Believers in God speak of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes and other such natural events as “acts of God”. Funny thing is, they still maintain that their God is good, the very essence of Goodness. Plainly enough to us, if there were a God killing people, ruining their lives, wrecking their homes, dooming them to hunger, cold, loss, and sickness in Japan right now by earthquake and tsunami, he would be an evil power.

For us who do not believe in divine control of the universe, what is happening in Japan is not a moral evil but a natural disaster. Nature is not a thinking thing. It has no moral responsibility. There is no point in criticizing it. Being  good and bad has to do with moral decisions, which are human and only human. What human beings do must be judged, not what nature does.

It is for this reason that we say the cold-blooded murder of five people in Samaria, the victims of human viciousness, needs our thought more than does the plight of tens of thousands of earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, regardless of how much our emotions may be moved by one or the other.

Udi Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4 and Hadas, 3 months were all stabbed to death in the early hours of Saturday March 12.

Can there be any reasonable doubt that the killings were carried out by a Palestinian or more than one Palestinian?

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is ostensibly the keeper of law and order on the “West Bank” which includes Samaria. The PA, which is Fatah in a suit, has received billions of US tax-payers’ money – at least $500 million per annum. Its  law enforcers are equipped and trained by the US. And where else does the money go? To raise generations hating Israelis and all Jews, teaching that the killing of Jews is a high moral duty, and to attain the “martyrdom” of suicide while doing so is the highest of moral achievements. That is what the US tax-payer is subsidizing.

From RedState:

For years, the left wing foreign policy establishment has rapturously promoted the ‘Palestinians’ as the cause célèbre of our national security interests. Despite their unyielding commitment to terror, these supercilious ‘wizards of smart’ have credulously identified the creation of a ‘Palestinian’ state as the consummate solution to all geo-political problems. They posit that upon creation of a 22nd Arab state and 2nd Palestinian state (the first being Jordon), the culture of terror would cease and we would all experience peace in our time. …

To that end, congress has been cajoled into authorizing billions of dollars in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). In addition, we have equipped and trained their armed forces with the best our military has to offer. This travesty is justified as integral to strengthening the “Palestinian people” and the “moderate PA leadership” in their alleged battle against the “extremist” Hamas. Those of us with more than a superficial understanding of the Middle East and Islamo-fascism, have always known the PA to be indistinguishable from Hamas. After all, the PA, otherwise known as the Fatah, was the catalyst in terror under the leadership of Yasser Arafat long before Hamas arrived on the scene.

The barbaric massacre of a family of five … should dispel the fallacy of the moderate Palestinian even in the eyes of their fatuous promoters. Here are the sickening details of the massacre:

Between 22:20 and 22:30 the terrorists entered the house through the living room picture window, did not notice the 6-year-old boy sleeping on the couch and continued on to the bedroom where they slashed the throats of the father and newborn [three months old] baby who were sleeping there. The mother came out of the bathroom and was stabbed on its threshold. The evidence shows that she tried to fight the terrorists.

They then slashed the throat of the 11-year old-son who was reading in bed. They did not notice the 2-year old asleep in his bed, but murdered the 3-year old with two stabs to his heart. After that, they locked the door, exited through the window and escaped.

So who committed this atrocity, Hamas? Nope. They always blithely claim responsibility for such attacks, yet have been silent in this instance. …

After the “Imad Mughniyeh” cell [of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade] assumed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, the organization released a statement saying that killing children is not part of their ideological views.

And there are those who will believe that lie, so the subventions from the US will continue without President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having a moment’s uneasiness of conscience – if either of them even possesses such a moral faculty, which we seriously doubt.

In our post below, An unanswered (and unanswerable?) question, we ask what the Western world can do to win the war Islam is waging against it.

The very tolerance and freedom that characterize the West provide advantage to the enemy, but if the only way to defeat the aggressor is to become intolerant and unfree, there would be nothing worth defending.

We don’t think the question is unanswerable, and we don’t think tolerance and freedom have to be lost. On the contrary, they have to be insisted upon.

If Muslims take advantage, as they do, of our freedom of speech to advocate their system which prohibits it, we must argue them down, loudly, publicly, and persistently.

That is what the West is not doing. European governments are doing the opposite, prosecuting critics of Islam.

