Countering Lies About Hezbollah

Repost from the old site.

Ever since the Lebanon War last summer between Hezbollah and Israel, much nonsense has been written about this organization, much of it from Zionists and US imperialists in the press. It is time for a rational overview.

Lie: Hezbollah is the puppet of Iran and Syria.

Not true! Is Israel the puppet of the US? Well, the US supports Israel, right? Despite the US support, Israel is not the puppet of the US. Israel does what it damned well wants. Well, yes, Hezbollah gets support from Syria and Iran, but they don’t take orders from them anymore than Israel takes orders from America.

In truth, Hezbollah does what it wants. Iran was probably informed before Hezbollah started this war, but that’s about it. And Hezbollah’s autonomy from Syria is well-documented. Syria uses Hezbollah to keep up the pressure on Israel, not because they want to kill all the Jews, like insane Zionists insist, but because they want the Golan Heights back.

Iran supports Hezbollah in order to support Shia power in the region, and because Hezbollah’s leadership supports the Iranian revolution and because Iran hates Israel.

Lie: The Lebanon War was started by Iran to take the heat off its nuclear program.

Not true! It looks like Hezbollah started the war on its own in order to try to win back some Lebanese that Israel has been holding captive for a long time.

But they had no idea that the war would go this way. They thought it would just be a few days of shelling back and forth and then they would get down to some hard bargaining. They were totally taken by surprise by Israel’s response.

Lie: Hezbollah “started the war”.

Well, yes, Hezbollah conducted a cross-border raid, killed and wounded some Israelis, then grabbed some captives and took them back to Lebanon.

But to place all of the responsibility for the resulting war in which Israel destroyed Lebanon is insane. Israel’s wild response was part of a war that they had been planning for over a year, in concert with the US, and the war was conducted by both the US and Israel.

In fact, Ehud Olmert has recently given testimony in Israel that he had been planning this war for months along with the neocons in the Bush Administration. The Israeli military already had advanced plans for this war that they had developed with Ariel Sharon.

The neocons were trying to use the war against Hezbollah as an excuse to attack Syria, but Israel would not take the bait. They wanted to go after Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran. Since Iran could not be hit itself, the second best option was to go after Syria. The apparent purpose was to weaken Iran’s allies Syria and Hezbollah prior to an attack on Iran itself.

This explains why both the US and Israel have been refusing to deal with Syria’s increasingly desperate efforts to negotiate a settlement on the Golan Heights (Syria is even willing to turn the Golan into a “peace park” and give Israelis free access to visit it.

Since this war, logically, Syria has been edgy, and has been building up its forces along the border with Israel. But in the crazy paranoid Israeli mindset, this is seen as Syria preparing for a (in my opinion, an obviously suicidal) war with Israel. Even the distinguished Martin Van Creveld, Israel’s top military historian, has bought into this nonsense.

What will stop the upcoming Syrian war? Let’s ask Van Creveld. Only a US attack on Iran. What will hasten it? A US withdrawal from Iraq and a US refusal to attack Iran. We can see the twisted Israeli thinking. If the US does what Israel wants, the nonexistent war can be prevented. If the US acts against Israel’s wishes in the region, the fake war can be prevented.

Lie: Hezbollah is an insane terrorist group that is dedicated to killing all the Jews.

Jews just love this one, since so many of them are afflicted with a paranoid-masochistic character that just eats this stuff up. It’s not true.

Hezbollah is not opposed to a Jewish state, they just don’t like that Jews stole Palestine, which they did. Lebanon is a Lebanese nationalist organization. They mobilized to fight Israel when Israel annexed South Lebanon. Ten years of guerrilla war won it back for Hezbollah and Lebanon and Hezbollah were the heroes of Lebanese nationalists.

Hezbollah is now fighting to get back the Shebaa Farms, Lebanese land that Israel occupies and refuses to give back to Lebanon on some very phony grounds. They have also made some noises about three or four Lebanese Shia villages that Israel conquered, ethnically cleansed and annexed in the 1948 War.

Many of the people in the South, where many Palestinians live in refugee camps, and people have lived through numerous conflicts with Israel, really hate Israel, and understandably so. So here for an overview of the people’s views of Israel.

Hezbollah has said that if the Palestinians accept Israel for a Palestinian state, Hezbollah will stand by that. Unfortunately, Hezbollah’s leaders have made some lamentable anti-Semitic remarks and it is disgusting that they call one of their missiles “Khaibar” in reference to the Khaibar tribe of Jews who had their men killed and their women enslaved by Mohammad.

Lie: Hezbollah are radical fundamentalist Muslims, like Al Qaeda.

Not so! At the beginning, Hezbollah laid down Islamic Law in south Lebanon but over time they found that it was not going over well, so since 1990 or so, they have lifted most of their restrictions.

At the time, Hezbollah banned alcohol and forced women to wear headcovers. Both of those bans have now been lifted by Nasrallah. However, Hezbollah still arrests homosexuals and turns them over the Lebanese police, since I believe that homosexuality is illegal in Lebanon. They may beat some of them too.

The Shia in particular seem to take a hard line against homosexuality, as the Iranian regime and the Iraq Shia have really persecuted gay men. The Iranians mostly beat them up, harass them and send them to jail for short stays. The Iraqi Shia have also been beating them, but apparently they have also killed quite a few gay men.

The Shia doing this include the Dawa and SCIRI parties that the US supports in Iraq. Hezbollah’s supporters include many liberated females, I saw a video on Youtube of Lebanese women without hijabs driving a car and smoking cigarettes, then doing a belly dance, all the while saying how they supported Hezbollah.

Hezbollah rallies have included quite a few beautiful young women without hijabs, and many have been dressed racily. Josh Landis tells of how during the Lebanese Civil War, when Hezbollah took over a district, they imposed Islamic Law, but it went over so poorly that they soon rescinded most of it.

Lie: Well, at least Iran is a radical fundamentalist state like Al Qaeda.

Nor is Iran. Women have many more rights in Iran than they do in the Gulf. The dress code is loosely adhered to and the religious police no longer bother mixed couples. Fredericks of Hollywood stores dot Tehran.

Middle class and upper middle class young people are engaging in lots of promiscuous sex and not much is being done to stop them. One of Iran’s top race car drivers is a woman. There are many women in Parliament and most or all professions are open to women. Compare to Saudi Arabia where only 5% or so of women are even employed.

Alcohol, marijuana and especially opium are widely consumed at parties and not much is done about that. Prostitution is widespread, especially in the religious city of Qom, where they serve the religious students. There, throngs of young women meet men and go before mullahs to get a temporary marriage in order to have sex.

The temporary marriage is merely a cover for prostitution. There is so much prostitution in Tehran that the religious leadership has suggested having official houses for them, all under the banner of temporary marriage. The religious leadership has also recognized transsexualism and one of the top mullahs is a transsexual.

Temporary marriage is widespread, and a famous Iranian female parliamentarian has had sexual relationships with many men, including top mullahs, under this rubric and has written about it. Also, Iran is much more democratic than most of the Sunni regimes, and this is one of the things that the Sunni regimes fear most about Iran.

Supporters of this theory can always come up with this or that atrocity to demonstrate how Iran is an Al Qaeda-like state, but the truth is more complicated than that.

Lie: Hezbollah has savagely persecuted the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army.

After Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, most people expected that there would be widespread paybacks for the South Lebanese Army (most of whom were Shia, not Maronites as it is commonly thought.

In fact, after Israel withdrew, Hezbollah issued a directive forbidding any attacks on the South Lebanon Army members, many of whom just went home. Quite a few others defected over to Israel.

That’s pretty amazing, considering that the French Resistance executed 10,000 “traitors” during World War 2. It’s also highly untypical behavior for a “terrorist” group.

Lie: Hezbollah is a terrorist group.

Well, for the most part it is a Lebanese resistance organization, and the vast majority of its attacks are against Israeli military targets.

It’s true that during the war, they fired rockets at Israeli cities and killed some civilians, but many of those attacks were actually aimed at strategic targets like arms factories and military bases that Israel cynically put right in the middle of Arab towns, so that if they enemy attacked, they would kill a lot of Arabs by accident.

On the other hand, Israel killed far more civilians in this war, and somehow avoided the “terrorist” label. Isn’t that kind of unfair?

Lie: Hezbollah and Iran are out to kill or convert all the Sunnis and then attack and kill or convert all the infidels in a world war, after which everyone will be a Shia Muslim.

I could not believe that people actually believed that one, but I heard a number of (mostly) Zionists and US imperialists repeating this bit of Sunni paranoia.

On the Sunni conversion, see here. On the rest of it, forget it. Shia is the nigger of the (Muslim) World. The relationship between Sunni and Shia is similar to that between Whites and Blacks during the Jim Crow South, with the Sunnis being the Whites and Shia being the Blacks.

The notion of Shia takeover is similar to fantasies of poor downtrodden Blacks taking over the South, or America. In Lebanon, the Shia say that the Sunnis used to only let them work as garbage collectors. Shia youngsters were routinely taunted and attacked by Sunni gangs in Beirut in the 1970′s.

Lie: Hezbollah gets Iranian money for schools and hospitals to brainwash Lebanese into supporting the terrorists.

No! The reason they do this is because to this day, the bigoted Lebanese government that the US supports provides almost zero money whatsoever for any kind of development whatsoever in South Lebanon.

This is the reality of Lebanon, and its always been this way. Someone has to do it, the government won’t, so Hezbollah steps in. Good for them!

Lie: Hezbollah is trying to take over Lebanon to make a fundamentalist Islamic state there.

Well, that is their stated intention. In the early days, they may have believed it.

In recent statements, Nasrallah has said that an Islamic state is only possible in Lebanon if the “vast majority”, meaning over 80% or so, or people support it. That is not likely any time in the near future, so the project is all but written off. Hezbollah is reckoning itself to Lebanese reality.

Lie: Lebanese Christians are poor, downtrodden and horribly persecuted by Muslims.

Nonsense. In fact, they have always run the country! This lie is spread by some of the Maronite fascists. In the late 1950′s, Marines landed in Lebanon to help preserve an election that the Christians stole.

