A year and a half ago, I mentioned in this space the Florentine Boar, a famous piece of porcine statuary in Derby that the council had decided not to have repaired on the grounds that it would offend Muslims. Having just seen Looney Tunes: Back in Action, in which Porky Pig mentions en passant that Warner Bros has advised him to lose the stammer, I wondered if for the British release it might be easier just to lose the pig.
Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.
Cllr Mahbubur Rahman is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding," he said. That's all, folks, as Porky Pig used to stammer at the end of Looney Tunes. Just a little helpful proscription in the interests of tolerance and acceptance.
And where's the harm in that? As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore.
And aren't we all? When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.
A couple of years ago, when an anxious-to-please head teacher in Batley was banning offensive "pig-centred books", Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain commented that "there is absolutely no scriptural authority for this view. It is a misunderstanding of the Koranic instruction that Muslims may not eat pork." Mr Bunglawala is a typical "moderate" Muslim - he thinks the British media are "Zionist-controlled", etc - but on the pig thing he's surely right. It seems unlikely that even the exhaustive strictures of the Koran would have a line on Piglet.
So these little news items that pop up every week now are significant mostly as a gauge of the progressive liberal's urge to self-abase and Western Muslims' ever greater boldness in flexing their political muscle.
After all, how daffy does a Muslim's willingness to take offence have to be to get rejected out of court? Only the other day, Burger King withdrew its ice-cream cones from its British restaurants because Mr Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe, after a trip to the Park Royal branch, complained that the creamy swirl on the lid resembled the word "Allah" in Arabic script.
It doesn't, not really, not except that in the sense any twirly motif looks vaguely Arabic. After all, Burger King isn't suicidal enough to launch Allah Ice-Cream. But, after Mr Akhtar urged Muslims to boycott the chain and claimed that "this is my jihad", Burger King yanked the ice-cream and announced that, design-wise, it was going back to the old drawing-board.
Offence is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. I once toured the Freud Museum with the celebrated sex therapist Dr Ruth, who claimed to be able to see a penis in every artwork and piece of furniture in the joint. Yet, when I suggested one sculpture looked vaguely like the female genitalia, she scoffed mercilessly.
Likewise, Piglet is deeply offensive and so's your chocolate ice-cream, but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight. The Church of England bishops would probably agree with that if, in their own misguided attempt at Islamic outreach, they weren't so busy apologising for toppling Saddam.
When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.
Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society? As A A Milne almost said: "They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace/ Her Majesty's Law is replaced by Allah's."
By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?
I doubt whether the Post Office will be in any rush to issue another set of Pooh commemorative stamps, or the BBC to revive Pinky and Perky. Forty years ago, Britain's Islamic minority didn't have the numbers to ban Piglet and change the Burger King menu. Now they do. What will be deemed "unacceptable" in the interests of "tolerance" in 20 or even five years' time?
It has been clear since July 7 that the state has no real idea what to do to reconcile the more disaffected elements of its fastest-growing demographic. But at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they're willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult.
#3
Still comes down to hyperpower+ America and Non-Muslims having to justify and save Islam for the Islamists, besides also the Democrat Party for the Democrats, Socialism for the Socialists, Commmunism for the Commies, LIberalism for the Liberals, ............@etal. AND, AS PER KATRINA/RITA-GATE, JUSTIFYING THE RIGHT OF NOLA'S BLACK AND POOR - read, DEMOCRATS - TO STAY POOR AND PERMANENTLY DEPENDENT ON GOVT. WELFARISM, WHILE GOP-CONSERVATIVES AND NON-AFRICAN AMERICANS DON'T HAVE TO. THe DemoLefties know there isn't enough money in all of Western Capitalism's free markets, or the so-called "Socialist market/
command economy", to support their agenda of national cantonization, ergo the answer is for either free America or Sozilist Amerika to be governed by Russia-China, the 90%-100% being governed by the 10%-or-less 'ers. "America is not worth dying/fighting for", ergo its quality-of-life and liberties is weirdly and mysteriously NOT worth leaving, ergo FREE AMERICA = SOCIALIST AMERICA = "FASCIST" SOCIALIST AMERIKA MUST DIE.
IT'S not just the environmentalists who think globally and act locally. The jihadi who murdered Newcastle woman Jennifer Williamson, Perth teenager Brendan Fitzgerald and a couple of dozen more Australians, Indonesians, Japanese and others had certain things in common with the July 7 London Tube killers. For example, Azahari bin Husin, who police believe may be the bomb-maker behind this weekend's atrocity, completed a doctorate at England's Reading University. The contribution of the British education system to the jihad is really quite remarkable.
But, on the other hand, despite Clive Williams's game attempt to connect the two on this page yesterday, nobody seriously thinks what happened in Bali has anything to do with Iraq. There are, in the end, no root causes, or anyway not ones that can be negotiated by troop withdrawals or a Palestinian state. There is only a metastasising cancer that preys on whatever local conditions are to hand. Five days before the slaughter in Bali, nine Islamists were arrested in Paris for reportedly plotting to attack the Metro. Must be all those French troops in Iraq, right? So much for the sterling efforts of President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, as the two chief obstructionists of Bush-Blair-Howard neo-con-Zionist warmongering these past three years.
When the suicide bombers self-detonated on Saturday, the travel section of Britain's The Sunday Telegraph had already gone to press, its lead story a feature on how Bali's economy had bounced back from the carnage of 2002. We all want to believe that: one terrorist attack is like a tsunami or hurricane, just one of those things, blows in out of the blue, then the familiar contours of the landscape return. But two attacks are a permanent feature, the way things are and will be for some years, as one by one the bars and hotels and clubs and restaurants shut up shop. Many of the Australians injured this weekend had waited to return to Bali, just to make sure it was "safe". But it isn't, and it won't be for a long time, and by the time it is it won't be the Bali that Westerners flocked to before 2002.
I found myself behind a car in Vermont, in the US, the other day; it had a one-word bumper sticker with the injunction "COEXIST". It's one of those sentiments beloved of Western progressives, one designed principally to flatter their sense of moral superiority. The C was the Islamic crescent, the O was the hippie peace sign, the X was the Star of David and the T was the Christian cross. Very nice, hard to argue with. But the reality is, it's the first of those symbols that has a problem with coexistence. Take the crescent out of the equation and you wouldn't need a bumper sticker at all. Indeed, coexistence is what the Islamists are at war with; or, if you prefer, pluralism, the idea that different groups can rub along together within the same general neighbourhood. There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one's views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact.