In America, government policy since 9/11 has been to appease Muslims rather than hold them to account. Great effort is put into propitiating those who claim to be aggrieved, with the result that the jihadists in our midst have become ever more powerful.

In a PajamasMedia column, N.M. Guariglia discusses the policy and suggests how better to deal with the internal and international threat:

There is one silver lining to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: it will eventually force the United States to adopt an international policy on Islam itself. Given his Cairo speech in 2009, littered with historical inaccuracies and undue politically correct praise of Islam, we shouldn’t expect President Obama to take upon himself this task. Perhaps another statesman will. But that it must be done …  is no longer a matter of debate.

The national discourse is petty. Policymakers talk as though the problem were merely 500 terrorists cave-hopping around Waziristan. This is not so. The issue is societal. Europe is on the precipice of cultural implosion. The issue is also imminent. The entire Persian Gulf and Arab Levant is up for grabs. Atomic bombs are in question. Radical Islamists have entrenched themselves in the West’s political mainstream — even into the U.S. government. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has had more power within the United States than in Egypt.

Take Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a former advisor to President Clinton and the State Department. Amoudi also ingratiated himself to then-Governor George W. Bush. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, Amoudi was one of the Muslim “moderates” championed by the administration. He spoke at the Washington National Cathedral honoring the victims. Three years later, Amoudi was arrested for conspiring to work with al-Qaeda and Moammar Gaddafi of Libya in an assassination attempt on the Saudi king.

There’s Omar Ahmad, founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim organization in the United States. CAIR was involved with the Holy Land Foundation, an operation that guised charity funds as subsidies to terrorist groups. And then there’s Nihad Awad, the co-founder of CAIR. Awad is an operative of Hamas and yet served on Vice President Gore’s commission for aviation safety and security — the irony! — and was invited to stand alongside President Bush after 9/11. Ismail Elbarasse worked with Amoudi and was involved with the Holy Land Foundation. He also conspired with Hamas leader Mousa Marzook and the “Virginia Network,” a cell of Pakistani terrorists.

In 2004, Elbarasse was arrested. Documents seized in his basement revealed the Muslim Brotherhood’s archives for the United States. CAIR is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Students Association (MSA) is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood spawned Egyptian Islamic Jihad and subsequently al-Qaeda.

These are just a few of the men running the Islamic mosques, schools, campus organizations, and charities in the United States. They are all avowed jihadists and see no distinction between Palestinian “resistance” and al-Qaeda terrorism. The entire apparatus of U.S.-Muslim dialogue is controlled by our enemies. And we have accepted this — so much so that to acknowledge this reality is political suicide.

It’s time to address this. Embassies have been burned, diplomats and newspaper editors have cowered, cartoonists have been hunted down, film directors have been hacked, operas have been canceled, and books have been taken off the shelf. We are losing the Enlightenment out of fear of offending others. …

In the United States, there were terrorist attempts on Penn Station, at a military recruitment center in Arkansas, on a federal building in Illinois, against other landmarks in Manhattan, and on a Dallas skyscraper. Then there was the Christmas Day plot against Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which would have killed more than 300 people had the al-Qaeda operative been more competent; the Times Square plot, which would have been worse than the Oklahoma City bombing had the operative been more competent; and the Fort Hood massacre, which could have been avoided had we been less afraid to appear intolerant of intolerance. And all this happened in just the past year and a half. They’re here.

There is the prevalent argument that this is not representative of real Islam. Fine. Then let’s at least have a discussion as to what “real Islam” actually is. Surely it makes little sense to define all the good things as real Islam and all the bad things as a perversion of real Islam, no? Can we no longer think objectively? Have we become that terrified into silence?

The truth is this: Islam is not merely a religion. Islam is a complete way of life: theological, political, social, and legal. Islamic law is the literal word of the Koran, which is supposed to be the direct word of God. It claims to be unalterable. …

Even amongst the disparate schools of Islam, there are no distinctions of Islamic law. All of these interpretative matters have been addressed long ago. It is what it is and it cannot be anything else. …

“Jihad” is not a yoga-like exercise for internal spiritual discovery. It is the killing of non-Muslims and the enforcement of Islamic rule throughout the world. “Peace” is not coexistence. It is Islamic dominion over the planet. “Freedom” is not individual liberty. It is submission to the supernatural.

