► Show Top 10 Hot Links

Archive for the ‘Palestinians’ Category

Why the peace talks will fail

by Speranza ( 186 Comments › )
Filed under Israel, Palestinians at September 2nd, 2010 - 6:00 pm

They will fail because they are not peace talks, they are capitulation talks.  The Arabs start with maximalist positions and never budge. It is being hosted by a man named Barack Obama who knows nothing about foreign policy, and one of the participants – Mahmoud Abbas – is an unrepentant terrorist who happens to wear a nice suit. The whole attempt is a ploy to pulverize Netanyahu into continuing the surrender policy of big mouth Ehud Barak and moronic Ehud Olmert. The Palestinians cannot even mention the Jewishness of Israel and still want to flood the country with  millions of hate indoctrinated refugees and descendants of refugees. Also I have to feel for Netanyahu – this is the third time this year he has had to be in the presence of Barack Hussein Obama a man who clearly despises him and his country.

by Benny Avni

Hamas’ cold-blooded execu tion of four West Bank set tlers on Tuesday cast a heavy cloud over the launch of peace talks yesterday.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, President Obama vowed that such “senseless slaughter” is “not going to stop us.”

But Palestinians remain outraged over Israel’s refusal to extend a freeze on new construction in its West Bank settlements. “If there is an announcement to build more houses, the Palestinians will not be able to continue negotiations,” a spokesman warned yesterday, after Obama met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak was adamant on the same point last night.

In other words, the received wisdom is that outsiders must foster a deal by insisting: You, Palestinians, stop killing; you, Is raelis, stop building.

[....]

That’s why Netanyahu’s demand to end the Arab-Israeli conflict is unrealistic. But short of an end to conflict, no amount of Israeli concessions can bring what Obama envisioned last night — “a peace that will end the conflict . . . for our generation, our children’s generation and the next.” So Jews will continue to build, even as Arabs continue trying to kill them.

Read the rest:  Building v. Killing

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Assorted thoughts on the Dhimma, its basis in nomadism and in Islamic scripture and exegesis

by Philip_Daniel ( 158 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, Afghanistan, Albania, Anti-semitism, Balkans, Blogmocracy, Bosnia, Christianity, Dhimmitude, Egypt, Fascism, France, Gaza, Georgia, Guest Post, History, India, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic Finance, Islamic Invasion, Islamic Supremacism, Islamic Terrorism, Islamists, Israel, Jihad, Judaism, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Massacres, Middle East, Military, Pakistan, Palestinians, Racism, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sharia (Islamic Law), Somalia, South Ossetia, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Uncategorized at August 30th, 2010 - 11:30 am

The passage below might elucidate how the Arabs and later the Turks viewed the dhimmi/rayah, and how this perspective was a direct outgrowth from the peripatetic lifestyle correctly associated with these two national groups…

The nomad’s energies are suddenly diverted from herding cattle to governing an empire; and, like all human beings, he sets out to solve the new problem with which he is confronted by applying to it his own particular experience of the past. He thinks of himself as still a herdsman, though no longer of animals but of men, and, in order to keep these ‘human cattle’ (a less docile herd than sheep and cows) under control, he selects and trains ‘human watch-dogs’ to help him and takes greater pains over their breeding and education than his ancestors took, on the steppes, in providing themselves with animal auxiliaries…In detail the method of nomadic empires has been to treat the majority of their sedentary subjects as ‘human cattle’ who are to be periodically milked and shorn and are to be kept in order by a ferocious repression at the first symptoms of insubordination, but are otherwise allowed to live their own lives in their own way; and to control these ‘human cattle’ through the agency of a small, select body of ‘watch-dog’ slaves recruited partly from prisoners-of-war, partly from the victims of professional slave-raiders and slave-dealers, and partly from children who are rounded-up periodically from the ‘human herd’ in order to be broken-in by their master [devcirme, meaning "tribute in blood"], with no more compunction than a shepherd feels in separating the lamb from its mother or the calf from the cow.

Turkey, Arnold Joseph Toynbee and Kenneth Porter Kirkwood, p. 19, Scribner, 1927

Likewise, from early Islamic historiography, we read that Soleiman ibn-e Abdolmaleck said of the Zoroastrians of formerly-Sassanid Persia, now integrated into the Rashidun Caliphate…

Milk the Persians and once their milk dries, suck their blood.

The blood metaphor is hardly new in regards to the attributed sayings of the earliest generations of imperial Muslims; on the battlefield, Khalid ibn al-Walid, the “Sword of Allah”, addressed his Eastern Roman equivalent thusly…

Now then, embrace Islam so that you may be safe, or else make a treaty of protection for yourself and your people and agree to pay jizya. Otherwise, do not at all blame anyone but yourself, for I have brought you a people who love death as you love life.

The annals of a medieval Armenian chronicler, Ghewond, records a similar line as having been spoken by Muhammad prior to his death…

Go against the countries and put them under your rule, for the plenty of the world has been given to us for our enjoyment. Eat the meat of the select ones of the countries, and drink the blood of the mighty.

By “drinking blood” is not meant literal vampirism, but the subjugation and exploitation of unbelievers under the theocratic tyranny enjoined by Allah and Muhammad in the Koran and Sunna, imposed by the Caliph, the “viceregent of Allah on Earth”, in order to ensure the obedience of the Slaves of Allah and the chastisement of the heathens, either through death or surrender to a state of perpetual wretchedness…

Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: ‘Umar sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans…When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, “Let one of you talk to me!” Al-Mughira replied, “Ask whatever you wish.” The other asked, “Who are you?” Al-Mughira replied, “We are some people from the Arabs; we led a hard, miserable, disastrous life: we used to suck the hides and the date stones from hunger; we used to wear clothes made up of fur of camels and hair of goats, and to worship trees and stones. While we were in this state, the Lord of the Heavens and the Earths, Elevated is His Remembrance and Majestic is His Highness, sent to us from among ourselves a Prophet whose father and mother are known to us. Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says:– “Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master.”

