The future of the IslamOnline website [IOL] remains unclear. The assurances made by the website's administration, as well as those by its spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, have failed to dispel the ambiguities that have arisen as a result of the latest crisis. The IOL staff staged a sit-in at the IOL offices in Egypt in protest against unfair managerial decisions that they described as unjust. This protest was aimed at the al-Balagh Cultural Society, which is the Qatar-based financial sponsor of IOL.
Analysis on the background and causes behind the crisis at the world's most popular Islamic website vary. Some believe that behind the crisis is an Egyptian-Qatari dispute over the management of the website. While others believe the crisis is due to the disturbance over the site taking a more hard-line and conservative approach. A third group even believes that this may have something to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, and that the US has played an undisclosed role in this crisis.
Whatever the case may be, this is a crisis that raises a question that relates to all aspects of Islam in the post-9/11 era; what kind of media for what kind of Islam after more than a decade of crises where politicians, philosophers, and activists have explored and analyzed everything connected to Islam to the point that the media is leaning towards irrational fear rather than towards research and knowledge?
It goes without saying that we live in a world that has grown more obsessed about religion and its interconnection with politics. Perhaps Islam, following the spread of armed Jihadist groups, has become the chief but not the sole subject of such controversy. Religion has become a global obsession as religious groups and sects have started to bring all their concerns to the internet. The internet, which is the most important invention in modern times, has allowed for the revival of religion. Religion is no longer about outdated ceremonies and tales that have no connection to their surroundings. The internet has increased the opportunity for there to be meetings and dialogue between groups, which we never imagined before and the internet has also contributed to the isolation of groups and trends that have become overly focused and centred on their websites. IOL presents itself as a site that presents Islam and Islamic issues around the world. So is the controversy at IOL an internal Islamic controversy?
Who can specify the identity of IOL?! Who can identify the kind of Islam this website presents to its audience?
This matter has been subject to as much debate as the idea of confronting Islamic extremism with moderation...in some cases the site presents issues in a moderate context, but in other cases IOL presents issues in an extremist manner.
Who sets the standards for moderation or extremism here?
It is obvious that we need some kind of measuring system that we are already lacking. The bottom line is that IOL is suffering a setback, but the discussion surrounding this is unclear and is taking place behind closed doors. Perhaps what we need is a measure of transparency in order to discover what kind of controversy has taken place at IOL, and this is something that we definitely need to order to state that IOL is a moderate site.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Moreover, what is the use of having islam as a religion?
86% believe it to be a sham. Why shall we embrace it?
There is no such thing as a "last prophet" and even if, mohammed was just a messenger.
Whats the difference? One sends a message, and the other already did that and warned against the false prophet mohammed before he was even born. Funny how things work out.
Now 1 billion idiots follow that foolish "messenger" from an arab moon god?
Like reading Iran Press, the WaPo tells us wehat the enemy is thinking.
The angry faces at Tea Party rallies are eerily familiar. They resemble faces of protesters lining the street at the University of Alabama in 1956 as Autherine Lucy, the school's first black student, bravely tried to walk to class. Those same jeering faces could be seen gathered around the Arkansas National Guard troopers who blocked nine black children from entering Little Rock's Central High School in 1957.
Those were the faces I saw at a David Duke rally in Metairie, La., in 1991: sullen with resentment, wallowing in victimhood, then exploding with yells of excitement as the ex-Klansman and Republican gubernatorial candidate spewed vitriolic white-power rhetoric.
They were spotted last weekend on Capitol Hill under the Tea Party banner protesting the health-care-reform bill. Some carried a signs that read "If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can." Some shouted racial and homophobic epithets at members of Congress. Others assumed the role of rabble, responding to the calls of instigating Republican representatives gathered on a Capitol balcony.
Tea Party members, as with their forerunners who showed up at the University of Alabama and Central High School, behave as they do because they have been culturally conditioned to believe they are entitled to do whatever they want, and to whomever they want, because they are the "real Americans," while all who don't think or look like them are not.
And they are consequential. Without folks like them, there would be no Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Pat Buchanan. There would never have been a George Corley Wallace, the Alabama governor dubbed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter in a 2008 Slate article as "the godfather, avatar of a national uprising against the three G's of government, Godlessness, and gun control." Who shot Wallace, anyway, a John Bircher?
