Free Speech is such a nuisance

I take it for granted that everyone knows about the murder of Theo van Gogh. If not, go here, here and here. Van Gogh was murdered, but long before this, many other people, of occupations like journalism, politics and science have gone underground or stopped giving whatever (perceived) offense there was.

Since the murder, there's been a lot of discussion about what a person should be able to say, and what not. It seems to me Muslims are not the only ones unable to grasp the concept of "sticks and stones". This discussion also takes place in Dutch parliament, and clearly the God of Political Correctness dictates that the person who repeatedly shot van Gogh, then drew a knife and nearly cut his head off Al-Zarqawi style and ended by sticking a knife in the dead man's chest with a note attached to it (for partial translation go here), this person is not totally to blame. It seems there are some things a person cannot and should not say. Cross the line, and the consequences are to some degree your own fault.

Well actually, this is obvious. So obvious in fact that we have laws that enable the people to procecute anyone that incites hatred, or preaches racism, or in any way provokes violence and what not. Theo van Gogh might well have been a prime candidate for such prosecution. He offended nearly everyone in Holland. Nobody ever took him to court.

Somebody put seven bullets in him and then nearly sawed his head off though.

So now the Dutch government is considering taking off the shelves an ancient law against blasphemy. Yes, you read it right, blasphemy. So you see, we'll still have free speech, but there's an EXTRA law that says you can't say anything mean about Islam. I realize blasphemy covers all religions, but let's face it, in Holland we couldn't care less about Jews or even Christians, and blasphemy would never have been an issue if it hadn't been for the fact that people are becoming wise about Islam. Christianity has been the subject of ridicule and insults for at least as long as I've lived, and no one has ever suggested reinstating blasphemy legislation.
Blasphemy:

• A contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning God or a sacred entity.
• The act of claiming for oneself the attributes and rights of God.

It becomes especially ironic when you're like me and don't believe in God. I feel no need to deliberately offend those who do, but to me blasphemy is less evil an offense than is jay-walking. Most of Holland is for all intents and purposes secular (although Islam is rapidly changing that!), and so for most Dutch, it is actually impossible to offend God, because they don't believe He exists!

Reinstating blasphemy laws is a way to rationalize the silencing of criticism of Islam. Plain and simple.

Van Gogh's been dead for a week and a half now, and already the time for indignation has passed, and the time for dhimmitude has returned. Nice going, Balkenende.

Get over it, boys

Seriously. Stop insulting our intelligence. It is a tad too tired, too mad and too old even for you, wouldn't you agree? Excuse me for not shedding any tears over Noddy's death, the undercover KGB operative*, who allowed his people (no, of course he was NOT born in Egypt *and of course NO Palestinians resent that) to starve while he and brave PLO had BILLIONS stashed away. Those gazillions will come in handy for all the male babies who will now be named after him (care to bet?) because OF COURSE he will have left the money to his people, he wasn't stealing it, he was simply, er, keeping it safe. Oh well, at least his fellow men are smart enough to already be making money with his death, what with the medals and the posters and all. Someone send them a shipment of Jarhzeit candles. Spare me the madness. GET A FUCKING GRIP!

In the meantime in Fallujah, children, old people and women, many of them pregnant, starve to death. Those who are not shot or blown to smithereens that is. Oh wait, Rumsfeld did say no Iraqui civillians were going to be killed during this operation and I HEART Rummie so no worries. "God bless us, everyone". Troll, let me count the ways...

And just because I need some fine humour and it's my bloody post:

I swear I feel an insomnia bout looming.

* (Link found through Efrex)

At least his poor widow is well taken care of.

IMRA reports that Arafat's grieving widow, who apparently has the power to hold the dead in limbo forever if she so chose, will not have to worry too much about whether she'll have anything to eat tomorrow.

In fact, she could probably feed all of Paris if she wanted to. Or her 'own people' (nah, that would be silly!)

Yasser Arafat's widow, Suha, is expected to receive a sum of $22 million a year out of the Palestinian Authority budget, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere De La Serra.