Sahih Bukhari Volume 4 Book 53 Number 386

In these final prescriptive revelations, binding for all time, not to be abrogated until the Hour of Resurrection, Allah and Muhammad have determined that the true believers shall rule over the entire world and enforce divine laws, while those who persist in idolatry will be their dejected, abused slaves in perpetuity, whose laborious fruits will, through excessive taxation, be made the ongoing booty of the elect, gradually reducing the “reprobate” to misery, as Maimonides describes in his Iggeret Teiman (“Epistle to the Jews of Yemen”)…

Remember, my coreligionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins God has hurled us into the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us, as God has forewarned us: Our enemies themselves shall judge us [Deut. 32:31]. Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they. Therefore, when David king of Israel of blessed memory, inspired by the Holy Spirit, envisaged the future tribulations of Israel, he bewailed and lamented their lot only in the kingdom of Ishmael, and prayed on their behalf for their deliverance in the verse: Woe is me, that I live with Meshekh, that I dwell among the clans of Kedar [Ps. 120:5]. Note the distinction between Kedar and the children of Ishmael, for the Madman is of the lineage of the children of Kedar, as they readily admit. Daniel also alludes to our humiliation and degradation like the dust in threshing [2 Kings 13:7], suffered only at the hands of the Arabs, may they be speedily vanquished, when he says: And it made fall to the earth some of the host, yea of the stars, some of which it trampled [Dan. 8:10]. Although we are dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and have to put up with their fabrications, yet we behave like him of whom the prophet said: But I am like a deaf man, unhearing, like a dumb man who cannot speak up [Ps. 38:14]. Similarly, our sages instructed us to bear the prevarications and lies of Ishmael in silence. They found it in a cryptic allusion to this attitude in the names of his sons, Mishma, Dumah, and Massa, which have been interpreted to mean listen, be silent, and endure. We have acquiesced, both young and old, to inure ourselves to humiliation, as Isaiah instructed us: I offered my backs to the floggers, and my cheeks to those who tore out my hair [Isa. 50:6]. All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment and pressure, which well-nigh crush us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition, as David describes: I am all peace; but when I speak, they are for war [Ps. 120:7].  Most certainly therefore if we start trouble, and claim power from them absurdly and preposterously, we surely give ourselves up to destruction.

The second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, is reputed to have said of the dhimmis under his domain…

Our children will live off them indefinitely for as long as they survive and these people will remain slaves to the adherents of Islam for as long as the latter endure. Therefore, strike them with the poll-tax.

These statements, of course, are congruent with authentic ahadith which exort the true believer to exploit the dhimmi — in fact, to “milk [the dhimmi] dry” through excessive taxation, the notorious jizya ‘alaa l-jamaajim (literally “the penalty on skulls”) and its associated extortion called kharaj ‘al-ard (i.e., “the land tax”, because dhimmis are unable to legally own property in the legal sense we understand — all conquered land is either ghanimaat [if taken by force] or fai’ [if taken without force] and is legally under the ownership of the mu’minin, so that the original kaffir inhabitants must pay the ruling caste in order to continue to live and work upon the land which was previously theirs but henceforth expropriated from them and redistributed to the Ummat al-Muslimin as waqf land — a sacred endowment — for eternity)…

Narrated Juwairiya bin Qudama At-Tamimi: We said to ‘Umar bin Al-Khattab, O Chief of the believers! Advise us.” He said, “I advise you to fulfill Allah’s Convention (made with the Dhimmis) as it is the convention of your Prophet and the source of the livelihood of your dependents (i.e. the taxes from the Dhimmis).

Sahih Bukhari Volume 4 Book 53 Number 388

The fiscal oppressions had the potential of being particularly tyrannical and dispiriting, as a record from the Jewish mercantile community in the Kalbid Emirate of Sicily (948-1053), found in the celebrated Cairo Geniza collection and subsequently quoted in Jeremy Johns’ Arabic administration in Norman Sicily: the royal diwan, painfully suggests…

They [the Jews] were sorry and preferred death to life. Most of them are poor and destitute. Through fear of the rulers, many went bankrupt, and unfortunately some fled overseas

Isaac ben Samuel, who sought refuge from the ravages of the Turcomen ghuzat in Israel through fleeing to Christian Italy and, later, Christian Spain, echoes Maimonides in expressing the sentiment of Jews regarding living under Islamic domination versus Christian domination, by invoking the authority of the Rabbis of the Talmud…

Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael.

The dhimmi is to be debased, humiliated, brought low, made to be servile and obsequious towards his Muslim master.

Already within a century of the expansion of the Caliphate throughout 2/3 of Christendom, the conquerors began to fully assert the newly-forming fiqh of the deen of Islam, designed as it were as a vehicle for Arab imperialism, in order to to promote the superiority of the Arab Muslim male, first above Arab Muslim females, then non-Arab Muslims, then subjugated infidels, then enslaved infidels, then finally unsubjugated disbelievers and unrepentant apostates. The productive, mercantile peoples indigenous to the formerly-Roman and Sassanid and Visigoth land, who did not enter the fold of the Jamaat of Muhammad, were, in the name of an ideology whose most virulent adherents cause endless trouble today, mistreated beyond comprehension, and this, despite the initial “good treatment” after subjugation (because the conquerors, finding themselves unable initially to wield the strings of the complex infrastructure of a sedentary culture so different from theirs, had no other choice for this short period), became the norm for the following 12 or so centuries, continuing today. As Andre Servier, a pied-noir and and unapologetic critic of Islam, wrote in his infamous Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman

Their [initial] prosperity [at the time of the conquest] was their undoing. A century later, as the result of a change of Muslim policy towards foreigners, we see the Copts, whose property had aroused envy, abominably robbed and treated as pariahs. It went to the length of their being compelled to wear blue turbans to distinguish them from Muslims, and of their priests being branded with a red-hot iron. Later still, when religious fanaticism had increased, they were reduced to such a pitiful condition that the greater part of them had to abandon their faith.

Today, as we know, the Copts, the indigenes of Egypt, which they term Kemet, constitute “officially” 8-10% of the total population, and the discrimination which they face has recently earned the attention of sincere-minded human rights activists, especially in the wake of the Nag Hammadi Massacre, committed on January 7th, 2010. The true believers, those who have achieved taqwa and who establish the “just” rulings enjoined in the Koran and Sunna, could not, and certainly several today cannot, bear the existence of a disbeliever whose life is not marred by misery and poverty — after all, how can one who venerates idols, who shares the hukm with Allah, who imposes al-munkar upon Allah’s helpless Slaves, be rewarded in spite of his sin in taking the bounty of Allah with such ingratitude?

Ismail ibn Kathir, student of Shaykh ibn Taymiyyah, asserts that Paying Jizya is a Sign of Kufr and Disgrace.

Likewise, in Volume II of the Hanafi madh’hab jurisprudential manual al-Hedaya ["The Guidance", penned by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani] we read that…

First, capitation-tax is a sort of punishment inflicted upon infidels for their obstinacy in infidelity, (as was before stated;) whence it is that it cannot be accepted of the infidel if he send it by the hands of a messenger, but must be exacted in a mortifying and humiliating manner, by the collector sitting and receiving it from him in a standing posture : (according to one tradition, the collector is to seize him by the throat, and shake him, saying, “Pay your tax, Zimmee!) – It is therefore evident that capitation-tax is a punishment; and where two punishments come together, they are compounded, in the same manner as in Hidd, or stated punishment. Secondly, capitation-tax is a substitute for destruction in respect to the infidels, and a substitute for personal aid in respect to the Muslims, (as was before observed;) – but it is a substitute for destruction with regard to the future, not with regard to the past, because infidels are liable to be put to death only in future, in consequence of future war, and not in the past. In the same manner, it is also a substitute and in the past.

