....And newspapers like the NYTimes will be thankful to ISRAEL as well as the grandchildren of the coward rulers of some western nations. ISRAEL is doing the West's dirty job.And ISRAEL can take all the time it needs to help eradicate this plague. As an American and Christian I thank ISRAEL every single day and pray that it succeeds. This is a War against the Civilized world as we know it. And if we do not stand together with ISRAEl we are doomed. The press may report both sides of the story: from Hezbollah's and Israel's perspective. But this is not about perspectives. This is about RIGHT and WRONG and what is JUST. And Hezbollah is founded on HATRED and destruction. Perhaps now is the time to revisit HISTORY and the CRUSADES...from a different perspective.
In the article, The Real History of the Crusades, Prof. Thomas Madden explains:
"So what is the truth about the Crusades?... the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands."
Perhaps the Editors at the NYTimes and other LIBERAL media should spend some time researching the facts...and not slant their articles and cause readers and world spectators to doubt, coward or hide behind the obvious. The Islamic Jihadists and supporters are out to destroy Western Civilization. So, wake up and fight, if not for themselves, then be it for the sake of their descendants!!!
July 26, 2006
Strategy
Israel Finding a Difficult Foe in Hezbollah By STEVEN ERLANGER and THOM SHANKER,
[Liberal Media]
[Israel]
[Anti-semitism]
[Hezbollah]
[Islam]
[Crusades]
[Christianity]
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
JIHADIST ISLAMISTS may now be well organized but are no match for ISRAEL.ISRAEL WILL PREVAIL.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
ALL CHRISTIANS MUST SUPPORT ISRAEL'S JUST WAR
All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.
However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."105
2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
ISLAMIC TERRORISM--JIHAD--FATWA--
"The leaders of the free world have taken pains since late 2001 to explain that Islam is a religion of peace. But in this far-ranging, 759-page collection of Muslim and non-Muslim eyewitness accounts, scholarly Muslim theological treatises and superb historical surveys, it appears that Islam has actually practiced a grisly jihad campaign against non-Muslims from its earliest days, in the hope of satisfying the Prophet Mohammed's end goal: forcing the "one true faith" upon the entire world....
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
[ISLAM]
[Anti-Semitism]
[Christians]
[Catholic Church]
[Mohammed]
[Jihad]
[Fatwa]
WHO CARES WHAT CLOWNS FIDEL, HUGO, EVO and "el NESTOR" are confabulating without Zapatero's European insight
PAYASOS FEOS!
Fidel Castro Surprises Anti-U.S. Leaders at Summit
A rare guest appearance by Cuban leader Fidel Castro has turned a routine trade summit into a politically charged gathering of Washington's greatest Latin American foes.
Castro's surprise visit to Argentina honors the induction of Venezuela into Mercosur, the highlight of talks that start Friday. The addition gives the South American trade bloc a decidedly leftist tilt a decade after it emerged during a wave of pro-U.S. free trade sentiment.
The communist leader, wearing his usual olive green military fatigues, slowly descended the airplane Thursday to cries of "Fidel! Fidel!" from well-wishers behind police cordons at the airport in the central city of Cordoba. Castro — whose trip was announced after he was airborne — made no public comments but saluted the crowd with a raised hand before heading to a dinner of the visiting presidents.
The summit gives Latin America's staunchest free trade critics — Castro, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's socialist President Evo Morales — a chance to meet with the region's more mainstream leftist leaders far beyond the influence of the White House.
It also gives them the opportunity to smooth over recent rifts. Among the sharpest: Morales' abrupt nationalization of his country's gas industry two months ago, a move that raised worries of energy shortages and price hikes for Bolivia's biggest customers, Argentina and Brazil.
At a meeting in Venezuela earlier this month, Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte brought up another source of division: alleged projectionist practices by Brazil and Argentina that have prompted Paraguay and Uruguay to question the benefits of Mercosur membership.
Chavez, however, called the display of leftist unity a "fiesta of integration. He lunched with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner in Buenos Aires before flying to Cordoba, arriving moments before Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva.
Unlike Lula Da Silva, who boarded a black limousine without making comments, Chavez waded into a crowd of local journalists to speak of a new Mercosur, pledging to use Venezuela's oil wealth to bolster the once-sleepy customs union.
"We are entering a new stage of Mercosur," Chavez said. "Imagine that ... the incorporation of nearly 30 million Venezuelans into a southern common market, and the Venezuelan economy is one of the most vigorous today in the world."
The summit allows Chavez to trumpet one of his long-sought foreign policy goals weeks after some critics blamed his political meddling for contributing to the election of losses of leftist presidential candidates in Mexico and Peru. He has said Mercosur should be a front against U.S. free trade deals.
Venezuela's induction expands Mercosur beyond its beginnings in southernmost South America. It now includes all the continent's largest economies — Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela — along with Paraguay and Uruguay.
Morales and moderate leftist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet were attending as observers.
Castro, who turns 80 on Aug. 13, has traveled to fewer international summits in recent years. It was his first trip to Argentina since Kirshner's 2003 inauguration.
Cordoba holds special significance for Castro, a political mentor for the younger Chavez and Morales. The central Argentina province was the boyhood home of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine who gave up a future in medicine to join Cuba's revolution.
The Mercosur leaders, meeting for the 30th time since 1991, are expected to sign a deal promoting trade between their nations and Cuba, which has been under a U.S. embargo for decades.
© 2006 Associated Press.
[Fidel Castro]
[Hugo Chavez]
[Nestor Kirchner]
[Rodriguez Zapatero]
[Evo Morales]
[Terrorism]
[Israel]
POPE BENEDICT XVI MUST SUPPORT ISRAEL
ISRAEL represents all of us who embrace Judeo-Christian values. We must support Israel because, in defending her land and peoples, she is defending our civilization. And the Pope, Benedict XVI should voice his support for ISRAEL
July 15, 2006
A Pope for All People
By David Shribman
I remember that my father had an abiding affection for Pope John XXIII. My daughters will remember that their father had an abiding affection for Pope John Paul II. Jews have had many enemies over the centuries, but we have had many friends as well.
Let me add one thought more, a Sunday morning reference to First Corinthians: The greatest of these was John Paul II.
The late pope lived, moved, studied, played and prayed among Jews. He grew up with Jews, he watched Jews being taken off to Nazi captivity and then cruel death, he returned the love that many Jews had for him. It is not too much to say, and perhaps to use the phrase for the first time ever without irony, that many of his best friends were Jews.
That is why a remarkable exhibit -- originated, with the help of Cincinnati's Jewish community, by one Catholic institution, Xavier University, and now appearing in another, Duquesne University -- is so moving a midsummer experience. It reminds us of the brotherhood of man, of the common faith of humanity, and of the capacity of people of different religions and outlooks to be, as the pope put it on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, "a blessing to one another."
Consider how extraordinary this is. Imagine telling someone in the years just after World War II -- in the chilliest days of the Cold War -- that in the coming decades the Catholic Church would select as its pope a man ordained a priest behind the Iron Curtain who would undermine the very foundations of the Soviet bloc, a cleric dripping with Polish nationalism and marinated in the traditions of the Polish church who would be a beacon of hope for Jews -- a light, you might say, among the nations. You would be dismissed as a dreamer.
And yet in a century that was not congenial to dreamers, all this became true. It is evidence, perhaps, that there is a God. We need not debate that question. There was a Karol Wojtyla.
The young Karol Wojtyla grew up in Wadowice, a Polish city home to Catholics and Jews alike. (Jewish population before the war: 2,000. Jewish population in 1944, a year before the war ended: 0.) The pope vividly remembered the Jews who gathered every Saturday at the synagogue, which dated to the late 1880s. Both religious groups, he said, "were united, I presume, by the awareness that they prayed to the same God."
The removal of one of his friends' family from Wadowice was a searing experience for him, and he said at the time, perhaps hoping that saying this would make it true: "Not all Poles are anti-Semitic." Ginka Beer, his neighbor and part of the family that had to leave its home, remembered the young boy's reaction: "He did not say a word, but his face went very red. I said farewell to him as kindly as I could, but he was so moved that he could not find a single word in reply.''
Karol Wojtyla would continue to be moved by that memory, and eventually he would find words to reply. In 1998, as the most terrible of centuries was expiring, he wrote:
"We pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people has suffered in our century will lead to a new relationship with the Jewish people. We wish to turn our awareness of past sins into a firm resolve to build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Judaism among Christians or anti-Christian sentiment among Jews, but rather a shared mutual respect, as befits those who adore the one Creator and Lord and have a common father in faith, Abraham."
Duquesne University's Mellon Hall is replete with quotations much like that. The pope spoke out continually, and with great and grave eloquence, on this question, as if he knew that he was peculiarly suited -- by temperament, by timing, by nationality -- to convey this message. Dare we say that the pope's life was a pilgrimage? The Catholic intellectual tradition regards a pilgrimage as a journey to discharge a religious obligation.
Remember that the pope was under no theological obligation to speak out for the Jews and against anti-Semitism. Over the centuries many popes have stuck to their doctrinal knitting, using their pulpit to speak on issues of their own faith, not other people's faith. And when they ventured into other religions it was not always to express their affection. But John Paul voluntarily embarked on this pilgrimage, and voluntarily took on this task, making it an obligation. You can think of it as an obligation of affection.
The pope undertook a parallel pilgrimage in 2000, visiting the Holy Land, paying tribute to "the three religious traditions which co-exist in this land." It was a remarkable moment in his life, and a remarkable moment in time, though Pope Paul VI, who was later to renounce and condemn the notion that Jews had collective guilt for the crucifixion, visited Jerusalem in 1964. On that occasion, in 2000, John Paul offered this prayer:
"God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
The pope has been dead for a little more than a year. We knew at the time that his passing meant the passing not only of a man but also of an era. We knew then, too, that this man helped shape more than his own church and that the ripples from his pebble in the papal pond extended far beyond Rome, far beyond Poland, far beyond Europe. We knew all that. It is just important to be reminded of it. And to realize that the world could use some more Wojtyla.
Copyright 2006 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/a_pope_for_all_people.html at July 22, 2006 - 11:35:42 AM CDT
[Israel]
[Anti-semitism]
[Jews]
[Pope John Paul II]
[Pope Benedict XVI]
[ISLAM]
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Que pasa, Spain?
