Criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism Are NOT Synonymous
Here's some thoughtful and engaging commentary by Johann Hari who, in addition to his time spent undercover in extremist Islamist and neo-Nazi organizations, has become a critic of (at least some of) the actions of the State of Israel:
Although in years past Hari worked undercover as an investigative reporter uncovering the ugly face of anti-Semitism in various places, which included the unfortunately rather easy job of documenting its prevalence amongst Islamic extremists, he has now been labeled an anti-Semite since he has the gall to criticize the inhumane actions of the Zionist government and their oppression of the Palestinian people. This gem of an article discusses everyone from Melanie Phillips and former President Jimmy Carter to Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, and is thus highly recommended. It demonstrates once again that not only do the pro-Zionists not entertain such effrontery very well, but their responses are getting increasingly irrational and transparent. This is probably because the non sequitur of the "Criticism of Israel = Anti-Semitism" formula should be obvious to any morally decent person with a single active brain cell...especially when an increasing number of the critics are Jews and Israelis themselves.
For readers who may have been duped into believing that Islam condones anti-Semitism, then I suggest taking a look at Holocaust Denial Undermines Islam, by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, as well as all of our postings on the topics of Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Israel...keeping the title of this posting in mind while reading.
On that note, I'll add that there are a couple [(1)(2)] of new interviews with Norman Finkelstein out on YouTube.com that are well worth a watch. In the first one, although edited by the pro-Zionist group MEMRI, the truth still manages to come out...and it's great watching the former professor at DePaul University chastise the Lebanese interviewer. The latter video contains an interview with Riz Khan, formerly of CNN but now with Aljazeera, from July 2007, and focuses on the circumstances surrounding Finkelstein's denial of tenure by DePaul University, which was largely due to the efforts of Alan Dershowitz—Professor of Law at Harvard University, Advocate of Torture, Denier of the Plight of the Palestinian People, and Documented Plagiarizer.
Below is a link to a recent Islamica Magazine interview with Norman Finkelstein, a "prolific scholar and outstanding teacher", who was recently denied tenure and put on administrative leave by DePaul University after scandalous, and ultimately successful, efforts initiated by Professor Alan Dershowitz not only brought about a grave injustice, but undermined academic freedom as well. As I touched upon in a previous blog posting, reading in detail about the anti-Finkelstein antics of Dershowitz is well worth the time invested. Not only is the fact that Alan Dershowitz got away with bringing Professor Finkelstein down totally outrageous, but the fact that a Harvard Law professor wrote a book that is "a mixture of plagiarism, shoddy research, and poor scholarship" (as Wahajat Ali puts in in the interview) but still manages to keep his job (although possibly not a very stellar reputation) is mind-boggling. Here's the link to the interview:
Interview with Norman Finkelstein[PDF] On Islamo-Fascism and Other Vacuous Epithets By Wajahat Ali - November 20, 2007 http://www.IslamicaMagazine.com/
Information on Dr. Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, in which he exposes the shoddy scholarship of Alan Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel, can be found here. As always, it's eye-opening to read the 1-star reviews of Finkelstein's book on Amazon.com just to get a taste of the myopic criticism that is normally thrown his way, including all of the banal accusations of anti-Semitism (keeping in mind that Norman Finkelstein is himself Jewish and his parents were survivors of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust). To fully understand just how misplaced this criticism is, I strongly recommend watching the videos of a lecture given by Dr. Finkelstein entitled Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic?, which can be found here.
For more information related to the Dershowitz-Finkelstein scandal, check out these links ([1], [2], [3]) and well as our previous postings ([1], [2], [3]) related to Norman Finkelstein...as well as this.
In the above clip, author and Middle East policy expert Robert Satloff discusses several stories in which North African Muslims helped Jews hide from and escape persecution by the Nazis during the Second World War. It's not well-known in the West that some North African countries, especially Morocco, have large Jewish populations due to the fact that they had to flee Christian persecution in Europe—especially Spain during the Reconquista. Unfortunately for them, Adolf Hitler decided to invade North Africa, thus extending his plan to exterminate the Jews (i.e. The Holocaust) across the Mediterranean.
This little trialogue makes it rather clear that there isn't much dispute over the historical facts of what has happened since 1948 in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor is there much doubt about who has international law on their side—and just in case anyone is wondering...it ain't the Israelis. All of this will probably come as quite a surprise to some people, so please make efforts to circulate this debate as much as possible—remembering to make it clear that this debate isn't just between a couple of Israeli bashers, but involves a Jewish American scholar whose parents were concentration camp survivors and a former Israeli Foreign Minister.
Below, I've posted some key excerpts from the debate (which includes adding some emphasis to some statements), but please take the time to read the complete transcript or listen to the audio. We all need to make efforts so that more people become aware of such balanced and frank discussions of the facts surrounding this conflict.
Here are the excerpts:
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I agree with the statement that there is very little dispute nowadays amongst serious historians and rational people about the facts. There is pretty much a consensus on what happened during what you can call the foundational period, from the first Zionist settlements at the end of the 19th century 'til 1948. There, there is pretty much of a consensus. And I think Mr. Ben-Ami, in his first 50 pages, accurately renders what that consensus is.
I would just add a couple of points he makes, but just to round out the picture. He starts out by saying that the central Zionist dilemma was they wanted to create a predominantly Jewish state in an area which was overwhelmingly not Jewish, and he cites the figure, I think 1906 there were 700,000 Arabs, 55,000 Jews, and even of those 55,000 Jews, only a handful were Zionists. So that's the dilemma. How do you create a Jewish state in area which is overwhelmingly not Jewish?
