade through the city of Hebron, in order to be viewed by the Arabs even though a curfew existed. Yatom did not object outright to the demand but opposed it as something that could cause disorder. Tzvi Katzover, the mayor of Kiryat Arba and one of the most extreme leaders of the religious settlers, telephoned Weizman and threatened that the settlers would make a pogrom of Arabs if their demands were not met. Weizman responded by telephoning the chief of staff and asking why the army opposed the demand of the settlers. According to Benziman, Chief of Staff [Ehud] Barak answered: 'The army was afraid that Arabs would desecrate Goldstein's tomb and carry away his corpse.' In further negotiations involving Barak, Yatom, Rabin, Kach leaders and Kiryat Arba settlers, Weizman assumed the consistant position, as stated by Benziman, that 'the army should pay respect to the desires and sensibilities of the settlers and of the Goldstein family.' Ultimately, the negotiated decision was that a massively attended funeral cortage would take place in Jerusalem and that the police would close some of the busiest streets to the traffic in Goldstein's honor. Afterwards the murderer would be buried in Kiryat Arba along the continuation of Kahane Avenue. According to Benziman, Kach leaders at first rejected this compromise. General Yatom had to approach the Kach leaders in person and beg them abjectly for their agreement, which he finally secured. Yatom also had to obtain consent from the notorious Kiryat Arba rabbi, Dov Lior. As reported in the March 4, 1994, issue of Yerushalaim Lior declared: 'Since Goldstein did what he did in God's own name, he is to be regarded as a righteous man.' Benziman explained the conduct of Weizman and his entourage: 'After the fact the officials of the presidential mansion justify those goings on by the need to becalm the settlers' mood. After the funeral the army provided a guard of honor for Goldstein's tomb. The tomb became a pilgrimage site, not only for the religious settlers but also for delegations of pious Jews from all Israeli cities." (pp 100-102)
I could go on - there's lots more in Shahak's account - but I'm sure you've got the picture. Pro-Israel propaganda notwithstanding, Israel always was, is now, and will continue to be - this side of apartheid - a deeply tribal society in which Gentile-killers will always get special treatment. As an ethnographic state born of a monumental act of injustice to the Arab Palestinians in 1948, it simply cannot be relied upon to dispense justice to its victims, Palestinians or otherwise.
Given that Israel's founding ideology - political Zionism - is a species of toxic, tribal nationalism, the very antithesis of the universal principles and standards enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and that its record in giving the finger to countless UN resolutions is legendary, verdicts such as that in the case of Rachel Corrie (and in many others over the years) are hardly surprising.
As an indication of the depth of the problem, it is worth revisiting the case of Israel's Anders Behring Breivik, Baruch Goldstein. On February 25, 1994, Goldstein, a member of Rabbi Meir Kahane's terrorist Kach organisation, opened fire on worshippers in a Hebron mosque, killing 29 Palestinians and wounding 125. Only a blow to the head by a fire extinguisher ended the massacre - and his life.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Goldstein and his massacre, he was "denounced by mainstream Orthodox Judaism" and "widely described as insane by Israelis." One is left with the impression that Israel's reaction was somehow comparable to that of Norway's following Breivik's Utoya Island massacre. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth, as Israeli scholar and human rights defender Israel Shahak reveals in his penetrating study, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1999/2004). Some excerpts from Chapter 6, The Real Significance of Baruch Goldstein, serve to contextualise Judge Gershon's verdict in the Corrie case :
"Israeli policies, directed towards Palestinians, other Middle East Arabs (perceived by Zionists as non-Jews) and people of other nations, are only explainable by assuming that they are based upon anti-Gentile feeling. The anti-Gentile feeling is strongest among the most religious Jews but exists as well in this secular milieu. This is the reason why support for Goldstein in 1994 and 1995 had a sequel in the excuses by many Israeli leaders for the slaughter. These excuses were thinly disguised by mostly hypocritical expressions of shock." (p 98)
"[Yediot Ahronot journalist Nahum] Barnea reported: 'Within hours a whole edifice of rationalization was built, according to which Goldstein [a military doctor] had allegedly been under unbearable mental pressure, because he had to attend so many wounded and dead [persons], including Arabs.' The men who propagated this lie knew that Goldstein had refused to treat Arabs. Barnea continued: 'Thus, the Arabs were made guilty for what he could not avoid doing. The implication was that the Arabs assaulted him rather than the other way around and that he really acted for the benefit of the Arabs by letting them finally realize that Jewish blood could not be shed with impunity.' This brazen lie was maintained as long as possible before being abandoned without apology. The propagation of such a lie reveals the influence of Jewish fundamentalism upon the secular parts of the Israeli establishment." (p 99)
"An even greater example of Jewish fundamentalism's influence upon the secular part of the Israeli establishment can be detected in the official arrangement of Goldstein's elaborate funeral at a time that the deliberate character of the massacre could not be denied. The establishment was affected by the fact, widely reported in the Hebrew press but given little place in the foreign press, that within 2 days of the massacre the walls of religious neighborhoods of west Jerusalem (and to a lesser extent of many other religious neighborhoods) were covered by posters extolling Goldstein's virtues and complaining that he did not manage to kill more Arabs. Children of religious settlers who came to Jerusalem to demonstrate sported buttons for months after the massacre that were inscribed: 'Dr Goldstein cured Israel's ills.' Numerous concerts of Jewish religious music and other events often developed into demonstrations of tribute to Goldstein. The Hebrew press reported these incidents of public tribute in copious detail. No major politician protested against such celebrations.
"President Weizman expressed more extravagantly than others his sorrow for the massacre. Weizman, as reported by Uzi Benziman in his March 4, 1994 Haaretz article, was also engaged in lengthy and amiable negotiations with Goldstein's family and Kach comrades concerning a suitably honorable funeral for the murderer. Kiryat Arba settlers, many of whom had already declared themselves in favor of the mass murder in radio and television interviews and had lauded Goldstein as a martyr and holy man, demanded that General Yatom, the commander responsible for the Hebron area, allow the funeral cortage to parade through the city of Hebron, in order to be viewed by the Arabs even though a curfew existed. Yatom did not object outright to the demand but opposed it as something that could cause disorder. Tzvi Katzover, the mayor of Kiryat Arba and one of the most extreme leaders of the religious settlers, telephoned Weizman and threatened that the settlers would make a pogrom of Arabs if their demands were not met. Weizman responded by telephoning the chief of staff and asking why the army opposed the demand of the settlers. According to Benziman, Chief of Staff [Ehud] Barak answered: 'The army was afraid that Arabs would desecrate Goldstein's tomb and carry away his corpse.' In further negotiations involving Barak, Yatom, Rabin, Kach leaders and Kiryat Arba settlers, Weizman assumed the consistant position, as stated by Benziman, that 'the army should pay respect to the desires and sensibilities of the settlers and of the Goldstein family.' Ultimately, the negotiated decision was that a massively attended funeral cortage would take place in Jerusalem and that the police would close some of the busiest streets to the traffic in Goldstein's honor. Afterwards the murderer would be buried in Kiryat Arba along the continuation of Kahane Avenue. According to Benziman, Kach leaders at first rejected this compromise. General Yatom had to approach the Kach leaders in person and beg them abjectly for their agreement, which he finally secured. Yatom also had to obtain consent from the notorious Kiryat Arba rabbi, Dov Lior. As reported in the March 4, 1994, issue of Yerushalaim Lior declared: 'Since Goldstein did what he did in God's own name, he is to be regarded as a righteous man.' Benziman explained the conduct of Weizman and his entourage: 'After the fact the officials of the presidential mansion justify those goings on by the need to becalm the settlers' mood. After the funeral the army provided a guard of honor for Goldstein's tomb. The tomb became a pilgrimage site, not only for the religious settlers but also for delegations of pious Jews from all Israeli cities." (pp 100-102)
I could go on - there's lots more in Shahak's account - but I'm sure you've got the picture. Pro-Israel propaganda notwithstanding, Israel always was, is now, and will continue to be - this side of apartheid - a deeply tribal society in which Gentile-killers will always get special treatment. As an ethnographic state born of a monumental act of injustice to the Arab Palestinians in 1948, it simply cannot be relied upon to dispense justice to its victims, Palestinians or otherwise.
Monday, November 28, 2011
My Brush with Superman
Oh dear, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's Jeremy Jones is at it again with his 22nd report on anti-Semitism in Australia - whether real or alleged - and we anti-Zionists have been scooped up in his net, aka Report on Antisemitism in Australia, November 2011, along with the usual suspects.
Mild-mannered JJ, you see, is apparently the Superman of the Israel lobby, capable of detecting an anti-Zionist insult sealed in kryptonite a thousand meters away (to adapt Circus Israel's wonderful line) and construing it as anti-Semitism. And his baleful x-ray vision, in the service of Zionist Propaganda, Israeli Injustice and the Apartheid Way, has settled on yours truly:
"6.5 The anonymous writer of Middle East Reality Check (MERC) often [!] used or hosted extreme and offensive rhetoric [hereinafter EOR]..."
Jones cites the following examples of MERC EOR (omission of context, of course, is a given with JJ, and the accusations of EOR are characteristically asserted, never demonstrated):
1) Commenter Syd Walker's use of the term "God-approved people of the Chosen Land."
Well, if that's an instance of EOR, would JJ care to comment on David Ben-Gurion's famous statement that "the Bible is our mandate"? JJ?
2) My reference to "Israel's Nazi-style blockade of Gaza."
JJ finds the following question - "How, other than Nazi-style blockade of Gaza, would you describe a deliberate policy of ghettoisation and enforced malnutrition reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto?" - a case of EOR. Well, JJ might care to answer that question. JJ?
3) My post Holocaust Studies Make the Grade. God knows I've puzzled over this one, but I just don't get the EOR label here. JJ?
4) A comment by "brian" that SBS "has long been ziionist [sic] central," based on his observation that, while SBS has inundated us with docos on the Nazis, it has screened "not one on Palestine," followed by his not unreasonable question, "how does that sort of programming happen?"
Now seriously, if JJ really found brian's comment EOR, why not hazard a rebuttal? Perhaps he could detail his (and other Zionist organisations') interventions with SBS over the years but go on to explain that these haven't had the least impact on the broadcaster. JJ?
5) A reference by that most windy of commentators, anonymous, to Israel as "a revival of Medieval Talmudic ghettoism at the expense of [Palestine's] indigenous population."