The real cause of the Civil War was the Muslims wanting a fairer share of the pie that the Christians had unfairly dominated for far too long. The Christians are being forced to concede some of their excess power in Lebanon (though they still have most of the money and much of the political power) and this is why some of the Maronites are wailing so much about “persecution”.

Lie: The Lebanon War last year was between Israel and a group of terrorists called Hezbollah. Most other Lebanese were not involved or opposed Hezbollah.

As you can see here, Israel was fighting much more than Hezbollah in South Lebanon.

In the Battle of Aita Al Shaab, most of the village fought against Israel, under the leadership of Hezbollah, true, but most fighters were just “local militia” who were not actually Hezbollah fighters. Further, there was quite a bit of fighting from members of the Lebanese Communist Party. The Amal militia fought against Israel too.

Truth is, Israel was essentially fighting a war against the people of South Lebanon. It’s true that a certain amount of that resistance was Hezbollah, but much of it was just local militia fighting for their homes and towns.

In the town of Marjayoun, during the Civil War the headquarters of the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army, Israel came under attack soon after they entered the town by members of Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). Most of the members of this party are Greek Orthodox.

In fact, it may be the most popular political party among Lebanese Greek Orthodox. In the Sunni villages, the local Muslim Brotherhood and another fundamentalist group organized an armed resistance.

Furthermore, 80-90% of Lebanese supported Hezbollah during the war, including 80% of Christians. The sickening US media deliberately lied about this, making much of the tiny minority of Lebanese who opposed Hezbollah, acting like they were the majority, and trying to portray the country as “divided”.

Lie: Hezbollah forces salute using “Nazi salutes”, so that means that Hezbollah idolizes and Nazis and wants to kill all the Jews just like Nazis did.

Much is made of this on Zionist and rightwing blogs and even in the mainstream press. See here and here for two examples. For more examples, see here, here and here.

In the last example, written by a militant Jewish Zionist named Lewis Loflin, although the photo on the right is of Hezbollah forces giving a “Nazi salute”, the photo on the right, which he states is of a Hamas fighter giving the Nazi salute, is actually of a PFLP fighter.

You can tell it is a PFLP fighter by the characteristic red headband and the poster and Ahmed Sa’adat, the present leader of the PFLP. Many people say that the PFLP is dead, but it is interesting how a dead organization could afford full uniforms, headbands, posters and automatic weapons.

This blog strongly supports the PFLP, and as leftists, I assure you that the mainstream PFLP does not like Nazis one bit.

The fact is that the “Nazi salutes used by Hezbollah fighters” is propaganda.

This is a type of salute which was originally known as the “Roman salute”. It has a fascinating history, and was widely used by many countries before World War II. Under the name “Bellamy salute” or “flag salute”, it used to be usual salute used when saying the US Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States. A photo of the Bellamy salute is here.

From Wikipedia:

Because of the similarity between the Bellamy salute and the Nazi salute, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted the hand-over-the-heart gesture as the salute to be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem in the United States, instead of the Bellamy salute.

The association with Nazism has been so strong that the salute has rarely been used by non-Nazi organizations since the end of World War II. There are several exceptions; one is the Republic of China (Taiwan), where the salute is still used during the swearing of oaths in inaugurations.

The salute is also still used by some Palestinian militant groups. It is also known to be used by the Tamil separatist organization, the LTTE, while saluting their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Lie: Hezbollah does not support Israel’s right to exist and therefore they want to wipe it off and map and kill all 5.1 million Jews there in the process.

Embedded in this clever argument is the notion that any nation or regime has any kind of inherent right to exist.

Did colonies and empires and occupied territories have a right to exist too? The very notion that any nation-state on Earth has some kind of a rock-solid “right” to exist is strange and counter-intuitive.

Sure, humans have a right to get together and make nations out of mapped out geographical parcels, but why does that mean that that nation has some kind of a laid in tone specific right to exist?

The fact is that throughout history, nations, empires and colonies have come and gone. The ones that no longer exist had no greater or lesser right to exist than any existing state does.
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Meanwhile, the US has initiated a very controversial plan to counter Shia influence in the region. The plan is being coordinated with Saudi Arabia, specifically Prince Bandar, who has a longstanding relationship with US Administrations, and possibly the Jordanian government, especially Jordanian intelligence.

They are working to arm and build up the pro-US Siniora government and stoke sectarianism in Lebanon.

Part of this plan, outrageously, has involved money given by the US, via the Siniora regime, to three Sunni Salafist groups who are pro-Al Qaeda. These groups are being armed in order to fight Hezbollah (since they loathe Shiites). If push comes to shove between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, these groups will be used to battle it out with Hezbollah.

Outrageously, the US is once again funding Al Qaeda, which shows that imperialism truly has no morals at all. See The Seymour Hersch’s The Redirection in the latest New Yorker magazine (video here).

The Saudis are racists who hate the Shia and want to keep them down. In fact, most of the Sunni Arab regimes are like this. They all look to the Ottoman Empire when the Sunnis ruled the roost and the Shia were kept down by force. This is the Sunni Jim Crow era that they long for.

It is outrageous that the US is supporting Sunni Jim Crow racism against the downtrodden Shia and it is particularly despicable that the Israeli Jews, considering the history of the Jews, are supporting the oppressor against the oppressed. Or maybe that is what Israel is all about?

“Is Israel Sovereign?” by Roy Tov

A very interesting article by Roy Tov asks a lot of interesting questions about Israel. I’m not completely sure what to make of all of these arguments, most of which center around legal notions, especially ideas dealing with international law. You are invited to read the article and comment on it if you can understand the concepts he is talking about here.

Roy Tov is an interesting fellow. An Israeli Jew who converted to Christianity and then left the country, he was attacked, apparently by Israeli operatives, where he was living in Bolivia. He suffered permanent damage to his throat and he can barely even speak anymore.

He is trying to get citizenship in a foreign country, preferably Iran, so Israeli agents can’t attack him anymore, but he has not been successful. He is currently being watched by Israeli operatives in Bolivia who work in concert with Bolivian police.

“This is another funny term from Political Sciences,” I told myself. After all, no self-defined sovereign state can decide that the sun would rise on the west tomorrow. In theological terms, the only possible sovereign is God. Yet, to make this argument clearer, I adopted the definitions used in Political Sciences texts and the media. A short definition of the term claims that sovereignty is the right to exercise the highest authority by the law within a territory.

The key point is the exclusivity of jurisdiction. When a decision is made by a sovereign entity, it cannot be overruled, in most cases, by any other authority.

The current notions of state sovereignty were defined in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, and include territorial integrity, border inviolability, and supremacy of the state rather than the Church; the sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority. Another significant change occurred by the end of the 18th Century, when the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Revolution of 1789 shifted the possession of sovereignty from the king to the people. However, how can such power be achieved?

There are two parameters that allow recognition of the existence of sovereignty: internal and external. Internal sovereignty refers to the relations between the sovereign and its own subjects; it deals with the question: by what right does the sovereign exercise authority over its subjects? In the past, the most common answer was by divine right. Nowadays, a social contract, like a Constitution, is the norm.

External sovereignty concerns the relationship between sovereign entities. Foreign governments recognize the sovereignty of a state over a territory and its denizens, or not. This parameter is not exact; in the near past, the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China claimed sovereignty over the same territory. Different countries adopted different answers on the issue.

This fluid definition of external sovereignty proves it is less valuable than internal sovereignty. Hence, the latter is de facto its defining property. A state can exist without external sovereignty, but it would fail without an internal one.

Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign possesses no territory or when its territory is under occupation by another sovereign entity. It happened to the Holy See during the annexation of the Papal States by Italy in 1870 and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, when it was recognized as a sovereign state and was granted Vatican City.

Since it lost Malta to Napoleon, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta rules only over two properties in Rome, but is widely recognized, and is even an observer at the UN. Occupied European countries during WWII were still recognized as sovereign states. Even under this strained condition, these entities kept their sovereignty because their subjects recognized it and fought for it.

If they had lost the people’s support during the occupation period, they would have been effectively terminated. This happened with many political entities during human history; under this test, the sovereignty awarded by the people has been proved as being more stable than the one relying on a king.

The latter disappears more easily, especially if the king and his heirs are killed in a war against other sovereign states. Thus, the key issue while testing sovereignty is its endorsement by the individuals comprising it.

In modern states, the acquisition of sovereignty by the state is defined by a social contract. This is often based on a single document, a constitution, which is ratified by the people, and later expanded into laws by a legislative body. This is the case with countries defined as democracies. Among these, the UK doesn’t have a constitution but has replaced it with a legal practice spanning several centuries.

Political power originates in the people. Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, “In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.” Thomas Jefferson said in 1799: “The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself.”

On November 29, 1947, Resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly decided to divide Palestine between Jews and Palestinians and this became the basis of the external recognition of the State of Israel by other sovereign entities.

On May 15, 1948, Israel’s Declaration of Independence was issued by a small group of people led by David Ben-Gurion. They didn’t have a formal and popular consent for that. Moreover, the declaration was never ratified by popular vote, though it was recognized by several states.

The new state never issued a social contract. Israel has no constitution and thus never ratified one. That means the State of Israel never got its people’s consent to be a sovereign entity, in other words, a state. The recent Basic Laws legislated by the Knesset—the Israeli Parliament—are a fig leaf. The state claims they are the basis for a future constitution.

However, they do not properly cover key issues like human rights, were subject to arbitrary changes due to needs of coalition governments, and were never ratified by the people. In a secondary issue, the entity doesn’t have a defined territory; there are neither internal nor external resolutions awarding the State of Israel a well defined territory.

A problem deriving from the latter is: Who are the sovereign’s subjects? Again, the State of Israel fails to fulfill the basic requisites to become a sovereign entity.

Under these circumstances, the external recognition of Israel is baseless; the recognition of other sovereigns, especially those defining themselves as democracies, of a non-ratified entity which has obviously not been invested by God, contradicts their own social contracts and thus would not stand a serious test.

The internal recognition of Israel is not an issue since it has never been ratified by its subjects. State propaganda over the local and international media cannot change the absolute fact that the State of Israel is not a sovereign entity.

