Here is a really amazing video (in three parts) of Abba Eban being grilled by Mike Wallace and coolly, gracefully replying with one slam dunk after another.

We desperately need more people like Abba Eban (may his memory be blessed).

With the incessant drumbeat of “Israeli apartheid” reverberating regularly throughout the world, it’s no wonder people never even notice the media’s sleight of hand trick in tucking away the real apartheid in the region—that of the Arabs against their own brethren.

Khaled Abu Toameh just wrote a great piece today on the Hudson New York blog, highlighting the media’s shameful and deliberate blindness to this, to the detriment of Palestinians literally dying because of the apartheid policies of their Arab brethren. It’s worth reproducing here in its entirety:

Mohammed Nabil Taha, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, died this week at the entrance to a Lebanese hospital after doctors refused to help him because his family could not afford to pay for medical treatment.

The tragic case of Taha highlights the plight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in impoverished refugee camps in Lebanon and who are the victims of an Apartheid system that denies them access to work, education and medical care.

Ironically, the boy’s death at the entrance to the hospital coincided with Israel Apartheid Week, a festival of hatred and incitement organized by anti-Israel activists on university campuses in the US, Canada and other countries.

It is highly unlikely that the folks behind the festival have heard about the case of Taha. Judging from past experiences, it is also highly unlikely that they would publicize the case after they heard about it.

Why should anyone care about a Palestinian boy who is denied medical treatment by an Arab hospital? This is a story that does not have an anti-Israel angle to it.

Can anyone imagine what would have happened if an Israeli hospital had abandoned a boy to die in its parking lot because his father did not have $1,500 to pay for his treatment?

The UN Security Council would hold an emergency session and Israel would be strongly condemned and held responsible for the death of the boy.

All this is happening at a time when tens of thousands of Palestinian patients continue to benefit from treatments in Israeli hospitals.

Last year alone, some 180,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip entered Israel to receive medical treatment. Many were treated despite the fact that they did not have enough money to cover the bill. In Israel, even a suicide bomber who is — only! — wounded while trying to kill Jews is entitled to the finest medical treatment. And there have been many instances where Palestinians who were injured in attacks on Israel later ended up in some of Israel’s best hospitals.

Lebanon, by the way, is not the only Arab country that officially applies Apartheid laws against Palestinians, denying them the right to receive proper medical treatment and own property.

Just last week it was announced that a medical center in Jordan has decided to stop treating Palestinian cancer patients because the Palestinian Authority has failed to pay its debts to the center.

Other Arab countries have also been giving the Palestinians a very hard time when it comes to receiving medical treatment.

It is disgraceful that while Israel admits Palestinian patients to its hospitals, Arab hospitals are denying them medical treatment for various reasons, including money. But then one is reminded that Arab dictators do not care about their own people, so why should they pay attention to an 11-year-old boy who is dying at the entrance to a hospital because his father was not carrying $1,500?

But as the death took place in an Arab country – and as the victim is an Arab – why should anyone care about him? Where is the outcry against Arab Apartheid?

 

Here’s another musical interlude…

It almost blows my mind (bad pun not intended), but how can it be that any sane government would actually require a debate over whether or not to strip a citizen of his citizenship should he be found guilty of aiding the country’s enemies or participating in terrorist operations?

I realize that Israel does not have capital punishment, even for treason, but are they so far to the other extreme that it’s not just a simple matter of locking up a convicted terrorist and throwing away the key?  It must be that they are—so much to the extreme that they even have members of the Knesset treasonously working again their own government!

Here is a tangential excerpt from a recent essay by Lee Smith that he wrote regarding Israel’s new oath of allegiance:

“The State of Israel has reached the height of fascism,” says Haneen Zoubi, a member of the Knesset representing Balad, an Arab Israeli party. The oath’s author, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, charges that it is precisely those like Zoubi who make the oath necessary. Zoubi was aboard the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish-sponsored boat that attempted to run the naval blockade of Gaza. The ship violated international law by refusing to respect a blockade and then attacked an Israeli boarding party, which would make Zoubi, were she a citizen of, say, the United States while it was at war, subject to a number of charges, including conspiracy and treason, and liable to execution by the state. And she’s not alone: Some of her fellow Knesset members from Arab Israeli political parties have become notorious in recent years for actions that no Western government would tolerate from its citizens—let alone from legislators who are privy to government decisions and counsels. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, served as a close political adviser to Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian leader planned to undermine the Oslo Accords and murder hundreds of Israelis in the second Intifada. Tibi’s colleague, Azmi Bishara, resigned from the Knesset and fled to Syria in 2007 to avoid facing charges of espionage and treason for giving Hezbollah detailed information about optimal rocket targets inside Israel during the Second Lebanon War.

