Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi: "It would be nice”
"Oh, Mankind! We created you from a single soul, male and female, (Adam and Eve) and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another (not to despise each other). Truly, the most honored of you in God’s sight is the one who is most righteous."
— (Holy Qur’an: 49:13)
“All nice people like us, are WE
And every one else is THEY”.
— Rudyard Kipling (Author of “White Man’s Burden”)
TO:
The Honorable President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, President of Turkey
The Honorable Prime Minister of Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen:
The Honorable Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsangolu, Secretary General of the O.I.C., Organization of the Islamic Conference
The Honorable Amre M. Moussa, Secretary General of the League of Arab States
H.E. Fugen Ok, Ambassador of Turkey, Denmark:
H.E. Ms. Perwitorini Wijono, Ambassador of Indonesia, Denmark
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
Mr. Carsten Juste, Mr. Fleming Rose; Jyllands-Posten/Politiken Group
“They make a desert and call it peace.”
— Tacitus, defining Roman imperialism.
YOUR Excellencies:
International Human Rights Organization:
Members of International Lawyers Guild/Associations;
Muslim Organizations and International Media:
Mr. Carsten Juste and Mr. Fleming Rose:
I greet you with the Abrahamic Greetings of: SHALOM, PEACE, and AL-SALAAM ALIKUM
“What thou hast done to thyself none else did,
Thou has caused pain to the spirit of the Prophet…
Civilization of the West is perversion of heart and mind…
Europe, alas, is ignorant of this state,
With the Light of Allah its eye does not see.
Nor between the allowed and the prohibited it makes a distinction,
Its wisdom is immature and mission incomplete
In snatching bread from the weak its wisdom lies,
Annihilation of man is the business of modern civilization”.
— Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) [1]
I was a physician in training in Beirut in the summer of 1982 when Ariel Sharon (Bush’s Man of Peace) besieged the city from the air, land, and sea and indiscriminately bombed it daily killing innocent civilians and depriving them of food, water and medicine. The United States gave Sharon the green light to invade Lebanon while it joined the United Nations Security Council in passing several Resolutions “asking” Sharon to lift the siege and allow basic necessities to enter the city. Sharon also oversaw the massacre of about 2000 Palestinian men, women, and children in the Refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, while killing over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians during that summer while creating hundreds of thousands of refugees forced to leave their home in Southern Lebanon.
While working in the Emergency Room among the countless stream of the dead and injured of all ages, I was captive to the shouts and screams of Muslim and Christian parents hovering over their dead children yelling at the top of their lungs: “Why are they doing this to us; Why do they hate us, Where is the United Nations, Why are America and Europe allowing Israel to do this to us? Why, why, why? To God we belong, and to Him we shall return.” I had no answer then and I don’t have one today.
Little did I know then that nineteen years later I’d hear the same question reverberating throughout the western civilized world after 9/11: “Why do they hate us?” I recalled the grieving parents in Beirut in 1982 and realized that the west had its answer in front of its nose–ISRAEL– but out of prejudice, ignorance, fear, financial power, powerful lobbies, and fifty three years of continuous media propaganda and indoctrination, that answer consciously or unconsciously eluded them. It was the civilized world, first Britain, then Christian Europe’s Holocaust, followed by America and its United Nations that forcibly implanted European Jews in Palestine solving Europe’s “Jewish Problem” at the expense of dispossessing and creating the “Palestinian Problem”. From European colonialism, to Zionism, to modern day American imperialism, Muslims and their lands lie as the doormat of their corrupt leaders and civilized “democratic occupation”. Muslims must be grateful for the concern of America, Denmark, and the “Coalition of the Killing” for giving them their freedoms—freedom from their faith, their lands, resources, culture and history.
"…Israel (is) the Middle East’s only democracy and its purest manifestation of Western progress and freedom….Thus, the soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West…"
— Benjamin Netanyahu in his September 20, 2001 remarks in the United States Congress
“Why do they hate us?” —- ISRAEL
“Why do we hate them? —- ISRAEL
Tragically, the western “civilized” world “CAN’T HANDLE THIS TRUTH”
“They’re not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied either”.
— President George W. Bush in a Prime Time Press Conference, April 13, 2004
For fifty seven years Israel has been the arsonist in the Middle East creating multiple crises to further its expansionist policies against the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries. Neither the U.N., the U.S., Europe, or for that matter the entire world have been able to stop the raging fires of Israel’s occupation, ethnic cleansing, and land annexation whether it be Christian or Muslim land. Muslim East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth are under occupation, yet both faith worlds are silenced.
“ARABS MAY HAVE THE OIL, BUT WE HAVE THE MATCHES”.
— Ariel Sharon; Mark Gaffney, “Dimona, The Third Temple: The Story Behind the Vanunu Revelation”, Brattleboro, VT, 1989, Amana Books, page 165
It is no coincidence that modern day Muslim antagonism and “terrorism” against the West only began after Israel’s founding. It took decades of daily and incessant brutality, murder, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing by Israel for Muslim “terrorism” to reach the shores of Europe and much later, the United States. While ignorance, peace, and prosperity were filling the western malls, Muslim blood was soaking the soil of the Holy Land.