Where is the United States to go from here? We ought to shut down the internal jihadist infrastructure controlling the American-Muslim community. We ought to challenge the ten-year plan of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference to stifle freedom of speech, thought, and expression in the West. We ought to more passionately defend the superiority of democratic and liberal values — in ethics, in philosophy, and in practice. We ought to call for explanations on behalf of the Islamic world. What is it they actually believe? What actions are they willing to take on behalf of these beliefs? Rather than tell them what they want to hear, we ought to begin insisting they tell us what we want to hear.

And finally, we ought to devise a foreign policy whereby we officially oppose the inclusion of fascist theocratic movements in new democratic governments — whether Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt [or the elected government in Iraq – JB]— and proclaim our support for true freedom.

Islam is waging war on the rest of the world. Its war is called jihad.

It will not stop until it is victorious. It will count itself victorious when it has brought the whole world under its rule. Its supreme ruler will be a caliph. The totalitarian system to which all will submit is called sharia.

What is the enlightened West doing to preserve itself from conquest by Islam?

What can it do?

Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum considers this question at Right Side News, and answers it pessimistically:

Today …  onetime arcane words — caliphate, jihad, sharia — become commonplace in the media …

Ever since Egypt became a hot topic in the media, there has been no shortage of pundits warning against the Muslim Brotherhood; warning that an Islamist takeover in Egypt may have a domino effect in the region; warning that the ultimate goal of Islamists around the world is the resurrection of an imperialistic and expansionist caliphate … Similarly, the controversy caused by the Ground Zero mosque brought Arabic-Islamic concepts that were formerly the domain of academics, such as sharia, into the fore.

Yet, as the West begins to understand the unique nature of its enemy — caliphate, jihad, and sharia all pose a perpetual, transcendent threat — it must also understand that a unique response is required. …

Consider the caliphate: its very existence would usher in a state of constant hostility. Both historically and doctrinally, the caliphate’s function is to wage jihad, whenever and wherever possible, to bring the infidel world under Islamic dominion and enforce sharia. …

A jihad-waging, sharia-enforcing caliphate represents a permanent, ideological enemy — not a temporal foe that can be bought or pacified through diplomacy or concessions. Such a caliphate is precisely what Islamists around the world are feverishly seeking to establish. Without active, preemptive measures, it is only a matter of time before they succeed.

In this context, what, exactly, is the Western world prepared to do about it — now, before the caliphate becomes a reality? Would it be willing to launch a preemptive offensive — politically, legally, educationally, and, if necessary, militarily — to prevent its resurrection? Could the West ever go on the offensive, openly and confidently — now, when it has the upper-hand — to incapacitate its enemies?

One may argue in the affirmative, pointing to the preemptive Iraq war. Yet there are subtle and important differences. The rationale behind the Iraq war was physical and practical: it was limited to the elimination of suspected WMDs and against a specific government, Iraq’s Saddam regime. War to prevent the creation of a caliphate, on the other hand, is metaphysical and impractical: it is not limited to eliminating material weapons, nor confined to one government or person.

The fact is, the West does not have the political paradigms or language to justify an offensive against an ideological foe in religious garb. …

What if an important nation like Egypt does go Islamist, a big domino in the quest of a caliphate? It is a distinct possibility. Can we also say that it is distinct possibility that the West would do everything in its power to prevent this from happening? Of course not …

Indeed, the Obama administration has already made it clear that it is willing to engage the [Muslim] Brotherhood, differentiating them from “radicals” like al-Qaeda — even as the Brotherhood’s motto is “Allah is our objective, the prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah our highest hope.” Likewise, a theocratic, eschatologically-driven Iran is on its way to possessing nuclear weapons — all while the international community stands by.

In short, as it becomes clear that violence and intolerance are inextricably linked to concepts like caliphate, jihad, and sharia, so too should it become clear that the threat is here to stay …

Ibrahim quotes Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University asking the question that needs to be asked, and which so far has no answer; a question which no leader in the West has dared to think about.

“You can sit here and talk about jihad from here to doomsday, what will it do? Suppose you prove beyond any shadow of doubt that Islam is constitutionally violent, where do you go from there?”