From here, we note that the payment of jizya by the dhimmi preserves his life under the domination of the true believers, preventing any future resumption of the jihad against him and his property as long as he pays it and submits to the all-encompassing discriminatory regulations legislated in the Dhimma of Umar (numerous additions were made over the centuries, until it constituted a truly-extensive legal code)…

When you (Muslims) came to us we requested safety for ourselves, children, property and followers of our religion. We made a condition on ourselves that we will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration nor use any of them for the purpose of enmity against Muslims. We will not prevent any Muslim from resting in our churches whether they come by day or night, and we will open the doors [of our houses of worship] for the wayfarer and passerby. Those Muslims who come as guests, will enjoy boarding and food for three days. We will not allow a spy against Muslims into our churches and homes or hide deceit [or betrayal] against Muslims. We will not teach our children the Qur’an, publicize practices of Shirk, invite anyone to Shirk or prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so. We will respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them. We will not imitate their clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names, or ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons. We will not encrypt our stamps in Arabic, or sell liquor. We will have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist, refrain from erecting crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets. We will not sound the bells in our churches, except discretely, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims, nor raise our voices [with prayer] at our funerals, or light torches in funeral processions in the fairways of Muslims, or their markets. We will not bury our dead next to Muslim dead, or buy servants who were captured by Muslims. We will be guides for Muslims and refrain from breaching their privacy in their homes.’ When I gave this document to `Umar, he added to it, `We will not beat any Muslim. These are the conditions that we set against ourselves and followers of our religion in return for safety and protection. If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion.

Whatever autonomy the dhimmis possessed, it was the autonomy of the Bantustan, which means that they were permitted to manage their internal affairs as long as such affairs remained completely private. In any and all interactions with the upper caste — that is, the Muslim citizenry — the dhimmi tributary-subjects must always defer to them in every circumstance, yielding to the every whim of the Muslim master; in all public situations the dhimmi is considered a marked inferior who can only be manumitted from his yoke through reversion to the deen of fitrah (the innate nature of mankind, i.e. Islam). The dhimmi, through payment of the jizya and subjection under the dhimma, is “rewarded” with aman (protection) on his life and property, but in exchange his rights are severely-diminished in the political and social and juridical and economic spheres, and he is made insecure because his rights and those of his millet (community) can be completely abrogated on account of a single misdemeanor in relation to the dhimma contract; this system is designed to keep the “weak in faith” from leaving Islam because seeing the degradation of the dhimmis assures the Muslim of the truth of his deen and the falsehood of those of the mushrikeen, designed to remind the dhimmis of the superiority in all realms of life of the deen of Allah over shirk and kufr, designed to punish the kuffar for their zulm against Allah and Muhammad, and designed to prevent the disbelievers from waging acts of fasad which would bring about the rule of taghut in place of shari’a and thus the feared victory of fitnah over tawheed. One of Allah’s 99 sacred names is al-Mudhill, the humiliator, the one who debases, and the dhimmi is, as a lower caste incapable of true citizenship, one who is often-intolerably humiliated, always a subject whose status resembles abject servitude, many of what we would (rightly) consider his basic rights being abrogated on virtue of his faith alone. As Malcolm MacColl writes in his 1897 study of the visibly-decaying Ottoman Caliphate, The Sultan and the Powers

Now among the irrevocable doctrines of the Sacred Law are the following:–If the Rayah refuse to become a Musulman he must choose between the cruel alternatives of death or tribute. If he become a Zimmi or Tributary it must be on certain painful and degrading conditions, of which the following will suffice as specimens:–He must pay a yearly capitation tax for the permission to live, and the form of receipt says that the tax is a ransom for the permission to wear his head that year; so that, if he is in arrear with his taxes, as the ruined Armenians are now, his life is forfeited. The Rayah’s evidence cannot be recieved in a court of law against a Musulman,  He is not allowed to bear or possess arms. He must provide three days’ gratuitous hospitality for every Musulman official or traveller who asks for it. Travelling pashas and their retinue of rapacious servants, the ruffianly police, tax-gatherers, Bashi-Bazouks, dirty Dervishes, &c., are thus mercilessly quartered on the wretched Christians of Turkey, whose women (although this is not sanctioned by law) are at the mercy of these unwelcome guests. Should a Christian convert a Moslem to Christianity, both the Christian and the convert must suffer death. The Rayah must build no place of worship. If he obtain official sanction (which he never does without heavy bribes) he may repair or rebuild such places of worship as existed in the country when the Musulman conquerors took possession of it; but it must be on the same plan, sites, and dimensions as the old buildings.

It is sometimes said by persons who know nothing about the subject that the Musulmans of Turkey are more cruelly oppressed than the Christians. That is nonsense, for although Musulmans and Christians are all abominably oppressed under the horrible rule of the Sultan, there is this difference–that the Musulmans are oppressed contrary to law, and the Christians in obedience to the law. The former possess two remedies which are partially effective, and which are denied to the Christians: they possess arms, and can appeal to the law for protection. Moreover, the Christians, in addition to the disabilities which I have described, are subject to many taxes from which the Musulmans are free. I have mentioned the yearly capitation ransom tax. But they are liable to many other imposts which do not touch the Musulmans–for instance, forced labour ad libitum and a tax on every Christian, from three months old to the day of his death, to provide a substitute in the army, from which the Christians are by law excluded.  In brief, the Christians throughout Turkey are obliged–according to the unanimous testimony of British Consuls–to pay in legal taxation 67 per cent.of the produce of their soil and toil. There are, of course, innumerable extortions in addition. So that the wretched Christians could not manage to eke out even their miserable existence except by means of cheating and bribery. And then, forsooth, highly virtuous writers and speakers in England, who have never experienced any oppression or injustice, take up their song and parable against the servile and degraded character of the Christian subjects of the porte! Who degraded them in so far as they are degraded? How many of their critics and slanderers would endure torture, death, dishonour, and barbarous death in defence of their faith, or of any doctrine in principle, or cause whatsoever? Yet that is what the Christians of Turkey have done for centuries…

