...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
FYI: I have some family matters to attend to Sunday and Monday. Back to the blog on Tuesday, I hope. (No funny business till I get back, Mr. Ahmadenejad.)
The novel and The Book: It was with great interest--and an ache in my heart--that I read this piece in The Guardian by Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk is the Turkish novelist who should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, but who lost out to Harold Pinter because the Swedish Academy chose to award politics--more specifically, Pinter's anti-Americanism--over literary merit. In the Guardian piece, adapted from a speech Pamuk gave last weekend in Germany, where he accepted a prize from the German book trade, Pamuk urges Europe to embrace "the other"--Turkey, the nation that keeps knocking on Europe's door, only to be turned away time after time.
Pamuk, raised in a secular, middle-class household where novels were devoured and adored, says that it is the novel which has given Europe a sense of itself as a place which values culture, civilization, humanity. It is the novel, more than any other artform, which takes us out of ourselves and, in so doing, sets us free.
...The history of the novel is the history of human liberation: by putting ourselves in others' shoes, by using our imaginations to free ourselves from our own identities, we are able to set ourselves free. So Defoe's great novel conjures up not just Robinson Crusoe but also his slave, Friday. As powerfully as Don Quixote conjures up a knight who lives in the world of books, it also conjures up his servant Sancho Panza. I enjoy reading Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's most brilliant novel, as a happily married man's attempt to imagine a woman who destroys her unhappy marriage, and then herself. Tolstoy's inspiration was another male novelist who, though he himself never married, found his way into the mind of the discontented Madame Bovary. In the greatest allegorical classic of all time, Moby-Dick, Melville explores the fears gripping the America of his day - and particularly its fear of alien cultures - through the intermediary of the white whale.
It was there that I got my first pang, and realized that Pamuk was about to let me down. I was right:
Contrary to what most people assume, a novelist's politics have nothing to do with the societies, parties and groups to which he might belong - or his dedication to any political cause. A novelist's politics rise from his imagination, from his ability to imagine himself as someone else. This power makes him not just a person who explores the human realities that have never been voiced before - it makes him the spokesman for those who cannot speak for themselves, whose anger is never heard, and whose words are suppressed. A novelist may (like me) have no real reason to take an interest in politics as a young man, or if he does, his motives may end up mattering very little. Today we do not read the greatest political novel of all time, Dostoevsky's The Devils, as the author originally intended - as a polemic attacking Russian westernisers and nihilists; we read it instead as a novel that reflects the Russia of its day, that reveals to us the great secret locked inside the Slavic soul. This is a secret that only a novel can explore. Obviously, we cannot hope to come to grips with themes this deep merely by reading newspapers and magazines, or by watching television. To understand what is unique about the histories of other nations and other peoples, to share in unique lives that trouble and shake us, terrifying us with their depths, and shocking us with their simplicity - these are truths we can glean only from the careful, patient reading of great novels.
Let me add that when Dostoevsky's devils begin to whisper into the reader's ear, telling him of a secret rooted in history, a secret born of pride and defeat, shame and anger, they are illuminating the shadows of Dostoevsky's history, too. Behind this recognition is a despairing writer who loves the west and despises it in equal measure, a man who cannot quite see himself as a westerner but is dazzled by the brilliance of western civilisation, who feels himself caught between the two worlds.
Here we come to the east-west question. Journalists are exceedingly fond of the term, but when I see the connotations it carries in some parts of the western press, I'm inclined to think it would be best not to speak of the east-west question at all. Because what it means most of the time is that the poor countries of the east should bow to everything the west and the US might happen to offer them. There is also a strong suggestion that the culture, the way of life, and the politics of places like the one where I was raised provoke tiresome questions, and an expectation that writers like me exist to offer solutions to the same tiresome questions.
But of course there is an east-west question, and it is not simply a malicious term invented and imposed by the west. The east-west question is about wealth and poverty, and about peace. In the 19th century, when the Ottoman empire began to feel itself overshadowed by an ever more dynamic west, suffering repeated defeats at the hands of European armies and seeing its own power slowly wane, there emerged a group of men who called themselves the Young Turks; like the elites that would follow in later generations, not excluding the last Ottoman sultans, they were dazzled by the superiority of the west, so they embarked on a programme of westernising reforms. The same logic lies at the heart of the modern Turkish republic and Kemal Atatürk's westernising reforms. Behind this same logic lies the conviction that Turkey's weakness and poverty stem from its traditions, its old culture, and the various ways it has organised religion. Coming as I do from a middle-class, westernised Istanbul family, I must admit that I, too, sometimes succumb to this belief, which is, though well-intended, a narrow and even simple-minded way of seeing things.
Westernisers dream of transforming and enriching their country and their culture by imitating the west. Because their ultimate aim is to create a country that is richer, happier, and more powerful, they can also be nativist, and - say what you will - powerfully nationalistic: certainly we can see these tendencies in the Young Turks and the westernisers of the young Turkish Republic. But as westward-looking movements, they remain deeply critical of certain basic characteristics of their country and culture: though they might not do so in the same spirit and the same style as western observers, they, too, see their culture as defective, sometimes even worthless. This gives rise to another very deep and confused emotion - shame - and I see shame reflected in some responses to my novels and to my own perceived relations with the west. When we in Turkey discuss the east-west question, when we talk of the tensions between tradition and modernity (which, to my mind, is what the east-west question is really all about), or when we prevaricate over our country's relations with Europe, the question of shame is always lurking between the lines.
When I try to understand this shame, I always try to link it with its opposite, pride. As we all know: wherever there is too much pride, and whenever people act too proudly, there is the shadow of the other's shame and humiliation. Wherever there is someone who feels deeply humiliated, we can expect to see a proud nationalism rising to the surface.
Pamuk spends the remainder of his speech talking about the wonders of the human imagination as it reveals itself in the novel, and longs for his country to be allowed into the club which brought this most magnificent of human endeavours. Otherwise, Turkish nationalists, drenched in the shame of another rejection, will have no choice but to fall back on their "nationalistic" repsponses to events. In essence, Pamuk's argument boils down to this: let us in, and let your beautiful novels civilize our cranky nationalists and reinstill lost pride, or reject us and suffer the consequences:
We've arrived at a point where we must choose between the power of a novelist's imagination and the sort of nationalism that condones burning his books. Over the past few years, I have spoken a great deal about Turkey and its EU bid, and often I've been met with grimaces and suspicious questions. So let me answer them here and now. The most important thing that Turkey and the Turkish people have to offer Europe and Germany is, without a doubt, peace; it is the security and strength that will come from a Muslim country's desire to join Europe, and this peaceful desire's ratification. The great novelists I read as a child and a young man did not define Europe by its Christian faith but by its individuals. It was because they described Europe through heroes who were struggling to free themselves, express their creativity and make their dreams come true, that their novels spoke to my heart. Europe has gained the respect of the non-western world for the ideals it has done so much to nurture: liberty, equality and fraternity. If Europe's soul is enlightenment, equality and democracy, if it is to be a union predicated on peace, then Turkey has a place in it. A Europe defining itself on narrow Christian terms will, like a Turkey that tries to derive its strength only from its religion, be an inward-looking place divorced from reality, and more bound to the past than to the future.
