A Hideous Irony:
Israel Undermined in the West while Islam Undermines the West
By Christopher Barder
Hopefully the messages of this are not lost through its being slightly out of date
By Christopher Barder
Hopefully the messages of this are not lost through its being slightly out of date
The hideous irony explored in this paper is that as Anti-Semitism grows in Britain and Europe and US foreign policy slides even further away from friendliness towards Israel, the frontiers of each, the USA and Europe, in terms of facing Muslim hostility, hinge more and more on the tiny state of Israel. Their own resistance is crumbling while that of Israel, measured in terms of the Iranian nuclear threat or the dagger at the historical heartland of Israel in the form of a radically hostile Palestinian entity, cannot afford to wane in resolve, because it faces an imminent existential threat. Israel must stand obdurate against varied Islamic determined threats, despite appeasement and cow-towing by the West, which refuses to discern and recognise that once the Saturday people are done for, the Sunday people will follow, in the thrust to create a Muslim ummah and khalifa.
So serious is the situation that it is remarkable how the EU and the US under President Obama appear to be fiddling while the mainstays of their erstwhile civilisations burn around them. Nor is this an exaggeration. Anti-Semitism is on the rise as an attitude and expressed as not for many a long day. The American administration may be, even if unwittingly, stoking this and it is well-attested in Europe that the once subterranean Anti-Semitism is resurfacing with a new intensity partly fuelled by Islamic adherents from within European states. There are, therefore, two parallel and inter-acting phenomena: a pro Islamic agenda and an Anti-Semitic one, both combining to destroy nothing less than Western political culture and the Judeo-Christian civilisation on which once it rested.
The parallel phenomenon is to render Israel subject to incessant strategic abuse. It is being commanded by the EU and USA to change its settlement patterns by a series of diktats concerning where Jews may or may not live, all under the guise of international law but really propelled forward by naked racism and political Islamic dogma. The entire anti settlement issue lacks both economic and social sense. Jews living together with Arabs side by side, not separated, should be an obvious goal, signalling, like mixed communities in Northern Ireland or northern Spain, an aspiration towards mutual regard and neighbourliness. Instead, the Arab idea that dhimmi control over ‘Arab land’ or ‘Muslim land’ is a breach of acceptability, holds sway. That Jewish presence is intolerable and settlements are ‘enemies of peace’.
This issue has received billing as a major cause of unease in US-Israeli relations. Where Israeli sovereignty exits in this, in the sense of a right to decide on policy, seems muddied and unclear. It may also signal that this is well-nigh irrelevant. The settlement issue is a fundamental one in several respects. It may determine crucial issues concerning Israeli security. This involves the strategic overlooking provided by hill-tops. It may mean line of sight in military observation advantages. It certainly involves substantive guarding capability because of the exposed nature of incursion.
What the withdrawal from Gaza has allowed is a lawless terrorist entity on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean full of violence, hatred, faction fighting and damage to resources, unmitigated by the take-over in the Hamas coup against the rival gangs of Fateh (not ‘parties’ as the Western media call them, misleadingly). Replication of this kind of militia-gang based society is settlements away from dominating Judea and Samaria since hue and cry and IDF action are almost de facto completely incompatible with Palestinian Arab control over areas.
In brief, the settlements are not illegal and may be disputed for political or other ends, but not legitimately through pseudo legal arguments, EU and American administration opinion not withstanding. The following extract is not immoderate or as assertive as the present writer’s position or as might be put forward by some respectable legal opinion.
‘One may legitimately support or challenge Israeli settlements in the disputed territories, but they are not illegal, and they have neither the size, the population, nor the placement to seriously impact upon the future status of the disputed territories and their Palestinian population centers….
The settlements are not located in “occupied territory.” The last binding international legal instrument which divided the territory in the region of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza was the League of Nations Mandate, which explicitly recognized the right of Jewish settlement in all territory allocated to the Jewish national home in the context of the British Mandate. These rights under the British Mandate were preserved by the successor organization to the League of Nations, the United Nations, under Article 49 of the UN Charter.
