August 28, 2011
By Nidra Poller
As the summer of 2011 draws to a close, an uninterrupted chain of violent events buffets the public's mind.
Havoc in Great Britain pushed aside mayhem in Norway. The murder of eight Israelis in a cross-border attack from Egypt was briefly noted -- then all eyes turned to Tripoli. Southern Israel is under attack from Gaza; Syrian protestors are detained, tortured, murdered in the streets. Gentlemen in suits and ties mouth bizarre promises about the bright future of Libya while TV cameras show us a disorganized armed mob.
Mass media are not really covering these events journalistically; they are staging a partisan show framed by fallacious analysis: the liberation of Libya is a high point of the Arab springtime, while Breivik was inspired by Islamophobic extreme-right Christian and Zionist white supremacists. The havoc in Great Britain is inexplicable. Rockets falling on Israel are nothing to get excited about.
When we piece together the artificially disconnected events, a coherent picture emerges: our societies are attacked from within and without. Public opinion is seduced into believing the Middle East is dancing toward democracy while those who warn against the dangers of Islamic conquest are accused of arming Breivik the mass murderer.
The barrage of attacks against Bat Ye'or, Geert Wilders, Andrew Bostom, Mark Steyn, Fjordman, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, et al., accused of inciting Breivik's murderous rampage, was muffled by the three-day outburst of smashing, looting, and burning in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. (Seen from France, by the way, British law enforcement did not look so bad compared to our three-week uprising in 2005.)
Who should be blamed for inciting the cross-border attack from Egypt aimed at a civilian bus and a private car on the road to Eilat, killing eight Israelis, six of them civilians? Israeli intelligence identified the perpetrators as members of the "Popular Resistance Committees" and wiped out seven of its leaders as they drove together to a war council in Gaza. But the BBC's Middle East expert Jeremy Bowen (BBC World, August 19, evening newscast), ignoring ample, reliable, readily available information, made it sound like the Israelis had struck blindly, as usual, inflicting pain and damage on Palestinians chosen at random. (More on this situation here.) On one side of the split screen, the "expert" with his nose in the air was calling for an impartial investigation -- who were the assailants, and how do we know they came through the Sinai from Gaza? -- while the other screen showed haredi men and boys (in black) with payes (ear locks) circling a car with smashed windows, the seats covered with shattered glass. Whose car, where, what had happened to it and to the people riding in it? No explanation. The combination of this mute image and Bowen's insinuations came across as an animated anti-Jewish cartoon!
BBC chatter didn't keep Israel from wiping out the current leadership of the PRC in one fell swoop. Israel will survive without empathy from the likes of the BBC. But the systematic bias that seems to find pleasure in disparaging Jews and/or Israelis actually undermines the foundation of Western societies, celebrates disorder, sullies integrity, and disrupts rational thinking.
The snide BBC specialist casting doubt on Israeli intelligence wouldn't likely be fingered for encouraging havoc in London. Hooded looters and smashers do not publish manifestoes citing the BBC. They carry their ideology in their pants. Though, according to Tom Gross, columnist Jody McIntyre, fired from The Independent for egging on the London rioters via Twitter, had systematically called Israel a racist apartheid state and blamed Zionism for Breivik's massacre.
The sacking and pillaging in Great Britain, apparently spearheaded by primarily black gangs, involved a diversely disgruntled crew that can't be defined by class, religion, or ethnicity. What brought them together is the feeling of impunity. Something had taught them that violence against whatever happened to irk them was justified. Graffiti on the yellow mailbox at the end of my street cries "Mort aux banquiers" (death to the bankers). I wouldn't be surprised to see "Mort aux postiers" (death to the mailmen) scrawled on the façade of a bank.