[The newspaper] said Abbas personally promised Suha that she would receive $22 million a year to cover her expenses in Paris. The paper noted that in July Arafat transferred to his wife $11 million to cover her living costs for the first six months of the year.

Abbas and the Palestinian leadership were forced to strike the deal with Suha after she refused to allow them to visit her husband in hospital.

No matter that Arafat was starting to smell a bit after being dead for a week. No matter that she's been living like a queen in Paris while she let 'her people' rot, or let the international community pick up the tab through UNRWA and the other 18 UN agencies and bodies. After all, she has a child to take care of!

In hindsight, these two degenerates made a perfect pair. A match made in heaven.

Words can't get more outrageous than this

"Statement attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General on the death of President Yasser Arafat" is what heads a few lines of text, apparently 'attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General'.

President Arafat will always be remembered for having, in 1988, led the Palestinians to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state. By signing the Oslo accords in 1993 he took a giant step towards the realisation of this vision.

I am not surprised to hear the leader of the UN say Arafat 'led the Palestinians to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state'. Because according to UN standards, THAT is exactly what Arafat did!

By any sane standard of course (and as I pointed out recently), Arafat did more than anyone else (certainly more than any Israeli) to make sure the Arabs would NEVER get their 23rd country, for which I would be eternally grateful if it wasn't for the fact that it cost the lives of thousands of Jews to do it.

Good to have it out in the open that Arafat and UN have a common concept of the 'principle of peaceful coexistence'. It explains a lot, like the handling of the situation in Sudan, or Rwanda, or Bosnia, or... Well, anyplace but Israel really.

Also read this UN statement by Annan himself. What really struck me was this:

Thirty years ago this week, Yasser Arafat stood in this chamber, when he became the first representative of a non-governmental organization to speak to a plenary session of the General Assembly. One year later, the GA adopted Resolution 3237, conferring on the PLO the status of observer in the Assembly and in other international conferences held under United Nations auspices.

But the relationship between the United Nations and the Palestinian people is far deeper and broader, and dates back much longer, than that. For 55 years, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has provided humanitarian assistance, health care, housing and education to Palestinians. Today, there are a total of 19 UN agencies and bodies lending their assistance to the Palestinian people. [Emphasis mine - Ed]

For 55 years, the UN has kept alive a refugee problem that on any other part of this planet would have disappeared one way or another in months.

And they're using 19 separate 'UN agencies and bodies' to keep on pampering the Arabs, making sure this NEVER goes away. Until Israel goes away, that is.

Let's hear it for Arafat and the UN.

Arafat seems to warrant many eulogies...

... But I like Joseph Farah's best.

Who says we shouldn't rejoice when an evil person dies?

Certainly not the Bible.

In fact, Proverbs 11:10 says: "When the wicked perish, there is shouting."

I didn't shout when the sick sociopath died, but I felt good. Also knowing that whatever happens, the Arabs won't be able to replace him with someone equally vile and (to Arabs and many Europeans) charismatic.

I am glad Israel made the last years of his life truly miserable. He must have known that, apart from literally getting away with murder (mass-murder in this case), all his machinations came to nothing. He must have known he was going to die without achieving anything except causing misery to the Arabs calling themselves Palestinians. I would have liked to see the 75-year pervert hang, would have paid for it in fact. But the way this frail, sick old piece of shit spent his last years and then died is not without gratification.

Let this be Arafat's final epitaph: He was a terrorist. He was a murderer. He was a liar. He was pro-Nazi scum.

I, for one, am glad to see him dead.

I am too. The day Arafat died was a good day.

On 'Palestinians', their leader and his burial

Since 1948, when the last 28% of the former British mandate of Palestine was partitioned, 'Palestine' has ceased to exist. Two years before that, Jordan became independant from Great-Britain. Jordan of course being the other 78% of the original British Mandate. The people who live in Jordan are the same people who lived there before it was called Jordan, namely... You guessed it, Arab Palestinians! They now call themselves Jordanians.

