Augean Stables

Geert Wilder’s film on Islam — Fitna (Dissension, Civil War) — which has been rejected from theaters and repeatedly blocked from websites for offending Muslims and engaging in hate speech, is now available.

Watch it, and ask yourself: Is documenting hate speech, hate speech?

Further reflections:

View this movie with the “eyes” of a jihadi Muslim who doesn’t know who made it, and believes in the destiny of Islam to conquer the world by any means. You see quotes from the Qur’an about engaging in Jihad; you hear preachers calling for jihad; you see victims of Jihadi attacks. Take out the Muhammad Cartoon, the Western music, and final coda, and I think he’d go, “Yessss!”

This could well be a recruiting device for Jihadis (e.g., considerably more elegant and to the point that Osama bin Laden’s long rambling recruiting video.

Note that the Muslims most engaged in the violence the Europeans so fear this movie will provoke, are precisely those who would find the contents unexceptional. So why are they threatening to riot?

Interestingly, the response has been remarkably muted so far. But note this comment from an al Qaeda member:

A militant believed linked to al-Qaida’s deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahri told The Associated Press in the northwestern city of Peshawar last week militants would mount revenge attacks against foreigners because of Wilders’ film.

“Foreigners will be attacked. The situation will change, change, change,” said Qari Mohammed Yusuf, whose also said his two brothers died fighting alongside al-Zawahri. “The reaction was in (the Pakistani tribal region of) Waziristan before, but tomorrow it will be in Kabul and even in Holland and in Denmark.“

Revenge for what? Quoting his buddies?

MERCAZ HARAV AND THE G-WORD
By • Richard Landes, Boston University
Published in: Exclusive to Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Faculty Forum March 16, 2008

Just after the murderous attack on the Seminary students in Jerusalem, SPME issued a statement to which it attached the names of the board members. The key passage runs as follows:

The deliberate attack on this venerable institution of Jewish learning, a sacred seminary, cannot be interpreted as anything but an overt act of premeditated, genocidal anti-Semitism not dissimilar from the acts of pogroms in Eastern Europe and Nazi SS raids on Jewish communities in Western Europe. Jews were killed simply because they were Jewish.

In no way can this be interpreted as an act of political liberation or of Palestinian self-determination and if the Palestinians insist that it is, then it must be interpreted as nothing less than an act of war against Jews and not just Israel.

Almost immediately board members received email objecting to this language as exaggerated and inappropriate. What follows are some of the objections that writers have made to us, and a response of sorts that both acknowledges their rebuke and raises a more fundamental question that this controversy reveals in stark colors.

I received the following from a colleague whose work I greatly respect and whose pronouncements on the Middle East conflict I had previously criticized.

I see that you and Efraim Karsh are among the signatories of the below call for a condemnation of the attack on the Mercaz Harav. Fine. But why this rhetoric? Why bring out the big guns (genocide, the SS, warcrimes) on the occasion of the mad actions of what seems to have been an isolated gunman who went “postal”? Did you protest in the same way when Baruch Goldstein shot worshippers at the mosque in Hebron? What is the point of this exaggerated rhetoric?

Wrote another colleague to a board member:

My general support for your efforts notwithstanding, I must object to this memo. Despicable. Deplorable. Criminal. Yes. But “genocidal?” No. Not by any reasonable definition of genocide. Hyperbole does not make the case stronger, just louder.

Wrote still another in the same vein:

I was saddened by the attack, by the loss of life, the injury, and the myriad of its implications. But your summary of the meaning of the event is badly discrediting your hasbara.

It would be easy to list many essential differences between the attack on Yeshivat Mercaz Harav and the pogroms in East Europe and Nazi SS raids. For one, as far as I know the Nazis and the kozacks did not undertake much risk, and certainly did not go on suicide missions. The Yeshiva, like the madrasas on the other side, is not just about scholarship but also indoctrination, to a perspective which does not leave much room for compromise. If this is the only choice, I certainly wish that the Yeshiva boys win over the madrasas, but hysterical self pity by the strong should not be our style.

Finally, an extensive rebuke from Alan Weisbard:

Words have meaning.

It is important that words associated with extremes of human conduct be used judiciously so that they retain their distinctive meanings, and so that proper uses of those words (and the experiences properly described by them) are not diminished through gratuitous overuse and dilution of meaning.

One such word is “genocide.” A second such word, one less extreme but nonetheless powerful and distinctive, particularly in Jewish historical context, is “pogrom.”

My own view is that the invocation of these terms to describe the clearly wanton and evil murder of religious students and scholars at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav by a single individual (perhaps - it is not known at this point - supported by one or another terrorist gang) is inexact and unhelpful. So are invocations of these terms (and of the term “holocaust”) employed by enemies of the State of Israel to describe deaths (including those of civilian women and children, so-called “collateral damage”) caused by targeted Israeli attacks on Palestinian militants/terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank.

I am making no claims regarding moral equivalence here, except to say that none of these acts, in my view, constitutes activity meaningfully or usefully described as genocidal. Certainly, if one applies such labels to the murders at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav, one must do so equally for the slaughter at the Cave of Machpelah by a deranged co-religionist, whose name I decline to mention, at Purim time some years back.