Forces working behind specious liberation movements to forge a united Muslim front against the West are weakening us from within by fostering specious protest movements. Citizens of our democracies are led to identify with enraged mobs --anarchists, altermondialistes, ecologists, striking students and workers, pro-Hamas anti-Zionists, indignados in Athens and Madrid...the list is endless. Palestinian shahid-murderers of Israeli civilians, stampeding Muslims damning "Mohammed cartoons," and middle-class students protesting tuition hikes are linked by a chain of sympathy in this danse macabre. People-gathered-in-a-public-square has become the emblem of virtue, and never mind what motivates them or where they are headed. Misguided media enthusiasm focuses solely on the exciting adventure, full speed ahead to victory.
The same voices that argue for compromise with the Taliban because "the solution is political, not military" encourage desperado movements in democratic countries where political action is, in fact, the appropriate option. In an Islamic tyranny the people submit for decades before suddenly bursting out in rage. Either the rebellion or the government will fall. Force lies not in the clarity of ideas, but in the willingness to kill and die -- haphazardly.
That mindset has blossomed into foolish enthusiasm for an Arab "spring" that is producing bushels of strange fruit. It leads to widespread support for a NATO operation in Libya that blatantly disregards every rule of the game. Western powers -- primarily Britain, France, and an ambiguous U.S. -- loosely draped in a U.N. mandate, seductively dressed in NATO colors, are toppling regimes and propping up their favorites like uninhibited neo-colonialists. Leading from behind, underneath, and in the cracks, they show that nations still project power when, how, and where they wish. What has become of the litany of charges against the United States military operation in Iraq and Israel's slightest gesture of self-defense? No pacifist outrage, no calls for ceasefires and humanitarian corridors, no caution against ruffling Muslim feathers by interfering in domestic affairs. Mission creep? Pourquoi pas? Who ever believed that the U.N. mandate for Libya was limited to protecting unarmed civilians?
Unfortunately, the joke is on us. This illusory power play is carving up our sovereignty!
Mass media have dropped all pretense of objectivity. Anchorgirls in flak jackets and helmets fraternize with the "rebels," dance with their joy, espouse their cause. (Ms.) Alex Crawford for SkyNews entered Tripoli with the guys, snuggled up to them all the way to the heart of Bab al- Azizia, smiled like a newlywed as they paraded in front of the camera uttering guttural "allahu akhbars." "Look," she murmured tenderly as they prostrated themselves, "they're praying."
She kept saying, "They met no resistance." The next day it was reported that 400 rebels were killed, 2,000 injured over the past 3 days in Tripoli. And fierce battles are still raging.
A high-ranking French officer, asked by a journalist if the rebels made the last push to Tripoli with such ease because they are well-trained, well-equipped, well-organized, or all three, replied: None of the three. NATO opened the way, and the rebels followed helter-skelter. Most of their shooting was in the air. The U.K. Telegraph now reveals that U.K. Special Forces are on the ground, fighting with (for) the rebels, leading the search for Colonel Gaddafi.
Why do the anchorgirl's darlings remind us of the mobs that tore up London in August; the mob that tore down the protective hoarding around the Israeli embassy in Cairo; the mobs that smash, burn, and pillage our cities whenever they feel offended?
While the similarity among mobs in Clapham, Benghazi, Tahrir Square, Strasbourg, etc. goes unnoticed, a churlish campaign has been launched against authors whose writings were cut and pasted into the manifesto of mass murderer Anders Breivik. (But the same censors go berserk if you say that the words of the Koran, the hadith, and the Sunna, no less than sermons in everyone's corner mosque, promote and provoke violence!)
Steven Erlanger on Geert Wilders and Patricia Briel on Bat Ye'or simply throw the targeted names -- Bat Ye'or, Wilders -- into proximity with the name of Breivik and his evil deed. The connection begins and ends there, by juxtaposition. There is no development, no pretense of supporting evidence. Mediocrities like Esther Benbassa are quoted to dismiss Bat Ye'or's ideas. Muslim activists are called to judge Wilders' political action. This pitiful mudslinging alternates with a smattering of concrete details about the situation in the Netherlands or the machinations of the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue that do in fact validate concerns about immigration, Islamization, dhimmitude, jihad, Eurabia.