Hence, an explanation for the familiarity of faces: today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies. They, like Wallace's followers, smolder with anger. They fear they are being driven from their rightful place in America. Well, he got that part right.
They see the world through the eyes of the anti-civil rights alumni. "Washington, D.C." now, as then, is regarded as the Great Satan. This is the place that created the civil rights and health care laws that were shoved down their throats. This is the birthplace of their much-feared "Big Government" and the playground of the "elite national news media." Sorry, Colbert, we're angry about the most recent bill shoved down our throats, not the ones of 40 years ago. Aren't there any tea partiers born after 1965?
And they are faithful to the old Wallace playbook.
McWhorter wrote how Wallace, in a 1963 speech to the political arm of Alabama's Ku Klux Klan, "referred to the recent bombings in Birmingham against prominent black citizens, citing the lack of fatalities as proof that the 'nigras' were throwing the dynamite themselves in order to attract publicity and money."
Fast-forward to today. Note the pro-Tea Party conservative commentary debunking last weekend's racist and homophobic slurs as a work of fiction and exaggeration strictly for political reasons. Noticeable, too, is the influence of George Wallace, Limbaugh, Beck and their followers on outcomes.
The angry '50s and '60s crowds threatened and intimidated; some among them even murdered. That notwithstanding, Americans of goodwill gathered in the White House to witness the signing of landmark civil rights laws.
Schoolhouse doors were blocked, and little children were demeaned. Yet the bigots didn't get the last word. Justice rolled down like a mighty river, sweeping them aside.
They insulted, abused, lied and vandalized. Still, President Obama fulfilled his promise to sign historic health-care reform into law by the end of his first term.
Those angry faces won't go away. But neither can they stand in the way of progress.
The mobs of yesteryear were on the wrong side of history. Tea Party supporters and their right-wing fellow travelers are on the wrong side now. It shows up in their faces. Talk to me in November, Colbert. We'll see who's on the wrong side. It shows in your writing.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/27/2010 16:19 ||
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#1
Yawn. Yet another hit piece comparing people that the Obamaklatura doesn't like with the KKK and George Wallace. You'd almost think there was some kind of official talking points being circulated by someone in the Administration.....(/sarc off)
Anyway, if there was someone at the GOP leadership who was remotely aware of history, they would issue a press release or something to remind people that Gov. Wallace was a Democrat, and that the senior Dem senator from WV is/was a Grand Kleagle. They could toss in the fact that the Civil Rights Act was mainly passed with Republican votes, too. But I guess I expect too much from that gang o' twits.
#3
Andrew Breitbart, of the outing of ACORN, is offering $10,000 for any picture, video, recording of proof of any racial or homophobic epithets. Last I heard, none have come forward.
Alex, I'll take "Famous Racial Slurs" for $10,000."
#5
This is lower primate behavior. They're pumping themselves up with rhetoric to get the hormones flowing to overcome basic survival instinct before they do something real stupid. That's what's behind all the demonetization displays frothing from their orifices. When they break the leash on the object of their scorn, its not going to be pretty. Everyone else, just remember the words of Captain Parker at Lexington - "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
#6
Forgive me for dredging up old history, but the political base of the Klan was essentially Southern Democrats. You know, those people that opposed all that icky civil rights legislation.
#7
True Steve S. It wasn't called the Solid South fer nuthin. Solid Democrat. My how truth gets twisted.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/27/2010 19:45 Comments ||
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Colbert I King wrote this hit piece? Had I not looked I would have thought anyone of the following might have been drooling venom: Janeane Garofalo, Bill Maher, Keith Olbemann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow; the usual suspects. King, in his comparisons, has stuffed a diverse group of people into one neat package. I would say King is a racist or maybe just a cheap bigoted word merchant trying to make a deadline.
#9
Forgive me for dredging up old history, but the political base of the Klan was essentially Southern Democrats.
That is absolutely correct! Every time my former Leftist friend rolls out the: "Where are your Robes and Hood?" comments, I just lay that fact on him. Makes his head spin like a top...Exorcist style. Liberals hate the truth, especially when there is no counter for it. Well...except the racist accusation, but that doesn't carry any weight anymore.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/27/2010 22:01 Comments ||
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#10
Every time my former Leftist friend... = Every time a Leftist former friend...