“The prime source of animosity towards the United States is the lack of progress in dealing with the Palestinian issue," Carter said, adding that past U.S. administrations since Harry Truman’s have maintained a "balanced position" in dealing with the rights of the Arab population within the Jewish nation. ….”The present administration has not done so at all. We have been exclusively committed to the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel, and have made no effort to try to have a balanced negotiating position between Israel and the Palestinians”
— James Pinkerton quoting President Jimmy Carter; “Former President Carter Takes President to Task”, Houston Chronicle, April 9, 2004
“We’re in bed, you might say with the Israelis and we won’t even talk to the leaders of the Palestinians,”
—President Jimmy Carter, Palestine Media Watch, “Carter: U.S. ‘in Bed’ with Israel”, October 15, 2002
“Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah and he’s had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates”.
— Thomas Friedman, “A Rude Awakening”, New York Times, February 5, 2004
“Americans are ready to discuss the United States’ relationship with Israel. And America’s injustices towards the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people”.
— Robert Fisk, “America Slowly Confronts the Truth”, The Independent, Dec. 3, 2005
DENMARK, the JP paper, and Islam’s Glorious Prophet, Muhammad (pbuh):
While Denmark joined America’s “Coalition of the Killing” in Iraq committing what amounts to war crimes against humanity, a tabloid paper, the JP, saw fit to make its priority the prejudicial and racist depiction of Islam’s Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) rather than focus on much more serious issues such as the war in Iraq or domestically such as the lack of future workers to support Denmark’s aging population. [2]: The 12 Cartoons of the Prophet)]
Yet the Muslim world is repeatedly told by the civilized west that the “war on terrorism” is not a war on Islam but on Islamofascists. True to form—lies, hypocrisy, double standards, media propaganda, and spin have always been the hallmark of western civilization and democracy—whereby “all men are created equal” meant only white Christian landlords have equal rights, damn the “others”.
The media has always served, at least initially, as an extension of governmental foreign policies, especially, war policies. To inflame American passion against Spain prior to the Spanish-American War, the most powerful media mogul in the country, William Randolph Hearst sent his reporters to Cuba with the admonition: “You bring me the pictures, I’ll supply the war”.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
— Samuel P. Huntington, Jewish Harvard Professor, Author of “Clash of Civilizations”
The “war on terrorism” is not a clash of civilizations but a clash of extremists in both the Muslim and the western “civilized” worlds, otherwise named the “Judeo-Christian” world after the Holocaust. The silence and absence of majorities in both worlds have created a political vacuum readily and gladly filled by extremists and special interest lobbies with pro-wealth, pro-empire agendas, supported by compliant politicians, financial institutions, and media corporations united in “manufacturing consent”, as termed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book of the same name.
“In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda”
— Chomsky, N; Herman, E. “Manufacturing Consent”, Pantheon Books, 1988
To Paraphrase the American historian Henry B. Adams—western, not just American, “society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.”
In my lifetime I’ve met many generous, caring, and extraordinary Danes who’ve dedicated their lives to the betterment of mankind. To them I express my deep respect and gratitude.
The Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (pbuh) said “You have not thanked God unless you have thanked your fellow man.”
Your Excellencies, I write to you with the deepest of pain that every Muslim around the world must feel, a pain most surely shared by the multitudes who love and fear God, the one God of all humanity, the God who chose to reveal Himself through His Prophets and Messengers from Adam to Muhammad, peace be upon them all, a pain deliberately, prejudicially, thoughtlessly and playfully inflicted by a Danish paper, the JP, portraying Islam’s Holy Prophet in, not one, but twelve despicable cartoons reinforcing Europe’s historical bias and demonization of the Prophet as a womanizing terrorist. Such denigration of the Prophet did not begin with the newspaper in question but began in the eighth century with John of Damascus, a religious figure, ironically employed as the Chief Financial Officer by the Muslim ruler of Syria. Europe couldn’t oppose the universal, comprehensive, and inclusive message of Islam as it confirmed the teachings of the Torah and Gospel, hence, rather than attack the message, attacked the Messenger. [3]
The Danish paper, the JP, deliberately invited cartoonists to submit blasphemous cartoons to uphold “freedom of speech” and to show its refusal to “subordinate” Danes to alleged Muslim threats against depicting the Prophet in any literary or media format. Mr. Carsten Juste, the paper’s Editor in Chief, described these abhorrent depictions as “a journalistic project”, in effect, a Danish Experiment to test the limits of freedom of speech by any method proving that “religion shouldn’t set any barriers on that sort of expression.” [4]
“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid”.
— Kierkegaard, Soren (1813-1855 Danish Philosopher, Writer)
It’s difficult to reconcile such vile journalism with the paper’s website statement of a strong “commitment to journalistic accuracy and reliability….with a high reputation for unbiased news.”
Given your self proclaimed reputation for “unbiased news”, your assertion that any religion can be satirized, allow me to put you to the test of another “journalistic project”, a project, if published, will forever solidify your paper as a paragon of liberty, democracy, and freedom of expression.
