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Heaven On Earth
Monthly Archives: July 2006
How to Identify a Muslim Moderate: Problems of Honor-Shame Cultures
How do we outsiders (i.e., non-Muslims) interpret the polling numbers recently published by Pew and Populus? Despite the positive spins that both Blair and Altikriti tried to give them, the numbers are troubling, especially when considered in the context of the more substantive responses of Muslims to both the numbers and the phenomenon of terrorism in their midst.
I think that one of the major approaches to interpreting both the polling data and the articulated reactions of Muslims to critics comes from considering the dynamics of “honor-shame cultures.”
When dealing with honor-shame cultures, one cannot expect people to show more solidarity with outsiders than with their own group. Indeed, one might paraphrase an honor-culture’s sense of solidarity with the expression, “my group (family, clan, nation, religion) right or wrong.” When it’s a question of someone killing your brother, you don’t ask yourself, “did he do it on purpose? was my brother responsible for provoking him?” You kill him. If you don’t, you lose your honor.
Civil society is built on the principle that justice trumps personal loyalties at least a significant amount of the time. When we speak of “moderates”, we basically mean people who are willing to acknowledge the justice claims of others, especially when it’s obvious… as for example the claim of a civilian not to be made a target by someone disgruntled with the way his government acts. The evidence for solidarity among Muslims — not necessarily ideological, but sentimental — is quite strong, and forbids the assumption that just because people don’t approve of the suicide attacks, that they a) “utterly oppose” them, or b) that they will condemn them.
Take the case of Marie Fatayi-Williams, whose son died in one of the 7-7 blasts (Hat tip MTL). She has asked Maniza Hussain, the mother of her child’s murderer, Hasib Hussain, to declare publicly that the attack was “wrong and her faith does not allow it.” The response so far has come from Hasib’s father, Mahmood, who claimed that, had he known what his son planned, he would have broken his legs to prevent him from doing it. But instead of making the declaration that Marie sought for, he takes refuge in denial that his son did it.
We are the victims, too – and in the same position as you are… We are decent people. I worked hard all my life. Please, please, please don’t say it’s something to do with me or that I know, my son knew, my wife knew. We are very, very decent people… I think it must have been somebody else on the bus. Not Hasib. He was a good boy. There’s not a shred of evidence that he was involved in it.
This isn’t quite conspiracy theory, but it operates as such. The father need not take responsibility for his son’s deeds; he can paint himself as a victim and solicit sympathy; and, apparently, he can avoid declaring the deed un-Islamic. Why this claim of innocence is a reason not to decry the deed — even if by another person/Muslim — is not clear from a moral point of view. But from the point of view of honor-solidarity, it is clear: There is only so far the Hussain parents will go in deploring what their son did, and declaring that it is un-Islamic is apparently too much. Recall the Dutch rapper Yassine SB who wanted to sing a song against the murderer of Theo Van Gogh and decided not lest he be shunned by his fellow Muslims.
We see this particular dynamic which lies at the heart of all the troubles the West in dealing with its Muslims. It’s not clear just what moderation is; not clear just where loyalties lie; not clear, when the peer pressure from radical Muslims is on, just how many “moderates” will resist. Nor is this even clear to the Muslims involved, caught between a civil society in which they find many advantages, and the atavistic call of tribal and religious loyalties enforced by an increasingly aggressive “community” of zealots.
(Note: Dual loyalties are not unique to Islam. Jews also feel them, as in the case of Jonathan Pollard. The issue is not so much whether they exist, but what the threshhold to abandoning the commitments to civil society. In Islam, that threshhold seems very low. Even denouncing terrorism — something the vast majority of Jews will do when a Jew commits an act of terrorism, like Baruch Goldstein — seems too high a price to pay for the tribal loyalties to fellow Muslims. Alas!
No one can say just how bad (or good) the situation is. But what we can say, is that spotting the demopaths and discrediting them, and thereby serving notice on those who inhabit the zone between being (willing) dupes of demopaths — those who support Qaradawi and insist they’re moderates — and knowing demopaths, is of utmost importance.
England’s Dilemma on the Eve of 7-7 Anniversary: How to Deal with Demopaths
The NYT (and International Herald Tribune) published a piece by Alan Cowell on England at the approach of the anniversary of the 7-7 bombings of 2005. In it one can see the problems that beset the West as it confronts a Muslim population which, to some extent by ideology, to a much greater extent by solidarity with an honor culture, produces a wide range of demopaths. My interlinear notes bring out this particular dimension.