In Spain, anti-Semitism is new leftist trend
Spanish Jews knew there were hard times ahead. Prime Minister Zapatero has not disappointed them
By Ignacio Russell Cano
Madrid: Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain and Secretary General of the Socialist Party, arrived to power at a time nobody expected, not even inside the Party.
Keen on populist tirades against the United States "Dickhead Bush" and "Ketchup Queen Kerry", his whole campaign did not bring much attention until the moment Al-Qaeda decided to blow up Madrid trains, killing almost 200 people and bringing to an end Spain's membership of the West.
From that moment on, everybody knew nothing would be the same, and Spanish Jews knew there were hard times ahead. Prime Minister Zapatero has not disappointed them.
'Understand Nazis'
Although many experts had foretold of the imminent disappearing of European Jews, nobody expected such a virulent explosion of anti-Semitism in Spain, not even under a Leftist government.
The first signal came on Monday, 5 December, when during a dinner with the Benarroch family, Zapatero and wife began claiming what Vidal Quadras, member of the European Parliament, described on the radio as "a tirade of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism".
By the moment the Benarroch couple had left the table to express their regrets, Zapatero was explaining his lack of surprise about the Holocaust: according to the people present, Zapatero claimed to understand the Nazis.
What about Hizbullah?
Closing Hizbullah TV was another mission impossible for the man who understands the Nazis. It took more than a year to definitely close the channel connection to the Hispasat satellite, siphoning Latin America with more than a year of hate and Islamist propaganda.
In a country with the most anti-Catholic government in its whole history but with a multicultural obsession for Islam, A-Manar TV was part of the 'freedom of press.'
The recent clashes with Hizbullah, however, have promoted the longest and hardest diatribes against Israel, forcing Zapatero to loose a cover for what it was long known in Spanish politics: His hate towards Israel, Jews and Zionism.
In the third day of such rants, before a gathering of the Socialist Youth Movement and a day before a demonstration against Israel, Zapatero showed at last his true colours: At the closing of the meeting he let the teenagers take pictures of him wearing a Palestinian kaffiyah.
Zapatero wearing the kaffiyah (Photo: AP)
Although according to Zapatero, Hizbullah and Israel are the same thing, he offers no words of condemnation for the Party of Allah, spending 100 percent of the time explaining, in a rather twisted way, that Israel should let Hizbullah kill Israelis.
Much of the theory belongs to controversial Spanish FM Miguel Angel Moratinos. EU envoy to the Middle East before and sinking in rumours of links to Hamas long before he left, Moratinos arrived to the foreign ministry cleaning the Elcano Institute up, firing the most prestigious experts and bringing in a group of friends of the oppression theory.
Since then, amid support for Castro and Chavez and mysterious support to Bolivia in order to bring Evo Morales to power, the Spanish FM has proved he has nothing to envy in terms of anti-Americanism, but nobody ever expected an explosion of anti-Semitism in Spain this big. It seems once more that the Jews are the canary in the mine, and the United States should take note.
Jews pay the price
The commotion caused in the Spanish Jewish community seems to be huge, especially taking in count that after some months of anxiety after his election, some Jews were feeling somewhat safe in Spain. Not anymore.
Some people were trying to alert the international community about what was boiling in Spain, but neither the OSCE nor the EUMC ever listened, preferring contacts with anti-Israeli NGOs based on the idea that anti-Semitism has to do with Arabs. Now the Spanish Jews are to pay the price for the international community's inaction, once more.
If the United States does not want to see the American embassy in Madrid full of Jews fleeing Spain, President Bush will do well in isolating Spain in the international arena while pressing, and asking European members to press, the new Socialist government of Spain. The American Rep's belonging to Moratino's Caucus of Friends of Spain should be reminded its elections time too.
The Sepharad story is clearly over, but nobody expected it would be by accident. If you are thinking about visiting Spain, think it twice. You may not leave easily.
[Anti-semitism]
[Spain]
[Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero]
[Miguel Angel Moratinos]
[Arabs]
EUROPEAns as usual divided and putting their heads in the sand...shame on you
Europe's papers divided on Lebanon
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GEORGE CONGER, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 19, 2006
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The European press has condemned Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hizbullah as an over-the-top response to the capture and killing of its soldiers and invasion of its territory, but remains divided over what must be done to resolve the crisis.
"As always," Le Monde wrote at the start of the crisis, Israel had responded "by making disproportionate use of military force, in violation of international law." On Wednesday, the paper applauded French President Jacques Chirac's call for Israel to exercise restraint as "without a doubt the most legitimate policy."
The French president's plan, Le Monde wrote, was the "only way to preserve a common line with the United States and a kernel of international consensus." It warned Israel that in implementing its "optimistic" plan "to do away with Hizbullah, it must not destroy Lebanon's efforts to reconstruct its country."
The Paris daily Liberation condemned the world's "relative indifference" to the crisis, which it blamed on US President George W. Bush's "policy of going along" with Israel's decisions. "We can deplore, but we cannot be surprised by the general helplessness," it wrote Wednesday.
Le Figaro of also found fault with the United States Monday for not responding more quickly to the crisis and criticized Bush's attempts to bring "something positive out of this double war against 'extremists,' out of this wreckage of weapons and blood, at least that of civilians."
Italy's Corriere della Sera wrote on Wednesday that while some consider Israel's response to the kidnapping of three conscripts "disproportionate," the offensives against Hizbulllah and Hamas must be seen in the context of Israel's fight for survival.
On Monday, The Guardian condemned as shortsighted Israel's "collective punishment of Lebanon's fragile economy," but said the "time for calling for restraint has passed, since too many on both sides show no signs of exercising any."
On Wednesday, the paper called Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz "military novices" and suggested "both have something to prove." Former prime minister Ariel Sharon "could negotiate a prisoner exchange with Hizbullah in 2004, rather than bombing them from the sky, because he had no fear of being branded weak," the Guardian wrote.
"Those who witnessed [the fighting] will not forget it, and they will carry a bitterness towards Israel for the rest of their lives, passing it on to their children" the Guardian said, as "both sides have ensured this dreadful conflict spreads, not just across borders - but down the generations."
The S ddeutsche Zeitung also called Israel's response "disproportionate," but said it did have a right to defend itself. This "war was declared by Hizbullah and Palestinian terror groups, not by Israel," it wrote.
On Wednesday, the German paper argued that the offensive against Hizbullah was a diplomatic blunder that had "trapped" Olmert. Striking at Hizbullah would "aggravate hatred of Israel across the world," it said. "The longer this war waged for the purpose of deterrence lasts and the more civilian casualties it causes in Lebanon, the more the images of destruction will push the party responsible for the war, Hizbullah, into the background."
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday dismissed the proposal for a UN-administered buffer zone in southern Lebanon as "an illusion." It called for Hizbullah to be "disarmed and the regular Lebanese army to occupy the border region with Israel in order to prevent terrorist raids."
The paper said, "Israel would probably answer a missile attack on Tel Aviv" with a strike against the powers backing the "radicals and terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon... The next goal would be Damascus. But the Israeli government also knows" an attack would ignite "a conflagration across the Arab world" the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said.
On Tuesday, the The Times of London said "only the permanent spiking of Hizbullah's guns will lead to sustainable peace."
"The parameters of the current crisis are simple," The Times wrote. "Iran, with help from Syria, is trying to maximize its influence. Its arming of Hizbullah with rockets that can reach deep into Israel gives the radical militia group, and ultimately Teheran, the power to sabotage any peace plan."
Israel's retaliation against Hizbullah has demonstrated the paralysis of the Arab League, The Times wrote on Wednesday. "Will the Middle East crisis prompt the Arab League at last to do something coherent and useful? Surely not; it is hard to imagine that day ever arriving."
The crisis had temporarily strengthened Israel's international standing, The Daily Telegraph wrote on Tuesday, saying the G-8 declaration on the Middle East "must rank as one of the most pro-Israel international statements in at least a decade."
The great powers were "motivated by the fear that a victory for Hamas and Hizbullah will be a victory for the forces of extremism across the Islamic world," it wrote. "Yet time plays against Israel by stoking international protest over the plight of civilians, and increasing the chances that a misdirected bomb on a building filled with civilians will turn the military venture into a political disaster" the Telegraph said, urging a speedy diplomatic resolution.
Such a resolution could have been reached if the dispute was only between Israel and Palestine, La Repubblica of Rome argued, but "everything has changed since the fall of Saddam."
"Arafat's death, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Sharon's retirement, the developments in Iran, Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, growing rivalries between the Shi'ites and Sunnis, and the chaos in Iraq" were all part of a larger crisis, La Repubblica wrote. "The fire is spreading, but who can make a stand against it?"
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This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291951606&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
[European Newspapers]
[Israel]
[Hizbulla]
[Hamas]
[Islam]
[Middle East]
[anti-semitism]
Muslims building Mosques in the west is fine. BUT WHEN WILL CHRISTIANS BUILD CATHEDRALS IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES???
Mosques with Foreign Flags: Islam in Europe and America
Al-Ahram Weekly, June 15, 2006
Muqtedar Khan, Nonresident Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
We entered the mosque through a large iron gate closely watched by a score of Turkish men. Unlike most architecturally-interesting buildings in Berlin, which are open and easily accessible, this majestic and grand mosque is surrounded by a high wall and is accessible only through iron gates. I was in Berlin for a conference organised by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, and one of their scholars and a Berlin Parliamentarian kindly volunteered to show me around the city.
As we approached the grand mosque, the Berlin Parliamentarian remarked, "notice the Turkish flag on the mosque; do you see a German flag anywhere?"
The day-long conference in Berlin was about comparing the experiences of Germany and the United States in integrating their Muslim minorities. Throughout the day, scholars from both sides of the Atlantic struggled with political and philosophical issues involved in the absorption of large numbers of minorities whose political and cultural values may be at odds with those of the host nations.
While Muslim scholars argued for more openness, more religious and racial tolerance, and equal treatment of all religious communities, others called for more assimilation and insisted that immigrants must make the effort to learn local languages and adapt to the mainstream political and cultural norms.
As I looked at the mosque with its Turkish flag flying proudly, the high walls, the iron gates and the stoic faces, I suddenly realised that this was not a mosque but instead a sort of embassy, a foreign enclave, an extension of Turkish sovereignty in the heart of Germany. In the US one may occasionally find a US flag on a mosque, but never that of a foreign country. The only mosque that has foreign flags is the Islamic Center in Washington DC which was established by diplomats from Muslim countries.