The West Bank and Gaza are disputed, not occupied, with both Israel and the Palestinians exercising legitimate [says the original author, the current writer would maintain, entirely erroneously in the case of the Palestinians] historical claims. There was no Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to 1967. Jews have a deep historic and emotional attachment to the land and, as their legal claims are at least equal to those of Palestinians, it is natural for Jews to build homes in communities in these areas, just as Palestinians build in theirs.
The territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was captured by Israel in a defensive war, which is a legal means to acquire territory under international law. In fact, Israel's seizing the land in 1967 was the only legal acquisition of the territory this century: the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1947 to 1967, by contrast, had been the result of an offensive war in 1948 and was never recognized by the international community, including the Arab states, with the exception of Great Britain and Pakistan.’[1]
What is constantly ignored in Europe and, seemingly, by the Obama administration and its State Department, is that the West actually does not relish economic ‘basket cases’. Gaza and Judea-Samaria without Israeli work provision and assistance are just such cases. All kinds of medical improvements and treatment have been provided by Israel. Higher educational institutions derive from the so-called ‘occupation’, which has caused massive improvements in all kinds of standards of living improvements and life expectancy.
It is important that, apart from the oil industry, Arab countries have no economic resources. Oil, everyone knows, might run out sooner rather than later, and is a dwindling asset. Addiction to it must cease, in the West; and Arab countries have no record of investment and success in their own areas, whatsoever. There is no reason to assume they can run successful economies – based on the performances evident even when they have oil richness. There is neither agricultural growth in the ‘desert blooming’, as in Israel; nor signs of factory production and external market penetration through manufactured goods, as in the Asian economies. So, settlements, like Barkan, provide excellent possibilities for Arab employment in the Territories. Palestinian Arab labour can be used in Israel but reverts to a position inferior even to the many thousands of Palestinians in Arab countries without such employment.
What is more, Arab abuse of water resources is well-nigh constant. This makes the safeguarding which settlements provide, paradoxically perhaps, essential not just for employment prospects, but also for reasons of keeping aquifers unpolluted and available to all populations. It is hard not to interpret such hard-line hostility to Israel settlements as derived in Europe and the US in part from misguided pro-Arab positions for raison d’etat and partly because of simple anti Israel stances, which might be interpreted as Anti-Semitism. It is all the more notable that the EU has sought to blacklist Israeli produce from the Territories, in an echo of the Arab boycott.
The following is included simply to demonstrate the kind of pressure now being applied to the Israeli government to cease allowing expansion of settlement populations, as if this were the hinge point in all discussions with surrounding Arab states and the Palestinians.
‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy to negotiations with the Obama administration will depart on Sunday for meetings with U.S. officials in an attempt to negotiate a possible future settlement freeze.
Yitzhak Molcho is expected to meet with White House officials and with the staff of U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, preparing the ground for a meeting between Netanyahu and Mitchell that is due to take place on August 26 in London.
Molcho's trip will focus on efforts to bridge the gaps in the Israeli and American stances in regards to future settlement construction.
Israel is reportedly willing to agree to a six-month settlement freeze, but the Americans are interested in a halt to all settlement construction for at least one year.
In addition, the U.S. administration is interested in using any settlement freeze reached with Israel to encourage moderate Arab nations to normalize their ties with Israel.
The U.S. would then announce these mutual gestures in a bid to restart the peace process. Washington is placing an emphasis on re-launching negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.’[2]
So here is a kind of quid pro quo which is redolent exactly of appeasement trade-offs.
The EU view of the Israeli settlements may be well-put and closely reasoned, as exemplified through the following July 2009 press statement. It is, however, arguably, totally flawed.