I would ask that under your definition of an unbiased commitment to freedom of speech, you consider publishing this most vile of a German Anti-Jewish cartoon, “The Eternal Jew” drawn in 1937 as a “journalistic project”, akin to your publishing the cartoon of the Prophet.
“We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love”.
— Whitney Moore, Jr.
“The Eternal Jew, 1937” [5] Obviously, for political, economic, and intimidating considerations you won’t even consider publishing the “Eternal Jew” cartoon and rightly so. Yet you feel comfortable to lambaste the Prophet of Islam, a faith of 1.4 Billion people. The Holocaust began with such demonization of Jews in “civilized” Europe. One of the strands of George Orwell’s 1984 was that in a dehumanized society hatred naturally becomes state-sponsored.
“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next”.
— Helen Keller
In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, November 10, 2005, Bjorn Moller, a senior research fellow at the Danish Institute of International Studies said: “The cartoons seem to have been a deliberate move by the newspaper to provoke Muslim sentiment…citing one right-wing member of parliament who compared Denmark’s Muslim community to cancer.”
Freedom of Speech is among the most litigious freedoms around the world. Its definition and application is complex and has varied over time, place, context, and circumstance. The most problematic issue for this freedom is defining its limits in society. Yet the Danish Prime Minister and the JP paper seem to have a clear cut black and white understanding of what constitutes freedom of speech. Translation—if it’s Islamophobic–it’s freedom of speech, otherwise Denmark does limit such freedom.
In 1919, the American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic”.
On September 3, 2005, Kevin Sullivan wrote an article in the Washington Post titled “Denmark decides Free Speech has Limits in world with terror”. It dealt with a Danish citizen prosecuted under the 2002 Anti-Terrorism law for making CD’s of internet videos dealing with the Iraq War. The article expressed the view that such a curb on freedom of speech was remarkable given Denmark’s tolerance for all points of view.
Another case that shows Denmark’s does limit and censor Freedom of Speech was reported in The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, February 13, 2004. The case dealt with the government halting the distribution of 60,000 CD-ROMs of sexual education material for students throughout the country due to some obscene content. [6]
Under the Danish Constitution Freedom of Expression is found under section 77. It states:
"Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to being held responsible in a court of law”.
Under the Responsibility of Media Act (Act no. 348 of 6. June 1991), the author, publisher, and editors are responsible for their actions under the law. AND:
“While carrying out their tasks mass-media should recognize the need to take the individual citizens rights to personal integrity into account and recognize the need of non-infringement without due course”.
The updated Media Liability Act of1992 includes sections on Press Ethics and the Right of Reply. The Minister of Justice appoints the eight council members to the Press Council. A Right of Reply to a media story must be made within four weeks of the incident in question in writing.
THE NATIONAL CODE OF CONDUCT
Denmark Press Council
National Code of Conduct
A legal code adopted by the Danish Parliament with the acceptance of the National Union of Journalists in 1992.
The rules comprise all editorial materials (text and picture) published in the written periodical press, in radio, television and remaining mass media.
The rules comprise persons mentioned and depicted, including deceased persons and also corporations and similar association.
THE CONTENT OF THE CODE
A. CORRECT INFORMATION
1. It is the duty of the press to bring correct and prompt information
2. The sources of news should be treated critically, in particular when such statements may be colored by personal interest or tortuous intention.
3. Information which may be prejudicial or insulting to somebody or detract from other persons’ opinion of the person concerned shall be very closely checked. [7]
ADDITIONALLY, THE DANISH PENAL CODE: SECTION 266b States:
"Any person who publicly or with the intention of dissemination to a wide circle of people makes a statement or imparts other information threatening, insulting, or degrading a group of persons on account of their race, color, or national or ethnic origin, "BELIEF" or sexual orientation shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years."
According to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC):
"The terms "statement or other information" should be interpreted broadly. They cover both oral and written expressions, pictures, "CARICATURES", and also symbolic acts and objects".
The EUMC Report also states that:
"In 2002, the Muslim organization "Hizb-ut-Tahrir" distributed threatening and insulting "flyers" that were Anti-Jews.”
On the same day such flyers were distributed, the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, immediately met with Jewish leaders to discuss the incident and afterwards promptly condemned the incident.
Under Section 266b, the leader of "Hizb-ut-Tahrir" was found guilty. [8]
However, in keeping with western double standards vis-Ã -vis Islam, Prime Minister Rasmussen described the more egregious attack on Islam’s Prophet as "freedom of expression". He said; "freedom of expression is the very foundation of the Danish democracy".
But, if one applies the JP’s newspaper definition of “freedom of speech” that justified publishing the atrocious cartoons of Islam’s Prophet, such "flyers" are protected by the Constitutional right of "freedom of expression" and thus the leader of "Hizb-Ut-Tahrir" should have neither be condemned nor found liable for insulting or degrading "Jews".
The March 2005 Annual Report of the E.U.M.C. singles out Governmental policies and Media influence as feeding the Racism and Xenophobia experienced by ethnic minorities in Europe, including those in Denmark.