Israel’s Independence Declaration was printed in an elegant fashion; but it has no legal value. Even its declarative value is questionable: it expresses only the opinion of those who signed it. They didn’t have the people’s mandate to do that and totally ignored the human rights issue, mainly because of Ben Gurion’s assessment that they needed the support of Orthodox Jews support to form a stable coalition government.

The latter recognized only the Talmud and related texts as a basis for the legal system; yet, the Talmud and the Mishna are not compatible with modern definitions of human rights. However, the main reason it is void of value, is that the state itself denies it.

In the eyes of the State of Israel authorities, one of the problems of the declaration is that it promises: “freedom, justice and peace,” “complete social and national equal rights to all its citizens without difference of religion, race or gender,” and “securing freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture, will keep the Holy Places of all religions and will be faithful to the United Nations.”

These are uncomfortable promises. Until now, all the Israeli governments were based upon coalitions that included political parties that couldn’t agree to some of these promises. The main problems were imposed always by the Ultra Orthodox Jewish parties, like Agudat Israel and Shas.

Avoiding the problem, the Knesset claims the declaration is neither a law nor an ordinary legal document. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the declaration contains guiding principles, that it is not binding constitutional law. Nowadays, Knesset laws are enforced even if they are inconsistent with the principles in the Declaration of Independence.

Placed in an uncomfortable position on the international arena, the Knesset legislated two basic laws—the Human Dignity and Liberty and Freedom of Occupation ones—stating that “fundamental human rights in Israel will be honored.” However, these laws fail to give an exact definition.

Another landmine in the independence declaration is the claim that Israel will be faithful to the UN principles; this is another reason for the formal institutions of the State of Israel to be declared void of legal value. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine into a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. Special areas, like Jerusalem, would be under the direct administration of the UN.

An overlooked part of that decision was a formal minority rights protection system. The protection was to be enforced by the UN and the International Court of Justice. Thus, twice in the declaration, Israel promises to be nice to the minorities; once explicitly by promising equality and second implicitly by promising to be faithful to the UN, which promised protection to those minorities.

Subsequently, Israel claimed these minority rights were constitutionally embodied as the fundamental law of the state of Israel through the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, and various letters addressed to the Secretary General.

These assurances were the basis for the General Assembly Resolution 273 (III) Admission of Israel to membership in the United Nations, from May 11, 1949. Reality was different. One irregularity—the lack of a formal constitution or any other social contract—gave birth to another.

The Law of Return gives automatic and immediate citizenship to every Jew arriving in Israel. A Jew is defined in that law as a person born Jewish (with a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother), with a Jewish ancestry (with a Jewish father or grandfather) or a convert to Orthodox Judaism (Reform and Conservative converts are recognized only if performed outside the State of Israel, Messianic Jews are rejected).

The basis for this racist law is what is known as “jus sanguinis” in Latin, namely the “Blood Law.” In ancient times, it was used to attribute citizenship on the basis of family relations. However, the Law of Return denies citizenship to Jews who have converted out of their free will. Did their blood change during the conversion process?

Later, the law was amended to include non-Jewish relatives of Jews, but it never recognized the Right of Return of other ancestral denizens of the land that were expelled during the wars: the Palestinians. For them, “jus sanguinis” does not exist. Again, that is despite the earlier promises of equality. In a related discrimination, the Arab citizens of the State of Israel were under military government until 1966, while the Jewish citizens were not.

An important point to keep in mind is that the Israeli citizens, regardless of their ethnic background and religion, were never allowed to give their opinion. This discriminating principle was never put to the democratic test. Due to its importance to the nature of the Israeli society, it should have been.

The Law of Return gives citizenship to Jews arriving in Israel. However, an intrinsic flaw accompanies it: “Who is a Jew?” “If your mother was, or…” is the argument presented by that law to answer the question. However, they have created only a recursive trap; the same question would apply to the testifier of one’s “Jewishness,” ad infinitum. Who would testify for King David’s mother?

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which is part of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs and is most of the time controlled by Ultra Orthodox Jewish parties, has been the authority deciding on “Who is a Jew?” until now due to coalitional considerations, but this is a questionable practice. Non-Orthodox religious Jews do not accept it, because the Ultra-Orthodox refuse to recognize their conversions.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that conversions performed by the latter outside Israel must be recognized, but those inside Israel not. What? Is one’s religion dependent on geographical issues? Absurd as it seems, eleven out of twelve of the most respected judges in Israel claimed that one’s conscience on the issue is irrelevant; your religion may be defined by your trajectory upon earth. They claimed that and are still considered wise; moreover, a whole country abides by this rule.

The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law from 2003 places age restrictions for the automatic granting of Israeli citizenship and residency permits to spouses of Israeli citizens, such that spouses who are inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are ineligible. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination unanimously approved a resolution stating that this law violated an international human rights treaty against racism.

The decision was adopted because this law disproportionately affects Israeli Arabs, since they are far more likely to have spouses from the West Bank and Gaza Strip than other Israeli citizens. Yet, Israel continues to claim it is a democratic country securing the rights of minorities. Again, Israel just ignores its own commitments towards its citizens and the international community.

When considering the Law of Return, then the parallel Palestinians’ right must also be assessed. This Right of Return was defined by the UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Article 11 of that resolution states:

“Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

Judging by the results, it seems that Israel’s Independence Declaration promise to be faithful to the UN does not include uncomfortable resolutions.

This right has since then been ratified several times. The 1974 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3236, recognizes the Palestinian people’s right to self determination, and makes the contacts between the United Nations and the Palestine Liberation Organization official. It also states that it: “Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.”

Again, Israel just ignores its own commitments towards its citizens and the international community. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights claims that: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”

Israel ignores that.

“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country,” says the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Israel ignores that. Simply, the Palestinians are not Jews, and thus are not recognized by the Law of Return. The Talmud teaches in Baba Bathra Folio 54b that non-Jews have no property rights. Their possessions are “like unclaimed land in the desert.” The passage appears on page 222 of the Soncino edition: “Rab Judah said in the name of Samuel: The property of a heathen is on the same footing as desert land; whoever first occupies it acquires ownership.”

Doesn’t the occupation of Palestine appear now in a new light?

On the other hand, Israel accepted massive numbers of non-Jews during various Aliyah waves. The most remarkable one was during the 1990’s when over a million people entered from the former USSR to Israel under the protection of the Law of Return. Orthodox sources claimed that well over a hundred thousand of them were Christians seeking to leave their former Communist state.

I have enjoyed underground Christmas meals with some of them; underground because openly celebrating the Prince of Peace is forbidden in Israel.

In another impossible angle of the Israeli reality, settlers in the West Bank live next to Palestinians. I have visited both. The Palestinians are void of citizenship, cannot move freely and cannot even marry their beloved ones if these are Israeli citizens (one case reached the Supreme Court in 2006 and the sublime and wise judges rejected the marriage).

The settlers are outside the territory of the State of Israel, yet they enjoy all the regular rights of an Israeli citizen. In my exiled location, I cannot vote for the Israeli Parliament because it is not within Israel; yet, the settlers can vote and marry whoever they want. This is discrimination and racism hiding under claims of democracy and equality.

Israel plays a double game. Towards its citizens, it claims the Declaration of Independence is not a binding document, but to the UN it states otherwise. The State of Israel is faithful neither to the UN nor to its citizens. The promise in the Declaration to create a Constitution for the new state is ignored.

Israel failed to fulfill the basic requirements for achieving sovereignty. It purposely failed the external requirements towards the UN, which provided the initial external recognition, and failed in its proposed social contract towards its citizens. I used the word “proposed,” because it was never properly ratified and because Israel does not have a constitution even now.

If these irregularities were all the existing problems, many would be tempted to say: “Let it be, there are more serious things in life than an illegally founded country.” However, as it has been shown, the list of violations goes on and on.

Israel openly breaks the condition upon which it was recognized as sovereign by the UN, and has not been awarded sovereignty by its own citizens, through a social contract. Hence, Israel cannot be considered a sovereign entity. Such a situation opens the possibility for an international force to enforce human rights in the area. Technically, the State of Israel cannot object to that because it does not exist as a legally sovereign entity.

The international community and the UN should also adopt a clear policy for such rogue states; until now we see enforcement in some cases (Iraq) or apathy in others (Pol Pot’s Cambodia). People must be free to choose their own future. If the UN was faithful to its declared goals, it would apply equal policies everywhere on the globe.

One of the characteristics of sovereignty is territory, though it is not an essential one. However, the vast majority of what we call “sovereign entities” does have a territory, even if only a small one like the Holy See and the Order of Malta do. If we are considering territory, then implicitly we are also considering borders. What is the situation of Israel’s borders?

These were established by the British Mandate of 1922, and were based on the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916; which divided the Ottoman Empire territories in the Middle East between the UK and France. However, things have changed since then.

The borders with Egypt and Jordan have been formalized in the peace agreements with these countries in 1979 and 1994 respectively. They gave up the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, creating an undefined border between Israel and Palestine (the last being represented by the Palestinian Authority).

The border with Lebanon was based on the 1949 Armistice Agreement, though Israel had several times ignited tensions along an area known as the Shabaa Farms on the former border between Lebanon and Syria. In the year 2000, the UN defined what is known as the Blue Line as the IDF retreat border; this is different from the Green Line, which marks the 1949 Armistice Agreement line.

In this respect, there is some ambiguity also along this border. The borders with Syria are not settled. Israel still occupies the Golan Heights. It even annexed them unilaterally in 1981. There is no formal Israeli decision on the country’s borders. Israel has no Constitution, so the borders cannot be defined there. There is no other formal government or general referendum decision concerning the country’s borders. That is exceptional and must have some repercussions on other areas of life.

Unluckily, it didn’t demand a Herculean effort from my side to find the result of that.

The question “Who is a Jew?” is a key issue in modern Israel. However, no less valuable is asking: “Who is a citizen?” This is a question with no clear answer in Israel.

Only citizens within the State of Israel are allowed to vote for the parliament. But the state has no defined borders, so what is a legal vote? A settler living in the West Bank is even by the State of Israel’s definition outside the state borders. Yet, he is allowed to vote and gets social benefits; at the same time, another Israeli citizen living in Egypt or Greece or the US does not have these benefits. This is an outstanding mystery.

