In a nice editorial piece, David Aaronovitch of the London Times Online, asks some common sense questions about the developing hostilities in Gaza:
This is not about proportionality. Let us instead express outrage and, perhaps, illustrate it with pictures of crowds of similarly outraged protesters in Damascus, Amman or Indonesia. Let half of us concoct round-robins of suddenly active professors, Gallowegian politicians and unthinking actors, expressing hyperbolic rage at “genocide”, describing Gaza as Israel’s Guernica and demanding sanctions, while the other half wonders why no petitions ever get launched against the funders and organizers of, say, the suicide bomber in Khost at the weekend, who blew up his vehicle beside a group of passing Afghan schoolchildren; or against the Taleban cleric threatening last week to kill female students in Pakistan for their un-Islamic desire to learn.
But the article falls apart in my opinion in its conclusion:
It was Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, who said that, far from there being no light at the end of the Middle East tunnel, there was indeed light. The trouble was that there was no tunnel. Bit by bit, inducement by bribe and cease-fire by restraint, we have to construct one.
If we are to do this then the friends of the Palestinians would be best advised to put pressure on Hamas never to launch another of its bloody rockets and to stop its death-laden rhetoric, and the friends of Israel well placed to cajole it into making a settlement seem worthwhile. All else is verbiage.
The problem is the author’s ignorance of history and Hamas’ own charter, which specifically calls for the destruction of Israel. For thousands of years, Islamic extremists have waged bloody war against anyone who is not a true believer in Islam. Jews and Christians are particularly singled out for death simply because they have different beliefs. According to the Koran and the institutionalized hatred for Jews and Americans being taught at Islamic schools, there can be no coexistence. The only option is for nonbelievers to be converted, subjugated (to pay a financial tax to true believers) or to be killed. This fact is difficult for many westerners to believe, but all the well-wishing in the world won’t change it. We need to see the world for the way it is and not the way we want it to be. And let’s not forget that the greatest victims are the innocent children being killed, maimed and orphaned every day due to the actions of those who murder in the name of their God. Thousands of years of broken truces, murder, and hate are lessons that must be heeded or repeated. There can be no peaceful coexistence until Hamas and other extremists can embrace a less violent interpretation of the Koran and begin accepting the differences between cultures and religion. Tolerance must be a two way street, or there will never be a solution to the conflicts which are spreading around the world as Islamic extremism spills new blood throughout the Middle East, Europe and in America.
What are your thoughts?
Reports are surfacing that the head of a West Bank family wants to reward the Iraqi “journalist” who lobbed his shoes at President George W. Bush by sending him a bride. (Editor’s Note: Journalists are supposed to be objective reporters of the news, not advocates trying to make the news.)
Ahmad Salim Judeh says if Muntadhar al-Zeidi is interested the family is willing to send one of their daughters to Iraq along with her dowry. But among the stories there is no outcry from anyone about treating women, who are considered in most cultures to be human, as as an inanimate object to be traded among men with zero consideration for her wishes or well being. This is appalling yet nobody will condemn or even question it.
An AP article simply concludes that, “Al-Zeidi has become something of a folk hero in the Middle East since throwing his shoes at Bush at a Baghdad press conference Sunday. Al-Zeidi is unmarried”
So where are the civil rights screamers? Where are the feminists? Where are the female commentators who beat the crap out of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for candidly commenting that that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano would be a good choice for secretary of Homeland Security because she has no family, which means no life? Maybe Rendell would have been less offensive if he had suggested that Gov. Napolitano’s familiy simply trade her to Obama for three cows and a chicken!
The silence is unbeliveable!