A year after London bombings, what lessons?
By Alan Cowell The New York Times
July 5, 2006LONDON One year after three of the four London bombers set out from a grim northern neighborhood called Beeston, the place they left behind forever is keeping its secrets to itself.
And, with some anxiety, Britons are still asking what inspired the onslaught by British-born Muslims and whether the dark undercurrents of July 7, 2005, could resurface in a new attack.
Gous Ali, a 31-year-old property developer, for instance, traveled to Beeston recently with a single question on his mind: Why did people from there, British-born like him, from his same immigrant generation, drive a rental car to London last July to kill 52 people, including his partner, Neetu Jain, who died when one of their bombs exploded on a No. 30 London bus?
But he does not feel he really learned. “They don’t want any intrusion, they want to be left alone,” Ali said in an interview. “They are hiding from the shame, the embarrassment, the horror of what was created here.”
Would this were true. It would suggest that England need no longer fear further deeds of the sort from this community. The alternative may be that they are hiding from the shame and embarrasssment of having the outside learn just how much of a culture of hatred and resentment — unrepentant since 7-7 — has developed there, that their desire to avoid intrusion means that they don’t want the outside to know how bad it is. If they are really committed to democracy, then the former conjecture would hold; if their response is demopathic, then the latter.
His assessment plays into an increasingly rancorous debate almost one year after the four bombers struck on three subway trains and a bus on July 7, 2005. The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair is locked in recrimination with Muslim leaders, who say the authorities have failed to reduce Muslim discontent.
“Failed to reduce Muslim discontent…” Like the French Muslims, the attitude is, the bombing (or the riots) are an expression of discontent that you must address, rather than these actions were unacceptable responses to a discontent that we must address. In placing all the onus on the British government for not rying to assuage Muslim discontent the Muslims essentially demand rewards for unacceptable violence and validate (in the case of England) suicide terrorism as a legitimate and successful form of protest.
What are these discontents? The most frequently mentioned is British foreign policy. As Asghar Bukhari of the MPACUK stated quite baldly on the BBC, they blew themselves up because they were angered at Britain’s foreign policy. In other words, when a Muslim angrily claims that the British government has not done enough to “reduce Muslim discontent” he might well mean that they have failed to align their foreign policy with the Arab Muslim position of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. Part of the problem, of course, is that since the “Left” agrees more and more with the Muslim position, including conspiracy theories, they are reluctant to chastise so welcome, if dangerous, an “ally.”
Marcus Reflects on the Return of al Durah
Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook have an op-ed on the return of Muhammad al Durah to Palestinian TV screens. Child abuse become national policy.
Seducing children to martyrdom
ITAMAR MARCUS & BARBARA CROOK, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 4, 2006
As Israel enters the northern Gaza Strip, there are signs that the Palestinian Authority plans to renew the tactic of sending children to the front lines as human shields to obstruct the IDF.PA TV is again broadcasting music videos designed to brainwash young children into seeking death as shahids – martyrs for Allah. Shahada-promoting music videos were first broadcast thousands of times on Palestinian TV from 2000 through 2004.
One of the most sinister of these clips was broadcast twice last week, according to our research after a three-year absence. The clip features a child actor playing the most famous Palestinian child martyr, Muhammad al-Dura – whose death in a crossfire was broadcast to the entire world – calling to other Palestinian children to literally follow him to Child Martyrs’ Heaven.
“I am waving not to part but to say, ‘Follow me,’” is Dura’s invitation on the TV screen.
The children watching this video are then shown what awaits them if they join Dura in death. The video follows the child actor – “Dura” – joyously frolicking in heaven. He romps on the beach, plays with a kite and runs toward a Ferris wheel.
The children are being told that death in conflict with Israel will bring them into a child’s paradise. Muhammad al-Dura is already in this paradise, tranquil and fun-filled.
This call to children to seek death, coming from the child who has turned into a Palestinian hero, and broadcast to their children by PA TV, is one of the most odious examples of exploitation of children witnessed on PA TV.
THE WORDS sung by the popular singer Aida are as insidious as the pictures. The earth is described as yearning for the children’s death – “its thirst quenched by the gush of blood flowing from the youthful body.”