Pamuk concludes the piece with these words:
Since my novel Snow was published, every time I've set foot in the streets of Frankfurt I've felt the ghost of Ka, the hero with whom I have more than a little in common, and I feel as if I am truly seeing the city as I have come to understand it, as if I have somehow touched its heart. Mallarmé spoke the truth when he said that "everything in the world exists to be put into a book". The book best equipped to absorb everything in the world - without doubt - is the novel. The imagination - the ability to convey meaning to others - is humanity's greatest power, and for many centuries it has found its truest voice in novels.
So moving. And yet, so untrue. While Mallarmé may have had a point about everything in life existing to be put in a book, nowhere in his speech does Pamuk mention the one book--the one competing book--which can negate the power of the novel. That book is the Koran, for some a work of fiction, but for many others a book of divinely-revealed truth which contains everything an individual needs to live his life, and which, to a significant and vocal (and explosive) portion of those who believe this to be so, overrides all other narratives, both fictional and non-fictional. Thus, it is not, as Pamuk says, the differences between rich and poor, or modernists and traditionalists which divides the world. It is the chasm between those who thirst for and thrive on the kind of freedom which the novel represents, and those who believe that the Koran is the only book worth reading.
The irony is that Pamuk himself is caught in just such a divide. He will soon face trial for defaming his country. His crime: He spoke the truth about Turkey's role in the genocide of Armenians--a truth that "nationalists", i.e. "traditionalists", i.e. true believers who want to take Turkey back from the secularists--are unwilling to hear. And if Pamuk really believes that exposing such people to the wonderful world of European literature is the way to turn them into lovers of freedom, he needs to put down the novels, delightful and spiritually enriching though they may be, and read up on concepts like "submission" and "jihad" and "infidels" and "dhimmis" and "Dar al Islam". Only then can he tender an informed opinion as to whether his homeland should be allowed into the European fraternity.
Bombs in New Delhi market kill 49: Wiccans? Buddhists? Seventh Day Adventists?
Sikhs?
Update: As expected, none of the above.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's interior monolgue: Crikey! You make one little map-cleaning comment, and the whole world jumps down your throat and does the macarena in your lower intestine. It's not like I said something new, or rude, or uncalled for. Who out there wouldn't be happy to see a world with a few fewer Zionists in it? (Vlad? Kofi? Back me up here.) Who among us wouldn't like to see the Jews finally get their just desserts? (You know, I could really go for one of those cigar-shaped baklavas about now--the kind that's stuffed with chopped pistachio nuts and dripping with honey? But I digress...Focus, Mahmoud, focus.)
But okay. For the sake of shalom bayit, I'm willing to play along. Here goes: When I said I wanted to wipe the Jews off the map, I wasn't making a specific threat about my intention to press a button and launch a nuke aimed at Tel Aviv. It was more like a generic, non-specific threat. Something along the lines of "at some point in the future, you name the date and time, let's all work together to ensure justice is done for our humiliated Palestinian brothers, oppressed these many years by brutal Jewish Zionist colonial apartheid occupiers."
Hey, I don't make the rules of the jihad. I'm merely a squeaky cog in a much larger and very ancient well-oiled machine.
It's like our late leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a man who was as eloquent as he was wise, used to say: "Kill the Jews!"
Words to live by, my friends. Words to live by.
Torture and the search for justice: There was a time not too long ago when the Saudis refused to acknowledge that Wahabism, the toxic ideology they had sent out into the world, had returned to home base. Part of the Saudi rationale for exporting Wahabism--along with extending the reach of their version of Islam--was to keep the seethers occupied in foreign domains so as not to interfere with the high life enjoyed by the Saudi royals. A bunch of do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do layabouts, and iredeemably corrupt to boot, the royals were convinced that the world was large enough to keep the seethers from their doorstep. It didn't work, of course. The seethers were outraged that these hypocritical slugs were the custodians of Islam's holiest sites, and were determined to throw the blighters out. For a long time, the Saudis chose to ignore the obvious--the better to maintain the pretence that all was copacetic in the Magic Kingdom, and that anything that disturbed the perfect picture was the result of outside, non-Muslim agitators. So when things started blowing up, authorities were forced round up some culprits to take the rap. That's what happened to William Sampson. Sampson, a Canadian-English consultant for a Saudi company, had been working in Saudi Arabia for two years. One night in 2000, there was a knock at the door at his house in Riyadh, and he was hauled away by Saudi police. He was accused of being involved in a turf war between Western bootleggers, a war which had resulted in several cars in the Western compound being blown up. The charge was completely fabricated, of course. Sampson was friendly with someone who ran a "social club" where alcohol was served, but that was the extent of his connection to any turf war. In fact, the turf war in question was not between phantom bootleggers but between the seethers and the Royals, but it would require a few more explosions--these more blatant and difficult to disguse--before the Saudis would finally notice that "the war on terror" had washed up on their shores. Wiliam Sampson was a casualty--almost a fatality--of Saudi Arabia's willful blindness. For months on end, he was tortured in the most horrific manner possible until, unable to endure it any longer, he signed a confession acknowleging his "crimes". He was tried and convicted in a Saudi kangaroo court, and would have been executed had there not been a zero-hour exchange for some Saudi nationals being held at Guantanamo. The current issue of Macleans, the Canadian newsmagazine, has a detailed--and stomach-turning--account of Sampson's prison ordeal. He has documented it all in his book, Confessions of an Innocent Man: Torture and Survival in a Saudi Prison. Here's a sample of what he endured: Much of the book consists of a meticulous reconstruction of marathon beatings interrupted only by Muslim calls to prayer, and meal breaks. Sampson says he was chained up, standing, to his cell door, and prevented from sleeping for days, which led to terrifying hallucinations of giant spiders crawling throughout his cell. He was hung upside down from a metal bar while interrogators whipped the soles of his feet with a bamboo cane or pounded his legs, back, and genitals with an axe handle. Sometimes, he was hog-tied, whipped and kicked. Others, he was punched in the kidneys, and had his testicles squeezed until he wailed in agony. Sampson describes a surreal merry-go-round in which his accusers tortured him, then lectured him on the depravity of his crimes, then tried to cajole him into confessing. When he insisted he was innocent, that he had killed no one and was not a spy, his captors would explode in rage and begin the cycle anew. Finally, after six days without sleep and in constant pain, Sampson was broken. "I screamed and begged to confess, to tell them what they wanted to hear, but my entreaties seemed to fall upon deaf ears," Sampson writes. "The beating continued, blows fell across my feet, buttocks, and scrotum, no matter how loudly I screamed my willingness to comply." When the abuse finally stopped, Sampson was told to write out an admission that he planted and detonated the bomb that killed British engineer Christopher Rodway. He hoped that with this confession, even if it was false, his agony would stop. Though he knew he would almost certainly be sentenced to death by beheading, he was beyond fear -- death would be a release from the hell he found himself in. But for Sampson the greatest pain and indignity was yet to come. Shortly after he made his first confession, Sampson claims he was dragged to an interrogation room where two Saudi "investigators" raped him. When he lost control of his bowels after the assault, his attackers shoved his face into the mess and severely beat him yet again. It was "the violation of my last vestige of physical and thus psychological integrity," he writes. "When finally I was lowered to the floor, I was a gibbering tear-sodden wreck, with no resemblance to what had once been a man." Sampson had written before about physical beatings, but his horrifying account in the book is the first time he has revealed any sexual abuse while in prison. Over the next several months, the torture sessions continued as his captors demanded more and more detail be added to his confessions, dragging more innocent men into an implausible plot of revenge and espionage, dictated by his tormentors. Finally, he was forced to say he was a British spy working to destabilize the Saudi regime. Again and again Sampson was dragged into a private room, bound, beaten until his legs, back and genitals were a collage of black and purple bruises, then returned to his solitary cell. Sampson reserves a large portion of his contempt for Canadian embassy officials, whose actions--or more accurately, inactions--extended his torturous ordeal: Throughout this time, Sampson hoped Canadian embassy officials might be the advocates and protectors he so desperately needed, but he was sorely disappointed. His first visit with Canadian officials came more than a month after his arrest. His torturers attended the meeting and warned Sampson not to let on he was being ill-treated. He did as he was told. In this meeting and others to follow, Sampson came to distrust the embassy officials, sensing that they believed he was guilty and were interested only in fulfilling their most basic responsibilities. They refused, for example, to accept Sampson's power of attorney and later, when he became defiant and abusive to his captors, they chided him for his rudeness. He saw the embassy staff as ineffectual, self-serving bureaucrats, not a potential lifeline to the outside world. Eventually he refused to meet with Canadian officials and the lawyer they had assigned to his case. And the Canadian government hasn't been any better. After his release, he and the others incarcerated for the trumped-up charge sought their government's assistence in seeking redress for their treatment--treatment which the Saudis say Sampson made up. Canada, in typical wuss-like fashion, is reluctant to stand up for the rights of its citizens if it brings us into conflict with scary Islamist regimes. (Just ask Zahra Kazemi's son, still seeking justice for his mother who was imprisoned, tortured, raped and murdered by officials in Iran.). Now, Sampson and the others are looking to a British court for justice. Unfortunately, it may be hard to find. According to Time Magazine's Canadian edition, which has a cover story on Sampson , "Sampson and his legal team learned with dismay that the British government will be intervening in the case—on the Saudi side." Sounds like justice may not only be delayed; it may be deferred--indefinitely.