In any other country (especially in the Middle East), those “collaborators” would be strung up on the nearest lamppost or thrown off a rooftop. But, in Israel, they have to debate this in the Knesset!

Sometimes, Israel is truly their own worst enemy.

At least now, it seems that some common sense is slowly starting to get around. As Arutz 7 reports:

Counter terror experts from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) gave support Tuesday to a bill that would strip Israeli terrorists of their citizenship. Forcing would-be terror supporters to put their citizenship on the line could be an effective tool, they said in a statement to the Knesset’s Internal Affairs Committee.

The committee heard arguments on a proposal from MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu – Israel Our Home) that would take away from citizens and permanent residents convicted of terrorist activities a variety of benefits, including welfare payments and other financial assistance, and possibly of their legal status as well.

The law “has an element of deterrence when it comes to serious breaches of security,” security officials said. They added that the power to make decisions regarding citizenship should be in the hands of the court.

Rotem explained that his law is aimed primarily at preventing Members of Knesset from giving support to terrorists. “We have to find a solution for cases where an MK betrays the country, but continues to be part of it,” he said.

He was apparently referring to former MK Azmi Bishara, who is accused of giving information to Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War. Bishara fled Israel and has since lived in several Arab states, where he gives talks harshly condemning Israel.

Bishara has admitted to speaking to a Hizbullah operative during the war, but says the information he gave was available in the media.

Professor Yisrael Aumann, a Nobel economics laureate and renowned game theory mathematician, has been in the news recently reiterating his strong convictions that the only way for peace to come about in the Middle East is for Israel to prepare and anticipate war. He says, “this may be opposite to common sense, but it is true. The spiritual preparation to kill and be killed is what will ultimately prevent the need to kill and fight. First, you need to be spiritually ready.”

He cites the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany as two clear examples of his strong theories. The Roman Empire, which was always prepared for war (and—in many unfortunate situations—actually carried through on its threat of war with powerful and crushing victories), ultimately brought about a world peace that to this day lives in history as the famous Pax Romana.

Nazi Germany, on the other hand, seems clearly to have been invigorated with delusions of world domination only after Neville Chamberlain took great pains and gave up great concessions in his quest to “chase peace”.

To explain his theory, Aumann has written a piece on Arutz 7′s web site, in which he explains the game theory concepts behind this analysis in layman’s terms. I find it absolutely fascinating and, as such, will share it in its entirety here:

Two men—let us call them Reuben and Simon—are put in a small room containing a suitcase filled with  bills totaling $100,000.  The owner of the suitcase announces the following:

“ I will give you the money in the suitcase under one condition…you have to negotiate an agreement on how to divide it. That is the only way I will agree to give you the money.”

Reuben is a rational person and realizes the golden opportunity that has fallen his way. He turns to Simon with the obvious suggestion: “You take half and I’ll take half, that way each of us will have $50,000.”

To his surprise, Simon frowns at him and says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt: “Look here, I don’t know what your plans are for the money, but I don’t intend to leave this room with less than $90,000. If you accept that, fine. If not, we can both go home without any of the money.”

Reuben can hardly believe his ears. “What has happened to Simon” he asks himself. “Why should he get 90% of the money and I just 10%?”  He decides to try to convince Simon to accept his view. “Let’s be logical,” he urges him, “We are in the same situation, we both want the money. Let’s divide the money equally and both of us will profit.”

Simon, however, doesn’t seem perturbed by his friend’s logic He listens attentively, but when Reuben is finished he says, even more emphatically than before: “90-10 or nothing. That is my last offer.”