I have sometimes been called a fanatic on the subject of Islam. I am no fanatic on that or on any other subject. I am an advocate of religious freedom in the widest sense consistent with the inalienable rights of mankind. My toleration ceases where the religious doctrines of one man invade the aboriginal rights of another, as they do, and have ever done, in every state, without exception, where Islam has ruled supreme. The non-Musulman can never obtain the rights of citizenship, but is irrevocably doomed to a most cruel and degrading servitude, under Musulman rule. It is no answer to this to point to Christians and Jews occupying high posts under the Sultan, who is obliged to make use of them for lack of competent Musulmans, or because he finds it good policy to employ them. It sometimes happened under the serf system in Russia that a landlord educated one of his serfs and employed him to manage his property, or permitted him to strike out a career for himself. But that did not affect the condition of the serfs in general, or even of the emancipated serf, unless he was really manumitted. So in Turkey. The rare exceptions prove the rule as regards the mass; and even the privileges of the few can be withdrawn in a moment. They have no rights. The Sultan’s present Ambassador in London, like his two predecessors is a Christian; but he is not, and cannot be, a citizen of the Ottoman Empire, for the only gate to that citizenship is the profession of Islam. The Turkish Ambassador, though a Greek Christian, is simply a Rayah advanced to a high position by the arbitrary will of the Sultan, just as a slave on an American plantation might have been by his master, and his case proves absolutely nothing as to the legal status of the non-Musulman. Indeed, the position of the Rayah is worse than that of the slave on an American plantation or in the Roman Empire; for the American planter or the Roman slave-owner could have made, and sometimes did make, his slave a freeman. But even the Sultan cannot make a single Rayah in his dominions a freeman, since that is a privilege reserved to the Musulman alone. It is because our statesmen and ambassadors have been ignorant of this fundamental fact that their policy in Turkey, from Lord Stratford de Redcliffe downwards, has been such an abject and disastrous failure. I have been preaching this truth for years, and some among us are at last beginning to recognise it. It was refreshing to read in the Morning Post, of last September 17, a leading article which clearly grasped the situation, as the following extract will show:–

Just as in the Christian West living things are divided into human beings and brute beasts, so where the Moslem is the master they are divided into believers and infidels, and the infidel human being is regarded as little better than the brute. And just as in a Christian country if the cattle become dangerous they would be slaughtered wholesale for the safety of the community, so in Turkey, whenever the Rayahs, have been thought to be dangerous, a clearance of them has been made. It is impracticable in a Mohammedan country to appeal to a principle of humanity, for that would be to assert a brotherhood between man and man, which it is the essence of the Mohammedan religion to deny. In a Mohammedan State the Christian can have no part, for his recognition would imply the negation of Islam. Accordingly, the most competent judges, Ranke, the historian of the modern changes in Turkey, and Moltke, the shrewd observer of the beginnings of the modern period, explained long ago that the security for the Rayahs could never be had until they were placed under their own rulers and withdrawn from the authority of the Turks.

The above assessment refers to the former Sunni Sultanate based in Constantinople, governed by the sons of Osman Ghazi, from whence the the term “Ottoman” is derived. In lands under the Shari’a as interpreted under Shi’ism, such as within the Qajar dynasty of Persia, the plight of non-Muslims was greatly exacerbated by the doctrine of najasun, whereby Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians — called “gavours” –were deemed not only spiritually but also physically filthy; this, naturally, served to segregate them further from society than even under the dhimma legislation in Sunnidom. The Romanian Jew J. J. Benjamin observed of the Jews living under Shi’a authority…

They are obliged to live in a separate part of town…; for they are considered as unclean creatures… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt… For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans… If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him… unmercifully… If a Jew enters a shop for anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods… Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them… Sometimes the Persians intrude into the dwellings of the Jews and take possession of whatever please them. Should the owner make the least opposition in defense of his property, he incurs the danger of atoning for it with his life… If… a Jew shows himself in the street during the three days of the Katel (Muharram)…, he is sure to be murdered.

The actual legal decrees pertaining to dhimmis bolsters the observations of this seminal traveler and historian; in 1892, in Qajar-ruled Hamadan, Jews were obligated to submit to the following abasements [hat-tip for this one to Dr. Andrew Bostom -- many thanks]…

1. The Jews are forbidden to leave their houses when it rains or snows [to prevent the impurity of the Jews being transmitted to the Shiite Muslims]

2. Jewish women are obliged to expose their faces in public [like prostitutes].

3. They must cover themselves with a two colored izar (an izar is a big piece of material with which eastern women are obliged to cover themselves when leaving their houses].

4. The men must not wear fine clothes, the only material being permitted them being a blue cotton fabric.

5. They are forbidden to wear matching shoes.

6. Every Jew is obliged to wear a piece of red cloth on his chest.

7. A Jew must never overtake a Muslim on a public street.

8. He is forbidden to talk loudly to a Muslim.

9. A Jewish creditor of a Muslim must claim his debt in a quavering and respectful manner.

10. If a Muslim insults a Jew, the latter must drop his head and remain silent.

11. A Jew who buys meat must wrap and conceal it carefully from Muslims.

12. It is forbidden to build fine edifices.

13. It is forbidden for him to have a house higher than that of his Muslim neighbor.

14. Neither must he use plaster for whitewashing.

15. The entrance of his house must be low.

16. The Jew cannot put on his coat; he must be satisfied to carry it rolled under his arm.

17. It is forbidden for him to cut his beard, or even to trim it slightly with scissors.

18. It is forbidden for Jews to leave the town or enjoy the fresh air of the countryside.

19. It is forbidden for Jewish doctors to ride on horseback [this right was generally forbidden to all non-Muslims, except doctors].

20. A Jew suspected of drinking spirits must not appear in the street; if he does he should be put to death immediately.

21. Weddings must be celebrated in the greatest secrecy.

22. Jews must not consume good fruit.

Refusing to follow these dehumanizing strictures, as stated above, renders one’s life and possessions mubaa’ — that is, lawful to be shed and looted respectively by Allah’s Chosen; one cannot reasonably doubt the effects of literally declaring non-Muslims as najasun in not only supplementing but actively increasing the pariah-ization of the kuffar, under Shi’a sovereignty…

Returning back to admittedly-more dominant and equally-worrisome Sunnidom –

Lastly, the Turkophile-Islamophile Abdolonyme Ubicini had no qualms about describing the plight of the dhimmi as it was, empirically (hat-tip to Bat Ye’or)…

The history of enslaved peoples is the same everywhere, or rather, they have no history. The years, the centuries pass without bringing any change to their situation. Generations come and go in silence. One might think they are afraid to awaken their masters, asleep alongside them. However, if you examine them closely you discover that this immobility is only superficial. A silent and constant agitation grips them. Life has entirely withdrawn into the heart. They resemble those rivers which have disappeared underground; if you put your ear to the earth, you can hear the muffled sound of their waters; then they re—emerge intact a few leagues away. Such is the state of the Christian populations of Turkey under Ottoman rule.

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

The New Cars of Gaza

by Rodan ( 111 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, Hamas, Islamic Supremacism, Islamic hypocrisy, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Palestinians at August 24th, 2010 - 8:30 am

The biggest myth claimed by the Progressive-Islamic Axis is that Israel is resigning Gaza. This is an outright lie and leaves out the fact Egypt is blockading Gaza. The Egyptians have even gassed Gazans in tunnels running under the border. Yet Israel gets blamed for everything concerning Gaza. Well it turns out they are driving new cars!