Card shark: No need to worry, folks. Michael Jansen, a writer for the Deccan Herald assures us that Ahmadinejad is no Hitler. One can distinguish the Jew-hating Austrian-born totalitarian from the Jew-hating Iranian totalitarian because the latter meant his genocidal comments rhetorically, not as an announcement of his murderous plans. They were merely a "handy card" up his sleeve in his ongoing rivaly with Hashemi Rafsanjani, the man he defeated and replaced as president of the Islamist dystopia:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for the removal of Israel from the map of the globe is nothing new. When he made his controversial statement he simply reiterated the words of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revered founder of the Islamic republic. Ahmadinejad, a neophyte in foreign affairs, clearly had no notion of the resonance of his words, particularly in the West, where the policy makers and public, sensitised by the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, have roundly condemned his remarks. Indeed, Israel is comparing him to Hitler. But his is hardly fair because Ahmadinejad's assertions are rhetorical rather than statements of intention.
Iran specialists argue that Ahmadinejad, a radical conservative, was simply engaging in verbal outbidding in a struggle for power with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, the man who had been expected to win the presidential election...
Were one argumentative, one could point out that until the Final Solution finally got underway, the words of Adolf Hitler, another "radical conservative", were also considered "rhetorical".
Deconstructing Ahmadinejad: A host and correspondent on Australian radio deconstruct Ahmadinejad's "cryptic" remaks and the massive Third Reich-like rally which followed:
MARK WILLACY: Well this is an annual event, and it marks what the Iranians call "Jerusalem Day", which falls on the final Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan.
It's designed to show solidarity with the Palestinians and their struggle against Israel, and today we saw tens of thousands turn out in Tehran alone, and we had one media agency saying that across the country more than a million people came out onto the streets.
And in Tehran itself we had demonstrators shouting "death to Israel", "death to the Zionists", and many carried banners which read "Israel should be wiped off the map".
Now that's the slogan first heard from the leader of the Islamic revolution, the late Ayatollah Khomeini many years ago, and it's controversially been revived this week as we now know, by the new Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Well how did the President defend himself against making those comments?
MARK WILLACY: Well, Mr Ahmadinejad attended the anti-Israel rally in Tehran and he was asked about this remark. He replied that what he had said, that Israel should be wiped off the map was a "just remark", as he says.
He said his words were the Iranian people's words, and he said that westerners were free to condemn him for those comments, but he basically dismissed the reaction and the condemnation of the west as invalid.
Of course it's no secret that Iran does not believe in Israel's right to exist, but for the past decade, particularly under the presidency of the moderate Mohammad Khatami, we haven't heard that sort of rhetoric, that ferocious rhetoric from Tehran.
So it's bad timing all round for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well, because just hours after he said Israel should be wiped off the map, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five civilians in an Israeli city...
Yes, Mark, it sure is crappy timing that just as Ahmadinejad was making his map-wiping comments, an oppessed Palestinian was taking him at his word. Mind you, were we to listen to Ahmadinejad's side of things, his remark was just a just remark. You know, like "Arbeit macht frei" or "Jews control the world" or for that matter, "Allah Akbar". Just a comment. An opinion. An in-joke among Iranians concerned about oppressed Palestinians, deprived of their land and displaced by those awful dhimmis. Hence the need for another annual event: The World Without Zionism conference, chockfull of workshops on Jew-elimination make-work projects. It was at this conference that the Iranian president made--or should we say "revived"--the comment about effacing Jews from the map.
But move along, y'all. Nothing to get worked up about here.
A river runs through it: A New York Times headline waxes poetic about the latest oil-for-food disclosures, describing The Many Streams That Fed the River of Graft to Hussein.
Yup. Those greedy oil-for-food hogs were certainly rollin’ in it:
Left a good job in accounting.
Workin’ off my butt ev’ry night and day.
But I never saw the good side of the city
Till I hitched a ride on the oil-for-food sleigh.
Big wigs kept on stealin’.
Oil hogs kept on dealin’.
Thievin’, thievin’, thievin’ on the river…
And like old man river, the thieving just kept rolling along:
Oil graft river.
That oil graft river.
Gushed for the greedy
And stiffed the needy.
It just kept flowin’
It kept on flowin’ along.
Saddam built castles.
Saddam built mosques.
And never worried
About the costs.
That oil graft river
He kept it flowin’ along.
You and me
We sweat and strain.
Work for our dollars and hardly complain.
Silly us. Missed the boat—
Saddam’s oily scam’s no longer a-
Flow-oat.
We get weary
Of UN corruption.
Which, like that river,
Flows with no interruption.
It still keeps flowin’.
It just keeps flowin’ along.
And now Saddam’s in the dock, lamenting what he’s lost:
By the river named Eu-phra-tees.
Where I once ruled
And raked it in
Without even tryin’.
By the river named Eu-phra-tees.
Where I once ruled
And raked it in
Without even tryin’.
I was wicked,
Carried away by thievery
Enamoured of my success.
Thought I’d be on top
For decades yet,
Not stuck in this awful mess…
I was wicked.
Carried away by lunacy.
Empowered by the UN.
Now I’ll never get to kill anyone again.