Sure it's categorical, but JJ really should read Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1999/2004) before mounting his high horse on "Medieval Talmudic ghettoism":
"This book pinpoints the political importance of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel... Jewish fundamentalism is here briefly defined as the belief that Jewish Orthodoxy, which is based on the Babylonian Talmud, the rest of talmudic literature and halachic literature, is still valid and will eternally remain valid..." (p 4)
"The religious influence upon the Israeli right-wing of Israel B [the right & religious parties] is attributable both to its militaristic character and its widely shared world outlook. Secular and militaristic right-wing, Israeli Jews hold political views and engage in rhetoric similar to that of religious Jews. For most Likud followers, 'Jewish blood' is the reason why Jews are in a different category than non-Jews, including, of course, even those non-Jews who are Israeli citizens and who serve in the Israeli army. For religious Jews, the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value; for Likud, it has limited value. Menachem Begin's masterful use of such rhetoric about Gentiles brought him votes and popularity and thus constitutes a case in point. The difference in this respect between Labor and Likud is rhetorical but is nevertheless important in that it reveals part of a world outlook. In 1982, for example, when the Israeli army occupied Beirut, Rabin representing Labor, although advocating the same policies as favored by Sharon and Likud, did not explain the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres by stating, as did Begin: 'Gentiles kill Gentiles and blame the Jews'. Even if Rabin had himself been capable of saying this, he knew that most of his secular supporters in Labor, who distinguish between Gentiles who hate Jews and those who do not, would not have tolerated such a statement." (p 11)
JJ, get back to me when you've read that one, OK?
Mild-mannered JJ, you see, is apparently the Superman of the Israel lobby, capable of detecting an anti-Zionist insult sealed in kryptonite a thousand meters away (to adapt Circus Israel's wonderful line) and construing it as anti-Semitism. And his baleful x-ray vision, in the service of Zionist Propaganda, Israeli Injustice and the Apartheid Way, has settled on yours truly:
"6.5 The anonymous writer of Middle East Reality Check (MERC) often [!] used or hosted extreme and offensive rhetoric [hereinafter EOR]..."
Jones cites the following examples of MERC EOR (omission of context, of course, is a given with JJ, and the accusations of EOR are characteristically asserted, never demonstrated):
1) Commenter Syd Walker's use of the term "God-approved people of the Chosen Land."
Well, if that's an instance of EOR, would JJ care to comment on David Ben-Gurion's famous statement that "the Bible is our mandate"? JJ?
2) My reference to "Israel's Nazi-style blockade of Gaza."
JJ finds the following question - "How, other than Nazi-style blockade of Gaza, would you describe a deliberate policy of ghettoisation and enforced malnutrition reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto?" - a case of EOR. Well, JJ might care to answer that question. JJ?
3) My post Holocaust Studies Make the Grade. God knows I've puzzled over this one, but I just don't get the EOR label here. JJ?
4) A comment by "brian" that SBS "has long been ziionist [sic] central," based on his observation that, while SBS has inundated us with docos on the Nazis, it has screened "not one on Palestine," followed by his not unreasonable question, "how does that sort of programming happen?"
Now seriously, if JJ really found brian's comment EOR, why not hazard a rebuttal? Perhaps he could detail his (and other Zionist organisations') interventions with SBS over the years but go on to explain that these haven't had the least impact on the broadcaster. JJ?
5) A reference by that most windy of commentators, anonymous, to Israel as "a revival of Medieval Talmudic ghettoism at the expense of [Palestine's] indigenous population."
Sure it's categorical, but JJ really should read Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1999/2004) before mounting his high horse on "Medieval Talmudic ghettoism":
"This book pinpoints the political importance of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel... Jewish fundamentalism is here briefly defined as the belief that Jewish Orthodoxy, which is based on the Babylonian Talmud, the rest of talmudic literature and halachic literature, is still valid and will eternally remain valid..." (p 4)
"The religious influence upon the Israeli right-wing of Israel B [the right & religious parties] is attributable both to its militaristic character and its widely shared world outlook. Secular and militaristic right-wing, Israeli Jews hold political views and engage in rhetoric similar to that of religious Jews. For most Likud followers, 'Jewish blood' is the reason why Jews are in a different category than non-Jews, including, of course, even those non-Jews who are Israeli citizens and who serve in the Israeli army. For religious Jews, the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value; for Likud, it has limited value. Menachem Begin's masterful use of such rhetoric about Gentiles brought him votes and popularity and thus constitutes a case in point. The difference in this respect between Labor and Likud is rhetorical but is nevertheless important in that it reveals part of a world outlook. In 1982, for example, when the Israeli army occupied Beirut, Rabin representing Labor, although advocating the same policies as favored by Sharon and Likud, did not explain the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres by stating, as did Begin: 'Gentiles kill Gentiles and blame the Jews'. Even if Rabin had himself been capable of saying this, he knew that most of his secular supporters in Labor, who distinguish between Gentiles who hate Jews and those who do not, would not have tolerated such a statement." (p 11)
JJ, get back to me when you've read that one, OK?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Time to Learn from Israel
Today's edition of The Australian's Cut & Paste gives the Green Left Weekly (not to mention the Spanish) a well-deserved pasting for its naivete and failure to call a spade a spade:
"Green Left Weekly on Sunday on the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras: MUSLIMS Against Homophobia, a recently formed support group for queer Muslims in Sydney, made a groundbreaking appearance in the parade. In the past, most Muslim societies were sexually permissive. Some Muslim countries, especially those in the Middle East, had a widespread homosexual culture that tolerated sexual relationships between men. But the moralistic colonial authorities, mostly strict Christians, disapproved of sex between men and banned it."
"Britain's The Guardian newspaper, June 9 last year: A DELEGATION of gay residents of Tel Aviv has been banned from joining a gay pride march in Madrid because authorities in the Israeli city have not condemned the recent attack on the Gaza flotilla. The Tel Aviv group [has] reacted angrily to the decision. 'Don't they know that Islamist fundamentalists don't just want to finish off Israel but that they also believe homosexuals should 'cure themselves' or die?'"
"BBC News, 2003: "GAY Palestinian men are risking their lives to cross the border into Israel, claiming they feel safer among Israelis.* Gay Palestinians say they are mainly persecuted at home because of religious attitudes. Many Muslims claim that homosexuality is strictly against the Koran."
"Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade travel advisory for Iran, March 4: HOMOSEXUAL acts are illegal in Iran for both men and women and penalities include the death penalty and corporal punishment."
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University, September 24, 2007: IN Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you we have it."
Like Ahmadinejad, those Muslim-loving lefties are in total denial about Muslim homophobia! If only Muslims would take a leaf from Israel's book:
"An Israeli umbrella organization encompassing gay and lesbian groups told prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that ministers in his government are guilty of incitement against the homosexual and transgender community... A Haaretz-Dialog poll has found that nearly half of the Israeli population believe that homosexuality is a perversion. The poll, conducted under Prof. Camil Fuchs, finds that 46% of the people surveyed answered the question 'Do you see homosexuality as a perversion?' In the affirmative, while 42% answered that it was not a perversion. Twelve percent said they did not know. The survey also finds that 71% of the ultra-Orthodox population believe homosexuality is a perversion. So do 67% of the religious (Orthodox), 64% of the Arabs, 57% of the Russian speaking immigrants, 44% of the observant (traditional) Jews and 24% of the secular population." (Gay leaders to Netanyau: Your ministers incite against us, Kosharek, Yaron & Ilani, Haaretz, 6/8/09)
"Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women - with some surprising successes. So far, 11 marriages have been performed... [Rabbi] Harel introduced [Ronni and Etti], and as the first of his gay-lesbian couples, they term themselves 'guinea pigs'. They are careful to keep up normal appearances before the children and the outside world, even sleeping in the same room, though they don't sleep together. Their children were born through artificial insemination." (Israeli rabbis launch initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women, Yair Ettinger, Haaretz, 11/3/11)
"Jewish fundamentalists have displayed severe enmity against Jews who adopt a different sexual life style. Many Israeli rabbis and the Israeli religious political parties in the 1990s reacted sharply against the increased visibility and power of the homosexual and lesbian communities in Israel. According to the Halacha (Jewish religious law), homosexuality is punishable by death by stoning, and, although the punishment is not clear, lesbian relations are forbidden." (Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Shahak & Mezvinsky, 2004, p xviii)
[*And they lived happily ever after in the Jewish state, right? Well... not exactly: "The man said he fled to Israel. There, he says, he was placed under virtual house arrest because he was viewed as a potential security risk." (Palestinian gays flee to Israel, newsvote.bbc.co.uk, 22/10/03)]
"Green Left Weekly on Sunday on the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras: MUSLIMS Against Homophobia, a recently formed support group for queer Muslims in Sydney, made a groundbreaking appearance in the parade. In the past, most Muslim societies were sexually permissive. Some Muslim countries, especially those in the Middle East, had a widespread homosexual culture that tolerated sexual relationships between men. But the moralistic colonial authorities, mostly strict Christians, disapproved of sex between men and banned it."
"Britain's The Guardian newspaper, June 9 last year: A DELEGATION of gay residents of Tel Aviv has been banned from joining a gay pride march in Madrid because authorities in the Israeli city have not condemned the recent attack on the Gaza flotilla. The Tel Aviv group [has] reacted angrily to the decision. 'Don't they know that Islamist fundamentalists don't just want to finish off Israel but that they also believe homosexuals should 'cure themselves' or die?'"
"BBC News, 2003: "GAY Palestinian men are risking their lives to cross the border into Israel, claiming they feel safer among Israelis.* Gay Palestinians say they are mainly persecuted at home because of religious attitudes. Many Muslims claim that homosexuality is strictly against the Koran."
"Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade travel advisory for Iran, March 4: HOMOSEXUAL acts are illegal in Iran for both men and women and penalities include the death penalty and corporal punishment."
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University, September 24, 2007: IN Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you we have it."
Like Ahmadinejad, those Muslim-loving lefties are in total denial about Muslim homophobia! If only Muslims would take a leaf from Israel's book:
"An Israeli umbrella organization encompassing gay and lesbian groups told prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that ministers in his government are guilty of incitement against the homosexual and transgender community... A Haaretz-Dialog poll has found that nearly half of the Israeli population believe that homosexuality is a perversion. The poll, conducted under Prof. Camil Fuchs, finds that 46% of the people surveyed answered the question 'Do you see homosexuality as a perversion?' In the affirmative, while 42% answered that it was not a perversion. Twelve percent said they did not know. The survey also finds that 71% of the ultra-Orthodox population believe homosexuality is a perversion. So do 67% of the religious (Orthodox), 64% of the Arabs, 57% of the Russian speaking immigrants, 44% of the observant (traditional) Jews and 24% of the secular population." (Gay leaders to Netanyau: Your ministers incite against us, Kosharek, Yaron & Ilani, Haaretz, 6/8/09)
"Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women - with some surprising successes. So far, 11 marriages have been performed... [Rabbi] Harel introduced [Ronni and Etti], and as the first of his gay-lesbian couples, they term themselves 'guinea pigs'. They are careful to keep up normal appearances before the children and the outside world, even sleeping in the same room, though they don't sleep together. Their children were born through artificial insemination." (Israeli rabbis launch initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women, Yair Ettinger, Haaretz, 11/3/11)
"Jewish fundamentalists have displayed severe enmity against Jews who adopt a different sexual life style. Many Israeli rabbis and the Israeli religious political parties in the 1990s reacted sharply against the increased visibility and power of the homosexual and lesbian communities in Israel. According to the Halacha (Jewish religious law), homosexuality is punishable by death by stoning, and, although the punishment is not clear, lesbian relations are forbidden." (Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Shahak & Mezvinsky, 2004, p xviii)
[*And they lived happily ever after in the Jewish state, right? Well... not exactly: "The man said he fled to Israel. There, he says, he was placed under virtual house arrest because he was viewed as a potential security risk." (Palestinian gays flee to Israel, newsvote.bbc.co.uk, 22/10/03)]
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Clive James & Brown Women
Gayatri Spivak could have had Clive James in mind when coining her classic line about the urge of the white man to save brown women from brown men. James' urge, already the subject of one post on this blog (Giving Poetry a Bad Name, 17/3/09), has resurfaced. Not that I'd have noticed without reading The Australian, of course. They just love the bugger over there at News Ltd.
