By Lieutenant Colonel (Rtd) Idris Hassan. I refer to the Malaysiakini report Of noisy Indians and 'keling' blood: Utusan strikes again. The attacking of fellow Malaysians by the mainstream media Utusan Malaysia because of their race is unwarranted and most uncalled for. I remember in the late forties when I was a little boy living in my hometown of Raub, Pahang.

I used to pass road gangs of Tamil labourers toiling in the midday's scorching sun from dawn till dusk. Armed with only picks and shovels, they would be hacking at solid rocks to carve out roads along the mountain side.

They had no proper attire, just a withered white towel tied in turban form on their heads. They would wrap rags around their spindly legs to prevent the hot molten tar from scalding them as they went about their chores.

Yet they had time to smile and wave at passing cars. They used to be referred to as 'coolies' and their slave-like living quarters as coolie lines. My late father used to tell us that most of the roads in Malaya at the turn of the century were built solely by Indian labour.


They toiled in the malaria-infested rubber estates, living with their families in filthy inhuman conditions. The white 'tuan' treated them like slaves and allowed them to indulge in drinking toddy to forget their woes .

Yet again it was the same coolies called 'toties' who serviced our bucket system latrines until the early sixties as there were no takers for this job from the other races. I have seen for myself these 'toties' cleaning the rubber tubs at a stream not far from my house with their bare hands.

In short, when there was any dirty, menial job to be done, it was this Tamil coolie, then often called by the derogatory term 'keling', that did it for us.

Now times have changed and their offsprings have made much progress in all fields and want to take their rightful place in our society .Let's not pour scorn on them and laugh away their pride.

As a soldier I know that many of my Indian/Tamil friends who fought and died for this country . They all are a part of those who stood by us during the good and bad times, they have helped make this country great.

A country which rightfully belongs to all Malaysians.Malaysiakini

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of 'SixthSense' technology

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop". Can the Arab world come out with something like this? I for one, do not think so. Not in a hundred years. Arabs are more adept at destroying and stifling the creativity of mankind. People like Pranav Mistry would be charged for witchcraft and beheaded. Yes, they are very adept at suicide bombing.

I'm waiting to hear of some serious Arab and UN protests against this apartheid wall and brutal Egyptian blockade of Gaza, like anytime now. Just like they constantly protest against the Israeli separation wall.

(Haaretz) Egypt has begun the construction of a massive iron wall along its border with the Gaza Strip, in a bid to shut down smuggling tunnels into the territory. The wall will be nine to 10 kilometers long, and will go 20 to 30 meters into the ground, Egyptian sources said. It will be impossible to cut or melt.

And nobody whines about the hardships the Palestinians will have to endure because of this illegal separation wall.

The new plan is the latest move by Egypt to step up its counter-smuggling efforts. Although some progress had been made, the smuggling market in Gaza still flourishes.Egyptian forces demolish tunnels or fill them with gas almost every week, often with people still inside them, and Palestinian casualties in the tunnels have been steadily rising.

So the Egyptians use poison gas on Palestinians. Have anyone ever heard of Arabs accusing Egypt of crimes against humanity? Where the hell is Goldstone when you need him? Where is the International Solidarity Movement? Blatant hypocrisy again? What is it with Ayyraabs and hypocrisy? Hat tip:Eye On The World

Muslims need to look within themselves, instead of playing victims. "Saudi scholars slam Swiss minaret ban"-Gulf News by Abdul Rahman Shahee. Several prominent Saudi Islamic scholars and preachers lambasted the recent Swiss referendum to impose ban on the construction of mosque minarets in the country. This people are from a country where other religions are not allowed houses of worship and worshipping in the open could get you into serious trouble, is that not sheer hypocrisy? Carrying a cross or a crucifix could land you in the slammer. How do you say 'hyopcrisy' in Ayyraab?

Then the gall of the enemy of free speech , the Secretary General of OIC, which groups 57 Muslim countries, qualified the ban as an unfortunate development that would tarnish the image of Switzerland as a country upholding respect for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights, in that same news. Is that not hypocrisy, again? Do Ayyraabs have an inkling or understanding of the word hypocrisy? Is it in their dictionary at all, that they can condemn the Swiss with a straight face?

According to Iman Kurdi, writing in the Arab News: "And let’s not be hypocrites. If you held a referendum in a Muslim country asking whether the construction of new church steeples should be permitted, you are also likely to get an overwhelming no. So let us not brand this a Swiss phenomenon and let us also remember that it is not the majority of the Swiss population that supported the ban but the majority of those who voted, which if you do the maths comes to 30 percent of the population.”

First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar's first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary's priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: "The idea is to be discreet because we don't want to inflame any sensitivities."

What about the Church in Shah Alam, Malaysia, the Church of Divine Mercy? Remember, it took more than 20 years from 1977 to 2005 to build and it looks like a factory, religious symbols must be discreet, it is located in an industrial park. See image above.

And when the Christians of a town in Upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of "laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities," won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.

Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christians suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified "consequences" of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the Danish cartoon fracas of 2006.

Second, Europe stands at a crossroads with respect to its Muslim population. Of the three main future prospects – everyone getting along, Muslims dominating, or Muslims rejected – the first is highly improbable but the second and third seem equally possible. In this context, the Swiss vote represents a potentially important legitimation of anti-Islamic views. The vote inspired support across Europe, as signaled by online polling sponsored by the mainstream media and by statements from leading figures. Here follows a small sampling:

France: 49,000 readers at Le Figaro, by a 73-27 percent margin, would vote to ban new minarets in their country. 24,000 readers at L'Express agreed by an 86-12 percent margin, with 2 percent undecided. A leading columnist, Ivan Rioufol of Le Figaro, wrote an article titled "Homage to the Resistance of the Swiss People." President Nicolas Sarkozy was quoted as saying that "the people, in Switzerland as in France, don't want their country to change, that it be denatured. They want to keep their identity."

Germany: 29.000 readers at Der Spiegel voted 76-21 percent, with 2 percent undecided, to ban minarets in Germany. 17,000 readers of Die Welt voted 82-16 in favor of "Yes, I feel cramped by minarets" over "No, freedom of religion is constrained."