Let the words of my mouth and the iniquites of my heart
Remind the world of what a thug I am. (Repeat)
By the river named Eu-phra-tees
Where I once ruled
And raked it in
Without even tryin’…
Quack, quack: Ahmadinejad's comments may have been directed at the uppity Zionists (the nerve of them to transcend their dhimmitude when they're supposed to be eternally lowly and servile!), but an Iranian nuke has just as good a chance as hitting Paris or Madrid or Milan as it does Tel Aviv.
The Jews, once again, may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine, but as this article points out, all of Europe is a sitting duck.
Fury at Iran: After Kofi Annan's tepid response to the Iranian President's call for genocide (Kofi said he was "dismayed"), it is heartening to read the at least one world leader is well and truly inscensed: From the Melbourne Herald Sun:
Tony Blair for the first time held out the prospect of military action against Iran last night after it called for the destruction of Israel.
A furious British Prime Minister condemned comments from the hardline leader of an Islamic state the US claims is developing nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Describing his "revulsion", and in terms reminiscent of the early build-up to the war on Iraq, a visibly angry Mr Blair said European countries would be holding talks with the US and other allies about a possible response.
He said Iran was making a "very big mistake" if it thought the world would ignore such comments because it was distracted by other events.
"To anybody in Europe knowing our history, when we hear statements like that made about Israel it makes us feel very angry, it's just completely wrong," he said. "And it indicates and underlines, I am afraid, how much some of those places need reform themselves."
Mr Blair made no direct reference to military action, which Britain had previously always insisted was not on the agenda.
"Ask yourself: A state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?" he said.
Now, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Blair? Actions--especially when you'll dealing with insane Islamists on the cusp of nuclear capablily--always speak louder than words.
Update: While Tony is "furious" and Kofi is "dismayed", the Arab/Muslim world is eerily silent on the subject.
Hmm. I wonder why.
The exception, of course, is the Iranian press, which is all gung-ho for the Exterminate the Jews Project, round 2, and is calling for a fatwa against Israel.
Update: Seems Blair has taken action. He had the British ambassador to the UN submit a statement, to be issued the Security Council. The statement "strongly condems" the Iranian President's genocidal remarks.
The Security Council, being the Security Council, is discussing it.
Update: The Security Council condemns Ahmadinejad's statement; Ahmadinejad stands by it.
Never say never: It is both ironic and fitting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his map-cleaning remarks during Holocaust Education Week. An annual event featuring speakers, films and the testimony of Holocaust survivors (whose ranks grow more depleted with each passing year), it is intended to teach the public about the horrors of the Jewish genocide so that it will never be repeated.
That's the plan, at least. Whether a week of educational outreach which attracts a largely Jewish audience (preaching to the choir, so to speak) can have the desired effect is, by now, rather moot. One has a sense these days that, despite all the reminders about the Holocaust--all the museums and memorials and monuments and ceremonies; all the books and films and speakers and testimonies--the world is no further ahead in its understanding of the Jewish people and the meaning of the pan-European effort to destroy them. How can it be, when the same dementias and pathologies are still around, fueling the desire of Jew-haters--this time centred primarily in the Muslim/Arab world--to perpetrate another Jewish genocide?
The cry after the Holocaust was "Never Again", and the organizers of Holocaust education weeks and other measures designed to raise awareness about the Holocaust had no doubt hoped that their work would serve to innoculate the world against the recurrence of the genocidal virus. Sadly, that has not happened. It might be helpful, no, more than that, it is crucial, during this Holocaust Education Week, to acknowledge the limits of rational discourse in an irrational world--a world in which Jew-hatred is endemic and eternal. We must realize that, unless drastic action is taken immediately, there's a very real chance the anguished cry of "Never Again" will, like the anguished cries of Jews murdered during the Holocaust, fall on deaf ears. As vital and meaningful as it is to memorialize the six million dead, it isn't enough to protect us, the living Jews, from another genocide.
Melanie nails it: The invaluable (and fearless) Melanie Phillips exposes the world's hypocisy in condemning Iran's latest genocidal announcement while condoning the continuing efforts by the Palestinians--the civilized world's pets-- to undermine and destroy the Jewish state:
With its customary hypocrisy, the alleged civilised world has recoiled in horror at the declaration by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’. So he’s a genocidal, Jew-hating maniac. So what’s new? Iran has never made any secret of its intention to annihilate Israel. It exports demented anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred to the Muslim world, it funds terrorists to murder as many Jews as possible (see the most recent victims this week in Hadera) and it is racing to build a nuclear weapon so that it can expeditiously carry out its professed aim to eradicate the Jewish nation state.
All this the world has known; and yet it has sat on its hands, occasionally extricating them to be wrung over Iran’s accelerating nuclear programme before resorting to the tried and tested strategy of maximum uselessness, diplomacy through the United Nations — fresh from that organisation’s triumph in disarming (not) that other threat to the world, Saddam Hussein; for which failure the head of its nuclear watchdog, Mohamed al Baradei, was doubtless awarded the Nobel Prize by a grateful Swedish establishment and wider world for whom America, not Iran, appears to be the greatest enemy of civilisation.
So Iran continues merrily on its diabolical way, murdering Israelis here, murdering Iraqis there, serenely building its apparatus of mass destruction while the alleged civilised world looks at Iraq and looks at President Bush and sucks its teeth and settles down to wait for the new Jewish holocaust wrapped in the mantle of sanctimonious opposition to pre-emptive action, and with Israel well on the way to being itself safely delegitimised and dehumanised. After all, are we not told by allegedly civilised people in Britain and Europe that it would have been better had Israel not been created?
How seriously can we take those expressions of horror at Israel’s putative annihilation, when those very same people lionise the Palestinians who are committed to precisely the same objective but whose every word and deed reinforcing that genocidal aim is sanitised or simply ignored? Since the Gaza pull-out, Israel has all but disappeared from the media radar. Why? Because the hacks only get excited when Israel behaves in a way they can condemn...
The past is prologue: If history has taught us anything--and given the way events seem to be unfolding these days, I often doubt it has--it's that when Jew-hating leaders who use Jew-hatred to rally their people to a totalitarian cause say they want to kill Jews, it behooves us to take them at their word. Thus, when an Iranian president says he wants to wipe Jews off the map and follows it up with huge anti-Jewish street protest (shades of the Third Reich) in his capital city, we can be fairly certain he isn't looking to sit down in a friendly confab to hash out his differences with Ariel Sharon. He's looking to expunge the Jewish presence from Allah's land. Only this time, he won't have to resort to banally evil assembly-line murder. He can go right to the main event and destroy the Jews with one judiciously-aimed nuked. (That he would also murder a significant number of Muslims is apparently seen as an unfortunate but necessary side effect--collateral damage in the larger jihad.)
But wait. Maybe we're going a bit overboard here. Maybe Ahmadinejad isn't really bent on genocide. Maybe all he wants is to rattle a few sabres to, you know, kickstart the peace process.
Yeah, that's the ticket. From ABC News:
On Friday the Iranian embassy in Moscow tried to soften the impact of Ahmadinejad's comment.
"Mr. Ahmadinejad did not have any intention to speak in sharp terms and engage in a conflict," the Iranian embassy in Moscow said in a statement following a wave of international criticism.
It added that Ahmadinejad "underlined the key position of Iran, based on the necessity to hold free elections on the occupied territories."
So you see, Iran, arguably the most repressive regime in the world, doesn't really want to wipe Israel (that rebuke to Allah's promises to the Prophet) off the map. What it really wants is to ensure that free and fair democratic election are held in the West Bank and Gaza. (Although, since Gaza is no longer "occupied" it would be more accurate to refer to the occupied territory.)