In the paper's column, Global Briefing: Journals, under the heading No honour in killing (8/9/09), the reader is informed that James had asked, in an essay in the British monthly Standpoint, "how Western feminists can turn a blind eye to the honour killing of women." He is quoted as saying: "We are told that when it comes to a case of honour [killing], Jordan is one of the more progressive Islamic communities. In Jordan, only one-quarter of all homicides are cases of honour. In the Palestinian sectors of the West Bank and in Gaza, the proportion is two-thirds."
We are told... By whom? James doesn't say. Unlike MERC, he doesn't do footnotes. Ready? A quick google for 'honour killings/Jordan' elicits the following: "The Jordan Times estimated in 1994 that between 28 and 60 Jordanian women... die in 'honour' killings every year... The death-toll may even run into the hundreds..." ('Honour' killings, (2) Jordan, gendercide.org). Do the same for Palestine, and you get this: "Given that honor killings often remain a private family affair, no official statistics are available on the practice or its frequency. According to a November 1997 report of the Women's Empowerment Project... there were 20 honor killings in Gaza and the West Bank in 1996." (Commodifying Honor in Female Sexuality: Honor killings in Palestine, Suzanne Ruggi, MERIP, Spring 1998)
The editor of the Australian column concludes thus: "Drawing on an article by the late Australian journalist Pamela Bone, Clive's conclusion is that feminists have been hiding - 'eloquent in their condemnation of Western evils', but ignoring the treatment of women within the culture of Islam."
Hello? Drawing on an article by the late Australian journalist Pamela Bone? Now there's an authority for you! As an apologist for Israel (and associate editor of The Age), Pamela Bone could apologise with the best of them: "Yes, what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is terrible. But what the Palestinians are doing to the Israelis is also terrible. One can hate the destruction of Palestinian homes (I do) but could at least recognise the reason for the destruction is arms-smuggling tunnels underneath them." (Anti-Semitism: the old hatred returns, The Age, 31/7/04)
And that phrase the treatment of women within the culture of Islam - how sly is that? What precisely does within the culture of Islam mean? That the practice of honour killing is... Islamic? To return to Ruggi's article quoted above: "The honour killing emerged in the pre-Islamic era, according to Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University... 'In an Islamic context, punishment for relationships out of wedlock is stipulated as 100 lashes if the woman is single, or if married, death by stoning. In both cases, however, there must be 4 witnesses willing to testify that the sexual act took place; conditions which make punishment difficult'." OK, so it's not Islamic, but anyone reading No honour in killing in The Australian won't be exposed to this clarification. And that's the whole point over at News Ltd, isn't it? Keep them in the dark and feed them on Islamophobic bullshit.
Should Clive have hung his Islamophobic rant on the death by stoning hook instead? Well, if he had, he'd have opened Pandora's box. According to the Bible, a woman can be stoned for adultery or for not being a virgin on her wedding night, for example. Stoning is also the penalty for apostasy, witchcraft, disobeying one's parents, breaking the Sabbath and cursing the king. And if an ox were to gore a man or woman? You guessed it - death by stoning. (skepticsannotatedbible.com)
In an attempt to ward off any scrutiny of the culture of Judaism, James issues the following disclaimer in his Standpoint essay, A Veil of Silence over Murder: "And the fact that there are men in charge of synagogues who feel the same [ie banning menstruating women] is not really an answer, because except for the occasional ultra-Orthodox headcase no man who runs a synagogue wants to burn [Pakistani-style] the women inside it." And that's that? Not by a long chalk. You see, James is as ignorant of Judaism as he is of Islam.
Israel Shahak, the late author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994), tells us that "[s]exual intercourse between a married Jewish woman and any man other than her husband is a capital offence for both parties, and one of the 3 most heinous sins." But, he points out (and no doubt James will be relieved to hear this), "the concept of adultery... does not apply to intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman; rather, the Talmud equates such intercourse to the sin of bestiality... This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman is permitted - quite the contrary. But the main punishment is inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped by the Jew: 'If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of 3 or an adult, whether married or unmarried... she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got into trouble'." (p 87)
And James reckons feminists turn a blind eye...
In the paper's column, Global Briefing: Journals, under the heading No honour in killing (8/9/09), the reader is informed that James had asked, in an essay in the British monthly Standpoint, "how Western feminists can turn a blind eye to the honour killing of women." He is quoted as saying: "We are told that when it comes to a case of honour [killing], Jordan is one of the more progressive Islamic communities. In Jordan, only one-quarter of all homicides are cases of honour. In the Palestinian sectors of the West Bank and in Gaza, the proportion is two-thirds."
We are told... By whom? James doesn't say. Unlike MERC, he doesn't do footnotes. Ready? A quick google for 'honour killings/Jordan' elicits the following: "The Jordan Times estimated in 1994 that between 28 and 60 Jordanian women... die in 'honour' killings every year... The death-toll may even run into the hundreds..." ('Honour' killings, (2) Jordan, gendercide.org). Do the same for Palestine, and you get this: "Given that honor killings often remain a private family affair, no official statistics are available on the practice or its frequency. According to a November 1997 report of the Women's Empowerment Project... there were 20 honor killings in Gaza and the West Bank in 1996." (Commodifying Honor in Female Sexuality: Honor killings in Palestine, Suzanne Ruggi, MERIP, Spring 1998)
The editor of the Australian column concludes thus: "Drawing on an article by the late Australian journalist Pamela Bone, Clive's conclusion is that feminists have been hiding - 'eloquent in their condemnation of Western evils', but ignoring the treatment of women within the culture of Islam."
Hello? Drawing on an article by the late Australian journalist Pamela Bone? Now there's an authority for you! As an apologist for Israel (and associate editor of The Age), Pamela Bone could apologise with the best of them: "Yes, what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is terrible. But what the Palestinians are doing to the Israelis is also terrible. One can hate the destruction of Palestinian homes (I do) but could at least recognise the reason for the destruction is arms-smuggling tunnels underneath them." (Anti-Semitism: the old hatred returns, The Age, 31/7/04)
And that phrase the treatment of women within the culture of Islam - how sly is that? What precisely does within the culture of Islam mean? That the practice of honour killing is... Islamic? To return to Ruggi's article quoted above: "The honour killing emerged in the pre-Islamic era, according to Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University... 'In an Islamic context, punishment for relationships out of wedlock is stipulated as 100 lashes if the woman is single, or if married, death by stoning. In both cases, however, there must be 4 witnesses willing to testify that the sexual act took place; conditions which make punishment difficult'." OK, so it's not Islamic, but anyone reading No honour in killing in The Australian won't be exposed to this clarification. And that's the whole point over at News Ltd, isn't it? Keep them in the dark and feed them on Islamophobic bullshit.
Should Clive have hung his Islamophobic rant on the death by stoning hook instead? Well, if he had, he'd have opened Pandora's box. According to the Bible, a woman can be stoned for adultery or for not being a virgin on her wedding night, for example. Stoning is also the penalty for apostasy, witchcraft, disobeying one's parents, breaking the Sabbath and cursing the king. And if an ox were to gore a man or woman? You guessed it - death by stoning. (skepticsannotatedbible.com)
In an attempt to ward off any scrutiny of the culture of Judaism, James issues the following disclaimer in his Standpoint essay, A Veil of Silence over Murder: "And the fact that there are men in charge of synagogues who feel the same [ie banning menstruating women] is not really an answer, because except for the occasional ultra-Orthodox headcase no man who runs a synagogue wants to burn [Pakistani-style] the women inside it." And that's that? Not by a long chalk. You see, James is as ignorant of Judaism as he is of Islam.
Israel Shahak, the late author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994), tells us that "[s]exual intercourse between a married Jewish woman and any man other than her husband is a capital offence for both parties, and one of the 3 most heinous sins." But, he points out (and no doubt James will be relieved to hear this), "the concept of adultery... does not apply to intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman; rather, the Talmud equates such intercourse to the sin of bestiality... This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman is permitted - quite the contrary. But the main punishment is inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped by the Jew: 'If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of 3 or an adult, whether married or unmarried... she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got into trouble'." (p 87)
And James reckons feminists turn a blind eye...
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
When the Tough Gets Going
The Israeli politicians and propagandists who dominate mainstream media coverage of the Middle East conflict are fond of rationalising Israel's barbarous behaviour* by claiming that the Middle East is a tough neighbourhood. Their supposed streetwise rationale is often taken at face value by gullible Western politicians and media practitioners. That Israel is far and away the biggest tough in the Middle East neighbourhood never seems to occur to them.