«««snip»»»
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Briefly, because we don't have time, there were four key issues at Camp David and at Taba. Number one, settlements. Number two, borders. Number three, Jerusalem. Number four, refugees. Let's start with settlements. Under international law, there is no dispute, no controversy. Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it's illegal for any occupying country to transfer its population to Occupied Territories. All of the settlements, all of the settlements are illegal under international law. No dispute. The World Court in July 2004 ruled that all the settlements are illegal. The Palestinians were willing to concede 50% — 50% of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was a monumental concession, going well beyond anything that was demanded of them under international law.
Borders. The principle is clear. I don't want to get into it now, because I was very glad to see that Dr. Ben-Ami quoted it three times in his book. It is inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Under international law, Israel had to withdraw from all of the West Bank and all of Gaza. As the World Court put it in July 2004, those are, quote, "occupied Palestinian territories." Now, however you want to argue over percentages, there is no question, and I know Dr. Ben-Ami won't dispute it, the Palestinians were willing to make concessions on the borders. What percentage? There's differences. But there is no question they were willing to make concessions.
Jerusalem. Jerusalem is an interesting case, because if you read Dr. Ben-Ami or the standard mainstream accounts in the United States, everyone talks about the huge concessions that Barak was willing to make on Jerusalem. But under international law Israel has not one atom of sovereignty over any of Jerusalem. Read the World Court decision. The World Court decision said Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. Now, the Palestinians were willing, the exact lines I'm not going to get into now — they are complicated, but I'm sure Dr. Ben-Ami will not dispute they were willing to divide Jerusalem roughly in half, the Jewish side to Israel, the Arab side to the Palestinians.
And number four, refugees. On the question of refugees, it's not a dispute under international law. Remarkably, even fairly conservative human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, in 2000, during the Camp David talks, they issued statements on the question of the right of return. And they stated categorically, under international law every Palestinian, roughly five to six million, has the right to return, not to some little parcels, 1% of Israel, which Israel is about — which Israel would swap, return to their homes or the environs of their homes in Israel. That's the law. Now, Dr. Ben-Ami will surely agree that the Palestinians were not demanding and never demanded the full return of six million refugees. He gives a figure of 4-800,000. In fact — I'm not going to get into the numbers, because it's very hard to pin it down — other authors have given figures of the tens of thousands to 200,000 refugees returning. That's well short of six million.
On every single issue, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. The problem is, everyone, including Dr. Ben-Ami in his book — he begins with what Israel wants and how much of its wants it's willing to give up. But that's not the relevant framework. The only relevant framework is under international law what you are entitled to, and when you use that framework it's a very, very different picture.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can bear to make this response brief, Dr. Shlomo Ben-Ami.
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yes, yes. Okay, the last third part of the book, as Dr. Finkelstein says, there is the diplomat, and this same diplomat still behaves in a way as a historian when he says in this book that Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well. This is something I put in the book. But Taba is the problem. The Clinton parameters are the problem, because the Clinton parameters, in my view —
«««snip»»»
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: The Holocaust has become not only a defining issue — event for the Jewish people, but something that Israel has — not Israel, but perhaps some politicians in Israel have abused. Begin used to compare Arafat to Hitler. He must have been probably a very nasty guy, but certainly not Hitler, just as I don't think that Saddam Hussein was Hitler. I think that President Bush father likened him to Hitler. We are — we go very lightly with these things. I mean, we do these kind of comparisons unnecessarily. The capture of Eichmann, for example, was very important to David Ben-Gurion, because he wanted a sort of pedagogical exercise for the young generation.
I explain this in the book, why he needed to reconcile himself with the Shoah, which didn't interest him very much at the beginning. He was much more concerned with other issues. He suddenly discovered that through the ethos of the new Israel, of the Sabra, you cannot build a cohesive nation, because people were coming from different parts of the world, so you needed to resort to Jewish memory, to Jewish values, to Jewish catastrophe, as a way to unite the newborn nation.
Today, it seems to me that the problem of anti-Semitism, when it happens, for example, in France, and synagogues are being attacked, etc., if this happens through the hands of Muslim youngsters in the suburbs of Paris, for me it is very difficult to define this as anti-Semitism. I can define it as hooliganism and manipulation of the conflict in the Middle East in order to perpetrate all kind of nasty acts against Jewish holy places, but this is not what we understand as anti-Semitism, which is a European malady, as it were. I think it was there always. It will continue to be there, but I am not in the business of counting how many incidents happen, because there is an institute in Tel Aviv University that will tell you how many incidents happen every year. I don't believe also that the number of incidents, as such, is the reflection of whether or not anti-Semitism is growing. I believe that it is there, I believe it will stay there as a sub-cultural current in many European societies, but I'm not scandalized by anti-Semitism today.
I can see more xenophobia against North Africans, against foreigners throughout Europe. And in a way, in a way, I can even see a reconciliation of Europe with its Jewish past. There is hardly a European country where you will not find today a museum of Jewish history. Not in only Germany, you will find it in Poland, in France, all over the place. So, Judaism is being endorsed more and more, or the Jewish history, as part of the whole European legacy. The problem today is, in my view, much more that of the Arab, the Muslim immigrants from North Africa, from the Middle East and other parts.
AMY GOODMAN:Being discriminated against.
SHLOMO BEN-AMI:Yeah, absolutely.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN:Totally agree. No disagreement at all.