The report states:
“The media in particular can have a significant influence on public attitudes…National and local media reports about ethnic minorities, migrants and asylum seekers also shape majorities’ attitudes towards minorities, with overt or covert racist bias in reporting both reflecting and influencing negative attitudes. Consideration needs to be given to political and policy standpoints, and in turn, media reporting of these standpoints, with respect to immigration and diversity -in particular with regard to the anti-immigration and racist sentiments of some nationalist and populist politicians in the EU…As the EUMC’s report on ‘Racism and cultural diversity in the mass media’ comments, these negative stances are increasingly reflected across the political spectrum and can serve to enhance the majority public’s sense of insecurity about immigration and minority populations. Too often, media reporting neglects to advance positive messages about diverse communities living in relative peace alongside each other…Whereas reports about radical Islam and the threat it poses to Europe are regarded as ‘newsworthy’, reports about cultural diversity and co-existing communities are comparatively rare. In addition, reference to majority and minority populations with respect to shared human rights is absent from most media reporting. In sum, reference to majority and minority populations’ rights and responsibilities towards each other, with respect to human rights and associated legislation relating to ‘race’ and ethnicity is sidelined by media and political parties that focus on negative images of minorities in Europe”. [9]
As law abiding and tax paying citizens of Denmark, Muslims must investigate all legal avenues to redress the paper’s action as to whether freedom of speech in Denmark allows for inflammatory depictions that may result in violence or terrorism or perhaps under the libel in fiction statute claiming defamation of a real character through the use of fictional parody. Unlike the U.S., Denmark does not have a First Amendment protecting free speech but the courts have drawn a line against racist speech online as occurred in 1998 with the Warming Case
The Organization of Islamic Conference, the Arab League, the Association of Muslim Lawyers (U.K.), Muslim Lawyers Guild (Germany), The Malaysian Bar, Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, and any and all Lawyers, Muslims or otherwise, who practice in the area of civil litigation, freedom of speech cases, human rights and international law should seriously consider filing suit against the paper, JP, and its editors.
According to the Organization of Islamic Conference (O.I.C.: personal email), Denmark exported products to the 57 member Muslim nations in 2003 worth $2,075,000,000 (over two billion dollars), an increase of 18% over 2002.
That’s an enormous leverage that must be considered in dealing with Denmark’s xenophobia, racism, and strict immigration and asylum policies that have been condemned by International Human Rights Organizations including those of the European Union and much of the western press.
Already some courageous Danish lawyers and professionals are taking the Danish Government to court for joining the Iraq in contradiction to Denmark’s Constitution.
— AFP, October 12, 2005.
Sadly, Mr.Juste is not alone in attacking Islam without any shred of knowledge of the faith as one would’ve expected from a 100% educated western “civilized” nation. He is only the “fool du jour” in a long and continuous pandemic of ignorance about Islam reverberating throughout all facets of western consciousness. The transformation of the west from Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” to Disneyland’s “I don’t think, therefore I’m civilized” is near completion. What prompted the paper’s insane “test” to defame a prophet rather than the conduct and behavior of some Muslims is beyond comprehension.
Mr. Juste, do not judge any faith by the actions of some of its followers, but by the content of its Scriptures.
"Over the course of no less than thirteen centuries a stubbornly biased and consistently negative outlook had persisted, permeating deep levels of European consciousness. In the works of an overwhelming majority of European writers, Muhammad was portrayed as a man of deep moral faults. Churchmen, historians, orientalists, biographers, philosophers, dramatists, poets and politicians alike had sought to attribute to Islam, and especially to Muhammad, fanatical and disreputable, even demonic characteristics." [10]
Yet, even in Europe’s Post-Enlightenment period, the Prophet was not spared but continued to be denigrated
“But when a camel dealer stirs up rebellion, claims to have conversed with Gabriel, and to have received this incomprehensible book, in which every page does violence to sober reason….such conduct can be defended by no man….unless superstition has choked all of the light of nature in him.”
— Voltaire, Preface to Mahomet ou le Fanatisime, 1742 [11]
Even Britain’s famous warrior and Noble Prize Winner, Sir Winston Churchill wrote thus on Islam:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome”.
— Sir Winston Churchill, “The River War” Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
The published cartoons in question today, in the twenty first century no less, persist in such demagoguery and demonization of a man whose moral character was unassailable even by his enemies during his lifetime.
Mr. Juste, prior to publishing the despicable cartoons in question, did your paper perform the most rudimentary journalistic research on the Prophet’s life and character? Did you read the Qur’an and a biography of this man? Do you know anything about this man’s morals and values? The rush to publish anti-Islamic propaganda reminds one of the “rush to war in Iraq”.
Your slander is consistent with the flawed and historically racist approach of the “white man’s burden” toward -–”the different, the colored, the religiously, culturally, exotic foreign “other”; the opportune scapegoat for a dying immoral civilization.
“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings”.
— Mohandas Gandhi
ISLAM–”TERRORISM–DEMOCRACY:
The cartoon showing the Prophet as a suicide bomber is beneath contempt but is consistent with the western association of Islam and terrorism. No other faith is used to identify terrorist acts committed by Non-Muslims—no Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, or Hindu terrorist is ever identified by his/her faith. For example: The “Catholic Terrorist Group the I.R.A.” today killed five Protestant Irishmen.