Further, given the current and foreseeable composition and proclivities of most international institutions in a position to apply such terminology with legal force, I do not think it serves the interests of Israel, or of the worldwide Jewish community, to encourage the indiscriminate use of these incendiary terms in the context of today’s Middle East-at least short of the use (or threat) of weapons of mass destruction.

The attack on the Yeshiva merits moral condemnation in strong terms. I also join your expression of sympathy and condolences to its victims, their families and communities. But the rhetorical escalation of language serves little good purpose here, andI would urge you to reconsider how best to express your justifiable outrage at this heinous act.

In sum, SPME’s statement struck many thoughtful people who are by no means hostile to the State of Israel as loose talk that both discredits the organization and debases the language in ways that do not serve to benefit either a responsible and free society or the Jews.

I must confess that I too, upon first reading the statement found it excessive in its rhetoric, unnecessarily insistent that the reader share the writer’s indignation at this wanton slaughter, but that they also assent to a “reading” of the conflict that drew sides in black and white. But as I read the objections, in particular the comparison with Baruch Goldstein - whose name Alan Weisbard is justifiably loath even to mention - I became increasingly convinced that the statement, rather than immoderate in its rhetoric, had only missed a critical step of reasoning that many of us on the board of SPME have already made, even if reluctantly and with much regret.

The missing piece here lies in the culture that produced this deed. Anyone who doubts that Palestinian culture, both “secular” (i.e., Fatah, Palestinian Authority) and religious (Hamas, Jihad Islami) has terrifying genocidal tendencies must visit the site of Palestinian Media Watch. There one finds documented in every aspect of public culture, from sermons on TV and educational programs to crosswords, sports, and children’s programs, a culture steeped in genocidal hatreds.

Read the rest.

In another remarkable article by Khaled abu Toameh, perhaps the best Arab journalist now practicing by Western standards, we find Hosni Mubarak, furious at the idea that his country might do a good deed by providing for their Palestinian brethren. The matter-of-fact way in which Mubarak asserts the logic — Israel must suffer no matter what the costs to the Palestinians — reveals just how implacable the hatreds. Mubarak is nowhere near the basic bar for even negotiating peace — love your own more than you hate your foes. Fine insight into the sources of Palestinian suffering. (Hat tip: fp)

JPost.com » Middle East Article
Feb 4, 2008 0:26 | Updated Feb 4, 2008 1:17

Egypt nixes Hamas call for alliance
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Under pressure from Egypt, Hamas on Sunday backtracked from its call for economic disengagement from Israel.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Photo: AP [file]
“Egypt has made it clear that it does not want to be responsible for providing the Gaza Strip with fuel and electricity,” a senior Hamas official in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post. “They have informed us that the Gaza Strip must remain Israel’s problem.”

The talk about economic separation from Israel is said to have enraged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who expressed fear that such a move would increase pressure on him to assume responsibility for the Gaza Strip.

The idea, which has been welcomed by Israel, was first floated by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh over the weekend.

In remarks published by the Hamas-affiliated Falasteen newspaper, Haniyeh said that “Gaza must maintain stronger economic links with Egypt as a way of economic disconnection from Israel.” He said Hamas was seeking to disconnect the Strip’s economy from Israel and receive food, fuel and electricity from Egypt.

“We said during our election campaign in 2006 that we are seeking to move toward an economic disengagement from the Israeli occupation,” Haniyeh said. “Egypt has a greater ability to meet the needs of Gaza.”

And, if they weren’t possessed by their hatred of Israel to the point where they can’t stop bombing it, they might be able to take care of their own people a little better.

Then this Egypt-Gaza border could become the beginning of an economic development that might assist the standard of living of the inhabitants of North Sinai.

Haniyeh’s statements were later echoed by his top aide, Ahmed Youssef, who called on Egypt to assume its responsibilities toward the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip so that they would no longer have to rely on Israel.

However, the two Hamas leaders were forced to retract their statements after being severely reprimanded by top Egyptian government officials, the Hamas official in Gaza City said. The Egyptians are also reported to have threatened to cut off ties with Hamas and ban Hamas representatives from entering its territory.

In other words, when the Egyptians want to get their way, they know how to do it.

The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has also rejected Hamas’s proposal, warning that such a move would absolve Israel of its responsibilities toward the Palestinians in Gaza. The PA also warned that “bringing Egypt back into the Gaza Strip” would kill the Palestinians’ hope of establishing an independent state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In other words, the PA and Egypt are on the same page: make the Israelis pay for the Palestinian suffering to which we (other Arab leaders) will contribute no solution unless it makes life impossible for the Israelis (independent state in West Bank and Gaza Strip combined). It looks like Hamas, under some international scrutiny (as a “democratically-elected” government), and increasingly squeezed by an Israel which cannot justify to itself feeding an enemy actively attacking it, seems to be the most pragmatic players at the moment.

But that too may be cognitive egocentrism. The PA and Egypt still use the “secular” discourse of Palestine and the Palestinians, whereas Hamas is a branch of the Muslim brotherhood. Their vision of future borders has no respect for the sovereignty of any of the political “entities” now in existence — Israel, Egypt, Jordan, “Palestine.”

Youssef denied that Hamas wanted to separate the Strip from the West Bank.

“The West Bank and Gaza Strip is one unified geographical unit,” he stressed. Explaining Hamas’s call for economic disengagement from Israel, he added: “What I was talking about was the need to change the situation where the Gaza Strip would continue to depend on economic aid from Israel. “We want to stop Israel from exploiting the economic situation to blackmail the Palestinians.”