«««snip»»»
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, let me tell you what is my description of terrorism. Terrorism, in my view, is an indiscriminate attack against civilian population. If I, personally, or my son, God forbid, is being attacked, being in uniform in Palestinian territories, by a Hamas call, I would not define this as terrorism. I will define as terrorism if they go into a kindergarten or a mall, explode themselves and cause injuries and death among civilian population. This to me is —
Now, the problem of the response of a state is much more difficult to define, because a state needs to go not against the civilian population. It needs to go against military targets, ticking bombs. This is what states can do and should do. The problem is that when you have a fight, not against armies, which is the case of Syria, Egypt, we never spoke about terrorism, state — Israeli state terrorism against the Egyptians. We spoke about wars between two military sides. This is very difficult in the conditions prevailing in places like Gaza or the West Bank, where you have militias, you have arsenals of weapons, etc., and the army attacks them and there is collateral damage to civilian population. To me, this is very difficult to define as state terrorism. It is attacking military objectives or sort of military objectives, an army which is not a real army but can cause damage and you need to fight back and defend your population, and it is very, very unfortunate that civilians are hit. But if Israel targets intentionally civilians, this is a different matter. This can be defined as terrorism. I don't believe that we have done it. Normally, the practice is that things happened collaterally.
AMY GOODMAN: I would like to get your response, Professor Finkelstein, and also if you could include in that, you have a chapter in Beyond Chutzpah called "Israel's Abu Ghraib."
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, on the issue of terrorism, I agree with Dr. Ben-Ami's definition. It's the indiscriminate targeting of civilians to achieve political ends. That's a capsule definition, but I think for our purposes it suffices. What does the record show? Let's limit ourselves to just the Second Intifada, from September 28 to the present. The period for that period, the record shows approximately 3,000 Palestinians have been killed, approximately 900 Israelis have been killed. On the Palestinian side and the Israeli side — I'm now using the figures of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories — on the Palestinian and the Israeli side roughly one-half to two-thirds of the total number were civilians or bystanders. And if you look at the findings of the human rights supports — B'Tselem, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, and so forth — they all say that Israel uses reckless indiscriminate fire against Palestinians, and B'Tselem says when you have so many civilian casualties, you have, you know, 600 Palestinian children who have been killed, which is the total number of Israeli civilians killed. 600 Palestinian children killed.
They said when you have so much, so many civilians killed — I don't particularly like the phrase "collateral damage" — when you have so many civilians killed, B'Tselem says it hardly makes a difference whether you are purposely targeting them or not, the state has responsibility. So, you could say Israel — using numbers, now — is responsible for three times as much terrorism in the Occupied Territories as Palestinians against Israel. That's the question of terrorism.
Let's turn to an ancillary issue: the issue of torture. Now, the estimates are, up to 1994-1995, that Israel tortured — and I'm using the language of Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem — Israel has tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian detainees. Israel was the only country in the world, the only one, which had legalized torture from 1987 to 1999. The record on torture, on house demolitions and on targeted —
«««snip»»»
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of torture of tens of thousands of Palestinians by Israel?
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: To tell you the truth, I don't know about the numbers, and we have seen different governments in — the British have done it. What the British did in Palestine in the '30s, there is nothing new in what we did that the British didn't do before us, and the Americans now in Iraq and elsewhere — what I find very, very uncomfortable is really this singling out Israel that lives in a very unique sort of situation in comparison with other countries, but —
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Norman Finkelstein makes the point, "Israel's Abu Ghraib," so that's making reference to what America did in Iraq.
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, okay. But if you — if you would come from another planet and examine the resolutions of the U.N., the Security Council, you might reach the conclusion there is only one sinner in this planet, and it's the state of Israel, and not anybody else.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But I am quoting your own human rights organizations. You know, B'Tselem is not the United Nations.
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, that's okay. I mean, I'm not — but it speaks in favor of Israel that we have human rights, we have B'Tselem, and we criticize ourselves.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Right.
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: And we want to change things, but the solution —
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I will agree with that, but then you have to say it doesn't speak too much in Israel's favor that it's the only country in the world that legalized torture. It was also the only country in the world that legalized hostage taking. It was also the only country in the —
SHLOMO BEN-AMI: It wasn't legalized —
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, yes. As your chief justice called it, “keeping Lebanese as bargaining chips.”Israel was the only country in the world that's legalized house demolitions as a form of punishment. Those things have to also be included in the record.
«««snip»»»
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN:B'Tselem did an interesting comparison. It compared the British policies of torture in Northern Ireland with Israeli policies of torture. In the 1970s, there were thousands of terrorist attacks by the I.R.A., and B'Tselem's comparison showed that the Israeli record is much worse than the British on the question of torture. That's the facts.
Just another observation regarding the subtle ironies of the cartoon that Daniel Pipes included in his article on the Danish "free speech" controversy. Please note that although this cartoon was drawn by J.J. McCullough, it obviously has received Pipe's stamp of approval, so he's just as guilty for buying into the racist stereotypes it subliminally presents.
That having been said, please notice that in his zeal to make a political statement, the artist who drew the cartoon allowed his racism to slip in. This becomes obvious once one notices the fact that J.J. McCullough, seemingly without even realizing it, gave the Muslim in the cartoon the same racist characteristics as the Jew that is being caricatured by the Muslim! Indeed, they both share a hooked nose, exaggerated teeth, facial hair and an angry scowl—all elements strangely reminiscent of Nazis caricatures. Also, notice the stark contrast between the Muslim's features and those of the cute and cuddly Dane. So what this cartoon seems to be trying to tell us is that Muslims are hateful anti-Semites that have double-standards, but this is how Muslims really are—then the same negative characteristics that Muslims are condemned for using are applied to them. I just wanted to bring attention to this glaring (and probably subconscious) oversight, which in the final analysis is really a double-standard within a cartoon intended to expose double-standards!
The above mentioned blunder is far from the only problem which undermines the cartoon in question. As I mentioned in my recent Danish Cartoons, Double-Standards and Daniel Pipes, the cartoon "gets the basic facts wrong" in regards to what's going on in the Danish cartoon controversy. This is because "no one is calling for laws which provide only Islam with special protection against being mocked and insulted. Additionally, and even more deceptively, his article's cartoon implies that Danish caricatures are rather soft and benign, while Muslim ones are outrageously offensive and over the top."