‘“The current discussion on Israel's settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory focuses heavily on the legal and political issues. And the European Union certainly takes the view that all Israeli settlement in the occupied territory is illegal and that it seriously undermines progress towards a two-state solution,” said Mr. Roy Dickinson, the European Commission's Chargé d'affaires in Jerusalem. “Yet the economic impact of settlements on the Palestinian economy and the PA's revenues also deserves attention. The expropriation of fertile land; the settler-only roads which carve up the occupied Palestinian territory, and the checkpoints and roadblocks which exist solely to protect settlements: these all contribute to strangling the Palestinian economy, thus they reduce the PA's revenues and make the PA dependent on handouts from donors. And it is European taxpayers who pay most of the price of that dependence.”’[3]
This all concerns interpretation of UNSCR 242. What are safe and secure borders for Israel, which can be defended? The high ground on which most settlements are built. The alternative involves what all kinds of military experts have condemned: the ‘Auschwitz frontiers’ of Abba Eban’s graphic description. However, the subtle cunning by which settlements are blamed for the Palestinian economic wretchedness in the above extract, is unhistorical and absurd.
There was no development of fertile land now used by settlements before they existed, before 1967. Land has remained Palestinian on pain of death, as far as sales go to Jews, since the PA has existed and was not appropriated for Jewish farms before the PA without legitimate sale, being government land from the Turkish and Mandate periods or Arab and remaining so. To imply that Israeli Jews are simply thieves is a foul calumny and must not be allowed to further political purposes.
Anyone who has visited either the cultivation once practiced in the Gush Katif region or the settlements of the dusty and rocky terrain of Judea and Samaria will know that the Jewish farmers are pioneers. In the former instances they used plant knowledge which pre-existed their arrival but was unused by the Arabs who did not bind together the soil with specialist plant choices or plant appropriate species for the sandy conditions. After Israel pioneered, for example, seawater tomatoes, it became possible for the Arab population to emulate. Sadly, they often preferred hatred and violence to economic development – partly for political manipulation purposes.
In Judea and Samaria, there has been a large-scale rock removal programme over many years, to create fields and to avoid clashing where possible with already existing plantation ambitions (such as caused olive grove clashes in yishuv days). Theft of fertile soil in areas requiring highly skilled drip irrigation is a bizarre concept and so, with water at a premium, and Arab land as it had been before 1967, advances are thanks to the Jewish presence, not in spite of it. Before the first intifada, these realities were acknowledged by (now older) Arabs.
Without and before the ‘settler’ roads, there were still roads and the routes avoiding Arab villages reflect the need to escape from violence against Jews. Israelis have employed Arabs in their construction and their existence actually leaves Arab roads freer and less congested. In any case, separate economies are partly a product of security issues and they damage Arabs more than Jews. Road blocks are equally a product of Arab anti Jewish violence and yet, as anyone who has passed through them will know, they are economically neutral, unless delays are regarded as damaging. If so all borders such as once existed in Europe and still exist at Dover for instance, are also economically damaging, so ridiculous an idea as to be unworthy of a serious economic document. Remove the Arab violence menace and integrate different communities peacefully and security issues recede. Incidentally, nothing about Fateh-Hamas relations suggests this would be possible without an Israeli presence.
What we are seeing here is a classic piece of European blaming of the Jew. It may be politically incorrect to say this, but so it appears. This phenomenon blends together the two themes of this paper: negligent blindness before Arab/Islamic arguments and intentions; and growing Anti-Semitism, frequently disguised (feebly to those able to recognize it for what it is) as anti Israeli policy sentiment. The evidence is startling.
A major study in 2004 reached a number of conclusions and exposed a good deal more, including the role of European major politicians in being uncommitted wholeheartedly to positions definitely opposed to Anti-Semitism. It also demonstrated how deep the anti Israel feelings ran. This is the resume.[4]
‘The resurgence of European anti-Semitism after the Holocaust suggests that it is integral to European culture.