Reuben’s face turns red with anger. He is about to punch Simon in the nose, but he steps back. He realizes that Simon is not going to relent, and that the only way he can leave the room with any money is to give in to him. He straightens his clothes, takes $10,000 from the suitcase, shakes Simon’s hand and leaves the room humiliated.

This case is called ‘The Blackmailer’s Paradox” in game theory. The paradox is that Reuben the rational is forced to behave irrationally by definition, in order to achieve maximum results in the face of the situation that has evolved. What brings about this bizarre outcome is the fact Simon is sure of himself and doesn’t flinch when making his exorbitant demand. This convinces Reuben that he must give in so as to make the best of the situation.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict:

The relationship between Israel and the Arab countries is conducted along the lines of this paradox. At each stage of negotiation, the Arabs present impossible, unacceptable starting positions. They act sure of themselves and as if they totally believe in what they are asking for, and make it clear to Israel that there is no chance of their backing down.

Invariably, Israel agrees to their blackmailing demands because otherwise she will leave the room empty handed. The most blatant example of this is the negotiations with Syria that have been taking place with different levels of negotiators for years.  The Syrians made sure that it was clear from the beginning that they would not compromise on one millimeter of the Golan Heights.

The Israeli side, eager to have a peace agreement with Syria, internalized the Syrian position so well, that the Israeli public is sure that the starting point for future negotiations with Syria has to include complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, this despite its critical strategic importance in ensuring secure borders for Israel.

The Losing Solution:

According to game theory, Israel has to change certain basic perceptions in order to improve her chances in the negotiations game with the Arabs and win the long term political struggle:

a. Willingness to forego agreements:

Israel’s political stand is based on the principle that agreements must be reached with the Arabs at any price, that the lack of agreements is untenable. In the Blackmailer’s Paradox, Reuben’s behavior is the result of his feeling that he must leave the room with some money, no matter how little.  Because Reuben cannot imagine himself leaving the room with empty hands, he is easy prey for Simon, and ends up leaving with a certain amount of money, but in the role of the humiliated loser.  This is similar to the way Israel handles negotiations, her mental state making her unable to reject suggestions that do not advance her interests.

b. Taking repetition into account

Game theory relates to onetime situations differently than to situations that repeat themselves. A situation that repeats itself over any length of time, creates, paradoxically, strategic parity that leads to cooperation between the opposing sides. This cooperation occurs when both sides realize that the game is going to repeat itself, and that since they must weigh the influence present moves will have on future games, there is a balancing factor at play. Reuben saw his problem as a onetime event, and behaved accordingly. Had he told Simon instead that he would not forego the amount he deserves even if he sustains a total loss, he would have changed the game results for an indefinite period.  It is probably true that he would still have left the game empty handed, but at the next meeting with Simon, the latter would remember Reuben’s original suggestion and would try to reach a compromise.

That is how Israel has to behave, looking at the long term in order to improve her position in future negotiations, even if it means continuing a state of war and fore going an agreement.

c. Faith in your opinions

Another element that crates the “Blackmailer’s Paradox” is the unwavering belief of one side in its opinion. Simon exemplifies that. This faith gives a contender inner confidence in his cause at the start and eventually convinces his rival as well.   The result is that the opposing side wants to reach an agreement, even at the expense of irrational surrender that is considerably distanced from his opening position.  Several years ago, I spoke to a senior officer who claimed that Israel must withdraw from the Golan Heights in the framework of a peace treaty, because the Golan is holy land to the Syrians and they will never give it up. I explained to him that first the Syrians convinced themselves that the Golan is holy land to them, and then proceeded to convince you as well. The Syrians’ unflinching belief that they are in the right convinces us to give in to their dictates. The only solution to that is for us to believe unwaveringly in the righteousness of our cause. Only complete faith in our demands can succeed in convincing our Syrian opponent to take our opinion into account.

As in all of science, game theory does not take sides in moral and value judgments. It analyzes strategically the behavior of opposing sides in a game they play against one another. The State of Israel is in the midst of one such game opposite its enemies. As in every game, the Arab-Israeli game involves interests that create the framework of the game and its rules.

Sadly, Israel ignores the basic principles of game theory.  If Israel would be wise enough to behave according to those principles, her political status and de facto, her security status, would improve substantially.