Reflecting on all of this made me recall S. Parvez Manzoor's article Turning Jews into Muslims: The Untold Saga of the Muselmänner. In this ground-breaking and insightful essay, we are informed that Jews in the Nazi concentration camps who had "lost all will to survive...were given by their fellow inmates the scornful epithet of die Muselmänner (the Muslims)! Leaving aside the morally intractable issues of genocide and anti-Semitism, what this grim and disquieting tale reveals is that, alas, the human propensity for despising the other takes precedence over our capacity to love, and that to the venom of collective self-worship neither the murderer nor the murdered, neither the 'Aryan' nor the 'Semite', is immune!"
Well it seems that J.J. McCullough and Daniel Pipes add the latest twist to this ugly human phenomenon, since in their fervor to expose the racism and double-standards of their stereotypical Muslim, they fell victim to the very vices they were attempting to condemn. Indeed, the outrageous irony in all this is that Daniel Pipes & Company have now turned Muslims into hook-nosed Jews!
Danish Cartoons, Double-Standards and Daniel Pipes
Well surprise, surprise, surprise. Daniel Pipes, the world's most prominent anti-Muslim hate-monger, has finally piped up and posted an article giving his point-of-view on the on-going Danish cartoon saga. He's obviously trying to capitalize on the current cartoon crisis in order to put forward his xenophobic agenda, which a close analysis of his Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism article makes rather clear. Based on the fact that he's the respected spokesman for so many Islamophobes around the world, you'd think he'd be able to articulate a decent defense for his paranoid positions. Please try to keep this in mind when you see how easy it is to un-spin his half-baked assertions—and it is always easy when the facts are on your side. So without further adieu, here's what Daniel Pipes, glaring hypocrite and Islamophobe extraordinaire, had to say:
"Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise: Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not."
It’s quite ironic that he finds it so easy to ignore the fact that eleven European countries (including ones that he lists as standing with Denmark in his article), as well as his own State of Israel, have laws which make public denial of the Holocaust a crime. Based on Pipes' own thinking, such an undermining of free speech should have spelled the end for Western Civilization. Why didn't Pipes whine that this violated the Western "customs and mores" that he claims to value so highly? Without a decent response to these questions (and if he had one, he would have used it), I'll just say that the "H-word" certainly comes to mind.
When the U.S. House passed a constitutional amendment banning flag burning as a form of free speech ([1][2]), why didn't Pipes and his cohorts surmise that this was tantamount to medieval Islamo-Fascist oppression that would cause American freedom to come to an end? Likewise, many U.S. states have laws, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld as constitutional back in 2003 ([1][2]), prohibiting burning a Christian cross. Why didn't Daniel Pipes and his fellow hypocrites complain that this compromised Americans' right to free speech and that they were now on a slippery slope towards the end of Western Civilization? Like always, the one-eyed Dajjalian approach of hate-mongers becomes apparent whenever the facts get in the way of their agenda. Actually, the cross burning ban is a bit more of a sticky issue, since opposing it might have aired some of the dirty laundry that the United States of America has in her closet. These are painful truths that many people, excluding most African-Americans, are almost wholly ignorant of. Maybe xenophobes and monoculturalists realized that opposing a ban on a form of racial hatred might end up making more people aware of what used to go on in the American South ([1][2][3][4][5][6]), including George W. Bush's home state of Texas, just a generation or two ago. I had mixed feelings about posting these very disturbing images ([1][2][3][4][5][6]), but felt that it was high time for many people out there to not only get a dose of reality, but to eat a slice of humble pie.
I want these people to look at what allegedly civilized Christians were able to do to fellow human beings when these "others" had become fully dehumanized in their eyes. They turned killing people into a blood sport, much as the Nazis did, but unlike most Nazis, some of these Americans even brought their children along to watch the brutal spectacle, sometimes even wearing their Sunday best. Take a look at their eyes and stare into their smiling faces and reflect on the question: Could this be you?
I think this is a particularly valuable reflection in light of the despicable mutilations of the American mercenaries (which they were, not simply “civilians” as some claim) in Fallujah back in 2004, who were burned and then hung from a bridge—and acts of mutilation are something which the teachings of Islam expressly forbid ([1][2][3]), by the way. This is because it’s become rather obvious that a lot of the talking heads out there seem to think that only Muslims ever do this type of thing. Well the wake up call is here folks, so please reflect on it. Let the fact that such actions, or any hateful and bigoted rhetoric that could lead to them, are never justified, while also realizing that certain people—regardless of their race, creed or color—are capable of such things.
Such blood lust is not a Muslim thing, a Christian thing or a Western Civilization thing, but just a savage thing. However, believing that it's just uncivilized Third World "others" who engage in such dastardly deeds (which essentially amounts to what I call the “my little Johnny would never do such things” syndrome) just makes one an ignorant bigot much like the people standing in some of the shocking photos included above. In reality, these photos are just the tip of the iceberg, since not only was lynching a widespread and socially acceptable practice throughout the American South until the early years of the 20th century (read this and this if you doubt me), but such events as the Holocaust and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims need to be taken into consideration as well. So if you really want to see horrifying displays of what some members of modern European civilization have been capable of, search for some pictures of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen and other such camps—not to forget or downplay the much more recent killing fields of Srebrenica. Maybe all this will help some people get off their self-righteous high horses and realize that we face a human problem here, not a Muslim one. It's disturbing to me that so many people are ignorant of, or choose to willfully ignore, their own country's, society's or religion's crimes of the past…but hopefully, after seeing these pictures ([1][2][3][4][5][6]), fewer are ignoring it anymore. Actually, I hope that I’ve turned the convenient little fantasy world which some people live in upside down…
Moving on...later in the his Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism article, with typical intellectual dishonesty, Daniel Pipes goes on to say:
"More specifically, will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy immunity from insults?"