And whenever the tough gets going, no people, apart from the Palestinians, suffer as much as the Lebanese. That they have the true measure of their neighbour from Hell, emerges from the results of an opinion poll of 800 Lebanese (Sunni, Shi'a, Druze & Christian) on the subject of last month's Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap and the role of armed resistance in defending Lebanon from the bully boy south of the border. The poll, undertaken by the Beirut Centre for Research & Information from 20-24 July, was reported in Lebanon's Al-Akhbar (The News) of 29/7/08. The translation is mine:-
1) Would it have been possible to obtain the release of our prisoners without the capture of Israeli soldiers in July 2006? [75% answered No (62% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 65% Druze, 75% Christian)]
2) If the Lebanese government had undertaken to negotiate the prisoner release, would it have yielded the same result? [62% answered No (40% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 46% Druze, 58% Christian)]
3) Do you believe that because some of the prisoners, such as Quntar and most of the remains, were not Shi'a, indicates that Hezbollah is non-sectarian? [59% answered Yes (38% Sunni, 94% Shi'a, 39% Druze, 52% Christians)]
4) Do you believe that diplomacy alone, not backed by military force, will enable us to reclaim from Israel that which is our right? [66% answered No (59% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 57% Druze, 54% Christians]
5) Disregarding what you think of Hezbollah's internal politics, do you consider the armed resistance to be Lebanon's protector until such time as the army is ready to take over? [69% answered Yes (51% Sunni, 96% Shi'a, 52% Druze, 65% Christian)]
6) Has Hezbollah regained its image as a resistance organization following the success of the prisoner exchange? [77% answered Yes (54% Sunni, 99% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 79% Christian)]
7) Do you believe that confronting the ongoing Zionist project requires an ongoing resistance project? [75% answered Yes (64% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 66% Druze, 68% Christian]
8) Do you support what Hasan Nasrallah said regarding the duty of all Lebanese to participate in the resistance? [79% answered Yes ( 71% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 73% Druze, 74% Christian)]
9) Do you believe that closing the prisoner and Shab'aa Farms file will eliminate the Israeli threat to Lebanon? [70% answered No (61% Sunni, 87% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 67% Christian)]
And, in a reference to Lebanon's other neighbour from Hell:
10) Have Hezbollah and the opposition done enough to investigate the fate of the missing in Syria? [67% answered No ( 81% Sunni, 43% Shi'a, 84% Druze, 72% Christian)]
[*To quote the late Israel Shahak: "I don't like to discuss Israeli policies in terms of 'settler states', or 'colonial rule', since I regard Israeli policies as being much worse than those applied by other colonial regimes." (Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, 1997, p 7)]
And whenever the tough gets going, no people, apart from the Palestinians, suffer as much as the Lebanese. That they have the true measure of their neighbour from Hell, emerges from the results of an opinion poll of 800 Lebanese (Sunni, Shi'a, Druze & Christian) on the subject of last month's Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap and the role of armed resistance in defending Lebanon from the bully boy south of the border. The poll, undertaken by the Beirut Centre for Research & Information from 20-24 July, was reported in Lebanon's Al-Akhbar (The News) of 29/7/08. The translation is mine:-
1) Would it have been possible to obtain the release of our prisoners without the capture of Israeli soldiers in July 2006? [75% answered No (62% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 65% Druze, 75% Christian)]
2) If the Lebanese government had undertaken to negotiate the prisoner release, would it have yielded the same result? [62% answered No (40% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 46% Druze, 58% Christian)]
3) Do you believe that because some of the prisoners, such as Quntar and most of the remains, were not Shi'a, indicates that Hezbollah is non-sectarian? [59% answered Yes (38% Sunni, 94% Shi'a, 39% Druze, 52% Christians)]
4) Do you believe that diplomacy alone, not backed by military force, will enable us to reclaim from Israel that which is our right? [66% answered No (59% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 57% Druze, 54% Christians]
5) Disregarding what you think of Hezbollah's internal politics, do you consider the armed resistance to be Lebanon's protector until such time as the army is ready to take over? [69% answered Yes (51% Sunni, 96% Shi'a, 52% Druze, 65% Christian)]
6) Has Hezbollah regained its image as a resistance organization following the success of the prisoner exchange? [77% answered Yes (54% Sunni, 99% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 79% Christian)]
7) Do you believe that confronting the ongoing Zionist project requires an ongoing resistance project? [75% answered Yes (64% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 66% Druze, 68% Christian]
8) Do you support what Hasan Nasrallah said regarding the duty of all Lebanese to participate in the resistance? [79% answered Yes ( 71% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 73% Druze, 74% Christian)]
9) Do you believe that closing the prisoner and Shab'aa Farms file will eliminate the Israeli threat to Lebanon? [70% answered No (61% Sunni, 87% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 67% Christian)]
And, in a reference to Lebanon's other neighbour from Hell:
10) Have Hezbollah and the opposition done enough to investigate the fate of the missing in Syria? [67% answered No ( 81% Sunni, 43% Shi'a, 84% Druze, 72% Christian)]
[*To quote the late Israel Shahak: "I don't like to discuss Israeli policies in terms of 'settler states', or 'colonial rule', since I regard Israeli policies as being much worse than those applied by other colonial regimes." (Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, 1997, p 7)]
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Elephant in the Room
"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." Moshe Dayan
"Israel is preparing for a war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to its liking, if it occurs in some or any Middle Eastern states." Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, pp 43-44
Here's a conversation between two people. Mark knows there's an elephant in the room. Patti's* in denial:-
[*"... all of her colleagues call her Patti..." http://law.wlu.edu/magazine/negotiator.asp]
Mark: The other really big non-proliferation hotspot, of course, is the Middle East. Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist has a piece in the latest New Yorker, which suggests that the Bush administration has just diverted quite a large sum of money to intelligence on Iran's nuclear program and to operations inside Iran. Do you have any comment on that?
Patti: Yeah, you know, I've never seen a writer get it wrong so many times and still get credence every time he writes something. Our ambassador in Iraq was very clear in his statements and he called them completely incorrect and not accurate. So let our ambassador speak for the United States on that.
Mark: So what is the US position at the moment on Iran's nuclear program?
Patti: The US is working through the so-called P5+1 process, working together to push the Iranians to reassess their decision to pursue a nuclear program through the UN Security Council. We have outlined a number of sanctions, measures, that are binding in all states. And we've also said that we're going to stop those sanctions if Iran ceases its enrichment reprocessing activities. And additionally we've created a package of incentives that, were Iran to cease its enrichment and reprocessing activities, we are prepared to negotiate a number of benefits that flow from that package, including even development of civil and nuclear energy cooperation in a way that is obviously not proliferation sensitive.
Mark: Meantime, though, there's a constant drumbeat, particularly from Israel, saying you've got very little time to do anything about this and that Iran may be a year, 2 years, 3 years away from a nuclear weapon, and the suggestion is that the Israelis may do something about it.
Patti: Obviously, Israel sees Iran as the existential threat, [and] will obviously look at its own strategic interest. Our national intelligence estimate says the worst case scenario is 2009, but more likely the development of the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon would occur into the next decade. So there is some time to make diplomacy work, not a lot of time, and we are committed to work through the diplomatic path. A mix of sanctions, of pressure, a collaboration with our partners. Not only in the P5+1, but also in the Gulf region, as well as working closely here in Asia. Many of the supplies and the (inaudible) items that are getting to Iran for these programs have a source here.
Mark: Whenever we look at this subject on this program, I get emails and letters from people saying, 'Well, Israel's got the nuclear bomb. Why is there not similar outrage about that? Because they're outside the non-proliferation treaty too'.
Patti: Well, Iran is a member of the non-proliferation treaty. They ratified it, they committed to implement it, and we believe they are acting in contravention to that binding legal committment that they took. And so, this process...
Mark: That really doesn't answer the question about Israel though, does it?
Patti: You know, I think in terms of the Israel question we certainly have not seen any indication that Israel is ready to introduce nuclear weapons as a weapon into the region.
Mark: What do you mean?
Patti: And they have always indicated as a better policy that is not... that they will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.
Mark: You mean no first strike? I mean that doesn't say they haven't got them.
Patti: You know, I sort of don't want to articulate their policy, that's something that they've done.
Mark: So the US doesn't believe Israel has a nuclear weapon?
Patti: I really wouldn't want to characterise what the US calculations, our assessments are on that point. My major point would be that Iran is pursuing its nuclear weapons in contravention to its legal commitments. Iran is also a deep, destabiliseding force in the region.
Mark: What I'm asking you [is] that people write in and they say, 'Why get so worried about Iran's nuclear weapons, when everybody knows that Israel has nuclear weapons?'
Patti: I think we all need to be worried about Iran. It's a destabilising influence in the region. It's supplying arms, not only to Iraqi insurgents, but even to its sworn enemy, the Taliban. It's supplying support to Hezbollah, it's supporting actions on the part of Syria. So it is having a large destabilising influence in the region. It also has the potential for the nuclear cascade. If you look at countries in the Gulf states, they look to Iran, and were Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capability, the potential for further acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities in that region would certainly augment in the view of many who have assessed that region.
Mark: Patricia McNerney, Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation with the US State Department.
That was part of an interview (US State Department representative speaks on nuclear weapons, 1/7/08) with Patricia McNerney, Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation with the US State Department by Mark Colvin on ABC Radio National's PM program. The interview began with a discussion of North Korea's recent demolition of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear power plant. To his credit (and this is unusual for the mainstream media) Mark had his eyes open.
Here's a paragraph from an article by a man who literally worships the ground the elephant in the room walks on (formerly known as Palestine in case you're interested). He knows that most of us are not as enamoured of the beast as he, and so would rather not draw too much attention to the object of his love. However, given the monstrous proportions of the creature, its swaggering, aggressive movements and loud trumpetings, he finds he has little choice but to acknowledge its presence in some way. And so, blinded by love, he tries his best to convince his readers that the elephant is really a gazelle:-
"Iran possessing nuclear weapons would be the final crack in the global non-proliferation regime. Despite parallels drawn to Israel's alleged nuclear capability, Israel is not violating international commitments (it didn't sign the NPT); it hasn't threatened to use nuclear weapons against its neighbours (it doesn't even confirm it has them); and its neighbours haven't sought a similar hedge against it."
That paragraph was part of an opinion piece (Diplomacy with Iran must be backed by a threat of force, 7/7/08) published in The Age. It was written by Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
Here's a letter from a man who loves the beast as ardently as the former, but can see no reason not to shout it from the rooftops. In fact, he believes that the entire Middle East should be rezoned as an off-leash area for the impetuous pachyderm, and being a lawyer, he has the legal gobbledegook at hand to justify any murderous rampage it may choose to undertake:-
"As a matter of policy, any first use of nuclear weapons is an extremely momentous decision and can be justified only in the most dire of circumstances. Any first use of nuclear weapons by Israel would be an even more momentous decision, given the unfortunate 'double standard' which the international community applies to judging all of Israel's military actions. However, given Ahmadinejad's declaratory policy of seeking to obliterate Israel, an Israeli decision to launch a preemptive strike against an entire array of Iran's nuclear targets would be justifiable in certain circumstances. (I assume that given the number of Iranian nuclear targets, their dispersal and 'hardness', Israel would not have high confidence in conventional strike options.) These circumstances would basically have to entail an imminent deployment of nuclear weapons by Iran, coupled with the realisation that there are no other viable options left for blocking Iran from such a deployment. While an Israeli first nuclear use against Iran would be certainly justifiable in such circumstances, you should be under no illusion as to what kind of reaction it would elicit; Israel would encounter a howl of international condemnations, boycotts, and diplomatic isolation the likes of which it has never seen. Its nuclear strike against Iran is also likely to trigger a regional arms race and precipitate many other dangerous and unpredictable consequences.
"As far as the law is concerned, despite the existing ICJ advisory opinion concerning nuclear weapons, I don't believe that there is any binding norm of international law that governs their utilization or prohibits nuclear use. Thus, the normal principles of jus ad bellum - governing the circumstances where the resort to force is legitimate - and jus in bello - governing the ways in which force can be used - would apply to any nuclear use by Israel. It would have to take exceptional care to ensure that it attacks only military targets and keeps collateral damage to the minimum levels possible. I have no doubt that IDF planners will endeavor to comply fully with all of the relevant jus in bello norms."
That was David Rivkin of Baker Hostetler LLP, a Visiting Fellow at the Nixon Center etc, etc. His letter appeared in the Israeli English language daily Haaretz on 23/6/08.