David Suissa wrote a great piece in the Huffington Post last month making a very interesting observation, essentially that with all the “new paths” that are called for (and new “plans” and “road maps” that are put in place), not a single one of them bothers to question the presupposition of judenrein policies in any future Palestinian state.

The rights of Arabs to live in Israel have never been called into question with these “peace plans” and, yet, it’s virtually a “given” that no Jew would be allowed to live in any future Palestinian state.

Well, Suissa points out that considering how poorly all those past plans have worked out, it might be a good time to start really thinking of things in a new way, and not just saying that we’ll do that.

He writes:

Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable? Why do we hear the same ideas over and over again, even though they never work?

At her AIPAC speech this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to find “a new path” to the two-state solution. But nowhere in her speech did she actually challenge a key tenet of the current path: We can never have Jews living in Palestine.

She’s not alone. For decades now, the world’s most brilliant political minds have worked with this same unimaginative and racist assumption: To have peace with the Palestinians, we must have ethnic cleansing of the Jews.

As a result, a peace vocabulary has developed that suggests anything but peace: words like “freezing” and “dismantling” rather than “warming” and “creating.” The Jews themselves who live in the areas of a future Palestinian state have been globally demonized as the biggest obstacle to peace.

Sure, there may be terrorist entities like Hamas and Hezbollah that are sworn enemies of any peace agreement, but as far as the world is concerned, the soccer moms in Ariel and Efrat are bigger obstacles to peace.

Never mind that when Israel tried to cleanse Gaza of all Jews a few years ago, it got rewarded not with peace and quiet but with a few thousand rockets.

It’s gotten so absurd, that the headlines around the world two weeks ago weren’t about the terrorist rockets flying into Israel, but about interim zoning permits for apartments in East Jerusalem. Had those apartments been for Buddhists or Hindus or Hare Krishnas, no one would have flinched. But they were for Jews, which makes them obstacles to peace.

The Obama administration’s obsession with freezing Jewish settlements — including Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — has further demonized the settlements, made the Palestinians even more intransigent and pretty much frozen the peace process.

But what if the peace processors took a different view of these settlements and saw them not as obstacles to peace but as potential contributors to Palestinian society? What if, instead of forcing Jewish settlers to leave as part of a peace agreement, they were invited to stay?

In all these failed peace meetings over the years, has anyone considered that a Jewish minority in a future Palestine may actually be a good thing? That it would encourage mutual dependency and co-existence and democracy — and help the Palestinian economy? And that for Israel, it’d be good to have Jewish representatives in a Palestinian parliament — just like we have supporters in Diaspora communities throughout the world?

I know what you’re thinking: How naïve of you, Suissa! How many Jews would want to be part of a Palestinian state? Who would protect them? It’ll never work!

To which I reply: Maybe you’re right! But nothing else has worked, so why not shake things up and try something new? Let’s poll the Jews of the West Bank who’d be most likely to be evacuated and see how many would be interested in staying in a future Palestine, and under what conditions. Dual citizenship? Security guarantees? Equal voting rights? These are great questions for peace talks.

Even if you’re a cynic who believes peace with the Palestinians is impossible in our lifetime, pushing for the right of settlers to stay in a future Palestine is a game changer. It disarms critics who claim that settlements are the main obstacle to peace and shines a light on fundamental issues, like whether the Palestinians are willing or even able to deliver peace, and how they would protect a Jewish minority in their midst.

Just like Soviet Jewry was about the Jews’ “right to leave,” this new cause is about the Jews’ “right to stay.” And if the world ends up opposing the idea, well, we’ll finally have our PR homerun: An international movement fighting for “Human Rights for Palestinian Jews!” Our mantra: The Jews of Palestine deserve the same rights as the Muslims of Israel.

If you’re not a cynic but a hopeless romantic who believes in the power of co-existence, you should have been with me the other night at the Levantine Cultural Center, a storefront salon on Pico Boulevard co-founded four years ago by local activist Jordan Elgrably to foster harmony between all peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. The guest speaker was author and journalist Rachel Shabi, who was talking about her new book, “We Look Like the Enemy: the Hidden Story of Israel’s Jews From Arab Lands.”