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/27/2010 22:03 Comments ||
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Let me know when the NAACP decorates Union veteran's graves on Memorial Day.
#12
It was largely southern Democrats who passed the Jim Crow laws also. Senator Byrd, a Democrat was formerly a member of the Klan. The left compared Bush with Hitler too. They spew a lot of venom and hatred to achieve their ends. It is probably a case of projection on their part. The left keeps getting more left it seems. In my lifetime, I cannot recall the level of lies taking place in national politics as today. George Bush the elder did not get a second term because he said "Watch my lips; no new taxes." He proceeded to raise taxes and got dumped by the voters. BO is the master of spin, distortion, false promises and fabrications. Nancy Pelosi is no piker in this department either. Throw Harry Reid into that pot also. It seems like a large number of our population is willing to tolerate such behavior. We would not tolerate such behavior in our children or our friends. Truth is existential with this crowd.
Nearly everybody agrees, President Barack Obama "made history" by ushering healthcare reform into law. General Custer "made history," too... In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait offered the admittedly "ludicrously premature opinion" that "Barack Obama has sealed his reputation as a president of great historical import." Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne called it a "moment of history, a culmination of the legacies of Truman and Franklin Roosevelt."
A news analysis in the New York Times explained that Obama "will go down in history as one of the handful of presidents who found a way to reshape the nation's social welfare system," though admitted that it could conceivably cost Democrats control of Congress. Joshua Green didn't dispute that judgment in the Atlantic, adding only that "history" will remember Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi kindly as well.
Great but, what the devil does that mean? History is a word that contains galaxies. History can mean an account of things past, sometimes of dubious veracity. The very cynical Devil's Dictionary defines it as "an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools" (and historians as "broad-gauge gossips").
Or history can mean altogether different things having to do with the future. The conservative magazine National Review announced its intention to "stand athwart history yelling stop" in the very first issue - a statement that has been widely misunderstood. The editors were not announcing their intention to stop recording the past, or turn back the clock, or freeze in place the status quo. The Soviets claimed that "history" or "historical forces" were on their side. American anti-Communists were simply disputing the claim. "End the end, we will bury him," said William F. Buckley Jr. of Nikita Khrushchev when the Soviet leader was visiting America.
The point here is not to call Barack Obama a Communist but to show the absurd uses - the malevolent causes - that the word "history" can be put to by ideologues. Granted, by saying that Obama "made history" we can simply mean that he managed to get difficult legislation through Congress against overwhelming odds and that he managed to succeed where past Democratic presidents have failed. If the Guinness Book of World Records recognized "passing difficult legislation" as a category, he'd probably belong there. I'd even nominate him for such a prize.
Yet that's not really the point of the many liberals praising Obama's "historic achievement" right now. Rather, they are trying to render this achievement beyond mere politics and thus beyond challenge. They are asserting without really arguing that this is an irreversible step in America's pre-determined Progress from a rowdy frontier democracy to a more civilized European style nation. They are saying that whatever else our president does or does not accomplish, this will stand, because it cannot fall.
Maybe, maybe not, but to pull Obama's healthcare reform into the broader sweep of history seems premature. It first has to survive multiple challenges in the Supreme Court, a majority of whose justices the president recently insulted. Then it has to survive the wrath of American voters, a clear majority of whom opposed the legislation. Obama's party will head into the election having cast a deeply unpopular vote in an awful economy. There are already early indicators that those voters' insurance premiums will be skyrocketing, and they aren't likely to be reassured by talk of an "historic" achievement.
If the Democrats lose their majorities in one or both chambers of Congress this November, if they lose the presidency in 2012, if Obamacare is struck down by the courts, or repealed, or radically altered, then Obama will indeed have made history. However it will not be the kind of history that Chait, Dionne, the New York Times and other left wing cheerleaders have in mind.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
The issue is who and why they decided to vote for a communist moslem, pelosi, reid, franks, et-al.
The problem is far deeper than anyone may grasp.
There is no education in the US anymore. And no one cares to learn. Not even some elders.
Unplesant truth is driving the wise away. Call them back into THIS HOUSE.