“Blackmailing” them into stopping the Qassam attacks. What transparent language! How obscured by our media that downplay the Qassam dimension.

In this sense, Youssef’s pragmatism might run something like this: Look Egypt, we need this electricity and materiel to bomb the Israelis. They’ve finally wised up — what took the idiots so long? — and cut off our supplies. Now we need you to supply us so we can really give it to them. The Egyptians, on the other hand, don’t want a destabilized border; they just want to the Israelis to suffer, like some Promethean chained to a rock, with his liver constantly gnawed upon. And if that means the Gazans suffer… hey, it’s great publicity, no?

Youssef said the idea did not change the fact that the Gaza Strip “is still under Israeli occupation.” But, he added, “All we want is to breathe freedom, find jobs, develop agriculture and promote trade.”

Now that’s interesting. Is that really true? Then Hamas’ best bet would have been to work with the Israelis, who have a far more dynamic economy than the Egyptians. But let’s say his honor precludes so humiliating a cooperation. Still, is he speaking for a significant portion of the Gazan population (who surely exist) that remembers the “good old days” of before the Intifada, when Gaza’s economy, linked to Israel’s under “truce” conditions, is much missed? Or is he manipulating this discourse to get pipelines open so he and his colleagues can pursue war?

In return for abandoning the idea, the Egyptians have promised to consider giving Hamas a central role in managing the Rafah border crossing, sources close to Hamas said.

According to the sources, Egypt promised to raise the issue of Hamas’s participation in controlling the crossing with the US and some EU countries, as well as with Israel.

Uh oh.

“Our Egyptian brothers have promised to reopen the Rafah border crossing soon,” said Taher a-Nunu, spokesman for the Hamas government. “Our delegation to the Cairo talks [last week] reached an agreement with the Egyptians on the need to reopen the border crossing.”

Khalil Abu Lailah, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, said his movement was not opposed to the presence of forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the Rafah terminal. But, he continued, Hamas would not accept any deal that allowed Israel to have indirect control there.

“We’re prepared to control the border together with Abbas’s forces,” he said. “The border must be only under Palestinian-Egyptian control.”

Egypt said Sunday it would resist any fresh attempts by the Palestinians to breach its border with the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, Egyptian border guards closed the last gap in the border with the Gaza Strip, ending the 11-day influx of Palestinians into Egypt. Palestinians who watched the Egyptians reseal the border expressed outrage and vowed to continue their efforts to tear down the barriers.

Now there’s one of the paradigm-setting cases for 21st century political jurisprudence: the border between Egypt and Gaza. Let’s hope the Israelis figure out how to make their demands felt. The consequences of failure will be a necessity to invade later on when the wrong items make it into Gaza.

(The following is a close look at the thesis of Major Stephen Coughlin, prepared by LB with comments by RL)

The fact that Coughlin is being fired for pressing his approach to Islam — take Islam seriously in its own terms — illustrates what’s wrong with Western policy circles, even those whose primary role is our defense.

Major Stephen Coughlin is one of the Pentagon’s premier experts on Islamic law and Islamism. In March, he will become the Pentagon’s former expert. Reports coming from the Pentagon in the past month have indicated that after submitting his Master’s thesis, Coughlin was fired from the Joint Staff after he fell into the bad graces of Hasham Islam, a key aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Islam and England have been aggressively reaching out to American Muslim groups, including the Islamic Society of North America, a group many critics call a front for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. During a meeting several weeks ago, Islam confronted Coughlin and called him “a Christian zealot with a pen.” The Pentagon decided that Coughlin was too controversial, and terminated his contract, effective this March.

The episode highlights intellectual weakness in the nation’s defense policy establishment and the influence of demopaths like Heshem Islam who is also a zealot with a pen who favors autobiographical fantasy. The Pentagon has apparently decided on an outlook that dictates that mainstream Islam stands for peace, that the Jihadi zealots represent a hi-jacking of the “true” religion, and will not countenance any evidence to the contrary. It also illustrates the way in which this “politically correct” approach acts as a form of cultural disarmament.

Coughlin’s recent 333 page Master’s thesis for the National Defense Intelligence College, entitled “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad“, is well researched, well argued and fairly straightforward. That his recommendations are being sidelined makes one pessimistic about the direction of the intellectual underpinnings of U.S. defense policy.

Coughlin calls for a dispassionate analysis of the Jihadi threat. He argues that our enemies base their statements and actions in Islamic law, and use Islamic legal language, therefore our only way to seriously understand their motives and intentions is to listen to what they are saying and analyze it in the context of Islamic law.

According to Coughlin, it is irrelevant if Islam stands for peace or not. Even if most Muslims do not share the specifically Jihadist reading of Islam, Jihadi positions are grounded in mainstream Islamic law, and their language is rooted exclusively in Islamic terms. Coughlin calls the dominant contemporary intellectual approach the Current Approach what we at the Augean Stable call the PCP. The “Current Approach,” he argues, is useless because it refuses to acknowledge the doctrinal basis of the terrorists’ actions. Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about the danger of ignoring our enemies’ declared intentions on The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq at the National Defense University on December 1, 2005:

Likewise, the nature of today’s jihadist enemies can only be understood within the context of their declared strategic doctrine to dominate the world. Just as we ignored Mein Kampf ” to our great detriment” prior to World War II, so we are on the verge of suffering a similar fate today.