Finally, here's guy who not only knows there's an elephant in the room but loudly warns that it's a rogue:-
"The conflict currently underway between the US and Iran is, first and foremost, a conflict born in Israel. It is based upon an Israeli contention that Iran poses a threat to Israel, and defined by Israeli assertions that Iran possesses a nuclear weapons program. None of this has been shown to be true, and indeed much of the allegations made by Israel against Iran have been clearly demonstrated as being false. And yet the US continues to trumpet the Israeli claims, and no individual more loudly so than the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton*."
[*Surprise, surprise, Patti's former boss.]
That's Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, from his 2006 book Target Iran (p 208)
Be afraid, be very afraid.
"Israel is preparing for a war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to its liking, if it occurs in some or any Middle Eastern states." Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, pp 43-44
Here's a conversation between two people. Mark knows there's an elephant in the room. Patti's* in denial:-
[*"... all of her colleagues call her Patti..." http://law.wlu.edu/magazine/negotiator.asp]
Mark: The other really big non-proliferation hotspot, of course, is the Middle East. Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist has a piece in the latest New Yorker, which suggests that the Bush administration has just diverted quite a large sum of money to intelligence on Iran's nuclear program and to operations inside Iran. Do you have any comment on that?
Patti: Yeah, you know, I've never seen a writer get it wrong so many times and still get credence every time he writes something. Our ambassador in Iraq was very clear in his statements and he called them completely incorrect and not accurate. So let our ambassador speak for the United States on that.
Mark: So what is the US position at the moment on Iran's nuclear program?
Patti: The US is working through the so-called P5+1 process, working together to push the Iranians to reassess their decision to pursue a nuclear program through the UN Security Council. We have outlined a number of sanctions, measures, that are binding in all states. And we've also said that we're going to stop those sanctions if Iran ceases its enrichment reprocessing activities. And additionally we've created a package of incentives that, were Iran to cease its enrichment and reprocessing activities, we are prepared to negotiate a number of benefits that flow from that package, including even development of civil and nuclear energy cooperation in a way that is obviously not proliferation sensitive.
Mark: Meantime, though, there's a constant drumbeat, particularly from Israel, saying you've got very little time to do anything about this and that Iran may be a year, 2 years, 3 years away from a nuclear weapon, and the suggestion is that the Israelis may do something about it.
Patti: Obviously, Israel sees Iran as the existential threat, [and] will obviously look at its own strategic interest. Our national intelligence estimate says the worst case scenario is 2009, but more likely the development of the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon would occur into the next decade. So there is some time to make diplomacy work, not a lot of time, and we are committed to work through the diplomatic path. A mix of sanctions, of pressure, a collaboration with our partners. Not only in the P5+1, but also in the Gulf region, as well as working closely here in Asia. Many of the supplies and the (inaudible) items that are getting to Iran for these programs have a source here.
Mark: Whenever we look at this subject on this program, I get emails and letters from people saying, 'Well, Israel's got the nuclear bomb. Why is there not similar outrage about that? Because they're outside the non-proliferation treaty too'.
Patti: Well, Iran is a member of the non-proliferation treaty. They ratified it, they committed to implement it, and we believe they are acting in contravention to that binding legal committment that they took. And so, this process...
Mark: That really doesn't answer the question about Israel though, does it?
Patti: You know, I think in terms of the Israel question we certainly have not seen any indication that Israel is ready to introduce nuclear weapons as a weapon into the region.
Mark: What do you mean?
Patti: And they have always indicated as a better policy that is not... that they will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.
Mark: You mean no first strike? I mean that doesn't say they haven't got them.
Patti: You know, I sort of don't want to articulate their policy, that's something that they've done.
Mark: So the US doesn't believe Israel has a nuclear weapon?
Patti: I really wouldn't want to characterise what the US calculations, our assessments are on that point. My major point would be that Iran is pursuing its nuclear weapons in contravention to its legal commitments. Iran is also a deep, destabiliseding force in the region.
Mark: What I'm asking you [is] that people write in and they say, 'Why get so worried about Iran's nuclear weapons, when everybody knows that Israel has nuclear weapons?'
Patti: I think we all need to be worried about Iran. It's a destabilising influence in the region. It's supplying arms, not only to Iraqi insurgents, but even to its sworn enemy, the Taliban. It's supplying support to Hezbollah, it's supporting actions on the part of Syria. So it is having a large destabilising influence in the region. It also has the potential for the nuclear cascade. If you look at countries in the Gulf states, they look to Iran, and were Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capability, the potential for further acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities in that region would certainly augment in the view of many who have assessed that region.
Mark: Patricia McNerney, Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation with the US State Department.
That was part of an interview (US State Department representative speaks on nuclear weapons, 1/7/08) with Patricia McNerney, Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation with the US State Department by Mark Colvin on ABC Radio National's PM program. The interview began with a discussion of North Korea's recent demolition of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear power plant. To his credit (and this is unusual for the mainstream media) Mark had his eyes open.
Here's a paragraph from an article by a man who literally worships the ground the elephant in the room walks on (formerly known as Palestine in case you're interested). He knows that most of us are not as enamoured of the beast as he, and so would rather not draw too much attention to the object of his love. However, given the monstrous proportions of the creature, its swaggering, aggressive movements and loud trumpetings, he finds he has little choice but to acknowledge its presence in some way. And so, blinded by love, he tries his best to convince his readers that the elephant is really a gazelle:-
"Iran possessing nuclear weapons would be the final crack in the global non-proliferation regime. Despite parallels drawn to Israel's alleged nuclear capability, Israel is not violating international commitments (it didn't sign the NPT); it hasn't threatened to use nuclear weapons against its neighbours (it doesn't even confirm it has them); and its neighbours haven't sought a similar hedge against it."
That paragraph was part of an opinion piece (Diplomacy with Iran must be backed by a threat of force, 7/7/08) published in The Age. It was written by Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
Here's a letter from a man who loves the beast as ardently as the former, but can see no reason not to shout it from the rooftops. In fact, he believes that the entire Middle East should be rezoned as an off-leash area for the impetuous pachyderm, and being a lawyer, he has the legal gobbledegook at hand to justify any murderous rampage it may choose to undertake:-
"As a matter of policy, any first use of nuclear weapons is an extremely momentous decision and can be justified only in the most dire of circumstances. Any first use of nuclear weapons by Israel would be an even more momentous decision, given the unfortunate 'double standard' which the international community applies to judging all of Israel's military actions. However, given Ahmadinejad's declaratory policy of seeking to obliterate Israel, an Israeli decision to launch a preemptive strike against an entire array of Iran's nuclear targets would be justifiable in certain circumstances. (I assume that given the number of Iranian nuclear targets, their dispersal and 'hardness', Israel would not have high confidence in conventional strike options.) These circumstances would basically have to entail an imminent deployment of nuclear weapons by Iran, coupled with the realisation that there are no other viable options left for blocking Iran from such a deployment. While an Israeli first nuclear use against Iran would be certainly justifiable in such circumstances, you should be under no illusion as to what kind of reaction it would elicit; Israel would encounter a howl of international condemnations, boycotts, and diplomatic isolation the likes of which it has never seen. Its nuclear strike against Iran is also likely to trigger a regional arms race and precipitate many other dangerous and unpredictable consequences.
"As far as the law is concerned, despite the existing ICJ advisory opinion concerning nuclear weapons, I don't believe that there is any binding norm of international law that governs their utilization or prohibits nuclear use. Thus, the normal principles of jus ad bellum - governing the circumstances where the resort to force is legitimate - and jus in bello - governing the ways in which force can be used - would apply to any nuclear use by Israel. It would have to take exceptional care to ensure that it attacks only military targets and keeps collateral damage to the minimum levels possible. I have no doubt that IDF planners will endeavor to comply fully with all of the relevant jus in bello norms."
That was David Rivkin of Baker Hostetler LLP, a Visiting Fellow at the Nixon Center etc, etc. His letter appeared in the Israeli English language daily Haaretz on 23/6/08.
Finally, here's guy who not only knows there's an elephant in the room but loudly warns that it's a rogue:-
"The conflict currently underway between the US and Iran is, first and foremost, a conflict born in Israel. It is based upon an Israeli contention that Iran poses a threat to Israel, and defined by Israeli assertions that Iran possesses a nuclear weapons program. None of this has been shown to be true, and indeed much of the allegations made by Israel against Iran have been clearly demonstrated as being false. And yet the US continues to trumpet the Israeli claims, and no individual more loudly so than the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton*."
[*Surprise, surprise, Patti's former boss.]
That's Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, from his 2006 book Target Iran (p 208)
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Schmoozing with Aaron Klein! 2
Continued from my last post...
I'm puzzled as to why the Talking with Terrorists's blurb reckons that Aaron's terrorists have targeted Hollywood "for elimination" when his ground-breaking research actually reveals that they're fans! It would appear that they've been following every twist and turn in the careers of such celebrities as Jane Fonda ("who we all know was involved in Vietnam activism," Aaron! helpfully reminds us), Rosie O'Donnell (Rosie who?), and Sean Penn since the 60s. Jane Fonda, for G-d's sake!: "I asked some of the terrorists... what they thought of the activism by Hollywood, and they loved it, they're emboldened, every time they hear a Hollywood celebrity talk out against the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or go on a solidarity mission [Senator McCarthy must be turning in his grave!] to a terror-sponsoring entity like Iran, like Syria, they're emboldened to believe, because they think that all Americans hate Islam, hate the Middle East, that whenever they get their picture that there are some out there who side with their goals, or at least for the terrorists they believe side with their goals, because to them they're not just looking to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan or destroy Israel, boost up Iran, these are just their short-term goals and they'll take all the help they can get."
This was a revelation for me, as I'm sure it was for you, dear reader. I had no idea Their Satanic Majesties spent so much time at the movies (the real ones, that is, not that crap from Egypt!). And not only the movies, apparently. Ditto for radio. According to Aaron! they love Madonna and Britney Spears to death! Crikey! What with indoctrination 101 at the madrasa, schmoozing with Aaron!, dodging IDF death squads, reading up on Rosie who?, stalking Britney Spears, going to the movies, shopping around for cut-price bomb belts, wiping Israel off the door mat, and working hard at the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization as we know it, these guys really have their work cut out. They're almost beyond belief.
Also according to the blurb, they've got homosexuality targeted "for elimination." Everything, it seems, except the Israeli occupation. Is there no end to their labors? And how would we ever have known this without the intrepid and courageous Aaron!? You see Aaron!'s been schmoozing with Abu Abdullah, "a senior commander of Hamas' military wing." (And if I may digress here, just thought I'd check out this character among the other A-boos listed in the index of Azzam Tamimi's Hamas: Unwritten Chapters. Nothing! Ditto for Zaki Chehab's Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs & Spies. Thank G-d he's at least made it into Aaron!'s book.) Aaron! quotes AA as saying that unless homosexuals mend their disgusting ways, "they may be sentenced to death." (And if I may digress yet again, Rachael quips, "Well, that would thin the ranks of society, wouldn't it?" Now just how gay does she think we are? Who, dear? Gay, dear? Us, dear? No, dear! How very dare you, Rachael!)