Spain: 14,000 readers of 20 Minutos voted 93-6 percent in favor of the statement "Good, we must curb Islamization's growing presence" and against "Bad, it is an obstacle to the integration of immigrants." 35,000 readers of El Mondo replied 80-20 percent that they support a Swiss-like banning of minarets.

Although not scientific, the lop-sidedness of these (and other) polls, ranging from 73 to 93 percent majorities endorsing the Swiss referendum, signal that Swiss voters represent growing anti-Islamic sentiments throughout Europe. The new amendment also validates and potentially encourages resistance to Islamization throughout the continent.

For these reasons, the Swiss vote represents a possible turning point for European Islam. Source....

During WWII, the death camp at Treblinka had an escape, causing the Commandant at a similar camp in Sobibor to vow (actually threaten) that his camp would never experience the same thing. But those who were its captives, the Jewish laborers that had been spared from the ovens, knew that they were on borrowed time and that their only hope was to escape... the only question was how to do it. However, because the Germans would kill an equal number of others whenever a group attempted to escape, the captives knew that if ever an escape was tried, all 600 prisoners in the camp would have to be included



... logistically precluding any ideas about tunnels or sneak breakouts. Indeed, to have such a mass escape could only mean that the Ukrainian guards and Germain officers would have to be killed, which many of the Jews felt simply reduced themselves to no better than their captors... thus making it a struggle of conscience. And therein lies the story, with the film being based on a factual account of what then happened at that Sobibor prison.

Well, this was an arresting opening, to an Associated Press report: “He compared al-Qaida in Iraq to wolves, urging that the terrorist group be crushed since he believed its members would never reject violence.

But the wolves got to the Iraqi counterterrorism officer first.”That officer was Ahmed Subhi al-Fahal, killed in a suicide bombing in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein’s old bastion). Killed along with him were two bodyguards and two bystanders. Al-Fahal was in his early 30s and apparently lived to eliminate violent extremists from his country. He claimed on al-Arabiya, the TV network, that he had killed more than 250 of al-Qaeda’s finest: not a bad haul.

And, according to the AP, “he was also thrown the most difficult missions. It was al-Fahal who was called in to track down 16 prisoners — including several al-Qaida-linked inmates awaiting execution — who escaped in a stunning September jailbreak . . .”

After al-Fahal’s death, an American colonel wrote, “He was controversial, flamboyant, brave, and effective. He single-handedly disrupted numerous enemy plots during the last election . . .”

Sounds like a very useful man, and it is no wonder that al-Qaeda is rejoicing over his death. May Iraq, for the sake of its possibility of life, have many more like him. National Review

A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance. By Tom Gross

It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. “Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground,” I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45-minute period the other evening.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I had spent that day in the West Bank’s largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life, and signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of covering the region.

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave, British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second-best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidah’s office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.- Mahathir, you did not know that, even if you knew, you will spin that accordingly, which is anti-semitism)

Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus’s gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.

Wandering around downtown Nablus, the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I’ve seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

And perhaps most important of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of Pres. George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank, and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring. (There was one border post on the return leg of the journey, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the young female guard just waved me and the two Palestinians I was traveling with through.)

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d’Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships, and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first-ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Two weeks ago, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

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"Turkey Objects to Assyrian Genocide Monument in Australia," from AINA, December 6:

Fairfield, Australia (AINA) -- A proposed Assyrian genocide monument has drawn the Turkish government into the debate. The monument, proposed to the NSW Parliament by MP Ninos Khoshaba, would honor the Assyrian victims of genocide in the 20th century, particularly the Turkish genocide of Assyrians in World War One, in which 750,000 (75%) Assyrians were killed between 1915 and 1918, as well as Armenians and Greeks, and the massacre of 3000 Assyrians in Simmele, Iraq in August, 1933....

Turkey's Consul General in Australia, Mr. Renan Sekeroglu, has expressed opposition to the erection of the monument and denied the genocide of Assyrians in World War One. Mr. Sekeroglu conceded there were "tragedies" on "both" sides during that period. Speaking to SBS Radio, Mr. Sekeroglu said "I am afraid that if such proposals bear fruit then it will create a climate of hostility and it will also contradict the environment of historically friendly relations between Turkey and Australia". Mr. Sekeroglu said he will lodge an objection to the proposed genocide monument with the Fairfield Council.

A spokesman for the Fairfield Council said the Council is "...taking into consideration all angles before making a decision on the 4.5 meters sculpture that looks like a hand holding up the globe." The Council will vote on the monument on December 15. Jihad Watch

Compass Direct 7 December 2009

More than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings

ISTANBUL -Survey finds nearly 40 percent of population has negative view of Christians. More than half of the population of Muslim-majority. Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith, according to a recently issued survey. Fully 59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either "should not” or "absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas. Fifty-four percent said non-Muslims either "should not” or "absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.

The survey also found that almost 40 percent of the population of Turkey said they had "very negative” or "negative” views of Christians. In the random survey, 60 percent of those polled said there is one true religion; over 90 percent of the population of Turkey is Sunni Muslim.

Ali Çarkoglu, one of two professors at Sabanci University who conducted the study, said no non-Muslim religious gathering in Turkey is completely "risk free.” "Even in Istanbul, it can’t be easy to be an observant non-Muslim,” Çarkoglu said. The report, issued last month, was part of a study commissioned by the International Social Survey Program, a 45-nation academic group that conducts polls and research about social and political issues. The survey quantified how religious the population is in each of its 43-member countries.

Çarkoglu, along with Professor Ersin Kalayc?og(lu, carried out the research in 2008. The completed study with the results of all 43 countries will be released in 2010. The study has been conducted previously three times at roughly 10-year intervals. This year marked the first time study data has been collected in Turkey. Turkey was the only Muslim-majority population in the study. The survey includes significant nuance. While 42 percent of the population agreed with the statement that religious people should be tolerant, 49 percent of those surveyed said they would either "absolutely” or "most likely” not support a political party that accepted people from another religion. But 20 percent of those surveyed said they had "very positive” or "positive” views of Christians – 13 percent "very positive,” and 7 percent "positive.”

Çarkoglu said the results of study could be attributed to the Turkish educational system, which mandates religious studies for both junior high school and high school students – classes in which Christians and Jews "are not even mentioned” or are portrayed as "the others,” Çarkoglu said. "That instills in these students a severe point of view of intolerance,” he added.