Of course, that is a comparison that, according to the rules of political correctness, cannot be made. And not being able to make it is part of our cultural disarmament. We are not permitted to even imagine that we might have an enemy as ruthless and imperialist as the Nazis. Just as it would be an insult to all Germans to call them Nazis, so it would be an insult to all Muslims to call them Jihadis. But what if a similar dynamic was at work whereby a small but dynamic minority began to gain inordinate influence over the larger majority? Could we not talk about it? And should honest Muslims, like honest Germans, be throttling such a discussion because it offends them? Whose side are they on? That of decency, or Islam “right or wrong”?

Coughlin starts with fundamental questions that, if answered honestly, should lead to an accurate understanding of the threat.

Why have we failed to do a doctrine-based threat assessment?
What is the doctrinal basis of the jihadi threat?
How can we come to understand the jihadi threat?

The efforts to define the doctrinal basis to the Jihadi threats were hampered in the first days after 9/11 by President Bush’s adamant assertions that Islam is a religion of peace, and the extraordinary assertion (for an outsider) those who commit violence in the name of Islam misread their religious texts and law.

Following the catastrophic events of 9-11 when 19 Muslim men attacked U.S. targets for reasons associated with jihad in furtherance of Islamic goals, President George Bush made broad statements that held Islam harmless:
The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

While there is little doubt the President made these comments to allay fears in the Muslim community while staring-down thoughts of vigilante justice in some circles, his statements exerted a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine by effectively placing a policy bar on the unconstrained analysis of Islamic doctrine as a basis for this threat.

There is a faulty assumption of an underlying cause for terrorism that has pervaded the thinking on the Jihadi threat. That assumption is that poverty and despair lead to terrorism, even when the facts stand against that conclusion.

As recently as 15 May 2007, from the same utterance in which he acknowledged that “it is true that terrorist leaders seem more often than not to come from middle-class backgrounds,” U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson counterfactually asserted that “most people would find it hard to argue against the idea that [the underlying cause of] terrorist violence arises, sociologically speaking, out of poverty, despair, hopelessness and resentment.”

The logic behind insisting on poverty as the source of terrorism is, like so much of PCP, a desire to have a solution we can implement: we [think we] know how to deal with poverty and getting rid of that is a good liberal goal, so kill two birds with one stone. But even some economists — who have every professional motivation to adopt this position — disagree.

And yet, the defense community apparently still does not understand the enemy’s motivation (transgressing against Sun Tzu’s cardinal rule, “Know Thy Enemy”), which comes entirely from Islamic doctrine. Before we can understand the enemy and predict his intentions, the U.S. planners must have a solid grasp of what the terrorists themselves say motivates them.

More than five years into the War on Terror (WOT) against a threat that defines itself in Islamic terms, the national security community does not understand the most basic Islamic doctrines that the enemy self-identifies as being its primary motivating factor.

In 2006, Republican congressional intelligence leaders could not explain any difference between Sunni and Shia in response to a reporter’s questions. When Democrats took over later that year, the situation was no better. Congressman Silvestre Reyes, Democratic Chairman of the House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence (and senior member of the Armed Services Committee), told the same reporter that al-Qaeda was predominantly Shia.

The “Current Approach” is characterized by two contradictory assertions, often made by the same individual- “Islam is a religion of peace” and “No one can say what Islam really stands for. There are a thousand ways to interpret Islam”. The intelligence establishment has a harmful practice of outsourcing crucial intelligence to experts who support the current approach and demand that the recipients of their expertise follow suit. Ironically, it’s as if the “Islamic experts” who adhere to the “Current Approach” get to inform the intelligence community on a “need to know basis.” Except that here, what we don’t know will hurt us.

(more…)

This is a topic I don’t often blog on, although I should. It’s the core of my own academic work, but I’ve chosen to focus on the media at the Augean Stables. Nonetheless, it’s important to keep in mind that one of the major functions of the MSM in the 21st century is to keep from the public awareness of the nature of the challenge. Islamic apocalyptic millennial expectations are at the heart of both the Shi’i (Khoumeini, 1979/1400) and Sunni (Bin Laden, 1989) jihadi awakening.

If you don’t know about this dimension of the problem, you’re much more likely to fall prey to PCP and LCE… which is why the guardians of the public sphere — academics and media talking heads — don’t like to bring it up much.

Hamas and Islamic Millenarianism: What the West Doesn’t Recognize

Paul Landau | Bio 08 Jan 2008

Some 20 years after its founding, the Palestinian organization Hamas remains little understood in the West. Although it is invoked nearly daily in the media, it has been the subject of only a very small number of serious studies. The most common error made by observers in considering contemporary Islamist movements — and notably, Hamas — is that of attempting to grasp them in terms of concepts and modes of thought that are proper to the West. Most western analyses of the phenomenon of Islamism tend to underestimate or even obscure a fundamental element that is common to all the various Islamist currents and organizations: namely, the role of specifically Muslim religious beliefs and, more precisely, of Islamic eschatology.

