Wednesday, May 29, 2002
[posted by jaed at 8:24 PM]Looking into the crystal ball:
The Telegraph reports on the visit of Leila Khaled to Britain to speak. You remember Khaled - she was a plane hijacker three decades ago, and is responsible for several deaths. They invited her to speak at the House of Commons in January; this visit, she's telling something called "the School for Oriental and African Studies" that people who blow up babies are actually "freedom fighters".
Now let's set the Way Ahead Machine to 2007, and see what the future holds:
Reuters News Service -- London, England -- September 11 2007 -- Osama bin Laden, long suspected of complicity in the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, today spoke before the British House of Commons. Mr. bin Laden told the Members of Parliament that Britain has "much to atone for", and concluded his address by reading a poem of his own composition praising the suicide bomber who recently blew up an Israeli day-care center as "the pure one who brings liberation with his pristine body".
The US State Department called the speech "unhelpful" and "provocative"; however, the UK interior ministry issued a statement saying that "Honestly engaging perspectives such as Mr. bin Laden's is essential in the modern world" and "The Americans must learn that they cannot expect the rest of the world to follow their lead."
Mr. bin Laden is a respected figure within the terror group al Qaeda, which last month claimed responsibility for the smallpox attack that has thus far claimed 230,000 American lives. He is scheduled to speak on "Liberation and Jihad" to the School for Oriental and African Studies a week from now, and may speak at other meetings, though his spokesman describes the trip as "primarily a recruiting effort".
Anyone care to lay odds?
(Link via Little Green Footballs.)
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
[posted by jaed at 3:06 PM]blogspot annoyance
Testing, testing, one two three....
Thursday, May 09, 2002
[posted by jaed at 1:02 PM]Off the wall thought for today: Unite Arabia!
The more I learn about the aftermath of World War I, the more I admire the title David Fromkin chose for his book on the making of the modern Middle East: A Peace to End All Peace.
That's what it was, all right. The treaty of Versailles resulted, twenty years later, in a conflagration in Europe that exceeded the carnage of the Great War. In the Middle East, the French and British split up peoples, moved monarchs and tribal leaders around like so many pawns on a chessboard, and drew borders willy-nilly, because they were afraid Arab nationalism would pose a future danger to their interests.
Great. Look at what we have to deal with instead.
So I'm wondering, in high-handed imperialistic fashion: what if we redrew the borders in the Middle East, and undid some of these arbitrary disasters, with an eye to uniting the Arabs politically? It may seem like a startling idea, but think about it. A unified Arab economy would almost certainly be healthier than the current mix of extraction economies and remittance economies, and a healthy economy, while not a solution to everything, is less likely to breed monsters. A single state, with a single leadership, would be easier for us to deal with than the current squabbling bunch, almost certainly.
Best of all, we could rid ourselves (not to mention the Arabs) of the useless House of Saud, sponsors of terrorism and general makers of violent mischief. Jordan is, even now, much better off than Saudi Arabia - more healthy economy (despite the fact that oil makes Saudi Arabia richer), more democratic institutions, more public participation in government, less general religious insanity. Put the Hashemites back on the throne of Arabia (which is, after all, where they came from, before the British peeled off a piece of the Mandate as a consolation prize for the Hashemite kings after giving Arabia to the Sauds), help establish a constitutional monarchy, and dump the Sauds in the nearest trash receptacle.
In the aftermath of WWII, we undid the disaster that was the Treaty of Versailles - and as a result we have a peaceable and prosperous Germany which has shown no signs of wanting to make war again. Is it possible to have a peaceful and prosperous Arab world that likewise does not want to kill people? Maybe it's time to think about undoing Picot-Sykes.
Thursday, May 02, 2002
[posted by jaed at 11:07 PM]The monster under the bed:
A 37-year-old British Jew speaks:
I could not imagine anything more fanciful than the idea that my countrymen might turn on me. I am the third generation of my family to be born here and as British as anyone. Israel is an idea, and a country, which I support; but it is a foreign country with whose citizens I have nothing more in common than a shared religion.
I now know different.
Yeah. The rest of us are starting to figure it out as well.
We didn't kill Nazism half a century ago. We thought we had. We thought this evil, at least, had been driven out of the world forever. There are plenty of other evils still active, but this particular toxin was dead, dead, dead.
But I've been reading about the synagogue burnings and Jews being beaten up on the streets in France. And the Saudis printing the blood libel. And some fool clergyman in Scotland deciding Easter was a good time to call the Israelis "Christ-killers" in the form of a mural. And Hamas talking openly about how many Jews they can kill, and no one sounding horrified or even surprised about that. And...and....