It’s obvious, Mr. Juste, you’re uninformed as to who began terroristic attacks in the Middle East using car bombs as well as the first hijacking of a civilian airline. No one has succeeded in defining terrorism, neither the United Nations nor the U.S. Government, but it’s obvious that the west considers any military antagonism to its hegemony or occupation as terrorism while its “chemical and conventional bombs” are smart, precise and instruments of peace, not terrorism.
“Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor”
— St. Augustine’s “City of God”
The Euro-Mediterranean Conference just held in Barcelona, Spain (November 27-28, 2005) failed to agree on the definition of “terrorism”. The Arabs sought to identify Palestinian and Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation as legitimate enshrined by International law while Israel and Europe wanted such resistance is “terrorism”.
The ultimate irony is that on December 7, 1987 the United Nations General Assembly voted 156 –” 2 to pass–A/RES/42/159–that dealt with combating international “terrorism” and to “study the underlying causes….including those in which States are directly or indirectly involved”. The only two nations that voted against the Resolution were the: United States and Israel. Reason: because the resolution “reaffirmed the principle of self-determination of peoples as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, and reaffirmed the inalienable right to self-determination and independence of all peoples under “colonial and racist” regimes…and upholding the legitimacy of their struggle, in particular their struggle for national liberation.” [12]
By this international definition Palestinians, Iraqi’s, Afghans, Chechens, Kashmiris, and all people seeking to free their land from foreign occupation are resistant fighters and have the right to fight for their independence. But not according to the colonial occupiers, “they” are terrorists and must be “silent” and accepting of the democratic benevolent occupation.
No one who’s studied the foreign policy of the United States, Israel, and colonial Europe will find the opposition of the civilized states to people’s independence, freedom, and self-determination shocking. Democracy as practiced by the west both domestically and in foreign affairs has always been the “Achilles Heel” of western ideals and values. Yet, the “coalition of the killing” led by Bush and Rasmussen seeks to spread democracy in the Muslim world by force in the delusion that a democratic Muslim world will make the world safer for their greed and hegemony.
No one believes that the west truly seeks a democratic Muslim world, for such a world will oppose western colonialism in a much more powerful fashion than is currently manifested.
In an article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, F. Gregory Gause III, associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont and director of its Middle East studies program, asks, "Is the security rationale for promoting democracy in the Arab world based on a sound premise?" His answer is NO.
He writes:
“Although what is known about terrorism is admittedly incomplete, the data available do not show a strong relationship between democracy and an absence of or a reduction in terrorism….Nor is it likely that democratization would end the current campaign against the United States… Nor is there any evidence that democracy in the Arab world would "drain the swamp,"In her book, "Terror in the Name of God", Professor Jessica Stern of Harvard has argued that "democratization is not necessarily the best way to fight Islamic extremism,"
In his book, “Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Robert Pape, Associate Professor of Political Science in the University of Chicago has collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. His conclusion thoroughly dispels the widely held misconceptions that suicide bombers act out of religious fundamentalism; rather, they act out of a secular impetus against foreign occupation. Here are some Facts that dispel propagandistic myths designed to ensure perpetual wars against Islam. Incidentally, suicide attacks accounted for only 3 percent of all terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2001.
It’s the Occupation, Not Fundamentalism
FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism. The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka–”a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.
FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. [13]
There is no such thing as total freedoms, least of all “freedom of speech” anywhere in the world. Governments and the mass media decide what is and isn’t freedom of speech. . It depends on their ideology, agenda, campaign donors, advertisers, fear and intimidation from special interest groups, and keeping their jobs. Would the New York Times publish an article by David Irving questioning the extant of the Holocaust? Would you publish a near naked photo of a Danish political figure especially of a right wing extremist as was a photo of Saddam Hussein splashed around the world? Many media outlets reject publishing advertisements opposed to their ideology or out of fear of a backlash. Recently FOXNEWS in the U.S. refused an ad against the appointment of the nominated Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito. CNN just fired a switchboard operator who told an irate caller complaining about a large “X” placed on the face of V.P. Dick Cheney because she told the caller that placing the “X” was “freedom of speech”. Zionist groups in America headed by Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz and others have launched a national campaign to silence any academic or political criticism of Israel as well as decry liberals. [14]
I’m sure you’ve read the reported story of Bush wanting to bomb the Arabic channel Aljazeera? Or of the U.S. military bombing the Aljazeera stations in both Kabul and Baghdad killing a reporter. Or of the U.S. paying Iraqi journalists to run favorable stories. Or the Bush administration paying American columnists (with tax monies) to write stories supportive of its domestic agenda such as paying Armstrong Williams $240,000 to support Bush’s educational initiative “No Child Left Behind”. Or of Bush’s Department of Education showing prepackaged videos promoting the same program as regular news stories. Or of the murder of over 56 international journalists in Iraq? Or of the bombing of the Serbian television station during the Kosovo war? There is a national governmental campaign in the U.S. to silence any dissidents against the Iraq war. Bush even refused the media to publish photographs of soldiers coming home in coffins. No American who is opposed to U.S. policy or to Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians is ever invited to a television or radio news show. Mainstream publishing companies refuse to publish books with opinions opposing Israel’s occupation leaving authors to go abroad to publish their books or get interviewed. Such dissidence is deemed unpatriotic by the few major corporations left who own the majority of the media in the U.S., while only nine such corporations own the majority of all media around the world. If you research the owners, CEO’s, Board of Directors, editors etc. of such corporations you’ll understand why there is no “freedom of speech”.