Thus in his book “Jihad,” a well-known French expert of Islamism like Gilles Kepel can explain Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979 as the result of an “alliance of the pious bourgeoisie and the poor urban youth.” In similar fashion, numerous journalists continue to describe the perpetrators of suicide attacks — both Palestinians and others — as economically disadvantaged and driven by “desperation,” even though all the research conducted on the subject demonstrates that such a Marxist-tinged sociological interpretation does not reflect the reality.

It is impossible to understand the success enjoyed by Hamas, notably since the Palestinian elections nearly two years ago, and the persistence of Islamism in general — the decline or even proximate demise of which is regularly announced by Western observers — if one fails to take into account the beliefs held by the members of Islamist movements themselves or if one diminishes their importance: dismissing them, for instance, as medieval gibberish devoid of any concrete significance.

We need to listen to what the Islamists say and appreciate the importance of their discourse if we are going to be able to grasp their motivations and strategies. It is symptomatic in this regard that the Western media, which regularly touch upon the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas in covering events in the Middle East, nonetheless almost never mention the charter of the Palestinian Islamist movement.

[snip]

Eschatology and the Conflict Between Islam and the West

One of the most essential — and most little-known — aspects of contemporary Islamism is the role of eschatological or millenarian beliefs within it. This millenarian dimension of Islam has often been minimized by commentators, sometimes for polemical reasons: Christianity is presented as the only religion that is oriented toward the beyond, whereas Islam is supposed to be characterized by strictly this-worldly preoccupations.

This forgotten dimension of the Islamist phenomenon is key to understanding the current resurgence of a triumphalist Islam, since it cuts across all the divisions within the Muslim world: between Sunnism and Shiism, between traditional Islam and contemporary Islamism. As the French historian Pierre Lory explained in a recent lecture at the Sorbonne, “Eschatology represents one of the fundamental traits of the Muslim religion. The imminence of the end of time and of the final judgment is one of the oldest and most constant Quranic themes and is found throughout the sacred text of Islam.” Inasmuch as Muhammad is the last prophet (bearing the “seal of prophecy”), his advent inaugurates the last period of universal history: i.e. the eschatological period.

In his collection of Hadith titled “The Major Signs of the End of the World from the Prophet to the Return of Jesus,” Abdallah al-Hajjaj cites a saying of the prophet, who, raising his hand, is supposed to have affirmed that his mission and the final hour were as close as his middle and index fingers. This belief in the imminence of the end of time is a fundamental aspect of the contemporary Islamic reawakening, in both its peaceful and belligerent forms.

It is sometimes suggested that only the Shia version of Islam assigns importance to eschatological considerations, and it is true that the motif of the return of the hidden Imam, the central element of Shia belief, lends itself especially easily to millenarian interpretations. Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, millenarian aspirations have been at the center of developments in the Shia Muslim world. The belief in the imminence of the Final Judgment helps to explain both the suicidal forms of behavior that proliferated during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and the current attitude of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

[snip]

A Millenarian and Redemptive Anti-Semitism

Hamas is a radical Islamic movement whose worldview is marked by an Islamic eschatology in which the Jews occupy a central place. Its apocalyptic vision of a final confrontation with Israel excludes every possibility of coexistence or “moderation.” This vision is identical with that of the most radical Jihadist movements.

Far from being merely an epiphenomenon, the anti-Semitism of Hamas constitutes the very core of its political-religious doctrine. The hatred of Jews expressed in the Hamas Charter and conveyed in the discourse of its officials is not simply a religious anti-Judaism or an imported anti-Semitism of European origins. It is, as the French scholar of anti-Semitism Pierre-André Taguieff has put it in his book “La nouvelle judéophobie,” a “millenarian and redemptive anti-Semitism.” Taguieff compares radical Islamic Judeophobia — in terms of which “the Muslim world can only be saved by the extermination of the Jews” — to the racist anti-Semitism of Hitler.

It is troubling to note, as Richard Landes has recently pointed out, that the West, far from condemning the apocalyptic discourse of Hamas, actually encourages it. Such an attitude is undoubtedly to be explained by the fact that certain European leaders and diplomats share the convictions of Hamas officials concerning the imminent disappearance of Israel.

Paul Landau is the author of the recent study of Tariq Ramadan and the Muslim Brotherhood “Le sabre et le Coran” (Editions du Rocher, 2005). The above article was translated from French by John Rosenthal.

Read the whole article.

The following video, from Media Line, portrays an Israeli Arab Hajj guide who engages fellow Muslims about Arabs in Israel. Arab media is so skewed that many do not even know that there are Muslims in Israel. The guide tells them that they enjoy civil liberties and a relatively good economic situation. While he may not be especially supportive of Israel, he knows enough about other Muslim societies to appreciate his good fortune of living in Israel.

Flush with confidence after the publication of the NIE, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote an article in this week’s Newsweek entitled “An Arrogant Approach: The Danger of Unilateralism-for the United States and the World.” It is a prime example of a proponent of Jihadi Islam attacking the West with its own terms and values- multilateralism, human dignity, and “global, sustainable peace and security”. Like many others who share his worldview, Ahmadinejad understands that the West’s media is an effective, available means of weakening its resolve.

In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful: the international community has moved away from peace, security and justice due to the mismanagement of some of its actors. Yet the expectation of a world marked by security and tranquillity endures.