A Palestinian with Israeli citizenship living in Jaffa cannot marry a Palestinian from Jenin in the West Bank. Marriage is a basic human right, though not in the eyes of the Israeli Supreme Court. This is a geographical mystery.

A Jew converted to Christianity and married to a Christian woman in a church wouldn’t get his marriage recognized by the state. His bastard sons would not enjoy the social benefits normal children in the country enjoy, unless he marries outside Israel and returns with the happy bride. This is another mystery, though I admit judges are smarter than lesser humans. No normal human can follow the logic of such a decision.

The truth is that I have no wish to solve these mysteries. Israel must adopt international standards of law and a constitution as it promised the UN in exchange for the recognition of its sovereignty. Otherwise, having broken the UN resolution and having failed to sign a social contract with its citizens, it has no right to exist as a sovereign country.

“Into the Fray: A Study in Self-Cannibalization,” by Martin Sherman

A very interesting article from the Jerusalem Post. The author is in all probability a Jew, as Sherman is a Jewish name. I don’t like the JP much, but the article is correct. I am by and large a political liberal, at least here in the US. Certainly I do not wish to see non-Muslim societies taken over by Muslims whereby Islamic Law is imposed. Sharia is completely opposed to my liberalism and even my Leftism. Even in a totalitarian Leftist state (dictatorship of the proletariat), I could not see putting in Islamic Law. Indeed, the USSR wiped out all traces of Sharia from its legal code, even in Republics and autonomous regions that were majority Muslim. China has also eliminated Sharia in its Muslim majority provinces.

Now, if Muslim states wish to live under Sharia, I think that is pretty terrible, but there is nothing that I can do about it. They can live however they want to in their sandboxes. However, when Muslims come to the West, they need to live under our secular laws. There is no place for Sharia for the Muslim minorities of the West. And importing large numbers of Muslims into the West seems to be a catastrophe. There have not been many problems here in the US yet, but there have been untold problems in Europe.

Finally, just because we on the Left don’t think that Islam or Sharia is good, does not mean that the Jews in Israel have a right to steal the Palestinians’ land and settle Jewish colonists on it. Muslims have a right to be protected from land theft and settler colonialism just like anyone else. On the other hand, I do not think that the Jews presently in Israel should have to be ruled by Muslims or live under Sharia or Muslim type laws. I don’t know what the solution is here.

Also, we Christians should keep in mind that 18% of the people that the Jews stole land from were us Christians.

Into the Fray: A Study in Self-Cannibalization

By Martin Sherman

Over a century ago, Churchill warned that Western civilization will face an existential challenge from the Muslim world. It is now upon us.

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

- W. R. Inge, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1915

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

– Karl Popper, “On the Paradox of Tolerance,” in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945

Many Western Europeans, from the man on the street to the cop on the corner, from the politician in Parliament to the immigration official at the border, have long considered it their obligation… to tolerate intolerance.

– from “Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe,” Partisan Review, 2002.

Across the Western world today, political liberalism is undergoing a process of self-cannibalization. It is being devoured by the very values which made it into arguably the most successful and influential sociopolitical doctrine in modern history.

At the very minimum, it is being complicit in actively facilitating its own demise though an unrestrained and undiscerning compulsion to apply these values universally – even when such application is not only inappropriate but detrimental to those values.

Acknowledging Diversity Is…Diverse

Devotees of political liberalism fervently advocate – quite correctly – the need to acknowledge the diversity of humanity and to accept the existence of those different from us, i.e., the “Other.”

However, they then go on to advocate – with equal fervor – something that in effect empties the previous acknowledgment of all significance, i.e., that we relate to all the diverse “Others” as equals.

For what is the point of acknowledging diversity if we are called upon to ignore the possible ramifications of that diversity and to relate to those discernibly different from us as if they were essentially the same as us? Prima facie, this is absurdly self-contradictory.

For surely the awareness of difference raises the possibility that different attitudes (and actions) toward the “Other” may be called for.

Although acknowledging diversity necessarily negates equality, this does not a priori mean that “Ours” is morally superior to “Theirs” – although the plausible assumption is that “We” have a subjective preference for “Ours” over “Theirs.”

This, of course, might entail certain practical ramifications for the preservation of “Ours” lest it be consumed by “Theirs” – depending on “Their” appetites and aspirations.

‘Us’ As An Item On ‘Their’ Menu

As the foregoing citation from W.R. Inge underscores, it would be injudicious to relate to carnivores and herbivores with an undiscriminating sense of egalitarianism. Indeed, if one is not mindful of the differences between oneself and the “Other” (say with regard to dietary preferences or predatory predilections), disaster may well be unavoidable.

Note that making such a diagnosis of difference does not necessarily imply a value judgment as to the relative moral merits of eating flesh or eating grass. However, operationally, it is a distinction that is essential for the preservation of grass-grazers and – and no less pointedly – for the shepherd charged with their welfare.

For no matter how sympathetic to, or appreciative of, the untamed majesty of predators one might be, the fate of the flock is likely to be grim if it is left to graze in wolf frequented territory with nothing more coercive to protect it than an appeal for understanding.

Now while I do not wish to push Inge’s ovine-lupine analogy too far, those who would dismiss it as overly facile would do well to recall that political liberalism has faced several challenges in the last century from adversaries which could plausibly be viewed as predatory.

It has had to contend with ideologies that were totalitarian, expansionary and irreconcilably inimical to its core values of sociocultural tolerance and individual liberty.

The ‘Other’ As…‘Other’

There was, for example, the kinetic clash with Nazism and the ideological clash with Communism. Political liberalism withstood them and prevailed.

It is facing another fateful encounter in this century: The existential clash with Islamism – a foe not less totalitarian, no less expansionary and no less irreconcilably inimical to its core values.

It is far from certain that this time it will prevail.

The major source of peril today is the reluctance – indeed the resolute refusal – to acknowledge the emerging threat. True, there were sympathizers in the West for both the Nazi and Soviet causes, which although they viewed themselves as antithetically adversarial to each other, both strove to eliminate our democratic freedoms and way of life.

However, the denial we are witnessing today seems qualitatively different. Leading liberal opinion-makers in mainstream intellectual establishment appear totally incapable of conceiving (or at least, totally unwilling to acknowledge that they are capable of conceiving) of the “Other” as anything but a darker skin-toned version of themselves – with perhaps somewhat more exotic tastes in dress and a greater penchant for spicy food, but with essentially the same value system as theirs, or at least one not significantly incompatible with it.

Indeed, there seems to be an overriding inability to admit the possibility that the “Other” is in fact fundamentally different – i.e., genuinely “Other” – and may hold entirely different beliefs as to what is good and bad, what is legitimate and what is not.

A Catastrophic Corruption of the Discourse

It is of little practical consequence whether this is the product of an overbearing intellectual arrogance, which precludes the possibility of any alternative value system, or of an underlying moral cowardice, which precludes the will to defend the validity of one’s own value system.

The result is the ongoing retreat from the defense of liberty and tolerance in the face of an ever-emboldened, intolerant Muslim militancy – not only across the Islamic world but within the urban heart of many Western nations as well.

Even more serious, it has undermined the capacity for honest debate, for accurate assessment of strategic geopolitical shifts… and for formulating timely and effective responses to deal with them.

Take the Arab Spring, for example, which much of the mainstream media heralded as the dawning of a new spirit of freedom and enlightenment from the Maghreb to the Persian Gulf. Almost a year since it began, the results are hardly cause for optimism. In Tunisia and Libya, Islamist governments have been ensconced by popular vote. In other countries, such as in Egypt, the religious fundamentalists has been hugely empowered; in yet others, such as Syria and Bahrain, similar outcomes have only been avoided – so far – by wholesale massacres.

Nothing that has occurred – or been prevented from occurring – seems to vaguely justify the rosy forecast that accompanied the initial stages of revolt as to the imminent emergence of Arab regimes founded on values and systems analogous to those of Western democracy.

None of this should have been unexpected.

The facts were available for anyone willing to recognize them. On the verge of the Arab Spring (December 2011), the respected Pew Research Center conducted a survey of popular opinion in several Muslim countries.

The two countries included in the poll with relevance for the Arab Spring were Egypt and Jordan. In both, massive majorities (over 70 percent on average for Jordan and over 80% for Egypt) supported:

• execution by stoning for adultery;
• whippings or amputation of hands for theft and robbery;
• the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion.

This then was the broad-based value system of the masses who drove the popular uprisings across the Arab world, despite the external trappings of modernity, despite the tweets, the smart phones and the social network connections.

It is a safe bet that had such a poll been conducted in the EU, North America or Australasia, the findings would have been radically different.

So perhaps it is time that we begin to recognize that the “Other” really is the “Other.”

Orwellian Mind-control Tactics

The politically correct endeavor to shy away from harsh truths has introduced an almost Orwellian atmosphere of 1984 mind control into the debate on the ramifications of Islam for political liberalism.

Pronouncements almost on a par with the “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength” employed by The Party to control the dystopian state of Oceania in George Orwell’s classic novel of pervasive dictatorship are emerging with disturbing frequency.

For example, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in effect pronounced that “religious fundamentalism is secular” when he characterized the radical Muslim Brotherhood as an organization that is “largely secular.”

A similar instance of convoluted, nonsensical gobbledygook came from the Obama administration’s homeland security adviser James O. Brennan, when he made the astounding claim that accurately defining the threat would exacerbate it: “Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists, because jihad is a holy struggle. [C]haracterizing our adversaries this way would actually be counterproductive,” he said.

So by reorganizing the rhetoric we will somehow dispel the misperceptions, from which the planners/perpetrators of wholesale carnage in the name of Islam apparently suffer, as to the sources of their beliefs and the nature of their motivations?

But perhaps the pinnacle of Orwellian endeavor came from then-British home secretary Jacqui Smith, who took it upon herself to bring home to radicalized UK Muslims that they were not who they thought they were. In a breathtaking stroke of self-contradictory double talk, she presumed to dub the acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamists in the name of Islam as “anti-Islamic activity.”

Her 2009 interview with Der Spiegel was shockingly reminiscent of the “mind control through language” policy employed by Orwell’s Big Brother and his omnipresent Party.