The main lyrics of the clip are as follows:
Narrator:
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs,
how sweet is the fragrance of the earth,
its thirst quenched by the gush of blood
flowing from the youthful body.
Caption: And so he went…
Choir: Good-bye to the boy Muhammad (2x)
Aida: Good-bye, good-bye…
Aida: How sweet is the scent of the earth,
its thirst satisfied by the gush of blood
flowing from the body of youth.
Choir: Good-bye, good-bye.
Aida: Good-bye, good-bye…
Choir: O father, ’til we meet (2x)
Aida: ‘Til we meet, my father, ’til we meet!
I shall go with no fear, no tears.
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!
I shall go to my place in heaven,
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!…WHEN PREVIOUSLY shown, the clip closed with the credit:
“Produced by: The Ministry of Information & Culture – The Palestinian National Fund.”This year the credit has been erased.
A SECOND music video rebroadcast after years of absence, opens with a girl witnessing the cold-blooded murder of her mother. The child then sings for five minutes about how she misses her mother, including the repeating refrain: “If you can’t come to me, I can go to you.”
This particular clip was first broadcast in December 2000. It was one of dozens of PA TV clips targeting children that portrayed shahada as “sweet” and idyllic.
This tactic was exceedingly effective for the Palestinian Authority. As children went to the front lines to try to copy Dura, the IDF had great difficulty aiming at gunmen who were firing from behind the children and using them as human shields.
In addition, when children were killed by either side, the Palestinians used them effectively for propaganda purposes. And indeed Israel was universally condemned for these deaths.
This clip was removed in the fall of 2003, after we showed it at a hearing in the US Senate and drew outrage from US senators. Sen. Hillary Clinton attacked it a “horrific child abuse,” and Sen. Arlen Specter denounced it as “civilization abuse.”
The reason for its sudden rebroadcast now, after three years, seems clear: The PA learned a long time ago that images of dead children are an ideal way of manipulating public opinion against Israel. Images of children running up to tanks and of children’s funerals are precisely what the PA used so successfully in the past.
It is apparently planning to revive this tactic if Israel moves deeper into Gaza in search of terror leaders.
Societies prepare for battle in different ways. Some focus on military preparations, while others focus on prayer. For the Palestinian Authority, battle preparation means encouraging their children to leave their homes for the front lines and to seek death.
Marcus is director and Crook is associate director of Palestinian Media Watch.
Comment: The authors are right. But they don’t place any of the onus on the Western media whose willingness to run footage from Pallywood, and especially of Muhammad al Durah, create such spectacular successes for the Palestinians in the media war, that sacrificing their children actually makes a perverted sense. Nor do they mention the strong likelihood that al Durah was neither shot by Israelis nor even killed. And ironically — a most bitter irony — it is precisely the tender-hearted progressives who anguish over every hair on every child’s head who make this policy of child abuse and child sacrifice successful. Talk about the road to hell…
As for the words to the song, you have to see Aida sing it in order to appreciate what’s going on in Palestinian society — the most popular female singer, not a religious zealot (she wears no veil or headscarf), singing words that should (?) turn one’s stomach. This is not a national liberation movement, this is a cult of death, a cult of child sacrifice in which everyone seems to play his or her part.
Not all, however, play it as willing as those Western “supporters” of the Palestinian people. For example, some of the parents of suicide bombers despise the reporters who want to know if they’re “proud” of their child-martyr, and truly hate the hatemongers who urge their children to sacrifice themselves. As the father of one girl put it:
“Those guys who set my daughter up — they took advantage of her age and her ideas of the world. What has happened has turned my life upside down,” he said. “If I knew who set up Hiba, I’d kill him. Why didn’t he send his own daughter or wife or mother?”
A good question. And why doesn’t our media, rather than give us a picture of a Palestinian people in despair over what Israel does to them, give us a sense of how bitterly the subjects of Palestinian elites feel about their rulers. Of course, that might mean opening up an awareness that, by repeating the victim narrative that scapegoats the Israelis, they may just be participating in victimizing the Palestinian people.
Time for Targetted Assassinations of Hamas “Leaders”
Michael Oren has an op-ed on how to deal with the situation in Gaza.