In 1948, 48% of the remaining 28% (are you still following this?) was offered to the Arabs who chose not to become Jordanians. 52% was offered to the Jews. The latter accepted, the former refused, choosing instead to go to war, or having the rest of the Arab world do it for them. They lost, and lost again, and again, and they've never stopped loosing. But then, they've never stopped warring either.

It was Arafat who renamed himself and anyone who followed him 'Palestinians'. It was a marketing masterstroke, and made all the more succesful by the fact that the entire world bent over backward to adopt the name for the terrorist and his minions. But until then, no Arab called himself a 'Palestinian'. In fact, the only ones that did call themselves that were the Jews, who until 1948 had no country of their own except the land that rightly belonged to them but had been renamed by the Romans from "The Land of Israel" to "Philistine", just to spite the rebellious Jews (The Philistines were ancient enemies of the Jews). It is actually kind of fitting that another mortal enemy of the Jews would choose a name that was thought up to spite the Jews, and assist in their annihilation.

And the ultimate irony of course is that Arafat was born in Cairo. That's Egypt for the geographically challenged among us.

On countless occasions, Yasir Arafat has regaled listeners about his Jerusalem birth and childhood. He fondly recalls his birthplace in a stone house abutting the Western Wall, then how he lived with his Uncle Sa'ud in Jerusalem. Like Said, Arafat presents himself as a victim of Zionism - someone who lost his wordly belongings and his place in the world due to Israel's coming into existence. But in fact, as two intrepid French biographers, Christophe Boltanski and Jihan El-Tahri revealed a few years, ago (in their 1997 book, Les sept vies de Yasser Arafat), "Mr. Palestine was born on the shores of the Nile."

The French researchers tell an amusing story of discovery. They went to the University of Cairo and innocently asked for the registration of one Muhammad 'Abd ar-Ra'uf 'Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husayni at the School of Civil Engineering in 1956. This, Arafat's birth name, means nothing to the Egyptian clerk, who "sits down behind a rickety wooden table, almost completely hidden by the pile of dusty files bound in black leather" and "blows off a layer of grime in a most professional way," then hands over the records. In a blue ink faded by time, the researchers find that their man, living at 24A Baron Empain Street, Heliopolis, "was born on August 4, 1929, in Cairo." With this information in hand, they dash over to the State Registry and find Arafat's actual birth certificate, which confirms the date and place.

Arafat then lived in Cairo until the age of 28 and identified as an Egyptian. His first political affiliation was an Egyptian student organization closed to Palestinians. He fought for an Egyptian group against Israel in 1948-49 and subsequently served in the Egyptian military. He first traveled to Moscow, in 1968, on an Egyptian passport. Arafat all his life has spoken Arabic like an Egyptian, something that has sometimes impeded his career; on first encountering him in 1967, a biographer recounts, "West Bankers did not like his Egyptian accent and ways and found them alien."

They once asked Mallory, a mountaineer who twice attempted to climb Everest, why he wanted to climb the mountain. His answer: "Because it's there".

Arafat had much the same reason for wanting to kill Jews. They were there. Of course, the vast majority of the Arab world felt exactly the same, so I guess it was the popular thing to do, perhaps even a way to go places in this world.

For another primer on this subject go here.

Anyway, guess what? Arafat is dead, and good riddance. He chose as mentor a close personal friend of Hitler, married a woman who was half his age and butt-ugly, caused more grief for his people than anyone else on this world could have dreamed up (and no one else could have gotten away with it either!). He lived out old-age demented and locked up, was finally spirited away to a French hospital as a drooling clown, and then died while his wife and his closest aides bickered over his stolen money.

Quite a legacy.

And then there was the burial. If you never saw a 'Palestinian' and didn't know the meaning of the word, if ever you were wondering what type of person would feel sad after Arafat dies, let alone worship this degenerate as the saviour of your people, all you ever needed to do was watch the arrival of his corpse in an Egyptian helicopter, and the subsquent mayhem that ensued. If this type of hysteria and mass-psychosis is not enough to convince anyone that talking to them is a complete waste of time, then I don't know what it will take.