The European Union's attitude toward anti-Semitism is double-handed. With one hand, by its discriminatory anti-Israeli declarations, the EU plays the role of arsonist, fanning the flames of anti-Semitism. With the other, it also serves as fireman by trying, at the same time, to quench the flames of classic religious and ethnic anti-Semitism. France is paradigmatic of this attitude.
New European anti-Semitism often originates from youth, which indicates that rather than an anti-Semitism of the past it is one of the future.
A major change in EU policies is required to combat European anti-Semitism more effectively.’
The following is part of the findings on the anti Israeli stances prevalent throughout Europe.
‘The most recent major version of anti-Semitism which has strengthened radically in the last few decades, targets Israel, the Jewish state. This variant of Jew-hatred is now commonly referred to as “new anti-Semitism.” Its perpetrators often call themselves anti-Zionists. They aim to isolate Israel and present it - in the words of the Berlin Technical University's Center for Research on anti-Semitism - “as a state that is fundamentally negatively distinct from all others, which therefore has no right to exist.”
Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler characterized this by saying: “Traditional anti-Semitism denied Jews the right to live as equal members of society, but the new anti-Jewishness denies the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations.”
Former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark defined it: “Criticism of Israel has become very similar to anti-Semitism. There exists in it a rejection of the Jewish people's right to express its identity in its state; and Israel isn't judged according to the same criteria that are applied to other countries. If anti-Semites once aspired to live in a world rid of Jews, today anti-Semitism's goal is apparently a world cleansed of the Jewish state.”…’
More recent findings are also illuminating, concerning scale. The ADL found that, in European countries surveyed, February 2009, in response to these four questions, percentages with suspicions about Jews remained high:
1) Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country.
2) Jews have too much power in the business world.
3) Jews have too much power in international financial markets.
4) Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.
‘Overall, nearly one-third of those surveyed, 32 percent, believe that at least three of the above statements are “probably true,” while 15 percent believe that all four are “probably true.” In fact, 28 percent of Polish respondents, 20 percent of Spanish respondents, 18 percent of Hungarian respondents and 17 percent of French respondents believe that all four of the above statements are “probably true.”’[5]
The figures for the USA are not so bad, apparently, although they clearly do not take into account the attitudes among the white supremacist groups or those who create the Anti-Semitic blogs on the internet. In the winter of 2007, the results of a poll suggested:
‘indicates that 15% of Americans believe Jews have “too much power in the U.S.” The ADL is touting this figure as a rise over the past few years. In 1998, the same figure was 12%. But the 3% change is just slightly higher than the survey’s margin of error.
ADL’s attitudinal survey, conducted periodically since the 1960s, presents respondents with a series of 11 negative statements about Jews and asks whether or not they agree. Responses in-dicating agreement with six of the statements are categorized as “strongly antisemitic” for statistical purposes. The methodology has been criticized in the past for counting as antisemitic some responses that turn out in focus groups to be seen positively, such as “Jews always stick together.”
The survey still paints a brighter picture of America than comparable polls have in Europe. ADL surveys in Europe earlier this year found that more than a third of the respondents believe Jews have too much power.
The ADL’s surveys in America have taken a particularly close look at beliefs among African Americans and Latinos.
Among African Americans, negative views of Jews were almost three times as high as those among white respondents.
The ADL’s polls have traced what the organization sees as an improvement in views toward Jews in the Latino community. The number of foreign-born Latinos who hold what the ADL char-acterizes as strong antisemitic beliefs was 29%, down from 35% in last year’s poll. Among American-born Latinos, the figure is half as big — at 15%.
Overall, the survey found that 31% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America. That figure is down slightly, from 33% in 2005. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents said that Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, down from 30% last year. The survey had 2,000 respondents and a margin of error of 2.19%.’[6]
This is a not insignificant range of figures in fact. Furthermore, it is well known that the Obama administration was elected by the black and Hispanic vote and this is the most Anti-Semitic population sector. No wonder that there was an outburst by an Israeli MK which decried the administration’s policy towards settlement growth and Judenrein areas.