Dual Threat
The Rev. Dositheos Anagnostopoulos, speaking on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, said that Greek Orthodox Christians are treated like second-class citizens in Turkey. He said that members of his church feel "pressured” but things have improved slowly over the years. Earlier this year, two Greek Orthodox cemeteries in Istanbul and one in Izmir were severely vandalized. "There’s still vandalism, but there haven’t been any problems with physical threats lately,” he said. In Turkey, Christians face dual threats from a self-declared "secular” state and from members of the public who, according to the study, have become more observant in their Islamic faith. Christians are often seen as enemies of the state, enemies of Islam or traitors to Turkish culture.

A 2009 report on international religious freedom by the U.S. Department of State said that in Turkey, "No law explicitly prohibits religious speech or religious conversions; nevertheless, many prosecutors and police regarded religious speech and religious activism with suspicion. Christians engaged in religious advocacy were occasionally threatened or pressured by government and state officials. … Threats against non-Muslims created an atmosphere of pressure and diminished freedom for some non-Muslim communities.” At times in Turkey’s history, the government has "manipulated public opinion” by putting forth the message that Turkish Christians are aligned with powers outside of the country that want to divide the nation, said Zekai Tanyar, a Turkish national who has been a Christian for more than 30 years. He is chairman of the Association of Protestant Churches (in Turkey).

"There are some who view that Christians are out to undermine the country, especially missionaries,” he said. In January 2007, Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead in Istanbul. Dink was a member of the Armenian Christian community in Turkey. Three months later, two Turkish Christians and a German Christian were murdered in Malatya. The accused killers in all four slayings have alleged links to Turkish nationalists. Two other Christians, converts from Islam, are standing trial charged with, among other things, "insulting Turkishness” and inciting hatred against Islam.

According to the U.S state department report, by law religious services in Turkey can only take place at worship sites approved by the government. And while the Sunni majority receives generous support from the government for its mosques, "[Non-Muslim groups] reported difficulties opening, maintaining, and operating houses of worship.” Tanyar of the Protestant association said that the anti-Christian persecution situation in Turkey has improved in some ways but gotten worse in others. "People have gotten used to the idea that we exist, and certain laws have changed to accommodate us,” he said. "On the other hand, acts of disinformation and violence have increased.”Europe News

Daily Pioneer 7 December 2009By Kanchan Gupta

Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was being faithful to his creed when he declared, "Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.” Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a fascist Sunni imam with a huge following among those who subscribe to the Muslim Brotherhood’s antediluvian worldview, was more to the point when he thundered at an event organised by London’s then Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, "The West may have the atom bomb, we have the human bomb.”

Sheikh Qaradawi, who is of Egyptian origin, frequently exhorts Muslims not to rest till they have "conquered Christian Rome” and believes "throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler”. Islamic schools in Britain funded by Saudi Arabia use textbooks describing Jews as "apes” and Christians as "pigs”. Theo Van Gogh, who along with writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali produced Submission, a film on the plight of Muslim women under sharia’h, was shot dead by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, in Amsterdam. Rallies by radical Islamists, which were once rare, are now a common feature in European capitals with banners and placards denouncing democracy as the ‘problem’ and Islam as the ‘solution’.

Such crude though accurate assertions of Islamism, coupled with the relentless jihad being waged overtly — exemplified by the London Underground bombings and the riots in Parisian suburbs — and covertly as exposed by Channel 4’s stunning investigation in its Dispatches programme titled ‘Undercover Mosque’, have now begun to raise hackles in Europe. The first signs of an incipient backlash came in the form of French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanding a ban on the burqa (the sharia’h-imposed hijab is already banned at public schools in France).

Any doubts that may have lingered about Europe’s patience with Islam’s rage boys running thin have been removed by last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland where people have voted overwhelmingly to ban the construction of minarets which are no longer seen to be representing faith. For 57.5 per cent of Swiss citizens, the minaret, an obligatory adjunct to a mosque which is used by the muezzin to call the faithful to prayers five times a day, is now a "political symbol against integration”. They view each new minaret as marking the transmogrification of Christian Europe into Islamic Eurabia. The Islamic minaret, according to Swiss People’s Party legislator Ulrich Schluer, has come to represent the "effort to establish sharia’h on European soil”. Hence the counter-effort to ban their construction.

Last Sunday’s referendum and the massive vote against Islamic minarets is by no means an unexpected development, as is being pretended by Islamists and those who find it fashionable to defend Islamism or are scared of taking a stand lest they be accused of Islamophobia. Resentment against assertive political Islam has been building up in Switzerland for almost a decade, triggered by refugees from Yugoslavia’s many civil wars seeking to irreversibly change the Swiss way of life to suit their twisted notions of Islam’s supremacy.

For the past many years the Swiss People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, both avowedly right-of-centre organisations, have been trying to initiate an amendment to Article 72 of Switzerland’s Constitution to include the sentence, "The building of minarets is prohibited.” After doing the cantonal rounds, both the parties set up a joint Egerkinger Committee in 2007 to take their campaign to the federal level. The November 29 referendum is the outcome of that campaign.

The resultant vote — 57.5 per cent endorsing the proposed amendment to the Constitution with 42.5 opposing it — provides some interesting insights. For instance, the Swiss Government and Parliament, which are opposed to the amendment, clearly suffer from a disconnect with the Swiss masses. The voting pattern also shows that the spurious ‘cosmopolitan spirit’ of Zurich, Geneva and Basel, where people voted against the ban by a narrow margin, is not shared by most Swiss.

The initiative has got 19.5 of the 23 cantonal votes — Basel city Canton, with half-a-vote and the largest Muslim population in Switzerland, barely defeated the initiative with 51.61 per cent people voting against it. This only goes to show that the Left-liberal intelligentsia may dominate television studio debates, as is often seen in our country, but it neither influences public opinion nor persuades those whose perception of the reality is not cluttered by bogus ‘tolerance’ of the intolerant.

Daniel Pipes, who is among the few scholars of Islam not scared to be labelled an ‘Islamophobe’, is of the view that the Swiss vote "represents a turning point for European Islam, one comparable to the Rushdie affair of 1989. That a large majority of Swiss who voted on Sunday explicitly expressed anti-Islamic sentiments potentially legitimates such sentiments across Europe and opens the way for others to follow suit”.