Well who has called for anti-blasphemy laws (for lack of a better term) that would apply only to Muslims? Exactly no one that counts, which excludes anything that some misguided and militant Muslims might have called for—and I haven't heard such things from them either. Really, I'm yet to hear any Muslim call for laws that would only protect Islamic beliefs and practices from public scorn and derision. Once this is realized, it should be obvious that the cartoon which Mr. Pipes includes in his article gets the basic facts wrong, since no one is calling for laws which provide only Islam with special protection against being mocked and insulted. Additionally, and even more deceptively, his article's cartoon implies that Danish caricatures are rather soft and benign, while Muslim ones are outrageously offensive and over the top. Pipes, as he often does, is purely propagandizing here. This would probably be enough to make Julius Streicher proud, but there’s even more to come:
"Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones. Are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?"
With this, Pipes has stooped so low that he's seemingly become convinced that two wrongs do indeed make a right. Which is not surprising coming from a Zionist, since their logic seems to be that since Jews were ethnically-cleansed in the Holocaust, they have the right to ethnically-cleanse Palestine. Such twisted reasoning seems born of the fact that such propagandists are aware that when you can’t make a case because the facts are against you, which in this case are the actual details about curbs on the freedom of speech currently in place in the Western world as explained above, just throwing out misinformation is usually the recommended course of action. Informed spin-meisters are aware that many television watchers out there are rather uncritical and myopic, thus it's unlikely they'll even notice that what Daniel Pipes is actually arguing for in this case is a juvenile "We're doing it because they do it too!" justification.
Pipes' statement also shows that he, and all those who think like him—and there are plenty of those—view Muslims as some monolithic whole, thus we’re all to blame for the actions of a misguided few. If we can just snap these bigots out of indulging in this one particular logical fallacy that would indeed be a lot of progress—since they seem to fall victim to it an awful lot.
Before continuing, I just want to say that if Muslim governments have any common, if not political, sense (and no, I won’t be naïve and appeal to their sense of decency), they'll crack down on all such hateful cartoons and offensive ant-Semitic material, since not only are such things counterproductive to everyone on both sides, they're Islamically forbidden as well. For everyone's sake, I hope the current crisis brings some positive change in that regard, insha'llah.
On that note, please realize that the existence of anti-Semitic Muslim cartoonists and the actions of violent angry Muslim mobs in various locales doesn't nullify the fact that many of those who are defending free speech and the so-called Western way of life are having hypocritical double-standards—so please stop using the recent violence as a way to divert attention from the real issue. Various pundits are claiming that European Muslims want special treatment under the law, although at least one specific religion is already getting preferential treatment. They claim Muslims only want their religion to be protected from insult, but true and decent Muslims want all religions protected from insult (which is a Qur'anic concept by the way). They say that they have the right to insult and blaspheme whatever they want, but the right to burn a cross is outlawed in the U.S. and seventy-five percent of Americans support a constitutional ban on desecration of their nation's flag. Thus in the final analysis, it's clear that not only do we have de facto censorship (i.e. Danish Paper Rejected Jesus Cartoons) in the Western world, but we have de jure censorship as well. So in spite of all of their self-righteous and paranoid spin, it remains rather clear who is being intellectually dishonest here. I wonder if Mr. Pipes finds it disconcerting that, according to his own logic, three-quarters of the people in the heartland of democracy constitute a threat to Western Civilization?
Looking back on all of this, the alarm bells should have sounded as soon as Pipes tried to accuse Muslims in Europe—who remain a small, and largely poor, disenfranchised minority—of some sort of "Imperialism"—which is not just outrageous, but insidiousness of the highest order. Anyone who knows something about the past two hundred years of Middle Eastern history should be aware of the fact that the cruel, racist and exploitive legacy of European colonialism in Muslim Lands bears some responsibility, but certainly not all, for the situation that Muslims face in much of Europe today. An intellectually honest person would want to address the real issues caused by past Imperialism that has not only already occurred, but is still going on (albeit in a somewhat different form) in both Iraq and Israel today. In lieu of presenting the facts, Daniel Pipes instead opted for spouting off paranoid delusions about some phantasmic "Islamic Imperialism". Indeed, such delusional outbursts, regardless of how hard he tries to present them as rational, should alarm us to the fact that the Daniel Pipes' of the world truly have a lot in common with the likes of Julius Streicher.
Due to the ongoing cartoon controversy, we've been hearing a lot of talk about not only Europe's "New anti-Semitism" which is directed towards Muslims, but despicable and hateful anti-Semitic acts by some Muslims have been brought to the world's attention as well. Since the new president of Iran also seems to have a view of the Holocaust that's based on popular myth, half-baked theories and sloppy revisionist history, I think this is a subject that many Muslims are in dire need of being educated about. The problem is that in the age of mass media and the Internet, many people are now confusing being duped by agenda-driven propaganda with proper academic research and education.
Insha'llah, the article linked to below will be a good first step in curing Muslims of the ignorance that many of them have about the Holocaust, which is a mutawattir historical fact, and what it should mean to Muslims. I was very happy to find this fine article, since it articulates a point-of-view that more Muslims not only need to hear, but need to stand up and loudly proclaim as well:
Excerpt:"On the other side, too many Muslim and Arab intellectuals and leaders continue to fail in adequately addressing the Nazi holocaust and its implications for today in meaningful, humanitarian terms."
Excerpt:"An intelligent and compassionate regard for the victims of the Nazi holocaust - Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, the disabled, and others - on the part of contemporary Muslims is critical for preserving ethical and communal integrity, for a just resolution of the Palestinian question and for the future - if there is to be one - of Western Muslims."