You know what? These barbarians deserved each other. A group of people that against all facts and better judgment will keep following a person they KNOW and even ACKNOWLEDGE is corrupt, has denied them a country of their own, robbed them blind, indoctrinated them into a state that makes it impossible for ANYONE in this world to co-exist with them DESERVES an asshole like Arafat for a leader.

I can't wait to see who they'll choose next. Bound to be a disappointment, I know. But still. Can't hurt to hope, right?

Michael Ledeen - The Killers

Michael Ledeen understands - and sometimes it helps to have some distance.

The Dutch — like every other European society I know — were unwilling to recognize that they had potentially lethal enemies within, and that it was necessary to impose the rules of civil behavior on everyone within their domain. The rules of political correctness made it impossible even to criticize the jihadists, never mind compel them to observe the rules of civil society. Just look at what happened the next day: An artist in Rotterdam improvised a wall fresco that consisted of an angel and the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill." The local imam protested, and local authorities removed the fresco.

That's what happens when a culture is relativized to the point of suicide. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked of an American politician, "he can longer distinguish between our friends and our enemies, and so he has ended by adopting our enemies' view of the world." This has now befallen Europe, which cannot distinguish between free societies — their natural friends — like the United States and Israel, and has ended by embracing enemies such as the radical Islamist regimes and elevating Yasser Arafat to near beatific stature.

Read it all.

Dutch Queen and Prime Minister send condolences

I guess it's just politics, but it makes ME sick to my stomach: The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports (Dutch) that

Queen Beatrix and Prime Minister Balkenende have sent condolences to both Arafat's widow and the 'Prime Minister' of the 'Palestinian Authority'. Balkenende calls Arafat an historic leader, a national symbol and a democratically elected president.

This depraved monster is responsible for thousands of Theo van Gogh's. Perhaps that makes all the difference: Kill one and you're a murderer. Kill a million and you're a statesman.

No one would have blamed Beatrix or Balkenende if they'd just remained silent. No one in their right minds, that is.

Who to trust? How to know?

After the death of Theo van Gogh, the integration of Muslims in the netherlands has been the prime topic of conversation for the Dutch people and their media. One thing has become clear about the murderer: He was born and raised in the Netherlands, was fully educated and integrated and had every opportunity at his disposal to lead a normal, happy and productive life.

Dozens, if not hundreds of interviews have been done with Muslims and their spiritual leaders in the 9 days since the murder. And without them realizing it, something has emerged from all this new information that should worry Dutch society more than anything else about this issue. More than foreign Muslims using Holland as a staging ground for acts of terror in Belgium and France. More than Dutch homes being used as storage facilities for explosives.

It has become clear that even Muslims who should be the best hope Holland has for integration, can turn into deadly murderers without appararent cause.

The fact that the Netherlands apparently offer a well-oiled infrastructure for terrorism and mayhem is secondary. The fact that Europe is essentially one large area without any real borders is secondary.

The thought that should frighten the average Dutch citizen is the fact that if third generation immigrants of Muslim descent, born, raised and educated in Holland, can turn just as deadly and extreme as Al-Zarqawi himself, then who from among the Muslim community can we trust? How can we know?

The group within which Mohammed Bouyeri (van Gogh's murderer) operated had been under surveillance by the Dutch secret service for some time. In fact, it's now become apparent that Bouyeri himself should by all accounts have been on the list of men warranting 'special attention'.

BUT A SECRET SERVICE EMPLOYEE OF MOROCCAN DESCENT WAS SUPPLYING THE TERROR CELL WITH EVERY BIT OF INFO THAT EXISTED ABOUT THEM.

Exactly what this person's role was (an interpretor, or an actual operative or analyst) is as yes unclear, but what is clear is that the man had full access to sensitive and confidential information, and that he had no doubt about where his loyalties lay: With his fellow Muslims, the terrorists.

Wether the man had purposely infiltrated the secret service to act a a mole, or had originally been of good faith (no pun intended) is still unknown. There can be no doubt however that this man felt no dilemma where his priorities were concerned.

