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Ramadan goes Jesus

February 13, 2007 08:25 AM

Yet another auto-martyrdom from professional Euro-Muslim Tariq Ramadan.

I believe the administration refuses me entry into the United States because of my criticism of its Middle East policy and America's unconditional support for Israel, which has led it to acquiesce in flouting Palestinian rights. And undeniably, some American groups that strongly support Israel and will allow no criticism of American foreign policy toward it have been highly critical of me. But academics, intellectuals, and organizations that have supported me — like the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Academy of Religion (I presented a keynote address to its annual meeting late last year by videoconference, since the administration would not let me enter the country to speak in person), the American Association of University Professors, and the PEN American Center — have understood that the real issue is my freedom of speech, and they have continued to lend their weight to my legal appeal of the decision.

I am not the only person concerned. The "fear of ideas" that has taken root in the United States since September 11, 2001, with the refusal to grant visas to a number of academics and intellectuals, most of whom are Muslims, strikes at the very heart of American democracy. The muffling of critical opinion should be of immediate concern to all freethinking individuals. To accept such a state of affairs is to accept that the United States, in the name of the "global war on terror" and national security, requires all citizens to think the same way.

"Fear of ideas" - indeed. Criticism of Israel? Never heard of it. O when will America ever live up to the democratic example of Saudi Arabia - or maybe Syria - where Jews piously lecture the benighted yokels about the menace of their foreign policy?

We're all dreaming along with you, Tariq.

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Heavy Weighs the Crown (of Thorns)

August 19, 2006 09:47 AM

In an otherwise almost perfectly unhelpful review of European hostility toward Israel, the Economist magazine did include one detail that caught my attention:

It is also often the right in Europe, linked with anti-Semitism in the past, that is most supportive of Israel today. Britain's Conservative Party, for instance, not always known for its admiration of Jews or Israel, is now the most pro-Israel party. In Italy, which invented fascism, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Gianfranco Fini's formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, are more pro-Israel than the government. In Spain, the centre-right opposition was highly critical of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, when he donned an Arab headscarf to show solidarity during the Lebanon war. [My emphases]

Is this guy for real? Sheesh.

And I don't know what to make exactly of this next bit.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Israel and Europe at Oxford University, argues that “Europeans see Israel as the embodiment of the demons of their own past.” The European Union is supposed to have traded in war, nationalism and conflict for love, peace and federalism. But Israel now reminds Europeans of darker forces and darker days.

Ottolenghi is a well-regarded and widely published scholar. I doubt the quote is meant - or that the author intended - to suggest that, in the image of Israel, the European elites see a reflection of their vulgar past and are repulsed by it.

Rather, I think it's meant to suggest that, in today's "progressive" Europe, Israel is a pesky reminder of their culpability in genocide, and Europeans resent that.

So how does that account for the hostility toward Israel? Why can't the Europeans just feel guilty for their betrayals and resolve never again - well, from here on out, at least - to allow genocide in their midst?

Because the oversized moral vanity of today's European progressives cannot allow it. The acceptance is too painful. The Europeans therefore seek to rationalize their culpability by reference to the putative culpability of Israel - Jews, that is - in comparable crimes.

This is not precisely - or rather, exclusively - a matter of antisemitism. It is not a conscious or unconscious wish that someone will "finish the job" that Europe started. The impulse can best be expressed as: If only the Jews would stop provoking, people wouldn't see the need to slaughter them every so often. In this view, people who seek explicitly to kill Jews - let's say, Hamas or Hezbollah - are cast as the original victims, as people who can't be held responsible for their actions because they've been driven to extremes by Jewish aggression.