I sympathised with the Berlin Parliamentarian's obvious displeasure concerning the Turkish flag. Several years ago I ran into a large contingent of Turks in the holiest of Muslim mosques in Mecca while circling the Kaaba. They were wearing tiny Turkish flags on their shirt collars. I found this display of nationalism in the House of God deeply offensive. Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion and nationalism in its extreme form begins to subvert the very idea of one God. Perhaps these Turks did not know that God is blind to nationality, ethnicity and race.
With Islamophobia on the rise in most Western countries, grand displays of Islamic religiosity combined with overt, in-your-face displays of allegiance to foreign nations can only be described as spectacularly stupid.
Both Muslims and non-Muslims are actively demanding the elimination of barriers between Western mainstream and Muslim Diaspora. While Muslims are insisting that host societies accommodate, recognise and respect all the differences that they bring, non-Muslims -- usually the dominant white Judeo-Christians -- are demanding that Muslims moderate these differences. In Germany the challenge is mainly that of Muslims learning the German language and of incorporating Islam as a German institution. In the US the challenges are more related to the real or perceived sympathy of American Muslims for anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
Muslim immigrants bring three significant challenges to Western societies: cultural differences, religious differences and political differences. In the US the first two challenges are easily manageable. Most Americans believe in the United States as a multi- cultural society and deeply value religious pluralism. Unlike Europe where the elite preach secularism yet go against it in practice, America actually practices a separation of Church and State.
In the US the government is neither involved nor interested in how Islam is institutionalised or managed by Muslims, whereas in Germany the state not only teaches religion in school but also has religious clergy on government payroll. This becomes particularly problematic since Germany finances both Christian and Jewish institutions but does not even recognise Islam.
In the US most people respect and even value cultural differences, jealously guard religious freedom, and consequently practice religious pluralism at all levels of society. Since most Americans are originally from a foreign country, the fact that Muslims also have foreign origins is of little issue.
American identity is open, flexible and continuously evolving. American citizenship is also easily acquired and hence becoming American in law and spirit faces less cultural and political barriers. Additionally, the "American dream" is a powerful positive that all immigrants aspire towards and often achieve. When travelling overseas, I frequently testify that coming to America for me was like joining the marines -- in America one can "be all you can be".
At present the key barrier to the mainstreaming of Islam in America is the relations between the US and the Islamic world.
Germany has a long way to go. Even though it does not have foreign policy problems like the US, it has several domestic policy issues. First, Germany must recognise Islam. Germany has been for decades a multi-ethnic society but very few Germans imagine Germany as a multi-cultural society. German intellectuals brag about being secular, but such a claim will remain false as long as Christian and Jewish institutions are on the national budget.
German identity is rooted in the past and is culturally tied to race, and ethnicity. Becoming German is very difficult, even for those who are born in Germany and speak perfect German but happen to look like me rather than Boris Becker.
German intellectuals must begin to imagine Germany as a political community that is a composite of values, rather than a nation-state based on a specific ethnicity. In the age of globalisation, narrowly defined identities are untenable. Germany, as an integral part of the emerging global society, must define itself in terms of global values that are sensitive to cultural, racial and religious differences. It must become a role model for other European nations like Ireland and Portugal that will soon face similar problems.
Muslims who live as minorities in the West or anywhere else must understand that their demand for tolerance of religious and cultural differences is a just cause. But they must align their political and economic interests with those of their neighbours, whose acceptance they seek, and not with those who live in foreign lands.
There is room for Islam in America and Germany. We can and we will build bigger and more spectacular mosques in the West, but there is no place for Saudi flags, or Turkish or Pakistani flags in Western mosques. They have their embassies and that is enough. They should not be allowed to use our mosques.
© Copyright 2006 Al-Ahram Weekly
[Islam]
[Judeo-Christian]
[Europe]
[Mosques]
Monday, July 17, 2006
THANK YOU ISRAEL for STANDING FIRM
NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY by Bob Dylan
Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.
He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.
What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.
[Israel]
[Bob Dylan]
[anti-semitism]
[Hamas]
[Hezbollah]
[Arab Terrorism]
[Islam]
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Today's New York Times Editorial : use it to wrap slimy bait
The Real Agenda
The New York Times Editorial
Sunday 16 July 2006
With all that is happening in the Middle East Bill Keller is still worried that Osama Bin Laden has not been apprehended and that the President has "powers". The White House's methods "have been shaped by another, perverse determination:never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch".
This editorial seems to be written by someone who has not received invitations to the WH in a long time and is starting to sound like a lot of international fellas who want desperate attention.
"Over and over again, " he goes on to write about..... the same story...blah, blah and will definitely drive his newspaper down the path to making it obsolete, with news that is unfit to print... Someone should save this paper ....
[NY Times]
[Guantanamo]
[war on terror]
[Bill Keller]
Arafat's legacy of EVIL, something the European countries and the UN don't want to accept.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT
Barry Rubin*
This article analyzes the breakdown of the Palestinian nationalist movement as resulting from the policies of Yasir Arafat and Fatah, the Palestinians' leaders for 35 years; the weaknesses of his successor, Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazin); the movement's overall strategy and ideology, and how Hamas will seek to consolidate and perpetuate its own rule.
The victory of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, in the January 2006 parliamentary elections seemed like an earthquake transforming the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinian politics, prospects for democratization, and even the region as a whole. Yet this development should not have been a surprise. More than just heralding the rise of Hamas and Islamists, it was both based on and ensured the Palestinian nationalist movement's overdue collapse. While the nationalists will, of course, survive, they have lost their long-held monopoly on power and on setting the Palestinian agenda.
This article analyzes that breakdown as resulting from the policies of Yasir Arafat and Fatah, the Palestinians' leaders for 35 years; the weaknesses of his successor, Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazin); the movement's overall strategy and ideology, and how Hamas will seek to consolidate and perpetuate its own rule.
In the long term, Fatah and the nationalists outlived their usefulness. On one hand, they were responsible for almost 40 years of failure. Despite promising--and often falsely claiming--victory, they brought on one defeat after another. The Palestinian movement was chased out of Jordan in 1970 and then out of Lebanon in 1982 and 1983. Israel grew stronger and did not collapse; Arab states provided far less help than the PLO sought. Year after year, the West Bank and Gaza Strip continued to be under Israeli control. Total victory in 2006 seemed no closer than in 1990, 1980, or 1970.[1]
True, the PLO did get back to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994, but only by making an agreement with Israel. Yet, while Israel let 200,000 Palestinians return, a government was formed (the Palestinian Authority, PA), and international aid reached the highest per capita levels for any people in history, the Palestinian situation improved only marginally. Despite ruling almost all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza for a decade after 1995, Arafat paid little attention to their material needs or well-being. His regime's corruption and oppression did not seem like some ideal outcome.[2]
Finally then, when the moment of truth came in 2000, Arafat rejected a good offer for a West Bank/Gaza Strip Palestinian state and billions of dollars in compensation at both the Camp David summit and in the Clinton plan. Instead, he led the Palestinians to five more years of disastrous war, which not only left them with more casualties but also with a wrecked infrastructure and shattered international image.
Ironically, though, while the specific group responsible for so many setbacks was criticized and eventually jettisoned, its very ideas and strategy that ensured failure are being retained and even reinforced. Maximal demands, dictatorial methods, and terrorist means--the real causes of failure--are accepted by both Fatah and Hamas as well as being supported by the majority of Palestinians.
When given the opportunity to judge the Fatah leaders, however, Palestinians understandably asked a series of valid questions. If they could not obtain a state through either military victory or diplomacy, what good are they? If they ruled so badly in a way permeated by corruption, repression, and anarchy, who wants them to be in charge? If their ideology and strategy were basically identical to Hamas, what did they have to offer that was so superior? If the nationalists could not even create a stable regime, discipline their ranks, maintain unity, or build institutions, why are they needed?
Given this acceptance of Fatah's basic world view, goals, and strategy alongside contempt for its actual performance, Hamas does not require greater moderation but merely an ability to make itself the new hegemonic leadership by seeming to better embody and implement a hardline approach.
Compared to Hamas' toughness and proud extremism, the Fatah nationalists were paralyzed by overweening smugness. Believing their own slogan that they represented the Palestinians' sole legitimate representative, they could not conceive that anyone else might replace them. Rather than improve their performance, they ignored all the problems that were bringing them down.
In facing the Hamas challenge, the PA and Fatah could certainly have done well enough to survive even within their own traditional approach. Yet the real solution would have been to develop a truly new program based on self-criticism of the past and a sense of reality about the present. They could have made a deal with Israel to end the conflict and obtain a state. The nationalists might have focused on raising living standards; convincing refugees to return to a Palestinian state (rather than demand they move to Israel); gaining credibility with Israel as a peace partner; creating a strong economy, schools, and health system; and other such steps. There is no evidence that the leadership of Fatah or the PA--except for a handful of people--ever seriously considered such a program.
Certainly, there was no attempt to implement anything of the kind. Once a state had been rejected by the PA and Fatah in 2000, it had nothing to offer except more struggle. Hamas rejected the very peace process that Fatah--and Hamas as well--had ensured would fail. By 2006, this seemed, at least to more than half of Palestinian voters, a reasonable position.
Of course, there were also immediate causes for the nationalists' collapse stemming from their glaring failures of the last decade:
The PLO has virtually ceased to exist, and the large Palestinian populations in Lebanon and in Jordan turned toward Islamist parties, convinced that Fatah would never get them back to Palestine.
The PA leadership, and especially Abbas, was weak and ineffective. Rather than care about the masses, they only seemed to loot them.
Economic prospects were dim. After five years of PA-led warfare, conditions were so bad that the World Bank estimated it would take a decade just to return to the level of 2000.[3] In late 2005, the resignation of Finance Minister Salam Fayyad over irresponsible increases in PA salaries removed the sole official trusted by Western donors. European aid virtually stopped.[4] Fayyad formed his own political party, which won only two seats in the parliamentary elections, a pitiful showing of just how weak real moderates are in Palestinian politics.
Fatah split into a ruling hardline establishment faction--which also controlled the PLO, PA, and security services--and a youthful hardline faction that ran Fatah's Tanzim grassroots' organization and the al-Aqsa Brigade terrorist group. Even many of Abbas' few supporters joined the latter faction.