"Men of intemperate mind never can be free; their passions forge their fetters," wrote Edmund Burke. And, in that sense, Bali is more symbolic of the Islamofascist strategy than London or Madrid, Beslan or Istanbul. The jihad has held out against some tough enemies: the Israelis in the West Bank, the Russians in Chechnya; these are primal conflicts. But what's the beef in Bali? Oh, to be sure, to the more fastidious Islamist some of those decadent hedonist fornicating Westerners whooping it up are a little offensive. But they'd be offensive whoever they were and whatever they did. It's the reality of a pluralist enclave within the world's largest Muslim nation that offends. It's the coexistence, stupid.
So even Muslims v (your team here) doesn't quite cover it. You don't have to have a team or even be aware that you belong to any side. You can be a hippie-dippy hey-man-I-love-everybody-whatever-your-bag-is-cool backpacking Dutch stoner, and they'll blow you up with as much enthusiasm as if you were Dick Cheney. As a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden put it in 2002, explaining why they bombed a French oil tanker: "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels."
No problem. In our time, even the most fascistic ideologies have been savvy enough to cover their darker impulses in sappy labels. The Soviet bloc was comprised of wall-to-wall "people's republics", which is the precise opposite of what they were: a stylistic audacity Orwell caught perfectly in 1984, with its Ministry of Truth (that is, official lies). But the Islamists don't even bother going through the traditional rhetorical feints. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. "We are here as on a darkling plain ..." wrote Matthew Arnold in the famous concluding lines to Dover Beach, "where ignorant armies clash by night".
But we choose in large part to stay in ignorance. Blow up the London Underground during a G8 summit and the world's leaders twitter about how tragic and ironic it is that this should have happened just as they're taking steps to deal with the issues, as though the terrorists are upset about poverty in Africa and global warming.
So, even in a great blinding flash of clarity, we can't wait to switch the lights off and go back to fumbling around on the darkling plain. Bali three years ago and Bali three days ago light up the sky: they make unavoidable the truth that Islamism is a classic "armed doctrine"; it exists to destroy. The reality of Bali's contribution to Indonesia's economic health is irrelevant. The jihadists would rather that the country be poorer and purer than prosperous and pluralist. For one thing, it's richer soil for them. If the Islamofascists gain formal control of Indonesia, it won't be a parochial, self-absorbed dictatorship such as Suharto's but a launching pad for an Islamic superstate across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Can they pull it off? The reality is that there are more Muslim states than a half-century ago, many more Muslims within non-Muslim states, and many more of those Muslims are radicalised and fundamentalist. It's not hard to understand. All you have to do is take them at their word. As Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gottingen University in Germany, said in an interesting speech a few months after September 11, "Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms, these mean different things to each of them. The word peace, for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or House of Islam -- to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought. Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar a-Salam, or House of Peace."
That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies inruins.
Excellent piece by the new "Transatlantic Intelligencer", which has unfortunately morphed from a great blog into a paying quarterly.
Very long, needs p. 49.
Btw, much of the rationale behind Germany's arab policy can be exactly transposed to France's (with perhaps more personal involements, as our pols love arab dictators, cf. Chirak and his friendship with Saddam or Hafez El Assad).
Also, while this is perhaps a tad too conspiratorial for me, this brings two interesting notions into play : the idea of a green euro-MP that the aid to the PA is actually the mean of an hidden war between the EU and the USA (this is basically validated by that article), and of course, the Eurabia Grand Project, in which I'm increasingly believing.
A Dubious Achievement: Joschka Fischer, the Road Map, and the Gaza Pullout
Matthias KÃŒntzel
Joschka Fischer looks out over the lake. âIn that direction,â he says, ânot far from here, I invented the Road Map. It came to me while jogging.â
- Der Spiegel, August 22, 2005 [1]
âIsraelâs withdrawal from Gaza has the potential to create a new and positive reality,â declared the Israeli ambassador in Berlin in August 2005, âIt can reduce tension, create new economic opportunities and give a new boost to the peace process.â
But the contrary is also possible: namely, the emergence of a âHamas-stanâ that the Islamists can use as a launching pad in order to escalate their war against Israel. Which scenario becomes reality depends decisively on whether and how the influence of Islamism in the Palestinian camp is combated. Germany, as one of the Palestiniansâ most important financial backers, will play a key role in this connection. One thing is sure: if Germany and the European Union continue to act as they have done in the context of the Road Map peace plan, then the consequences of the Gaza pullout will be disastrous.
Regrettably, the fierce battle between the Europeans and the USA which shaped the progress of Road Map diplomacy from the outset is little known to the larger public. There is even less awareness of the role played in this context by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, usually regarded as a credible defender of Israelâs interests.
At the center of this transatlantic dispute stood and stand different assessments of Islamist terror. Should it be fought and crushed or â inasmuch as âresistance to occupationâ â tolerated and rewarded? It is the conflicting answers given to this question that have thus far condemned the Road Map. Today, the USA is attempting to woo the Europeans by way of concessions. But the clash over the correct response to Islamist terror remains as sharp as ever. Let us take a closer look at how this dispute has evolved.
A German Debut in Middle East Diplomacy
On April 30, 2003, the âRoad Map Peace Planâ was presented to Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the then newly elected Palestinian prime minister. Germanyâs foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, saw reason to be proud: âLook at what we Europeans have accomplished in the Middle East!â he exulted, âThe Middle East peace plan is a European achievement. The other members of the Quartet then adopted it and together developed it further. In essence, however, it is the product of European ideas.â [2] These remarks display a degree of German and European self-assurance such as was until then unknown in the context of the Middle East conflict.
The catalyst for the creation of the Road Map was a Hamas suicide attack on March 27, 2002 that killed 29 people at a Passover celebration in the Israeli city of Netanya. On April 4, eight days after the massacre, President Bush issued a statement, for the first time forcefully intervening in Middle East politics. On April 9, Joschka Fischer also intervened, presenting a paper titled âIdeas for Peace in the Middle Eastâ. One day later, the âMiddle East Quartetâ, consisting of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, was created in Madrid. Joschka Fischer's âideasâ, however, had nearly nothing in common with George W. Bushâs statement.
