Things are becoming clear to the Dutch

For decades now, the Dutch, with the rest of Europe, have been the most critical detractors of Israel, with the natural exception of the Arab/Muslim world. For people involved in politics, there is some short-term logic to this. After all, there is so much more to be gained by friendly relations with the Muslim world than there is with good ties with Israel.

For average people the reasons for being critical of Israel beyond all proportions are due to two reasons.

1. Lack of actual facts about the situation
2. anti-Semitism

As in most Western countries, the mainstream media (MSM) are overwhelmingly Leftist, and against Israel. Reporting is biased against Israel in a truly astounding manner, and has been consistently so for more than a generation. Most analysts put the turn-around from residual guilt and sympathy for 'those plucky Jews' to distaste or worse for Imperial and oppressive Israel at around 1967, after Israel beat the combined Arab armies of Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt in less than a week. Clearly, from then on it was open season on Israel.

So most Dutch people have heard little from the MSM other than that Israel is oppressing the 'Palestinians', killing and harassing them at will, targeting children, keeping them poor, occupying 'their' lands, etc, etc.
The Arabs on the other hand are an honorable people, oppressed, displaced, fighting merely for freedom, with little else than sticks and stones. All these poor people desire is a country of their own, which they've always had, but that was taken from them by force, illegal occupation. If the 'Palestinians' ever DO cross the line of what it still acceptable, it is at least still understandable, considering the hardship, oppression and even torture they've had to endure.

As the average non-Jewish European (by definition cursed with at least latent anti-Semitism), a Dutchmen has very little problems understanding why the 'Palestinians' murder Jews, no matter if most of their targets are unarmed civilians and often specifically women and children. The same Dutchman finds it hard to feel sympathy for the Jew and his family being butchered by psychopaths with explosives on buses and in public places. 'Palestinians' are always depicted in the news as suffering, grieving, inflicted, in pain, even if the person they lost was in fact the suicide bomber who just murdered twenty Israeli's. The effects of such massacres on Jews are never shown, not on the street, and not in documentaries after the fact.

Jews do not suffer. Arabs do.

And now Theo van Gogh has been murdered, by a Muslim extremist, in a way that would make Al-Zarqawi proud.

“There will be no mercy” said a document that the killer had held over van Gogh’s chest before skewering it there with a final knife blow to his heart.

By then van Gogh, 47, had been shot several times and was seen by one witness on his knees, pleading with his assailant, “Don’t do it . . . we can still talk about it.”

The response was a knife to the throat. The killer sawed through the neck and spinal column, almost to the point of decapitating him.

And many Dutchmen suddenly are able to see (despite the fact that these gruesome details are not published in the Dutch media!).

They see that dozens, no hundreds of incidents are not unrelated, as the press and the politicians would have them believe. Native Dutchmen being harassed from their homes, whole neighbourhoods being effectively ruled by gangs of Moroccans, politicians, journalists and researchers who speak out against the rise of Islam in Holland being forced underground and silenced by death threats. The pattern is being recognized by more than the few.

They see the difference between a people that will allow anyone to take a seat in parliament and strive for a cause, and culture that will react to any perceived offense with death threats, and the desire and capability to see them put to effect. And the people I'm referring to here is not Israel (although they too qualify), no, it's the Dutch themselves who have a very long history of accepting in their midst anyone who was forced to flee their home, or chose to come for any reason. The Dutch simply cannot conceive of the barbarism that is part and a parcel of the mindset of a large number Muslims. And so, a Dutchman will naturally think: "If an Arab does something like this, something terrible MUST have been done TO him". For what other reason can there be? It just doesn't make sense.

And still most Dutchmen do not understand, or they simply refuse to. Like Communism under Stalin, Islam's stated goal is the spread of the faith until it covers the globe. Not necessarily through violence, but violence is certainly not excluded.

Dar-al-Islam. Dar-al-Harb. There is the world of Islam, and there is the world of strife, of war. Where Islam does not yet rule, there is strife. Until Islam rules there too.

This is best seen in places where Islamic countries border on non-Islam countries. By far most, if not all (I'm not aware of any exceptions) regional conflicts in the world are caused by the expansion of Islam, with all the political and religious consequenced involved). The Middle-East, South-East Asia, Europe, Africa, the former Soviet-Union. Only the America's, where there is no Islamic country, are free of Muslim expansion. And W-Europe, which was only recently reminded that is has a Muslim heritage in Bosnie, also has a large Muslim population in its midst. Some countries are affected more strongly than others, but there is no W-European country that does not clearly show and feel the effects of the (on average) 7% Muslims that makes up its population.

Of all this, the Dutch chose to remain largely ignorant. Even after Salman Rushdie published a book that earned him a death sentence from Islam.
Even after the murderer of Pim Fortuyn (Holland's most popular politician since WW2) gave as one of his motives Fortuyns stand on Islam and its followers.
Even after Ayaan Hirsi-Ali was forced underground after taking a stand against misoginy under Islam.

So now Theo van Gogh has been murdered, by a Muslim extremist, in a way that would make Al-Zarqawi proud.

And many Dutchmen suddenly are able to see.

They see the insanity of a religion that brooks no criticism. With followers who know no compromise, no sense of proportion.

They see that if only 5% of all Dutch Muslims are radicals (the conventional estimate), that still means there are 20.000 (twenty thousand) religious fanatics in their midst, willing and able to do murder.

Dutch politics are stirred up. Some bigots have now torched Muslim schools, or even placed bombs. And most rational Dutchmen see.

The question is: Will they keep their eyes open this time? Or is it another week or so until they fall asleep again, until their daughters and granddaughters are forced to wear a veil, and pray five times a day?