#3
A news analysis in the New York Times explained that Obama "will go down in history as one of the handful of presidents who found a way to reshape the nation's social welfare system,"
"Reshaping social welfare".....? But wait! I thought he was fixing healthcare?
#4
His historic recognition will be that of the most polarizing political figure of all the American Presidents, and as that of the man who destroyed the modern democratic party for a generation or longer. As the scales fall from hte American People's eyes and they see what a POS they have elected, and the utter devastation he is wreaking, we cannot quickly enough vote his party out of power, and elect a Congress that can defund his policies and oppose him at every turn. For conservatives, it is time to lose our natural manner, moderation and restraint, and (within the law, and peacefully) go Roman on this jerk and the democratic party nationwide. Absent this level of commitment, the Republic will slip into faded memories and USSA will solidify in place.
#5
BO and his party will go down in history as having absolutely wrecked our American economy. Just for example, I saw an estimate in our paper that the recent health care bill that was ramrodded through congress (without bi-partisan support) will cost $100 million annually. This estimate is most likely way, way low. Even at that, my simple math indicates that $100 billion spread across 300 million people amounts to $333 per every man, woman, and child in this country in tax money. Since some of these men, women and children don't work because the mom or dad stays at home and takes care of the kids or for some other reason, the per person cost is much higher. And also consider that some people just won't work. Since the government doesn't produce any wealth, that is a cost to the taxpayers as I see it. When you throw everything else in that the government pays for via taxpayer money, our government is like a crack addict trying to feed a habit; the habit is spending our money and looking for more and more. This bunch of idiots really do not like private business or industry. We are on our way to becoming Venezuela, Cuba, or Mexico unless we vote them out of office in November 2010 and November 2012.
#6
Fastest drop in the polls of any politician in history. The Anti-Bush whose first year showed the opposite trend (thanks to 9/11).
I believe political pundits will look back at the Obama election as a fluke. A combination of Bush hatred and exhaustion, combined with the more generic throw the bums out feeling that comes around from time to time, mixed with the historic possibility of the First Black President and a cheerleading Media who refused to ask many questions.
Obama/Palin will be seen as the Nadir of politics. The two least qualified politicians to ever face off against each other (Okay they weren't technically against each other but they got more press than the other two guys) with partisans trying to convince people that that lack of qualifications is actually an asset.
#1
Must have been a CNN hacker or wannabe, cause we all know that the CRU of the University of East Anglia files were hacked not leaked. Or is it when its something the MSM touches, its leaked vice when its something that appears on the net, it's hacked. /sarc off
#2
On Wednesday, CNNs Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr reported on multiple, highly sensitive documents that had been provided to CNN and which detail valuable, strategic intelligence gathered by the Department of Defense in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It should come as no surprise that Starr made sure to highlight all of the juicy details. She not only revealed U.S. knowledge of a covert meeting between Hamid Karzais brother and Mullah Baradar (a top Taliban leader who was later arrested in Pakistan), as well as a secret audio message played to Taliban commanders from reclusive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, but she went on to inform the entire world that the United States has a safe house in Kabul (used by members of the Haqqani terror network) currently under surveillance.
#4
luckily it was on CNN, so it wasn't widely seen
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/27/2010 15:00 Comments ||
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Interesting that President Obama's DoD doesn't get a pass from CNN. And as Frank G. says, not many will have seen it. But, will the New York Times, et al, pick up on the story?
#6
Jesu, Joseph and Mary, when will we arrest and prosecute people, the leaker and the reporter, for doing this? God only knows what lives were risked or lost for this stupid bi*ch to get a story.
If you think about it, much of the money that has built small pockets of affluence across Pakistan has its origins overseas. Ranging from heroin to exported workers, and from cash skimmed off arms deals to diverted aid, many fortunes in Pakistan rest on illegal foundations.
This is why the Pakistani ruling elites are forever on the prowl for new cash cows abroad. The United States, being the richest country in the world, is an obvious target. Luckily for us, American interests in the region bring this particular cow to the milking shed at regular intervals. And when, as happened after the American cow wandered off for a while when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, our rulers went into a terminal sulk with our perennial benefactors.
According to the theory of the rentier state, when a country derives most of its funds from abroad, it becomes disconnected from the wider society, and tends to become autocratic. This model is generally applied to oil-rich states in the Middle East and Africa to explain why the people of many of these countries remain so poor despite their immense oil reserves.