The sight of a brand new Chevrolet with 2010 plates cruising through down town Gaza City raises the question: how did it get there?

Until this month the partial Israeli/Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip banned the import of vehicles, but even now they can not come through the border crossing due to internal Palestinian politics.

So the Chevvy and the dozens of other new cars seen around town are still coming in via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza/Egypt border.

A video obtained by Sky News shows a bulldozer pulling a large car through a tunnel.

Read the rest: Tunnel Vision Of Gaza’s Luxury Car Smugglers

Excuse me if my heart doesn’t bleed for Gaza.

(Hat Tip: Guggi)

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Negotiations over what?

by Speranza ( 50 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Gaza, Iran, Israel, Palestinians at August 22nd, 2010 - 10:00 am

The upcoming Middle East peace talks will have the same fate as the previous talks. This is because negotiations presume give and take and the only thing the Palestinians want to negotiate is how long it  will take  for them to destroy Israel. I hope that Netanyahu realizes this. Obama seems to think that the best way to deter Iran is  to solve the phony “Palestine” issue. He does not know or forgets that before the June 1967 War there was no peace. By insisting that the key issue to be resolved is “Palestine” – we are playing  into the Islamic Imperialist  narrative, because the key issue that needs to be overcome is the Arab worlds refusal to come to grips with the idea of a non Islamic state in the Middle East, and not a second Palestinian nation (Jordan is the first).

by George F. Will

‘Twas a famous victory for diplomacy when, in 1991 in Madrid, Israelis and Palestinians, orchestrated by the United States, at last engaged in direct negotiations. Almost a generation later, U.S. policy has succeeded in prodding the Palestinians away from their recent insistence on “proximity talks” — in which they have talked to the Israelis through American intermediaries — and to direct negotiations. But negotiations about what?

Idle talk about a “binational state” has long since died. Even disregarding the recent fates of multinational states — e.g., the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia — binationalism is impossible if Israel is to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people. No significant Israeli constituency disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: “The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel’s borders.”

Rhetoric about a “two-state solution” is de rigueur. It also is delusional, given two recent, searing experiences.

The only place for a Palestinian state is the West Bank, which Israel has occupied — legally under international law — since repelling the 1967 aggression launched from there. The West Bank remains an unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate, the disposition of which is to be settled by negotiations. Michael Oren, now Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said several years before becoming ambassador:

“There is no Israeli leadership that appears either willing or capable of removing 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes. . . . The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops — the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War — and was profoundly traumatic.”

Twenty-one Israeli settlements were dismantled; even the bodies of Israelis buried in Gaza were removed. After a deeply flawed 2006 election encouraged by the United States, there was in 2007 essentially a coup in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. So now Israel has on its western border, 44 miles from Tel Aviv, an entity dedicated to Israel’s destruction, collaborative with Iran and possessing a huge arsenal of rockets.

Rocket attacks from Gaza increased dramatically after Israel withdrew. The number of U.N. resolutions deploring this? Zero.

The closest precedent for that bombardment was the Nazi rocket attacks on London, which were answered by the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities. When Israel struck back at Hamas, the “international community” was theatrically appalled.

Read the rest Many possible Israeli concessions would be suicidal

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Political theater, the Obama administration and the Israeli Left

by Speranza ( 117 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Fatah, Hamas, Israel, Palestinians at August 4th, 2010 - 8:30 am

Miss Glick  points out the obvious – that the Israeli Left (lead by the discredited Kadima party of Ehud Olmert,  Tzipi Livini, and Haim Ramon) is as treacherous as the Democratic Party is in the United States. She also details the enormous money that has been spent propping up the pathetic Mahmoud Abbas. Any treaty or understanding signed with Mahmoud Abbas would not be worth the piece of paper it is written on.

by Caroline Glick

The Israeli Left is on a collision course with the Obama administration. It is reportedly trying to undermine negotiations between the Netanyahu government and Fatah. The Obama administration is earnestly seeking to initiate them.

According to an unnamed eyewitness interviewed by Israel Radio, during a July 8 meeting between Kadima Council Chairman and former vice premier Haim Ramon, and Fatah chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, Ramon urged Erekat to tell Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to reject the Netanyahu government’s offer for direct negotiations towards a peace deal.

Ramon allegedly claimed to speak for President Shimon Peres and warned Erekat that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will not give the Palestinians what they demand. In light of this, Ramon urged Fatah to reject Netanyahu’s offers to meet.

The implication was clear. If the Palestinians wait out this government, a Kadima-led leftist government will happily give them what they want: Israel on a platter.

[...]

BUT WHILE they disagree on when these negotiations should take place, the Israeli Left and the Obama administration agree on what it will take to get them started and keep them going. Like Ramon, Obama seeks to woo Abbas to his side by promising to deliver up Israel. According to media reports, Obama has pledged that if Abbas agrees to negotiate, the administration will use America will coerce Netanyahu into submitting to the Palestinians’ demands on substantive issues. These include borders, Palestinian militarization, ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and large portions of Jerusalem, and other issues.

Yet despite these and other massive inducements, Abbas still refuses to negotiate. And so the Americans have released their heavy guns.

No, Obama is not threatening to end US training of the Palestinian army. That $550 million training will continue despite Israel’s position that a Palestinian state must be demilitarized and its concern that the US trained force will turn its guns on Israel.

Members of the Palestinian security forces and their Fatah affiliates have been responsible for most of the lethal attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria in recent years.

But the Obama administration’s commitment to its Palestinian army is so massive that the US’s General Accounting Office just published a report criticizing Israel for not being sufficiently supportive of the US trained military force.

[...]

And then there are the military realities.

Today, it is not the US-trained and financed Palestinian army that keeps Abbas’ expired government in power in Judea and Samaria.

It is the IDF. If the IDF were to withdraw, Hamas would take over in those areas just as it took over Gaza three years ago.

And if Abbas signed a peace accord with Israel tomorrow, he would have no capacity to implement it. He would be dead before he had a chance to declare statehood. And he knows it.

When Hamas reinstated its missile war against Israel last week, the media contended that Hamas is seeking to derail talks between Abbas and Netanyahu. Whether this is true or not, it misses the point.

The point is that Hamas can derail talks any time it wishes because Hamas is the real power in Palestinian society – not Abbas.

And because the US has coerced Netanyahu into agreeing to hold talks with a Palestinian who has no power to negotiate, and because the Palestinians with actual power are controlled by Iran and wholly committed to Israel’s destruction, it is clear that Obama’s most earnestly held goal and the Israeli Left’s greatest desire is to engage in political theater with Abbas at Israel’s expense.

[...]