Ibrahim gives no answer of his own.

Has the West rendered itself finally impotent against this enemy by its choice of the very values that first made it strong: freedom, tolerance, openness, benevolence, irenicism, skepticism, rationality?

If it can only win this war by changing itself into its own opposite, becoming collectivist, intolerant, oppressive, malevolent, violent and dogmatic, it will destroy itself, becoming so much like Islam that Islam it may as well be.

… in Afghanistan.

There is no power greater than brain power, and Israel has it.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Antitank rockets … had been the bane of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) Armored Corps. Until now, the answers had been increasingly thick steel protective plates for the tanks to literally dull the blow. But improved rockets proved essentially able to penetrate any shield and there are limits to how much armor can be piled on a tank without impeding its movement.

Realizing how deadly portable hollow-pipe devices can be, both Hamas and Hezbollah stocked up on them, amassing colossal arsenals. In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, dozens of Israeli tanks were struck, 19 crewmen were killed and others wounded.

But while Israel’s enemies were arming themselves to the teeth, Israel’s scientists … were busy re-accentuating the country’s qualitative military edge, which had sometimes appeared to be fading.

They have invented a new missile interceptor called Trophy.

The first time it was used in the field, this is what happened:

It happened so quickly and functioned so flawlessly that the IDF tank crews doing routine duties last Tuesday near the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip frontline didn’t even notice anything unusual.

They didn’t immediately realize that they had just witnessed history in the making and that the lives of a fourman crew had been spared when the miniature Trophy system, fixed onto all tanks in the Gaza sector, recognized that a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) had been launched at one of the tanks.

Trophy intercepted the RPG with a neutralizer and blew up the incoming projectile in mid-air, with no harm wrought to either the tank or to the corpsmen in its belly.

(Pronounced cor-men, President Obama.)

The system quickly reloads in a fully automated process. It’s “smart” enough to hold fire if an RPG is about to miss its target. Moreover, the explosion it sets off is so small that friendly-fire casualties are highly unlikely.

The Trophy is perceived as the harbinger of the future in ground warfare, being the first operational active defense system, and capable of granting Israel a new strategic advantage.

Trophy will be available to Israel’s allies.

The Trophy’s premiere matters not only for Israel but globally. This was the first time that antitank fire had been successfully intercepted under real combat zone conditions, as distinct from controlled trials. The implications both to Israel and its allies cannot be overestimated.

Rocketry that is easy to carry is a favorite weapon for terrorists and a whole host of irregulars [such as] the roadside-ambushers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Trophy could radically alter the balance of power on both the Lebanese and Gaza fronts and it could become crucial for US and allied forces battling al-Qaida and associated insurgents.

And there’s more to come:

[Trophy] is not alone. In the works is the Iron Fist, an antimissile defense that is being custom-designed for armored personnel carriers. Its jamming capabilities can swerve an oncoming rocket off course, or it can detonate it with shock waves.

Lots more is being concocted in Israeli labs, workshops and testing grounds. Despite our proven penchant for fault-finding and self-deprecation, this is a fitting occasion for unstinting collective pride. Our defenses and those who man them are, mercifully, a little more secure today in the face of our enemies.

It seems likely then that those massive stockpiles of heavy pipes, those colossal arsenals of RPGs, so painfully assembled in Gaza by smuggling pieces through tunnels, will soon have no more value than any old pile of scrap metal. Unless Hamas puts them to use against fellow Arabs, which is more than likely.

Days went by and the president of the United States had nothing to say about the revolution and civil war that broke out  in Libya. Eventually, having consulted with the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, he said that the Libyan government’s murderous violence against its people was “unacceptable”, but avoided condemning Gaddafi the dictator by name. Why had he waited so long to say so little? The ever-ready Office of Glib Excuses and Pretty Pretexts (OGEPP) which, being abstract, is able to hover perpetually in the air of the Oval Office and the corridors of the State Department simultaneously, came out with a sweet one: Obama had held back from saying anything in case the dictator took revenge on American citizens in Libya. The president would have it known that he was desperately keen on protecting the “safety and well-being” of individual Americans. And as usual, the ingenuously gullible – or disingenuously biased – members of Obama’s hurrah-chorus in the media reported the shiny new excuse as if it were credible.