While Pakistan does not possess much oil, its location has given it leverage in the West that its rulers have exploited skilfully over the years. During the Cold War between the US and the USSR, it was accorded frontline status, and signed up to a number of anti-communist alliances. These pacts swelled our arsenals as well as the self-esteem of our generals. But after decades of being on the frontline and receiving billions of dollars worth of aid, there is little to show for it in terms of enhanced security or prosperity.
One problem with the rentier state is that it does not need to have an effective tax system to generate funds to sustain its rulers. Nor does it have to internalise and inculcate the virtues of hard work. True, the masses have to sweat just to keep body and soul together, but the state does not feel the need to provide a decent education or healthcare to its citizens. After all, the rulers send their children to private schools, and have private hospitals to tend to their maladies.
In this warped socio-economic scenario, the role model is the feudal who lives off the labour of his wretched haris. In a sense, Pakistan is an extended jagir where landlords and warlords live well while the vast majority scramble to achieve a hand-to mouth existence.
One reason the Kerry-Lugar Act has provoked so much opposition among the ruling elites is that it threatens to subvert a system that has worked well for them for so many years. By trying to get money directly to neglected areas like education and health, and bypassing sticky official fingers as well as the international consultancy mafia, the Americans have made many privileged Pakistanis nervous. For all their lofty talk about sovereignty and national honour, the bottom line is always about money, and who gets it.
Access to scarce resources reveals a lot about power and its distribution. In Pakistan, the military has traditionally devoured the bulk of our budgetary allocations, and the fact that military spending remains opaque, and those responsible largely unaccountable to parliament, says a lot about who's in charge. This fact of life was hammered home by Gen Kayani's prominent role in the current strategic dialogue' between the United States and Pakistan. He went along to make sure the military got its rightful share of the goodies about to flow from Washington.
In an incisive article about US aid, Mosharraf Zaidi wrote recently in a newspaper that the Pakistani wish-list carried by our team included power projects worth $647m. In the pipeline are F-16s worth $720m. As a Pakistani, he said he'd much rather have the former, and so would I. However, as a betting man, I think the chances of getting the jet fighters are far higher.
From the American perspective, it must be galling to see so much anti-American sentiment in a country in which they have sunk so much money over the years. However, they must realise that the public does not get to see the military hardware that has formed the bulk of their assistance. What matters is how aid touches the lives of ordinary people, and in our case, the answer is very little.
Another problem with this high volume of arms assistance is that it allows policy planners to adopt stances that would not be sustainable had they needed to find the resources internally. Grandiose dreams of strategic depth', and of flying the Pakistani flag over Delhi would have seen those who talked about them being frog-marched to the loony bin. Presently, however, they are given slots on TV.
There has been much talk in Washington recently about how our relationship will be transformed into a partnership. But a partnership implies equality, and the question to ask is what are we doing for America? True, we are fighting an enemy that often attacks Nato troops across the border in Afghanistan. But this is a war we must fight and win for our own survival, irrespective of American aid, or the presence of US troops in Afghanistan.
Years ago, a friend told me about a business trip to China where he had a meeting with an official. After the initial pleasantries, the bureaucrat said to the Pakistani businessman: I'd like to be your friend.' Congratulating himself for the swift progress he had made in breaking the ice, my friend eagerly echoed the sentiment. Ah,' said the Chinese official sadly, pointing at the ceiling. But you are up there financially, and I'm down here. We can only be friends if you can raise me to your level so I can be your equal.'
As a demand for a bribe, I have seldom heard of a more elegantly phrased one. And while the Pakistani people cannot dream of being elevated to the high levels of American affluence, that is certainly the aspiration of our elites.
I remember a popular sign painted behind trucks and taxis in the 1990s: Dalar ki talaash' (searching for dollars'). Perhaps this can be our national slogan.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/27/2010 09:17 ||
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NB: originally posted at Rantburg, May 24, 2009; reposted today given the antagonism between Barack Obama and Israel, and the desire of the progressive Left to see Israel eliminated.