European antisemitism is a factor, without a doubt. The Economist suggests that attitudes toward Israel have shifted across Europe as Israel has transformed, becoming more powerful and more aggressive. Maybe so. But Israel has nothing on Iran, or North Korea, or China, or even Russia, when it comes to extraterritorial threat - and yet a solid majority (60 percent) of Europeans consider little Israel to be the greatest threat to world peace? Guilt alone cannot account for an outlook that ridiculous.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a Polish acquaintance recently. She was lecturing me on the need to understand why someone would strap explosives to himself, walk into a pizza parlor, and blow up a bunch of strangers. I told her that there is no way to understand this - that nothing could be "understood" to induce someone to do something so depraved. It is the act of someone too sick with purposeful hatred to act otherwise. Yet I couldn't budge her. She steadfastly maintained that one shouldn't be too quick to reach judgments - this failure to "understand" is what starts wars etc. At least this appeared to be her attitude... until she told me (in order to reveal her ecumenism) about a visit she had made at some point to a women's social event at a synagogue. All was fine there until one woman evidently felt moved to suggest that Jews were the "chosen" people of God. Yeah, I know. It's not like that's explicitly stated in the Torah or anything, right? Still, this was evidently the first time she (a Catholic) had encountered this perspective. And it was traumatizing. According to her, she suddenly felt physically ill, disgusted, disoriented to the point she had to flee the premises lest she make a scene. Now, if you're asking me whether I believed her story, my answer is no. Maybe she was at a synagogue; maybe this business about the Chosen People arose; but beyond that I'm skeptical. (For that matter, I don't think I've ever heard a Jew utter the words "Chosen People" without the accompaniment of an ironic smirk. History demands irony in such instances.) Nevertheless, I couldn't help being struck by the contrast in attitude. Here she was, almost perfectly ambivalent about suicide bombing - but undone by what she took to be the suggestion that Jews were somehow superior in the eyes of God. (She better not read the Koran!) I wondered whether this dichotomy might have something to do with the fact that Poland contributed the greatest share of Jews to the gas chambers. They were The Chosen, alright.

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Learning to Love the Bomb

May 11, 2006 06:18 AM

While the regime in Iran openly flouts the Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory, and flirts with the destruction of Israel, the Beeb wonders: "Would An Attack on Iran Be Legal?"

Probably not, I'd say. Expect us to be arrested and thrown in jail, where we'll spend our days pacing the cell murmuring about "loose nukes" and posting urgent manifestos to European media. Occasionally the lone guard posted outside will grow tired of listening, and will enter and beat us until, bloody and whimpering, we will once more forswear any further mention of weapons or ayatollahs or world destruction. Shamed, disfigured and ignored, we will gradually lose our faith in humanity or justice, until one day we meet this nun from Singapore who will devote her remaining days to winning our freedom. As trust grows between us, we will reveal to her our willingness to be redeemed, and she will teach us to "heal." Working in tandem, our international legal team will make a plausible human rights case from the fact that our prison is within "blast distance" of Tel Aviv and will likely be incinerated in a nuclear exchange. The matter will be taken up by a crusading Spanish judge who believes that "even the world's worst terrorist" (us) should be treated humanely. Eventually a European court will agree to move the prison 20 kilometers West, just outside the blast zone, where radiation from the subsequent detonation will hit the cheek like the warm breath from a toaster oven and the view of the mushroom cloud will be marvelous.

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The Wages of Fear

May 8, 2006 05:26 AM

UPDATE 5/11: Reference to Georgia clarified from original post.

The Vilnius Summit is turning into a potential watershed in East-West relations. Last week, VP Cheney chided Russia for its backsliding on democracy and human rights. Georgia is poised to leave the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States. And now Ukraine looks poised to follow, reports the AP:

The press service of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko organized a special briefing on the future of the CIS by the head of the foreign relations service of the president's secretariat Konstantin Timoshenko. Mr. Timoshenko reported that the Ukrainian leadership is not satisfied with the effectiveness of the organization's functioning and that the president is seriously considering Ukraine's withdrawal from it.

“Unless something changes, the question of Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS will become a practical plan, if not tomorrow, then in the near future,” Timoshenko said.