The obvious remedy for all of this is for the Israeli Left and the US to recognize what it is that they are doing. Outside the world of theater, neither the Israeli Left nor the US have an interest in building yet another terror state in Judea and Samaria in addition to the one in Gaza. Neither has an interest in weakening Israel to the point where it cannot defend itself and therefore invites aggression from its neighbors.

If the Israel Left and the Obama administration truly want peace, they would be making some demands on the Palestinians. At a minimum they would demand that the Palestinians accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state and reform their anti-Semitic institutions.

But then they wouldn’t have their political theater. And that is something that cannot live without.

Read the rest here: Lights, camera and peace process

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

US aid to the PA

by m ( 142 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, Islamic Supremacism, Islamic hypocrisy, Islamists, Palestinians, Politics at August 3rd, 2010 - 8:30 am

A reminder from Caroline Glick:

Watch this amazing video about what US aid money to the Palestinian Authority pays for and what it could be used to do.

Watch it and then send it to your email lists and post it on your blogs. And if you are American — or European or Japanese or Canadian or Australian or the citizen of any of the dozens of states that annually give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinians — send it to your elected representatives and ask them to justify their actions.

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

You Can Send a Boat to break the Gaza Blockade

by snork ( 133 Comments › )
Filed under Anti-semitism, Dhimmitude, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Islamic Terrorism, Islamists, Israel, Jihad, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Progressives, Terrorism at July 27th, 2010 - 9:00 pm

Barack Obama’s friend, Rashid Khalidi, is passing the hat around [warning: jihadist website] among the fashionably loony crowd in New York to buy and outfit a boat for their next attempt to get arrested by the Israelis.

We turn to you to help make the U.S. boat, The Audacity of Hope, a reality. We must raise at least $370,000 in the next month. These funds will be used to purchase a boat large enough for 40-60 people, secure a crew, and cover the licensing and registering of the boat. In addition, the funds will subsidize some other costs of sending a U.S. delegation. We can make this happen together. For example, with 370 people giving $1,000, or with 3,700 people giving $100, we will have raised our full amount.

Yes, you read that right. The title of William Ayers’ Barack Obama’s book is to be the name of a terrorist ship specifically intended to violate international law. That does take some audacity. The chutzpah of splodydope.

We have already received donations ranging from $10 to $10,000. So, give what you can and give generously. From the deck of The Audacity of Hope, we will be in a powerful and unique position to challenge U.S. foreign policy and affirm the universal obligation to uphold human rights and international law. Let us act now because every moment counts and every dollar counts. Together we will contribute to the great effort to end the blockade of Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine.

Funny how they don’t mince words when they think no one else is listening.

And FWIW, look at the list of signatories. Half of them are Jewish names.


And in other Palestinian news:


What Was That that Some Blogger Used to Say? Palestinian Child Abuse?

Since the race-obsessed former anti-Jihadi blogger with an obsession with Pam Geller doesn’t do “Palestinian Child Abuse” threads any more, we need to fill in the void. So without any further ado, we have this piece of

***Palestinian Child Abuse***

Brought to you by the same Religion of Pieces that seems to be calling the shots at that place that used to be anti-child abuse.

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Please Separate your Recyclable Rockets

by snork ( 290 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, Hamas, Islamic Terrorism, Islamists, Israel, Palestinians, Terrorism at July 23rd, 2010 - 9:00 pm

This was from a viral email, so there’s no source link, but there is a description:

This is a garbage truck captured by the Israelis in Gaza (no doubt supplied to them by western aid).

The note on the holes in the front of the box reads: “The truck is set up to fire 9 Kasem rockets and then drive off innocently. ” The pink sign on the door says: “In case of traffic violations, please contact the Palestinian Authority.”

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Gaza, Under Siege, Opens New Luxury Mall

by Macker ( 76 Comments › )
Filed under France, Gaza, Hamas, Islamic hypocrisy, Palestinians, Turkey at July 21st, 2010 - 11:30 am

Remember all those Gazans, who are touted by the world press as being in “dire economic straits” due to the blockade imposed by Israel? Yep! They’re in such dire economic straits, they’ve gone ahead and opened yet another shopping facility full of goods imported from:
• France! (No surprise there.)
• Turkey! (Imagine that!)
• The United States! (No doubt, courtesy of الرئيس أوباما and the Demo☭rats.)

More photos here.
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if this place were open 24/7? Such is the hypocrisy of the MSM and the Paleostinians.
NOTE TO IDF: Please schedule an after-hours Grand Opening DEMOLITION!

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Why Israel’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals

by Speranza ( 118 Comments › )
Filed under Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Hezballah, Islamic Terrorism, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Media, Palestinians at July 15th, 2010 - 7:00 pm

The media will always romanticize and sanitize the genocidal enemies of the Jewish state. Just as blithering idiots such as Patty Murray will vapidly claim that Osama Bin Laden  is popular because he builds day care centers (he does not by the way), they will always point out that Hamas provides social services to Gazans.The goal is to humanize the most murderous and totalitarian ideology since the defeat of National Socialism and the implosion of the U.S.S.R. in order to demonize Israel so that its physical annihilation will be heartily approved with no guilt attached.  We have seen CNN and BBC reporters admit that they have shed tears at the deaths of the hideous Yasser Arafat and Sheikh  Fadlallah and I am sure that Christiane Amanpour felt the same way only she is too smart to admit it – unlike  Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr.

Hat tip – Hot Air

by Lee Smith

It’s nothing new for Western intellectuals to lavish attention and admiration on the resistance forces aligned against Israel, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah or even organizations like al-Qaida that are less interested in Israel than in killing and maiming Western civilians. Last week, when CNN’s former Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted [1] that she respected the late militant cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the cards were out on the table for all to see. But usually the pro-resistance vibe is more subtle, as when Nasr’s defenders demanded a more nuanced understanding from knee-jerk Americans who were shocked by Nasr’s support for a suicide-bomb-sanctioning man of faith. After all, Fadlallah was a relatively pro-feminist radical Islamist cleric—and if his talk about Israel was genocidal, well, that’s just part of the package when dealing with a complex place like the Middle East.

Media consumers in the United States are by now well aware that Hezbollah and Hamas provide “social services” for their communities. For the writers and television personalities who push such supposed palliatives on their audiences—“Yes, they do chant ‘kill the Jews!’ and they do act on their rhetoric, but they also educate poor kids in clean, well-lit schools (please ignore the slogans painted on the walls)”—respect for the resistance is a polite way of indicating one’s tolerance for murderous anti-Semitism. The issue is whether this attitude is in danger of seeping into the mainstream of the U.S. public. Poll numbers show that U.S. support for Israel is consistently high—in February Gallup found [2] that a near-record 63 percent of Americans were more sympathetic to the Jewish state than to the Palestinians. But ideas can change, and it’s intellectuals who often lead the way. Remember that Israel was a popular cause among the intellectual classes until the 1967 war. It is true that the American people and the bulk of their intellectual class are far apart on the subject of Israel, but all the massive and popular evil of the last century started among a small ideological elite.