Many studies on the media in the U.K. and U.S. have been done that factually show the enormity of bias toward Israel’s viewpoint.
Case in Point:
In a scientific study of how the British broadcasters, BBC and ITV, cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Professor Greg Philo and Dr Mike Berry of the Glasgow University Media Group, have detailed in their book, “Bad News From Israel”, that news coverage tends to promote a strong Pro-Israel perspective while ensuring that viewers remain ignorant of the root causes of the conflict.
Truth, Mr. Juste, has always been the enemy of empires and the sacrificial lamb of campaign contributions and powerful special interests.
So, please spare us your prejudice against Islam under the “freedom of speech” cover.
Ironically, while Denmark and Europe fear the “Islamization” of the continent, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League’s (J.D.L. in U.S.A.) Director, Abraham Foxman, recently declared his fear that fundamentalist Christian groups will “Christianize” America. "Today," said Foxman, "we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To save us!" [15]
Sound Familiar? “The Islamic Fundamentalists want to impose an Islamic Caliphate worldwide”
"The West, whether Christian or dechristianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it. It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind”.
— Roger Du Pasquier, “Unveiling Islam”, pages 5-7
Mr. JUSTE: please read what more enlightened, civilized, and learned scholars say about Islam and Islam’s Beloved, Glorious Prophet—-a man you blaspheme but do not know. [16]
“Muhammad is the most successful of all Prophets and religious personalities.”
— Encyclopedia Britannica
“My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.”
— Michael H. Hart, “THE 100: A RANKING OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY”, New York: Hart Publishing Company, Inc., 1978, page 33.
“Perhaps the greatest leader of all times was Mohammad, “
— Jules Masserman in “Who Were Histories Great Leaders?” Time Magazine, July 15, 1974
"The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only”.
— Thomas Carlyle, “Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History”, 1840
“The founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?”
— Alphonse de LaMartaine in ‘Historie de la Turquie,’ Paris, 1854. Vol 11, pg. 276-277
“It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher.”
— Annie Besant, The Life and Teachings of MUHAMMAD, Madras, 1932, page 4.
“If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam….I have studied him – the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity….I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”
— Sir George Bernard Shaw in ‘The Genuine Islam,’ Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.
“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue”
— Arnold Toynbee, English Economic Historian and Social Reformer, 1889-1975
“The tolerance within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel in history; class and race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers”
— M. M. Pickthall, (1875-1936), English educator, traveler, and novelist. Translator of the Holy Qur’an and Author of “The Life of the Prophet Muhammad”.
“History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.”
— De Lacy O’Leary, “Islam At the Crossroads”, London, 1923, p. 8.
“The doctrine of brotherhood of Islam extends to all human beings, no matter what color, race or creed. Islam is the only religion which has been able to realize this doctrine in practice. Muslims wherever on the world they are will recognize each other as brothers.”
— R. L. Mellema, Holland, Anthropologist, Writer and Scholar.
“In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500’s did the net direction of flow begin to reverse.”
— Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist, and physiologist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book: “Guns, Germs, and Steel.”
THE FREE MEDIA: “LIES WILL SET YOU FREE”
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell
The western MEDIA is truly the greatest “weapon of mass destruction”. It has the power to launch wars, create or destroy careers, especially political careers, demonize and stereotype ethnic groups, influence political policies, create comfort, distrust, or hate; inflame passions; but above all its relationship with governments, corporate interests, and the military-industrial complex makes it the most powerful institution worldwide, no where more so than in the West.
“Whoever controls the media–the images–controls the culture." — Allen Ginsberg
“The nation’s immediate problem is that while the common man fights America’s wars, the intellectual elite sets its agenda. Today, whether the West lives or dies is in the hands of its new power elite: those who set the terms of public debate, who manipulate the symbols, who decide whether nations or leaders will be depicted on 100 million television sets as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ This power elite sets the limits of the possible for Presidents and Congress. It molds the impressions that move the nation, or that mire it.”
— Richard Nixon, 1980, in “The Real War”
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years….It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
— David Rockefeller – Bilderberg Meeting – June 1991 Baden, Germany (See Also: Jon Ronson, “Who Pulls the Strings”, Guardian Unlimited, March 10, 2001
“The mass media does not reveal reality, its masks it. It doesn’t help bring about change; it helps avoid change. It doesn’t encourage democratic participation; it induces passivity, resignation and selfishness. It doesn’t generate creativity, it creates consumers.”
— Eduardo Galeano, “We the Media”, Ed. Don Hazen and Julie Winokur, (inside cover)
“In the world according to the U.S. Media, the high moral ground in the Middle East belongs to Israel’s government–”even when it slaughters Lebanese civilians as a matter of policy. In news coverage, Israeli casualties are apt to have names, faces, and bereaved relatives, while Arab victims are likely to be fleeting images; nameless, faceless, distant….Israel’s most crucial allies include the mass media of the United States. Together with top officials in Washington, news outlets keep reinforcing the assumption that the Israeli government can do little wrong."