As always, Pipes is prescient. An opinion poll conducted by the French Institute for Public Opinion after the Swiss referendum shows 46 per cent of French citizens are in favour of banning the construction of minarets, 40 per cent support the idea, while 14 per cent are indecisive. "That it was the usually quiet, low profile, un-newsworthy, politically boring, neutral Swiss who suddenly roared their fears about Islam only enhances their vote’s impact,” says Pipes. The post-referendum opinion poll in France shows that one in two French citizens would not only like to see minarets banned, but along with them mosques, too.

Yet, it may be too early to suggest that the tide of Islamism will now have to contend with the fury of a backlash. Governments and organisations that find merit in toeing the line of least resistance have reacted harshly to the Swiss vote; rather than try and understand why more and more people are beginning to loathe, if not hate, Islamism, a case is being made all over again for the need to be tolerant with those whose sole desire is to subjugate the world to Islam.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay, who is yet to utter a word about the suppression of freedom and denial of dignity in Islamic countries or the shocking violation of human rights by jihadis, has been scathing in her response, describing the Swiss vote as "a discriminatory, deeply divisive and thoroughly unfortunate step”. The Organisation of Islamic Conference has warned that the vote will "serve to spread hatred and intolerance towards Muslims”. The OIC’s complaint would carry credibility if it were to demand tolerance towards non-Muslims in its member-countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and denounce Islam’s preachers of hate. Europe News

(An expanded version of this article can be read at http://kanchangupta.blogspot.com/) -- Follow the writer on: http://twitter.com/KanchanGupta. Blog on this and other issues at http://kanchangupta.blogspot.com/. Write to him at kanchangupta@rocketmail.com

On the surface it might seem that Switzerland's law-binding vote to ban new minarets in mosques is petty, vindictive and unnecessary. And in a sense it is, but in another way it is understandable. It's pretty hard to depict Switzerland as a red-necked, xenophobic society. It is one of the few countries in the world that demands no passport for visitors entering, and it's famous for being a meeting place of cultures.

It is a functioning society that manages to exist without wars, nasty linguistic or ethnic feuds. It is a society that flourishes peacefully in times of war in other countries. It is a country where every male is expected to own a gun and knows how to use it. A country where gun crimes are rare.

All the Swiss seem to demand from people is they behave decently, obey the law, adapt to the Swiss way of life. It is not a country spoiling for trouble, which is why the vote to ban new minarets is more significant than, say, if it occurred in a country beset with Islamic militancy -- a condition that has been growing in Europe.

The Swiss, basically, want to keep their country Swiss.

They don't want Sharia law, even a modified version as dingbat democracies like the McGuinty government in Ontario once favoured in the name of cultural equivalency -- until saner heads prevailed. (As an aside, many of these "saner heads" were Muslim women who've escaped the tyranny of Sharia in their birth countries, and Muslim men who see its oppressiveness). Switzerland is not a country like any other. The cantons that comprise the whole are more important and influential than the central government. It is a country of four regions with four languages -- German, French, Italian and Romansh, with English the language of air controllers.

The world comes together in Switzerland in the form of international organizations and banks, and it values its neutrality (since 1815) and guards its continuing democracy. Prior to the minaret vote, polls indicated 53% of the people opposed banning minarets, which on voting day turned into 57% in favour of the ban. Even the Swiss tell pollsters what they think pollsters want to hear.

Swiss are uneasy about their culture and don't want their landscape dotted with minarets from which the Islamic faithful are called to prayer. Odd, because of Switzerland's 150 mosques, only four have minarets. Non-Muslims -- which is 94% of the 7.5 million population -- are not keen on being roused by sing-song calls for the faithful to pray, should minarets sprout on all mosques. Now there's some fear of a Muslim backlash in Switzerland. Blame for all this is not Swiss prejudice, but Islamic militancy in countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and world-wide awareness that while most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslim.

SILENT TOO LONG

In their way, the vast majority of moderate Muslims are victims of jihadism and Islamic extremism that has poisoned relations. Yet the moderate majority has been too silent for too long. Canada has been fortunate in escaping extremism, as has Switzerland, but there is growing unease about the future here, as there is in Europe's most neutral and tolerant country. One hopes Muslims, who are not monolithic in their attitudes, speak up and take a lead in opposing extremism which threatens the future. Source..

The bootlicker of UMNO Wong Chun Wai, writes his column titled "Swiss in the doghouse". Scoring points eh, Wong? Many people have demolished his arguement many a time. Look into Malaysia itself, it is a disgrace as far as freedom of religion is concerned and along with 56 other OIC countries. No amount of spin, Wong, will get you out of the dog house.The Swiss are a democracy. Then the "great" Farish spins with his The Pathologisation of Muslims As Everything That is Wrong With Europe.

Here is how Muslim countries screw their minorities, read here It is okay for Muslim countries to ban bibles and trash their minorities...not okay for a Christian (Switzerland) country to ban minarets and here, The Problem of Islamic Religious Persecution. Minarets are a Symbol of Faith & Power. Here is how and why, After the Ottoman Sultan, Fatih Mehmet conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in May 1453, one of his first acts was to order a wooden minaret added to the 900-year-old church of Hagia Sophia to signal its conversion into a mosque. The temporary wooden minaret was soon rebuilt in stone and three others added for good measure. As Mehmet and his successors built other mosques in their new capital, Istanbul’s skyline came to be punctuated by dozens of slender, arrow-like minarets that gave the Ottoman capital a distinctive aspect and signaled to all that it was no longer the capital of Christian Byzantium but the new capital of an Islamic empire. Well, the West has yet to reconquer Contantinople? Remember Spain and the reconquista?

I am not as good as this lady, but she is definitely better than Wong or Farish. Listen to her rationale on the ban of the minarets. She is an ex-Muslim, I will not even talk about Lina Joy and the freedom to chose one's faith in Malaysia.The Malaysian Foreign Minister, needs to read alot.

In the battle of ideas, symbols are important.

What if the Swiss voters were asked in a referendum to ban the building of an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles as a symbol of the belief of a small minority? Or imagine a referendum on building towers topped with a hammer and sickle – another symbol dear to the hearts of a very small minority in Switzerland. Political ideas have symbols: A swastika, a hammer and sickle, a minaret, a crescent with a star in the middle (usually on top of a minaret) all represent a collectivist political theory of supremacy by one group over all others.