The Presidentâs statement called on Israel to cease its settlement activity. But the main gist of his message was directed against Hamas: âThere is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.â President Bush recognized Israel's right to defend itself against terror, and he called on the Palestinians and Arab governments to put a halt to the âterrorist activitiesâ of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, to âdisrupt terrorist financing, to stop inciting violence by glorifying terror in state-owned mediaâ; and to abandon the talk of âmartyrsâ. âThey're not martyrs,â he said, âthey're murderersâ. [3]
By contrast, Hamas was not even mentioned in Joschka Fischer's âIdeasâ paper. This was by no means an accident: none of the 56 Middle East press releases published by the German Foreign Office between January 2001 and November 2003 contains a single reference to Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Hizbollah. The central message of the so-called âFischer-Planâ was quite different: âThe parties (Israel and the Palestinians) are unable to resolve their conflict without outside help. Therefore what is needed is a Road Map and a timetable laying out how to arrive at the two-state solution.â The Fischer proposal comprised the immediate proclamation and recognition of a Palestinian state, while specifying that a final settlement of crucial issues, such as that of the âright of returnâ and definitive borders, should be achieved within two years. Furthermore, the Fischer proposal declares that a âthird partyâ is needed âto supervise the processâ: thus Fischer brings the international community â âled by a so-called Quartetâ â into play. This, the German Foreign Office announced hopefully, is the âsolutionâ to the problem: two states, Israel and Palestine, âliving in peace ... side by sideâ. [4] If that was so, however, why, then, did Yasser Arafat leave the negotiating table at Camp David three years before? Why had all proposals for a two-state solution dating back over 60 years been torpedoed by the Palestinian leadership? Moreover, would not the rapid proclamation and recognition of a Palestinian state be tantamount to rewarding the mass-murder of the suicide bombers?
Fischerâs plan was based on an entirely different assessment of Islamism than that reflected in Bushâs Middle East statement. Astonishingly, the German government has persistently chosen to ignore an element that is all too familiar from Germany's own past: namely, rabid anti-Semitism, such as that which gets continuously expressed by Hamas. It is symptomatic, for instance, that the Hamas Charter has yet to be translated into German. Published in 1988, the Hamas Charter asserts that âthe Jews were behind the French Revolution and behind the Communist Revolutionâ; that they were âbehind World War I so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate ... and they were also behind ⊠World War II, whereby they collected immense benefits from trading in war materialsâ; and that they âinstigated the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council ... in order to rule the world through their intermediaries.â âThere was no war anywhere,â the Charter sums up, âthat did not bear their [the Jewsâ] fingerprints.â [5]
It is tempting to ridicule the Hamas Charta as lunacy, just as in the past Hitlerâs ravings were ridiculed. However, it is precisely such demonization of Jews as the source of all evil that transforms the murder of Israeli civilians into an act of liberation and that provides the phantasmagorical reason for Hamasâ ambition to destroy Israel. This is why an uncompromising combat against anti-Semitism in Palestine and the Arab world is a key precondition for any genuine peace in the Middle East.
But on precisely this point, German foreign policy under the direction of Joschka Fischer has not merely refused to join the battle. It has deliberately turned a blind eye, proceeding as if hating Jews were a normal feature of the Oriental world â like hookahs or mosques. Consequently, the âred-greenâ government has not treated the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as combatants waging war on Israel. Islamist suicide terror has instead been presented as a false, though, in the final analysis, comprehensible reaction to poverty and hopelessness. âIt is not the violence of the second Intifada which has caused the failure of the peace process,â the Green Party member of parliament Christian Sterzing remarked in a discussion of the Fischer proposal, âit is rather the failed political process which has caused the violence.â [6]
Whereas the American government set the destruction of the terrorist infrastructure as a prerequisite for any peace agreement (and hence for Palestinian statehood), the German position was exactly the opposite. âNothing but the prospect of a permanent peaceful solution will bring about a lasting truce,â Joschka Fischer affirmed in an April 2002 interview. [7] In the same month, with the Intifada at its peak, Fischer went so far as to attribute a positive significance to the latter: âthe Middle East crisis will either force a solution or escalate â thatâs the alternative ... That is why I prefer the speedy proclamation of a [Palestinian] state.â [8]
To the nonchalance displayed by German foreign policy toward the anti-Jewish suicide attacks, there corresponded energetic support for Yasser Arafat. After the SPD/Green government came to power in September 1998, Germany became of all states the single most important supplier of funds to the Palestinian Authority. In per capita terms, no other population group in the world receives more substantial German aid. With the initiation of the Al-Aqsa-Intifada in September 2000, the influence that this financial support gave Germany took on new significance. Nonetheless, when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited Yasser Arafat in November 2000, he did not demand Arafatâs return to the negotiating table. On the contrary, he, in effect, gave the PLO-chief the green light for the Intifada. At the time, a member of the Chancellorâs delegation remarked: âSchröder does not want to put pressure on Arafat to return to the negotiating table. It is not sensible to link future development aid to the willingness to compromise of the Palestinians.â [9] On that first of November 2000, a course was set. Using the leverage of German development aid, one might have been able to force Arafat to make peace with Israel und thus markedly improved the conditions of life of in particular the Palestinians. But the attempt was not even made. Instead, German development aid would, in effect, henceforth be made to keep pace with the suicide attacks: despite the rise in the latter, Germanyâs financial aid for Arafat was likewise increased.
Moreover, the German support for Arafat extended to the diplomatic arena as well. In February 2002, Arafat was isolated. Israel had broken off all contact with him. The USA publicly accused him of being the single person most responsible for the escalation of violence in the Middle East. Arafat was even spurned by the Arab world because of his recent rapprochement with Iran. Such was the situation when Joschka Fischer put an end to Arafatâs isolation. âArafatâs three cheers for the visit of the German foreign minister â âThank you! Thank you! Thank you!' â sound much like a victory of the Palestinian leader over the Israeli tanks positioned at his front doorâ, reported the German daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : âFischer and the European Union did everything in their power to bring about Arafat's resurrection. .... So long as Israelis are being terrorized, and so long as Arafat provides at least passive, if not active protection for the orchestrators of the terror, then it would be difficult to recommend the isolated Palestinian president as a partner in negotiations. But Joschka Fischer did just that.â [10]
From such divergent views of Arafat and Hamas there necessarily follows differing assessments of Israeli security policy as well. While the American administration recognized Israel's right to defend itself, the German government preferred neutral talk of a âspiral of violenceâ: the Israeli government was placed on the same level as Arafat, with both sides being criticized as equally unreliable and âno longer capable of finding a solution to the conflict [on their own]â. In an interview on American public television, Joschka Fischer put it this way: âThere was an agreement: say, hello. The interpretation of the one side is âgood night,' of the other side is âgood morning,' so this leads to nowhere. Therefore, you need a vital third party for the implementation [of the Road Map].â [11]
Clash over Arafat
From the very beginning, Road Map diplomacy was thus characterized by sharp transatlantic disagreements. Nonetheless, facing âincreasingly pointed demands from the Europeans and moderate Arab States for progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflictâ (in the words of the New York Times [12]), in his second Middle East statement of June 24, 2002, President Bush, as the website of the German Foreign Office emphasized, accepted âcentral points of the German conceptual paperâ. The American President adopted the idea of rapidly proclaiming a provisional Palestinian state and announced that a final settlement might be reached within a three-year period. He did so, however, with the reservation that a new Palestinian leadership must first be established without Arafat: a leadership that fights Islamist terrorism and dismantles its infrastructure. Implicitly, he also made an appeal to the EU: âEvery nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel - including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah.â [13]
But in Brussels and Berlin the call went unheard. Instead, Germany foreign policy concentrated on securing Arafatâs political survival. A few days after Bush issued his statement, Joschka Fischer distributed a second paper to the Middle East Quartet. According to Fischerâs proposal, Arafat should not be forced to resign. Rather, âfor the present so-called emergency phase,â he should âcall into being a transitional government with a prime minister.â [14] This proposal had little in common with the American requirement that the Palestinians âelect new⊠leaders not compromised by terrorâ. It was unlikely that a Prime Minister would remove from office the very person to whom he owed his post.
