What a rotten job the official representatives of Jewish communities in Western countries are doing!

British Jews are still so grateful to Oliver Cromwell for letting them into the country some 350 years ago, that they’d rather put up with anything – slander, humiliation, threats, even physical attack – than complain. Their official representatives play along with the phony “interfaith” racket in the stubborn (but forlorn) hope that it will soften Islamic hatred of them, although that hatred is ineradicably doctrinal as well as political. If it wasn’t for the excellent institution Stand For Peace under the inspired directorship of  Sam Westrop exposing the racket for what it is, there would hardly be any resistance at all to the intensifying anti-Semitism and advancing stealth-jihad in the United Kingdom.

And it’s far worse in France and Sweden.

How well are “official Jews” doing to earn their salaries in Canada and the US?

Abraham Foxman recently announced after 27 years steering the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) he will retire next year. How well has he done?

Andrew Bostom, writing at American Thinker, said of Foxman in 2011 that he is –

… the most blindly agenda-driven organizational Jewish “leader.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s Foxman sprays defamatory charges – rooted in willful ignorance – against all those legitimately concerned with the ceaseless efforts of mainstream institutional American Islam to insinuate Sharia mores and jurisdiction into US society.

Today Mark Steyn says what needs to be said about this self-blinkered Official Jew:

Canada’s “official Jews” [are] among the most useless people on the planet. Under Bernie Farber, for example, the Canadian Jewish Congress was obsessive about the last three neo-Nazi losers living in their mum’s basement and contributing unread blog posts to obscure “white supremacist” websites. But it had nothing to say about the broad-daylight mass Jew-hatred and, indeed, brazen incitement to murder of large groups of people parading through downtown Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Farber & Co were cardboard warriors, capable only of fighting the battles others had already won long ago.

And so it goes for America’s “official Jews”:

Anti-Defamation League chief Abe Foxman believes that anti-Semitism is at its height since the Holocaust, and threatens the lives of Jews all around the world.

He got that right. He got everything else wrong:

Europe is where the Jewish people have paid the highest price for anti-Semitism, and it’s sort of an old-new phenomenon,” he said, defining it as “nationalists, anti-government people, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis of anti-immigration and anti-government coming together with a glue and cement of anti-Semitism. I think it’s a serious threat to Jewish life.

Is it really possible in 2014 even for the capo di tutti capi of official Jews to be so blind? Foxman is either the most wicked dissembler or, to be more charitable, he reflects merely the blinkered parochialism of America’s liberal Jewish elites. Unlike the head of the ADL, I have no special interest in or responsibility for the welfare of the Jewish people, but I have been to Toulouse, Antwerp, Malmö and the old Jewish East End of London, and I know what I have seen there.

I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse, a city the size of Jacksonville, Florida, where in recent years one synagogue has been firebombed, another set alight when two burning cars were driven into it, a third burgled and “Dirty Jews” scrawled on the ark housing the Torah, where a kosher butcher’s was strafed with gunfire, and a Jewish sports association attacked with Molotov cocktails, and three Jewish children murdered outside their grade school, I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse and tell any Jew he finds there (they are advised by their rabbis not to wear identifying marks of their faith) that it’s all the work of “anti-government people”.

I would like him to go to Malmö – once the first Christian city in Norway and soon to be the first Muslim city in Sweden – and tell such Jews as he can find (they are abandoning the city) that the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and the ugly reinforced steel doors at the Jewish kindergarten and the rocket-proof glass in the windows of the synagogue are all the fault of “neo-Nazis”. Sweden is renowned for its neo-Nazis, isn’t it? Doubtless they were the reason why a year or two back at the Davis Cup the Israeli tennis players had to play their match behind closed doors, in a Baltiska Hallen stadium without a single spectator. For had they opened the doors, the seats would have filled up with Swedish “nationalists” and Swedish “neo-fascists” and all hell would have broken loose.

I would like Abe Foxman to go to Tower Hamlets in London’s East End, where on Holocaust Memorial Day a couple of years ago a visiting New Yorker had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel after a Jewish tour group was pelted with stones by a group jeering “If you go any further, you’ll die.” I would like Foxman to tell those Jews that their attackers were an “anti-immigration” group.

I would like him to go to Villiers-le-Bel, where a Jewish girl was brutally attacked by a gang shouting “Jews must die!”, or to Odense, where the headmaster says his school can no longer take Jewish pupils for security reasons, and tell them it’s the fault of Danish “nationalists” and French “neo-Nazis”.