Democracy über alles, as they say.
Update: Looks like the embassy official got it wrong because the President is standing by his words.
Sense and sensibility: The lead editorial in the Globe and Mail condemns Ahmadinejad's genocidal housekeeping comments about wiping Jews off the map and notes the response of world leaders to his revolting words:
On the day an Iranian-backed terrorist group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed five people and injured 21 others in the Israeli town of Hadera, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was spewing out a despicable message of hate that lends ideological weight and emotional support to those who plot such murderous attacks. It is shocking to hear that any public figure in the Middle East today could still espouse the destruction of Israel. But it is positively frightening when it comes from the head of a government that is determined to develop the capacity to make nuclear weapons.
At a conference in Tehran appropriately titled The World Without Zionism, Mr. Ahmadinejad launched into one of his rants against the U.S. government, accusing it of using Israel "as a fort to spread its aims in the heart of the Islamic world." Then, summoning the memory of the late Ayatollah Khomaini, leader of the Iranian revolution, he declared: "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map." Palestinians, he added, "will wipe this stigma from the face of the Islamic world."
The virulently anti-Semitic remarks recall Nazi depictions of Jews as a kind of virus that must be eliminated. It would be easy to dismiss Mr. Ahmadinejad as a crackpot, but the problem is that he reflects a pathological strain of thought in the Middle East that fuels hard-line sentiment, encourages suicide bombers and makes it harder to resolve legitimate Palestinian grievances at the negotiating table. Israelis are right to question the value of concessions if they cannot ensure lasting peace and security.
World leaders were quick to condemn his genocidal views and remind Tehran that there would be consequences. Prime Minister Paul Martin called the outburst "beyond the pale." Russia, which has opposed Western calls for action over Iran's refusal to abandon nuclear development, called the statements "unacceptable." Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said flatly, "We have recognized the state of Israel and we are pursuing a peace process . . ."
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded member states that Israel has "the same rights and obligations as every other member." That isn't nearly good enough. It would be going too far to suspend Iran's membership in the world body over its blatant disregard of the UN charter, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed. But Mr. Annan could make a strong statement by cancelling a planned visit to Tehran and joining Western leaders in pushing for concerted action to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, more sensible voices in the Middle East must make much more noise to drown out Mr. Ahmadinejad and other war-mongering hard-liners.
Ah, yes. Those much-vaunted "sensible voices". As if King Abdullah of Jordan and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (for I presume those are the biggest guns in the arsenal of sensible voices to which the editorialist refers) could make headway with the mullahs and their jihadi designs. As if the president of an Islamist totalitarian dystopia, who, after all, is merely the frontman, the ventriloquist's dummy, can be reasoned with in a rational manner. As if tyrants and tyrannies can be disarmed (and disarmed) with a few sensible words.
All I can say is, "I'm dismayed" that the Globe hasn't looked to the historical record. If it had, it might have noticed how ineffective "sensible" voices have always been in the face of pure evil.
No, what's required is not a sensible discussion with a few "moderate" Arab leaders, but a concerted effort on the part of the world to ensure that Iran--which, once again has made its genocidal intentions clear--is never allowed to develop the weapons which will enable it to fulfill its goals.
One must question whether such an effort is even possible on a planet which awards Nobel Peace Prizes to feckless nuclear watchdogs who have so far done squat to foil the mullahs' plans.
Le mot (un)juste: You can always count on charismatic international dynamo, Kofi Annan, to rise to the occasion. Take, for example, his response to the remarks made yesterday by Iran's new president. Echoing a genocidal maniac of an earlier age, Mahmoud Lastnamerhymeswithjihad boldy asserted that Israel, that blot on an otherwise impeccable Arab landscape, should be "wiped off the map".
Kofi responded to this call for mass murder not with "outrage", not with "disgust". No, such heightened emotions are simply not within the unflappable diplomat's repertoire. Kofi said he was "dismayed"
"I'm dismayed". That's what you say when your child gets a "B" in math instead of the"A" you know he's capable of. That's what you say when Baskin-Robbins is sold out of your favourite ice cream flavour on a warm day in July. That's what you say when you can't fit into that dress you wanted to wear to your high school reunion. "I'm dismayed". "I'm pertubed". "I'm most distressed and quite downcast at this unfortunate and unexpected turn of events."
When a loony-tune jihadi suffused with delusions of Shia grandiosity says he wants to slaughter 5.3 million Jews, you should be frikkin' ballistic with rage.
Gee, Kofi, what's it take to get you really upset?
I know: How 'bout a big old hole where the Zionist entity used to be.
Update: Another unflappable diplomat, Foggy Bottom flak Sean McCormack, has rejected Israel's call to have Iran expelled from the UN for its genocidal comments. "Iran is a member of the United Nations," says McCormack . "What I think we would encourage instead is Iran to start behaving in a responsible manner as a member of the international community."
He also wants them to quit pretending they want to light office buildings in Tehran when what they really want to do is build nukes to obliterate Israel; to stop supporting terrorism; and to no longer oppress their own people.
It's the crude, dude: You have to hand it to Saddam. Not only was he raking it in from the UN scam known as Oil-for-Food. He was also earning a good coin on side by demanding kickbacks from the corporations--over 2,000, according to the Volker Report--who sidled up to the oily trough. From The Telegraph:
More than 2,000 companies taking part in the United Nations oil-for-food programme paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, an inquiry has found.
Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has delivered a fifth and final report, which details how thousands of companies and individuals around the world were involved in illegal transactions to circumvent the UN programme.
The New York Times newspaper said three members of the UN-established Independent Inquiry Committee had confirmed that the report would show that "the country with the most companies involved was Russia, followed by France."
The 500-page report said companies in 66 countries paid kickbacks on selling Iraq humanitarian goods and companies from 40 countries paid surcharges on oil contracts but the UN Security Council took little action.
The program, which began in December 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of UN sanctions imposed in 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait. It achieved considerable success in feeding Iraqis, and allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to pay for food, medicine and other goods.
Preferential treatment was given to companies from France, Russia and China, the report says, all permanent members of the Security Council, who were more favorable to lifting the 1990 sanctions than the America and Britain...
I think that's what George Costanza on the Seinfeld show (now a quaint relic from that blissfully ignorant Clintonian era) would have called "double dipping".
As for those who've long insisted "it's all about the oil", turns out they have a point. Only it's not about America's desire to get its mitts on Saddam's crude. It's about France, Russia and China's desire to keep the oily--and very lucrative--spigots open for as long as possible.
Update: And lest you think that only two-bit, slimeball companies were doing business with Saddam, the Volker Report mentions such corporate giants as Volvo, Siemens and Daimler-Chrysler.
Both side now: The BBC, ever the unbiased, "t"-word-eschewing media outlet, notes that Israeli and Palestinian newspapers have fundamentally different takes on yesterday's suicide bombing in Hadera:
Newspapers in Israel and the Palestinian territories are sharply divided over the reasons for and ramifications of Wednesday's suicide attack in the northern Israeli town of Hadera, in which several people died.
In Israel, a sense of anger and frustration is manifest, together with recriminations against both the Israeli and Palestinian governments, which are accused of a failure to tackle terrorism effectively.