Accordingly, when the Quartet convened in July 2002 in New York City, views on how to proceed were polarized. On the one side, there was the USA, calling on the Europeans to cease their direct budgetary aid of some $10 million per month to Arafatâs Palestinian Authority, in order thus to force the latter to undertake real policy changes. On the other, were the Europeans, supported by the UN and Russia, insisting on seeing Arafat as the legitimate leader of the Palestinians. [15] In the dispute over Arafat, it was, in effect, the overall orientation towards the Middle East crisis that was at stake: âPro Arafatâ meant having a generally positive assessment of the second Intifada and the vision of Palestinian statehood that was in the process of being realized by means of Islamist terror; âcontra Arafatâ meant striving for a new beginning and a vision of a Palestinian state that would provide the key to a durable peace by raising the combat against Islamist terror and the normalization of Palestinian relations with Israel to the status of guiding principals.
In the course of this summer meeting in New York, the Quartet ought in fact to have broken up. After all, the signposts on the Road Map had turned out to be pointing in entirely different directions. Yet again, however, the United States gave ground, accepting Joschka Fischerâs idea of having a new prime minister installed by Yasser Arafat. Was it the then looming transatlantic quarrels over the Iraq war that made the US government eager to compromise?
In any case, at the end of August 2002, the foreign ministers of the European Union approved the so-called âEU-Road Mapâ, which, as the website of the German Foreign Office proclaimed, âtook its basic orientation from the German government paperâ: âThe EU adopted the three-stage plan covering the period 2002-2005 and all the essential details, including the idea of naming a prime minister.â In September 2002, this European version of the Road Map was transformed into the joint Middle East Quartet Road Map. In December 2002, the final wording of the peace plan was adopted at the Quartetâs meeting in Washington.
What, then, were the steps foreseen by this Quartet âRoad Mapâ?
Phase I (âup to May 2003â): the Israeli army was supposed to withdraw to its positions of September 28, 2000, and Israel was to dismantle all settlements created after March 2001. The Palestinians were to centralize their security apparatus, and to initiate âeffective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructureâ, whereas the Arab states were to âcut off public and private funding and all other forms of support for groups supporting and engaging in violence and terror.â
Phase II (âJune 2003 until December 2003â) was supposed to take place after the prerequisites of Phase I were met. At the end of this second phase âan independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereigntyâ was to be founded and, if possible, recognized by the United Nations.
Phase III (â2004-2005â): Only at this point were negotiations on a complete and final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict supposed to take place. [16]
Sabotage at Ramallah
The disagreements that marked the birth of the âRoad Mapâ came glaringly into the open as soon as it was time to attempt to put it into effect. Arafat humiliated his new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, calling him a âtraitorâ. Just two days after the âRoad Mapâ was delivered to the parties in April 2003, he demonstratively defied its provisions by centralizing two-thirds of the Palestinian security forces under his control, and he continued to provide tactical support for the suicide attacks of the Al-Aqsa Brigades of his own Fatah movement. Nonetheless, in the face of the increasingly vocal protestations of Washington, Arafat continued to enjoy the unqualified support of Germany and the EU. [17]
Hamas denounced the Road Map as a âZionist conspiracyâ and embarked on a new series of suicide attacks in order to undermine the peace process. In spite of this, meeting on July 3, the EU Council of Ministers refused to put Hamas on its âblack listâ of terror organizations or to freeze its bank accounts. The spokesperson of the European Commission, Reijo Kempinnen, emphasized that the activities of the political wing of Hamas are âlegitimateâ, since it provides social services and runs clinics. âYou can't say that the whole of Hamas is a terrorist organisation,â he said, âand certainly that is not our position.â [18]
In open contradiction with the stipulations of the Road Map, Joschka Fischer pleaded to have Hamas permanently integrated into the peace process. At a press conference in Cairo in June 2003, he explained that âa âpermanent agreement for a cease-fire' would have to be achieved with the Islamist Hamas movement and other groups.â [19] The next dayâs New York Times quoted a US government official asking: âHow can a group determined to wipe Israel off the face of the earth become a partner in the peace process?â Fischerâs response is unknown. [20]
On August 19, 2003, a Hamas suicide bomber boarded a crowded Jerusalem bus and killed 23 passengers. But even this was not sufficient to bring about a ban. According to a report from early September in the EUobserver, âthe UK, the Netherlands and Italy are all in favour of blacklisting the group but will face tough opposition from France and Germany who are keen to stress the importance of the political wing's humanitarian projects to people on the ground.â [21] The EU changed its course only after the peace plan was already in ruins. Hamas was finally added to the âblack listâ on September 6, 2003 â the very day Mahmoud Abbas resigned from his post as Prime Minister. While the EU decision represents a major development, in order properly to assess its significance it needs to be noted that the ban does not include offshoots of Hamas allegedly engaged in social welfare. [22]
Ignoring all the warnings and appeals from Washington, Germany and the EU thus undermined the peace process and secured the failure of the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. At first glance, such a policy seems as effective as shooting oneself in the foot. Had not the Germans and the Europeans sabotaged their own approach? We will return to the question below.
The Hijacking of the Gaza Plan
Abbasâ resignation brought the Road Map diplomacy to an end. With his appointment of Ahmed Qurei to replace Abbas, Arafat now had a 100% loyalist at the head of the PA. The Europeans at once recognized Qurei unconditionally. Washington, however, reacted with reserve to the appointment of the Arafat ally: in effect, with Qurei at the helm no crack down on the terrorists was conceivable. [23] Bush officials made it clear that the Road Map plan âwas moribund and that, for the most part, the Palestinians are to blame,â and even UN Secretary General Kofi Annan âacknowledged that the approach of the United States and its diplomatic partners had come to a kind of dead end in the Middle East.â [24] Between September 2003 and April 2004 all meetings of the Quartet were suspended and the Road Map peace plan was effectively dead. Precisely because the peace plan was dead, however, Ariel Sharon changed Israeli policy. âIf in a few month the Palestinians still continue to disregard their part in implementing the Roadmap - then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians,â he announced in December 2003 at a Security Conference in Herzliya: âThe âDisengagement Planâ will be realized only in the event that the Palestinians continue to drag their feet and postpone implementation of the Roadmap.â [25] Thus the pull-out was not a part of the Road Map; it was a response to its failure.