The PA fumbled the opportunity offered by Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. With the Palestinian-ruled areas plunged into factional violence, general lawlessness, and rampant corruption, Fatah only seemed to offer more of the same.
Even given all of these problems, if there had not been elections, Fatah might have continued to rule the Palestinians for years to come. Still, the Hamas victory is not some temporary electoral setback, but a transformation of Palestinian politics. After all, it took ten years after the first such balloting, in 1996, to renew the parliament's "four-year" term. Also, Fatah ran the movement for almost 40 years despite numerous failures. Hamas, then, can expect to stay in the saddle a long time.
In Hamas' own terms, this constitutes the beginning of what it calls the third period of Palestinian politics. The first PLO (1964-1967) was an Egyptian client; the second (1968-2006) was Arafat's domain. Now it is Hamas' turn to rule, no matter how badly it misrules.
THE LEGACY OF YASIR ARAFAT
The problems described above can be traced to Yasir Arafat's style and shortcomings as Palestinian leader. Having exercised virtual dictatorship for four decades, Arafat set the PLO's goals as total victory by erasing Israel; the use of terrorism as a central tactic; a high degree of decentralization with minimal discipline or institutionalization; an adventurism that repeatedly led to defeat; massive corruption; and the other key characteristics that led the movement to multiple catastrophes.
Of course, Arafat also had considerable achievements. He kept the movement united, avoided becoming any Arab state's puppet, and won it a large measure of international support. Yet despite these gains, much of Arafat's career consisted of surviving debacles of his own making.
In 1993, Arafat signed the Oslo agreement, in which he promised to end terrorism and negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict with Israel. In general, he did not keep his commitments. He returned to his homeland to become the head of the PA that seemed poised to achieve a state. Yet as ruler of over two million Palestinians, he devoted virtually no effort to building strong institutions, a productive economy, or a constituency for moderation during his more than 11 years of virtually uncontested power.
Then, in 2000, he rejected, at Camp David and in the Clinton plan, two chances to obtain a state and end the Israeli occupation. Instead, Arafat again went to war, still believing that violence would achieve his goals. The result was four years of bloodshed and the pointless deaths of several thousand people.
Why did Arafat, Fatah, and the PLO behave this way? The fundamental problem was that Fatah has never been a normal nationalist group since its top priority was never about obtaining a state where its people could prosper and live in peace. Achieving total victory by destroying Israel and turning all the contested land into an Arab state was always its ultimate goal.
A revealing item here is their "non-negotiable" demand that all Palestinian refugees should go live in Israel. Yet no real nationalist movement would want to "give away" its potential citizens in this manner, demanding they live in some other country. The "return" was merely a way to subvert Israel from within, a step toward the ultimate total victory.[5] This was a demand that ensured no peace agreement would be achieved, but whose implementation would provoke years of massive violence and suffering for both sides. Only a strategy that included making the necessary compromises could produce a two-state solution and bring real peace. Anything less would ensure that the Palestinians got no state. Having to choose, the Palestinian leadership preferred continuing the conflict to resolving it.[6]
In contrast, for Arafat and his colleagues, any Palestinian state had to be merely an interim solution that did not interfere with continuing the struggle to its intended end. The nationalists feared that getting such a state might block it from achieving its fundamental ambition, locking it into a permanent situation. Yet it was this very stance that ensured that the conflict could not be ended in a compromise solution. If things had been otherwise, there might well have been a Palestinian state resulting from a negotiated solution in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, as well as in 2000.[7]
Instead, Arafat's life was dedicated to ending Israel's existence, even if that policy ensured that an independent Palestinian state would never be born; and Arafat's embrace of terrorism was not a side issue but something essential to his strategy. Arafat believed that by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians he would bring about Israel's collapse. To his dying day, he never lost belief in the efficacy of this method no matter how clearly it failed to destroy Israel, while succeeding in discrediting the Palestinians.[8]
However, by the end of his career, Arafat's luck had run out. While many in Europe and elsewhere continued to be swayed by Arafat's unique public relations skills and revolutionary image, increasingly he was being seen as part of the problem, not the solution. The events of September 11, 2001, accelerated this process by showing graphically the costs of terrorism. While the world was engaged in a war on terrorism, Arafat remained one of its principal architects and practitioners.[9] Disillusioned by Arafat's blend of incompetence, unreliability, and violent strategy, the United States and Israel refused to deal with him.[10] Even in Europe and the Arab world, criticisms of Arafat reached an all-time high. Among Palestinians, too, his popularity was at a low point, though they agreed there was no alternative leader. Remarkably, at the time of his death Arafat was more popular in France than among Palestinians.[11]
Yet only Arafat's death in 2004 forced the Palestinians to seek a new leader, but his legacy--constantly reaffirmed by most of his colleagues and successors--continues to shape the movement. There are three critical factors by which Arafat posthumously ensured the collapse of the nationalist movement and of his own Fatah group.
First, Palestinian institutions and governmental structures were a mess. Arafat's system was designed to ensure his domination but in a very laissez-faire manner. He never built institutions, developed a culture of discipline, or installed a chain of command. All power went directly to him.
Without Arafat, nothing functioned very well and decisions required a consensus only achievable by maintaining the status quo and appeasing a lowest-common-denominator militancy. The movement was merely a mishmash of rival leaders, institutions and militias, nationalist and Islamist groups. Most resources were spent on security forces and buying loyalty. No consideration at all was given to economic organization, social policy, or any of the other issues that shape political debate elsewhere.
Second, in strategic terms, the movement is in an extremely weak position. Foreign aid, Israeli goodwill, and international support have all been squandered. Palestinians might claim to have won every war--most recently asserting that armed struggle had forced Israel to leave the Gaza Strip--but have to face the consequences of being the losers. Refusing to acknowledge the situation meant that the movement rejected the usual response of those being defeated: changing course, being cautious, reducing expectations, and offering compromises.
Thus, leaders argue that armed struggle is making gains and must be continued, overstating the value of Western and Arab backing as well as Israel's weakness. This tendency to misstate actual conditions and ignore the balance of forces--also trademarks of Arafat--remains a powerful factor blocking any moderate, pragmatic reorientation. While Abbas and a few others realized the extent of the disaster, they could barely talk truthfully about it, much less effect change.[12] Most of their associates deny this reality. The movement has little interest in the material state of its people and so this factor does not pressure it toward moderation. Since they argue that their strategy is working there is no need to change it.
Third, in ideological terms, Arafat ensured that militancy would be the dominant ideological force. The prestige of armed struggle, legitimacy of terrorism, and deification of total victory are extremely powerful forces that even the top leaders cannot oppose without facing considerable risk. Simultaneously, the leadership reinforces these assumptions by demonizing Israel, portraying it as likely to surrender if terrorism reaches sufficient levels and continues long enough, and minimizing any offers it makes for peace or compromise. It never speaks of a realizable Palestinian state that would gather in refugees while being economically and culturally prosperous, but rather of a "return" intended to recreate a mythical pre-1948 Palestine.
This tendency to misstate actual conditions and ignore the balance of forces continues to block any moderate, pragmatic reorientation. This political culture--spread through the PA-controlled schools, mosques, and media--has now been passed to a new generation. At the same time, the kind of program required as a minimal basis needed to achieve peace with Israel is basically defined as treason, a charge that the many rivals for leadership will not hesitate to fling at anyone deemed excessively moderate.
It must be remembered that to this day, few Palestinians have any idea that in 2000 the United States and Israel offered a comprehensive negotiated solution including an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza, most or all of the West Bank, and much of east Jerusalem, including sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa mosque.[13] Misinformed that Israel poisoned Arafat and told that it wants to wipe out the Palestinians, that Israel is the enemy of Islam, has no right to exist, and offers them nothing, Palestinians understandably see long-term armed struggle as their only alternative. Told repeatedly that total victory is just and that the whole world supports them, they believe this program will triumph. Certainly, such a conclusion makes them unlikely to opt for a comprehensive moderate rethinking of their world view.
All of these factors played into the hands of Hamas. It promised to provide a strong, honest, caring institution in comparison to Fatah's anarchy. As for strategy and ideology, Hamas implicitly offered to continue Fatah's line but to do it better and more systematically. By extolling extremism and militancy, Fatah sowed the seeds and Hamas reaped the crop.
THE FAILURE OF MAHMUD ABBAS
What Arafat wrought could hardly be changed by Abbas, who became the successor leader of the PLO and PA. Abbas is a veteran bureaucrat with limited political ability and no substantial personal base of support.[14] As a result, he was both weak and timid. He failed to advance negotiations with Israel, solve the PA's problems, fix Fatah's ailments, or stop Hamas' growing power. His skills were more than overmatched by his colleagues' radicalism, the younger generation's challenge, the security forces' assertive independence, and Hamas' rivalry. Even within Fatah, his personal support was far less than 20 percent, and his few backers fought with him and among themselves.[15]
Within Fatah, Abbas faced a growing factional rift in which he could depend on neither contestant. Power was still held by the establishment that served Arafat and supported his policies. These people saw no reason to change their view that the conflict's only acceptable outcome is a Palestinian state in place of Israel.[16] Satisfied with the status quo, these leaders saw no reason to abandon traditional policy and practices. On the contrary, they fought against change. The situation might be objectively disastrous for the Palestinians, but it was very beneficial for them.
Yet, while the establishment rejected any reforms or moderation, it still had good reasons for having Abbas as nominal leader. He is one of them, a man who could be trusted to support their interests against the younger generation and Islamists. At the same time, they knew he was too weak to challenge their own power. Yet he was extremely valuable, since he could still present a more moderate face to the world, thus retaining Western support and money better than the openly hardline leaders.[17]
Challenging the establishment was a group of younger Fatah militants, including the terrorist al-Aqsa Brigade and Fatah's grassroots' Tanzim group. Its best-known leader was Marwan Barghuti, now serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail as the main organizer of the 2000-2005 terrorist campaign. The young insurgents view the establishment leaders with contempt, having failed to win victory and instead becoming corrupt bureaucrats. Instead, the insurgents wanted a concerted war on Israel, which they believed would force its withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundaries without any political concessions on the Palestinians' part.