This goes to the core of the issue. Since it became clear that the waves of immigrating Muslims would never return to their homelands, Holland (along with the rest of Europe) has been struggling to integrate, if not assimilate these new citizens.
We'd done it before. Our Indonesian allies in the war against Japan and later the colonial war against Sukarno became an integral part of Dutch society.
Inhabitants of our Surinam and Dutch Antilles colonies had more trouble integrating, but they did for the most part, and except for the color of their skin, they are virtually indistinguishable from 'native' Dutchmen.

So the Duch had some reason to expect no problems with the Muslim immigrants.

Wether the religion of Islam makes the crucial difference (as I think it does) or wether some other reason makes it all but impossible for Muslims to really become part of Dutch society is interesting for scientists and researchers, but it makes no practical difference. Islam forces its followers to choose between a Western-European life, or a Muslim one, or at least, that is the choice most Dutch Muslims see themselves faced with.

The wearing of veils has increased in the Netherlands, particularly among young women who were born here. Radicalization of Imams was becoming more and more apparent long before van Gogh was murdered. If there is a way for an increasing number of Muslims to really become part of Dutch society, this will only happen when Holland becomes a more Islamic society.

It's not even a matter of meeting each other half way (which is impossible). It is a matter of "My way, or the high way". For both 'sides' in this issue.

Muslims in the Netherlands form their own society and culture. In fact, Turks and Moroccans are separate from each other too, no mingling there either. There's no reason whatsoever to assume anything's going to change, and as the events after the murder of van Gogh make clear, polarization is bound to increase.

So it's high, high time the Dutch also made up their minds. The choice is one between preserving their free, open and democratic society, at the cost of being less politically correct and more politically direct. Or irrevocably plotting a course that starts with self-censorship, through ever-increasing Muslim influence, to an Islamic state, with the choice for native Dutch between converting, leaving, or becoming second-class citizens.

Islam will allow us no third option.

One of the 20th century's great monsters

The depraved demented psychopath is dead. 74 years too late, but better late than never.

Directly responsible for the death of thousands and thousands of Jews. More than anyone else since Adolf Hitler (from whom he was separated by only 2 degrees). Talk about standing on the shoulders of giants...

HonestReporting sums it up succinctly.

The bastard is dead...

... and guess who killed him? Watch this movie to find out! (spoiler: It's the Jews, AKA pigs and apes).

And this in a sermon from the Religion of Peace. Well, peace clearly fills the room, and radiates outwards in every direction. You can feel it right off the screen in fact!

Siege in The Hague

In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday a police SWAT team attempted to arrest an unknown number of men in a residential house in The Hague. The reason for the attempt is as yet unknown, but the attempt failed after explosions were heard and two members of the team were seriously injured in the ensuing firefight, apparently by a grenade, and another SWAT member was lightly wounded.

After it became clear SWAT is not equipped or sufficiently trained to deal with whoever the suspects are, the Dutch counter-terror team was called to the scene. This team is closely modeled on the British SAS, and belongs to the Netherlands Royal Marine Corps.

Presently, the situation is in a stand-off, with all the surrounding houses evacuated, the suspects holed up, and even airspace over The Hague blocked for all normal traffic. Hundres if not thousands of police and military personel are on the scene, apparently getting ready to assault.

Am I being premature in assuming the suspects are Muslim terrorists? Am I paranoid in suspecting my government is trying to suppress such information until the last possible moment?

Most information comes from Dutch news sources, but BBC has this short article.

France gives up on Muslim integration, embraces Islam

The murder of Theo van Gogh concerns all of Europe. Or it should, as the murderer makes clear in the letter he left at the dead body, pinned to it with a knife. In it he calls for the collapse of Europe. Also, it has become clear one week after the murder that the assassin did not act alone, but belonged to a group of Muslim extremists, with international connections.

But the Netherlands, currently chairing the EU, neglected to broach the subject at what would have been a perfect occasion for it: An EU summit in Brussels. It is tacitly admitted that on almost any subject discussed within the EU, the opinions and interests of the tens of millions of Arabs, Turks and Pakistanis living in the EU are always a very real consideration.