Why do we doubt it?

Oliver North, as skeptical in this instance as we are, explains:

According to Hillary Clinton, “the safety and well-being of Americans has to be our highest priority.” Oh, really? That comment, proffered by our secretary of state Tuesday, is overshadowed by the serious jeopardy U.S. citizens now encounter thanks to the ideological blindness and national security incompetence of the Obama administration.

Since 2011 began, more than 20 Americans have been injured, killed or gone missing in the midst of violence in Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Mexico and the Indian Ocean. American citizens are being held by government authorities in Iran, Yemen and Pakistan — and by pirates in Somalia. Our State Department says it is “concerned.”

Last week, two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were ambushed in Mexico. Special Agent Jaime Zapata was killed, and his partner was grievously wounded. Mexican authorities now claim they have apprehended some of the perpetrators with “connections” to one or more drug cartels. The Obama administration, with its history of “slow rolling” counter-narcotics assistance to Mexico and doing next to nothing to protect our borders, is confronted now by news that a Saudi national has been apprehended in Texas with plans to attack sensitive U.S. infrastructure.

Last week, four Americans aboard the sailing vessel Quest were seized by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. A U.S. warship was ordered to the scene as the seaborne terrorists headed for safe haven in Somalia. If past is prologue, it should have ended like previous armed rescue operations conducted by U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Marines, South Korean navy commandos and even Russian and French special operations units — with the safe recovery of nearly all hostages.

But in this case, our ships were inexplicably ordered to simply tail the captured yacht while an FBI hostage negotiator conducted a parley with the pirates. During the negotiations, all four hostages were killed.

We think the four were stupid to go sailing in those pirate-infested waters. Or they were inexcusably uninformed, which is also to say stupid. Or if not uninformed, deliberately courting martyrdom – they were apparently sailing about on the high seas to distribute bibles hither and yon. But as stupidity, ignorance and Christianity are not capital crimes, the four should have been and could have been saved. But their lives were simply not Commander-in-chief Obama’s “highest priority”. Not harming the Islamic terrorist-pirates was higher.

In Pakistan, Raymond Allen Davis, an officially credentialed American with diplomatic immunity, is being held on murder charges at a notorious and often deadly detention facility in Lahore. Unnamed “U.S. officials” are widely quoted in international media claiming Davis is variously a “CIA officer,” a “CIA employee” or a “CIA contractor.” Any of these sobriquets are a virtual extrajudicial death sentence for an American held by anybody in Pakistan. …

The State Department has filed a “protest note” complaining that the government in Islamabad is not abiding by its international obligations and held a surreal media conference call with an unnamed government official to explain diplomatic immunity.

Meanwhile, U.S. Army Spc. Bowe Bergdahl [who is] in the hands of the Taliban, isn’t even mentioned by the administration.

But the Americans have been rescued from Libya. Obama sent a boat to fetch them out – a ferry boat unsafe on winter seas. After three days of hesitation in the Libyan port, its passengers waiting nervously on board, it finally set out for safe haven. (China, Britain, and Italy sent military ships.) Now the might of the United States may be used to strike terror into Gaddafi.

But will it be?

Instead of sending a U.S. aircraft carrier to the coast of Libya to prevent members of the Libyan air force from bombing their countrymen, our commander in chief has dispatched Secretary of State Clinton to Geneva to confer with the absurdly impotent, anti-American United Nations Human Rights Council.

Of which Libya is a member. In fact, Libya actually chairs the UNHRC at present*, seeing to it that its regular business of condemning Israel for something-0r-other is conscientiously carried out.

Oliver North concludes by saying –

Now — with rebellion sweeping Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, which is the home of our 5th Fleet, and U.S. oil spiking at more than $100 per barrel, the highest it has been since 2008 — [Obama’s] commitment to the “safety and well-being of Americans” rings more hollow by the minute. His weakness, incoherence and passivity have bred chaos that places us all at risk.

We agree that he is weak, incoherent and passive, but we tend to the view that he acts weakly, incoherently and passively because, deep in the heart of him, he has no wish to defend Americans or America.