When Ariel Sharon presented the unilateral pull-out plan to the White House in April 2004, President Bush responded with evident enthusiasm and even made the Prime Minister a couple of pledges intended to strengthen his position in Israel. Thus he declared that the 1967 âGreen Lineâ had to be adapted to new realities and that the right of return for Palestinian refugees should be rejected, so that Israel would remain a Jewish state. [26]
The EUâs reaction to this summit meeting in Washington was one of outright horror. Jacques Chirac described the American position as âdangerousâ. The EUâs foreign policy coordinator, Javier Solana, was especially indignant about the US rejection of the right of return, while Joschka Fischer demanded that âany solution must be within the framework of the Road Mapâ. [27]
Now, however, it became apparent to what extent American Middle Eastern policy had become ensnared in the web of âQuartetâ diplomacy. Startled by Sharonâs visit to the White House, the Europeans demanded a high-level meeting of the Quartet on May 4, 2004 in New York. In the presence of an unhappy-looking Colin Powell (âhe seemed glumâ) a statement was produced that, in the words of a New York Times report, âamounted almost to a reversal of the policy set forth by President Bushâ. It stipulated, for instance, that any future determination of Israelâs borders or of the status of Palestinian refugees âmust be mutually agreed to by Israelis and Palestinians.â âThe lengthy statement,â the Times report continues, âhad been hammered out ⊠in what diplomats said was a crosscurrent of tensions between the Bush administration and its quartet partners.â [28]
In that spring of 2004, when Arafat was still lively and alert and successfully torpedoing every measure to rein in the terror campaign, something strange happened to the Israeli governmentâs Gaza pull-out plan: the Palestinian leadership hijacked it and diverted it from its original purpose. Under Qurei the Palestinian Authority had systematically ignored the anti-terror stipulations of the Road Map. At the same time, however, the Palestinian leaders were desperate at all costs to rescue the Road Map for its diplomatic value. They therefore hit on the idea of presenting the Gaza pull-out as a part of the Road Map. Ahmed Qurei welcomed âan evacuation of the Gaza Strip as the first Israeli measure in the framework of the Road Map.â [29]
The Europeans endorsed this lie. The German government described Sharonâs withdrawal plan as âa step on the way to the realization of the two-state solution envisaged by the Road Mapâ, while an EU spokesman declared that âthe pull-out could turn out to be a significant step towards implementation of the Road Mapâ. Since then we have heard an ever shriller chorus of voices insisting that the Gaza withdrawal must now precisely be followed by further steps. It is no wonder, then, that Ariel Sharon thereafter refused even just to meet with the Quartet or that the USA began contemplating a new Middle East project involving Israel and Egypt â but leaving out the Europeans! [30]
But then, in November 2004, Arafat died and so began the most recent scene in a diplomatic drama whose end is still far from sight. From now on Washington would place all its hopes in Arafatâs elected successor Mahmoud Abbas. Subsequent American policy has been marked by striking inconsistencies. On the one hand, during a visit to the White House by Mahmoud Abbas in May 2005, President Bush stated: âHamas is a terrorist group; itâs on a terrorist list for a reason.â [31] On the other, he has bitten his tongue and uttered not a word of criticism of the fact that Abbas too wants neither to disarm the Islamist enemies of Israel nor even just to combat them, but rather to involve them in the work of his government. Now also the US Secretary of State began to make Ahmed Qureiâs reinterpretation of the Gaza pull-out her own: âthe next stage of the Road Map must follow on from the Gaza withdrawalâ, she urged her negotiating partner Ariel Sharon in July 2005. Sharon, however, rejected this demand, stating that Israel would only return to the Road Map after the infrastructure of Islamist terror had been dismantled. [32]
What conclusions can be drawn from this review of Road Map diplomacy? As a rule, all those involved start from the assumption that the USA is the ally of Israel, while the Europeans back the Palestinians. Even though tensions between the USA and Israel have risen in recent months, this assessment remains largely true as far as the USA is concerned. But have the Europeans really been standing up for the interests of the âPalestiniansâ as such? The history of the Road Map tells a different story: to date the European Union has prioritized support not for the âPalestiniansâ as such, but for the militant opponents of Israel among them. Of course, if it wanted to do so, the EU, as the biggest provider of funds to the Palestinians, could use its influence to strengthen the hand of the anti-terror elements in the Palestinian camp. But Germany and the EU were and are evidently not interested in doing so:
Not one member of the German or any other European government has criticized the disastrous consequences of the second Intifada as pointedly as has Mahmoud Abbas. In October 2002, when he was the PLOâs Executive Secretary, Mahmoud Abbas declared: âWhat happened in the past two years, as we see today, is the complete destruction of everything we built [under Oslo], and what we built before. ⊠The militarization of the Intifada was a complete mistake.â [33]
According to survey results published at the beginning of July 2003, some 56% of Palestinians were in favor of the Road Map peace plan. [34] But instead of strengthening Abbas, Germany and the EU continued to support the opponent of the plan, Yasser Arafat.
According to a survey conducted after the Sharm el-Sheik summit of February 2005, âsome 70 percent of Palestinians were worried about the diffusion of weapons in Palestinian society and wanted one central authority that could maintain law and orderâ. [35] This reaction was also aimed indirectly at Hamas, which has not only refused to give up its weapons, but has set about recruiting a several thousand-strong guerrilla army and stockpiling Qassem rockets in Gaza. [36] Despite this, in June 2005 the European Union promoted Hamas to the status of a negotiating partner and without posing any preconditions whatsoever. [37] The warning of former US special envoy to the Middle East, Dennis Ross â âif youâre dealing with them, I think youâre undercutting the Palestinian Authorityâ â fell on deaf ears. [38] Since then the dialogue between European governments and Islamists has not only been conducted at low level. In July 2005, the Hamas leadership proudly revealed that a senior German government representative had held talks with them in both Ramallah and Gaza City. [39]
On her first visit to Europe as Secretary of State in February 2005, Condoleezza Rice missed no opportunity to call on the European Union to designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. Her appeal enjoyed the support not only of the Israelis, but also of the Palestinian Authority. The degree of Hizbullahâs influence on the Palestinians had reached such a point that, according to the Jerusalem Post, âeven the PA leadership is sounding alarm and begging the world to help it cut off those throwing oil on flames that it is trying to douse.â [40] But in vain. That very month the EU decided that it would spare Hizbullah and not place it on the terror list â despite knowing full well that this organization has aimed thousands of rockets in the direction of Israel, advocates the destruction of Israel and is a protector of Palestinian terrorism.