There is, however, one way to avert a public relations disaster for Israel, to limit casualties, and to restore Israel’s deterrence power: Israel must return to the targeted-killing policy that enabled Mr. Sharon to triumph over terrorist organizations. Israel must target those Palestinians who order others to fire rockets from within civilian areas but whose families are located safely away from the firing zones. No Hamas or Islamic Jihad leader should be immune from such reprisals—neither Prime Minister Ismail Haniya nor Khaled Meshal, who masterminds Hamas from Damascus. Though there is certain to be some international backlash, the damage to Israel’s image will likely be temporary. Who today remembers Abdel Aziz Ranitisi and Sheikh Yassin? Those responsible for causing injury and death to both Israelis and Palestinians must pay the ultimate price. Only then can quiet be restored to Israel’s borders and progress toward either unilateral or negotiated solutions resumed.
I would add to that, that given the cowardice of these “leaders,” the policy is likely to work quite quickly. I remember the quick one-two assassinations two years ago (2004) of Hamas heads Yassin, and Rantisi and in addition to the immense sympathy poured out by the international press for the “poor old man in a wheel chair,” and the enraged Palestinian promises that Israel had “opened the gates of hell,” a threat that our pundits like Tom Friedman were only too eager to replicate in the form of profoundly misleading hand-wringing prophecies of ferocious retaliation… there was, in fact, silence.
Al Durah’s Back: Watch out for MDPH
The piteous picture of Muhammad al Durah, the 12 year old boy allegedly gunned down in cold blood by the Israelis at the beginning of the second Intifada (September 30, 2000), is back on PA TV, doing his assigned task of recruiting other children to becoming Shahids (martyrs… preferably by taking out as many Israeli civilians as possible while blowing themselves up). During the Intifada, this image was used repeatedly, in particularly when the PA wished to stir up hatred and violence. Indeed one Israeli observer coined the expression MDPH (Muhammad al Durah per hour) as a way to predict levels of violence the next day.
The particular clip they’re showing can be seen here. It was created at a time when the Intifada was losing steam and parents, who noticed their children recruited but not those of the Hamas leaders who sent them to their deaths, were keeping their children indoors. So the PA recruited their child terrorists on TV with a slick video.
PA television airs clip encouraging children to become shaheeds
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
This week, Palestinian television reprised, after a three-year absence, a clip featuring Palestinian child Mohammed a-Dura, calling to other children to join him in a shaheed heaven for children.
The dramatic heart-wrenching footage of a-Dura, shot dead in crossfire in a clash between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip in the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, was broadcast around the world.
Note that the author of the article still considers it a given that the boy was “shot in a cross-fire.” Ha-Aretz does, indeed, have an awful record in this case (one of my students commented that it sounded like a Palestinian paper), but more generally, the Israeli public is little aware of the case that it was staged.
“Palestinian Media Watch” reported on the television clip on Saturday, and announced, “The Palestinian Authority is once again airing video clips designed to influence the behavior of young children and to make them seek deaths as shaheeds.”
The clip, which caused much controversy when it first aired, was taken off the air in the fall of 2003, after Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus, presented the clip at a U.S. Senate hearing.
Following the hearing, senators slammed the clip and criticized it as “horrifying abuse of children.”
In the clip, a child portraying a-Dura is peacefully playing in heaven, and calls to other children, “follow me.” The popular singer Aida performs the song in the clip, which describes how the earth longs for the deaths of children, saying, “How pleasant is the smell of the earth whose thirst is quenched by blood pouring out of young bodies.”
Another clip that aired this week after a long absence depicts a young girl witnessing her mother’s murder and then singing about how she misses her mother. She sings, “If you can’t come to me, I can come to you.”
Palestinian Media Watch reported that the 2000-2003 Palestinian television campaign to recruit young children was so effective, that 70 to 80 percent of Palestinian children during that time wanted to die as shaheeds, according to three separate polls.
Marcus fears that the “sudden and surprising reprisal of the a-Dura clip, calling upon children to join him in a playground in shaheed children’s heaven, may be only the first of many steps in a wide campaign designed to recruit children for the cause.”
A well grounded fear. Maybe this time, the world will respond differently from how it did the last time.
Second Thoughts about Gaza: Disengagement a good Idea?