*Correction: This is an error. Libya was elected to the chair of the UNHRC in 2003, but at present a Thailand representative presides over it. Libya was a member until it was suspended yesterday, March 1, 2011. The point we’re making about the nature of the organization remains the same.

It’s spreading all over. We got it from Creeping Sharia where they say this:

A remix of a rambling 75-minute speech Gadhafi delivered on Tuesday, set to dance music and featuring the strongman alongside footage of two gyrating girls, has gone viral on the Internet. It has racked up almost half a million views on the video-sharing website YouTube since it was posted three days ago. Called “Zenga Zenga,” the music video mixes Gadhafi’s quotes with club beats, using lines in which he vows to fight “inch by inch, home by home, alley by alley” as the chorus for the song. The clip was created by Israeli musician and DJ Noy Alooshe and appears to be wildly popular in the Arab world despite its origins in the Jewish state.

He has also posted online a version of the spoof hit without the scantily clad dancing girls to take into account sensibilities in the Muslim world. That version has some catching up to do in terms of popularity, with about 50,000 hits so far.

“There were some curses, but still most said it was a great remix,” Alooshe said.

“One guy even said that when Gadhafi falls we will dance to this remix in the streets of Tripoli – that would really be something.”

As might be expected, the best informed and therefore the most valuable opinion on the present upheaval in the Arab states comes from Professor Bernard Lewis, the famous and deservedly much honored historian of Islam and the Middle East.

His view is so different from the common opinion and received wisdom recited by media pundits as to be – at least in some instances – surprising.

We’ve chosen these extracts from his recent interview with David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post.

The Arab masses certainly want change. And they want improvement. But when you say do they want democracy, that’s a more difficult question to answer. What does “democracy” mean? It’s a word that’s used with very different meanings, even in different parts of the Western world. And it’s a political concept that has no history, no record whatever in the Arab, Islamic world.

I think it’s a great mistake to try and think of the Middle East in [Western] terms and that can only lead to disastrous results, as you’ve already seen in various places. They are simply not ready for free and fair elections.

In Egypt now, for example, the assumption is that we’re proceeding toward elections in September and that seems to be what the West is inclined to encourage. I would view that with mistrust and apprehension. If there’s a genuinely free election – assuming that such a thing could happen – the religious parties have an immediate advantage. First, they have a network of communication through the preacher and the mosque which no other political tendency can hope to equal. Second, they use familiar language. The language of Western democracy is for the most part newly translated and not intelligible to the great masses. In genuinely fair and free elections, [the Muslim parties] are very likely to win and I think that would be a disaster. A much better course would be a gradual development of democracy, not through general elections, but rather through local self-governing institutions. For that, there is a real tradition in the region.

If you look at the history of the Middle East in the Islamic period, and if you look at their own political literature, it is totally against authoritarian or absolutist rule. The word they always insist on is consultation.

You have this traditional system of consultation with groups which are not democratic as we use that word in the Western world, but which have a source of authority other than the state – authority which derives from within the group, whether it be the landed gentry or the civil service, or the scribes or whatever. That’s very important. And that form of consultation could be a much better basis for the development of free and civilized government.

They’re all agreed that they want to get rid of the present leadership, but I don’t think they’re agreed on what they want in its place. For example, we get very, very different figures as to the probable support for the Muslim Brothers. And it’s very difficult to rely on these things. People don’t tell the truth when they’re being asked questions.

One has to understand … the differences in the political discourse. In the Western world, we talk all the time about freedom. In the Islamic world, freedom is not a political term. It’s a legal term: Freedom as opposed to slavery. This was a society in which slavery was an accepted institution existing all over the Muslim world. You were free if you were not a slave. It was entirely a legal and social term, with no political connotation whatsoever.

The major contrast is not between freedom and tyranny, between freedom and servitude, but between justice and oppression. Or if you like, between justice and injustice.

To say that [the Muslim Brotherhood] is secular [as the US intelligence chief James Clapper did] would show an astonishing ignorance of the English lexicon. I don’t think it is in any sense benign. I think it is a very dangerous, radical Islamic movement. If they obtain power, the consequences would be disastrous for Egypt.

I don’t know how one could get the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood is relatively benign unless you mean relatively as compared with the Nazi party.