Palestinian commentators argue that such attacks are inevitable and will continue as long as Israel continues to maintain its stranglehold on Palestinian areas. They point to the fact that the latest attack came after Israeli troops killed an Islamic Jihad leader on Monday.
The Beeb then offers a few excepts from these newspapers to highlight the difference of opinion.
Reminds me of the time Cherie Blair insisted that suicide bombers, the poor dears, have no other way to express their frustration at the stranglehold Israel maintains over Palestinian areas than by exploding whichever Israeli civilians happen to amble into their path.
After all, killing a leader of a terrorist organization which seeks to obliterate the sovereign Jewish presence on land claimed by Arabs is exactly the same as a jihadi in the grip of hateful fantasies blowing himself up in a crowded marketplace. And anyone who suggests otherwise lacks the Beeb's steely resolve to remain completely and utterly unbiased.
Fulla's world: The front page of the Globe and Mail has a story about Fulla, the Muslim world's answer to Barbie. The fetching but modestly-dressed Fulla comes with a selection of head scarves and her own little prayer rug, unlike that Western slut who wears skimpy outfits designed to bewitch unsuspecting males and lure them into illicit carnal relations, which the men of her family will be compelled to act against so as to restore the family's honour, besmirched by a disobedient harlot, with her painted face and her sexual wiles who...
Oh, sorry. Don't know what came over me. Give me a sec to compose myself.
Deep breath.
There. Much better.
Anyway, the Globe article neglects to mention that Fulla comes in a singing version. When you press her prayer mat, you'll hear the following song:
I’m a Barbie girl
In a Muslim world.
I’m Wahabi.
Join the clubi.
You can’t brush my hair.
It’s hiding under there.
Wear a burka.
When I worka.
(Come along, Fulla,
You’re so cool-a.)
I’m a Barbie girl
In a Muslim world.
When I get vexed
Put on my semtex.
I have never kissed
An awful Zionist.
Allah hates ‘em.
Incinerates ‘em.
(Come along, Fulla
You’re so cool-a.
Come along, Fulla
Muslims rule-a…)
Nellie Ahmadin”jihad” and the boys sing:
Nellie: We’re gonna wipe the Jews right off o’ the map.
We’re gonna wipe the Jews right off o’ the map.
We’re gonna wipe the Jews right off o’ the map.
And kill ‘em all today.
The world will come to thank us
When the Zionists are dead.
We’ve had enough, we want a change
It’s time to ride ‘em off our range.
Rub ‘em out of the region
And put Arabs there instead.
Mullahs: Oho! Those Jews have got it coming.
They had a good long run.
We’ll lob a nuke at Tel Aviv
The end will be a great relief.
Make the world safe for jihad
And extend Dar al-Islam.
Nellie: I’m gonna wipe the Jews right off o’ the map.
I’m gonna wipe the Jews right off o’ the map.
I’m gonna wipe the Jews right off o’ the map.
Let’s kill ‘em all today.
I may be genocidal
But it’s not like I’m insane.
It’s not a quirk to do God’s work
And Jew-hate don’t corrode the brain.
I’ll rant and spew like A. Hitler
So his work won’t be in vain…
Q&A on A-J: In its ongoing effort to spread truth throughout the world, Al That Jaz gives viewers a chance to consult an expert in the field of world affairs.
Today's query comes from a befuddled fan in France who wants to know "What's at the core of the conflict between the West and the Muslim world?"
Dear Dr. Kareem or Sheikha Sajida…
You keep discussing Iraq war, the Israeli Palestinian conflict- Why not search for the true reasons and the core of the conflict between the West and the Muslim and the Arab world?
I’m a Muslim American living in France and I’d truly love to hear your answers on this issue.Is it the West’s interference under the guise of “liberation” and “modernisation?” Or is it the greed of many corrupt Arab regimes that made them tilt towards the West at the expenses of their people?
Thanks for your time
Mahatma from France
To which the expert responds:
Dear Mahatma,
You’ve aroused a very important subject indeed, although I believe that Iraq war and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians solve part of the riddle.
I do admit that many Arab leaders are more concerned with their own interests. I do believe that some of them even sold their nations to the West to win their support and avoid unexpected penalties if the agenda of any of the world superpowers, and I don't only mean the United States, wasn't implemented.
But apart from the greed and blindness of those leaders is the West crave for control and hegemony. Countries like the U.S., Britain and Israel do not wish for the rise of more powerful states that would threaten their interests and split the influence they have over the world.
Another fact that plays a key role in shaping the West strategy towards the Arabs or the Muslim world is the natural resources. Most of the Arab and the Muslim countries sit on massive oil reserves, which the West has no intention to lose.
Hope this has ended your confusion.
Sheikha Sajida
On behalf of Dr. Kareem
What a relief it has nothing whatsoever to do with that jihad we've all heard so much about.
Update: In another informative Q&A, this one from a few days ago, Sheikha Sajida on behalf of Dr. Kareem (just where is that Dr. Kareem--he seems to be AWOL) comiserates about Israel's inexorable landgrab:
Dear Dr. Kareem…
They just keep taking and taking and cutting away Palestinian lands, that very soon Israel will have it all.
They keep faking excuses taking Palestinian lands and putting Berlin wall on it. Ever since the Israelis stole their way to Palestine, there has been nothing but trouble and fighting.
I believe those invaders have this plan from the beginning and step by step, they seem to accomplish it by provoking attacks and playing the victim with the support and help of Washington.
They are just a group of greedy lying stealers trying to make mega money and military bases in the Middle East.
Space
Dear Space,
Israel’s continuous land grab is an absolute travesty of international laws and UN resolutions, but still fails to attract the world nations’ attention to take action and save the Palestinians and stand on their side once.
I’m afraid the world, including the Middle East has become accustomed to the Israeli atrocities and brutal strategy in the occupied territories.
We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to Israel’s tactics specially the coming period, where the Jewish state feels protected with it’s latest move of withdrawing from Gaza Strip, which I call “temporary withdrawal”.
By giving the withdrawal the form of a goodwill gesture, Israel now will move ahead with its agenda to swallow as much Palestinian lands as possible, without having to worry about an international community's condemnation.
Sheikha Sajida
On behalf of Dr. Kareem
Apparently, neither Space nor Sheikha Sajida on behalf of Dr. Kareem have ever bothered to look at a map. If they had, they might have noticed that the Arabs control a vast amount of land while the Jews control a minute amount of land.
But it seems even that is too much for some people. Just ask the Islamic dystopia's new president. He wants to expunge all traces of the miniscule Zionist entity from the map.
Georgie Porgie pudding and pie/Got himself caught in a terrible lie: Christopher Hitchens in FrontPage Magazine manages to reign in his glee--a bit--at the apparent implosion of dapper gasbag George Galloway. George, who impressed the New York Times and others with his silver-tongued legerdemaine in front of the U.S. Senate back in May, seems to have been suffering from some unknown brain ailment which affected his ability to discern truth from fiction (my explanation for his odd behaviour). As a result, he may have perjured himself when recounting his exploits--or lack thereof--with Baathist brigand, Saddam Hussein. George has previously insisted that he did not benefit financially from that association. Au contraire, said a Senate report, which offered a detailed account of how Georgie and the ex-Mrs. Georgie helped themselves to some of Saddam's oily lucre.