Gerald Steinberg, director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar Ilan University in Israel, director of the NGO Monitor has some reflections on the Gaza Disengagement that reinforce many of the points made in our “paradigms” discussion posted last summer. I remember speaking with a high-ranking Israeli officer in Dover Tzahal (IDF Spokesman’s Office) last summer about the looming disengagement.
“Do you think it will lead to more or less Palestinian violence?” I asked.
“More Palestinian violence against Palestinians, yes.”
“No, more Palestinian violence against Israel?”
“Well that’s the million dollar question isn’t it?” he responded, genuinely not sure which it would lead.
The Honor-Shame Jihad paradigm anticipated that the withdrawal would be seen as a victory for violence, a credit to Hamas, a sign of Israeli weakness, and an invitation to further aggression. All those wonderful efforts to keep the greenhouses going registered as the (admirable) fantasies of people incapable of stepping outside of liberal cognitive egocentrism. But apparently many, even in the Israeli army, felt that the Disengagement was worth the gamble.
GERALD STEINBERG- RETURN TO GAZA: DISENGAGEMENT HAS FAILED
By • Gerald M. Steinberg
Published in: National Post June 29, 2006As an early Israeli supporter of unilateral disengagement, I admit that this plan, like the earlier Oslo “peace process,” has failed. Hopes that the unprecedented move, including the dismantling of all Israeli military bases, checkpoints and even civilian houses in Gaza would reduce the violence and promote mutual accommodation were naive. Almost a year after the exit, attacks against Israelis continue to escalate, Palestinian society is in a state of advanced anarchy and the security pledges from Egypt and Europe, brokered by the U.S., have proven worthless.
The murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Palestinian terrorists, who launched the attack from a tunnel dug from a house in Gaza under the border, was the last straw. Even before then, the dozens of rockets raining down on houses and schools every week, and numerous other terror efforts, had already signalled the approaching end of this unique experiment in conflict reduction. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity for progress, Palestinians moved their rocket launching teams into the most densely populated neighbourhoods, goading Israel into responding. And whenever a Palestinian was killed, even when Israel was not involved, they could count on political groups such as Human Rights Watch to condemn the Israeli Defense Force, regardless of the evidence.
This was one of the things I had in mind when I set up the Second Draft. It is the foolishness of our media in echoing the Palestinian victim narrative that makes it profitable for the Palestinian leadership (Hamas or Fatah) to abuse their own people and then scream bloody murder. If they didn’t have the media in the West covering their back, but instead criticizing them harshly for their inhumane attitude towards not only the Israelis but their own people, they would not be so prone to these strategies. In the long run (even middle run) it would be a contribution to peace if the press played its proper role.
The role of the Palestinian population in supporting terror is central, but the international community also bears considerable responsibility for the latest disaster. For years, the Europeans, the UN and others had provided massive support — financial as well as political — to PLO leader Yasser Arafat in the hope that he would make peace. After that proved to be a mirage and Arafat died, the members of the Quartet (the European-inspired framework designed to push hopes for peace co-operatively) pressed numerous schemes to prop-up Arafat’s successors. These failed to achieve anything of significance.
That’s because, born of the Politically correct paradigm, it was either doomed to non-implementation or failure… basically a band-aid put over a suppurating wound to give those who felt responsible the vague impression they were doing something.
Without skipping a beat, as soon as the Israelis left, the Palestinians extended the terrorist infrastructure to encompass the resources they had gained. A few months later, the entry of Hamas officials, pledged to radical Islam and the eradication of Israel, sped up this process.
There is, of course, the good possibility that their political success was the result of their claiming to have driven the Israelis out (despite what the media told us about corrupt PA officials).
As the attacks accelerated, and no evidence for a change for the better was forthcoming, Israelis also rediscovered the mistake of giving responsibility for their survival to outsiders. The security arrangements negotiated with Egypt and Europe, which accompanied the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza in August 2005, have all collapsed.
The first agreement was signed with the Egyptians, after former prime minister Ariel Sharon overruled many advisors, and agreed to remove Israeli troops from the 13-kilometer border strip between Gaza and Egypt. The IDF had been very active in stopping Palestinians from smuggling explosives, terrorists and various anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles under the border. Although turning over this responsibility to Cairo was a calculated risk, the hope was by making this move, Israel would be seen to have ended the occupation of Gaza. And perhaps the Egyptian presence along the border and inside Gaza would encourage the Palestinians to turn their energies from war to peace.