A common explanation for the turning away of the intellectuals from Israel is that the Jewish state forfeited the world’s sympathy once it was no longer perceived as the underdog in its conflict with the Arabs. Israel’s sin, in this reading, is that it didn’t lose. However, this would suggest that intellectuals misunderstand a uniquely American concept: The underdog does not win the pity of the chorus because he is crushed by his tormentors; rather, he is the champion who perseveres because the stubborn stars that rule his nature will not permit him to choose otherwise. Perhaps his friends will abandon him, and maybe his family, too; neither his wife nor children signed on for such an arduous journey. If he intends to follow this hard path, he may well travel alone. Such is the stuff of big-ticket American heroism. It is odd that the American intelligentsia cannot recognize in Israel the likeness of our literary models, Melville’s Ahab, Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne. Rather, the intelligentsia is more like Hester’s hypocritical neighbors. If Israel is portrayed as the Dirty Harry of nations, then its accusers are the tepid bureaucrats mistaking cowardice for compassion, who chide Clint Eastwood’s Callahan.

In reality, of course, Israel isn’t all that heroic. No one and nothing is. Israel’s men and women of honor do not accomplish Homeric deeds in south Lebanon or Gaza to the beat of martial songs, like the resistance; instead they ride the bus home on the weekend to see their parents, go out drinking with friends, and pick up the wrong guy or girl in a smoky bar with awful pop music. “Our warriors,” says one former tank driver, “are Jewish boys who are bossed around by their wives.” And yet during the war with Hezbollah four years ago, the country’s incompetent political and military leadership sent too many of those Jewish boys to their deaths, without sufficient training or a strategy for victory. It seems like almost every day there is news that another of Israel’s chief political leaders is under investigation for corruption charges, which is to say the system is rotten and the system works. To say that Israel is normal is to say that it is, like all democracies, mediocre.

[..]

Some journalists shed tears [5] when Arafat died, others are smitten [6] by the beauty of Islamist militants: The “green eyes” of Hezbollah’s deputy Naim Qassem “are framed by thick, dark lashes and he has long elegant hands.” Saddam Hussein, we are told [7], did much to advance the rights of women. In Cairo I knew a former CNN producer whose first affair with an Arab intelligence officer was in Saddam’s Baghdad—a great city, she explained, if you didn’t mind the constant surveillance and widespread torture.

Read the rest:  Hollow Men

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Mother of Infant Saved by Israelis Hopes He Will Murder Them

by Eliana ( 160 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, Israel, Terrorism at July 9th, 2010 - 11:30 am

A Gazan woman with an infant dying from a genetic defect that causes failure of the immune system took the child to Israel for expensive life-saving treatments. Individual Israelis donated money to help save the boy’s life.

It was such a heartwarming story about how the two peoples might be able to come together someday that an Israeli journalist started filming it as a documentary.

Imagine the filmmaker’s surprise when the woman explained to him that she hoped her desperately ill baby would grow up to murder Israelis someday.

Nevertheless, this idyllic situation developed into a deep crisis that led to the severance of the relations and what appeared to be the end of the filming. From an innocent conversation about religious holidays, Raida Abu Mustafa launched into a painful monologue about the culture of the shahids – the martyrs – and admitted, during the complex transplant process, that she would like to see her son perpetrate a suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem is ours,” she declared. “We are all for Jerusalem, the whole nation, not just a million, all of us. Do you understand what that means – all of us?”

She also explained to Eldar exactly what she had in mind. “For us, death is a natural thing. We are not frightened of death. From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You’re free to be angry, so be angry.”

And Eldar was angry. “Then why are you fighting to save your son’s life, if you say that death is a usual thing for your people?” he lashes out in one of the most dramatic moments in the film.

“It is a regular thing,” she smiles at him. “Life is not precious. Life is precious, but not for us. For us, life is nothing, not worth a thing. That is why we have so many suicide bombers. They are not afraid of death. None of us, not even the children, are afraid of death. It is natural for us. After Mohammed [her sick infant] gets well, I will certainly want him to be a shahid. If it’s for Jerusalem, then there’s no problem. For you it is hard, I know; with us, there are cries of rejoicing and happiness when someone falls as a shahid. For us a shahid is a tremendous thing.”

Saving Mohammed Abu-Mustafa

When the liberal peacemakers say that all cultures are alike and we all want the same things, they aren’t just liars. They are damn liars.

Hat Tip: Carl in Jerusalem & Elder of Ziyon

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Gaza Game?

by m ( 126 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, Islamic hypocrisy, Islamists, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Progressives at June 23rd, 2010 - 10:30 am

Gaza video game highlights enclave’s hazards

AFP – An online video game launched on Tuesday lets you play the role of a Gaza student who must negotiate a web of Israeli obstacles in order to attend university in the occupied West Bank — but you can’t win.

The game, developed by an Israeli rights group with EU funding, walks players through the restrictions that remain in place despite Israel’s recent decision to allow greater amounts of consumer goods into the Hamas-run enclave.

[...]

Players begin by choosing characters on the website (www.spg.org.il), either a student, an ice cream manufacturer trying to export to the West Bank, or a man deported to Gaza whose family still lives in the occupied territory.

There are several options, including appealing to the Israeli military, petitioning the supreme court, or travelling via Egypt and Jordan, but in the game all of them lead to failure.

Hey, I’ve got a great idea! To make it really lifelike and make sure to tell all sides of the story (which is what they want, of course!) they should add some characters.

First of all, they need a couple people admitting that Gaza is not starving and some smiling Gaza shop keepers.

Where are the Hamas leaders admitting if the blockade is lifted more terror will follow?

They also need a few piece of crap martyr wannabes claiming that “attacking Israeli civilians is not a war crime”. How about a couple of Hamas happy asses celebrating it? Throw in a Jew-eating terrorist rabbit and Mickey Mouse lookalike indoctrinating their children into a lifetime of hate and constant war and they might be on to something.

OH and don’t forget the exploding donkeys!

They really should let the characters live through three days of terror in Israel before deciding if they are truly the victim. Maybe they would decide they don’t want to be associated with the evil that perpetrates such acts. Then they could give extra points if the character develops a conscience and decides to take out the obligatory terrorist loving pieces of shit that praise the evil of pulling over a car of “settlers” and executing a nine month pregnant woman and her four innocent girls.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. To be fair and all.

(thanks to Rodan for the link)

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Protest Outside the ‘House of the Lord’ Church in Brooklyn

by Delectable ( 122 Comments › )
Filed under Anti-semitism, Communism, Gaza, Islamists, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Turkey at June 18th, 2010 - 2:00 pm

Last night I attended a protest outside where certain Gaza ‘flotilla’ (aka terror armada) passengers were speaking in Brooklyn, at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. It should be noted that this ‘church’ actually believes in liberation theology, and claims that Jesus was an African, rather than Jewish.