The above list shows that Germany and the EU do not truly side with the âPalestiniansâ or the Abbas government. Instead, the transatlantic conflict is also fuelling the divisions within Palestinian society between the US-backed forces around Abbas, who, however half-heartedly, are seeking accommodation with Israel, and the Islamist forces that are courted by the EU, even though they aim at Israelâs destruction. What motives could lead the Europeans, and in particular Joschka Fischer and the âred-greenâ government he represents, to pursue such a policy?
German Middle East Policy
Some clues are provided in the programmatic report âFramework for a German Middle East Policyâ, which was co-authored by Middle East experts from the Christian Democrat, Social Democrat, and Green parties and published in August 2001. [41] It is no coincidence that this document was the product of a non-partisan effort: the CDU has always supported and never criticized the âRed-Greenâ coalitionâs Road Map diplomacy.
To begin with, the German position paper takes for granted that there is a special relationship between Germans and Palestinians: âSupporting the creation of a Palestinian state is a priority. The financial assistance that the Palestinian authority receives either directly or indirectly from Germany exceeds that provided by any other state. This support is a considered and correct decision of German policy, and Germany should not shrink from playing the role of midwife and godfather of the future Palestinian state.â
Godfather of the Palestinians?! Why should Germans of all people be destined for such a role? Is it that they must make good to the Palestinians the wrongs previously done to the Jews? And why does one want to be Godfather precisely of the Palestinians? Is it because one imagines that, like the Palestinians, one knows what it means to be âmisusedâ by Jews? For the contemporary German psyche, the Middle East represents a minefield. If only subconsciously, patterns of defensiveness, projection and transference clearly exert influence on German discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and indeed on German policy.
What happens to âpriority Palestineâ, however, when Islamist terror continually blocks the path to Palestinian statehood? The German âFrameworkâ-document makes provision for such an eventuality: âGermany should make clear that it recognizes the predominantly Arab character of the Near and Middle East and that it is not making its relationship with the Arab world dependent on the success of the peace process.â The hierarchy is unmistakable: relations with the Arab world are not to be subordinated to the success of efforts to create peace in the Middle East. Rather the peace process and the question of Israelâs security that is tied to it are subordinated to the preservation of Germanyâs good relations with Arab regimes. The latter, however, often have their own domestic reasons for being interested precisely in the continuation of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel. âPriority Palestineâ and â the greater â âpriority Arab worldâ: these two stated priorities of the âFrameworkâ document seem to have had a decisive influence on German Road Map diplomacy.
This choice of alliances is, moreover, linked to economic considerations. Saudi-Arabia, for example, does not only fund approximately 60% of the Hamas budget â it is also Germanyâs most important trading partner in the region. Iran is not only the founder and financier of Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad â it is also an export Eldorado for German business. Today, Iran imports more goods from Germany than from any other country. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports: âIn 2004, German exports to Iran increased by 33% to â¬3.57 billion. Since 2000, German exports to Iran have more than doubled.â [42]
Of course, it is true that Germany might also have expanded and strengthened its relationships with the Arab world by acting as an influential partner of the United States. The logic of German foreign policy under the âred-greenâ coalition has, however, taken competition with the USA for influence and prestige as axiomatic.
Alliance against America
Already in 1998, the director of the German Institute for Middle East Studies [Orient-Institut], Udo Steinbach, enthused that in light of the enormous âsympathyâ that Germany âtraditionally enjoys in the entire regionâ, the Federal Republic is âwidely regarded in the Middle East as a future great powerâ that could ârepresent a counterweight to the all too dominant American exercise of power.â [43] The âtraditional sympathyâ in question notably comprises the today still widespread admiration of National Socialism. The 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War seem only to have reinforced German ambitions to appear as the most important challenger to American power in the Arab/Islamic world. To this end, the pursuit of alliances with Islamist forces has been openly advocated.
Such a policy orientation was, for instance, recommended by a discussion paper prepared for a January 2002 conference on the Middle East organized by the influential Bertelsmann Foundation. Participants in the conference included Joschka Fischer and Javier Solana, as well as a representative of the EU Presidency and the Middle East envoys of both the UN and Russia. According to the Bertelsmann paper, âthe EU should not waste its time on the futile search for an internationally accepted definition of terrorism.â This is especially important with respect to the âMediterranean area, where the lines between terrorists, resistance fighters and opposition groups are blurred in public discourse.â But is not the allusion to âpublic discourse in the Mediterranean areaâ here just a flimsy pretext for being able to blur the lines between terrorists and opposition groups also in the European policy context and notably in the treatment of groups such as Hamas? What is the alternative to seeking a definition of terrorism that the Bertelsmann study proposes? âInstead, the EU actors should defend the Islamist movement against an all too undifferentiated conduct of the war on terror by the Americans and integrate it into the European dialogue of culturesâ. [44]
The âred-greenâ government has evidently made these recommendations its own: it appears to want to co-operate with Islamists, instead of isolating them. In this respect, the consideration it has shown for Arafat and Hamas has given a signal to the Arab/Islamic world. But is this signal not tantamount to the encouragement of jihad against Israel? Why should the Arab world heed the American calls to ostracize Hamas or other Islamist terror groups if even Germany and the EU refuse to do so?
Behind the tactical acceptance of the suicide bombings may possibly lay a more far-reaching objective. Why has the USA felt obliged to accept a greater European role in the Middle East process? âThe most important source of pressure is the evolution of the situation and its potential for escalationâ, is Fischerâs answer. [45] Precisely! Thus, in the same way as major terrorist attacks in Iraq have forced the USA to involve the UN and EU in their plans to a greater extent than previously, so did the terror of Hamas pave the way for the German-European debut in the Middle East with the Road Map.
âMight countries with power-political aspirations perhaps have an interest in seeing that the success [of the USA in the fight against terror] be neither triumphal nor even unequivocal?â asked the foreign affairs editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with feigned innocence. He thus put his finger on a decisive point: every American foreign policy success represents a blow to the relative stature of the EU. [46] The less the American success, the greater the opportunity for Germany and the EU to put themselves forward as an alternative to the USA and thus to profit from its failures.
The transatlantic clash over the Road Map perfectly illustrates the contradictory tendencies in the struggle against Islamist terror in general. While Israel and the USA are fighting the radical Islamist movements as best they can, Germany and the other EU powers continue to curry favour with them.