Excerpt:"Like their Christian counterparts, the Muslim men and women who rescued Jews during the Holocaust are among history's true heroes, whose stories we should be telling our children and grandchildren. They represent the best of the Abrahamic and Islamic tradition and spirit. May God grant us true moral courage like the rescuers in the face of hardship and adversity. May God - the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful - free us of denying or exploiting the suffering of others."
Yes, my dear fellow Muslims, it's time to put the Jew-hating, anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial to rest. Sure, you can still oppose Zionism (which is not to be confused with the actual religion of Judaism) and the inhumane policies of the State of Israel, but don't fall into the trap of becoming a one-sided, angry and bigoted hatemonger of everyone that's a member of a particular ethno-religious group. Not only would you not like it if they did the same thing to you, but you'll be falling into the same trap as the Islamophobes who blame all Musims, indeed Islam itself, for the misguided actions of a few militant radicals. Let's avoid both the logical fallacies and the hate-mongering, since they often go hand-in-hand, and get busy trying to make the world a better place. That may sound quaint, but it's really what we're all here for...
Deen On...but please don't forget to read the article.
All hate-mongers out there need to realize that one of their kindred spirits, Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, was found guilty at the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to death even though he never directly participated in the Holocaust. Rather he used his Der Stürmer newspaper to warn of the supposed "insidious dangers" that Jews posed, thus building up hatred of Jews amongst the German people. His hate-mongering and "inciting the extermination of Jews" got him convicted of crimes against humanity for which he was executed by the Allies on October 16, 1946.
I wonder if any of the hate-mongering Muslim-hating hypocrites out there, like the ones who seemingly think freedom of speech should be absolute, want to defend Julius Streicher's right to free speech? I doubt it, since these same defenders of freedom didn't seem bothered when their allegedly absolute freedom was curtailed in order to prevent Jewish sensibilities from being unsettled. Well you can't have it both ways...unless you're a complete hypocrite.
And just to make sure that I'm not misunderstood, I want to state clearly that the Nazi extermination of six million Jews (and roughly three million non-Jews) is a mutawattir substantiated historical fact. The half-baked theories that attempt to deny it are driven by self-serving and hateful agendas that have the historical veracity of other such revisionist histories, such as the ones that claim there were only a few Bedouins living in Palestine when the first Zionists settlers arrived. Again, you can't have it both ways...either you accept half-baked revisionist history or you don't...and I don't.
Personally, I feel that idea that Muslims are the "New Jews"--since it's okay to hate them, stereotype them, claim they have a propensity towards violence, have no moral values and pose a threat to society at large--is very substantiated, thus I don't think that internment camps (or worse) are out of the question if another large scale terrorist attack takes place on U.S. soil or elsewhere. Indeed, one well-known pundit has actually tried to make a case for the mass arrest, internment and deportation of Muslims and Arabs (and I say that because the author seems to think...or at least she did when she wrote the book...that being Muslim is some sort of "Racial" thing). This conclusion-based pick-and-choose piece of historical scholarship (and I use that word loosely) is entitled In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror.
The book's author, Michelle Malkin, who is essentially an Ann Coulter wannabe, has managed to extend her fifteen minutes of fame by being a hate-monger. She currently has one of the most popular conservative (or neo-conservative) blogs on the web which produces a steady stream of Islamophobic postings. As with her book, morally-challenged Michelle is quite a master at ignoring everything that doesn't support her case while presenting everything that seemingly does--regardless of how unreliable, far-fetched or ambiguous. All I can say is that Julius Streicher, and Joseph Goebbels for that matter, would be proud.
It's at times like these that I really feel thankful to Almighty God for guiding me to Islam. Sure, most of us get frustrated by the often misguided antics of Muslims these days, but just look at the hate-mongers out there whose daily work consists of making the world a more hateful and less tolerant place...and they're doing so by misrepresenting a religion and overgeneralizing the acts of some of its misguided followers. Not good things to have on your record unrepented from--since that door's always open--when The Horn blows...which just makes me think: Thank you God for guiding me to Islam!
Finally, as our previous posting Islamophobia and the Next Holocaust explained, hatred and distrust of Muslims is rife in Europe...so don't ever think it could never happen again. If you think I'm just being paranoid, ask a Bosnian Muslim.
The Abuse of History: From Ancient Greece to Modern Israel
I was relieved when I found that The American Conservative magazine website had posted the full-text of It’s All Greek to Victor Davis Hanson, by Gary Brecher, since it saved me the trouble of posting large quotations from it myself. This much-needed review is a scathing critique of Victor Davis Hanson’s most recent waste of ink and paper entitled A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. As Gary Brecher astutely points out, this book is so “confused” that even the title contradicts the author's line of argument in the actual text: “If Hanson believes that the Peloponnesian War was really so unique, why does he spend his first chapters making far-fetched connections between that war and every other war in history? If he wanted his title to reflect what he actually argues, Hanson should have called this book A War Like Nearly Every Other, Especially Iraq.”
Even though I’ve neither read the book—and after reading the review in question, I don’t plan to—nor spent much time reflecting on Hanson’s analysis of the Peloponnesian War, based on some of his articles that I have read, I've reached the conclusion that he doesn't have any business commenting on Islam or the Middle East (or much else, for that matter). If you think Bernard Lewis is an example of a highly-educated academic who sometimes comes to baffling (if not idiotic) conclusions, then Victor Davis Hanson's sloppy thinking also earns him a seat at the table of those whose education exceeds their intelligence. Overall, I see him as an uncritical cheerleader when it comes to his own values and civilization, but who suffers from being proverbially blind in one eye and unable see out of the other when it comes to those unfortunate "others". In the above-mentioned review, Gary Brecher concludes that: "This book is just a point on the graph of Hanson’s decline. It shows him in the late stages of a wild ego trip, getting more and more thoughtless as he starts believing his own press. The whole book stinks of vanity, from the idea of thinking you could improve on Thucydides to the careless writing, the sleazy connections between alien cultures, and the big blind spot at the center of it all." This review is well worthwhile, so please take the time to read it all…
Another must-read review, which is also found on The American Conservative site, is The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz, by Michael C. Desch. This thoughtful review of Norman G. Finkelstein's latest book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, can also be found here in Adobe Acrobat format [4,262 KB]. Like the book, this review exposes and discusses the tired antics and intellectual dishonesty of Alan Dershowitz—who is well known as a Harvard Law Professor, an advocate of torture, a talking-head commentator on cable news and a former defense lawyer for O.J. Simpson. For more details on his path to infamy, check out The Dershowitz Hoax section on Norman G. Finkelstein's website—and you might have to read quite a bit of this material to get a full appreciation of how slimy and underhanded Alan Dershowitz really is…but it’s worth the effort.