The similarities here to the Oslo process, where those warning against such catastrophic errors were dismissed as right-wing war-mongers is significant. When does warning about the belligerent intentions of the Palestinians become “respectable”?
In parallel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered a separate security arrangement covering the Rafiah crossing. On Nov. 15, 2005, Rice pressed then prime minister Sharon to agree to a joint Palestinian-European Union arrangement in this very sensitive area. The U.S. was responding to pressures from the Europeans, who desperately wanted a major role in what was seen as the latest “peace process.”
A short time after the agreement was signed, Palestinians bulldozed a breach in the barrier along the Philadelphia corridor and moved freely into and out of Egypt. The 70 European “observers” were shunted aside and chased away by various Palestinian gunmen. As a result, the smuggling of weapons and terrorists has grown into a torrent, and these agreements have joined many others in the dustbin of Middle East peace efforts.
Note that along with guns and other weapons, the Palestinians brought over drugs and wives(!), the latter a sign of how superior the economy of Gaza — despite the worst of the Israeli occupation — in comparison with the economy of Egyptian Sinai.
The combination of Rice’s notion of how to work the problems here, her concessions to Europeans who are — at best — feckless, at worst collaborators with the Palestinians, and the confidence of the Palestinian “gunmen” that they can get away with anything they want, all helped to contribute to this debacle… predictable, but not any less a debacle for that.
After paying a high price for these hopes, Israelis have rediscovered the fundamental need for direct control over their own security. This lesson has been learned on many occasions — in 1948, when no one protected them from a mass invasion that almost crushed the nascent country; in 1967, when the UN suddenly removed the peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai following the previous war; and in 1973, when Egyptian forces were able to use weapons that the American-brokered cease-fire was supposed to have kept far away from the front. But after a few years, the combination of international pressure on Israel and the hopes that perhaps there will be changes this time, have led to another round of Palestinian attacks and a reluctant Israeli return to responsibility for its own security.
“High price for hopes…” — the epitaph of the Olso “Peace” Process. Part of the price was paid in high hopes, part in a reluctance to get dismissed as a “groupuscule d’extrême droite” (Enderlin’s favorite phrase for anyone who questions his al Durah coverage). In order to be “respectable” in most circles, one had to support these hope-filled initiatives.
It is still far too early to know how the return to Gaza will end. But even if the kidnapped soldier is released, the Israeli forces cannot simply turn around and leave Gaza, waiting for the next attempt. Israel is unlikely to reoccupy the poor and hate-filled cities, but the days when Palestinian groups could simply drive from Egypt into Gaza with weapons and terrorists are over. Reliance on outsiders — particularly Egypt and the European Union — for security is over, and Israel has no choice but to resume control over Gaza’s borders.
More occasion for the moral left to scream about Israeli imperialism and occupation.
This will at least help to prevent more terror and kidnappings, and perhaps eventually convince some Palestinians that the only option they have is to take control over their own society, and finally make the compromises necessary for real peace.
This last observation is far more easily made than carried out. The Palestinian commitment to victimization and the European and left-wing enabling of that demeaning and self-destructive posture is too powerful to break easily. When you’re afraid of failure, and you know you can blame the failure on someone else, even hope to succeed through that blamed failure, what’s to get you to try hard to succeed? Why on earth engage in the necessary self-criticism and run the risk of having to take responsibility. It’s so much more easy to blame someone else. Especially when you’ve got so many people cheering you on in your suicidal ways.
The real question: Can the Europeans and the “Left” wake up to the ways they are a) encouraging the worst behavior from the Palestinian leadership; b) victimizing the Palestinian people; and c) endangering themselves?
I had a conversation with my daughter the other day, and we spoke about the twin necessities for getting on with our lives rather than caught in the spiral of retaliation that’s so tempting to pursue. “For that you need two things: 1) the ability to self-criticize, and 2) the ability to give up wanting to retaliate.”
“Which is harder?” she replied.
Indeed, which? Especially when your desire to retaliate is directly related to your inability to self-criticize. Only intervention can help here, and only the Europeans and the “Left” are capable of effective interventions with the Palestinians. Can they? Will they? Not likely.
My real question here is: why is the “Left” so much in need of “retaliating” against Israel?