In a month from now, another EU summit will vote about the entrance of Turkey into the EU. The Dutch government has consciously decided not to 'complicate' that matter any further by raising the question "Just exactly how much Islam can Europe handle?".

Last week Nicholas Sarkozy - France's former Foreign minister, and hardly less powerful a politician than President Chirac - was asked about integrating Islam with European attitudes on government and democracy, he said:

It is too late to speak of integrating Islam. Wether I like it or not, Islam is France's second religion. Therefore, we have to integrate it by making it a French Islam.

Sarkozy never mentioned a French Secret Service report that was published five months ago in Le Monde, which states that there are about three hundred Islamic enclaves in France, where French laws and standards play next to no role, but it is clear that this report forms the background of his statements.

The Dutch government is not learning any lessons from the brutal slaying of van Gogh, or the situation parts of France. Already Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister has reverted to the usual babbling about tolerance, rationality, keeping cool. Nothing wronh with that, except that in this case, it is meant purely to calm people down and then subsequently FORGET about it, except maybe once a year when we have a remembrance at a memorial.

There is no political vision. No will to change the course of Islam overturning Dutch society. Already fervour and spirit are wearing off. Already we're handing out instructions on how to recognize extremist Muslims to Imam in Mosques, as if those Imams wouldn't know. As if many of those same Imams are not the very ones responsible for spreading the extremism.

If the death of van Gogh is not sufficient to afford a lasting new vision to the Dutch, and their government in particular, then nothing is.

Parts of this post translated from this article in NRC Handelsblad (Dutch)

Anne Bayefsky knows the UN

This subject bears repeating. Until the UN is disbanded. And ms Bayefsky explains better than anyone why this is so.

...what values does the U.N. promote? To name a few, the U.N.'s primary human-rights body, the Commission on Human Rights, includes such role models as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Not surprisingly, of 86 separate votes held at the 2004 Commission, the U.S. was in the minority 85 percent of the time. Reports estimate that more than two million people have been killed in Sudan over two decades of conflict, 70,000 have been murdered in the Darfur region since March, and another 1.6 million persons are currently displaced. But there has been no U.N. General Assembly emergency session on Sudan, just as there wasn't for Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. That's because the Assembly's emergency sessions are reserved for denouncing Israel, the "tenth" emergency session having now been "reconvened" 13 times in the past seven years. Instead, the U.N. has sent a commission of inquiry to Sudan to "determine whether or not acts of genocide have occurred or are still occurring" and to report in three months. Zhila Izadi, a 13-year-old Iranian girl, is currently under a sentence of death by stoning for the crime of being raped and impregnated by her brother. But the U.N. response to a criminal "justice" system that stones, amputates limbs, and publicly hangs children was to abolish the post of U.N. investigator of human-rights violations in Iran in April 2002. So much for values.

I would think the UN is a vile, despicable entity even if Israel was NOT its prime (if not indeed its SOLE) subject of condemnations, boycots, and resolutions. But as is clear from the quote above, the UN as an entity really has nothing better to do than harass the Jewish nation. Of course, the UN is not a homogenous club. It's 'democratic' nature ensures that dictatorships and other totalitarian countries decide what gets passed in the General Assembly and what does not. The revolting discrepancy that ms Bayefsky cites between the handling of the crisis in Sudan and the treatment of Israel should be enough for any sane person to conclude the UN is a monster whose time has long come and gone.

Ruled by a corrupt opportunist, openly interfering in the US elections, allowing the most dangerous countries on earth to aquire nuclear weapons while harassing Israel for its alledged posession. The UN has truly become an abomination.

Please read it all.

"Thou shalt not kill" = offensive

This Dutch Blogger has the following report (in English):

...artist Chris Ripke painted a mural stating 'Thou shalt not kill' on a wall opposite a mosque. It was, of course, a protest against the assassination of Van Gogh. The mural also included a dove, not exactly a ferocious or hate-inspiring animal. According to a letter by Nottroth on Van Jole's site, Ripke used his own wall for the painting.
After complaints from the mosque, who deemed it offensive, the police had it removed. According to Van Jole's site, mayor Ivo Opstelten of Rotterdam sanctioned this.