On controversial issues, the Swiss listen to debate, read newspapers, and otherwise investigate when they make up their minds for a vote. What Europeans are finding out about Islam as they investigate is that it is more than just a religion. Islam offers not only a spiritual framework for dealing with such human questions as birth, death, and what ought to come after this world; it prescribes a way of life.

Islam is an idea about how society should be organized: the individual's relationship to the state; that the relationship between men and women; rules for the interaction between believers and unbelievers; how to enforce such rules; and why a government under Islam is better than a government founded on other ideas. These political ideas of Islam have their symbols: the minaret, the crescent; the head scarf, and the sword.

The minaret is a symbol of Islamist supremacy, a token of domination that came to symbolize Islamic conquest. It was introduced decades after the founding of Islam. In Europe, as in other places in the world where Muslims settle, the places of worship are simple at first. All that a Muslim needs to fulfill the obligation of prayer is a compass to indicate the direction of Mecca, water for ablution, a clean prayer mat, and a way of telling the time so as to pray five times a day in the allocated period.

The construction of large mosques with extremely tall towers that cost millions of dollars to erect are considered only after the demography of Muslims becomes significant. The mosque evolves from a prayer house to a political center. Imams can then preach a message of self-segregation and a bold rejection of the ways of the non-Muslims. Men and women are separated; gays, apostates and Jews are openly condemned; and believers organize around political goals that call for the introduction of forms of sharia (Islamic) law, starting with family law.

This is the trend we have seen in Europe, and also in other countries where Muslims have settled. None of those Western academics, diplomats, and politicians who condemn the Swiss vote to ban the minaret address, let alone dispute, these facts. In their response to the presence of Islam in their midst, Europeans have developed what one can discern as roughly two competing views. The first view emphasizes accuracy. Is it accurate to equate political symbols like those used by Communists and Nazis with a religious symbol like the minaret and its accessories of crescent and star; the uniforms of the Third Reich with the burqa and beards of current Islamists?

If it is accurate, then Islam, as a political movement, should be rejected on the basis of its own bigotry. In this view, Muslims should not be rejected as residents or citizens. The objection is to practices that are justified in the name of Islam, like honor killings, jihad, the we-versus-they perspective, the self-segregation. In short, Islamist supremacy. The second view refuses to equate political symbols of various forms of white fascism with the symbols of a religion. In this school of thought, Islamic Scripture is compared to Christian and Jewish Scripture. Those who reason from this perspective preach pragmatism. According to them, the key to the assimilation of Muslims is dialogue. They are prepared to appease some of the demands that Muslim minorities make in the hope that one day their attachment to radical Scripture will wear off like that of Christian and Jewish peoples.

These two contrasting perspectives correspond to two quite distinct groups in Europe. The first are mainly the working class. The second are the classes that George Orwell described as "indeterminate." Cosmopolitan in outlook, they include diplomats, businesspeople, mainstream politicians, and journalists. They are well versed in globalization and tend to focus on the international image of their respective countries. With every conflict between Islam and the West, they emphasize the possible backlash from Muslim countries and how that will affect the image of their country.

By contrast, those who reject the ideas and practices of political Islam are in touch with Muslims on a local level. They have been asked to accept Muslim immigrants as neighbors, classmates, colleagues – they are what Americans would refer to as Main Street. Here is the great paradox of today's Europe: that the working class, who voted for generations for the left, now find themselves voting for right-wing parties because they feel that the social democratic parties are out of touch.

The pragmatists, most of whom are power holders, are partially right when they insist that the integration of Muslims will take a very long time. Their calls for dialogue are sensible. But as long as they do not engage Muslims to make a choice between the values of the countries that they have come to and those of the countries they left, they will find themselves faced with more surprises. And this is what the Swiss vote shows us. This is a confrontation between local, working-class voters (and some middle-class feminists) and Muslim immigrant newcomers who feel that they are entitled, not only to practice their religion, but also to replace the local political order with that of their own.

Look carefully at the reactions of the Swiss, EU and UN elites. The Swiss government is embarrassed by the outcome of the vote. The Swedes, who are currently chairing EU meetings, have condemned the Swiss vote as intolerant and xenophobic. It is remarkable that the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said in public that the Swiss vote is a poor act of diplomacy. What he overlooks is that this is a discussion of Islam as a domestic issue. It has nothing to do with foreign policy.

The Swiss vote highlights the debate on Islam as a domestic issue in Europe. That is, Islam as a set of political and collectivist ideas. Native Europeans have been asked over and over again by their leaders to be tolerant and accepting of Muslims. They have done that. And that can be measured a) by the amount of taxpayer money that is invested in healthcare, housing, education, and welfare for Muslims and b) the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who are knocking on the doors of Europe to be admitted. If those people who cry that Europe is intolerant are right, if there was, indeed, xenophobia and a rejection of Muslims, then we would have observed the reverse. There would have been an exodus of Muslims out of Europe.

There is indeed a wider international confrontation between Islam and the West. The Iraq and Afghan wars are part of that, not to mention the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. That confrontation should never be confused with the local problem of absorbing those Muslims who have been permitted to become permanent residents and citizens into European societies.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of "Infidel," is the Somali-born women's rights advocate and former Dutch parliamentarian. Her forthcoming book is entitled "Nomad." Christian Science Monitor

Paris (AsiaNews) - The outcome of the Swiss referendum has aroused a wave of inquiries and questions on the Internet and in print, with reactions, sometimes very violent, sometimes more favourable. Typically politicians have reacted negatively, criticizing this vote. Instead, people in Europe have been in favour of the outcome. Some sites and European newspapers have thus voted:

Polls in Europe

In France, the newspaper Le Monde carried out a survey: "To hold a referendum like that of Switzerland is a sign of democracy or irresponsibility? 61.5% said it was a sign of democracy, 33.2% said it was irresponsible, to 5.3% no opinion.

L’Express posed another question: If the same referendum was held in France what would you answer? 86% answered yes, against the minarets, 11% no, 2% did not respond.

Le Figaro, which leans to the right: 77% yes to the ban, 23% no.

BFM, a television, reported these results: 75% yes, 25% no.

Radio Montecarlo 83% yes, 17% no; Euronews, which is to the left, 70% yes, 29% no, 1% do not know.