Clearly in an intellectual climate such as this – where truth is condemned and dismissed as politically incorrect hate speech – no effective response can be marshaled against the gathering storm facing Western civilization and the values of political liberalism that underpin it.

Menace of Muhammadanism: Prescient Premonitions

Such reticence and evasion was not always prevalent. In an era long before political correctness crippled the ability to articulate the truth in the public sphere, far-sighted men warned of the impending clash.

Thus seven decades ago, Hilaire Belloc, the prominent Anglo-French writer and historian, raised the trenchant question:

Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Muhammadan world… reappear again as the prime enemy of our civilization? (The Great Heresies, 1938)

He was not alone in his sense of foreboding.

In the first edition of his The River War, published in 1899, Winston Churchill set out a withering critique of the effect Islam has on its followers, its debilitating effect on economies of nations that embrace it, and the enslavement of its luckless women.

While he admits that “individual Muslims may show splendid qualities,” he contrasts this with realities on collective level, where “the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.”

Few who page through the latest Arab Human Development Report sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and independently authored by intellectuals and scholars from Arab countries would dispute this today.

Churchill goes on to warn:

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Muhammadanism is a militant and proselytizing faith…and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science…the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

But how long will the West remain “cradled in the strong arms of science?” Might this question not help concentrate minds over the latest IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program?

Epilogue

Let me conclude with the observations of a gay intellectual regarding the propagation of Islam in Europe, where private Islamic academies – subsidized by European governments – “reinforce the Koran-based…morality learned at home that prescribes severe penalties for female adulterers and rape victims (though not necessarily for rapists), and that demands… that homosexuals be put to death.”

With some foreboding, he remarks:

If fundamentalist Muslims in Europe do not carry out these punishments, it is not because they’ve advanced beyond such thinking, but because they don’t have the power.

120 Syrian Military Killed in Jisr Al Shoughur

Amazing news. Syria seems to be slipping into civil war.

120 security forces dead and 35 opposition members killed. Rebels reportedly number in the 1000′s and are armed with RPG’s and automatic weapons. The biased Western news is casting doubt on the figures, saying that the government ginned them up to justify a crackdown. But the figures appear to be valid. Attacks included an ambush on police, the blowing up of a post office and rebel snipers on rooftops.

Nine tanks were destroyed, and 2 helicopters were downed. All of the government buildings in town were burned to the ground. Monday night they seized the army’s explosive stores near the dams on the Orontes River. They used these to blow up dams over the river that link central and southern Syria. This will prevent tanks from moving into the area to put down the uprising.

On Internet sites, supporters of the regime (there are many, many of them) are furious about the soldiers being killed and are demanding blood. Meanwhile, opposition supporters are cheered.

This purely Sunni Arab city is right near the Turkish border and the rebels got the weapons smuggled in from Turkey. The fighters are 100% made of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The MB has had decades of military experience in fighting the Syrian regime. They even had training camps in Iraq for a time. Many have since gone on to become a major faction in Al Qaeda.

In fact, this is how Al Qaeda developed. After the crackdowns against the MB in Egypt and Syria around 1980, many Egyptian and Syrian MB members fled their countries for various places. Many went to Saudi Arabia, often as religious teachers. There, their militant stance mixed with Wahhabi theology (at that point, mostly quietist) to produce a potent brew. This is what led to Al Qaeda.

When talking of Al Qaeda, it is sometime said, “All roads lead to the Ikhwan.” The Ikhwan is the MB, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. The MB is also big in Jordan, but they are mostly quietist there. The Palestinian MB is actually Hamas, but Hamas does not like to discuss that because the MB is not popular in Palestine.

The relationship between the MB and Al Qaeda and other such groups is very complex. Obviously, many MB members are not supporters of Al Qaeda, much less members. MB groups do not openly support Al Qaeda. But the MB is like an incubation tube where jihadis fester for a while before they move to Al Qaeda. Furthermore, MB members flow in and out of Al Qaeda, and AQ members flow in and out of MB, and nobody much discusses this in either organization.

The MB is a huge organization, and obviously most are not jihadis. But the MB is always spinning off small numbers of jihadis that move on to groups like Al Qaeda.

I hope I explained that well enough.

Chaos in Syria

Anti-regime demonstrations in Syria have been going on for about six weeks now, and things are really getting out of control. An excellent resource on all things Syrian is Syria Comment, by Joshua Landis. He doesn’t take a particularly pro- or anti-regime stance. Instead, he’s pretty unbiased.

The demonstrations began at a town called Daraa in the far south of Syria near the Jordanian border. They may have been about economics. The Syrian government has been planting a lot of wheat in the area near the town, and I believe the project was drying up people’s wells. The Syrian state reacted harshly to the demonstations, and a number of people were killed.

Demos then started springing up in some other places. The city of Homs in central Syria has been the center of a lot of protests. It’s a mostly Sunni city in the north. Hama, the city where the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 1982 was so brutally crushed by Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s father, killing 30,000 people, apparently has little appetite for another round. There have been demos of various sizes in most large Syrian cities and in some towns too. They have even occurred in Damascus.

After the Daraa killings, Assad announced some major changes. He fired the governor of the province that Daraa is situated in, announced municipal elections for many Syrian cities, granted citizenship to 300,000 stateless Kurds in the north of Syria, freed many old political prisoners and hundreds arrested in the latest round of demos and announced that he was ending the hated Emergency Law that Syria has labored under since 1963.

Back then, Syria was highly unstable, with many armed local revolts and assassinations of government officials. At the same time, Assad announced a new law immediately effectively banning all new demos.

The Emergency Law gives the police very wide powers and is essentially martial law. It is widely hated in Syria and it makes no sense that it’s gone on for 48 years.

The Kurds were said to be illegal immigrants who arrived from Turkey sometime around 1950. Because they were illegals, they were denied citizenship in a cruel move. Many other Kurds were already citizens. The lack of citizenship was one of the major sticking points for violent Kurdish demos in recent years, centering around the city of Qamishli on the Turkish border. Getting rid of Emergency Law and giving citizenship to the Kurds were big moves.

After he did that. Assad basically said, “Ok, now no more demos.” But the demos have continued. The state has reacted brutally, many times opening fire in unarmed demonstrators or attacking them with club-wielding gangs of pro-regime thugs. Ambulances were prevented from taking the dead away, and the wounded were hauled out of hospital beds and taken away. Funerals have been fired on.

In response, the demonstrators have begun arming themselves and fighting back. The latest I heard was 90 casualties among the security forces, but I am not sure if that includes both dead and wounded. There are definitely about 40 security forces who have been killed.

All told, about 600 people have been killed since the demos started, at least 85% of them demonstrators, armed or not. It’s a great big bloody mess. In recent days, Assad has ramped up the crackdown, and some cities and towns have been surrounded by the army. Security forces make house to house raids in demonstration wracked cities, hauling lots of suspects away.

But the regime has a problem. The anti-regime forces are new and largely unknown, so the regime doesn’t have much intelligence on them, unlike the old opponents, who were widely known and kept under tight surveillance.

But all of the crackdowns just seem to be emboldening the demonstrators who are now furious about their friends and relatives being killed, injured or arrested. There have been shootouts in the army when units refused to fire on protestors. The recalcitrant troops were then fired on by other units. Some soldiers have reportedly been executed for refusing to fire on demonstrators.

The protesters are getting weapons from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.  There are indications that the Saudi government may be arming the protestors.

This is probably because the Shia Alawite government is probably widely hated by the Saudi Wahhabis. The Alawi are a highly heterodox sect of Shiism that incorporates elements of other religions, including pre-Islamic paganism, Judaism and Christianity. They don’t go to mosques and in fact they have no mosques to go to. They don’t go on hajj. They often don’t fast during Ramadan. Most Sunnis despise them as heretics and non-Muslims.

Most of those demonstrating against the regime are Sunnis. Sunnis are 70% of the population, but the Alawis, with 12% of the population, run the state. Christians are 10%, including many refugees from Iraq. There are also Ismailis, Druze and a tiny group of Jews. In general, the Alawi, Christians, Ismailis and Druze all support Assad.

They fear a total breakdown which will result in civil war. Civil war will no doubt turn into Islamic jihad just like in Iraq. Surely the Christians and Alawi will be slaughtered just like the Shia and Christians have been in Iraq. The Druze and Shia Ismailis also support the state and fear getting attacked in a civil war. The Syrian Jews have stated that they support Assad.

Any civil war will probably be sectarian, as in Iraq. The Sunnis will attack the Christians, the Alawi and probably the Ismaili and the Druze. It will probably be a horrific sectarian massacre as in Lebanon and Iraq. I don’t see how an anti-regime civil war, as in Libya, will not turn into a sectarian mess.

More and more Sunnis, even secular Sunnis, are turning against the state, especially in Homs. They are angry at Alawite rule. Further, the President’s family and friends have enriched themselves outrageously while cracking down harshly on the population. This was particularly the case in Homs. Sunnis are also probably angry at the Alawi over their perceived heresy and secularism. A Homs Sunni said that during Ramadan, government workers, all Alawis, would smoke and drink tea in their offices all day, “just to annoy the Sunnis,” as he put it.

The Iranians have been helping Assad to crack down on protesters, but their help has been minimal so far.

Hezbollah is pulling all of the missiles they have in storage out of Syria and is trying to figure out how to get them across the border to Lebanon without Israel attacking them. These includes Iranian Fatah-110 and Syrian analogue M-600 and advanced SA-8 Gecko (Soviet?) anti-air batteries. The missiles are so wide ranging that they will put most of Israel under threat and the air battery will make it hard for Israeli aircraft to fly over southern Lebanon.

It doesn’t look like anything good will come of this. The regime can’t defeat the protesters, and the protesters won’t give up. Assad will not resign. Things look bloody ahead.

For Latest on Revolution in the Middle East

Tune in to the Angry Arab’s blog. He is about the closest to my POV. Of course I support the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia to the hilt. I’m aware I have not written much about it, but I have been following it very closely.

Jordan: Things are cooking in Jordan. The King just dissolved the government.

Yemen: Possibly another domino to fall, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way. Protests at the moment are being led by college students in this poor and backwards country.