But I don’t suppose Abe Foxman will go anywhere outside his bubble, will he? Is it really too much to expect him somewhere in that long laundry list of antiquated irrelevances to utter the “M” word? As Laura Rosen Cohen writes of this contemptible nothing of a man:

Shame on you, Abraham Foxman. Shame on you.

These Jews are a danger to the Jewish people.

Their denial is so thick and so amoral that it is difficult sometimes to find the words to express my utter disgust and contempt.

By fighting the last war against the German Nazis over and over in their heads, they endanger living Jews. But they will never learn.

It’s so cozy to be a professional Jew, fighting the ghosts of WW2 over and over and never facing the real threats to the Jewish people.

Though the Holocaust must never be forgotten, it must not so obsess generation after generation that they fail to see what is happening all about them. 

Jewish groups missed the threat 80 years ago, too. But why wouldn’t they? There’d always been anti-Semitism in Europe: You can’t buy property here, you can’t stand for parliament there, and everywhere always a certain sliver of people who just don’t want to be around Jews. But it didn’t turn genocidal until the 1930s, and, after a millennium of low-level Jew hate, you can understand why nobody saw it coming.

But the violent, murderous phase of the new Jew-hatred is already here – in the emergency ward of the Royal London Hospital; in the corpse-strewn schoolyard of Toulouse; in the synagogue in Brussels set alight by Molotov cocktails; in a pleasant Jewish home in Antwerp, where burning rags were pushed through the mail flap; at the RER train station in Auber, where a commuter was savagely assaulted by a mob taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews”; in the suburban home where a young Frenchman was tortured to death over three weeks while his family listened via phone to his howls of agony as his captors chanted from the Koran; in the stairwell of the apartment house where a Paris disc-jockey had his throat slit, his eyes gouged out, and his face ripped off by a neighbor who crowed, “I have killed my Jew!” 

Those “anti-government people” get around, don’t they? The groups who perpetrate this violence come from a minority community – larger than the Jews but not yet larger than everyone else. They are telling you what they will do when they have the numbers to do it. …

Abe Foxman has not had his eyes gouged out, but he is blind, utterly blind.

The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conspired with the Holy Land Foundation to fund Hamas, the death-cult terrorist organization that the Palestinians in Gaza have elected to govern them. As a result CAIR has been named a co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation which was found guilty of the crime, but CAIR remains “unindicted”. [Why?] It pretends to be the protector of American Muslims aganst a totally imaginary campaign of persecution which it dubs “Islamophobia”.

In fact, CAIR is a menacing organization dedicated to imposing oppressive sharia law on all Americans.

This is from American Thinker:

On June 5, 2012, a radical Islamic organization, CAIR-Florida, sent out a mass mailing with this message:

“CAIR Florida has been receiving an increase in complaints by law abiding American Muslims inappropriately targeted by law enforcement for questioning. This is a direct result of Islamophobic training CAIR has discovered many law enforcement officers in Florida are receiving. Join us this Saturday for an important program to learn how to protect yourself, your family, and your community against harassment by law enforcement or discrimination by businesses.”

Without verifiable proof of such “discrimination by businesses,” “Islamophobic training” or “inappropriate targeting by law enforcement”, this email appears to be a blatant slander of the tolerant American society and its legal system. The extensive influx of Muslim immigrants in recent years is the best evidence that they are treated better in the U.S.A. than in their own countries of origin.

So what motivates CAIR to besmirch their host country and stir discontent? The answer lies in the old playbook developed by the radical Left and now passed on to the new radical players: calculated fear mongering. Such messages are designed to keep American Muslims misinformed, scared, and running for CAIR’s protective cover.

In this example, CAIR was promoting its own so-called “Civil Liberties” Conference titled “Know Your Rights,” with the apparent purpose of encouraging Muslim immigrants to disobey American laws, resist law enforcement efforts, and game the system with frivolous lawsuits against local businesses and government agencies that result in more political power and personal enrichment – all under the aegis of CAIR.

The email included this flyer:

… CAIR’s faith-based protection racket is now working its way to replace all other means of social interaction for Muslim immigrants, aiming to become the only game in town for all American Muslims.  By the rules of this game, in exchange for “protection,” they dare not assimilate and integrate into the larger society, accept American traditions and values, and – most importantly – dare not leave Islam.