Le Soir in Belgium: 63.2% yes, 34% no; 2.8 without opinion.

In Spain,"Twenty minutes": 94% yes, 6% no. El Mundo: 79% yes, 21% no (with 25 thousand people surveyed).

In Germany, Die Welt online: 87% yes, 12% no, 2% do not know. In Austria, Die Presse: 54% yes, 46% no. Is the closest of all surveys.

In Italy I have seen only "Leggo" that gives 84.4% to the yes vote; 13.6% no, 2% do not know.

Nando Pagnoncelli, IPSOS director, said however that "in general the issue of Islam and immigration is causing concern and in some cases social alarm, because there is a perception of fanaticism". If there were a referendum like the Swiss, the voices are largely in favour of the ban.

In Holland Elzevier reported 86% yes, 16% no.

This gives a picture - perhaps not a perfect one but certainly an interesting one – of a reaction of fear widespread across Europe in the face of danger that comes from Islam. And there is also an act of courage of those who dare to say "enough" despite the propaganda of politicians and the threat of divisions that it has revealed. Commenting on the vote, Dr. Issam Mujahid, spokesman for the Muslim community of Brescia, said: "It 'a vote of fear," but he also added, "and we are all responsible."

Some thoughts on these data

This referendum can become a positive opportunity for us to reflect together. "Now, says Issam Mujahid, we must and we can assume our responsibility to work for dialogue among civilizations and reject the thesis of a clash of civilisations".

1. People in Europe do not reject the minaret to defend Christianity. Is not a religious problem: it is a problem of culture and visibility.

2. People feel that if they says yes to the minaret, tomorrow the call to prayer will also become widespread, then the microphones, then there will be requests for halal meat in school cafeterias or hospitals, then working breaks for the five prescribed daily prayers (as they tried to do with me at the University of Birmingham in 1991 when I taught there) ... Every now and then Muslims make fresh requests, which grow more and more insistent in places and countries, bringing new demands. And once they obtain a license to behave as they want they never turn back. Muslim groups have yet to be seen stopping their requests at some point. And that makes the Europeans think.

3. If we look at the situation of immigrants, only a little more than a third come from Muslim regions. Two thirds from other areas (Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America). Yet this third is the most discussed because it continually makes religious-cultural demands: The Vietnamese, Chinese, Indians, non-Islamic Africans, Latinos do not stake these claims or have this cultural visibility.

What is the problem?

4. Europe is discovering, with the presence of other cultures that itself has its own culture. The Italian reaction against the Strasbourg decision to abolish the crucifix in public places emphasizes the defence of an element of culture (as well as the religion of many). This rediscovery of culture is essential for dialogue. Muslims come with a strong sense of religious cultural identity because these two fields are not divided in the Islamic world. Europeans, who are the majority, however, find it difficult to say what their identity is. Now, there can be no real dialogue if a partner has a strong identity and the other weak one, or even if both partners are weak. Dialogue may be harder when both have a strong identity, but it is also richer and more valid!

5. On the other hand, Issam Mujahid says, “the culture of Muslim civil society organizations is lacking in Europe. In Europe, Islam is only represented by mosques. And this is wrong". Integrated Muslims in Europe do not help the immigrant Muslim community to integrate the values of European culture. For their part, imams are often not able to transmit these values, because they themselves have not received them.

6. The sense of the Swiss vote could be summed up as': "We no longer want to protect cultural diversity and guarantee religious freedom by submitting ourselves to the intolerance of Islam ... which in turn does not tolerate cultural diversity and religious freedom". Establish a true inter-cultural dialogue

This is an opportunity for Muslims to say what is really important in their faith and their culture and what is missing here in Europe. Certainly, the Muslim can not demand everything he had at home because he is living in another country that has its own laws, rules, customs, etc.. In doing so, we will see if it is possible to establish some directives at national, private or individual levels.

On the European side is time to ask ourselves what defines us and makes us who we really are.

Islam must renew itself, trying to distinguish between the essential and the occasional, and the West must also deepen its own sense of self and see what is essential to their own identity.

Take for example the veil

It is a precept, but it does not mean that it is essential. Many great Muslim authors have written about this. Gamal al-Banna, the younger brother of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, has written a book and several articles to say that the veil is not a requirement. It was at first a council given to wives of Muhammad, it is not clear whether this was for all women. Neither is it clear whether it is called for in a given situation or forever.

This is why up to 50 years ago in the Islamic world, the veil was almost disappeared from countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc.. and no imam ever cried shame. Over the past 30 years it has started to come out again and today it has almost become an obligation. Muslims, throughout the course of history have made the distinction between what is fundamental and what is secondary. Even regarding prayer: very few Muslims pray 5 times a day. Increasingly we are seeing that the Muslim community is rejecting imposed religion and respects those who, while believers, do not practice. Religious freedom is the foundation of all freedoms, and if the Muslims demand it for themselves, and rightly so, in Europe, then they must give it to non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

The effort of exegesis and hermeneutics lies in discerning whether something is important or if it is something special, valid only for that time. Many Muslims attempt this exegesis, but the problems are many: there is no established doctrine, there is no teaching authority, an authority that decides and settles controversial issues. Asia News

“Minarets are our bayonets” was one line in the famous poem Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recited at a public rally several years earlier, earning the future prime minister a minor prison term. I was never able to fully understand the merit of the metaphor; why, after all, should a symbolic structure of a holy building be likened to a weapon? But sending someone to jail just because he had recited a poem was more ridiculous than the bizarre verse, probably long forgotten.

The Swiss vote and its aftermath have reminded us once again that the “minarets are our bayonets.” The wisdom of the Swiss people’s choice to ban minarets can always be debated, possibly with more of us disagreeing with the Swiss. All the same, just as Erdoğan’s sentence was more ridiculous than the poem itself, the Turkish reaction to the Swiss referendum has been more ridiculous than the ban itself. Shame, disgrace, Swiss racism, victory of Islamophobia, illiberal decision... You name it. We are heading fast to say “One minute!” to the Swiss. Soon some genius Islamist may argue that the Swiss vote should be blamed on the Kemalist imitation of French rationalism, or on the Turkish military – which, by the way, has a ban on buying Swiss-made weaponry. Oh, but that should be the cover for the conspiracy!