How could it be otherwise? Wilders is a serious politician who has won the votes of free citizens of a democracy. Bat Ye'or is a serious historian whose works are respected by distinguished colleagues and discerning readers. Both Wilders and Bat Ye'or describe a reality that concerns the entire Western world.
Erlanger and Piel do not and cannot show any logical connection between anti-Islamization thinkers and a criminal rampage. Their articles simply enforce a de facto anti-blasphemy law. Erlanger unwittingly reveals as much in quoting Kathleen Ferrier, a Christian Democrat legislator born in Surinam: "Wilders says hateful things and no one objects. We have freedom of speech, but you also have to be responsible for the effect of your words."
It all adds up. It all reverberates. The phony Arab Spring shows its fangs in Egypt. Egyptians of the Tahrir Square generation lust for Jewish blood. It's dismissed -- it's just against Israel -- it doesn't spoil the picture.
Meanwhile, the Liberation of Libya is playing further down the road. Anchorgirls shill for this unsavory rebellion, sex it up, sell it like it's perfume. And when it all goes sour, they'll find new playgrounds to romp in.
Rockets rain down on southern Israel and the U.N. urges restraint...from guess who! International opinion isn't tallying six months of wanton destruction of Libya's infrastructure, atrocities, humanitarian catastrophes, and summary executions; but the day when Israel has to strike Gaza, expect another fit of hysteria.
The Middle East is being sharpened into a saber of massive destruction and our Western leaders are cooing as if they were admiring quintuplets in the maternity ward. Conscientious thinkers who warn against the dangers of jihad conquest are assaulted because the white jihadi Anders Breivik was just smart enough to appreciate their works...like millions of other readers...none of them murderers... and too evil to share their humanity.
Life for our young people is coarsened. Their natural, openhearted "live and let live" nonchalance makes them soft targets in an increasingly brutal environment.
We owe them a better narrative.
American Thinker
By Nidra Poller
As the summer of 2011 draws to a close, an uninterrupted chain of violent events buffets the public's mind.
Havoc in Great Britain pushed aside mayhem in Norway. The murder of eight Israelis in a cross-border attack from Egypt was briefly noted -- then all eyes turned to Tripoli. Southern Israel is under attack from Gaza; Syrian protestors are detained, tortured, murdered in the streets. Gentlemen in suits and ties mouth bizarre promises about the bright future of Libya while TV cameras show us a disorganized armed mob.
Mass media are not really covering these events journalistically; they are staging a partisan show framed by fallacious analysis: the liberation of Libya is a high point of the Arab springtime, while Breivik was inspired by Islamophobic extreme-right Christian and Zionist white supremacists. The havoc in Great Britain is inexplicable. Rockets falling on Israel are nothing to get excited about.
When we piece together the artificially disconnected events, a coherent picture emerges: our societies are attacked from within and without. Public opinion is seduced into believing the Middle East is dancing toward democracy while those who warn against the dangers of Islamic conquest are accused of arming Breivik the mass murderer.
The barrage of attacks against Bat Ye'or, Geert Wilders, Andrew Bostom, Mark Steyn, Fjordman, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, et al., accused of inciting Breivik's murderous rampage, was muffled by the three-day outburst of smashing, looting, and burning in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. (Seen from France, by the way, British law enforcement did not look so bad compared to our three-week uprising in 2005.)
Who should be blamed for inciting the cross-border attack from Egypt aimed at a civilian bus and a private car on the road to Eilat, killing eight Israelis, six of them civilians? Israeli intelligence identified the perpetrators as members of the "Popular Resistance Committees" and wiped out seven of its leaders as they drove together to a war council in Gaza. But the BBC's Middle East expert Jeremy Bowen (BBC World, August 19, evening newscast), ignoring ample, reliable, readily available information, made it sound like the Israelis had struck blindly, as usual, inflicting pain and damage on Palestinians chosen at random. (More on this situation here.) On one side of the split screen, the "expert" with his nose in the air was calling for an impartial investigation -- who were the assailants, and how do we know they came through the Sinai from Gaza? -- while the other screen showed haredi men and boys (in black) with payes (ear locks) circling a car with smashed windows, the seats covered with shattered glass. Whose car, where, what had happened to it and to the people riding in it? No explanation. The combination of this mute image and Bowen's insinuations came across as an animated anti-Jewish cartoon!