After the end of the cold war and the regional confrontations emanating from bipolar competition, many hoped there would be a beautiful spring in international relations, as a multilateral system emerged that offered equal opportunities to all members of the international community. It was hoped that the new world would enable all nations, in light of universally accepted humane norms and mutual respect, to advance together, eradicate poverty and injustice, and set aside bitter memories of the past that were nothing but war, bloodshed, violence and tension.

(more…)

Mark Steyn spoke recently in Brookline at an event sponsored by CAMERA. It was a spectacular combination of brilliant and witty. Not a moment wasted; every sentence worth its weight in gold. Before the talk, Josh Katzen introduced him as a cross between Jean Kirkpatrick and Mel Brooks. I whispered to the person next to me, “He’s better than Kirkpatrick.” He responded, “… and not as funny as Mel Brooks.” But after hearing him speak, he may be as funny as Brooks.

Below some notes (filled out with my additions which are necessarily his words) and my comments.

Outsourcing the Future: The West’s World Historical Gamble
Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The default of our society right now is the mode of cultural relativism, epitomized by Christian Amanpour who apparently can’t tell the difference between a Christian school where the girls have dress codes and a Islamist country like Taliban Afghanistan where, by law, women are forbidden by law to feel sunshine on their faces.

And women who violate that law get acid thrown in their faces.

I was here this year on September 11, and heard Governor Patrick speak about 9-11: “a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the USA… a failure of human beings to understand each other, to love each other.” It’s the “each other” that’s the problem. I am not interested in “loving each other”, as much as I would love to understand. We do not live in a cheesy pop-song where “All you need is love…”

Steyn has here brought together two linked phenomena. On the one hand, cultural relativism — various forms of moral equivalence (we’re as bad as they are) and inversion (we’re worse than they are) — and on the other, what I call “liberal cognitive egocentrism.” Amanpour must “level the playing field” lest she be seen as unduly critical of Islam.

Patrick’s language is a cross between vague allusions to the Christian belief in the power of love, and classic liberal cognitive egocentrism: we’re all fine folks, let’s be nice to each other; “we can work it out” so that everyone wins. It’s not that this stance is illegitimate. Indeed, it works, maybe even most of the time (depending on how good you are at doing it). Civil society is the near-miraculous product of getting a critical mass of commoners to adopt these attitudes towards fellow citizens. But on those rare occasions, when this generous approach doesn’t work, applying it backfires.

The West is engaged in a world historical gamble on the power of cultural relativism to solve a series of civilizational dilemmas. At the moment, the Western world is beset by systemic structural defects, the most massive being demographic. The West is in demographic decline just as it has created a welfare state that need increasing population to survive, a problem still more serious in Europe, where both demographic decline and the cost of welfare is steeper than in the USA. As a result, we are outsourcing the future.
(more…)

This article is up at PJMedia

La version française, traduite par Menahem Macina, se trouve ici.
Al-Dura et le “secret d’intérêt public” du journalisme au Moyen-Orient

In the summer of 2006, Reuters News Agency, humiliated when bloggers caught them duped by obvious photographic manipulation, fired both the photographer and the chief of their photographic bureau. They then removed all the photographer’s photos from their news archive. In so doing, they acted decisively in punishing two of the cardinal sins of modern journalism: “creating evidence” and getting duped by created evidence.

These principles – i.e., the ethics of a free press – go so deep, that Westerners apparently have difficulty imagining that others might not share our commitments. Thus few people believe claims that footage of Muhammad al Durah, the twelve year old boy allegedly gunned down by Israelis at Netzarim Junction on September 30, 2000, was staged. Charles Enderlin, the correspondent for France2 who presented the tale to the world, derisively and successfully dismisses such claims as a conspiracy theory as ludicrous as those about 9-11. How absurd: Palestinian journalists would not do such a thing; and if they did, the Western media would catch it. To this day, most journalists still ask, “Who killed al Durah?” not, “Was he killed in the footage we see?”

The last time we see al Durah on Talal’s camera:
He holds his hand over his eyes not his allegedly
deadly stomach wound. He lifts his up his arm and
looks around. Enderlin had already declared him
dead in an earlier scene, and (therefore?) cut this
scene from his broadcast.

And yet, one of the major differences between Western journalism and self-styled “Islamic media men” emerges on just this issue of the permissibility of staging the news and attitudes towards what constitutes honest information. According to the Islamic Mass Media Charter (Jakarta, 1980), the sacred task of Muslim media men [sic], is on the one hand to protect the Umma from “imminent dangers,” indeed to “censor all materials,” towards that end, and on the other, “To combat Zionism and its colonialist policy of creating settlements as well as its ruthless suppression of the Palestinian people.”

So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Durah sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV responded:

These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth.

When Talal abu Rahmah received an award for his footage of Muhammad al Durah in Morocco in 2001, he told a reporter, “I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people.”

These remarks serve as an important prelude to considering the France2 rushes that will be shown in court in Paris on November 14 in the Enderlin France2 vs. Philippe Karsenty defamation case. These tapes were filmed by Talal abu Rahmah on September 30, 2000, and for seven years, Enderlin has claimed that the tapes prove him right and show the boy in such unbearable death throes that he cut them out of his report. But several experts who have seen the tapes (this author included) claim that the only scene of al Durah that Enderlin cut was the final scene where he seems alive and well; and still more disturbingly the rest of the rushes are filled with staged scenes. Indeed there seems to be a kind of “public secret” at work on the Arab “street”: people fake injury, others evacuate them hurriedly (and without stretchers) past Palestinian cameramen like Talal, who use Western video equipment to record these improvised scenes. Pallywood: the Palestinian movie industry.