All three of the most powerful Palestinian political groups--the Fatah establishment, Fatah young guard, and Hamas--have the same basic world view, goals, and strategy. Against this combination, Abbas' shaky belief that a moderate course was needed and his timidity at implementing anything had no chance of even partial success.[18] Ironically, after helping make Abbas' administration a failure, the Fatah young guard and Hamas then posed as the alternatives to this unsatisfactory situation. Yet, by running so many competing candidates in the January 2006 parliamentary election, the Fatah young guard ensured a landslide victory for Hamas and a defeat for its own organization.
In the run-up to both the 2005 local elections and the 2006 parliamentary balloting, Abbas looked especially inept. Following the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, anarchy prevailed there. Abbas' own "victory" celebration was both eclipsed by Hamas' much bigger rally and disrupted by Hamas men. Dissatisfied Fatah gunmen repeatedly kidnapped PA officials and took over offices to protest either their demand for jobs or the fact that those already employed went unpaid.[19]
One of the most powerful security force commanders, Musa Arafat, Yasir's nephew, was assassinated in a big gun battle almost next to Abbas' own residence.[20] On January 4, 2006, al-Aqsa Brigades gunmen killed two and wounded 30 Egyptian soldiers as they took over the Gaza-Egypt border to demand the release of one of their officers who had been arrested by the PA for kidnapping a British family. The next day, the PA released the man.[21] Eight days later, gunmen attacked the home of Interior Minister Nasser Yusuf.[22]
With anarchy in the Palestinian-ruled areas, rising factional violence, economic recession, rampant corruption, and no hope for the future, Palestinians turned to Hamas. Fatah had engaged in what might be called a political suicide bombing of itself.
THE VICTORY OF HAMAS
By 2005, the PA and Hamas had bombarded West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians for more than a decade with an intense incitement campaign to inculcate their common world view that an evil Israel, which would never give the Palestinians anything, must be destroyed by long-term violence. While many Palestinians would still prefer to put a priority on enjoying better lives and educating their children, Fatah's performance so far, and lack of any reason to believe it would change, gave them no hope. Those willing to accept Hamas' general view of the situation were also willing to give it a chance to do better.
There were three separate elections in 2005 and 2006 that showed the direction of Palestinian politics. These included the Fatah primaries, in which hardliners did far better than moderates; the local council elections, in which Hamas triumphed over Fatah; and the parliamentary elections, whose results paralleled the voting for town councils.
In the primaries, the young guard did relatively well in competing for spaces at the top of Fatah's parliamentary list. There was no way, however, that Mahmud was going to turn over all of these slots to them and he did not have to do so. According to Fatah's rules, he had a wide degree of latitude in picking people for the highest positions. Even if he had wanted to do otherwise, his colleagues would not have let him push them out of positions of power. Naturally, the young guard was dissatisfied. While Barghuti let himself be talked out of forming his own party, many members of the young guard--as well as others in the undisciplined ranks of Fatah--ran for locally selected seats, thus splitting the Fatah vote.
In the local elections, Hamas performed remarkably well. Fatah may have won more councils but the Islamists triumphed in the ones with the most people. Hamas gained big majorities in Nablus, al-Bireh, Jenin, and Ramallah. By the end of the four rounds of balloting, about half of all Palestinians lived under councils that were controlled by Hamas.[23] The results were a clear warning to Fatah but it did not use the time to do anything different or better. Its fate was sealed.
Members of parliament were elected in two ways in the January election. Half of the seats were chosen on a national level. In this category, the Hamas list received 29 seats compared to 28 for Fatah. Small leftist and liberal parties divided 9 other seats. This was an impressive victory, though not a landslide, for Hamas.
On the local level, Hamas did even better because of vote splitting for multiple Fatah candidates in many districts. The West Bank chose 41 members: 30 Hamas, ten Fatah, and one independent. However, this understates the Hamas victory since four of the ten Fatah men were elected in Christian seats. In Gaza, Hamas elected 15 to six for Fatah and four independents. This gave Hamas a total of 74 seats to only 44 for Fatah.
THE MEANING OF THE EARTHQUAKE
Why did Palestinians vote for Hamas? In the past, about 20 to 25 percent of Palestinians have identified with Hamas. This means, in very rough terms, that about half of those voting for Hamas support its entire program while the other half backed it due to disillusionment with Fatah's rule.
While this certainly implies that Hamas did not receive a mandate for a purely Islamist program, it in no way means that voters were more moderate on other issues. After all, despite Abbas' personal views and Fatah's nominal ones--it did not explicitly reject the Oslo peace process for example--voters knew that in matters regarding Israel and terrorism the two parties are virtually identical. Few people cast a ballot for Hamas in spite of its hardline views on the conflict. Thus, on most issues Hamas can view itself as having received a mandate. Indeed, it will no doubt find itself in a consensus with the opposition party on these questions.
The most curious claim arising out of the Hamas victory is the idea that the group will now become more moderate. Such expectations go against history, political logic, and Hamas' actual behavior. In historical terms, the idea that radical groups become moderate after gaining power simply does not fit most cases--certainly not the ones concerning Communist, fascist, Arab nationalist, and Islamist groups. More commonly, as with the Islamists in Turkey recently or Euro-Communist movements in the 1970s, it is precisely a failure to gain power that inspires revisions. However, since Hamas won a big victory with its current program--which largely reflects the Palestinian consensus--it need not moderate.
There are other strong factors, too, militating against moderation. Hamas leaders believe passionately in their ideology and accept it as conforming with God's will, making it rather hard to abandon.[24] As a cadre group, it is not responsive to the masses. Even with Fatah, whose doctrine was based to a far greater degree on populism, it was clear that leaders easily ignored or redirected public complaints about casualties or economic hardships. Then, too, Hamas leaders are discouraged from moderation by the competition and peer pressure among them. The career of anyone who can be shown--or even accused--to be guilty of moderation will not go well. Finally, the belief they are winning--more accurately in the Palestinian context, though less so against Israel--gives them little incentive to make concessions.
Speeches and interviews with Hamas leaders in Arabic show no real change from the organization's historic stands, while even those in English demonstrate the careful use of language to give an impression of moderation while maintaining hardline positions.[25] Hamas' "peace" plan is for Israel to return to the pre-1967 borders without exception and allow in any Palestinian refugee who wishes. In exchange, Hamas only says it will not attack Israel until it is ready to do so.[26] The organization's deep hatred of Jews and genocidal intentions are still present daily in its statements. Actually, in most ways--though not in its priorities for targets--there is little to distinguish Hamas from Usama bin Ladin, Hizballah, or the Iranian government.[27]
In one official Hamas video released in December, during the campaign, Raed Said Hussein Saad (Abu Muadh), commander of Hamas military activities in north Gaza, explains that the battle will continue until not "one inch of our holy land is in the hands of the Jews."[28] Two more official videos published in February, after the election, show Hamas suicide terrorists, one of whom proclaims in a message to Jews: "We will destroy you, blow you up, take revenge against you, [and] purify the land of you, pigs that have defiled our country… Jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine--all of Palestine--from the impurity of the Jews."[29]
These are not isolated cases, but express the viewpoint held by all Hamas leaders. Of course, the organization reserves the right to launch terror attacks at a time and place of its choosing. This parallels the Fatah view that terrorism is always justifiable but that its timing must be determined by the leadership based on the movement's interests.
The electoral process' structure and Fatah's split gave Hamas far more seats than it would have attained on a purely proportional basis. Yet, unless Fatah has a miraculous transformation in terms of its leadership and policies, the leverage offered by incumbency are likely to strengthen Hamas' base and control over Palestinian thought and life.[30]
A key contradictory factor, however, is the fact that Hamas may not enjoy two of the main usual types of leverage from being in office.
First, one of the main advantages of being in power is control over patronage and money. This is especially true since so many Palestinians are dependent on the PA payroll. The PA has an estimated 140,000 employees, whose dependents comprise one-third of the Palestinian population. Just to pay their salaries will require getting $100 million a month in aid. (Given the massive amount of foreign assistance received by the PA, there are no general taxes collected.) Yet since its victory is producing at least a partial cut-off of Western aid and Israeli payments, Hamas may well not enjoy this powerful leverage.[31]
Second, another key asset of a regime is control over the means of repression, in this case the PA security services. Here, any attempt by Hamas to take over these institutions, and deprive 58,000--mostly Fatah supporters--of jobs could lead to civil war. It is not clear whether Hamas will really be able to gain control of the police and armed forces.
When one adds to this the fact that Abbas will remain the PA's "president," the outcome is more one of "dual power" than of a Hamas dictatorship. At best, though, this means a deadlock: no progress on peace; even more systematic incitement to extremism and hatred; failure to address economic and social problems; and cooperation with the mounting of terror attacks on Israel.
A LONG-TERM CONFLICT: BOTH INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY
There is a wide gap between the prevalent Western image of the Palestinian movement and its actual self-defined identity. Much of the West imagines the conflict is about a Palestinian wish to create a West Bank-Gaza Strip state, a simple matter of nationalist resistance to foreign occupation. Yet this is not what Palestinian leaders say when they talk to each other, their own public, or the Arab world.
If this outside perception were accurate, the conflict could be quickly and easily solved. Indeed, this would have already happened before the 1948 or after the 1967 wars, when Egypt made peace with Israel in the late 1970s, or during the diplomatic campaign for peace of the 1988-1990 era. The fact that the classical nationalist narrative does not fit here was most thoroughly disproved by the experience of the 1990s' peace process and especially in the way it ended.
In pragmatic terms, Palestinian leaders should be thinking:
We are in a terrible situation and have no state because of our incorrect strategy. Violence, radicalism, and maximalist demands have failed to bring benefits. We must instead try a strategy of compromise, peace, and moderation. Let us accept Israel's existence; get our own state; bring home the refugees to become productive citizens; and focus on economic, social, and cultural development to benefit our people.
Since this seems logical, much of the world simply assumes that such is the Palestinian position.
However, the leadership's real standpoint is:
Our armed struggle is winning. Continue the battle, produce more martyrs, make no concessions, gain international support by projecting an image of moderation, and we will win in the end as Israel collapses or surrenders, no matter how many years are required, lives it costs, or resources must be spent.
Accepting this standpoint, Hamas does not expect to change everything overnight. In fact, given the hegemony of this kind of thinking, Hamas has to change far less in terms of Palestinian ideology, programs, and policies than it might appear; and certainly Hamas has patience. Its leaders often say that 20 years will be needed to wipe out Israel. Since it believes its goal and methods have divine sanction, Hamas is not too concerned with the time needed, international opinion, or any sufferings this plan inflicts on Palestinians.