Qatar: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen. Also the home of Al Jazeera, the real winner in the latest mess.

Oman: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen.

Kuwait: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen.

Saudi Arabia: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen. It’s clear that they are frightened though. Look at their Arab media supporting Mubarak to the hilt.

UAE: Takes good care of its people. Nothing will happen.

Bahrain: This is a tough one, since the majority are Shia, and they are badly repressed by a ruling Sunni elite. There will be demos in the days to come.

PA: Nothing will happen here, but the PA in the West Bank just agreed to hold elections.

Libya: Rich oil state that takes good care of it’s people. Nothing will happen.

Algeria: They already have a rickety democracy. Nothing will happen here.

Syria: Demos scheduled for February 5, but I doubt if much will happen. It’s only pro-US regimes that are going down, and the regime is popular. Besides, they look at Lebanon and Iraq next door and see democracy and mass sectarian slaughter.

Sudan: Hard to say, but the South will go. I don’t expect much to happen here.

Lebanon: The pro-US regime is gone, and Hizballah is now in power. It’s already pretty democratic as it is.

Iran: Nothing will happen here. The Democracy Movement has been going for a while here, and it won’t gain steam.

Dutch Nationalist Right Calls on Israel To Annex the West Bank

This is the nationalist Right, including the White nationalist Right’s hero, Geert Wilders. Yeah, he’s socking it to those scummy Muslims and those dirty immigrants, who, it turns out, are all Muslims too.

This is what you get, idiots. When you vote for Islamophobes, you get the worst Zionists of all. I’ve been through all of the anti-Islam sites out there, including all of the blogs. It is axiomatic that if one if an Islamophobic nut, one is also a fanatical Zionist. One goes with the other.

Wilders is calling for Israel to annex the West Bank, ramp up settlement building as much as possible, and apparently to send the Palestinians to Jordan (“Jordan is the Palestinian homeland.”) This is even more radical than Avigdor Lieberman.

Like I said, this is par for the course with Muslim-haters. If you’re a Muslim hater, you heart Israel. Why? Because the most fanatical Muslim haters of all are in Israel. Because Muslims hate Israel, and therefore, Israel must be good. Because Israel is part of the Judeo-Christian West under assault by Islam.

On the other hand, most anti-Semites love Muslims. This makes no sense to me. I’ve been around enough Muslims to figure out that they are not the greatest thing since sliced bread. Actually, they are much worse than that. Confined to their sandboxes, they do a minimum of harm, but we let that cat out of the bag long ago. If you hate Israel, you love Islam. If you hate Jews, you love Muslims. Why? Once again, the biggest and nastiest anti-Semites out there these days are Muslims. They’re the coolest and baddest Jew-haters of all! Yeah! If you hate Israel, well, Islam does too.

Of course there’s a sensible line that almost no one takes. It could look something like this:

Jews suck.
Muslims suck.
They both suck.

Israel sucks.
The Arab World sucks.
They both suck.

A better line is proposed by the Left in the region, especially the Left in Iran and Afghanistan. The Left in that part of the world is not wild about Islam, after all, Muslims pretty much exterminated the Left in that part of the world, and Islam is behind almost everything reactionary in Central Asia, in particular women’s rights. This is where RAWA, the famous Afghan women’s movement, is coming from. They grew out of the Afghan Maoist Left. The Left in that region also hates Israel of course, in line with the general Left line on Zionism.

The Saudhouse

Repost from the old site.

Are the Saudis behind Muslim terror most everywhere, or does it just seem like it?

After all, 80% of Al Qaeda were Saudis several years ago. What’s the figure now? We know that Zarqawi’s Iraqi Al Qaeda was full of men from the Gulf, not necessarily Saudi Arabia, but Arabia nonetheless. Fallujah was full of these guys in 2004 during the two horrible US invasions of the town.

And support for Al Qaeda is high in the Kingdom. A good 50% of the population supported bin Laden a few years back. The Al Qaeda unit inside Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, had vast support and was able to penetrate into the deepest recesses of the Saudi security forces during its operations. This is how it raided embassies.

There were also times during the worst of the AQAP operations that the Saudi security forces just let AQAP escape from their very hands. This was due to huge support for AQAP inside the Saudi security forces themselves. What’s happened since? With the death of the horrible Muqrin, the AQAP leader, the organization seems to have temporarily given up armed struggle inside the Kingdom.

The very decision to initiate armed struggle inside Saudi Arabia was very difficult for bin Laden, since there had always been an implicit agreement between Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia to keep its attacks outside the Kingdom. That was part of the deal. The decision to initiate attacks inside Saudi Arabia was a momentous one, and was possibly controversial with its supporters.

For a long time there, maybe two or three years, there were regular shootouts with AQAP and the Saudi security forces, and the security forces lost a lot of men. During the peak of the conflict, AQAP had men in the streets at night and ruled whole districts of major cities when the sun went down, and the security forces just stayed out.

So what’s happened to AQAP? Why did they quit attacking the Saudi state? That’s an interesting story right there. Has anyone written about it? John Bradley? Anyone else?

Fatah Islam, an insane Salafist offshoot of a Palestinian group that took over a refugee camp in north Lebanon and shot up Lebanon for a few weeks last year, leaving lots of dead Lebanese soldiers and a wrecked camp, was 30% Saudis. Some Palestinian group, eh?

Everyone knows that Iraqi Al Qaeda is full of Saudis, that one of its leaders is a Saudi, that Saudis are the nationality with the most suicide bombers in Iraq, that Saudi preachers, even government preachers, praise the Iraqi guerrillas every week with no consequences.

In Saudi Arabia, there have been 1000′s of funerals of Saudis killed in Iraq. Probably at least 3,000 young Saudi men who went to fight there have come home in boxes. The funerals are a big deal in Arabia. Check out John Bradley on the Net for more.

How about all the Gulf money pouring into the Iraqi insurgency? Do you realize that that money only goes to radical Salafist type groups that are synonymous with Iraqi Al Qaeda for all intents and purposes? This is what has given the Iraqi guerrillas their Wahhabi – Salafist character and killed the secular and Leftist groups that were fighting in Iraq through 2003.

Afghanistan and Western Pakistan, home of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and like groups, is flooded with Gulf money, and all the money goes to Wahhabi mosques. These mosques churn out the Taliban types like assembly line plants.

The IMU in Uzbekistan, most active before 2001, but later transplanted to the FATA in Pakistan where they are still active as pretty much an arm of Al Qaeda, was created by young Uzbek men getting influenced by insane and evil radicalism in Saudi-funded mosques.

There is a major dust-up in Chechnya these days about Wahhabism and how much it has penetrated the Chechen guerrillas and Chechen society. Chechen religious leaders are preaching against Wahhabism, which, it is true, is alien to traditional Chechen religious culture. No one really knows how many Wahhabis there were in the Chechen guerrillas, but their communiques have gotten more Salafist in tone as time has worn on.

They used to say that 12% of the Chechen insurgency was Wahhabi. What is it now? The current leader of the Chechen guerrillas, in a bid to appeal to the anti-Wahhabi nature of Chechen society, has said that his group is in the Chechen tradition of Sufism, not Wahhabism. But then why do they refer to government security forces as apostates? That’s Al Qaeda Salafist talk.

Al Qaeda is still very big in Yemen, and they carry out major operations from time to time, operations that could not go down without penetration of security forces. A group of AQ in Yemen recently broke out of prison, and security forces involvement seems likely.

The Saudis are in Iran as we speak, preaching Wahhabism in the Ahwaz and converting the Shia Arabs to Sunni Wahhabism. And what upshot is this likely to have? Anything good?

Zarqawi’s group penetrated deep within Jordanian security forces and nearly carried out a mad acid attack on Western embassies in Amman. Zarqawi and his group of Shia-killers have mass support inside Jordan, among the tribes and among the regular folks. His ideology came straight from Jordan itself? Oh really now?

Why Hamas and its rise, and the decline of the PLO? All the Gulf, especially Saudi, money, goes to Hamas. They won’t give a dime to the secular groups. Looking for someone to blame for the radicalization of Palestine? Forget Iran and Syria. Look no further than the Gulf.

The hatred for the Shia that characterizes the Sunni radicals in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, is to some extent all fed by the Saudis. In Pakistan, the homicidal anti-Shia war was actually initiated in the 1970′s by Saudi-brainwashed Sunnis.

The entire Sunni world as a whole contributes to the Shia-hatred in a much lesser way, though it has become louder since the Iraq War. These were seeds that were always there in Sunni society, but have been given a homicidal and even genocidal watering with Saudi money and especially propaganda.

What created the mad Salafist insurgency in Algeria? Was it just homegrown Algerian fanaticism? Did the Gulf have nothing to do with this? Why do they now call themselves Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb?

What can you say about a place where the women can’t even drive a car? You call it Saudi Arabia. And there is good evidence that the women are not too happy about this state of affairs, but the Kingdom is a very complex place.

The Saudhouse, the Saudhouse. Oh, such corruption. The prince who spent his 20′s frying on LSD and smashing up other people’s stuff with his motorcycle. The princes who drink and whore around and all of that opportunistic male homosexuality. The thieving princes who steal land, homes and businesses right and left, and no one can do a thing about it.

In the Kingdom, the girls’ colleges are known for lesbians on the make, and lesbian love affairs and their ferocious breakups tear up the girls’ high schools. All of the princesses on pills, depressed, somaticizing, and their frustrated and lesbian love affairs in the South of France, why will no one speak of these things?

Situational bisexuality among males is everywhere there, and a Kuwaiti female friend estimated it at 50% at least. That’s what happens when you focus on males and females getting together. There is also evidence that Wahhabism is making large numbers of Saudi young people depressed in one way or other, though it is often somaticized or covered up in other ways.

Nobody will ever say anything about the Saudhouse. Wherever you find Al Qaeda, you find Saudis, and Saudi money. To this day. And that is all there is to it. Why will nobody say a thing about this?

Oh we know, we know. We know about the advisors of the emirs of Qatar who have deep connections with Al Qaeda, who had connections with some of the folks involved in 9-11. We know about the 27 pages in the 9-11 Report that were torn out because they had to do with the Saudis. They discussed the role of Saudi Arabia or its citizens, or both, in 9-11.