But hang on. I've got this terrible bout of cognitive dissonance, because I remember Rachael describing Aaron in her blurb as an Orthodox Jew, and an adjacent critic's just slipped me this quotation from Israel Shahak's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel: "Many Israeli rabbis and the Israeli religious political parties in the 1990s reacted sharply against the increased visibility and power of the homosexual and lesbian communities in Israel. According to the Halacha, homosexuality is punishable by stoning... Many rabbis, when interviewed, indicated that they favoured imposition of the death penalty for Jewish homosexual men." (p xviii-xix)
No way could I believe this rubbish. Consult Wikipedia. Aaargh! It seems that "the Biblical book of Leviticus calls the big H an 'abomination' that may be subject to capital punishment, although Halakhic courts are not authorized to administer capital punishment for sexual immorality in the absence of a Temple in Jerusalem." Could it be that Aaron's alleged schmoozing with the Israeli right is designed solely to expose them and thus save Israel's gay community from a right stoning? But what's this? The same adjacent critic's just slipped me an editorial by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily's CEO, on 'The dirty little secret of America's newsrooms' (25/6/08). Which is? That US "newspapers and broadcast outlets... The Hearst Corp, McClatchy Company, Gannett, National Public Radio, Bloomberg, Washington Post, NBC News, ABC, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and... News Corp," are all dancing to the tune of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, an "arrogant bunch of fascist mind-control freaks." But not, it seems, WND.
And Orthodox Aaron!? In 'Religious leaders: No 'gay pride' in holy city: Rare gathering of Christian, Jewish, Muslim figures blasts homosexual event' (31/3/05), he informs us that "The Rabbinical Alliance [of America]... sponsored a poll," which showed "[n]early 100% of the Orthodox Jewish segments surveyed said they were opposed to [WorldPride 2005]" being held in Jerusalem. Does this mean then that...? But no, Aaron! must surely have been among the 1% Orthodox who defended this celebration of gay pride. Else why would he be exposing the dreadful Abu Abdullah? But then, in another of his reports just slipped to me, 'Israel recognizes homosexual couples: 'Jewish state risks becoming next Sodom and Gomorrah'' (3/7/08), he's schmoozing with an Orthodox rabbi who's predicting that the Israeli Attorney General's decision will excite G-d's wrath, with dire consequences for Israel! Now Aaron's indicated in his interview with Rachael that he's writing a second book about a much greater conflict than that being fought between the Horned and Fanged Terrorist Aliens of Planet Palestine and the gentle, unassuming volk of the Lamb of Israel: that between "the secular and the religious" in Israel. Guess we'll just have to wait and find out whose side he's on - Sodom and Gomorrah's or the Good Good Good Guys of Gush Emunim.
Apparently, it's not just Hollywood wot's giving comfort to these Terrorist Reptiles. The mainstream media's in on the act too! Says Aaron!, "I think a lot of reporters, they don't have a moral compass... I can't say enough that [the terrorists] are looking to spread their belief system around the world, and that Israel is just a stepping-stone... towards the ultimate destruction of the West, then our media... really needs to... change some of their attitudes... if you look at a lot of the editorial blurbs of the major American media outlets, it's no surprise that a lot of them are controlled by liberal editors, the editorial board of the New York Times, the Washington Post, liberal, liberal, and one of the major tenets of liberalism... is that you can sit down and negotiate with your enemy, as an absolute last resort you should use military means... But I think that if most Americans really understood who their enemy is in these terror organisations, really understood that with this enemy there is no dialogue, that with this enemy there is no cease-fire, a cease-fire is a chance to re-load and re-group. That you can't sit down to this enemy, you either win or they're going to try to win."
Now I seem to remember reading such BK! studies as Israel-Palestine On Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (Howard Friel & Richard Falk), which argues that the "NYT's unwillingness to view the conflict through the lens of international law has contributed significantly to both an anti-Palestine bias and an inflated sense of Israeli entitlements," and Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The New York Times vs Haaretz, 2000-2006 (Jerome Slater), which argues that Israel's Haaretz is actually far more critical of Israeli policies than the NYT. Now, however, thanks to Aaron!'s revelations, I can see that these were just part of a fiendish and sophisticated plot by "liberals, liberals" at the helm of the NYT to cover their slimy, terrorist-appeasing tracks. Is there no end to the deceptions and fraud perpetrated by the liberal media? Thank G-d we've got WND to fall back on!
In fact, so powerful is this liberal media conspiracy to aid and abet the Legions of Terror that even Rachael, despite her being in the Top 50 and all, is sucked in! No sooner has Aaron! declared he's for eternal war on the terrorists, than she's babbling, Chamberlain-like, about "the war in Iraq... dissuad[ing] anyone from say approaching this issue in a military fashion." But our Aaron!'s not sucked in by the snakes of the liberal media, no siree, Bob! The courageous, intrepid, unbelievably honest one is prepared to fight the Towelheaded Vermin to the last American soldier: "Yes, there's absolutely no question that America could have won this war a long time ago and why they haven't been using their full military might, rather than restraining the military, I don't know..." Shock & Awe, 655,000 Iraqi deaths and climbing, millions of refugees, and trillions of $$$ - simply not good enough! With the application of "full military might," Yankee Doodle Dandy could've blown Iraq back to the Stone Age where it belongs! And all this while the namby-pamby IDF merely "go from home to home instead of carpet bombing in Gaza, in the West Bank." That, of course, is the appeaser Olmert's doing, and Aaron!, as we know, has fingered his government as one of the conspirators engaged in the awful business of simply handing over the Middle East to the Terrorist Hordes. Hence the importance of his research and his number one finding: You've gotta talk to the terrorists to know that you can't talk to the terrorists.
For me, the high point of Rachael's interview came when she asked Aaron! about his "encounters with Christians in the Middle East." This triggered a veritable flood of revelations, hitherto unrevealed. The persecution of Christians was "a huge story," said Aaron! "Take for example Bethlehem, which is one of the holiest cities for Christianity. It's the site of the Church of the Nativity, which is where Christians believe Jesus was born, and up to about... 18 years ago the Christian population of Bethlehem was about 85%, and then, starting in the early 1990s, suddenly Christians started fleeing Bethlehem, and now actually the Christian population of Bethlehem is about 23%, and actually that counts satellite towns, the actual Christian population in Bethlehem proper right now is 12%, it's dwindling. Why?... what happened was Israel evacuated Bethlehem and gave Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat, gave Bethlehem to the Palestinians as part of the Oslo Accord in the 1990s and as soon as the Palestinians took over, as soon as Yasser Arafat got his hands on Bethlehem, right away you had all of these instances of Christians being persecuted, of Christian women being forcibly converted to Islam, Christian stores being firebombed, of Christians actually coming home at the end of the day, and I witnessed this twice, this happens, it's incredible, they come home and their property is confiscated by Muslim terrorist gangs related to Fatah, to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah group. They tell the Christians they have 24 hours to evacuate your home and then get out. That's it. Happens all the time, and the Christians can't go to the police, they can't go to the court system because the courts and the police are controlled by the Palestinian Authority and so you have the situation now where Christians are fleeing left and right." Rachael was so shocked at this tale of rapine and plunder that all she could manage was a strangled, "Why haven't we heard much about this from Hanan Ashrawi?" I too was reeling. I'd been misled.
BK!, I'd read this from the book by the Boston Globe's Middle East bureau chief from 1997 to 2001, Charles M Sennott: "Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala formed a 'Christian triangle' in the West Bank, containing the highest concentration of the Palestinian Christian population. Roughly 30% of Bethlehem's 30,000 inhabitants were Christian; and Beit Sahour and Beit Jala, each with approximately 12,000 residents, were about 75% Christian. About two-thirds of all Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem lived in one of these 3 towns." (The Body and the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians & the Possibility for Peace, p 117) Obviously dodgy figures. Almost certainly a liberal. The very fact that he qualifies the word 'Christian' with the adjective 'Palestinian' is a dead give away.
And this on Arafat and the Christians: "Arafat has always been attentive to the Christian minority within the Palestinian community, and some officials of the Palestinian Authority have criticized him for coddling the Christian minority in a way that causes their ostracization from the larger group. Arafat seems to have a genuine concern for the diminishing local Christian presence as well as a shrewd understanding of Christians' importance to his own political, diplomatic, and fund-raising missions throughout the Western world. Arafat has been attuned to the resonance of Bethlehem and Jerusalem during his frequent trips to France, Italy, and America. On these trips, whenever he spoke of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, he evoked images of Jerusalem's church spires along with the Dome of the Rock. When he spoke in Arab countries, the church spires were more often left out and the Islamic requirement to protect Al-Quds was stressed." (p 69) Mere hearsay, of course. If only Sennott had had the gumption to schmooze with Arafat instead.
And then there's that 2006 poll of Bethlehem Christians, carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Research and Dialogue, which showed that 78% blamed the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem on Israel's blockade, and 73% believe that the Palestinian Authority treats Christian heritage with respect. (http://www.openbethlehem.org/) Obviously, these figures need to be taken with more than a few grains of Dead Sea salt. After all, the mob that did the polling was "Palestinian." And anyway, talking to Bethlehem Christians while they're busy with Muslim home renovators and learning how to don hijabs couldn't possibly lead to reliable results.
Not to mention the following 2006 letter by Open Bethlehem's chief executive Leila Sansour, a Bethlehem Christian, to Texas congressman Michael McCaul on his resolution on the plight of Palestinian Christians: "The resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing Christians in the Holy Land. [It] ignores the numerous calls from churches in Jerusalem and Bethlehem - and the overwhelming body of reports from international human rights organizations - that warn of the devastating effect of the Israeli system of closure, collective punishment and the construction of the wall. In the Holy City of Bethlehem, the wall forcefully expropriates most of Bethlehem's valuable land and historic landmarks, depriving many Christian families of their homes, barring access to family and jobs in Jerusalem and all the lands that are on the other side of the wall. By perpetuating the misconception that it is their Muslim neighbors and the Palestinian Authority who are creating this crisis, rather than policies imposed by the Israeli government, congressman McCaul is entrenching the problems faced by the Christian community rather than helping address them. The Open Bethlehem campaign was created to address the state of emergency in Bethlehem with full support from the Patriarchs of the churches in Jerusalem and all Bethlehem civil institutions." (Congress misled about real threat to Palestinian Christians, http://www.openbethlehem.org/) Well, I never. Talk about propaganda! Aaron!'s got this one pegged: "Actually, every year about Christmastime, right before, every year the mainstream media in America does these stories where, get this, they actually blame Israel. I kid you not, every year, blame Israel for the plight of the Christians in Bethlehem because they say that Israel built a fence that encircles Bethlehem. Actually there's no wall that encircles Bethlehem, there is a fence and part of it's a wall and it's just in one part of Bethlehem that interfaces with Jerusalem..." And Top 50 Rachael didn't pull him up on this, so that's good enough for me.