I understand the visitors of the mosque may have felt especially targeted by the mural,

"Thou shalt not kill"

but the only proper reaction would have been "WE AGREE!".

Arafat: death even worse than his life

Father of Terror's death even worse than his life
By P. David Hornik November 7, 2004


He's alive. He's dead. He's conscious. He's in a coma. He's brain-dead. He's recovering. He's on life support.

You'd think they were talking about a great statesman and noble leader, watching every tremble of the needle with clenched hearts. As far as many people are concerned, of course, that is what they're talking about.

Last April 5, asked about Arafat in an interview to Israel's Y-net news website, Ariel Sharon said, "I am not vouching for his physical safety. Whoever kills Jews or orders Jews and Israeli citizens to be killed ... is a marked man." Soon after I wrote: "Did Sharon mean what he said this time. . . ? Many of us feel that this man's continuing to go scot-free is a moral stain on our history that may never go away unless something is done about it soon. . . . This founder of modern terrorism . . . murdering Jews and others for decades in a sententious world of Holocaust ceremonies and proclamations about human rights -- is he going to get away with it? . . ."

The answer is now clear, and it's melancholy. Yes, he got away with it all -- scot-free. He's dying in state in a great capital of European culture, the finest physicians hovering over him round the clock, preparations already under way for a grand funeral in Gaza to be attended by some of the world's leading dignitaries. It's still not clear how his billions will be disbursed after his death.

His victims died much less honorary deaths, most of them now entirely forgotten except by family and friends. They didn't die in old age in top-flight hospitals with doctors hanging over them, most of these victims, but suddenly, in scenes of bloody carnage. One morning early in the "second intifada," the janitor of my younger son's school was shot dead in his car while on the way to work. My son, then ten years old, had his introduction to murder on a personal level: he had to learn that this man would not be coming to the school anymore, and why.

A few years earlier a girl, then fourteen, who had gone to school with my older son was killed by a suicide bomber in downtown Jerusalem. Then in the "second intifada" another classmate of his, this one a friend, a boy who had now reached the age of twenty, died in another suicide bombing on the same Ben Yehuda Street in downtown Jerusalem.

On September 9 last year, seven people were killed and over fifty wounded in a suicide bombing at the Cafי Hillel in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood. One of the dead was the brother of an old friend of mine.

You didn't know about these people; when such people got as far as the hospital, you didn't follow the details of their life-and-death struggles; an Israeli dignitary may have gone to their funerals, but world leaders didn't bother. No, the only one to whom great honor accrues is the killer -- and I, who don't want to be just part of a "people that dwells alone" but also part of the world, will somehow have to come to terms with these facts.

At a time when nonagenarian Nazis and aides to Nazis who killed a dozen people sixty years ago are still hunted down, aged, confused witnesses shuffling up to the stand in desperate attempts to testify against them, Arafat will be buried in state in Gaza, and something in me will get buried, too -- a hope I nurtured, admittedly weak, that there was enough justice in the world that it would still catch up with him, as the terror raged and more and more victims died and were mangled.

Who to blame? -- Sharon, for knuckling under to Bush's behest that Arafat not be touched? Bush, for knuckling under to "the world" at a time when he made ringing statements about good and evil and the duty to defeat all terror? Rabin and Peres for bringing Arafat out of his eclipse in Tunis to wage war on our children for eleven years? "The world" that has always supported him and embraced him so eagerly in the seventies when he came with his headdress, stubble, and gun, the noble savage, the "oppressed," the "victim," to make Jew-killing virtuous again?

Arafat is almost gone, but terror, his legacy, is with us, flourishing as never before, having "graduated" to videotaped beheadings on the Internet, mega-attacks that kill thousands and could kill millions instead of the ten people in the cafי or the fifteen people on the bus. No, justice was not done; instead there's a gaping hole, a void, to be filled with the screams and mourning of generations of victims as the Father of Terror sleeps peacefully in his grave.

Courtesy of israelinsider.