Shabi, a Jew of Iraqi descent who grew up in London and now lives in Tel Aviv, has had a lifelong fascination with the story of Jews who come from Arab lands like Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria and Tunisia.

As she spoke about the long and complicated journey of these Jews of Arabia, she didn’t sugarcoat their struggles, but you could feel her passion for the golden moments and possibilities of cultural co-existence.

Stuck between my cynical and romantic sides, and perhaps caught up in the moment, I couldn’t help wondering whether there might be, one day, a Palestinian chapter to this Jewish-Arab odyssey — a chapter that wouldn’t be about Jews being kicked out, but about Jews being asked to stay.

…or all three?

Richard Goldstone, having read the draft of today’s United Nations resolution which was ultimately approved later in the day—officially endorsing his virulent, anti-Semitic, slanderous report—is reported to have said, “This draft resolution saddens me as it includes only allegations against Israel. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope that the council can modify the text.”

Now, any adult living in today’s world for more than five minutes can tell you that the news is always full of “atrocities” committed by Israel, and full of condemnations of Israel by other countries and organizations for these “atrocities”… while you hear comparatively nothing about the Arab world, with their customs of imprisoning political dissidents, beheading Christians, stoning rape victims, performing forced clitoridectomies on teenage girls, forcing women to be subordinate to their husbands, committing the occasional genocide here and there in Africa, and of course bombing civilian areas and using human shields while committing acts of terrorism.

So, either Goldstone is:

(a) a naïf who miraculously made it this far in his adult life unaware of the twisted ways of the world, and who actually thought he could put out such a sham of a report and not have it immediately snatched up by everyone to be used against Israel and Israel alone, ignoring the few mentions of Hamas in there (get out your magnifying glass…);

(b) an idiot who might have been aware of that global phenomenon, but stupidly thought his report was some kind of magical one that would ward of any such uses, or maybe that he is a special kind of guy who wouldn’t be used like the foolish anti-Semitic tool that he turned out to be; or

(c) an “excrement-peddler” (euphemistically-speaking, of course), who knew exactly what he was doing when he put out that crock of excrement, and is now following it up with more excrement to have you believe that he’s innocent of any such vicious intentions, when he is in reality so obviously full of excrement because he knew what he was doing and just didn’t care.

My vote is with (c) and, I pray, may he get slammed with an equally vicious and slanderous “assessment” on his own Judgment Day.

In an absolutely heinous crime, reported by Arutz 7, a small mob of Arabs passing a small Jewish family on the Tel Baruch beach decided to first taunt a young woman then, when her father responded, they attacked the entire family. Mother and daughter ran away, chased by some of the mob, while the rest of the mob stayed behind to beat the Jewish father to death and throw his body in the ocean.

Thankfully, the police were able to make quick arrests. One can only hope that the justice system is not so politicized that these animals won’t get thrown in jail to rot there for the rest of their vermin lives.

It’s times like these that Israel’s lack of capital punishment is sorely missed; these miserable excuses for humans deserve nothing less than having every bone in their body shattered by metal rods wielded by the relatives of the deceased and then being strung up from the gallows and left to rot while vultures pick apart the flesh from their splintered bones.

In the midst of all the depressing news of anti-Semites all over the world, and especially in the Middle East, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear about a Bedouin sheikh who has the guts to take up the cause of Gilad Shalit, traveling throughout Israel to express solidarity, raise awareness and gather signatures.

(Of course, one cannot expect news like this to not to come coupled with a dark side, and so, naturally, this noble Bedouin has been getting death threats and gunfire from his Arab brethren, and even denouncement in the local Arab newspapers.)

So, I just wanted to take a minute to give this brave Bedouin sheikh the recognition and respect he deserves for standing up for what’s right in the face of the disgraceful pressure of his Arab brethren.

Although I just recently posted a superb open letter to President Obama by Lou Pritchett, I’d like to take this opportunity to post yet another phenomenal open letter to President Obama, this time by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian woman thrown out of her home by Palestinians and now living in America, where she is a strong advocate of confronting Islamic terrorism and calling it what it is.  She recently put out a new book, entitled, Because They Hate.