After detailing George's infamy, including how he may have been undone by former amigo, Saddam flunky Tariq Aziz, Hitchens wonders if those who had hailed the "maverick" MP's Senate performance and anti-war stance will now have the courage to set the record straight:
Yet this is the man who received wall-to-wall good press for insulting the Senate subcommittee in May, and who was later the subject of a fawning puff piece in the New York Times, and who was lionized by the anti-war movement when he came on a mendacious and demagogic tour of the country last month. I wonder if any of those who furnished him a platform will now have the grace to admit that they were hosting a man who is not just a pimp for fascism but one of its prostitutes as well.
Yet they will, Hitch. Just as soon as apes and pigs learn to fly.
Huzzah for the Lords!: In a bracing display of common sense, the British Upper House has voted to scrap the bill which would have made it illegal to say anything unduly critical about Buddhists, Wiccans and Seventh Day Adventists. Oh, and also about Muslims. From the Times Online:
MINISTERS sounded a retreat on their plans for a contentious new law to outlaw incitement to religious hatred last night as the Lords inflicted a crushing defeat by throwing out the Bill.
Peers voted by 260 to 111 to tear up the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill and replace it completely with text that severely limited its scope and added safeguards for free speech.
The scale of the defeat would have been larger still had it not been for an last-minute offer from a Home Office Minister to attempt to find a compromise within the next fortnight.
Baroness Scotland, of Asthal, QC, admitted that “there are issues which we found difficult” and pleaded with peers to give her time to try to bring forward amendments at its report stage.
Opposition to the Bill, which has been led by an eclectic alliance including evangelical Christian groups and the comedian Rowan Atkinson, is likely to intensify after her admission of doubts within the Government over the Bill...
Border orders: Condi Rice wants Israel to loosen up it borders to that the Palestinians can get on with the business of building their new state. From Ha'aretz:
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested Tuesday that Israel must loosen controls at border crossings to allow freer passage for Palestinians and economic development in areas that would one day be an independent Palestinian state.
Rice spoke in the Canadian capital of Ottawa a day after reports that a top Middle East envoy had criticized Israel for moving too slowly on negotiations to open borders around the Gaza Strip.
Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza over the summer after nearly 30 years. The territory, now under Palestinian control, is on the other side of Israel from the larger Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, and Palestinians must cross Israel or go through Egypt to pass between the two areas."It is very clear that the crossings issues need to get resolved," Rice said.
She did not specifically call on Israel to change its border policies, but did not dispute the findings of envoy James Wolfensohn that Israel was stalling in the restoration of movement across the borders.
Sure thing, Condi. And if some semtex-clad seethers manage to slip across the newly-relaxed borders and blow up a slew of Jews, that's a small price to pay for ensuring the economic success of the nascent Palestinian state.
Tales from the crypt: Well, that Palestinian reconstruction project is finally underway. The first announced project: a massive shrine to late, great leader, Yasser Arafat, the thuggish kleptocrat who, in the words of the Christian Science Monitor, "forged the identity" of his people.
Wish someone would give them a genuine identity, one that involved a desire to co-exist peacefully with the Jews. From the Jerusalem Post:
The Palestinian Authority, which in recent years has been facing a severe financial crisis, has decided to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in build a large and magnificent mausoleum for former PA chairman Yasser Arafat.
The new stately structure will replace the current burial site, which is located in the Mukata "presidential" compound in Ramallah. The project is financed by the PA Ministry of Finance, which has refused to reveal the costs. However, sources here estimated the cost of the project at over one million dollars.
Entitled Mausoleum of Yasser Arafat, the project is being carried out by the Palestinian construction company Midmac and under the auspices of the PA's Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction [PECDAR].
PA Minister of Housing Mohammed Shtayyeh said a museum and a mosque will be attached to the mausoleum, adding that the new structure had been designed solely by Palestinian architects.
The museum will include Arafat's personal belongings, such as his keffiyeh and pistol, as well as other items he used during his work. As for the mosque, it will have enough space for 250 people and could also be used as a conference hall.
According to the plan, Arafat's tomb will be turned into a 12-meter-high chamber built with Jerusalem stones. A 19-meter-high monument, also decorated with Jerusalem stones, will be constructed next to the chamber, which will be surrounded by a garden stretching over a six-dunam plot.
To allow visitors free access to the site, the PA is planning to open a new gate in the southern part of the Mukata with a Jerusalem stone tiled path leading straight to the structure, which is due to be completed by May 2006.
In a related development, the entire Mukata compound is to be renovated under the terms of an agreement signed Tuesday between the PA and the United Nations Development Program [UNDP].
Japan will finance the project, estimated at more than $10 million...
Mausoleum of Yasser Arafat, huh? Catchy title. Bet they needed a few dozen focus groups to arrive at that one.
And so nice of the Japanese to foot the bill for the Mukata renovation. What, are they hoping to get the sushi concession or something?
Fill in the blanks--The Prophet (p.b.u.h.) turned the obdurate, stiff-necked Jews into apes and ----: A bunch of the faithful have gathered in newly-liberated Gaza for a competition which tests students' knowledge of the Koran. From BBC news:
An international competition testing Muslim students' knowledge of the Koran is underway in Gaza, with participants from 20 countries taking part.
The al-Aqsa International Competition for the Holy Koran sees a panel of Muslim clerics posing questions to 70 competitors over a five day period.
Entrants are asked to recite Koranic verses from memory with the winners sharing $73,000 (£41,000) in prizes.
The competition was opened in Gaza City by Palestinian officials on Sunday.
Over 700 people, including leaders of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, attended a cultural centre for the launch of the event.
Participants have travelled from countries including Senegal, Nigeria, Holland and Arab states to take part.
Celebrations
"The aim of this is to show our respect to the holy book of the Koran and to create a new generation of believers who are following the rules of the Koran," Yousef Salameh, Palestinian minister of religious affairs, told the Associated Press news agency.
Mr Salameh also praised the non-Arabic speakers among the competitors for their knowledge of the Koran.
The minister said the competition formed part of Palestinian celebrations taking place following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
"We pray to God that next year, God willing, the competition will take place in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in holy Jerusalem," Mr Salameh added.
Palestinians hope to see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent Palestinian state.
Next year in Jerusalem, as they say.
Timber!: The UN has always seen itself as a force for good in the world, even when evidence (Oil-for-food! Thuggish regimes preside over the Human Rights Commission! UN peacekeepers rape the locals! Etc, etc. etc...) shows that to be a myopic vision at best, and completely blind at worst. Now, though, the UN wants to buff up its tarnished image, and one of the best ways to do that is to change the way it relates to the Jewish state. Seems the UN and Is have been estranged of late, what with all that undue international focus on a speck of Jewish sovereignty floating in a sea of hostile Arabs. The UN's new kindler, gentler approach to Israel has been touted by no less a source than the New York Times. But an article by Jonathan Tobin the the JWR suggests that, for the time being, it's more a matter of optics than of genuine change.
That's because no matter how many tea parties Israeli envoys are invited to, U.N. anti-Zionism is grounded in more than just the hard hearts of so many of the delegates and permanent employees there.
It's at the United Nations and its agency offices around the globe where hatred of Israel is not merely an opinion.
There, it is institutionalized in committees and agencies that exist to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state and to provide forums for those who wish to attack it.