I’m an historian. My business is the past, not the future. But I can imagine a situation in which the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations of the same kind obtain control of much of the Arab world. It’s not impossible. I wouldn’t say it’s likely, but it’s not unlikely. And if that happens, they would gradually sink back into medieval squalor.

Remember that according to their own statistics, the total exports of the entire Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, one small European country. Sooner or later the oil age will come to an end. Oil will be either exhausted or superseded as a source of energy and then they have virtually nothing. In that case it’s easy to imagine a situation in which Africa north of the Sahara becomes not unlike Africa south of the Sahara.

There’s a common theme [in the Arab states] of anger and resentment. And the anger and resentment are universal and well-grounded. They come from a number of things. First of all, there’s the obvious one – the greater awareness that they have, thanks to modern media and modern communications, of the difference between their situation and the situation in other parts of the world. I mean, being abjectly poor is bad enough. But when everybody else around you is pretty far from abjectly poor, then it becomes pretty intolerable.

I was expecting a wave of such movements. I didn’t think it would be as quick and easy as it was in Egypt. But I expect that there will be more. We can see in so many countries, the regimes are already gravely in danger.

One method [of supporting the rebels – in Iran, for instance] is by political warfare, by having some sort of propaganda campaign against the regime. This would not be difficult. There’s a vast Iranian population now in the Western world, particularly in the United States, who I’m sure would be willing to help in this, and thanks to modern communications, it would not be too difficult to get the message across.

People talk about American imperialism as a danger. That is absolute nonsense. People who talk about American imperialism in the Middle East either know nothing about America or know nothing about imperialism. … As applied to American policy in the Middle East at the present time, it is wrong to the point of absurdity.

[Among the Arabs] two things have happened. One is that their position on the whole has been getting worse. The second, which is much more important, is that their awareness of that is getting much greater. As I said before, thanks to modern communications, they can now compare their own position with that in other countries. And they don’t have to look very far to do that. I have sat with friends in Arab countries, watching Israeli television, and their responses to that are mindboggling. [That is to say – the context indicates -they found freedom of speech “mindboggling” – JB.]

There are increasing numbers of people in the Arab world who look with wonderment at what they see in Israel, at the functioning of a free and open society. I read an article quite recently by a Palestinian Arab whom I will not endanger by naming, in which he said that “as things stand in the world at the present time, the best hope that an Arab has for his future is as a second class citizen of a Jewish state.” A rather extraordinary statement coming from an Arab spokesman. But if you think about it, he’s not far wrong. The alternative, being in an Arab state, is very much worse. They certainly do better as second class citizens of the Jewish state. There’s a growing realization of that. People would speak much more openly about that if it were safe to do so, which it obviously isn’t.

There are two things which I think are helpful towards a better understanding between the Arabs and Israel. One of them is .. the perception of a greater danger. … Sadat turned to Israel because he saw that Egypt was becoming a Russian colony. The same thing has happened again on a number of occasions. Now they see Israel as a barrier against the Iranian threat.

One sees similar calculations later than that. Consider for example, the battle between the Israeli forces and Hezbollah in 2006. It was quite clear that the Arab governments were quietly cheering the Israelis and hoping that they would finish the job and were very disappointed when they failed to finish the job. The best way of attaining friendship is by confronting a yet more dangerous enemy. There have been several such [enemies] in the Middle East and there are several at the present time. That seems to me the best hope of understanding between the Arabs on the one hand and either the West or the Israelis on the other hand.

The other one, which is less easy to define but in the long run is probably more important, is [regarding Israel] as a model of democratic government. A model of a free and open society with rights for women – an increasingly important point, especially in the perception of women.

The case has been made, and I think there is some force in it, that the main reason for the relative backwardness of the Islamic world compared to the West is the treatment of women. As far as I know, it was first made by a Turkish writer called Namik Kemal in about 1880. At that time an agonizing debate had been going on for more than a century: What went wrong? Why did we fall behind the West? He said, “The answer is very clear. We fell behind the West because of the way we treat our women. By the way we treat our women we deprive ourselves of the talents and services of half the population. And we submit the early education of the other half to ignorant and downtrodden mothers.”