Which brings us to a problem more complex than the fairly straightforward observation that Palestinian journalists play by a different set of rules in which this kind of manipulation of the “truth” is entirely legitimate. What do Western journalists do with these products of propaganda? Do they know these are fakes or are they fooled? Do they tell the cameramen working for them and using their equipment that filming such staged scenes is unethical and unacceptable? And if they do, why do cameramen who have worked for them for years – Talal worked for Enderlin for over a decade when he took these rushes – continue to film these scenes. And how often do our journalists run this staged footage as real news?

Here the evidence provided by the Al Durah affair suggests that, in some sense, journalists are “in” on the public secret. When representatives of France2 were confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in Talal’s footage, they both responded the same way. “Oh, they always do that, it’s a cultural thing,” said Enderlin to me in Jerusalem. “Yes Monsieur, but, you know, it’s always like that,” said Didier Eppelbaum to Denis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte, and Luc Rosenzweig in Paris.

As an echo of this astonishing private complacency, Clément Weill-Raynal of France3 made a comment to a journalist that he meant as a criticism of Karsenty:

Karsenty is so shocked that fake images were used and edited in Gaza, but this happens all the time everywhere on television and no TV journalist in the field or a film editor would be shocked.

The implications of this remark undermine its very use in his argument: How can Karsenty defame Enderlin by accusing him of using staged footage when, as Clément Weill-Raynal here admits, everybody does it? Is it wrong to do this? And if so, why does Weill-Raynal criticize Karsenty for blowing the whistle? And if not, where’s the defamation?

We may have stumbled here onto the very nature of public secrets and the value of a good reputation: everyone can cheat so long as no one is caught. It’s okay for the insiders to know, but the effectiveness of the (mis)information depends on the public not knowing. As Daniel Leconte reproached Eppelbaum: “the media may know [about this staging], but the public doesn’t.” Indeed, the public must not know. CNN advertises itself as “The Most Trusted Name in News,” not because it struggles against the influences, like access journalism, that destroy trustworthiness, but because it knows how important trust is to their audience public consumers of news. Thus, even if Western journalists use staged footage regularly, they cannot admit it. And, if denial doesn’t work, then, apparently, the next move is to say, “it’s nothing; everyone does it.”

An incident at Ramallah, however, suggests that Western journalists have systematically submitted to Palestinian demands that they practice Palestinian journalism. On October 12, 2000, to cries of “Revenge for the blood of Muhammad al Durah,” Palestinian men tore to pieces the bodies of two Israeli reservists. Aware of the potential damage, Palestinians attacked any journalist taking pictures. And yet, one Italian crew working for a private news station, at great risk to their lives, smuggled out the footage. Eager to avoid being blamed, the representative of Italy’s “official television station RAI,” wrote to the PA that his station would never do such a thing,

…because we always respect (will continue to respect) the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for (journalistic) work in Palestine…

Just what are these “journalistic procedures”? Do they resemble the rules of the Jakarta charter, including the censorship of anything damaging to the Palestinian cause (no matter how true), and publication of anything damaging to the Israeli cause (no matter how inauthentic)? The PA, apparently unaware that this is not how journalism should be done in the West, published the letter.

But on the side where modern journalism allegedly reigns, such revelations were profoundly embarrassing: even the normally timid Israeli government “temporarily suspended” the press card of Roberto Cristiano, and no one in the normally aggressive Western media objected. Cristiano had violated the basic rule of Western journalism’s omerta, and openly admitted shameful practices. The public consumer of Mainstream Media (MSM) “news” needs to ask, “How many journalists adhere to these Palestinian rules, and how much does that adherence distort, even invert, our understanding of what goes on in this interminable conflict? Can we afford this “public secret”?

Nor can we expect the MSM to discuss this willingly. On the contrary, awareness of the importance of trust often enough leads journalists to hide their mistakes rather than admit and learn from them. As a French friend put it to me: “No one admits publicly to mistakes in France. It’s a sign of weakness.” While these are the rules of honor-shame culture, civil society depends on having people prefer honesty to saving face, no matter how painful that may be. And while we cannot expect people to volunteer for public humiliation, we can and must insist that there are limits to both individual and corporate efforts to resist correction.

This is Charles Enderlin’s problem with the al Durah case. He has, with his eagerness to get the scoop, foisted upon an unsuspecting world, a nuclear bomb in the world of information warfare. As Bob Simon put it, to the background of a medley of Pallywood images: “In modern warfare, one picture is worth a thousand weapons.” And no image has done more to inspire the desire for violent revenge and global Jihad than this “icon of hatred.” To admit his mistakes, to release the public from this image’s thrall and alert us to the possibility that such colossal errors not only occur, but go years without correction, would destroy Enderlin’s career.