‘“Let’s not mince words,” says Knesset Member Yaakov Katz, head of the National Union party, a right wing party not in the government coalition. “The Obama-Clinton ‘no natural growth’ policy for 650,000 Jews in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is nothing less than anti-Semitism.”
…Katz called on American Christians and Jews to get tough with President Obama and tell them they will not accept such policies. “The American people must stand up and say that a President who says these things is anti-Semitic. They must not be silent – and the fact that they are silent is what's scaring me!”
“Ever since we liberated Jerusalem, the Golan and the other Biblical Jewish areas over 40 years ago,” Katz said, “American administrations have always been pushing us and trying to stunt our growth in Judea and Samaria; what the Obama Administration is trying to do is not new. I would just like to add that for the Obama Administration, there is no difference between Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria. In the Jerusalem neighborhoods that were liberated in 1967, we have close to 300,000 Jews, and we have another 350,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria. For the Americans, all 650,000 are the same; they are all to be boycotted, discriminated against and told to stop building and stop growing. There is no difference for them.”
“Ever since we liberated Jerusalem, the Golan and the other Biblical Jewish areas over 40 years ago,” Katz said, “American administrations have always been pushing us and trying to stunt our growth in Judea and Samaria; what the Obama Administration is trying to do is not new. I would just like to add that for the Obama Administration, there is no difference between Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria. In the Jerusalem neighborhoods that were liberated in 1967, we have close to 300,000 Jews, and we have another 350,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria. For the Americans, all 650,000 are the same; they are all to be boycotted, discriminated against and told to stop building and stop growing. There is no difference for them.”
“There is one other difference [between past U.S. administrations and this one]. In the past, other administrations have also pressured us – but this is the very first time that they are actually saying that the Jewish people have no right to give birth, or to build kindergartens, or to grow. President Barack Hussein Obama is the first one to say that a population of 650,000 Jews in Israel is not allowed to build even one square meter. He is bringing us back to the Middle Ages, with Jews facing discrimination simply because they are Jews.”
“This is the first time,” Katz continued with fervor, comparing Obama to the Biblical Pharaoh that worried about multiplying Hebrews, “that Americans – Christians and Jews – hear a President saying that the Biblical areas – areas that they believe and know are completely Jewish – must be sterilized of Jews. They hear him saying, just like King Pharaoh decreed so many years ago, that Jews must not give birth!”
“We have to ask the American people – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Senators and Congressmen of both parties, and others – to stand up and say: We refuse to fight against the Biblical nation in the Biblical land, and we have to stop this president from discriminating against the Jewish people. This is the first time since the Holocaust that a Western leader has said Jews have no right to give birth. I repeat this – because [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton said that even natural growth will not be allowed. They don’t say this about dogs or cats; only Jews in the Holy Land, a population of 650,000 Jews, has no right to grow and develop!”
Reiterating his message to American supporters of Israel, Katz said, “The American people have to stand up and say that a President who says these things is simply anti-Semitic.... Something happened 70 years ago in Europe and no one stood up to stop it – and no one is standing up to Obama now either, to say, ‘Shut up! You have no right to tell the Jewish People that they cannot have children in their own land!”’[7]
Was this an hysterical, exaggerative outburst? Maybe not so much as at first it may appear. Shortly after President Obama took over, Caroline Glick, a remarkably perceptive commentator, wrote:
‘It is comforting to believe Obama is motivated not by hostility toward Israel, but by naiveté. After all, if true, it means that as his attempts to appease the Arabs, Iran, and the Taliban are rebuffed, he will change course.
Unfortunately, two recent developments lend credence to the view that in courting the likes of Mullah Omar, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Assad and Khaled Mashal, Obama is not motivated by naiveté but by a conviction that the U.S. should abandon Israel. The first was the administration's Valentine's Day announcement that it was sending a delegation to Geneva to participate in the planning sessions preceding the UN's Durban review conference set to be convened in Geneva on Yom Hashoah in late April [2009]….