BBC chatter didn't keep Israel from wiping out the current leadership of the PRC in one fell swoop. Israel will survive without empathy from the likes of the BBC. But the systematic bias that seems to find pleasure in disparaging Jews and/or Israelis actually undermines the foundation of Western societies, celebrates disorder, sullies integrity, and disrupts rational thinking.
The snide BBC specialist casting doubt on Israeli intelligence wouldn't likely be fingered for encouraging havoc in London. Hooded looters and smashers do not publish manifestoes citing the BBC. They carry their ideology in their pants. Though, according to Tom Gross, columnist Jody McIntyre, fired from The Independent for egging on the London rioters via Twitter, had systematically called Israel a racist apartheid state and blamed Zionism for Breivik's massacre.
The sacking and pillaging in Great Britain, apparently spearheaded by primarily black gangs, involved a diversely disgruntled crew that can't be defined by class, religion, or ethnicity. What brought them together is the feeling of impunity. Something had taught them that violence against whatever happened to irk them was justified. Graffiti on the yellow mailbox at the end of my street cries "Mort aux banquiers" (death to the bankers). I wouldn't be surprised to see "Mort aux postiers" (death to the mailmen) scrawled on the façade of a bank.
Forces working behind specious liberation movements to forge a united Muslim front against the West are weakening us from within by fostering specious protest movements. Citizens of our democracies are led to identify with enraged mobs --anarchists, altermondialistes, ecologists, striking students and workers, pro-Hamas anti-Zionists, indignados in Athens and Madrid...the list is endless. Palestinian shahid-murderers of Israeli civilians, stampeding Muslims damning "Mohammed cartoons," and middle-class students protesting tuition hikes are linked by a chain of sympathy in this danse macabre. People-gathered-in-a-public-square has become the emblem of virtue, and never mind what motivates them or where they are headed. Misguided media enthusiasm focuses solely on the exciting adventure, full speed ahead to victory.
The same voices that argue for compromise with the Taliban because "the solution is political, not military" encourage desperado movements in democratic countries where political action is, in fact, the appropriate option. In an Islamic tyranny the people submit for decades before suddenly bursting out in rage. Either the rebellion or the government will fall. Force lies not in the clarity of ideas, but in the willingness to kill and die -- haphazardly.
That mindset has blossomed into foolish enthusiasm for an Arab "spring" that is producing bushels of strange fruit. It leads to widespread support for a NATO operation in Libya that blatantly disregards every rule of the game. Western powers -- primarily Britain, France, and an ambiguous U.S. -- loosely draped in a U.N. mandate, seductively dressed in NATO colors, are toppling regimes and propping up their favorites like uninhibited neo-colonialists. Leading from behind, underneath, and in the cracks, they show that nations still project power when, how, and where they wish. What has become of the litany of charges against the United States military operation in Iraq and Israel's slightest gesture of self-defense? No pacifist outrage, no calls for ceasefires and humanitarian corridors, no caution against ruffling Muslim feathers by interfering in domestic affairs. Mission creep? Pourquoi pas? Who ever believed that the U.N. mandate for Libya was limited to protecting unarmed civilians?
Unfortunately, the joke is on us. This illusory power play is carving up our sovereignty!