Tobin says the UN has "an infrastructure of hate" which has yet to be dismantled. At the head of the hateful conga line: UNRWA, the organization which has done more than any other to perpetuate and normalize the Palestinian refugee situation. UNRWA
is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, created in 1949 ostensibly to aid Palestinian refugees. All other refugees around the world since then have depended on the U.N. High Commission for Refugees for help. Only the Palestinians have their own U.N. agency. But unlike every other refugee problem, the Palestinians were not resettled but rather kept in place (through the good offices of their own U.N. agency) so as to better facilitate the ongoing war to destroy Israel.
Over the years, UNRWA morphed from being a group merely dedicated to aiding the siege of Israel to one whose employees in places like Gaza were themselves affiliated with terrorist groups, such as Hamas.
And that's only one of many institutionalized efforts to undermine the Jewish state, ones which, writes Tobin, " have served to fuel the conflict". And because Jew-hatred has proven to be such a lucrative pursuit, with so many corrupt employees of these agencies diverting money into their own pockets, it's hard to see how this endemic moral erosion can ever be reversed. At this point, the rot has probably spread too far, compromising the viability of the entire structure.
The Beeb comes full circle: As al Jazeera prepares to lauch its English language station, the BBC struggles to play catch-up.
Ironic really, since so many BBC journalists who worked for the Arab-language radio arm--the Beeb's first foreign language venture launched way back in the late 1930s--have in recent times gone on to work for...al Jazeera: From the Beeb website, of course:
The BBC's first foreign language radio service was launched in 1938. It was in Arabic. Sixty seven years later the first BBC funded foreign language TV service is to be launched.
Again it will be in Arabic.
The political background has changed. In 1938 the British Government was concerned about Italy's Radio Bari broadcasting anti-British propaganda to the region.
But the need for a strong BBC presence across the Middle East remains as strong as ever. However, while the radio service has around 12 million listeners increasingly it is satellite television that is becoming the main source of news.
However, the BBC has already had a go at running an Arabic language TV service. It fell apart in the 1990s following a series of editorial conflicts with its Saudi backed funders.
It did though leave an interesting legacy, a pool of trained Arabic journalists who went on to become the core of a new broadcaster, the Qatar based al-Jazeera.
Al-Jazeera is famous for its broadcasts of recordings of Osama bin Laden. And the US Government has been critical of the broadcaster for its coverage of events in the middle east but its had a dramatic impact on the spread of free speech across the region.
Al-Jazeera has meant that this new BBC venture will be launched in to a very different media World...
A very different media World, no doubt; one in which the U.K.'s dhimmified national broadcaster sees an Arab propogandizer as somehow contributing to the spread of free speech. (Free to spread Jew-hatred and loony conspiracy theories, more like.) But a world which once again faces a very real totalitarian threat.
Here be dragons: Not long ago, I expressed my anxiety about the most dangerous global threats in a humourous couplet: Avian vectors and fanatics who kill/If the flu don't get you then the jihad will. I can't say my anxiety was appeased any by reading Mark Steyn latest piece in the Telegraph. Like me, Steyn isn't too exercised about the Naomi Klein No Logo crowd's self-righteous freak-out re: the global machinations of American multinationals. He's worried about those other dragons--the ones which breathe actual fire and which may prove far more difficult to slay:
...In a globalised economy, the anti-glob mob and the eco-warriors want us to worry about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. But globalisation cuts both ways, and the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First World - just because someone got on a plane.
Indeed, when you look at it that way, the biggest globalisation success story of recent years is not McDonald's or Disney, but Islamism: the Saudis took what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practised by Bedouins in the middle of a desert miles from anywhere and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Leeds, Buffalo. It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop. And now, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalised insurgency.
What's the bigger threat? A globalisation that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalisation that exports the fiercest and unhealthiest aspects of its culture? Far too many American conservatives still think the dragons are at the far fringes of the map - that, in the 21st century, America can be a 19th-century republic untroubled by the world's pathogens because of its sheer distance from them...
Steyn's point is that the global village is a mighty small place these days, and the threats we perceive as being remote and thus non-threatening are much closer than we think. That got me thinking. When I was in journalism school many moons ago, there was a term we used to refer to events that were so far away, so removed from our field of awareness, that they might as well have been occurring on another planet. The term was "Afghanistanism".
Afghanistan doesn't seem so remote anymore.
Update: Today's unintentionally amusing bird flu headline--Parrot quarantined next door to foot and mouth farm.
I usually attend the Royal Winter Fair every year (an annual event which, this year for the first time, may not allow poultry to be exhibited because of fears over bird flu). I've seen goats, sheep, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, ducks and turkeys, but I have yet to see a single foot or mouth on display. I trust farms devoted to the pedal and the oral exist only in the British Isles.
Money changes everything: George Galloway, the leader of the satirically-named Respect Party, is in hot water again. Galloway has successfully fended off charges that he had his hand out during the UN-Saddam Hussein joint financial project known as Oil-for-Food. So far, he was won a libel suit against the Telegraph and demonstrated his debating skills, forged in the crucible of the British House of Commons, to the tongue-tied yokels of the U.S. Senate (at least, that's how the exchange was portrayed by media outlets like the New York Times). Now, however, new evidence has surfaced which seems to suggest that George may have been less than forthcoming about his involvement in the oily scheme. From BBC News:
George Galloway has rejected claims he lied under oath to the US Senate committee which accused him of receiving oil cash from Saddam Hussein.
The Respect MP ridiculed the senators' claims during a hearing in May.
Now they say fresh evidence links him and his estranged wife to Iraq's oil-for-food programme. Mr Galloway and his wife both deny the allegations.
Mr Galloway said: "I am ready to fly to the US today... to face such a charge (perjury) because it is simply false."
The US Senate committee claims to have found £85,000 in Iraqi oil money in the bank account of his estranged wife Dr Armineh Abu-Zayyad.
The MP could face criminal charges if he is found to have given false testimony to the committee on 17 May...
Couldn't happen to a nicer fascist blowhard.
Phobes and philes: Daniel Pipes takes on the neologism "Islamophobia" in the National Post. (The piece is secreted, unfortunately, behind the Post's firewall.) Pipes points out that the term was coined in 1996 "by a self-proclaimed 'Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia'". It was supposed to describe prejudice against Muslims--a Muslim version of "anti-Semitism (even though that term was intended to pertain to a Jew's race, not his religion, and was invented by a German anti-Semite in the late 19th Century). But this purported "phobia", a pathological and irrational fear of Muslims and their faith, has been used to target and marginalize those, like Pipes, who have criticized Islam and the violent acts performed in its name.
Pipes is the first to say that he is not Islamophobic, even though he has been labeled as such by Sheema Khan in The Globe and Mail (and by many others who don't have a bully pulpit in Canadian media). What he is is an "Islamism-ophobe". That is, he has been critical of and vigilant against "radical Islam, the ideology, not Islam the religion". Apparently, Pipes sees a clear distinction between the two, although those up to speed on the concept of jihad might have some difficulty separating the two, especially since Islam the ideology--the jihad ideology--is an integral aspect of the faith as mentioned in the Koran and practised by Allah's Prophet. I'm not sure how you extricate the one from the other except to say that, since the concept of jihad is central and eternal to Muslim doctrine, you can't. It's a matter of whether the faithful choose to act on it, as they have in most periods of history since the religion's founding. Hence the reason, if we care to notice, why so much of the world is Islamic.
In any case, Pipes's insistence t