...and I am starting to feel the way Sigourney Weaver felt at the end of Alien when, safe in her emergency shuttle, having escaped from her ship, she suddenly noticed a shadow behind some machinery and saw the alien, still alive, uncoiling itself up from the floor, rising to nine feet in height and looking at her.
I'm starting to have the dreadful feeling that fifty-seven years ago, we didn't kill Nazism after all. It just went underground.
[posted by jaed at 9:32 PM]
MEMRI again delivers the Latest in Lunacy, Hot Off the Presses (and I swear their stuff is so crazy-sounding that I'd conclude MEMRI was a front designed to try to make the Arabs look bad were it not for the fact that a) I've never seen anyone question their translations and b) when I've been able to check, their material has always proven out)
... where was I... yes, MEMRI delivers us this time the words of one Father Manuel Musalam, a Palestinian Christian clergyman, on the message of Jesus:
You are loathsome! You are contemptible! You are cowards! � because you cannot carry the message of Jesus in your hearts. The message of Jesus is one of love, sacrifice, mercy, life, and manhood, and these Christians of the world have no mercy, no compassion, no manliness, no sacrifice.
(He's complaining here that the Christians of the West haven't forcibly prevented Israel from trying to end the Palestinian occupation and hostage-taking in the Church of the Nativity.) Now, the message of Jesus...
- Love, check.
- Sacrifice, gotcha.
- Mercy, all clear here.
- Life, OK.
- Manliness... full stop.
Manliness? Me-heap-big-man-you-do-what-I-say-ness? The importance of virility? Honor above all? Somehow I missed that.
But at the very least this is more evidence in support of the idea that the honor/shame culture of the Arabs is at the root of this mess - more specifically, of why the Arabs cannot get out of it, since all the available avenues are either impossible (actually defeating Israel militarily and killing them all) or too humiliating for the product of an honor culture to contemplate (making peace, after all this time of the rhetoric of genocide, when it will be obvious to all that peace is sought out of weakness). And further evidence - remember, this is a Christian clergyman identifying "manliness" as a core principle of Christianity - that it's a manifestation of Arab culture, not of Islam as such.
Bonus quote: Bishop Alex, head of the Roman Orthodox Bishopric of Gaza, said, "Real Christianity means love and harmony, and it exists only in Palestine and the Holy Land." Love and harmony. Only in Palestine. Hmmm. Is it something in the water that drives the people there to say things like this? The air? A heretofore-unknown psychotomimetic agent? Maybe the UN should make itself useful and send WHO officials instead of a UNHRC team.
Just a wealth of quotes here:
Perhaps the Church of the Nativity will be destroyed and turn into rubble. Bush, the head of the Christian rulers, will be responsible for what happens to it.
...not, of course, the people who actually destroy it and turn it into rubble. The disclaimer of responsibility sounds a familiar note.
There's much more, not excluding the Christ-killer libel, references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the existence - the existence! - of Israel as an "unforgiveable sin", sympathy for poor Pope Pius XII, traduced just because he was complicit in the Holocaust...
[posted by jaed at 12:29 PM]
Winds of Change proposes a memorial to the heroes who recaptured Flight 93 before it could be used as a guided missile:
The fitting memorial I imagine for my heroes would not sit in one place, but in many places. It would be something that every American could hope to visit - and would be available outside America as well. In its forms, it would match the variety of those on the plane. Yet it would convey the same message. E Pluribus Unum: from out of many, one. It would not just remind, it would teach. Preferably by quiet example. As they did.
Wednesday, May 01, 2002
[posted by jaed at 2:37 PM]The persistence of lies
The Washington Times reports that Al Fatah has concluded the Palestinian death toll at the battle in Jenin was 56. Which is about what I'd expected it to come out as. Israeli officials estimated about 50 a week ago; other groups are providing about the same numbers.
Nonetheless, I know that in future years, friends attacking Israel will point to the "massacre" of Jenin, in which "hundreds were killed" and "the whole city was destroyed", in excuse for the latest atrocities. Just like they point to the merciless and deliberate Israeli killing of the child Muhammed al-Durra (who was caught in a shootout with his father and was killed by a Palestinian bullet, but the lie persists anyway). Lies have a habit of doing that, when they're repeated and reinforced and exaggerated with every trip around the globe.
The Weekly Standard also comments, in an article worth reading if only for the headline:
THE JENIN PROBE ENDS
The United Nations, unhappy about the prospect of seeing Israel exonerated, decides not to investigate Jenin.