What it is trying to do now is to establish hegemony over the Palestinian movement in a way that would ensure Hamas will be the permanent leader. Since Hamas' campaign is ahead of schedule--it did not expect to do so well in the election--this can proceed in a step-by-step fashion. Nor does Hamas really worry about winning the next vote, which might never be held or at least, like parliament's previous "four-year term," take ten years to hold.
Hamas knows, however, that it faces two serious domestic barriers. First, while its program of destroying Israel and using terrorism is popular, Islamization is far less supported by the Palestinian majority. Islamist measures, then, should advance gradually and mostly by local councils.
Hamas' second big problem is more serious: the institutional competition with Fatah. How is Hamas going to form a government and get control of the mechanisms of power--money, jobs, and guns--without triggering a civil war with Fatah? For example, the firing of any Fatah supporter from any job, especially in the overstuffed security forces, could set off a major crisis. Similarly, how can Hamas fight corruption since it could face a civil war if it arrests Fatah officials and puts them on trial?
Given this situation, the most likely Hamas response is to put the priority on what unites Palestinians, i.e. blaming their problems on Israel and fighting against it. Joint Fatah-Hamas terrorist operations have been common since 2000. Rather than shoot at each other, Hamas and Fatah are offered the attractive alternative of cooperating in their campaign against the common foe.
This strategy fits Hamas' effort to make itself leader of the whole people and "national" cause--rather than just an Islamist party--in a way parallel to how Chinese, Cuban, and Vietnamese Communists achieved similar outcomes. Since there is basically no political difference between Hamas and Fatah except for Islamism, this should not be too difficult. For example, Hamas wants to ensure the educational system will raise a generation that would reject any peace or compromise with Israel, extol terrorism, and vote Hamas.
Meanwhile, Hamas will stick to its radical line in order to consolidate and guide its supporters. As Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar explains, "Those who built their structure on the basis of the Quran...cannot budge because of promises from America or a dollar from Europe," and, "Our program is to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine."[32]
At the same time, though, Hamas will try to create an illusion of moderation among foreigners. Its current "moderate" plan states that if Israel concedes everything (withdraws from all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, while letting all Palestinian refugees come live in Israel), in exchange Hamas will not attack Israel until it wants to do so, while reserving the right to commit genocide on Israel.[33]
However, even this offer does not mean Hamas would make any effort to stop others--Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas people operating "unofficially"--from staging terror attacks during this time; or, in Zahar's words, "Anyone who thinks the calm means giving in is mistaken. The calm is in preparation for a new round of resistance and victory." As for previous Palestinian commitments, he explains that Hamas is entering parliament in order "to eliminate any traces" of the Oslo agreements. This means that all previous concessions made by Israel have achieved no reciprocal steps by the Palestinians.[34]
Fatah also has a multi-layered strategy, but it is in far worse shape. The election defeat has solved none of its problems. All the establishment leaders are still in place, the bitter factional strife is completely unresolved, and Fatah is stuck with a weak, discredited Abbas as its standard bearer. Still, he can provide a moderate face, a way to attract international money and support with the message: "Hamas are the bad guys; we are the good guys."
Yet the main two elements of Fatah strategy remain terrorism and patronage. Fatah will fight desperately to hold onto jobs and money, with the implicit threat of a civil war if its interests are neglected. At the same time, Fatah's gunmen will try to attack Israel to prove it the superior fighter; striving by fighting against Israel--rather than against corruption, for example--to defeat its rival at home.
Nevertheless, Fatah leaders are still living in a dream world, having no sense of how to organize and compete politically. Without control of the budget and government agencies, how well will Fatah hold onto its supporters? Recovery, if it happens at all, will be very difficult for Fatah, which could face splits as well. Indeed, large portions of Fatah might well ally themselves to Hamas. At a minimum, the purportedly nationalist forces are in deep crisis; at worst, they may become a permanent minority that simply tries to compete within the framework laid down by Hamas.
For the Palestinian movement generally, weakness and failure is guaranteed by these same factors: internal divisions and the inability to make key decisions, on the one hand, and the lack of moderate goals or a viable strategy, on the other hand. Military victory is impossible; a war based on terrorism is counterproductive. As a result, it is unable to achieve a state, end the Israeli occupation, improve its people's material well-being, end the violence, or gain good relations with the West.
* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, which is published in both English and French. He is author of three books on Palestinian politics, including Yasir Arafat, A Political Biography. His latest book is The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East.
NOTES
[1] For a detailed history of the PLO up to 1994, see Barry Rubin, Revolution Until Victory? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
[2] For the story of the PA era, see Barry Rubin, The Transformation of Palestinian Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
[3] The World Bank, "The Palestinian Economy and the PA's Fiscal Situation: Current Status," February 1, 2006.
[4] Reuters, November 15, 2005.
[5] Faruq Qaddumi, long the closest thing to a number two man in the PLO and later the head of Fatah explained, "The Right of Return of the refugees to Haifa and Jaffa is more important than statehood." Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2002.
[6] This was best laid out in a Fatah document, "44 Readers why Fateh [sic] movement rejects the proposals made by U.S. President Clinton," in Fatah Movement Central Publication, Our Opinion, January 1-7, 2001.
[7] Such opportunities took place, for example, regarding the Camp David agreements between Egypt and Israel; the Reagan plan and Jordan-PLO negotiations of the 1980s and the U.S.-PLO dialogue era of 1988-90; as well, of course, as the Oslo peace process.
[8] This issue is discussed in detail in the author's "The Origins of PLO Terrorism," in Barry Rubin, Terrorism and Politics (NY: St. Martin's, 1991).
[9] A good example here was Arafat's involvement with the Karine-A arms' smuggling operation in December 2001-January 2002 along with Lebanese Hizballah terrorists and Iran. Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography (NY: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp. 253-54.
[10] In President George W. Bush's words, "I saw what he did to President Clinton," and did not want to waste his time trying to work with someone who was not going to make peace. Associated Press, April 24, 2003.
[11] "Poll: French see Arafat as Hero," Jerusalem Post, November 9, 2004. Compare to Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, Poll No. 51, June 2004; Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Public Opinion Poll #13, September 23 and 26, 2004.
[12] For his most interesting such statement, see Al-Rai, September 27, 2004. Translated in MEMRI, No. 793, October 5, 2004, downloaded from:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP79304.
[13] For an account of the negotiations based on interviews with many participants, see Rubin and Rubin, Yasir Arafat, pp. 185-203. For an example of Arafat's deliberate distortions on this matter, see page 210. See also the accounts in Bill Clinton, My Life (NY: Knopf, 2004) and Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).
[14] An analysis of the PLO Executive Committee and Fatah Central Committee show literally not a single member to be a committed personal follower of Abbas.
[15] Examples of these rivalries include Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei (Abu Alla), who often opposed Abbas, and the rivalry between Gaza Strip security chief Muhammad Dahlan and his West Bank rival Jibril Rajub.
[16] A good example of this school is Sakhr Habash, the head of Fatah's educational and ideological activities, but statements to this effect can be found from virtually every top Fatah official.
[17] After all, the Western policy of "supporting the moderates" could only be sustained in regard to Abbas as the PA's leader, since his Fatah counterparts--with the exceptions of Abu Alla, Dahlan, and Fayyad--barely manifested any moderation at all.
[18] It should be remembered that Abbas, though he wanted to make a deal with Israel, was very strongly attached to the "right of return" idea that made such an agreement impossible. See, for example, his statement in Al-Ayyam, January 26, 2001.
[19] AP, August 22, 2005. The Hamas rally was attended by 10,000 people; the official rally by only a few hundred.
[20] Bloomberg, September 7, 2005. There were many other attacks on senior officials. For example, a bomb exploded in front of the Gaza home of the PA's attorney general, AP, August 1, 2005.
[21] For the strong Egyptian reaction, see Al-Quds, February 17, 2006 and Al-Hayat al-Jadida, February 18, 2006.
[22] AP, January 12, 2006.
[23] UN Development Program, "Elections Palestine."
[24] See text of Hamas charter in Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader (NY: Penguin, 2001).
[25] The Hamas position at best is equivalent to the 1974 PLO stance, which was rejected internationally and took 20 years for the PLO even to claim had changed, and even then this idea proved untrue. On the PLO "two-phase" plan, see the text in Laqueur and Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 162-63; and Rubin and Rubin, Yasir Arafat, pp. 69-70.
[26] For example, in an interview with Dream-2 television on February 13, 2006, deputy head of the Hamas Political Bureau Musa Abu Marzouq explained: "We say that all of Palestine, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, belongs to the Palestinians…. An independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty over the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip is a temporary and phased solution… not the permanent solution." He likened the Hamas view to that of Arab states between 1948 and 1967 when they waited for the right moment to go to war against Israel but waged the conflict through terrorism and other means.
http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1043.
[27] In common, they view the West and the United States, and also Christians and Jews, as waging a war on the Muslim world. Muslims must unite, use violence, defeat these forces, and establish an Islamist state wherever Muslims live, with a longer-term goal of world conquest. While Muslim Brotherhood-style groups, including Hamas, put the primary goal as revolution within the place where they live (in Hamas' case, against Israel), Jihadist groups (following bin Ladin's view) generally put the priority on attacking the West.
[28] Reuters, January 12, 2006.
[29] Translation in Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, February 14, 2006.
[30] An interesting example of how victory reinforces itself is shown by a public opinion poll conducted shortly after the election. Asked who they would vote for a few days after the election, 44.1 percent said Hamas compared to only 31 percent for Fatah--a far higher margin than in the actual voting. Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, Poll 57, February 2006.
[31] Up to now, the United States alone has provided eight times more aid than all of the Arab world put together, while Arab total contributions have been at the same level as the individual grants made separately by Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, or Italy, and far behind what Norway provides! It will not be easy to replace Western donations even if some countries continue to provide aid. See the OECD report at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/23/38/1882818.gif.
[32] Jerusalem Post, February 14, 2006.
[33] Interview with Dream-2 television, February 13, 2006. Translation by MEMRI #1098, February 22, 2006. To view the interview:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP109806.
[34] Jerusalem Post, February 14, 2006.