The US government buried them and Americans haven’t asked to see them. Why? Americans don’t care? What are we, sheep?

The whole US elite is corrupted. By Saudi money. By Saudi oil money, as they bat the tennis balls in Washington, DC with the princes. Who? Dick Cheney. Colin Powell. The Bushes. On and on. The oil and the money, addicting as crack.

The Saudi terror. The Saudi Sunni terror.

Why will no one discuss this wound that moans so loudly as it limps through our injured world?

A Clash of Civilizations?

Note: Repost from the old blog.

There has been much talk lately of Islam clashing with non-Muslim European culture and civilization. Starting in the 1960′s or so, Europe began importing a lot of North Africans as a source of cheap labor.

Moroccans went to Netherlands and Spain, Tunisians and Algerians to France, Pakistanis to Britain, Turks, Kurds and Syrians to Germany, Libyans to Italy, and Iraqis to Norway and Denmark. Over 40 years, the Left in Europe has tried multiculturalism with the Muslim immigrants, an approach which has completely failed.

Large populations of angry young Muslims who completely reject European civilization can now be found in many of Europe’s cities. Many of the Muslim immigrants are openly hostile to open, Western, secular European values, especially women’s rights, gay liberation, pornography and open sexual expression, revealing clothing on women and women’s sexual freedom.

Many are upset that it is illegal to beat your wife or menace, beat or kill your female relatives for being “sexually loose”.

At the same time, it is true that there are a large percentage of mostly young Muslims (especially females) who are crafting a new, more open and tolerant view of Islam.

This hopeful view can be seen in the French Muslim Women’s Movement called “Neither Submissives Nor Whores” (loose translation). Many young Muslim women in Britain are refusing to wear the hijab while citing perfectly reasonable Koranic views that say that the hijab is not mandatory.

In fact, after Mohammad’s death, Fatima, Mohammad’s daughter, often preached in the mosque and never wore the hijab. One can make a case that only the prophets’ wives were required to wear the hijab.

One can also make the case that the hijab was only meant to cover a women’s breasts or her private parts – the Koranic wording is very loose and non-specific – it says a woman should cover her “ornaments” and her bosom.

Over centuries, however, Islamic scholars, operating merely on such loose phrases as “Men and women should dress modestly”, have elaborated a strict dress code that applied mostly to women, little to men, and ended up saying that most of a woman’s body should be almost completely covered. These scholars have had little Koranic basis making such a determination.

For centuries in Islam under the Ottomans, most women did not wear the hijab – it was mostly worn by upper-class women as a symbol of their wealth and status.

The “mandatory hijab” came about more with the anti-colonial movements in the Muslim World at the turn of the century, as people turned inwards towards the more fundamentalist and reactionary versions of their cultures as an anti-colonial statement.

Multiculturalism has completely failed in Denmark. The Left pushed it for years and all it has created is a Muslim community largely hostile to secular Danish society at large and openly refusing to assimilate.

In the 1970′s and 80′s, many wealthy Iraqis and Iranians came to Denmark – those who could afford to get out. Many of their children – young people in their teens and 20′s, acted like spoiled brats. They were angry at having to leave their countries and they despised Denmark.

The Danes set up taxpayer-funded programs to teach them Danish so they could get a job. Many of them attended classes but openly refused to learn Danish. Many of them still do not know Danish and are largely unemployable. When the teachers left, they would destroy the libraries in the schools where they were being taught.

A combination of upper-class spoiled brattism plus Eastern contempt for the secular West proved to be a bad combination.

After decades of multiculturalism, Netherlands and Denmark are hanging up the towel and demanding that new immigrants either assimilate to the culture or take off. Radical imams who are not citizens are being summarily deported.

The consequences of the failure to assimilate are clear: one consequence is gang rapes. Gang rapes by young Muslim men of non-Muslim European women have been reported in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Australia, France and Indonesia.

There has been an epidemic of gang rapes in French Muslim ghettos also. Outrageously, in many cases, the police do not even prosecute these rapes because the gangs run roughshod over the neighborhoods and the female victims are too terrified to testify. For their part, most of the rapists insist that they did nothing wrong.

In the Muslim neighborhoods of Malmo, Sweden, there is a horrendous crime epidemic by Muslim youth gangs who rule the area and utterly despise Swedish society. Threats against crime witnesses, robberies, rapes of minors and gang rapes have all exploded in Malmo. In the schools, where most students are Muslim immigrants, there is widespread anti-Semitism.

Malmo is the face of catastrophic Muslim failure to assimilate to European society.

A similar picture haunts Denmark, where an astounding 68% of all rapes in Denmark are committed by Muslims, who are only 6% of the population. In Norway, it’s a similar nightmare, as 65% of rapes there are committed by Muslims, who are only 4% of the population. In recent years, Oslo has registered its highest rape rate ever – and Muslims are wildly overrepresented in Oslo’s rape explosion.

In Britain, there is a notable incidence of rape by Muslims of non-Muslim White British girls. In Denmark, eight Muslim Danish girls were killed by Muslim fundamentalist Medievalists for either leaving Islam or for honor crimes.

There is a ready explanation for the high rape rate amongst Muslims in Europe. In their home countries, the crime rate in general and the rape rate in particular is often quite low, Pakistan being an exception.

Muslims are most comfortable living in Muslim societies. Living as a Muslim minority under the rule of infidels is insulting and hurtful to the unfortunately supremacist mindset of most Muslims.

Living under Muslim rule accords well with such supremacism. Islam is meant to dominate, and the word itself means to submit. In Europe, young Muslim men are outraged at the scanty clothing and loose sexual mores of many European White non-Muslim women.

In their way of thinking, such women are whores, and they are more or less for the taking. It is permissible to rape them, since they are making themselves readily available. In their home countries, there are not many women walking around clothed like that, and women’s sexual freedom is an underground thing, so their mores are not so offended.

Furthermore, there is stigma attached to being a criminal in an Islamic society, whereas as a Muslim minority under the rule of infidels, perhaps there is less stigma and possibly criminal behavior is even seen as appropriate rebellion.

We should note here that many of the young Muslim criminals in Europe are not especially religious and most are actually turned off by radical Islam. There is something else going on here – a profound sense of alienation and rage.

The problems of Muslims in France are particularly acute, where they make up about 12% of the population, and in recent years have staged wild riots lasting weeks in which they burned 1000′s of cars and abandoned buildings. Nobody quite knows what these riots are all about, but the Muslims living in the suburbs of big French cities are clearly not very happy campers.

But all of the usual signs are there. In French Muslim ghettos, the insanity of Left multiculturalism has left Islamic fundamentalist cretin morals police to roam the French ghettos – harassing and attacking women who are not veiled.

There is an ongoing disaster in French schools, where the schools have been taken over by male Islamists who act as “big brothers” and enforce “Islamic morals” on Muslim girls. Makeup, dresses and skirts are banned, and girls are not allowed to go to the movies, to the gym or go swimming. These rules are enforced by these fundamentalist idiots via beatings and intimidation.

But the situation in the schools is actually better the scene outside of school, where the backwards custom of forcing unwilling girls into marriage at only age 14 or 15 is common.

Muslim students are in open rebellion against French society – they frequently refuse to read Voltaire and Madame Bovary, refuse to acknowledge the existence of other religions, refuse to sing, dance or draw pictures of faces, and will not draw anything that contains a right angle because it looks like a cross.

In my opinion, students who refuse to practice these basic normal scholastic activities due to their preposterous religion should simply be given an “F” in that subject, if only due to their sheer contemptuous defiance.

Muslim students, heads swollen with liberal “equal rights” bullshit, demand their own tables and their own bathrooms so they will not have to share them with infidels, the right to not come to school during Muslim holidays and the right to get served halal food.

It is almost impossible for secular or non-practicing Muslim students to avoid the Islamic dictates in these schools. For example, even non-Muslims are forced to fast during Ramadan.

The Muslim students show a lot of support of Islamist terrorism, a frightening amount of anti-Semitism and lots of aggressive Islamic proselytization. Jewish kids are subject to continuous racist and anti-Semitic abuse, and freedom of religious choice for minors can no longer be protected.

The lunacy has reached the point where the French now have almost separate facilities in their schools for Muslim and non-Muslim students, a Kafkaesque joke that makes a mockery of French Republicanism.

The new generation of French Muslims, born and raised in France, is being raised by their twisted culture to see themselves a separate nation opposed to everything the West stands for. In this group, anti-democratic views and support for Osama bin Laden are widespread.

Similar disaster looms elsewhere in the West. In Holland, you can see pitiful Moroccan girls with a smiley – their throats slashed (non-fatally), cut from mouth to ear with a knife for not wearing a veil. In Sweden, the charming folks at CAIR (the largest US Islamic organization) objected to prosecuting two Muslim men for the sick honor killing of a Swedish girl.

Prisons house wildly disproportionately Muslim populations, and they are serving as an incubator for radical Islamists in Europe.

Australia has also seen its share of the nightmare of Muslims refusing to assimilate to the West. In large Australian cities, many Lebanese have immigrated in recent years. Although many were Muslims, many more were Lebanese Christians.

For those Identity Politics Leftists who complain that this is due to anti-Arab racism by White Australians, the fact that Lebanese Christians have caused almost no problems at all in Australia is a slap in the face to their theory.

The usual symptoms of the nightmare afflict these areas of Australia, with Muslim gangs taking over Muslim districts, high crime rates, gang rapes of White Australian women by Muslim men, and with the added outrage that the gang rapes are both condoned by their backwards Muslim society and excused by morally twisted reactionary mullahs.

In one particularly outrageous case, the entire Muslim family of one rapist showed up at the trial to defend their sociopathic criminal rapist son, showing their utter contempt for the victim by calling her a slut and a liar throughout the trial.

In other cases, the barbarians in the families of the Muslim rapists threatened the families of the female rape victims.

Muslims like these are just backwards people with no place in Western society. We ought to collectively deport them back to their Middle Eastern sandboxes. Some of the insanity of these Muslims of course often mirrors the insanity of their backwards cultures back home (honor killings,etc.).