The framework for such games has been inadvertently established by the fallacious multiculturalist doctrine.  …

Omar M. Ahmad, founder of CAIR, once said: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant… The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” It is apparent that CAIR’s goal is not so much to contribute to the American society, but rather to replace our constitutional republic with an oppressive Islamic theocracy.  Their efforts to set up the groundwork for this have been so far successful.

Freedom-loving Americans who oppose premeditated destruction of their cultural and political integrity are being silenced with lawsuits and the myth of “Islamophobia.” Their opponents have learned how to take advantage of democratic liberties, such as the right to free speech, free expression, free press, free assembly, freedom of religion, and equal protection before the law.  But in a society the Islamists are planning for us, there will be no place for any of these individual freedoms, as evidenced by the Sharia-based totalitarian systems currently being implemented in the Middle East by the international Islamist alliance known as the Muslim Brotherhood.

All world cultures, Western and Muslim alike, share the same moral conviction, which is commonly reflected in their laws: those who show contempt for human life by committing remorseless, premeditated murder justly forfeit the right to their own life.

No. That is not true. Islam does not share the moral convictions of the West. It does not forbid its followers to murder, it only fobids them to murder fellow Muslims [eg. Koran 48:29]. And even that prohibition is honored more in the breach than the observance. Every single day Muslims are killed by other Muslims, in large numbers.

By this moral and legal standard, shouldn’t remorseless radical groups that profess contempt for our individual freedoms and actively promote their demise, forfeit their own right to enjoy these very individual freedoms? Shouldn’t their premeditated efforts to destroy the rule of law make them ineligible to be protected by these very laws? …

They should. But CAIR is favored, assisted, sustained, encouraged by the Obama administration:

The White House has recently admitted to having hundreds of behind-the-scenes meetings with CAIR …

When Eric Holder’s DOJ routinely steps in as muscle for CAIR’s ongoing litigation jihad; when Muslim employees are instigated to bring about unreasonable lawsuits against their employers; when American Muslims feel overwhelmed or bullied into silence by radical groups that claim to “represent” them, good and honest Americans must say “enough is enough” and, in the absence of government protection of their interests, resort to individual action and seek effective alternatives.

The Florida chapter of Stop Islamization of America has done just that. Calling CAIR-Florida’s flyer “offensive to our law enforcement officers and to Florida business owners,” they have created this counter flyer:

The advance of Islam must be resisted. Powerful, well-funded Islamic organizations can be frustrated. Stopping the creep takes organization, determination, thought, planning, tireless work, and much courage.

We at the American HQ of TAC are proud to announce that our British editor, Sam Westrop, wearing one or two of his several political activist hats, has chalked up a victory by all these means in London.

Two victories, in fact, as this press release reveals:

A report published by Stand For Peace exposing the extremist views and backgrounds of several foreign speakers invited to preach at a large conference in London has forced the cancellation of the event.

Organised by the Al-Muntada Trust, the ‘Month of Mercy’ was due to be held on 8th July at the Grand Connaught Rooms, but following numerous complaints and discussion with the police, the venue has stated that the conference will not go ahead.

Al-Muntada has an extensive history of hosting some of the UK’s worst hate preachers over many years. The views of the proposed speakers at the conference included justifying suicide bombings, glorifying jihad, promoting venomous homophobia, questioning criticism of female genital mutilation, spreading antisemitism, and encouraging reprehensible bigotry against Shia Muslims.

The report was compiled with research assistance from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, which monitors anti-democratic and illiberal forces abroad. It was then discussed with MPs, the Home Office and security services, and was published on the Stand for Peace website.

Concerns were initially dismissed by the venue hosting the event, with one senior member of management stating that the conference “didn’t bother me at all”. But after several anti-extremist blogs and websites picked up on the report, hundreds of people complained directly to the venue and lobbied their MPs, resulting in the cancellation. The venue cited “the safety and security” concerns when they cancelled the event, saying that they had engaged in “careful consideration and liaison with the local police force”.

Sam Westrop, Associate Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, said:

“The cancellation represents a victory for fair minded people of all faiths. By giving out the relevant information about extremist speakers, Stand for Peace was able to demystify the event’s purpose. Many people are intimidated by such events taking place around them, and lack the tools to investigate the true nature of what will be preached at them. By simply referring to public statements speakers have made in the past, members of the public were able to point out the worrying agenda that the event seemed to be pursuing. We commend the Connaught Rooms for changing their mind in the face of public concern.”