[Israel]
[Palestine]
[Hamas]
[Hezbollah]
[Arafat]
[Terrorism]
[Fatah]
[Middle East]
[Anti-semitism]
[Europe]
Hitler as Mentor of the Islamist terrorists
In today's Drudge Report it appeared an article from the Jerusalem Post that cites
Ahmadinejad condemning Israel for acting like Hitler.He says,
"The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan," He was quoted by the Iranian News Agency. We believe it is opportune to revisit the following article... "Hitler's Mufti" by David G. Dalin which appeared in the magazine First Things a year ago September.
In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders in Germany to convince them to propagate the anti-jewish final solution to the Arab countries...
"After the defeat of the Axis powers, Hajj Amin al Husseini escaped indictment as a war criminal at Nuremberg by fleeing to Egypt, where he received political asylum and where shortly after his arrival, he met the young Yasser Arafat, a teenager then living in Cairo...."Arafat soon became a devoted protege of the grand Mufti, who brought a former Nazi commando to Egypt to teach Arafat and others how to fight. Arafat first shed Jewish blood during terrorist raids against Israel in 1947."
Hitler’s Mufti
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David G. Dalin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2005 First Things 155 (August/September 2005): 14-16.
In his 2004 book The Return of Anti-Semitism, Gabriel Schoenfeld declared that “the ancient and modern strands of anti-Semitism” have been “successfully fused today” in the Muslim world, “and from there the hatred of Jews receives its main propulsion outward.” In the 2003 Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, Abraham Foxman added, “Virulent anti-Semitism is widespread throughout the Arab Middle East. . . . Anti-Semitism is tolerated or openly endorsed by Arab governments, disseminated by the Arab media, taught in [Muslim] schools and universities, and preached in mosques. No segment of [Islamic] society is free of its taint.” And in the 1999 Semites and Anti-Semites, Bernard Lewis concluded, “Classical anti-Semitism is an essential part of Arab intellectual life at the present time.”
It is possible to trace modern Islamic anti-Semitism back along a number of different historical and intellectual threads, but, no matter which one you choose, they all seem to pass, at one point or another, through the hands of one figure—Hitler’s mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the viciously anti-Semitic grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of Muslim fundamentalists in Palestine, who resided in Berlin as a welcome guest of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust.
The child of a wealthy and influential Palestinian Arab family, al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem in 1893. Living in Jerusalem during the 1920s, he quickly emerged as the recognized leader of the Arabs under the British government in Palestine. From his earliest years, Kenneth R. Timmerman recently noted, al-Husseini was “a ferocious opponent of Jewish immigration to Palestine,” with an unrelenting hatred of the Jews and the British. His career as an anti-Semitic agitator and terrorist began on April 4, 1920, when he and his followers went on a murderous rampage, attacking Jews on the street and looting Jewish stores. He was subsequently convicted by a military tribunal of inciting the anti-Semitic violence that had resulted in the killing of five Jews and the wounding of 211 others.
Sadly, the British—recognizing his status among the Palestinians—disregarded his record and appointed him to the prestigious post of grand mufti of Jerusalem in 1922, which made him both the religious and political leader of the Palestinian Arabs. Only two months after his appointment, his propaganda, including a new translation into Arabic of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, precipitated a second anti-Jewish riot in Palestine. On August 23, 1929, al-Husseini led a massacre of sixty Jews in Hebron and another forty-five in Safad.
Then, in the early 1930s, al-Husseini began to make overtures to the new Nazi government of Germany. The alliance between Adolf Hitler and the Muslim fundamentalist world was initiated and forged by the grand mufti at the very beginning of the new Nazi regime. In late March 1933, al-Husseini contacted the German consul general in Jerusalem and requested German help in eliminating Jewish settlements in Palestine—offering, in exchange, a pan-Islamic jihad in alliance with Germany against Jews around the world. It was not until 1938, in the aftermath of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous capitulation to Hitler at Munich, that Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s overtures to Nazi Germany were officially reciprocated, but by then the influence of Nazi ideology had already grown significantly throughout the Arab Middle East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1934, when the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws were promulgated, telegrams of congratulations to Hitler were sent from all over the Islamic world—especially, as Paul Longgrear and Raymond McNemar have noted in their 2003 essay, “The Arab/Muslim Nazi Connection,” from Morocco and Palestine, where the German propaganda machine had been most active. Several of the Arab political parties founded during the 1930s were modeled after the Nazi party, including the Syrian Popular Party and the Young Egypt Society, which were explicitly anti-Semitic in their ideology and programs. The leader of Syria’s Socialist Nationalist Party, Anton Sa’ada, imagined himself an Arab Hitler and placed a swastika on his party’s banner.
The pro-Nazi mood and increasingly anti-Jewish worldview of al-Husseini and his cohorts among the new Arab leadership was described this way by a leader of the Baath party in Syria: “We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the sources of its thought, particularly Nietzsche, . . . Fichte, and H.S. Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which revolves on race. We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf. Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor.”
Though he was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini moved his base of operations (and pro-Nazi propaganda) to Lebanon in 1938 and to Iraq in 1939, where he helped establish the strongly pro-German Rashid Ali al-Gaylani as prime minister. His role as a loyal Axis ally was increasingly appreciated by the German government, which invited him to base his activities in Berlin. On the very day that he arrived, November 6, 1941, Husseini met with Ernst von Weizsacker, the German foreign minister. Three weeks later, on November 28, 1941, Husseini met for the first time with Hitler. As Timmerman has correctly argued, “al-Husseini owes his place in history” to this meeting, where he offered to raise an Arab legion to help carry out Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. “The mufti’s close ties to Hitler, and his total embrace of Hitler’s Final Solution,” concludes Timmerman, “provides the common thread linking past to present. If today’s Muslim anti-Semitism is like a tree with many branches, its roots feed directly off of Hitler’s Third Reich.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the outset of his stay in Berlin, al-Husseini was portrayed in Nazi propaganda as the spiritual and religious leader of Islam. On January 8, 1942, Radio Berlin reported that the mufti had “announced in a telegram to the German Führer before the whole world his adherence to the Tripartite Pact against Britain, Jews, and Communists.” In a speech announcing his arrival in Germany, he called the Jews the “most fierce enemies of the Muslims” and an “ever-corruptive element” in the world. From his Arab Bureau office in Berlin, al-Husseini mobilized political and military support for the Nazi regime and organized networks of spies throughout the Middle East. As Bernard Lewis has reminded us, even Anwar Sadat, “by his own admission, worked as a German spy in British-occupied Egypt” for al-Husseini.
There is also evidence the mufti advised and assisted his German hosts in the destruction of European Jewry. His importance “must not be disregarded,” insisted Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny in 1941. “The Mufti had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he was maintaining contact, above all to Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry.” At the Nuremberg Trials, Wisliceny was even more explicit: “The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.” On this visit to Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly “admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently.”
In 1943 al-Husseini traveled several times to Bosnia, where he helped recruit a Bosnian Muslim S.S. company, the notorious “Hanjar troopers,” who slaughtered 90 percent of Bosnia’s Jews and burned “countless Serbian churches and villages.” Throughout World War II, al-Husseini preached regularly on radio broadcasts to the Middle East. On November 2, 1943, less than three weeks after the initial Nazi roundup of Roman Jews and the beginning of the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital, he used German radio to broadcast one of his most virulently anti-Semitic messages: “The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God’s chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals” makes them “incapable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals.” “Kill the Jews wherever you find them,” the Mufti told his growing Arab radio audience in 1944. “This pleases God, history, and religion.”
“It is hardly accidental that the beginning of the systematic physical destruction of European Jewry by Hitler’s Third Reich roughly coincided with the Mufti’s arrival in the Axis camp,” Joseph B. Schechtmann pointed out in his 1965 book The Mufti and the Führer. And much of the Arab-Muslim leadership in the Middle East learned to share al-Husseini’s ideas about the Jews during the Second World War.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the defeat of the Axis powers, Hajj Amin al-Husseini escaped indictment as a war criminal at Nuremberg by fleeing to Egypt, where he received political asylum and where, shortly after his arrival, he met the young Yasser Arafat, a teenager then living in Cairo. (Arafat and al-Husseini were, in fact, distantly related: Arafat’s mother was the daughter of al-Husseini’s first cousin.) Arafat soon became a devoted protégé of the grand Mufti, who brought a former Nazi commando to Egypt to teach Arafat and others how to fight. Arafat first shed Jewish blood during terrorist raids against Israel in 1947.
The Mufti’s mission of waging ongoing war against the Jews was continued by Arafat during the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, for example, the PLO recruited two former Nazi instructors, Erich Altern, a leader of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs section, and Willy Berner, an S.S. officer in the Matthausen extermination camp. Another former Nazi, Johann Schuller, was found supplying arms to the Fatah. The Belgian Jean Tireault, secretary of the neo-Nazi La Nation Européenne, also went on the Fatah payroll. Still another Belgian, the neo-Nazi Karl van der Put, recruited the PLO. So, too, the German neo-Nazi Otto Albrecht was arrested in West Germany with PLO identity papers, after the PLO had given him $1.2 million to buy weapons.
Arafat always revered al-Husseini, who died in 1974, as his beloved hero and mentor. In a major address in April 1985, Arafat said he took “immense pride” in being the Mufti’s student and emphasized that the PLO “is continuing the path” he set. Close to thirty years after al-Husseini’s death, Arafat referred in an August 2002 interview to “our hero al-Husseini” as a “symbol of withstanding world pressure, having remained an Arab leader in spite of demands to have him replaced because of his Nazi ties.”
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As Robert S. Wistrich has persuasively argued, the anti-Jewish legacy of Nazism “has proven to be especially potent” in the Arab-Islamic world, “where anti-Semitism is once again acquiring a potentially lethal charge.” This new and insidious Islamic anti-Semitism, with its roots in the virulently anti-Jewish ideology of Nazism, has become pervasive throughout the Arab world. In point of fact, as Wistrich demonstrates, “there is currently a culture of hatred that permeates books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, video-cassettes, the internet, television, and radio in the Arab Middle East which has not been seen since the heyday of Nazi Germany.”
Portions of the tradition of Muslim anti-Semitism date from as far back as the Middle Ages, but in recent decades, as Wistrich has suggested, the dehumanizing images of Jews and Israel that have penetrated the body politic of Islam have been sufficiently radical in tone and content to constitute a new “warrant for genocide.” Something different, something new, entered the Arab mind in the twentieth century. And its origins are not particularly hard to trace. Much of this new Muslim-inspired anti-Semitism owes its development to one man: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who so passionately supported and contributed to Hitler’s Final Solution.