Hamas Leaders Shamed: Did anyone notice?
I have not been able to follow developments closely over the last several days, but one thing caught my attention as soon as I heard it. Apparently, the Israeli army rounded up over 60 Hamas officials (including a third of the cabinet) without so much as a shot fired. [!?!?!]
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli forces arrested nearly one-third of the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet and 20 lawmakers early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza, responding to the abduction of one of its soldiers. No injuries were reported.
Army Radio said the arrested Hamas leaders might be used to trade for the captured soldier. Israel had refused earlier to trade prisoners for the soldier’s release.
Palestinian security officials said seven ministers of the 24-member Hamas-led Cabinet and 20 lawmakers were arrested. Earlier reports that Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer was among them were incorrect, they said.
No deaths or injuries were reported in the Israeli actions.
The area’s normally bustling streets were eerily deserted, with people taking refuge inside their homes.
Now let me get this straight. The people who have brought the world a particularly grotesque form of death cult in which they a) say they love death while we pitiful westerners and jews love life; and b) they urge their own (actually other Palestinians’) children to die for the cause. And over 60 of them go quietly when the Israelis come? Not one of them ready to fight to the death?
Why does that remind of me of this:
and this:
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All these brave leaders who (like Edward Saïd) are ready to fight to the last Palestinian, but not a trace of personal courage. As a friend commented to me: didn’t you notice their suits? As soon as they took over the government, they started wearing suits.
Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al (the one in Damascus) addressed the infidel enemylast February:
Today, you are fighting the army of Allah. You are fighting against peoples, for whom death for the sake of Allah, and for the sake of honor and glory, is preferable to life. You are fighting a nation that doest not tire, even after a 1,000 years of fighting. Today, you are facing peoples filled with faith, with the love of Allah, the love of Allah’s Prophet, with bravery, glory, and pride – a nation that knows its way, a nation that knows what it is, a nation that respects itself. How can you possibly defeat us?
This is outright child abuse on a cultural scale (so deftly deployed during the second intifada), by men who taunt their enemy with the confidence that they can sweep their own people into a catastrophic war that they have already declared.
Oh Palesinian people! Oh Arab people! Oh Muslims! can you possibly want these hypocrites and cowards who have no honor to be your leaders and your spokesmen? Do they offer you any more than hate-filled violence that debases your soul and corrupts you even as it holds you captive and abused? Are these the choices of a great-souled people?
Update: Apparently someone did notice. (Hat tip: Judith)
Sandmonkey posted a comment from Al Arabiya:
Can anyone tell me how the palestenians accept to live like this ? what kind of a government that has no dignity, controled by Israel, no army, no police, no life, no future, and they still say it is a country and a government, SHU HAL MASKHARA, CLOSE THIS STUPID GOVERNMENT AND CARRY ON THE WEAPONS AND FIGHT, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT, FINISH THIS THEATER, LOT OF MONEY, LOT OF DEAD PEOPLE, BIG TRAGEDY, HOW MANY YEARS YOU WILL STILL BE LIKE THIS, LOOK WHAT HAPPENED IN LEBANON, THEY DEFEATED ISRAEL, BUT AT THE END MOST OF THE PALESTINEANS AR E KHAWANA, , KHAWANA, WE ARE SICK OF YOU AND YOUR NEWS, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING, ALWAYS CRYING FOR MORE HELP FROM OTHER ARAB COUNTRIES, LIKE A BABIES, YOU ARE PLAYING WITH THE FUTURE OF A WHOLE GENERATION, ITS BETTER FOR YOU TO DIE THAN LIVING LIKE THIS, WAKE UP WAKE UP.
This post illustrates well one of the points that I’ve been making: from the perspective of a warrior concerned with honor, playing the victim is the most craven of options, and when the Palestinians adopted (or were forced by their Arab brethren to adopt) the role of victim, they went into a form of honor-shame pathology. Here is someone from the honor-shame world, disgusted by Palestinian cowardice, but still waiting for the fulfillment of what the Islamists (Muslim Brotherhood et al.) promised they’d deliver that Arab Nationalism had failed to do: wipe out the Israelis
Couldn’t we rephrase the request: It’s better to live with self-respect and the respect of others than live prisoner of people who harbor such hate, addicted to fantasies of revenge, at your expense. Wake up. Wake up!