It’s funny how the Turkish Foreign Ministry expects a “corrective action,” or how the “Turkish democrats” queue up to condemn what was essentially a foreign nation’s democratic choice, right or wrong. It was even funnier how Islamist Turks gave long lectures on Switzerland’s ailing democracy. Here, the rule is simple: We love democracy only as long as it serves political Islam. Ironically, on the exact same day Turkish government big-wigs condemned Swiss democracy, their boss, Erdoğan, publicly said that “the less columnists wrote, the more peaceful Turkey would be.” They may be right to dislike Swiss democracy. With Swiss democratic rules and values, half the cabinet might have to go to jail.

Turkey is 10 times bigger than Switzerland in population and nearly 10 times poorer in per-capita income. All the same, Turkish lawmakers earn 10 times more than the country’s average income, while Swiss lawmakers earn just on the average. Swiss lawmakers cannot possibly spend most of their office hours meeting hordes of people from their contingency cantons asking for jobs, government contracts or other personal favors. Just try to imagine a delegation of merchants from Argovia, or farmers from St. Gallen, showing up at the offices of their fellow deputies to ask for government loans or jobs for relatives. In the land of the Crescent and Star, lawmakers enjoy the finer things in life – secretaries, armies of advisers, free telephone calls, travels to exotic territories, lifelong health care and much more, in addition to a de jure shield that protects them from prosecution if they offend. In the land of lakes, mountains, chocolate, fine watches and numbered bank accounts, lawmakers cost each taxpayer less than 10 francs a year – and no de jure shield to protect them from prosecution.

The hypocrisy is always there when political Islam is speaking. In a country where synagogues and churches have been bombed and priests killed, where locals have slit the throats of Christian missionaries and 50 to 75 percent of people refuse to have Christian, Jewish and atheist neighbors, we surely cannot be talking about putting to vote whether we should have church bells ringing. But it looks grossly absurd to talk about democracy and tolerance when observant Muslims can not even tolerate less observant Muslims.

We can always safely guess the results of a Turkish referendum on whether to ban churches and synagogues, or Jewry and atheism, as a whole. Again, the unspoken rule is simple: Interfaith tolerance is a one-way street.

It wasn’t a surprise to hear Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, Egemen Bağış, calling on “our Muslim brothers to withdraw their money at Swiss banks,” and adding the vulgar opportunistic note that “Turkish banks would always welcome their money.” That call for boycott was merely a seal that we are going through a clash of civilizations, not an alliance of them. The message is clear: If you offend Muslims, even through democratic means, we will make you pay for it. That’s hardly the dynamics of an alliance. So, Minister Bağış, you want economic sanctions against a country because its people made an “undemocratic choice through democratic means?” Think about Iran and Sudan, both of which are on your government’s “most-preferred nations” list for trade. But in the dictionary of political Islam, Iran and Sudan can always be perceived as more democratic than Switzerland. Hurriyet-Turkey's English Daily

For your weekend entertaiment pleasure. Enjoy!!

When the Duke of Milan is brutally murdered, Giovanni Auditore an Assassin - is dispatched to investigate the crime. His mission: determine who is responsible and why. The answers he uncovers implicate Italys most powerful families reaching all the way back to the Vatican itself. As Giovanni draws closer to the truth, he becomes hunted himself. He must expose the conspirators before he joins their ever growing list of victims This is the Prequel to the Assassins Creed 2 Story.

1476, Florence. Giovanni Auditore, an assassin, attempts to thwart a conspiracy against one of Lorenzo de Medicis allies, whom he works for. The ensuing inquiry will take him to Milan where he tries to prevent the worst from happening.



Pursuing Sforzas assassins, Giovanni arrives in Venice where he intercepts a coded letter from the members of the conspiracy. Decoding this document in order to get to the top of the conspiracy becomes of imperial importance.

Unable to decode the letter, Giovanni decides to deliver it to Rome in order to unmask the ringleaders. But there he discovers that the conspiracy is much more widespread and dangerous than he thought.

Are you worried — like so many Americans after the Fort Hood massacre — about the growing threat of Islamist subversion and terror here at home? Worried, beyond that, about what we’re doing — or not doing — militarily in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq? Worried about the growing reach and power of Islamist movements in Europe and South America, as well as Asia, the Middle East, and Turkey? Worried about the military alliances Islamist governments are forging with their secular mirror images: socialist-god governments in places like North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela?

Then focus like a laser on Iran, now, because Islamists will score major victories in all those places and more if we fail to prevent the ruling mullahs from openly, triumphantly making Iran the world’s first Islamist nuclear power. The danger isn’t only Iran’s own catastrophic recklessness, once she gets the bomb, or the fact that all her Arab neighbors will respond by scrambling to go nuclear too. It’s also that Islamists everywhere — joined by growing masses of previously undecided Muslims — will see Iran’s success in achieving nuclear status the way Iran’s mullahs see it: as a historic defeat for the West, blasting open the gate to a 21st-century world where Islam rules and Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are subservient or worse. Islamist ranks will swell, everywhere, as confidence grows that the Islamist side is the winning side, and victory is near.

THE WAR WE MUST WIN
Most Americans can scarcely imagine an Islamist-ruled world. Most Muslims can, and they respond in one of three ways. Moderate Muslims wholeheartedly reject the Islamist vision and the support for jihad that is inseparable from it; Muslim extremists embrace it, many with growing fervor; and a third group sits on the fence, waiting and watching. Constant politically correct reassurances that only a minority of the world’s Muslims support violence against us are based on the fantasy that only “Islamist extremists” do that; “moderate Islamists” don’t. In fact, there is no such thing as a “moderate Islamist.” All Islamists are extremists. It’s an extreme creed. Moderate Muslims do exist, millions of them, many bravely fighting against the rising Islamist tide, but they aren’t “moderate Islamists.” Moderate Muslims are anti-Islamist Muslims, who oppose the imposition of Sharia and all the oppressive baggage that comes with it. They are on our side — freedom’s side — and we should be on theirs. Instead, we mostly ignore them and fail to heed their warnings, reaching out to “moderate Islamists” instead, welcoming them into our critical institutions — as our military, aided by the FBI, welcomed Major Hasan.