It goes further than that. A child who grows up in a traditional Muslim household is accustomed to authoritarian, autocratic rule from the start. I think the position of women is of crucial importance. That is why I am looking with great interest at Tunisia. Tunisia is the one Arab country that has really done something about women. In Tunisia there is compulsory education for girls, from primary school, right through. In Tunisia, women are to be found in the professions. There are doctors, lawyers, journalists, politicians and so on. Women play a significant part in public life in Tunisia. I think that is going to have an enormous impact. It’s already having this in Tunisia and you can see that in various ways. But this will certainly spread to other parts of the [Islamic] world.

A fuller record of the interview may be found here.

The armed intervention by the US (with NATO) in the erstwhile communist and disintegrating state of Yugoslavia at the end of the last century, was probably the most unjustifiable war America ever waged.

Why did the US  expend blood and treasure where absolutely no interest of its own was involved? Why did it go to the aid of the Muslims of Bosnia, and protect – as it still does – assorted Muslim terrorist gangs in Kosovo?  True the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was a nasty man, but he wasn’t harming America or Americans. And as brutes in power go, he fell well short of the standard set by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Funny that the left was so against Saddam being overthrown by US arms, yet so ardently for the overthrow of Milosevic.

Now at last comes an answer to “why?”. A revelation. And it should be enough to make the most hawkish of us blush.

According to Samuel Mikolaski, whose article appears today at American Thinker, the answer is: because President Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright hated the Serbs.

At least “in part”  it was her “vitriolic, personal hatred of Serbs” that “facilitated” Clinton’s decision to “import Al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Bosnia”, and “skewed our foreign policy”.

Not since Helen of Troy had a woman’s emotion made nation go to war against nation. (Same part of the world, but a different sort of woman, and an opposite emotion.)

Samuel Mikolaski was born in the Balkans and grew up in Canada. He is a retired professor of theology, so understandably distressed by the “destruction and desecration of literally hundreds of churches, monasteries, cemeteries and other Christian landmarks, some of which are medieval treasures” by the Muslims to whom Kosovo has now been handed over (by the self-described Christian West!). “There are,” he writes, “more churches, monasteries and other Christian landmarks per square kilometer in Kosovo than anywhere else on earth”, because “Kosovo is to Serbian Orthodox Christians what Canterbury is to Anglicans and the Vatican to Roman Catholics.”

Although we don’t share the professor’s religious sensibilities, we do deplore the vandalism and philistinism. But the far greater outrage is the handing over of European territory to Muslim control.

There [was not] even a hint of anxiety or regret [on Clinton’s part] at what his importing of Al Qaeda into Bosnia was causing as they settled down, married Bosnian women, and began the process of imposing Islamic radicalism on Bosnia, which had become significantly secular since the expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe after World War I.

From Bosnia and Kosovo we now have one of the largest and most virulent drug cartels in the world, the worst of white slavery and prostitution trafficking into Europe, and terrorist training compounds. (Several of the 9/11 hijackers spent time in Bosnia among their Al Qaeda compatriots.) …

It is scarcely credible, but nevertheless true, that the Clinton Administration ignored the Islamic Declaration by Alija Izetbegović, former president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he clearly urged Islamists in Bosnia and worldwide to take up jihad against the West. Instead they regarded him as “their boy,” ignoring the proliferating terrorist cells in Bosnia. …

The latest bombshell is the Council of Europe’s recently adopted report… that Kosovo leaders, including Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, are complicit in crime, including organ trafficking. There is now a strenuous effort to sweep the body parts issue under the rug lest it torpedo efforts to legitimize the illegally mandated separation of Kosovo from Serbia. The data are horrific: Serbian captive youths were selected on the basis of genetic compatibility for killing in order to harvest saleable body parts. … But there is an insuperable obstacle to effective judicial proceedings: Kosovo is tiny, and it is almost impossible to shelter witnesses, should they come forward. Testifying would mean signing a death warrant against oneself and one’s entire family. …

Apart from which, a self-imposed code of “omerta” has been adopted throughout Europe (and in America by the Obama administration), with regard to Islam: a state of affairs commented on by one of the world’s foremost authorities on Islam, Bernard Lewis, in a passage quoted at the end of the article:

[There is now] a degree of thought control and limitations of freedom of expression without parallel in the Western world since the 18th century … Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.

Which provokes another “why?”.