— Solomon, Norman; Cohen, Jeff; “Wizards of Media Oz”, Common Courage Press, 1997, Page 243
“One phrase — "security zone" — sums up an entire era of media spin about Israel’s 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. The dismal American news coverage of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon is an apt metaphor for the overall reporting on conflicts that involve Israel. Harmonizing with the tenor of Washington’s official policies toward the Middle East, the U.S. press corps winks and nods as Israel — annually receiving a few billion dollars in aid from Uncle Sam — continues to suppress the human rights of Palestinians. On some issues, it is possible to argue for wider debate in America’s mainstream news media. But on the subject of Israel, how does one widen a debate that doesn’t really even exist?" [17]
— Norman Solomon: “U.S. news media: “A security zone for Israel”, May 25, 2000, Author of “The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media”
“That the U.S. media are anti-Israel is so absurd as to suggest hysteria. Are American Jews in such deep denial about the brutality of Israel’s recent actions that they would damn those who report the truth?..Certainly the American media are far more sympathetic to Israel than publishers and journalists in the rest of the world. However, the traditional absence of acknowledgement in U.S. news reporting of the ongoing victimization of the Palestinians, powerless from the beginning of their displacement half a century ago, is callously immoral…or to treat Palestinian civilian deaths as a necessary evil made legitimate because they are caused by U.S.-supplied tanks and choppers."
— Robert Scheer, “The Palestinian Side Must Be Told”, Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2002
“Israel is losing its military struggle against Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon – but winning its propaganda war on the conflict in the outside world. Although its aircraft bombed three Lebanese power stations last week after guerrillas killed six occupation soldiers, Western press and television reports almost unanimously portrayed the latest violence in Lebanon as a war by Israel in defense of its civilians on the other side of the frontier. In fact, no Israeli civilians were attacked, let alone hurt, and all the Israeli soldiers who died were inside their occupation zone in Lebanon.
— Robert Fisk, “How America Swallows the Israelis’ Lies”, Feb. 14, 2000
“In no US newspaper or broadcast that I have seen has the French position on Iraq been accurately presented…. It sometimes seemed that the press had become "embedded" not only in the fighting forces but in Washington officialdom itself”.
— Professor Stanley Hoffman, “America Goes Backward”, The New York Review of Books, Volume 50, Number 10 · June 12, 2003
“On May 2 the Senate, in a vote of 94 to 2, and the House, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel in its recent military actions against the Palestinians. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is "no daylight" between the policies of Israel and of the United States…So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it’s no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. Journalists, meanwhile, are often loath to write about the influence of organized Jewry.In the end, though, the main obstacle to covering these groups is fear”
— Michael Massing, “The Israel Lobby”, The Nation, June 10, 2002
“If you want to know the truth about Iraq, join the millions who have given up on the silences of the mainstream media”
— John Pilger [18]
FROM NAZI TO NEO-CON PROPAGANDA: A CASE FOR HATE AND WAR
"Why of course the people don’t want war… That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger”.
— Hermann Goering
Western “democratic, civilized” leaders lied to their peoples, to the world, and violated international laws and the United Nations Charter, that their nations helped formulate, to invade a non-threatening sovereign nation, Iraq, already decimated by a war, a decade of severe economic sanctions that killed 1.5 million people and 500,000 children—something Madeleine Albright deemed “worth it”. These democratic leaders all knew prior to their illegal war that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, had no ties to Al-Qaeda, did not threaten its neighbors much less the west or Israel.
"And when they are told, Do not spread corruption on earth," they answer, "We are but improving things. Oh, Verily, it is they, they who are spreading corruption—but they perceive it not. And when they are told, "Believe as other people believe," they answer, "Shall we believe as the weak-minded believe?" Oh, Verily, it is they, they who are weak-minded–but they know it not. ..God will requite them for their mockery, and will leave them for a while in their overweening arrogance, blindly stumbling to and fro: for it is they who have taken error in exchange for guidance."
— Holy Qur’an: 2: 11 -13; 15 –” 16
But THEY did spread corruption, destabilized the world, spread fear and increased terrorism:
THEY ARE: Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Rasmussen, Aznar, Howard, and Sharon.
“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception”
— Mark Twain, “The Mysterious Stranger”, 1916, Ch. 9
Like his counterparts, the Danish Prime Minister, Mr. Rasmussen, exploited an already biased media’s “freedom of speech” against the “other”, the Muslims, the followers of the demonized Prophet, to inflict LIES upon the Danes and death upon the Iraqi’s. This is a “civilized leader” who protects the Danish Constitution’s guarantee of the media’s freedom of speech. He lied and he knew he lied when he was lying.
Curiously, for having plunged the world into war, chaos, fear, and loss of civil liberties under false pretenses, it’s surprising that the citizens of America, England, and Denmark have not demanded an inquiry into the lies leading up to the Iraq war and called for Impeachment proceedings against these men whose legacy will be lies, death, and destruction. Passivity, perhaps only when Muslims and Africans die, has supplanted civil outrage in the civilized world. Each word," wrote Jean-Paul Sartre "has an echo. So does each silence."