Enemy heads can attend Arafat funeral

The Jeruzalem Post reports that

Israel will allow foreign leaders, including those from enemy states, to attend the funeral of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat should it be held in the Gaza Strip

The report doesn't say wether Israel will allow them to leave, or live.

I wonder wether any Arab has the nerve to go to Israel. Of course, Arafat didn't have any friends. And Israel is still not recognized by any Arab except Jordan and Egypt (who might safely send delegations).

Yasser Arafat will most likely be buried between Thursday and Saturday, senior police officers estimated Sunday night following a meeting with IDF officers and representatives from the Foreign Ministry at the Southern District Police headquarters.

Dead or alive?

One can always hope...

For the record

The man who murdered Theo van Gogh was born in the Netherlands to parents of Moroccan nationality. He went to school and finished the second-highest form of high school. He has complete command of Dutch, both spoken and written. He had every opportunity in Dutch society at his disposal.Until the death of is mother, two years ago, he seemed normal, soft-spoken even. If any Dutchman of foreign descent could have 'fitted in', it was Mohammed Bouyeri.

Some sources now try to paint a picture in which it was the death of his mother that somehow radicalized this psychopath.

Bouyeri is the eldest of nine children. Dutch press accounts described him as "soft-spoken" and "nice" until his mother died several years ago. Bouyeri then grew a beard, began wearing traditional Moroccan robes and started attending the El-Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam, known for its radical preachings.

First of all, why don't all 24-year olds turn radical, then homicidal when their mother dies?

But most of all, any psychologist will tell you that the seed of such an act is sown in early youth. In this case, the seed was indoctrination with fundamentalist Islam. Which, when preached by the 'right' Imam, teaches that death is the penalty for those who ridicule or offend Muslims, or Islam in general.

I hope this finally puts to rest the myth that it is disenfranchised young (Muslim) people who are drawn to violence and murder. Too many Western Muslims with plenty of normal life opportunities have commited such barbarous acts to persist in this lie.
Dutch-born Muslims have been arrested on their way to Pakistan for Jihad-training. Others have been killed by security forces while already there.
British-born Muslims have volunteerd for the fight against Israel, and detonated themselves in public places, killing scores of Israeli's.

Disenfranchisement, desperation, lack of hope? I call it indoctrination, insanity, brought on by a religion that puts Muslims above all other humans, and Islam as the only proper type of society for the entire world.

Mohammed Bouyeri's mother may have been all that kept this ticking timebomb from exploding. But her death certainly was not the cause of his rampage.

Friends of van Gogh write open Letter to Murderer

Friends of the brutally murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh have written an open letter (in Dutch) to his Muslim assassin. I translate it here in full:

Dear Mohammed and friends,

What a drag things had to go like this.
We had no idea it was all so sensitive.
We sure learned our lesson.
Is the leg alright? [The murderer was shot in the leg by police during arrest - Ed]
Let's try to keep things together.
Out of respect to each other this should work, otherwise things will get so messy again.
Could you give us some firm guidelines as to what we can and cannot say?
That this should happen during Ramadan, darnit.
We will do our utmost to become more involved in your beliefs in order to prevent any further misunderstandings.
We are all very embarassed, Mohammed.
For putting you in this predicament, we can surely be blamed.
We have really crossed the line this time.
We hold ourselves responsible.
For Gods sake, try not to loose your sense of humour,
'cause you're going to need it in the coming time.
We hope this open letter does not contain anything that would hurt you or your co-religionists.
If so, please forgive us, we too are a bit confused.
Well guy, keep your head up!
Try to get away from it a bit, there's always tomorrow.
And remember, whatever happens, keep smiling.
Good luck and write soon

The friends of Theo Van Gogh.

No one appreciates sarcasm more than I do. And I'm well aware that van Gogh himself might have appreciated this 'open letter' as well.
I just think that the time is still too early, and more fit for anger, even rage maybe. Sarcasm is for when this Muslim scum, and everyone like him, rots behind bars or is dead.

Vigilance - Dutch style

The Dutch secretaries of the Interior and Justice, respectively.

The subtitle below the candle says: "Enough is enough".

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?