Moreover, Enderlin’s failure, at this point, seven years later, implicates the larger MSM who, with their refusal to even allow the critique to air, protect him. This dilemma may partly explain why the MSM in France has scarcely mentioned this case; why they had nothing to say about the initial trial until Karsenty lost, at which point they leapt into print to reassure the public that the image choc of the Intifada “was not staged.” Enderlin, after all, is not some Palestinian hack, even if he trusts and therefore regularly channels the work of such “journalists.” He is perhaps the best known and most widely trusted European correspondent in the Middle East. Surely, as a Jew and an Israeli, he would not report false stories that blackened his own country’s name. They must be true.

More ominously, just as Al Durah represents a “higher truth” for Muslims — a justification for hatred, a call to revenge — so does it carry symbolic freight with Europeans. Catherine Nay, a respected news anchor for Europe1, welcomed the image:

The Death of Muhammad cancels out, erases that of the Jewish child, his hands in the air from the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto.

From Ramsey Clark’s International Action website.

How ironic! The Europeans use an image produced by those who admire the Nazis and dream of genocidal victory over the Jews, to erase their own guilt over the Holocaust. In so doing, Europe has “atoned” for its sins against the Jews by empowering its Muslim extremists.

So not to admit such mistakes, destroys the very fabric of the civil society that allows a free press. In the long history of blood libels, no people have benefited from embracing the twisted hatreds they evoked.

At what point does self-protection become self-destruction, not only for the journalists who deny their errors no matter how costly, but for the public that believes them? As an Israeli journalist remarked: “Every day I have to walk the fine line between loyalty to my sources and loyalty to my audience.” How grievously have our journalists betrayed us, their audience, for the sake of finding favor in the eyes of their sources?

Palestinian journalists, in their own ethical declarations, argue that their role is to defend their cause and weaken its enemies. Journalism for them is war by other means; the media, a theater of war. Honesty and fairness do not intrude on this ethical prescription, but merely present a requirement for versimilitude designed to deceive susceptible Western audiences and incite Muslim rage.

In this clash of journalistic cultures, how often has the Western media played the “useful idiots” to Palestinian demands. How often have they presented Palestinian “truths” to us as “news”? And if they have done so as often and as destructively as Pallywood and its greatest success, the Al Durah Affair, suggests, how much longer will they persist?

(Post by Lazar) A.J. Liebling once said, “Newspapers write about other newspapers with circumspection”. As is usually the case, the Israelis are the exception to the rule. The following Jerusalem Post op-ed, by Isi Liebler, excoriates Haaretz, and in particular its editor David Landau, for its bias against Israel. At the heart of the accusation lie basic journalistic ethics. In order for media to serve its role in a democracy, the journalist in the Western world must be impartial, and not let personal prejudices and political motivation stand in the way of journalistic standards. Landau’s boast that he had intentionally “soft-pedaled” allegations of corruption against Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert in order not to weaken their support as they worked toward a peace process should jolt any observer who understands the value of a responsible free press in a democratic society. The fact that Landau felt comfortable airing such a transgression is perhaps more alarming. It suggests an atmosphere among journalists in Israel, indeed across the West, that condones the promotion of a certain ideology at the expense of the standards that should serve as a guide to Western media.

(Interlinear comments by RL)

Shame on Ha-Aretz
Isi Liebler
November 6, 2007

We frequently boast that notwithstanding its limitations, the Israeli media is unfettered by government intervention and could serve as a role model for a free press in any democracy.

As in most Western countries, Israeli journalists are inclined to the Left and substantially outnumber the more conservative-minded. In fact, one constantly hears complaints that to hold right-wing views is a major stumbling block in obtaining promotion in the media world. But that is not unique to Israel.

The majority of Israelis who read a newspaper on a daily basis read one of the tabloids. In that sense, the broadsheet Haaretz stands alone. It presents as a serious liberal newspaper and aspires to assume the mantle of a Hebrew-language counterpart to The New York Times. Despite a limited circulation, it is extraordinarily influential and read by most opinion makers.

Its news coverage and access to inside information exceeds that of the tabloids. However, whereas it carries superb pieces on culture and society, with especially insightful articles on religious issues, its frequent endorsement of radical policies does tend to increasingly link Haaretz with fringe rather than mainstream opinion.

Indeed, many would even argue that a considerable proportion of Haaretz editorials and op-ed columns are politically off the wall. Its op-ed and magazine articles demonizing Israel and inclined toward post-Zionism are increasingly being quoted by Arabs and anti-Israeli propagandists. In fact, a man from Mars observing the level of the newspaper’s frequent vitriolic condemnations of Israeli governments could understandably be misled into believing that some Haaretz writers are consciously acting as propagandists for the Palestinian cause.

I had precisely this experience when I presented the al Durah Affair to a class on Communications Revolutions, and assigned a number of readings, including Ha-Aretz’s coverage of the Israeli commission of inquiry. One of the students commented,
“I thought Ha-Aretz was an Israeli paper.”
“It is,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it sounds like a Palestinian paper.”
It wasn’t just its critique, but the tone of it… as if the authors were trying hard to avoid embarrassment at the flaws in the report by jumping in ahead of everyone else and showing they could be more contemptuous than anyone. Don’t you shoot at someone on “my” side, I’ll do it for you, and in so doing, prove that at least “I” am a good person.
(more…)

Many journalists write with a moral purpose. They see their work as a potential vehicle for the betterment of the world. Of these reporters and editors, there are those who consider all warfare something to be avoided at all costs. As the bumper sticker has it, WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.

Therefore, anything these journalists can do to make distan