The presidential adviser's appearance was the apotheosis of a series of anti-CIS moves by Ukrainian authorities. For a week, various officials have been harshly criticizing the CIS. Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Ogryzko set the tone when he stated during a visit to Moscow that Kiev is disappointed the CIS has turned from an organization of action to an organization of conversation.

He said that Ukraine has repeatedly made specific proposals within the CIS and none of them were developed by the organization.

Ogryzko cited the example of President Yushchenko's proposal to set up common border protection for the CIS countries, which was ignored. “Will there be any desire to make new proposals after that? The question arises as to why we need that shell? For business or as a club?”

The Ukrainian Security Council followed the Foreign Ministry. Its secretary Anatoly Kinakh hit at a sore spot when he said that the CIS has lost its economic meaning. “Hundreds of documents have been passed by the CIS, but they are not implemented. The procedure for creating a free trade zone between member states has not been completed,” he recalled.

Yushchenko did not touch on the topic of the CIS directly at the Vilnius summit. But it was clear from his speech at the forum that the CIS is not the future Kiev has in mind. Yushchenko called maximum closeness to NATO and the European Union the main goals of his presidency. “It will be a great honor for me to solve those problems,” he said.

No the honor's ours, Vik. Meanwhile, top Bush administration officials are working on oil agreements with countries like Azerbaijan and Equatorial Guinea -- presumably in an effort to lessen reliance on Russian oil. There's a chill in the air, no?

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lindbergh et al

April 12, 2006 09:01 AM

Yesterday, James Taranto of Opinion Journal noted [first item] that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had published a defense, by former ambassador Edward Peck, of the much-disparaged Mearsheimer-Walt "working paper." That document, as you will recall, argues that insidious Jews and the Israel Lobby control the U.S. government and have steered policymaking away from American interests in order to serve Israel's. So it should come as no surprise that a "Holocaust revisionist" named Mark Weber, the author of an anti-Semitic flyer posted recently on Harvard's campus [second Taranto item], says its content "makes some of the same points as are made in the 81 page paper by [Kennedy School Academic Dean M. Stephen] Walt and [University of Chicago professor John J.] Mearsheimer."

All of which leads me to ask: Is there anything to the fact that all these gentlemen have Germanic surnames?

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from the annals of diplomacy

April 10, 2006 09:16 AM

The Russian government has assured Condoleeza Rice, in writing(!), that it did not tip-off Saddam Hussein to America's intentions on the eve of the Iraq war. As you will see below, Russia's denial struck Rice as firm and unequivocal. The emphases are mine.

According to the letter, “the Russian government does not believe that contact took place” between Saddam Hussein and the Russian ambassador to Baghdad at the time, Vladimir Titorenko, [Rice] said.

Lavrov “told me that he believes that any such contact would have been highly inappropriate for an ambassador of Russia,” she added.

“Of course, we will continue to look into the matter,” she told lawmakers, saying the U.S. administration was trying to verify the authenticity of documents which indicate Moscow tipped off the Iraqi dictator about U.S. plans for the March 20, 2003 invasion.

[Report orig. from AFP]

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'Our Home Turf'

February 24, 2006 08:43 PM

One more reason it's fun being Jewish:

Israeli starts ‘anti-Semitic cartoon contest’

JERUSALEM: An Israeli cartoonist has launched an “anti-Semitic cartoon contest” to poke fun at fellow Jews in response to furore among Muslims over the publication of caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Cartoonist Amitai Sandy said he was inspired by violent Muslim protests and the launching of a Holocaust cartoon competition by an Iranian daily that said it wanted to test the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries....[snip]

“We will show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published,” Sandy wrote on his website.

“No Iranian will beat us on our home turf,” he added in reference to the cartoon competition being held by Iran’s best selling newspaper to lampoon the annihilation of six million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust during World War Two.