There has been considerable talk recently of a two-state' solution to the problem of the Middle East. The sixty years of bad blood between Israel and the Arab states is supposed to be brought to an end by creation of a homeland for the Palestinian Arabs, a Palestine', a state equal to Israel in which the descendants of the land will live.
That homeland is supposed to include, at a minimum, the West Bank, the Gaza district, and East Jerusalem. Some more vocal and, dare we say, progressive', advocates demand some sort of connection between Gaza and the West Bank (that this would bisect the Jewish state is of no major consequence), so that the citizens of the new Palestinian state could travel throughout their land without being hassled by the Israelis. Even more radical voices demand that Israel also accept what is called, as a code phrase, a right of return'; that is, the acceptance of the descendants of the Arabs who originally populated parts of the Israeli lands who fled at the time of the 1948 war. These descendants would not be subject to Israeli law, though they would live inside Israel, but rather would answer to the rulers of the new Palestinian state.
People in the West see such a state as the price Israel must pay to have peace'. What peace is supposed to be generally is fuzzy in the details, but at a minimum it means some form of recognition for Israel's right to exist by the Arab states with an end to overt hostilities. It might or might not include formal diplomatic recognition, less likely will include trade and economic links, almost certainly will not include any diminution in the vitriol that currently comes out of the more respected mosques throughout the Arab world, and only in fantasy would result in an end of hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians.
Governments in the West, particularly in Brussels and Washington, have over the years bought into the supposed peace that a two-state' solution would bring without publicly acknowledging, let alone examining, what the second state would look like. The world news media bangs a drum that says, simply and in line with their education from the progressive left, in turn thoroughly infiltrated by Palestinian agitators, that the Palestinians have been robbed and repressed, lacking only opportunity in their quest for a state of their own. Neither the political or media spheres talk about what the two states would look like or how they would co-exist; the focus has been on the political wrangling.
So what do the two states look like?
We already know what the first state looks like: that state is Israel. Israel is a vibrant, liberal democracy with periodic elections and changes in government. Israel is western-oriented in its mores and culture. Its people speak not only a national language but also the languages of the west. It has a legal code, courts, and redress for its citizens. Israel is by no means perfect, but it shares all the attributes of a modern, western nation.
We know what the first state looks like.
What would the second state, Palestine, look like?
We know that too.
We have several examples. The first is Jordan, the Hashemite kingdom that was supposed to be a Palestinian state when it was created by UN mandate in 1948. The UN installed a royal family which keeps its power today by employing the usual tricks of a modern Arab state: a repressive secret police, court intrigue and massive corruption. Jordan survives today only because the only country that would kill it, Syria, is in even-worse shape. Jordan is filled with unemployed young men who would rather pledge their support to Osama bin Laden than to their king'.
The second example is the Palestinian Authority, perhaps the most laughable name in governance on the planet today. The Authority devolved, and that's the correct word, from Fatah and the PLO. It exists today because Israel, the European Union and the United States maintain the Authority as a fiction for a Palestinian state. It has thrown away every dollar in foreign investment, destroyed everything it can touch, and terrorized any person with a whiff of spirit, independence and business-sense. The Palestinian Christians have fled, and the men who remain work either for the Authority that is to say, for the various gangs and militias or the UNRWA, which means they do nothing.
The third example is, of course, Hamastan', or Gaza, controlled by the Hamas Party which in turn is controlled by Iran. After wresting control of the district from the out-gunned and poorly-led Fatah, they have implemented hell on earth. Every bit of decent housing, industry, greenhouses, public buildings and basic sanitation has been ruined. Every decent person has been cowed, beaten, or murdered. Gaza is a disaster, and one that has been created deliberately by the thugs in Hamas who are in charge.
Even worse from the standpoint of a two-state' solution, Gaza has been a launching point, literally, for attacks on Israel. Israeli towns around the district are now uninhabitable due to the Qassam rocket attacks, and Hamas is obtaining longer-range rockets to extend their kill radius. Israel is to blame, of course, as the world-press lectures it about retaliating against people who mean to kill them. Israel has retaliated anyway, in ways large and small, without blunting the desire of the Gazans, fanned by the Hamas leaders, for an eventual dire revenge.
That is what a Palestinian state would look like in a two-state' solution.