âLook at what we Europeans have accomplished in the Middle East!â Joschka Fischer boasted to the journalists from Die Zeit on May 8, 2003. In the same interview Fischer gave his answer to the question of what the specific European contribution to the new world order might be: âthe difference is between a cooperative or a confrontational approach towards the Arab-Islamic arc of crisis.â
In drawing this distinction Fischer obscured a more essential one: the difference between those Arab-Islamic forces that recognize Israel as a Jewish state and those that wish to destroy it. That is the real line of divide. The âcooperative approachâ to Muslims who today wish to take their distance from Islamist Judeophobia requires a âconfrontational approachâ to Hamas and Hizbullah. Will the EU use the occasion of Israelâs disengagement from the Gaza Strip to show that it has learned something from the fiasco of its Road Map policy? Up to now, its âcooperative approachâ has only benefited those forces that aim at Israelâs destruction: in Teheran, in Gaza and in Beirut. Today, Europe again faces a choice: either it begins to combat radical Islamists and to support their opponents in the Muslim world. Or it gives anti-Semites the world over a sign of tacit approval, inasmuch as it accepts or encourages the jihad against Israel. There is no third way.
Matthias KÃŒntzel is a Hamburg-based political scientist and a research associate of the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His latest book Djihad und Judenhass: Ãber den neuen antijÃŒdischen Krieg [Jihad and Jew-hatred: On the New Anti-Jewish War] was published in 2002 by Ãa Ira Verlag. More of his writings are available in English, French and German at http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/.
Translated from the German by Transatlantic Intelligencer(see link for notes)
#2
Well a proxy war between the ideals of National Socialism and the US. Killing all the Jews is still a desired outcome for some Germans. That those are people in the government is relevant. Action does speak louder than words after all.
'...the Federal Republic is âwidely regarded in the Middle East as a future great powerâ' Only if you start breeding new Germans. Otherwise Germany will just become a and ethnic Turkic state in the heart of Germany. It has no ability to project power without outside assistance. How many CBJs can the Federal Republic dispatch? How many airborn troops can it have half way around the world in 24 hours? How many attack subs and launch platforms for balistic missiles does it have at sea? How many on land?
This policy is the policy of fools. That the Christian Democrats endorse it is handwriting on the wall. More decline for the Federal Republic.
A sad thing.
Joschka Fischer claiming success in failure. He in fact is a clown. He will soon be back to selling books, only this time they will be his mushy thoughts in them.
BEITUNIA, WEST BANK - With his beardless face brightened by a trendy orange shirt and matching tie, Saadeh Shalabi does not look like the typical up-and-coming leader of Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist movement committed to Israel's destruction.
But he can still be helizapped.
But Mr. Shalabi, an electrical engineer who works at East Jerusalem's Al Quads University, is Hamas' top politician in this middle-class suburb of Ramallah, the West Bank's Palestinian power center. And, even though his party won less than half of the available seats here in last week's municipal polls, he appears set to become mayor, aided by a coalition with independents who also won seats in the election.
"Hamas did very well," says Mr. Shalabi, in a meeting at the local Hamas campaign office. According to official results announced Sunday, Hamas won five of the 13 available seats here. "It's good that the people will see that the Islamic parties can participate in democracy and can work to develop their societies."
"And then we'll kill all the Joooos!"
Hamas, he says, recruited him because of his reputation for being honest. And if he was going to go into politics, he wanted to work only with "qualified professional people," he says. "I found those qualities in Hamas."
"Nobody booms better than those guys!"
The election was one in a series this year enabling Palestinians to choose local officials for the first time in 28 years. Fatah, the political party affiliated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, won six seats, and the other two seats went to independents.
The results in Beitunia are remarkable in several ways. Even though Fatah, led by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, won the largest number of seats in about half of the 104 municipal councils that were being chosen last week, in many places, the wins were not enough for Fatah to claim leadership. What's more, Shalabi represents what could be the face of Hamas's future. At least in some camps, there's an attempt to reshape Hamas, which won 13 municipalities in the vote, as a Muslim political party and less of a guerrilla group. But the different faces of Hamas - ranging from technocrats like Shalabi to a military wing that continues to attack Israelis - may make Hamas as political party a hard sell to the rest of the world.
The Euros have already bought it.
Election results were announced the same day Hamas gunmen carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a police station in Gaza City. The ensuing street battle, which resulted in the death of at least three people including a deputy police chief, represents growing tension between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas militants and some of the worst infighting between Palestinian factions in a decade. Many PA leaders now worry that confrontations with Hamas's militants, continuing to flex their muscle after Israel's historic withdrawal from Gaza, will only continue.
Shalabi says he has no contact with the military wing of Hamas. Asked about its activities, such as the possibility of future suicide bombings, he says "God willing," there won't be. "We're not eager to have bloodshed," he says. "And if the political atmosphere goes in the right direction, I think there won't be. But don't think that a nation under occupation will always go in the right direction."
He says that frustration with corruption has been wearing down support for Fatah, while Hamas is seen as a party full of people who, because they are religious, are less given to graft.
Suckers.
That said, the local wing of the party doesn't have a fundamentalist agenda, but expects to stick to issues that affect the everyday lives of people here such as building a sewage system. His other priority, he says, is improving education.
The organization's seesawing between democracy and violence resemble the identity crisis that other Islamic militant organizations have undergone. From Hizbullah in Lebanon to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, several groups with militant backgrounds have, in recent years, managed to steer themselves from combat to campaigns.
Here, as in other countries, the domestic image of Hamas is not nearly so tainted as its international one. Recognizing that, one of the winning independent candidates in the election here, Shaker Othman, says he is concerned that if Hamas is seen to be "running" Beitunia, it will have a hard time getting foreign donors to support development projects here.
Still, says Mr. Othman, a real estate developer who was once active in Fatah, he found the local Hamas leaders to be straight shooters, so to speak, and that he now prefers to deal with them over Fatah. "If Hamas does anything, they do it right," he says. "I chose work with them because they are more honest." Othman, who isn't a particularly ideological person, says that Hamas will eventually deal peaceably with Israel - and Israel with Hamas - "because Hamas is simply a fact of life here."
Local Fatah leader Arafat Khalaf, also known as Abu Ali admits they had hoped to get far more seats on the council here, which, as an area so close to Ramallah, is not considered to be "Hamas territory." "Hamas has used the Islamic religion to lobby voters. They visit them at home and lecture them in the mosques," he says. Most people in Fatah are honest, he says, but a few people with poor reputations are making Hamas a powerful challenger. "For sure, Fatah is paying a heavy price for some individual Fatah members," he says. "There are a few who are corrupt, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand."
Starting with Fearless Leader's cement contract with the Israelis.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/04/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
With his beardless face brightened by a trendy orange shirt and matching tie, Saadeh Shalabi does not look like the typical up-and-coming leader of Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist movement committed to Israel's destruction.
These propaganda reports are as predictable as a porn movie. The innocent faced Saadeh Shalabi does not look like the typical wild night of sex that he is....