Mass media have dropped all pretense of objectivity. Anchorgirls in flak jackets and helmets fraternize with the "rebels," dance with their joy, espouse their cause. (Ms.) Alex Crawford for SkyNews entered Tripoli with the guys, snuggled up to them all the way to the heart of Bab al- Azizia, smiled like a newlywed as they paraded in front of the camera uttering guttural "allahu akhbars." "Look," she murmured tenderly as they prostrated themselves, "they're praying."
She kept saying, "They met no resistance." The next day it was reported that 400 rebels were killed, 2,000 injured over the past 3 days in Tripoli. And fierce battles are still raging.
A high-ranking French officer, asked by a journalist if the rebels made the last push to Tripoli with such ease because they are well-trained, well-equipped, well-organized, or all three, replied: None of the three. NATO opened the way, and the rebels followed helter-skelter. Most of their shooting was in the air. The U.K. Telegraph now reveals that U.K. Special Forces are on the ground, fighting with (for) the rebels, leading the search for Colonel Gaddafi.
Why do the anchorgirl's darlings remind us of the mobs that tore up London in August; the mob that tore down the protective hoarding around the Israeli embassy in Cairo; the mobs that smash, burn, and pillage our cities whenever they feel offended?
While the similarity among mobs in Clapham, Benghazi, Tahrir Square, Strasbourg, etc. goes unnoticed, a churlish campaign has been launched against authors whose writings were cut and pasted into the manifesto of mass murderer Anders Breivik. (But the same censors go berserk if you say that the words of the Koran, the hadith, and the Sunna, no less than sermons in everyone's corner mosque, promote and provoke violence!)
Steven Erlanger on Geert Wilders and Patricia Briel on Bat Ye'or simply throw the targeted names -- Bat Ye'or, Wilders -- into proximity with the name of Breivik and his evil deed. The connection begins and ends there, by juxtaposition. There is no development, no pretense of supporting evidence. Mediocrities like Esther Benbassa are quoted to dismiss Bat Ye'or's ideas. Muslim activists are called to judge Wilders' political action. This pitiful mudslinging alternates with a smattering of concrete details about the situation in the Netherlands or the machinations of the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue that do in fact validate concerns about immigration, Islamization, dhimmitude, jihad, Eurabia.
How could it be otherwise? Wilders is a serious politician who has won the votes of free citizens of a democracy. Bat Ye'or is a serious historian whose works are respected by distinguished colleagues and discerning readers. Both Wilders and Bat Ye'or describe a reality that concerns the entire Western world.
Erlanger and Piel do not and cannot show any logical connection between anti-Islamization thinkers and a criminal rampage. Their articles simply enforce a de facto anti-blasphemy law. Erlanger unwittingly reveals as much in quoting Kathleen Ferrier, a Christian Democrat legislator born in Surinam: "Wilders says hateful things and no one objects. We have freedom of speech, but you also have to be responsible for the effect of your words."
It all adds up. It all reverberates. The phony Arab Spring shows its fangs in Egypt. Egyptians of the Tahrir Square generation lust for Jewish blood. It's dismissed -- it's just against Israel -- it doesn't spoil the picture.
Meanwhile, the Liberation of Libya is playing further down the road. Anchorgirls shill for this unsavory rebellion, sex it up, sell it like it's perfume. And when it all goes sour, they'll find new playgrounds to romp in.
Rockets rain down on southern Israel and the U.N. urges restraint...from guess who! International opinion isn't tallying six months of wanton destruction of Libya's infrastructure, atrocities, humanitarian catastrophes, and summary executions; but the day when Israel has to strike Gaza, expect another fit of hysteria.
The Middle East is being sharpened into a saber of massive destruction and our Western leaders are cooing as if they were admiring quintuplets in the maternity ward. Conscientious thinkers who warn against the dangers of jihad conquest are assaulted because the white jihadi Anders Breivik was just smart enough to appreciate their works...like millions of other readers...none of them murderers... and too evil to share their humanity.
Life for our young people is coarsened. Their natural, openhearted "live and let live" nonchalance makes them soft targets in an increasingly brutal environment.
We owe them a better narrative.
American Thinker