That said, while Lou Pritchett’s letter focused mostly on what Obama is doing to our country, Brigitte Gabriel’s letter takes the focus to the Middle East and to the subject of Obama’s speech addressing Muslim-American relations.

Click the “continue reading” link to read the letter.

Dear Mr. President,

You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.

I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.

I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I’m sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a “student of history,” it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.

A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.

You began in your speech by asserting that “tensions” exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.

A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers  and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.

These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history, acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.

A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed’s death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India, eventually creating an empire larger than Rome’s was at its peak.

The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What’s more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the ”jizya,” a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.

These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.

You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.

Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.

The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.

The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?

What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?

What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only “crime” was allowing her students to name their teddy bears “Mohammed”?

What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to terrorist organizations?

What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?

What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a church or synagogue?

To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other “root causes,” most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.

Lastly, I must address your statement that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.” Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.

Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.

For instance, Christians and Jews became “Dhimmis,” a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad’s Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.

I witnessed first-hand the “tolerance” of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970′s, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the “proud tradition” of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced  in the cause of Islamic jihad.

Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world.

Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Who regard “infidels” as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support “cultural jihad” as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.

Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.

Sincerely,
Brigitte Gabriel

In my previous post, I mentioned one predictable omission from Obama’s speech to the Muslim world (easily predicted by Dennis Prager).

Well, in the Op-Ed section of yesterday’s New York Times, André Aciman points out another glaring omission from Obama’s speech: namely, the double standard where the Muslim world is “outraged” over the “plight” of the “Palestinians”, while they do not even acknowledge the even worse treatment to which the Jews of the “tolerant” Muslim countries were subjected throughout the last couple of centuries.

The problem, though, is not just limited to Obama’s speech. In fact, like the omission Prager pointed out, no one would have really expected someone like Obama to have the guts and integrity to bring this up either.

No, the problem is that hardly anyone brings this up. Jews don’t bring it up because, unlike the Palestinians, they don’t harp on past grievances to the point of their own debilitation.  The Arabs don’t bring it up because why should they air their own dirty laundry?  And if the Jews and the Arabs aren’t bringing it up, why should the rest of the world, right?

So, why is it a problem?  For the simple reason that this huge detail in the history of Jewish-Arab relations actually becomes a critical factor when assessing the claims of the Palestinians and assessing their status as “victims”.  When compared with what the Jews of Arab countries went through, it is entirely unacceptable to still call Palestinians “victims” to this day when the Jews, suffering from a harsher blow, picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and went on to create the most advanced country in the region in the shortest span of time.

In fact, the “Jewish Naqba” was in many ways much worse than that of the Palestinians—in scope, in lives, in lost wealth, in lost homes, and in displaced people.  See Tom Gross’s Mideast Dispatch on The Jewish Naqba for a really eye-opening look at just how much Jews suffered at the hands of the Arabs long before the Arabs’ “Israel excuse” was even born.

And yet, the Palestinians are still there, still in their refugee camps. Why? Because while the Jews all rushed to help one another resettle and recover and grow, the Arabs did just the opposite: they refused to help the Palestinians, refused to give them citizenship in their countries, and preferred to keep them helpless and impoverished if only to be able to hold them up to the world as an example of “Israeli Occupation”.

So, what started as several hundred thousand refugees leaving their homes in Israel at the urging of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt (who, via radio announcements, told the all Palestinians in Israel to leave so that Israel can be properly invaded and destroyed)… has now become millions of “refugees” (most of whom never lived in Israel themselves) still languishing in squalid refugee camps for the sole purpose of making Israel look bad. In the meantime, their rich, fat Sheikh cousins with billions of dollars bemoan their sorry “plight” from the confines of their luxurious palaces while doing nothing more to lift a finger than to comdemn Israel at every opportunity.

So, if we really want to bury the hatchet with the Muslim world and point out the fallacy of their view of America as anti-Muslim (as Obama was right to do), then we should also bring up the fallacy of their view of the Palestinians as victims when, after more than half a century, they passed up on every opportunity for improving their lives and instead embraced terrorism wholeheartedly along with an entire culture of death—something hard to reconcile with a “victim status”.