“A former intelligence officer who leaked documents on Iraqi WMD says he was appalled by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s distortion of truth. Major Frank Søholm Grevil of the Defense Intelligence Service (FE) says the nation was duped by its most powerful elected officials on the case for war in Iraq. Søholm Grevil….spoke….about how Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen manipulated FE intelligence to argue that Iraq had WMD prior to the US-led invasion…,even though we issued at least 10 threat assessments that were absolutely unequivocal on that point," Frank Søholm Grevil told the newspaper….We have an elected official here who’s blatantly lying”.
— Copenhagen Post, 14/04/04 [19]
“For the Danish public, these positions (Pre-War positions of Iraq Government) are on the whole unknown because smear journalism and war propaganda, which are the words best characterizing the coverage of the … Danish mass media…..while it was the so-called democratic leaders in the West, including Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who lied about the same things, launched the aggression, grossly violated the UN Charter, turning themselves into war criminals, who will be judged by history. Their actions have already cost more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.”
— Committee for a Free Iraq, Denmark, April 29, 2005 [20]
A Lying Prime Minister, a media culpable of “smear journalism and war propaganda”–”are these protectors of the Danish Constitution’s “freedom of speech?” One is reminded of a Danish proverb: “A fair skin often covers a crooked mind.”
“As the world goes, right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”
— Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book V, section 89
Shortly after the fall of Communism Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington proclaimed the inevitable “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and Islam. A fearful cry reverberated across the western “world”—The Muslims Are Coming, The Muslims are coming. Since then Islam became the punching bag for all “patriots” and Judeo-Christian warriors against the rage of Islamic fundamentalism.
Enter the Danish JP into the fray of Islamophobic camaraderie. After all, Muslims constitute no political or economic threat to anyone in the West and without possessing the most powerful intimidating symbol in modern history—the new and improved “Scarlet Letter– A” for Anti-Semitism—they lack any clout, although Arabs are the true Semites.
“They charge us with anti-Semitism–”i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a “passionate attachment” to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America…Indeed; it is the charge of “anti-Semitism” itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them. Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon”.
— Patrick Buchanan, “Whose War?”, The American Conservative, March 24, 2003
Islamic radicalism, fundamentalism, terrorism, and Islamo-Fascism determined to overtake the “civilized world” became the convenient rallying cry for the few determined men, the Neo-cons, strategically appointed to sensitive positions in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, with a compliant Congress, and powerful media outlets spewing lies to support an illegal deadly invasion of a non-threatening decimated nation. With many around the world questioning and protesting this quagmire, many courageous former U.S. and U.K. governmental officials, former diplomats, Intelligence officers, weapons Inspectors, analysts, and Congressmen, have all reached the same conclusion:
THIS WAR, DRIVEN BY A “CABAL”, WAS A WAR FOR ISRAEL AND OIL
“We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity”
— Patrick Buchanan, “Whose War?”, The American Conservative, March 24, 2003
“IN PRESIDENT BUSH’S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security –” including vital decisions about postwar Iraq –” were made by a secretive, little-known CABAL. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld”.
— Lawrence B. Wilkerson, “The White House CABAL”, Los Angeles Times, October.25, 2005. (Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2002 –” 2005)
“Cheney, he (Scowcroft) said, appeared to have been taken with a presentation by Bernard Lewis, an octogenarian Middle East scholar from Princeton University, who had been invited to the White House soon after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks. According to Scowcroft (General Brent Scowcroft, Director, National Security Council under Bush Sr.) Lewis’s message was, "I believe that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power."
— Jim Lobe, “Frustrated Scowcroft Assails Neo-Cons, Cheney”, Inter Press Service, October 24, 2005
Bernard Lewis, a staunch Pro-Israel ally, launched the "Clash of Civilizations"–”in a September 1990 Atlantic Monthly article on "The Roots of Muslim Rage”, immediately after the Collapse of Communism.
“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel…And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,”
— Philip Zelikow, Executive Director 9/11 commission and Member President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in “Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel–”Bush Adviser”, Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service, March 29, 2004
Thus, they kill Muslims for Israel and Oil and we dare ask “Why Do They Hate Us?”
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world – no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
— President Woodrow Wilson, U.S. President during World War I.
While the American media is too intimidated to speak the truth about the LIES for war and who is behind this murderous campaign, a few papers like the Guardian, Independent, Le Monde, Harper’s Magazine, and others courageously told the truth. However, the most courageous newspaper to reveal the truth about the “cabal” behind this war was the respected Israeli paper–”Ha’aretz.As H. L. Mencken quipped, “freedom of the press is limited to those who own one".
Who’s Behind the Iraq War?
“The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history..Washington is …a kind of small town that happens to run an empire. A small town of government officials and members of Congress and personnel of research institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one another….In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit.”
— Ari Shavit, “White Man’s Burden”, Ha’aretz, May 4, 2003
Muslims somehow get killed in western protected “safe havens” such as the ones in Srebrenica where Serb Christians massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys; or in Qana, Lebanon where Israel deliberately bombed a United Nations camp where Lebanese families sough