This unholy legacy of virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish terrorism has been an enduring one: In the sixty years since the Holocaust, Hajj Amin al-Husseini has become the hero of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, the founding father of the radical Palestine National Movement, and the inspiration of two generations of radical Islamic leaders to carry on Hitler’s war against the Jews.
David G. Dalin is a professor of history and political science at Ave Maria University. This article is adapted from his new book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope.
Hitler’s Mufti
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David G. Dalin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2005 First Things 155 (August/September 2005): 14-16.
In his 2004 book The Return of Anti-Semitism, Gabriel Schoenfeld declared that “the ancient and modern strands of anti-Semitism” have been “successfully fused today” in the Muslim world, “and from there the hatred of Jews receives its main propulsion outward.” In the 2003 Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, Abraham Foxman added, “Virulent anti-Semitism is widespread throughout the Arab Middle East. . . . Anti-Semitism is tolerated or openly endorsed by Arab governments, disseminated by the Arab media, taught in [Muslim] schools and universities, and preached in mosques. No segment of [Islamic] society is free of its taint.” And in the 1999 Semites and Anti-Semites, Bernard Lewis concluded, “Classical anti-Semitism is an essential part of Arab intellectual life at the present time.”
It is possible to trace modern Islamic anti-Semitism back along a number of different historical and intellectual threads, but, no matter which one you choose, they all seem to pass, at one point or another, through the hands of one figure—Hitler’s mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the viciously anti-Semitic grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of Muslim fundamentalists in Palestine, who resided in Berlin as a welcome guest of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust.
The child of a wealthy and influential Palestinian Arab family, al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem in 1893. Living in Jerusalem during the 1920s, he quickly emerged as the recognized leader of the Arabs under the British government in Palestine. From his earliest years, Kenneth R. Timmerman recently noted, al-Husseini was “a ferocious opponent of Jewish immigration to Palestine,” with an unrelenting hatred of the Jews and the British. His career as an anti-Semitic agitator and terrorist began on April 4, 1920, when he and his followers went on a murderous rampage, attacking Jews on the street and looting Jewish stores. He was subsequently convicted by a military tribunal of inciting the anti-Semitic violence that had resulted in the killing of five Jews and the wounding of 211 others.
Sadly, the British—recognizing his status among the Palestinians—disregarded his record and appointed him to the prestigious post of grand mufti of Jerusalem in 1922, which made him both the religious and political leader of the Palestinian Arabs. Only two months after his appointment, his propaganda, including a new translation into Arabic of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, precipitated a second anti-Jewish riot in Palestine. On August 23, 1929, al-Husseini led a massacre of sixty Jews in Hebron and another forty-five in Safad.
Then, in the early 1930s, al-Husseini began to make overtures to the new Nazi government of Germany. The alliance between Adolf Hitler and the Muslim fundamentalist world was initiated and forged by the grand mufti at the very beginning of the new Nazi regime. In late March 1933, al-Husseini contacted the German consul general in Jerusalem and requested German help in eliminating Jewish settlements in Palestine—offering, in exchange, a pan-Islamic jihad in alliance with Germany against Jews around the world. It was not until 1938, in the aftermath of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous capitulation to Hitler at Munich, that Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s overtures to Nazi Germany were officially reciprocated, but by then the influence of Nazi ideology had already grown significantly throughout the Arab Middle East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1934, when the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws were promulgated, telegrams of congratulations to Hitler were sent from all over the Islamic world—especially, as Paul Longgrear and Raymond McNemar have noted in their 2003 essay, “The Arab/Muslim Nazi Connection,” from Morocco and Palestine, where the German propaganda machine had been most active. Several of the Arab political parties founded during the 1930s were modeled after the Nazi party, including the Syrian Popular Party and the Young Egypt Society, which were explicitly anti-Semitic in their ideology and programs. The leader of Syria’s Socialist Nationalist Party, Anton Sa’ada, imagined himself an Arab Hitler and placed a swastika on his party’s banner.
The pro-Nazi mood and increasingly anti-Jewish worldview of al-Husseini and his cohorts among the new Arab leadership was described this way by a leader of the Baath party in Syria: “We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the sources of its thought, particularly Nietzsche, . . . Fichte, and H.S. Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which revolves on race. We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf. Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor.”
Though he was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini moved his base of operations (and pro-Nazi propaganda) to Lebanon in 1938 and to Iraq in 1939, where he helped establish the strongly pro-German Rashid Ali al-Gaylani as prime minister. His role as a loyal Axis ally was increasingly appreciated by the German government, which invited him to base his activities in Berlin. On the very day that he arrived, November 6, 1941, Husseini met with Ernst von Weizsacker, the German foreign minister. Three weeks later, on November 28, 1941, Husseini met for the first time with Hitler. As Timmerman has correctly argued, “al-Husseini owes his place in history” to this meeting, where he offered to raise an Arab legion to help carry out Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. “The mufti’s close ties to Hitler, and his total embrace of Hitler’s Final Solution,” concludes Timmerman, “provides the common thread linking past to present. If today’s Muslim anti-Semitism is like a tree with many branches, its roots feed directly off of Hitler’s Third Reich.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the outset of his stay in Berlin, al-Husseini was portrayed in Nazi propaganda as the spiritual and religious leader of Islam. On January 8, 1942, Radio Berlin reported that the mufti had “announced in a telegram to the German Führer before the whole world his adherence to the Tripartite Pact against Britain, Jews, and Communists.” In a speech announcing his arrival in Germany, he called the Jews the “most fierce enemies of the Muslims” and an “ever-corruptive element” in the world. From his Arab Bureau office in Berlin, al-Husseini mobilized political and military support for the Nazi regime and organized networks of spies throughout the Middle East. As Bernard Lewis has reminded us, even Anwar Sadat, “by his own admission, worked as a German spy in British-occupied Egypt” for al-Husseini.
There is also evidence the mufti advised and assisted his German hosts in the destruction of European Jewry. His importance “must not be disregarded,” insisted Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny in 1941. “The Mufti had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he was maintaining contact, above all to Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry.” At the Nuremberg Trials, Wisliceny was even more explicit: “The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.” On this visit to Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly “admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently.”
In 1943 al-Husseini traveled several times to Bosnia, where he helped recruit a Bosnian Muslim S.S. company, the notorious “Hanjar troopers,” who slaughtered 90 percent of Bosnia’s Jews and burned “countless Serbian churches and villages.” Throughout World War II, al-Husseini preached regularly on radio broadcasts to the Middle East. On November 2, 1943, less than three weeks after the initial Nazi roundup of Roman Jews and the beginning of the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital, he used German radio to broadcast one of his most virulently anti-Semitic messages: “The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God’s chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals” makes them “incapable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals.” “Kill the Jews wherever you find them,” the Mufti told his growing Arab radio audience in 1944. “This pleases God, history, and religion.”
“It is hardly accidental that the beginning of the systematic physical destruction of European Jewry by Hitler’s Third Reich roughly coincided with the Mufti’s arrival in the Axis camp,” Joseph B. Schechtmann pointed out in his 1965 book The Mufti and the Führer. And much of the Arab-Muslim leadership in the Middle East learned to share al-Husseini’s ideas about the Jews during the Second World War.
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After the defeat of the Axis powers, Hajj Amin al-Husseini escaped indictment as a war criminal at Nuremberg by fleeing to Egypt, where he received political asylum and where, shortly after his arrival, he met the young Yasser Arafat, a teenager then living in Cairo. (Arafat and al-Husseini were, in fact, distantly related: Arafat’s mother was the daughter of al-Husseini’s first cousin.) Arafat soon became a devoted protégé of the grand Mufti, who brought a former Nazi commando to Egypt to teach Arafat and others how to fight. Arafat first shed Jewish blood during terrorist raids against Israel in 1947.
The Mufti’s mission of waging ongoing war against the Jews was continued by Arafat during the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, for example, the PLO recruited two former Nazi instructors, Erich Altern, a leader of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs section, and Willy Berner, an S.S. officer in the Matthausen extermination camp. Another former Nazi, Johann Schuller, was found supplying arms to the Fatah. The Belgian Jean Tireault, secretary of the neo-Nazi La Nation Européenne, also went on the Fatah payroll. Still another Belgian, the neo-Nazi Karl van der Put, recruited the PLO. So, too, the German neo-Nazi Otto Albrecht was arrested in West Germany with PLO identity papers, after the PLO had given him $1.2 million to buy weapons.
Arafat always revered al-Husseini, who died in 1974, as his beloved hero and mentor. In a major address in April 1985, Arafat said he took “immense pride” in being the Mufti’s student and emphasized that the PLO “is continuing the path” he set. Close to thirty years after al-Husseini’s death, Arafat referred in an August 2002 interview to “our hero al-Husseini” as a “symbol of withstanding world pressure, having remained an Arab leader in spite of demands to have him replaced because of his Nazi ties.”
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As Robert S. Wistrich has persuasively argued, the anti-Jewish legacy of Nazism “has proven to be especially potent” in the Arab-Islamic world, “where anti-Semitism is once again acquiring a potentially lethal charge.” This new and insidious Islamic anti-Semitism, with its roots in the virulently anti-Jewish ideology of Nazism, has become pervasive throughout the Arab world. In point of fact, as Wistrich demonstrates, “there is currently a culture of hatred that permeates books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, video-cassettes, the internet, television, and radio in the Arab Middle East which has not been seen since the heyday of Nazi Germany.”
Portions of the tradition of Muslim anti-Semitism date from as far back as the Middle Ages, but in recent decades, as Wistrich has suggested, the dehumanizing images of Jews and Israel that have penetrated the body politic of Islam have been sufficiently radical in tone and content to constitute a new “warrant for genocide.” Something different, something new, entered the Arab mind in the twentieth century. And its origins are not particularly hard to trace. Much of this new Muslim-inspired anti-Semitism owes its development to one man: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who so passionately supported and contributed to Hitler’s Final Solution.
This unholy legacy of virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish terrorism has been an enduring one: In the sixty years since the Holocaust, Hajj Amin al-Husseini has become the hero of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, the founding father of the radical Palestine National Movement, and the inspiration of two generations of radical Islamic leaders to carry on Hitler’s war against the Jews.
David G. Dalin is a professor of history and political science at Ave Maria University. This article is adapted from his new book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope.
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