An even more recent review of Beyond Chutzpah can be found here. It's by Ilan Pappé, an Israel historian who teaches at Haifa University, and bears the name Occupation Hazard: Norman Finkelstein Challenges the Conventional Line on Israel. Overall, he's got a lot of good things to say about Normal Finkelstein's work, which is expressed in his conclusion that the "book cracks the wall of deception and hypocrisy that enables the daily violation of human and civil rights in Palestine. As such, it has the potential to contribute to the removal of the real wall that shuts out those in the occupied territories".
Before closing, I’ll take this opportunity to mention that NormanFinkelstein.com, in addition to those materials just mentioned, is full of a lot of great content. If you want to read Doctor Finkelstein's diagnosis of a case of foot-in-mouth disease, have a look at The Cowardly Commissar: An e-mail correspondence with Prof. Froma Zeitlin of Princeton University. Likewise, there's a considerable amount of audio and video material on this site, or linked to from it, that's worth downloading. Among my favorites are Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic? and Video: Finkelstein at Yale, 10.20.2005, which can be downloaded in several parts and formats. And while we’re on the subject of audio, video and Alan Dershowitz, the recent (29-Nov-2005) debate between him and Noam Chomsky can be found here. This debate is well worth watching, and I would have expected that Dershowitz—with all of his stand-up lawyer oratory and spin-doctor skills—would have done better, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re trying to defend a tenuous and immoral case in the face of facts that just won’t go away.
In spite of their often xenophobic views, concerted opposition to multiculturalism and other distasteful tendencies, I give The American Conservative credit for thinking outside the box (at least once in awhile) and exposing not only the sloppy thinking of neo-cons but for seeing through the smoke screen of Israeli-Zionist propaganda as well...
Here are some key excerpts from the article, which are followed by some of my own comments:
"Islamophobia is not a British disease: it is a common, if diverse, European phenomenon. It is the singular rock against which the tide of European liberalism crashes."
"But the overall factor in the fear and loathing of Turks, Richter says, is old-fashioned racism. 'I am afraid we have not learned from our history. My main fear is that what we did to Jews we may now do to Muslims. The next holocaust would be against Muslims.'"
"'It's economic injustice and inequalities that successive generations of Moroccan and Algerian Muslims have suffered in employment, housing and educational opportunities, as well as downright racism at the hands of French society,' he says. 'They have no means to survive. It is all about survival.'"
"Throughout our journey, we were surprised at how openly prejudiced people were against Muslims."
"Minorities are fine as menial workers, a subordinate class. It is when minorities seek to be upwardly mobile, to live the modern liberal dispensation in their own, distinctive way as self-assured, equal members of the national debate - and that was the desire of all the young Muslims I met - that the problems start and latent prejudice comes to the fore."
In spite of the valuable and disturbing (although unsurprising) observations of this article, I can't help but comment on Sardar's description of Ibn Rushd (a.k.a. Averroes), since what he says—as well as what he doesn't say—about him speaks volumes about his attempts to portray Islam as "progressive"—something which I consider to be inherently dishonest. Although to call Ibn Rushd a "philosopher" is certainly fair, calling him a "humanist" is rather questionable. This is because he certainly didn't adhere to the cosmological view that "man is the measure of all things", which is pretty much the hallmark of humanism and what is usually meant when this label is applied today. However, if by "humanist" Sardar simply meant that Ibn Rushd had rationalist tendencies and recognized the dignity and worth of all human beings to a degree not found in most other medieval thinkers (whether Jew, Chrisitian or Muslim), then I can accept that...although I think that there are plenty of other descriptions that would be more fitting.
However, what's even more telling about the last paragraph of the article is that Ziauddin Sardar fails to mention that Ibn Rushd was a respected jurist of the Maliki school who, in spite of some aberrations in the field of theology, endorsed a classical Islamic worldview with many of the trimmings, such as hijab for women, that liberal Muslims like Sardar seem to have such a problem with. Based on what Ziauddin Sardar has said in the past, I really doubt that that he's ready to embrace the fiqh of Ibn Rushd wholesale, thus Sardar’s endorsement comes across as somewhat half-hearted, if not outright devious and hypocritical. In case anyone is wondering what Ibn Rushd's scholarly views are, there's a two volume [(1)(2)] English translation of his well-known work of comparative fiqh entitled Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtasid. Taking a detailed look at this detailed work of Islamic jurisprudence, which was produced very much within a traditional framework, should make one realize that if pushed, Sardar's endorsement of Ibn Rushd as a role model for modern Muslims would most likely become a pick-and-choose affair—as is usually the case whenever religious liberals are confronted with a religious text or traditional view. On these same grounds, I certainly object to the attempt to make Ibn Rushd seem like an erstwhile "progressive" by labeling him a "liberal", since this seems wholly inappropriate no matter how you slice it.