How to explain the discrepancies between the findings of the above BK! scribblers and those of our Aaron!? There's the inevitable question of liberal bias, of course, with Aaron! correctly pointing out that these hacks have a tendency to leave their moral compasses on the shelf at home. However, I believe that they can largely be explained by a difference in methodology. The above babblings are generally based on such traditional investigative techniques as interviews, polls, and accessing relevant data in libraries and databases, and are generally carried out by experienced and qualified personnel who wouldn't know an axe-grinder if they stubbed their toe on one. Needless to say, this makes their product extremely bora, bora, bora. The result is that the punters have lost all interest - they're switching in droves to WND or FrontPage Magazine or Little Green Footballs. Thanks to Aaron! the old approach to these matters has been superseded by his exciting new strategy of knowledge acquisition, schmoozing, which could perhaps be defined as getting so close to the bastards that you can smell the sulphur. You see, schmoozing cuts right through all that boring and time-wasting academic folderol (after all we are dealing with ticking bombs here), and goes straight to the heart of darkness!
The efficacy of schmoozing is perhaps best illustrated, apart from the revelations already alluded to, towards the end of the interview. Rachael, breathless at Aaron!'s tales of derring-do, asks him if he was ever scared for his life. The self-effacing lad is, of course, as honest as the day is long. "Absolutely," he replies. "There were several interviews in particular in the last two years while writing this book where I really didn't think I would get out alive." Here is his hair-raising account of just one. Aaron!'s moral compass, which he carries with him at all times, had led him to the lair of "the senior leadership of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group, the most active Palestinian terror group in the West Bank, with literally the chief of the Brigades No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, it was all the senior leadership, they were all with their weapons, had machine guns..." Presumably the chiefs of Brigades No. 1, No. 5, No. 6 etc, etc were busy with their Bethlehem furniture removal business (Gone Before You Know It! Pty Ltd). He was, of course, accompanied by his long time colleague and research assistant, the equally intrepid and courageous "American radio host" and Professor of Islamic Studies at George Dubya Bush University, Redneck, Kansarse, Rusty Humphries. Predictably, Rusty proved more than a match for the Terrorist Spawn of Satan but, hey, I'll let Aaron! tell the story in his own inimitable (72 virgins x 10) style: "We went in together and during the interview Rusty... kept asking the terrorists to show us where in the Qur'an it says anything about 72 virgins, about suicide bombers who go up to Allah's paradise and get an eternity with 72 dark-eyed virgins, because actually I don't know if you know this, but it's not in the Qur'an, the Qur'an doesn't say anything about 72 virgins and yet the terrorists constantly tell the Palestinian teenagers who blow themselves up that they're going to get the 72 virgins, and so Rusty knew it wasn't in the Qur'an and he kept asking the terrorists who said earlier that martyrs get 72 virgins, he kept asking where in the Qur'an it was located. And I was sitting across the room from Rusty and so I couldn't really nudge him, but the terrorists were getting really agitated and he didn't realise that, they actually kept shooting these angry glances at me, like shut this guy up, tell him to stop asking. And he kept petitioning, 'So did you find the 72 virgins yet, did anybody find the 72 virgins?' He actually had them take out a Qur'an and flip through the Qur'an and look for the 72 virgins, and they kept pointing to different verses that may indicate a virgin or two, but they couldn't find the 72 virgins, and I didn't think we'd get out alive from that interview." What a close shave that must have been!
The point is, but for the intrepidity and courage of these two, we would've just gone on swallowing any old codswallop from these Terrorist Swine. Now, AK!, we know that, as Aaron! says, "at the very foundation of the arguments of the terrorist, there is no argument, there is no foundation, it's not there." I know just what he means.
"Are you going to be more careful in the future?" asks a maternal Rachael in one last, probing question. "Oh yes, absolutely, very careful," responds Aaron!
I somehow think he'll survive, don't you?
Oh, I almost forgot! Rusty's also a renowned singer and songwriter. You can order his CD, Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy, from www.talk2rusty.com/store. The lyrics of the title song are informed by the very fruitloops of his joint research with wunderkind Klein!: Life as a terrorist is really laid back/ You find an infidel and give his head a big whack/ See a soldier just shoot him in the back/ Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy - Well I got me 5 wives and got me a hooka/When the sun comes up I strap on me Bazooka/ One wife so ugly I'm glad she wears a burka/ Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy (Radio host's CD pokes fun at terrorists, 27/10/06, WorldNetDaily.com)
I'm puzzled as to why the Talking with Terrorists's blurb reckons that Aaron's terrorists have targeted Hollywood "for elimination" when his ground-breaking research actually reveals that they're fans! It would appear that they've been following every twist and turn in the careers of such celebrities as Jane Fonda ("who we all know was involved in Vietnam activism," Aaron! helpfully reminds us), Rosie O'Donnell (Rosie who?), and Sean Penn since the 60s. Jane Fonda, for G-d's sake!: "I asked some of the terrorists... what they thought of the activism by Hollywood, and they loved it, they're emboldened, every time they hear a Hollywood celebrity talk out against the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or go on a solidarity mission [Senator McCarthy must be turning in his grave!] to a terror-sponsoring entity like Iran, like Syria, they're emboldened to believe, because they think that all Americans hate Islam, hate the Middle East, that whenever they get their picture that there are some out there who side with their goals, or at least for the terrorists they believe side with their goals, because to them they're not just looking to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan or destroy Israel, boost up Iran, these are just their short-term goals and they'll take all the help they can get."
This was a revelation for me, as I'm sure it was for you, dear reader. I had no idea Their Satanic Majesties spent so much time at the movies (the real ones, that is, not that crap from Egypt!). And not only the movies, apparently. Ditto for radio. According to Aaron! they love Madonna and Britney Spears to death! Crikey! What with indoctrination 101 at the madrasa, schmoozing with Aaron!, dodging IDF death squads, reading up on Rosie who?, stalking Britney Spears, going to the movies, shopping around for cut-price bomb belts, wiping Israel off the door mat, and working hard at the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization as we know it, these guys really have their work cut out. They're almost beyond belief.
Also according to the blurb, they've got homosexuality targeted "for elimination." Everything, it seems, except the Israeli occupation. Is there no end to their labors? And how would we ever have known this without the intrepid and courageous Aaron!? You see Aaron!'s been schmoozing with Abu Abdullah, "a senior commander of Hamas' military wing." (And if I may digress here, just thought I'd check out this character among the other A-boos listed in the index of Azzam Tamimi's Hamas: Unwritten Chapters. Nothing! Ditto for Zaki Chehab's Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs & Spies. Thank G-d he's at least made it into Aaron!'s book.) Aaron! quotes AA as saying that unless homosexuals mend their disgusting ways, "they may be sentenced to death." (And if I may digress yet again, Rachael quips, "Well, that would thin the ranks of society, wouldn't it?" Now just how gay does she think we are? Who, dear? Gay, dear? Us, dear? No, dear! How very dare you, Rachael!)
But hang on. I've got this terrible bout of cognitive dissonance, because I remember Rachael describing Aaron in her blurb as an Orthodox Jew, and an adjacent critic's just slipped me this quotation from Israel Shahak's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel: "Many Israeli rabbis and the Israeli religious political parties in the 1990s reacted sharply against the increased visibility and power of the homosexual and lesbian communities in Israel. According to the Halacha, homosexuality is punishable by stoning... Many rabbis, when interviewed, indicated that they favoured imposition of the death penalty for Jewish homosexual men." (p xviii-xix)
No way could I believe this rubbish. Consult Wikipedia. Aaargh! It seems that "the Biblical book of Leviticus calls the big H an 'abomination' that may be subject to capital punishment, although Halakhic courts are not authorized to administer capital punishment for sexual immorality in the absence of a Temple in Jerusalem." Could it be that Aaron's alleged schmoozing with the Israeli right is designed solely to expose them and thus save Israel's gay community from a right stoning? But what's this? The same adjacent critic's just slipped me an editorial by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily's CEO, on 'The dirty little secret of America's newsrooms' (25/6/08). Which is? That US "newspapers and broadcast outlets... The Hearst Corp, McClatchy Company, Gannett, National Public Radio, Bloomberg, Washington Post, NBC News, ABC, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and... News Corp," are all dancing to the tune of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, an "arrogant bunch of fascist mind-control freaks." But not, it seems, WND.
And Orthodox Aaron!? In 'Religious leaders: No 'gay pride' in holy city: Rare gathering of Christian, Jewish, Muslim figures blasts homosexual event' (31/3/05), he informs us that "The Rabbinical Alliance [of America]... sponsored a poll," which showed "[n]early 100% of the Orthodox Jewish segments surveyed said they were opposed to [WorldPride 2005]" being held in Jerusalem. Does this mean then that...? But no, Aaron! must surely have been among the 1% Orthodox who defended this celebration of gay pride. Else why would he be exposing the dreadful Abu Abdullah? But then, in another of his reports just slipped to me, 'Israel recognizes homosexual couples: 'Jewish state risks becoming next Sodom and Gomorrah'' (3/7/08), he's schmoozing with an Orthodox rabbi who's predicting that the Israeli Attorney General's decision will excite G-d's wrath, with dire consequences for Israel! Now Aaron's indicated in his interview with Rachael that he's writing a second book about a much greater conflict than that being fought between the Horned and Fanged Terrorist Aliens of Planet Palestine and the gentle, unassuming volk of the Lamb of Israel: that between "the secular and the religious" in Israel. Guess we'll just have to wait and find out whose side he's on - Sodom and Gomorrah's or the Good Good Good Guys of Gush Emunim.
Apparently, it's not just Hollywood wot's giving comfort to these Terrorist Reptiles. The mainstream media's in on the act too! Says Aaron!, "I think a lot of reporters, they don't have a moral compass... I can't say enough that [the terrorists] are looking to spread their belief system around the world, and that Israel is just a stepping-stone... towards the ultimate destruction of the West, then our media... really needs to... change some of their attitudes... if you look at a lot of the editorial blurbs of the major American media outlets, it's no surprise that a lot of them are controlled by liberal editors, the editorial board of the New York Times, the Washington Post, liberal, liberal, and one of the major tenets of liberalism... is that you can sit down and negotiate with your enemy, as an absolute last resort you should use military means... But I think that if most Americans really understood who their enemy is in these terror organisations, really understood that with this enemy there is no dialogue, that with this enemy there is no cease-fire, a cease-fire is a chance to re-load and re-group. That you can't sit down to this enemy, you either win or they're going to try to win."
Now I seem to remember reading such BK! studies as Israel-Palestine On Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (Howard Friel & Richard Falk), which argues that the "NYT's unwillingness to view the conflict through the lens of international law has contributed significantly to both an anti-Palestine bias and an inflated sense of Israeli entitlements," and Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The New York Times vs Haaretz, 2000-2006 (Jerome Slater), which argues that Israel's Haaretz is actually far more critical of Israeli policies than the NYT. Now, however, thanks to Aaron!'s revelations, I can see that these were just part of a fiendish and sophisticated plot by "liberals, liberals" at the helm of the NYT to cover their slimy, terrorist-appeasing tracks. Is there no end to the deceptions and fraud perpetrated by the liberal media? Thank G-d we've got WND to fall back on!