Anyway, back to this protest. Here are pictures of the event. This is my favorite picture of the protest.

Protest

About 40 people of mixed background came to the protest in Brooklyn, on Atlantic Avenue. It should be noted that the Blind Sheikh was based out of the Masjid al-Farooq Mosque, at 554 Atlantic Avenue. This ‘church’ was at 415 Atlantic Avenue. So this protest occurred deep in the heart of Radical Islam.

In any case, the pro-jihadis had this clown singing ‘peace’ songs. It was quasi-comical. Of course, I also was handed the newspaper of the Communist Worker’s Party. Red/Green Alliance strikes again.

Clown

Some of the protesters (i.e., the good guys) started singing “We Con the World” while wearing clown wigs, which is the song popularized by the group Latma. It was quite appropos.

Some observations of the event:

  • A person running for City Council happened to be half a block from the ‘flotilla’ event. I asked him if he was pro-Israel, and he said yes. I then asked him if he backed Israel specifically in the ‘flotilla’ bruhaha, and he said “Well, it is complicated.” And then he went into a long story. I replied that it is not complicated at all and it is about Israel’s right to self defense. I then informed this would-be City Councilman (a Dem, of course), that I will not support him.
  • There was someone from Brazilian TV there, and I told him on camera that what I am most troubled by is language desecration, and I fear for the future over the misuse and defamation of the word “peace.” I told the same to a Columbia School of Journalism reporter.
  • More evidence of the red/green alliance – al-Awda NY sponsored this event, and you had communists handing out the Communist Worker’s Party newspaper. Al-Awda is linked to extremely unsavory jihad groups, as documented here.
  • I saw Turkish flags at this event. Never before have Turkish flags flown at such pro-jihad events. This is an extremely troubling trend.
  • At the event, the so-called ‘peace activists’ were screaming that Zionism is racism.

Overall, it is my considered opinion that peace is not possible while we buy into these false narratives, and claim that those who wish for the destruction of another are ‘peaceful.’ We must fight the war on the English language that the press has bought into, hook, line, and sinker.

And on a final note, I want to say that the pro-jihadis were really…pathetic. I mean, a tired, sad-looking man, singing a hippy-dippy ‘peace’ song, while wearing a jihad scarf? Come on! The only tragedy of this all is that we take these people seriously, and actually treat them like they have a substantial opinion, rather than the farces that they are.

Once we cut off the teat of the Western largesse to our jihadi adversaries, and stop treating the jihadis and their sympathizers as people worth listening to, real peace is possible.

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Our incoherent foreign policy

by Speranza ( 117 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Palestinians, Syria, Turkey at June 17th, 2010 - 6:30 pm

Victor Davis Hanson is sounding the clarion call that our current administration is making a mess of our alliances and that the appeasement vibes emanating out of the White House is merely emboldening our enemies.  These are dangerous times to be a friend of the United  States. Hillary Clinton and the shadow Secretary of State Samantha Power, are going to be responsible for the deaths of so many good people who loved and trusted America.

by Victor Davis Hanson

Not being George W. Bush while apologizing for America’s purported sins is not a foreign policy.

Ronald Reagan came into office with the idea of rolling back the Soviet Union. Reagan hoped that such an evil empire might collapse from its inability to match a newly confident United States.

George H. W. Bush sought to oversee a peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire, the reunification of Germany, and a new Western-led world order that thugs such as Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein could not disrupt.

Bill Clinton pushed Western-inspired liberal globalization to lift the Third World out of poverty.

After 9/11, George W. Bush sought to keep America safe from another round of Islamic terrorism while promoting Middle East constitutional government as a way of weakening Islamic terrorism.

But what exactly does Barack Obama wish to accomplish abroad?

In interviews and speeches, Obama emphasizes his nontraditional background and his father’s Islamic heritage. Apparently, he hopes that by reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush, America will be better liked.

But without a strategic vision, “Bush did it” leads nowhere — given that most of the world’s problems predated and transcend Bush. Obama doesn’t seem to understand than wanting people to like America is only a means to an end, not a policy in itself — and an especially dubious means, given the character of many nations in the world today.

Nor does Obama comprehend that global tensions often reflect fundamentally different views of the human condition, rather than simple miscommunication or clumsy diplomacy — and so can’t be solved by serial apologies.

[...]

In all these crises, trashing George W. Bush, reaching out to enemies and taking friends for granted is not proving to be a coherent foreign policy. Instead, it is a prescription for a disaster not seen since 1979, when another messianic American president thought he could charm the world by making our enemies like us.

And we all know how that ended.

Read the rest here: “Bush did it” is not a foreign policy

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon

Barack Hussein Obama BP Oil Spill Speech

by Rodan ( 160 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Gaza, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Open thread, Progressives at June 15th, 2010 - 7:30 pm

President Barack Hussein Obama will address the nation tonight about the BP oil spill. He will use this speech to Demagogue BP and Push for Cap-N-Trade.

The president will also press for the passage of legislation to move the nation away from fossil fuels, the one piece of his ambitious domestic agenda that has stalled, but it’s unclear what that legislation will ultimately look like.

The president said recently that he wants legislation that puts a price on carbon, and vowed to help round up the votes for it in the Senate.

Democratic Senate aides said this week that there is little appetite for pursuing ambitious legislation to combat climate change this year, and predicted a smaller package that directly addresses the oil spill is more likely.

Another item of interest is that the Obama regime pressured Israel to speed up the Gaza Flotilla and include an International component.

The Obama administration, led by National Security Advisor Jim Jones, was heavily involved in the Israeli government’s decision to appoint an “independent public commission” to investigate the Gaza flotilla incident and pushed Israel to speed up the process in order to head off any attempts for increased pressure at the United Nations.

Over the last week, there were a flurry of high-level interactions between top administration officials and their various Israeli interlocutors. A State Department official told The Cable that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and that Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg, Special Envoy George Mitchelland others were working the phones as well. Barak also spoke with Vice President Joseph Biden, who was traveling in the region.

But in last couple of days, the final details were worked out between the White House and Prime Minister’s office, specifically by Jones and Israeli national security advisor Uzi Arad, according to an Israeli official. The National Security Council was much more involved than the State Department, with NSC Director Dan Shapiro in Israel to help and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren playing a role as a go-between as well, the official said.

The message Obama officials delivered was twofold. First, they wanted to make sure Israel appointed international members to the commission who were credible. William David Trimble from Northern Ireland and Ken Watkin, a former judge advocate general of the Canadian Armed Forces, will be on it.

► Hot Links

Post to Twitter Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to StumbleUpon