In the end, however, in spite of having trouble with some of the adjectives that Ziauddin Sardar chose to employ, I certainly endorse the spirit of what he was trying to get at. Indeed, not only was medieval Islam much more "tolerant" than medieval Christianity, I firmly believe that it is inherently more tolerant since its scripture and prophetic tradition clearly teach that other religions must be tolerated (although this, contrary to popular belief, doesn't amount to endorsing their current form as a viable alternative to Islam and way to salvation). Likewise, I think that our Ummah as a whole, including some of our 'ulama, needs to start focusing their attention on the "honourable and ethical", since it's the apparent lack of these two qualities, as well as mercy—the quality which is the hallmark of Islam, that has done so much to taint the image of Islam in the present age...wa Allahu 'alim.
Here are some excerpts from the detailed book description:
In this long-awaited sequel to his international bestseller The Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an iconoclastic interrogation of the new anti-Semitism to a meticulously researched expose of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein's answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted.
Finkelstein also scrutinizes the proliferation of distortion masquerading as history.
The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz's assertions on Israel's human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community.
Thoroughly researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah lifts the veil of contrived controversy shrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict, enabling readers in search of a just and lasting peace to act on the basis of truth.
If you haven't already, Finkelstein's exposé of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is a must read. If you're wondering why, a quick answer can be found in the answer to the rhetorical question "What if a Harvard Student Did This?": he'd be kicked out for plagiarism and Norman Finkelstein demonstrates this very meticulously and effectively. This entire saga is entitled The Dershowitz Hoax and if you read it in detail like I did, the next time you see Alan Dershowitz appear on TV you'll wonder why he's not wearing a bag over his head (or even appearing at all). Now that's chutzpah.
The interesting thing about Norman Finkelstein is that not only is he Jewish, but his parents were Holocaust survivors. In spite of this, he's still sometimes accused of being anti-Semitic. Not only that, but due to his often misunderstood book The Holocaust Industry, he's been accused of being a "Holocaust denier" even though this book does nothing of the sort since its sole intent is to defend the memories of the Holocaust. All of his books are worth reading, by the way.
My final comment is one I always like to make whenever the subject turns to the Holocaust. We all know, since we seem to have a never ending stream of documentaries, movies, museums, books and news casts to constantly remind us, that about six million Jews perished in the Holocaust—and indeed this was one of the greatest tragedies of human history. However, if you do some research you'll learn that in reality roughly nine million people perished in the Holocaust: about six million Jews and about three million non-Jews. My question is: Why are these three million non-Jews almost never mentioned? Don't they matter? Seemingly not to some people who only want to remember their own dead. Food for thought...
By the way, chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning audacity, insolence, unbelievable gall, shameless impudence, brazen nerve, effrontery, etc. Not to mention any names, but that is a pretty good description of a certain Middle Eastern country (i.e. the one with the blue Star of David on its flag).
There's nothing quite so hypocritical as an Evangelical Christian criticizing the Qur'an for (allegedly) advocating indiscriminate violence. In order to participate in this exercise in self-delusion, one not only has to turn a blind-eye to the unambiguous views of 1,400 years of mainstream Islamic scholarship, but it's necessary to pass over quite a number of explicit verses in the Bible and large portions of Christian history as well. This is discussed in a forthright and learned manner by a Yale University scholar in the following article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature:
However, in spite of the overall merits of this article, it seems that the author couldn't quell the temptation to take a swipe at the scripture of Islam. After informing us of a view that holds that the Bible is the "most dangerous" of all books, the author opines that "…other books, notably the Qur'an, are surely as lethal". Well this statement is "not quite true", regardless of the author's claim, since even though both the Bible and the Qur'an have been abused and misinterpreted, if one looks at history there's no way to justify the statement that the Qur'an is "as lethal". Indeed, in spite of the bloody activities of a vocal and militant fringe element of Islam in recent decades, the violence committed in the name of Islam over the centuries still pales in comparison to the crimes carried out in the name of Christianity. In medieval times, Muslims had nothing on the scale of the Spanish Inquisition or the Wars of Religion that Europe experienced, nor did Muslims ever put the entire population of Jerusalem to the sword or burn large numbers of heretics at the stake. If we look at the post-Enlightenment world after which many formerly Christian and Muslim nations become secularized, the case against the Bible gets even worse. In these years, the Bible was used to justify everything from race-based slavery, colonial imperialism and, until just very recently, racial segregation and apartheid. Even though Muslims have their share of racists and bigots, and ethnic discrimination and rivalries unfortunately aren't unheard of in the Muslim World, these iniquities have never been justified by appeals to the Qur'an. One should also keep in mind that the Holocaust of European Jewry was orchestrated in the same nominally Christian (not Muslim!) country that produced Evangelical Christianity and the Gutenberg Bible. Likewise, Lebanese Philangist Christians, not Muslims, carried out the largest massacre of civilians in the Middle East in recent decades. Similarly, even though Palestinian suicide bombers have caused some to cast a reproachful (albeit ignorant) glance upon the Qur'an, the fact remains that the Bible is the only scripture that contains a God-approved act of suicide in order to kill enemy civilians (Judges 16:26-30).
The true irony in all of this is that the misguided Muslims who have committed horrible acts of violence in the name of Islam in recent years are following a modern Western influenced re-interpretation of Islam which took form during the late colonial period (i.e. after Christian powers invaded Muslim countries and started to exploit them). This undeniable fact has been documented in a number of books and articles, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
In the end, the actions of a fanatical minority of Muslims today does not prove that the Qur'an is a "lethal" book, rather it only proves that some Muslims have an interpretation of it that flies in the face of over 1,400 years of competent Islamic scholarship. If the Qur'an advocates indiscriminate violence against civilians, isn't it odd that more than a millennium of scrupulous and God-fearing Muslim memorizers, exegetes and jurists failed to realize it?