When it comes to Islamists abroad, poll data make it clear that they are the overwhelming majority in the Middle East. Iran and Turkey were the two great Middle Eastern exceptions, as Islamism swamped competing ideologies in all the Arab lands. Iran may still be, if popular majorities in that once great nation were allowed free choice, but they are governed by an Islamist regime more despotic than any Persian shah, ancient or modern. Turkey, once the freest, most proudly westernized and progressive country of them all, is on the verge of the same sorry fate. If you doubt that, look again at the new Turkey, governed by an Islamist party since 2002, a Turkey that is right now preparing to embrace Iran.

Focus like a laser on Iran now, because we have only months — not years — to prevent Iran from blasting through that history-making gate. Don’t waste precious time on the pretense that negotiations and/or sanctions can save us. As John Bolton, Michael Ledeen, Rich Lowry, Andrew McCarthy, and a few other brave souls keep pointing out, we have been negotiating with Islamist Iran for 30 years now, offering the mullahs one sweet deal after another, and getting blow after blow in return. Even if — mirabile dictu — Iran signed an agreement promising to forgo nuclear weapons forever, it would be worth no more than the 1938 Munich agreement. Iran’s mullahs are fanatics, like Hitler, not rational criminals we can make a deal with, as we did with the Soviets. MAD — mutual assured destruction — worked, because the Russians weren’t mad.

As for sanctions, if there ever was a chance they could have worked, even in their most robust form — a complete blockade of Iran’s ports by America and the few allies who might have joined us — that chance is long gone. Years ago, such a blockade might, arguably, have brought Iran’s Islamists to their knees by denying them the refined gasoline they need to keep the machinery of repression rolling, giving Iranians who hate the mullahs a chance of overthrowing them. Today, regimes like Russia’s and Venezuela’s would supply that gas and more, over land, and we would be forced either to retreat in defeat, or to do what we should have done soon after we invaded Iraq — as soon as it became clear that Iran was behind most of the IEDs that were dismembering our troops in Iraq.

CONTINUED 1 2 3 4 Next Source: National Review

Because the Obama administration is keen to restart negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered a ten-month freeze on West Bank settlements. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has responded by demanding more — as a pre-condition, before he will talk. Just a guess: Netanyahu is not surprised. Nor should anyone else be. It doesn’t require Donald Trump to know that the art of the deal starts with an understanding of what each side wants. Yet for more than half a century, Western politicians and diplomats have built upon a mirage: the belief that because we see peace as a benefit, everyone in the Middle East must see it that way, too.

This assumption is mostly obviously false in regard to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza with an iron fist since Israel withdrew from that territory in 2005. Hamas’s leaders have been candid: They are fighting a jihad, a religious war. Their goal is the annihilation of Israel, an “infidel” nation occupying land Allah has endowed to the Muslims. A “two-state solution” or any other compromise is out of the question. Under sufficient pressure, Hamas will accept a temporary truce as a way to gain time to rebuild its strength. But putting sufficient pressure on Hamas is problematic, as illustrated by the U.N.’s recent Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of war crimes for having responded to several years of non-stop rocket attacks with a military offensive — one that was cautious and limited by any objective standard.

Of course, serious people do not envision Israeli-Hamas negotiations. It is rather talks between Israel and Abbas — who maintains tentative control of the West Bank — which President Obama would like to get underway again. But any agreement Abbas might strike with Israel, no matter how advantageous for average Palestinians, would be denounced by Hamas as not just a bad deal but an act of treachery and apostasy. Abbas’s life would be in danger. If you were advising Abbas, what would you tell him? Probably, to do exactly what he is doing: Pocket any Israeli concessions the Americans can wring out of the Israelis while dismissing them as woefully insufficient; refuse to negotiate; but behind the scenes work with the Israelis on security — not least your own — and economic development. If nothing else, that may prevent Hamas from gaining additional ground.

As for Israel’s neighbors, they are undemocratic regimes, so, for them, allies are nice, but enemies are essential. Where else can popular dissatisfaction be deflected? Take Saudi Arabia: Israel long ago proved itself to be the Saudis’ best enemy — both reliable and valuable. The Saudis know they face no actual threat from Israel, but hatred of Israel is something Wahhabi clerics — whose theological support the House of Saud requires — can sink their teeth into during Friday night sermons. Why would a Saudi prince trade that for an invitation to dine in Jerusalem? Of course, one can make peace with Israel and not break bread with the Jews. Egypt is proof of that. After reaching a settlement with Israel in 1979 and receiving the entire Sinai Peninsula — a territory three times as large as all of Israel — in exchange, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamists in 1981. His successor, Hosni Mubarak, has understood that Egypt’s diplomatic relations with Israel must never be normal, neighborly relations. Blatant anti-Semitism is rife in Egypt. (View, for example, this clip from MEMRI TV.)

There’s also this: Tension in the Middle East keeps the price of oil higher than it would be were a durable peace ever to break out. So any country that depends on oil sales — Russia, for example — benefits as long as the conflict stays at least on low simmer. Higher oil prices on the one hand, peace for Jews and Arabs on the other: You think it takes Vladimir Putin long to make up his mind? As for Iran’s Islamist rulers, the vehemence of their jihad against Israel buys them legitimacy and even a chance for leadership within the Sunni world. Is there a better way for a Shia regime to achieve that? Like Hamas and Hezbollah, two terrorists groups they finance (the first Sunni, the second Shia), Iran’s rulers have not the slightest interest in such Western diplomatic constructs as a “final-status plan for a two-state solution.”

The U.S. and Israel, of course, do adamantly desire peace. Chronic conflict — the normal state of most of the world throughout most of history — is uncomfortable for free and democratic nations to endure. But with so many key actors opposed to peace, there is no way for Israel, even with energetic American help, to reach a lasting settlement with its Muslim neighbors any time soon. That doesn’t mean the situation can’t improve. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority does appear to be cooperating closely with the Israeli Defense Forces to crack down on both terrorists and criminals. And an improved security situation is among the factors contributing to a remarkable new economic vitality on the West Bank.

Netanyahu calls this the pursuit of “economic peace.” Could it pay off over time by persuading more Palestinians — and more powerful Palestinians — to embrace peace as their goal and effectively challenge peace’s opponents? Yes to the first; doubtful but not impossible to the second. But why not achieve now what can be achieved now? Surely, cultivating a small oasis is preferable to pursuing a great mirage. National Review

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.