Hamas, he says, recruited him because of his reputation for being honest. And if he was going to go into politics, he wanted to work only with "qualified professional people," he says. "I found those qualities in Hamas."
Actually, the mild mannered appearing engineer was recruited for his...um...big guns... if you get my drift.
Blah, blah, blah... as if anyone ever gets to the end.
I hold a secret belief that these NPR, BBC, Dark and Stormy Night articles are written in a little sweatshop by 3 or 4 writers who somehow manage to sneak out and moonlight as porn screen-writers to supplement their meager incomes.
The lie here they are attempting to feed us is that Hamas is a legit governing force. Yeah, right, and that 32 yr ol' Secretary in glasses and a bun was a virgin at the bar for the very first time only because she was a fair damsel in distress.
#2
I didn't know "most Fatah were honest". Wow, I so want to hang out with these guys, maybe we can play scrabble. Is there an Arabic version? Anyone from DLI reading, please let me know! - Covert Floridian
#3
Hamas: "It's a political party! It's a military wing! It's also a dessert topping and floor wax!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/04/2005 18:11 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Still, says Mr. Othman, a real estate developer who was once active in Fatah, he found the local Hamas leaders to be straight shooters, so to speak....
Yeah, right. LOL!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/04/2005 18:24 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Except for the jew-killing and gun sex, Hamas is pretty much like any other community service organization here in the US.
IT'S not just the environmentalists who think globally and act locally. The jihadi who murdered Newcastle woman Jennifer Williamson, Perth teenager Brendan Fitzgerald and a couple of dozen more Australians, Indonesians, Japanese and others had certain things in common with the July 7 London Tube killers. For example, Azahari bin Husin, who police believe may be the bomb-maker behind this weekend's atrocity, completed a doctorate at England's Reading University. The contribution of the British education system to the jihad is really quite remarkable.
But, on the other hand, despite Clive Williams's game attempt to connect the two on this page yesterday, nobody seriously thinks what happened in Bali has anything to do with Iraq. There are, in the end, no root causes, or anyway not ones that can be negotiated by troop withdrawals or a Palestinian state. There is only a metastasising cancer that preys on whatever local conditions are to hand. Five days before the slaughter in Bali, nine Islamists were arrested in Paris for reportedly plotting to attack the Metro. Must be all those French troops in Iraq, right? So much for the sterling efforts of President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, as the two chief obstructionists of Bush-Blair-Howard neo-con-Zionist warmongering these past three years.
When the suicide bombers self-detonated on Saturday, the travel section of Britain's The Sunday Telegraph had already gone to press, its lead story a feature on how Bali's economy had bounced back from the carnage of 2002. We all want to believe that: one terrorist attack is like a tsunami or hurricane, just one of those things, blows in out of the blue, then the familiar contours of the landscape return. But two attacks are a permanent feature, the way things are and will be for some years, as one by one the bars and hotels and clubs and restaurants shut up shop. Many of the Australians injured this weekend had waited to return to Bali, just to make sure it was "safe". But it isn't, and it won't be for a long time, and by the time it is it won't be the Bali that Westerners flocked to before 2002.
I found myself behind a car in Vermont, in the US, the other day; it had a one-word bumper sticker with the injunction "COEXIST". It's one of those sentiments beloved of Western progressives, one designed principally to flatter their sense of moral superiority. The C was the Islamic crescent, the O was the hippie peace sign, the X was the Star of David and the T was the Christian cross. Very nice, hard to argue with. But the reality is, it's the first of those symbols that has a problem with coexistence. Take the crescent out of the equation and you wouldn't need a bumper sticker at all. Indeed, coexistence is what the Islamists are at war with; or, if you prefer, pluralism, the idea that different groups can rub along together within the same general neighbourhood. There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one's views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact.
"Men of intemperate mind never can be free; their passions forge their fetters," wrote Edmund Burke. And, in that sense, Bali is more symbolic of the Islamofascist strategy than London or Madrid, Beslan or Istanbul. The jihad has held out against some tough enemies: the Israelis in the West Bank, the Russians in Chechnya; these are primal conflicts. But what's the beef in Bali? Oh, to be sure, to the more fastidious Islamist some of those decadent hedonist fornicating Westerners whooping it up are a little offensive. But they'd be offensive whoever they were and whatever they did. It's the reality of a pluralist enclave within the world's largest Muslim nation that offends. It's the coexistence, stupid.
[Blocked Ads]
So even Muslims v (your team here) doesn't quite cover it. You don't have to have a team or even be aware that you belong to any side. You can be a hippie-dippy hey-man-I-love-everybody-whatever-your-bag-is-cool backpacking Dutch stoner, and they'll blow you up with as much enthusiasm as if you were Dick Cheney. As a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden put it in 2002, explaining why they bombed a French oil tanker: "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels."
No problem. In our time, even the most fascistic ideologies have been savvy enough to cover their darker impulses in sappy labels. The Soviet bloc was comprised of wall-to-wall "people's republics", which is the precise opposite of what they were: a stylistic audacity Orwell caught perfectly in 1984, with its Ministry of Truth (that is, official lies). But the Islamists don't even bother going through the traditional rhetorical feints. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. "We are here as on a darkling plain ..." wrote Matthew Arnold in the famous concluding lines to Dover Beach, "where ignorant armies clash by night".
But we choose in large part to stay in ignorance. Blow up the London Underground during a G8 summit and the world's leaders twitter about how tragic and ironic it is that this should have happened just as they're taking steps to deal with the issues, as though the terrorists are upset about poverty in Africa and global warming.
So, even in a great blinding flash of clarity, we can't wait to switch the lights off and go back to fumbling around on the darkling plain. Bali three years ago and Bali three days ago light up the sky: they make unavoidable the truth that Islamism is a classic "armed doctrine"; it exists to destroy. The reality of Bali's contribution to Indonesia's economic health is irrelevant. The jihadists would rather that the country be poorer and purer than prosperous and pluralist. For one thing, it's richer soil for them. If the Islamofascists gain formal control of Indonesia, it won't be a parochial, self-absorbed dictatorship such as Suharto's but a launching pad for an Islamic superstate across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Can they pull it off? The reality is that there are more Muslim states than a half-century ago, many more Muslims within non-Muslim states, and many more of those Muslims are radicalised and fundamentalist. It's not hard to understand. All you have to do is take them at their word. As Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gottingen University in Germany, said in an interesting speech a few months after September 11, "Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms, these mean different things to each of them. The word peace, for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or House of Islam -- to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought. Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar a-Salam, or House of Peace."
That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies inruins.
Mark Steyn, a columnist with the Telegraph Group, is a regular contributor to The Australian's Opinion page.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