It does not matter that the U.S. and E.U. would pledge more money to build a new Palestinian state. The thugs in charge of Palestine would spend the money on themselves, on arms, and towards their safety stashes in banks around the world. Whatever money that actually made it to the people of the new state would be a pittance, designed to keep them bound to a feudal and patronage system. Money really is control in the Palestinian lands, and so it will be used in the new state.
It does not matter that the U.N. would pledge more assistance. What the UNRWA has done so far would cause a normal person to thank the U.N. for any pledge and then back away. The refugee camps', home to people who now count grandchildren and great-grandchildren as refugees', are among the worst slums on earth thanks to the U.N. A new Palestinian state will be more of the same, as no person with any independence will be allowed to create anything decent.
It does not matter what political structure might be promised. Yasser Arafat, the old terrorist who wrecked many a peace' deal, demonstrated the callowness of Palestinian politics over the decades. A new Palestinian state will be, at first, anarchy, then civil war, than a satrapy. If one were to handicap the horse-race now, Hamas would be the clear favorite, as they have the will, the Iranian money and weapons, and the clearest vision of what should be. They would win the battle and install their vision of a Palestinian state.
That would be Hamastan, version two, larger, more volatile, and more dangerous to Israel, the region, and the world peace' fervently desired by so many. A new Palestinian state would continue to take funds from the E.U., U.S., and U.N. It would continue the presence of the UNRWA. To do otherwise would commit them to building a country, and that is the last thing Hamas wants.
What is their vision? To understand that, one need simply read their charter.
Hamas does not want a two-state' solution. They want a one-state solution, their state, all of Palestine', with Israel extinguished and its citizens dead or deported. Their state will be an Islamic one with a small cabal of religious thugs in charge. Democracy need not apply; it is un-Islamic.
Israel, in their vision, is an infidel state whose very existence is an affront to Islam as defined by Hamas, by Iran, and by the Palestinian men and women who carry guns and bombs. No Palestinian leader will ever acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. Indeed, recent offers by Hamas, called a truce' proposal in the western press, are correctly read as a hudna': an Arabic word that means a cessation of hostility only long enough for the Palestinians to gather their strength for a new attack.
The Palestinians have never been able to stand successfully against Israel in any conventional conflict so they have adopted the ways and values of terrorism. The short-term goal of terrorism is to terrorize, the long-term goal is to conquer. Accommodation with Israel is neither possible nor desired. The politicians and journalists of the West do not understand and thus continue to offer the Palestinians various bribes and deals. Thank you, the Palestinians will say, and then will terrorize some more. Whatever idealism (or not) that started the Palestinian movement, the movement today is run by armed gangs and thugs who derive their power and support from being terrorists. Like the scorpion on the back of the frog, it is what they do.
The two-state' solution therefore is not a formula for peace and stability in the Middle East. It simply shifts the battlefield against Israel. Imagine the two states side-by-side. One splinter' group inside Hamastan (for that will be the practical reality of the Palestinian state) launches rockets into Israel. Israel responds with air strikes. Who will the world blame? We already know the answer to that from reading the world press today.
Israel cannot win that kind of war. It has survived today because its enemies have never united, and because the West has recognized that Israel is one of them and has afforded it trade, recognition and weapons for defense. A new Hamastan that unites the West Bank and Gaza under one leadership, combined with ever-increasing pressure from the left-progressive West, makes Israel a long-term losing proposition, and that is without considering the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
The two-state' solution is an idiocy promulgated by western leaders who wish a problem to go away without understanding the nature of the problem. It is a stepping-stone on the way to the final destruction of Israel and the deaths of millions of Jews. Accepting the two-state' solution requires one to be uncaring and unsympathetic to the fate of Israel.
That, in the end, would require the West to be unsympathetic to its own fate. And that, as it turns out, is one of the central issues on which the far-left and far-right agree.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/27/2010 09:37 ||
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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.
Those were the faces I saw at a David Duke rally in Metairie, La., in 1991: sullen with resentment, wallowing in victimhood, then exploding with yells of excitement as the ex-Klansman and Republican gubernatorial candidate spewed vitriolic white-power rhetoric. 
In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait offered the admittedly "ludicrously premature opinion" that "Barack Obama has sealed his reputation as a president of great historical import." Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne called it a "moment of history, a culmination of the legacies of Truman and Franklin Roosevelt."