In fact, so powerful is this liberal media conspiracy to aid and abet the Legions of Terror that even Rachael, despite her being in the Top 50 and all, is sucked in! No sooner has Aaron! declared he's for eternal war on the terrorists, than she's babbling, Chamberlain-like, about "the war in Iraq... dissuad[ing] anyone from say approaching this issue in a military fashion." But our Aaron!'s not sucked in by the snakes of the liberal media, no siree, Bob! The courageous, intrepid, unbelievably honest one is prepared to fight the Towelheaded Vermin to the last American soldier: "Yes, there's absolutely no question that America could have won this war a long time ago and why they haven't been using their full military might, rather than restraining the military, I don't know..." Shock & Awe, 655,000 Iraqi deaths and climbing, millions of refugees, and trillions of $$$ - simply not good enough! With the application of "full military might," Yankee Doodle Dandy could've blown Iraq back to the Stone Age where it belongs! And all this while the namby-pamby IDF merely "go from home to home instead of carpet bombing in Gaza, in the West Bank." That, of course, is the appeaser Olmert's doing, and Aaron!, as we know, has fingered his government as one of the conspirators engaged in the awful business of simply handing over the Middle East to the Terrorist Hordes. Hence the importance of his research and his number one finding: You've gotta talk to the terrorists to know that you can't talk to the terrorists.
For me, the high point of Rachael's interview came when she asked Aaron! about his "encounters with Christians in the Middle East." This triggered a veritable flood of revelations, hitherto unrevealed. The persecution of Christians was "a huge story," said Aaron! "Take for example Bethlehem, which is one of the holiest cities for Christianity. It's the site of the Church of the Nativity, which is where Christians believe Jesus was born, and up to about... 18 years ago the Christian population of Bethlehem was about 85%, and then, starting in the early 1990s, suddenly Christians started fleeing Bethlehem, and now actually the Christian population of Bethlehem is about 23%, and actually that counts satellite towns, the actual Christian population in Bethlehem proper right now is 12%, it's dwindling. Why?... what happened was Israel evacuated Bethlehem and gave Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat, gave Bethlehem to the Palestinians as part of the Oslo Accord in the 1990s and as soon as the Palestinians took over, as soon as Yasser Arafat got his hands on Bethlehem, right away you had all of these instances of Christians being persecuted, of Christian women being forcibly converted to Islam, Christian stores being firebombed, of Christians actually coming home at the end of the day, and I witnessed this twice, this happens, it's incredible, they come home and their property is confiscated by Muslim terrorist gangs related to Fatah, to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah group. They tell the Christians they have 24 hours to evacuate your home and then get out. That's it. Happens all the time, and the Christians can't go to the police, they can't go to the court system because the courts and the police are controlled by the Palestinian Authority and so you have the situation now where Christians are fleeing left and right." Rachael was so shocked at this tale of rapine and plunder that all she could manage was a strangled, "Why haven't we heard much about this from Hanan Ashrawi?" I too was reeling. I'd been misled.
BK!, I'd read this from the book by the Boston Globe's Middle East bureau chief from 1997 to 2001, Charles M Sennott: "Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala formed a 'Christian triangle' in the West Bank, containing the highest concentration of the Palestinian Christian population. Roughly 30% of Bethlehem's 30,000 inhabitants were Christian; and Beit Sahour and Beit Jala, each with approximately 12,000 residents, were about 75% Christian. About two-thirds of all Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem lived in one of these 3 towns." (The Body and the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians & the Possibility for Peace, p 117) Obviously dodgy figures. Almost certainly a liberal. The very fact that he qualifies the word 'Christian' with the adjective 'Palestinian' is a dead give away.
And this on Arafat and the Christians: "Arafat has always been attentive to the Christian minority within the Palestinian community, and some officials of the Palestinian Authority have criticized him for coddling the Christian minority in a way that causes their ostracization from the larger group. Arafat seems to have a genuine concern for the diminishing local Christian presence as well as a shrewd understanding of Christians' importance to his own political, diplomatic, and fund-raising missions throughout the Western world. Arafat has been attuned to the resonance of Bethlehem and Jerusalem during his frequent trips to France, Italy, and America. On these trips, whenever he spoke of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, he evoked images of Jerusalem's church spires along with the Dome of the Rock. When he spoke in Arab countries, the church spires were more often left out and the Islamic requirement to protect Al-Quds was stressed." (p 69) Mere hearsay, of course. If only Sennott had had the gumption to schmooze with Arafat instead.
And then there's that 2006 poll of Bethlehem Christians, carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Research and Dialogue, which showed that 78% blamed the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem on Israel's blockade, and 73% believe that the Palestinian Authority treats Christian heritage with respect. (http://www.openbethlehem.org/) Obviously, these figures need to be taken with more than a few grains of Dead Sea salt. After all, the mob that did the polling was "Palestinian." And anyway, talking to Bethlehem Christians while they're busy with Muslim home renovators and learning how to don hijabs couldn't possibly lead to reliable results.
Not to mention the following 2006 letter by Open Bethlehem's chief executive Leila Sansour, a Bethlehem Christian, to Texas congressman Michael McCaul on his resolution on the plight of Palestinian Christians: "The resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing Christians in the Holy Land. [It] ignores the numerous calls from churches in Jerusalem and Bethlehem - and the overwhelming body of reports from international human rights organizations - that warn of the devastating effect of the Israeli system of closure, collective punishment and the construction of the wall. In the Holy City of Bethlehem, the wall forcefully expropriates most of Bethlehem's valuable land and historic landmarks, depriving many Christian families of their homes, barring access to family and jobs in Jerusalem and all the lands that are on the other side of the wall. By perpetuating the misconception that it is their Muslim neighbors and the Palestinian Authority who are creating this crisis, rather than policies imposed by the Israeli government, congressman McCaul is entrenching the problems faced by the Christian community rather than helping address them. The Open Bethlehem campaign was created to address the state of emergency in Bethlehem with full support from the Patriarchs of the churches in Jerusalem and all Bethlehem civil institutions." (Congress misled about real threat to Palestinian Christians, http://www.openbethlehem.org/) Well, I never. Talk about propaganda! Aaron!'s got this one pegged: "Actually, every year about Christmastime, right before, every year the mainstream media in America does these stories where, get this, they actually blame Israel. I kid you not, every year, blame Israel for the plight of the Christians in Bethlehem because they say that Israel built a fence that encircles Bethlehem. Actually there's no wall that encircles Bethlehem, there is a fence and part of it's a wall and it's just in one part of Bethlehem that interfaces with Jerusalem..." And Top 50 Rachael didn't pull him up on this, so that's good enough for me.
How to explain the discrepancies between the findings of the above BK! scribblers and those of our Aaron!? There's the inevitable question of liberal bias, of course, with Aaron! correctly pointing out that these hacks have a tendency to leave their moral compasses on the shelf at home. However, I believe that they can largely be explained by a difference in methodology. The above babblings are generally based on such traditional investigative techniques as interviews, polls, and accessing relevant data in libraries and databases, and are generally carried out by experienced and qualified personnel who wouldn't know an axe-grinder if they stubbed their toe on one. Needless to say, this makes their product extremely bora, bora, bora. The result is that the punters have lost all interest - they're switching in droves to WND or FrontPage Magazine or Little Green Footballs. Thanks to Aaron! the old approach to these matters has been superseded by his exciting new strategy of knowledge acquisition, schmoozing, which could perhaps be defined as getting so close to the bastards that you can smell the sulphur. You see, schmoozing cuts right through all that boring and time-wasting academic folderol (after all we are dealing with ticking bombs here), and goes straight to the heart of darkness!
The efficacy of schmoozing is perhaps best illustrated, apart from the revelations already alluded to, towards the end of the interview. Rachael, breathless at Aaron!'s tales of derring-do, asks him if he was ever scared for his life. The self-effacing lad is, of course, as honest as the day is long. "Absolutely," he replies. "There were several interviews in particular in the last two years while writing this book where I really didn't think I would get out alive." Here is his hair-raising account of just one. Aaron!'s moral compass, which he carries with him at all times, had led him to the lair of "the senior leadership of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group, the most active Palestinian terror group in the West Bank, with literally the chief of the Brigades No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, it was all the senior leadership, they were all with their weapons, had machine guns..." Presumably the chiefs of Brigades No. 1, No. 5, No. 6 etc, etc were busy with their Bethlehem furniture removal business (Gone Before You Know It! Pty Ltd). He was, of course, accompanied by his long time colleague and research assistant, the equally intrepid and courageous "American radio host" and Professor of Islamic Studies at George Dubya Bush University, Redneck, Kansarse, Rusty Humphries. Predictably, Rusty proved more than a match for the Terrorist Spawn of Satan but, hey, I'll let Aaron! tell the story in his own inimitable (72 virgins x 10) style: "We went in together and during the interview Rusty... kept asking the terrorists to show us where in the Qur'an it says anything about 72 virgins, about suicide bombers who go up to Allah's paradise and get an eternity with 72 dark-eyed virgins, because actually I don't know if you know this, but it's not in the Qur'an, the Qur'an doesn't say anything about 72 virgins and yet the terrorists constantly tell the Palestinian teenagers who blow themselves up that they're going to get the 72 virgins, and so Rusty knew it wasn't in the Qur'an and he kept asking the terrorists who said earlier that martyrs get 72 virgins, he kept asking where in the Qur'an it was located. And I was sitting across the room from Rusty and so I couldn't really nudge him, but the terrorists were getting really agitated and he didn't realise that, they actually kept shooting these angry glances at me, like shut this guy up, tell him to stop asking. And he kept petitioning, 'So did you find the 72 virgins yet, did anybody find the 72 virgins?' He actually had them take out a Qur'an and flip through the Qur'an and look for the 72 virgins, and they kept pointing to different verses that may indicate a virgin or two, but they couldn't find the 72 virgins, and I didn't think we'd get out alive from that interview." What a close shave that must have been!
The point is, but for the intrepidity and courage of these two, we would've just gone on swallowing any old codswallop from these Terrorist Swine. Now, AK!, we know that, as Aaron! says, "at the very foundation of the arguments of the terrorist, there is no argument, there is no foundation, it's not there." I know just what he means.
"Are you going to be more careful in the future?" asks a maternal Rachael in one last, probing question. "Oh yes, absolutely, very careful," responds Aaron!
I somehow think he'll survive, don't you?
Oh, I almost forgot! Rusty's also a renowned singer and songwriter. You can order his CD, Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy, from www.talk2rusty.com/store. The lyrics of the title song are informed by the very fruitloops of his joint research with wunderkind Klein!: Life as a terrorist is really laid back/ You find an infidel and give his head a big whack/ See a soldier just shoot him in the back/ Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy - Well I got me 5 wives and got me a hooka/When the sun comes up I strap on me Bazooka/ One wife so ugly I'm glad she wears a burka/ Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy (Radio host's CD pokes fun at terrorists, 27/10/06, WorldNetDaily.com)
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