…The second development is Obama’s appointment of former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman to serve as director of the National Intelligence Council. The NIC Director is charged with advising the president on intelligence matters and composing the National Intelligence Estimate.
Freeman is an outspoken opponent of Israel. He has stated repeatedly that the source of Islamic and Arab hostility toward the U.S. and violence against Americans – including the September 11 attacks – is the American alliance with Israel. Were the U.S. to abandon Israel – which he believes is solely to blame for the Arab world's rejection of its right to exist and for Iran's stated intention to destroy it – then the U.S. would have no further difficulties with the Arabs or Iran.’[8]
It may be sound and sensible not to emphasise Anti-Semitism as a motive but as an effect, the product could be devastating. But senior political figures and a whole intelligentsia inclined to agree with Walt and Mearsheimer, this is dangerous and is found on both sides of the Atlantic. Former British Europe Minister, Denis MacShane has highlighted the severity of the problem.
‘Hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent. Last year I chaired a blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians, including former ministers and a party leader, that examined the problem of anti-Semitism in Britain. None of us are Jewish or active in the unending debates on the Israeli-Palestinian question.
…More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.
Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens – there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant – that is not acceptable in a modern democracy……… Our report sent a shock wave through the British government. Tony Blair called us in and told his staff to fan out throughout government departments and produce answers to the problems we outlined.
…Europe is reawakening its old demons, but today there is a difference. The old anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have morphed into something more dangerous. Anti-Semitism today is officially sanctioned state ideology and is being turned into a mobilizing and organizing force to recruit thousands in a new crusade -- the word is chosen deliberately – to eradicate Jewishness from the region whence it came and to weaken and undermine all the humanist values of rule of law, tolerance and respect for core rights such as free expression that Jews have fought for over time….
…Today there is still denial about the universal ideology of the new anti-Semitism. It has power and reach, and it enters into the soft underbelly of the Western mind-set that does not like Jews or what Israel does to defend its right to exist…’[9]
Rejecting Europe’s hopes, shared by most of its politicians, that Muslims can be peacefully integrated, Daniel Pipes suggests ‘The unprecedented nature of Europe's situation also renders a forecast exceedingly difficult. Never in history has a major civilization peaceably dissolved, nor has a people ever risen to reclaim its patrimony. Europe's unique circumstances make them difficult to comprehend, tempting to overlook, and virtually impossible to predict. With Europe, we all enter into terra incognita.’[10] Yet even this seems optimistic in comparison with violent strife and resistance to Eurabia, which are, generally, at a low ebb.
Bat Ye’or has said, ‘European universities - like those in America - are totally controlled by the Arab-Islamic lobby, as are the schools. A teacher who attempts to teach according to the European view of history is thrown out. Indeed, the freedom of expression and thought that has been so crucial for European democracy has disappeared.’ That is serious. Intellectuals and analysts, who advise governments and supply the people who advise on and create policies in the corridors of power, these are deeply influenced by Muslim ideas. She continues:
‘…the EU is spending a lot of money on Israeli NGOs in order to promote policies which will lead to the destruction of Israel. The EU considers Israel to be an accident of history that has to disappear. It thinks that if Israel disappears, relations between Europe and the Arab world will be much better. Now, the EU doesn't come out and actually say this, but all its policies, statements and actions are indicative of its aims. These aims could be developed in Israel and in America…
…We have to educate the European, American and Israeli youth to recover their culture and values, since it is they who will have to continue the efforts to preserve freedom and democracy - and they who will have to fight to defend them.’[11]
One of Bat Ye’or’s important insights here – and there are many in the interview – is the bracketing together of these three entities. Their values and cultural awareness, meaning the entire Judeo-Christian heritage, are under assault. This is not mere fancy. ‘Without taking into account the possible admission of Turkey to the European Union, the number of Muslims is expected to grow to more than 40 million by 2050, representing about 15 percent of the population.’[12] Sharia is getting more prominent and customs, signified by dress codes and even honour killings, are now matters of national concern in many EU countries. Nor is this all.
