Zion. An island of sanity in an ocean of savagery.
Friday, February 17, 2006
No one is saying it
While there were Jews in Gaza, they were being attacked daily. Literally. Kassam rockets rained upon the small towns and settlements. And the Israeli government retreated, forcibly expelling Jews who wished to remain.
It was called disengagement, and it was unilateral.
<GollumVoice>"We want nothing to do with you nasty mean Arabses."</GollumVoice>
Well it was unilateral alright. A year and a half ago I predicted it would simply mean shifting the frontier outwards from Gaza. And while it never made headlines (and I'm sure it was thoroughly suppressed), Kassam rocket attacks on Ashkelon, a major city in Israel, are now a daily fact of life:
[Maj.-Gen. Yoav ] Galant brushed off the fact that the Palestinians are lobbing rockets and mortars at Israel on a daily basis in spite of the IDF's "effective" responses, by saying: "You have to look at the glass as half full. It could be better, it could be worse."
And it's not 'just' a matter of a few Jews murdered, after which we fire a few Hellfire missiles from an Apache in order to kill a few of theirs as retaliation:
Israel needs to prepare for a large-scale disaster caused by Kassam rockets which could strike the Ashkelon power plant or chemical storage tanks in the nearby industrial zone, senior security and government officials warned on Thursday.
But don't worry, we Jews have creative and ingenious solutions to the problem, as always:
While the IDF said it was working to reinforce the roofs of the factories and to protect the industrial zone, senior officers admitted that the military did not have a 100-percent solution to what they called the "Kassam problem."
Just what we need: Thicker roof tiling. Right.
Maybe it's time to re-disengage again. Force Ashkelon's zealous inhabitatans out, and withdraw to Tel-Aviv. Kassams can't reach us there yet, can they?
There's been a lot of fuss lately about the Danish cartoons, and the Islamic drive to curtail Western freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The global muslim outrage (wether orchestrated or spontaneous) has led many, if not all analysts and commentators, to conclude that these freedoms are at stake, are at the heart of the issue.
They are all wrong. As I wrote recently, this most current spate of violent Islamic outbursts, triggered this time ostensibly by some innocuous Danish cartoons, supplemented by some "even more offensive" images supplied by muslims themselves in order to raise the heat some more, all this has a more insidious goal: It creates and maintains a subconscious image of Islam and its followers as an entity that plays a major role in our lives.
The fact that this is already the case seems so obvious that it doesn't warrant mentioning it anymore by most mainstream analysts. And yet there is nothing normal about Islam's dominance of our newsmedia, our politics, our daily lives. There is nothing natural about the fact that Islam's outrage-of-the-day is the subject of watercooler discussions, at dinner tables and on every second blog or forum. And the (mostly unspoken) conclusion is always the same: Better watch your words.
Even in the days of the cold war, when perhaps the media paid much attention to whatever the Soviet Union did and said (as they should), the daily lives of normal average people were mostly untouched. There was this vague threat, perhaps, but most of us never believed that war would ever come to happen between the West and the East. Both parties were just too sane.
That feeling of security does not exist with Islam. It is clear to many people (much more than there were scaremongers during the cold war) that of all things, sanity is in short supply in the Islamic world. During the cold war, no one in the West would be afraid to wear a T-shirt of Ronald Reagan, or of Lenin. Opponents might harshly disagree, but there was never any thought of violence against each other.
Today, very few people in Europe have the nerve to wear a star of David openly, or a Kippah. Very few people would dare to hang one of the offending cartoons of Mohammed in their window. We are already censoring ourselves. We're being considerate to people we don't really like anymore, but are fearful of saying and doing what we wish we could do, partly out of politically correct indoctrination, partly out of simple fear.
We are afraid. And we are made to cower ever more, as we are made to watch embassies burn, Westerners flee from Islamic countries, and riots in our own lands, where muslim youths ridicule police, destroy shops, scream that we either behave or loose our heads, and stare into the camera with murderous malice, demanding 'respect'.
They do this because Islam prescribes it. And because we let them.
In Islamic countries, these riots are orchestrated and often organized by the state. There is no freedom of protest there, and any protest is necessarily sanctioned, if not ordered, by the regime.
In Europe, they are organized by Islamic groups, and although often not officially allowed by the government, they are nevertheless not forbidden, nor stopped. The only reason for this weak stance is fear. Fear of what might happen if a city council might exercise its legal right to prohibit a demonstration it has good reason to expect will result in riots.
Fear of what happened in Paris. It could happen anywhere in Europe. We know it. Our governments know it.
And the Enemy knows it.
For the moment, muslims still need an excuse to riot, to be righteously angry. There are plenty of excuses, so there's never a shortage of reasons to force themselves and their barbaric demands upon us. And the less we act against them, the more often they will do this, and the smaller their excuses need to be.
Until it is us who need to find an excuse for everything we do in our country. Like publish a cartoon. A book. Show a play. A movie. After which we will stop doing these things, either because they are forbidden, or because we would rather avoid the consequences.
Think about it. How free do you really feel? To say what you want, for the sake of saying it, without having to explain to anyone why you said it?
To wear what you want, without having to worry someone else will take exception, even to the point of assaulting you?
I don't feel THAT free anymore. Do you?
Islam ALREADY has far too great an influence on our lives, and it is a very negative one. What our politicians are exhorting us to do, we've already been doing, it just seems it is not enough.
This is not about freedom of speech. It is about freedom. Period. And the time has come and gone for stopping the encroachment upon our freedom. Too much has been given away already, will be lost unless we reclaim it. We must be serious about keeping our lands completely free, and not "free so long as...".
Putin is an old style Russian leader. He follows the principle "If everyone is against them, I should befriend them", hoping to gain favour and influence:
Until now, Russia has adhered to the quartet's common line, but Mr Putin's comments have sparked off speculation over whether Russia's policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has changed, the BBC's Steven Eke says.
With Hamas' electoral victory in January, Mr Putin may simply have perceived an opportunity to step in - and re-assert his country's influence - while others were considering how to respond, our correspondent says.
No matter that in the case of Hamas, even notorious Arab-lovers such as Spain and France are hesitant to start diplomatic ties right away.
No matter also that Hamas sees the Chechen insurrection as just another part of the global Jihad. Remember Beslan? All part of the same struggle against every infidel worldwide, as far as Hamas is concerned. Ties between Hamas and the Chechen Jihadi's are well-documented:
According to the document, Hamas "is completely hostile to the Russian regime in that it identifies with the Chechen separatists, regarding them as part of the global jihad, and supports them in their terrorist activities."
The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend, Putin. In this case, the Enemy of your enemy is the Enemy of the whole world.
We search the purses of little old ladies so that recent immigrants from Saudi Arabia named "Mohammed" wearing massive backpacks don't get singled out.