In barbarian Muslim Northern Nigeria, for instance, women who are raped by a family member are often punished by the law for adultery, similar to the insane Hudood Islamic laws in the nightmare state called Pakistan, laws instituted by former dictator Zia al-Haq’s Islamization process in the late 1970′s.

Haq’s Islamization process is widely considered to have been a disaster. As part of this process, he brought in large numbers of Saudi instructors and built a huge number of madrassas, or religious schools. The teachers in these schools were usually Salafists from the Gulf. This era was really the root cause of the radical Islamic movement in Pakistan.

It was then when radical Sunni gangs, egged on by Zia, were formed to attack the Shia “niggers” who had finally started to stand up for their just rights after having spent centuries withering under the boot of Sunni Jim Crow oppression in Pakistan.

I really don’t want to go here, but Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, a site pretty much devoted to bashing Muslims, does have an interesting and thought-provoking article here called, What Is a Moderate Muslim?.

Those who desire to refute Spencer need to put their money where their mouth is and offer reasonable, coherent arguments refuting his points. Simple insults like “Islamophobe” or “bigot” will not cut it.

Most reasonable progressives should agree that all forms of fundamentalism are examples of cretinism and obscurantism at best. This surely applies to Islam as well as Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. Salafism is extremist fundamentalist Islam, and it can be reasonably attacked on many fronts.

It shares much in common with both the Wahhabism of the reactionary Saudis and with Qutbism, the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Many Western progressives are getting sucked into the vortex of backwards Sunni fundamentalist clowns, especially the Salafists. One argument is that some Salafists are peaceful, while the armed ones tend to resemble Mssrs. Zarqawi and Bin Laden.

I have always felt that peaceful Salafism is hate speech, kind of like the KKK without guns. In other words, it sucks. This blog post goes a long way towards fleshing that out.

This post has probably been a pretty depressing read for any Muslims or anyone sympathetic to Islam. Hence, we ought to end on a bright note.

A recent survey of the Arab World shows that the varieties of Islamic fundamentalist cretinism espoused by Wahhabism, Salafism, Qutbism, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc. are not popular at all in most of the Arab World.

Here are the results of the survey:

Vast majorities in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco support some variety women’s rights. Support for the Taliban-Al Qaeda position on women ranges from 1-9% in these countries.

98% said women should have the same rights to education as men clear through university. 91% said women should an equal right to work, and 78% said they should have the same working conditions as men. 91% said women should be allowed to own property and own and manage economic projects. 95% said women should be allowed to choose their own husbands, and 97% condemned physical and mental abuse of women.

62-90% opposed polygamy, but men supported it more than women. 79% supported women’s political activities and 76% said women should be able to hold office. There is much more support for the hijab, however – 43-50% said that women must wear it, while 1/2 said it was a personal decision.

On the down side, majorities in Jordan and Egypt opposed a female president, although Lebanese and Moroccans were less hostile.

Bottom line is that Arabs are not nearly as misogynistic, reactionary and fundamentalist as they are made out to be. By the way, the ME Times is a good progressive Middle Eastern publication, opposed to both Islamic fundamentalism and Arab backwardness and also to US imperialism and Zionism.

It’s a welcome anecdote from the usual Arab nationalist and pro- Arab regime junk you get from the Arab press, much of which is funded with Saudi money.

Update: This post has received accolades from a conservative blogger at Pleasant Misery. Although we certainly disagree with conservatives on most things, in the fight against Muslim fundamentalist idiots, we will take any reasonable allies that we can find.

One of the points he made was that the Muslims in the Middle East appear to be better behaved than the Muslims in Europe. I do not think so – they are the same people. Let us face it – Islam wants to dominate; it is a supremacist religion.

In some places where Islam dominates, other religions are sometimes treated fairly well. Christians are treated with at least some degree of decency in Morocco, Iran, Uzbekistan, Albania, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Even Jews are treated fairly well in Iran, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Bahrain, Uzbekistan and Albania.

Where Islam dominates, Muslims relax and can often treat other religions well.

And they can also also be moderately tolerant of sinful behavior. Many women in Lebanon and Egypt do not wear the hijab, and the hijab is almost banned in public places in Turkey, Tunisia and Libya. Prostitution and nightclubs are common in Beirut, Cairo and the UAE.

Mini-skirted upper class women are commonly seen on university campuses in Kuwait. Pre- and extramarital sex is common in Cairo.

There is a discreet underground male gay scene in Cairo and Upper Egypt, and in Morocco, Turkey, Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. There is quite a bit of lesbianism in Arabia, in girls schools and amongst the frustrated wives of the royalty. Gay male pornography is available to anyone in Arabia with a satellite dish, which just about everyone has.

There is a lot of illegal drinking in Kuwait and probably other places in the Arab World.

I could go on.

But in Europe, Muslims are a widely-despised minority, and more importantly, they are being ruled by infidels. Islam wants to dominate, and Muslims rebel when ruled by infidels. The open sexuality, alcohol, drugs, prostitution, pornography, gay populations and feminism contrasts with the discretion with which such areas are treated back home under Islam.

This is the crux of the matter.

But those Western Muslims who are unable to assimilate to Western societies need to consider going somewhere else.

Muslims who consistently violate and show contempt for Western norms and continue to espouse backwards fundamentalist values – for instance, Muslims who believe that those who insult Islam or women who preach in mosques should be killed – need to be removed from Western societies if possible, hopefully via deportation.

The Role of Iran in Arab -Islamic Resistance to Imperialism and Zionism

This post will provide an overview of why the Iranian regime is hated so much by US imperialism and Zionism, and why they plotted a Green “color revolution” to throw out one of the last holdouts of Arab – Islamic resistance in the region.

Except for Iran, Syria, Hamas-Gaza and Hezbollah, all of the rest of the Arab and Islamic World has folded in the face of the Zionist onslaught or been bought off by US imperialism.

Saddam was another rejectionist, but the Zionist traitor neoconservatives engineered an illegal invasion to bring him down.

Ghaddafi was threatened with invasion by the same folks, and promptly folded.

The Palestinians now effectively have no outside support.

Egypt collaborates with Zionism to police the Gaza border and assists in the starvation and deprivation of the Gazans. Egyptian police prevent guns from flowing to the Gazans for their noble resistance to the Zionist enemy.

Jordan was captured long ago. Elections are not allowed in Jordan, because the 65% Palestinian population would elect a radical anti-Zionist regime.

Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are bought off and sold to the US. Anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations are regularly crushed with brutality in Tunisia. None of these states are democracies, because democracy would allow an anti-Zionist and anti-US regime to be elected.

In Arabia, there are no democracies. All of the regimes are sold out to the US. There are US military bases in all nations, for the sole reason of policing the Arabian peoples. The effect is that the Arabian peoples are under a dictatorship of US military bases combined with local satraps and Quislings. It’s true the Saudis allow fighters to go to Arab lands, but only to Iraq to fight the Shia that they hate so much.

Lebanon has been under imperialist-Zionist assault for years now. With the election of a French Jew to head the French state, France is now firmly in the Zionist camp. This, along with a colonial attachment to the Lebanese fake state that never died, explains why France has gone along with imperialism-Zionism in Lebanon.

Iraq is now occupied by imperialism-Zionism in the form of the US military and will be occupied into the forseeable future. Iraq was attacked because it was one of the only Arab holdouts that stood steadfast against imperialism and Zionism in the region. Also, they allowed no bases and opened up their oil to non-Americans.

The invasion, in collaboration with the Zionist enemy, was planned to remove the holdout Saddam of the Arab resistance, to remove the competitors of US oil companies from the oil fields they were developing, to take over Iraq’s oil for the US, to use Iraqi oil to flood the oil market and lower the price, killing the Saudis and Gulf states of their oil weapon (the Gulf Arabians, while US allies, are distrusted by International Zionism, and they hatched the Iraqi invasion).

With permabases in Iraq and the biggest US embassy on Earth in Baghdad, US control over the region was seized by force.

It was only due to fortitude that the Iraqi resistance soon led an insurgency against the invaders. If they would not have done this, we know for a fact that the US military would have done a “left turn at Baghdad, and headed for Syria”, as their Zionist masters were ordering them too.

With Iraq out of the way, Libya was quickly subdued with threats of force.

Arafat was murdered by the Israelis. They placed a Mossad agent as his cook and poisoned his food. The Abbas clique went along with the poisoning since they hated Arafat. Getting Arafat out of the way was a long-standing goal of the Zionist agenda. Then elections were held in Palestine, but the results came out wrong and Hamas won.

The Abbas forces were trained by the US to be the shock troops of Zionism in Palestine. Indeed, Abbas forces are utilized primarily against those Palestinians in Hamas who still dare to resist the Zionist enemy.

A plot was concocted to oust the pro-Syrian regime in Lebanon, but it failed. Syria probably killed Hariri, but Hariri was selling out Lebanon to imperialism and Zionism, and Syria would not stand for that.

What does Syria want? One thing and one thing only. They want the Golan back. For this, they will sacrifice everything, the Palestinians, Arabism, you name it. The only card left that Syria holds to enable it to get back the Golan is their auxiliary force in Lebanon, Hezbollah. This is why Syria must not allow Hezbollah to be dismantled. If Hezbollah is dismantled, Syria has lost their last cards too get the Golan back, and they will never be able to get their land back.

The killing of Hariri resulted in international pressure against Syria, including sanctions. There was also an international effort made to disarm and dissolve Hezbollah. The effort to get rid of Hezbollah seems to have failed, although pro-Hezbollah forces won 45% in the last elections. The mini-Hariri crowd that won with 55% is widely seen as the voice of imperialism and Zionism in Lebanon.

A few years ago, with the connivance of US imperialism, US neoconservatives along with Israel concocted a plot to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. The purpose here was to decisively defeat Hezbollah and wipe out their substantial missile stockpile. This invasion largely failed to accomplish this mission.

The UN was then given the task of occupying South Lebanon to enforce Zionist and imperialist rule on sovereign Lebanese land. This effort has largely failed, as Hezbollah has restocked their missiles and they are now better armed than before the invasion.

This background shows you that Ahmadinejad is one of the last holdouts in the region against total dominaton by US imperialism and Zionism. This is why the Iranian regime is being targeted so forcefully.