In the USA there have been signs of Islam influencing cultural and legal forms rather like in Europe. Some ‘see Islamic law's growing influence as a threat. Shariah's critics point to cases such as the airport in Minneapolis, where some Shariah-adherent taxi drivers made headlines in 2006 for refusing to pick up passengers they suspected of carrying liquor. The drivers' aversion to alcohol stemmed from a verse in the Qur'an that describes "intoxicants and gambling" as "an abomination of Satan's handiwork.
Last year, [i.e. 2008] a Tyson Foods plant in Shelbyville, Tenn. replaced its traditional Labor Day holiday with paid time off on Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival – marking the end of fasting during Ramadan. A labor union had requested the change on behalf of hundreds of Muslim employees – many of them were immigrants from Somalia.
But public outcry over the decision to dismiss Labor Day quickly prompted the company and union to negotiate a new contract that makes accommodations for both holidays.
In 2007, the University of Michigan installed ritual foot baths to accommodate Islamic tradition. “These things are beginning to percolate up as Shariah-adherent Muslims insist that their preferences and practices be accommodated by the rest of the population,” said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy — a Washington think tank.
Gaffney predicted the U.S. could soon face problems similar to some Western European countries, where the religious values of Muslim immigrants sometimes clash with their highly secular host cultures.
But Professor An-Na'im believes it will be different in America. “The variety of American secularism – which is much more receptive of public displays of religion and a public role for religion – is, in fact, more conducive for Muslims to be citizens and to be comfortable with their religious values and citizenship than European countries,” An-Na'im said.’[13]
This is more or less the same kind of debate about Europe’s position. Is there a dhimmi style surrender or rather various means to peaceful co-existence? The same thing applies to the process of cutting Israel down to indefensible borders. No peaceful, tolerant co-existence and mutual respect appear possible in the face of expansionist and violent Islam. That seems a reasonable conclusion from the record of history and the words of the imams. The West’s appeasement of Islam must change and end and so must Israel’s – and the Western powers’ determination to weaken Israel fatally. The present writer is reminded of the words of the famous longshoreman philosopher, Eric Hoffer,
‘The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.
Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.’
That is the reality the West must now face.
[1] Jeffrey Helmreich, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Settlement Issue’, Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 2, No. 16, 19 January 2003, at <http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-16.htm>.
[2] Ha’aretz, 16 August, 2009.
[3] European Commission Press Release, 6 July, 2009, at <http://www.delwbg.ec.europa.eu/en/whatsnew/July_CSP_Press_release_E.pdf>.
[4] Manfred Gerstenfeld, ‘Anti-Semitism: Integral to European Culture’, Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, Jerusalem Center for public Affairs, No. 19, 1 April 2004, at <http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-19.htm>.
[5] Anti-Defamation League, ‘Attitudes Toward Jews in Seven European Countries’, February 2009.
[6] The Forward, November 2, 2007.
[7] At <http://israelinsider.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mk-katz-americans-must>.
[8] ‘Understanding Obama’, February 25, 2009, at <http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2009/02/understanding-obama.php>.
[9] ‘The New Anti-Semitism’, The Washington Post, September 4, 2007.
[10] ‘Europe or Eurabia?’, The Australian, April 15, 2008, at <http://www.danielpipes.org/5516/europe-or-eurabia>.
[11] Ruthie Blum, ‘One on One: A 'dhimmi' view of Europe’, The Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2008.
[12] At <http://pluralism.org/news/view/20591>.
[13] ‘Islamic Law's Influence in America a Growing Concern’, Fox News, March 29, 2009, at <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511361,00.html>.