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A special day

February 22, 2006 09:07 AM

Today I clicked the link to a column by "Joe Conason" -- the name given the IBM supercomputer that spits out predictably artless calumnies with assembly-line regularity -- without having any idea in advance of what it would argue. A fool I was! I should have gone with my first hunch, which was that "Joe Conason" sees the port deal as a sign that President Bush is sucking up to autocratic Arab regimes on behalf of his oil buddies. My misstep was in assuming that "Joe Conason" would have condemned President Bush for "Islamophobia" if he had blocked the deal -- ergo, by not standing in the way, Bush was playing admirably "against type," as they say. In such an instance, I reckoned, the computer might opt to follow a strategy of considered misdirection in order to make its next move less predictable. But in choosing this assumption, I neglected to take into account the basic flaw in "Joe Conason's" design: It will always take the shortest route to condemnation. Of course, it's possible that I am being misdirected by this lack of misdirection....

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Dog Dane Afternoon

February 10, 2006 07:25 AM

Who knew there were Iranians in Kiev? I didn't, until I ran into my Danish friend Lars on the street this morning. Half tongue-in-cheek, I asked Lars, who handles security issues between Ukraine and the Scandinavian countries, whether the Danish embassy was still intact. Yes, he told me, but as a matter of fact the embassy saw its first cartoon protests just this morning. (They've had police protection out front since Monday.) He said the 30-odd protestors included representatives from a local Islamic Association and some Iranians who are students at some of the local universities. No major disruptions, but the Danes decided to close for the day, just in case.

I was curious to see what practicing Muslims looked like in Ukraine -- I had never seen one here, and let's just say that Ukraine is not the safest place on earth for non-whites, if there were to be any (non-whites) in this crowd. Since the embassy is only a couple of blocks from my flat, I quickly headed home, grabbed my notebook and camera, and headed for the site. Unfortunately, by the time I reached the embassy the crowd had already left, though I did spot one woman in hijab buying a coke at a nearby kiosk. But what struck me anyhow was one minor detail that remainded: the Danes had taken down their flag, as well as the EU flag that customarily flies beside it. I could not imagine that the United States -- or even France -- would respond similarly. What an awful capitulation in the face of such cretinous incitement. Even if you close for the day in the interests of staff safety (fair enough), you don't let them take down your flag. I headed back to my apartment, wondering what I might see at the Swedish embassy, which is across the street. Sure enough....

It's easy for me to judge, though. The Danes and the Swedes don't imagine themselves as provocatuers; they can't make sense of the strange hatred and violence directed at them; they aren't accustomed to the rent-a-mobs that are routinely sent to pester U.S. consulates for the pleasure of satellite viewers. Part of the privilege of being American is in feeling a perverse exhilaration, not fear, when I see the mob burning my flag in the streets of Tehran or Damascus. It is the exhilaration of knowing that my flag represents everything the busily benighted are fighting against: liberty, tolerance, robust dignity. Until they can get their grimy little hands on me, they're just going to have to settle for the flag. And they couldn't possibly face a tougher adversary. The flag will hate them back; it will never stand for cynical neutrality between opposites, like the Swiss flag. But what happens when you replace pride with modesty, and still they burn your flag? When do you stop surrendering if you can't possibly comprehend the source of the grievance? At some point, Denmark, you just have to let the flag fly.

UPDATE: Do not miss Michael Kinsley's ruminations on the cartoon riots in today's Washington Post.

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Time to build a higher fence

January 26, 2006 01:21 PM

Let's see... children's books calling for the destruction of Israel; streets named after terrorist "martyrs"; a constant flow of genocidal anti-Semitic rhetoric from the Mosques and state-controlled media.... One isn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the shock being expressed by the World Community at Hamas' landslide victory in the Palestinian elections. The AP reports that leaders are "uneasy at the prospect of a Hamas-led Palestinian government." The Washington Post writes that this "complicates" diplomacy. Sure does! It removes the small fig leaf of rationalization -- that Israel has a "partner" for peace -- that has been used to force Israel into concessions that threaten its existence. Sure, the Hamas victory may complicate "diplomacy." At least one hopes so!

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