The Grand Connought Rooms cancellation follows a recent and similar warning about the activities of the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB). The PFB planned a ‘cultural’ event in Manchester, featuring speakers who have supported terrorism, including Azzam Tamimi and Saudi hate preacher Mohammed Al-Shareef. After StandforPeace and other campaigning organisations disseminated background information provided by the Institute, the hosting venue forced the PFB to cancel the speakers.

Notes for editors:

Stand For Peace is one of the UK’s leading anti-extremism organisations. It closely monitors and analyses extremist activity across the UK, thanks to its network of informers, and its expert researchers and analysts.

The Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy is a London-based think-tank which promotes better understanding of democratic and anti-democratic forces in the Middle East.

If it can be done there, it can be done here. It is being done here – in Florida, for instance. All it takes is organization, determination, thought, planning, tireless work, and much courage.

A surprising interview. Hasan Afzal, a Briton of Palestinian origin, objects to the vicious world-wide movement to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Hasan tells The Atheist Conservative this about himself:

At present I’m on a leave of absence from the University of Birmingham where I’m studying Political Economy.

I come from a secular Muslim family. Religion was often a private experience with the family only ever becoming overtly religious during Ramadan and the two Eid festivals. Other than that, there were no boundaries on what we could talk about so I had complete academic freedom to talk/think/debate with whatever I liked.

The Israel/Palestine issue was never talked about at home, not out of censorship but it never really came up. When I was at University, I was forced to think about it. I guess I’ve been rather influenced by democratic peace theorists and liberal interventionists (aka Neocons – cough!). Sadly, university degrees are too easy to commit one’s mind too, so I spent most of my time reading around the subject. I read Strauss, Hobbes, Locke.

I began to ask: How could this little democracy, Israel, be all the evils that the hate-preachers say it is? I did my own research, and I found out it wasn’t. I got involved in anti-Islamism and discovered the Israel delegitimisation network.  Since then I have had an almost instinctive sympathy for Israel and sadness for the short-sighted leadership of Palestinians. It’s equally a pragmatic support as well as a little ideological. When I see how skewed the debate has become about Israel/Palestine, it is the Israelis I feel are the victims of a sophisticated delegitimisation network.

In the course of his researches, he met Sam Westrop, our British editor. Together they founded the organization British Muslims for Israel, which is beginning to attract media attention.

Sam and I set up British Muslims for Israel. When something happens in the Middle East – the Jerusalem bomb was a perfect example – we come out and make our point clear and provocative. The hope is that Muslims who are hesitant or unsure of their support for Israel will one day put one and one together and see who their real enemies are.

Undhimmi features the video and comments:

It is not before time that a voice of reason from the Muslim community was heard – particularly in Britain – which is fast gaining a reputation as an anti-Semite’s paradise. The cacophany of uninformed and biased, agenda-driven noise (for that it what it is), emanating from the British media and the Islamo-Left coalition – who are dedicated to dehumanising Israelis and falsely presenting the ‘Palestinians’ as perpetual victims – goes virtually unchallenged here [in the US], Britain and the West [in general].

And Melanie Phillips writes in her column at the Spectator:

A warm welcome to a new and very brave kid on the block – British Muslims for Israel. As I have often said, where someone stands on Israel is for me the litmus test of whether they are a decent and rational human being or pose a threat not merely to Jewish interests but to civilised values. Unfortunately, even among those many Muslims who are opposed to the jihad and support western democracy, animosity towards Israel often runs horrifyingly deep. Any Muslim who speaks up in defence of Israel runs significant personal risks. So those behind British Muslims for Israel, which has emerged from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy*, merit a huge amount of praise and support. They also offer a ray of hope for the future. They show that there are Muslims who pass that key civilisational litmus test with flying colours.

Listen here to their spokesman Hasan Afzal, explaining that the group was set up to counter the dangerous notion which is gaining ground that Israel should cease to exist at all; that Muslims get a better deal if they live in Israel rather than Saudi Arabia; and even that he would happily volunteer to be involved [in Israeli public relations] in the face of the ‘sophisticated internet campaign to delegitimise Israel’.

We applaud Hasan’s efforts and will continue to cheer him on.

*Sam was also one of the founders of The Institute for Middle East Democracy.

There is a stereotype at my University with whom I often talk. He wears a kaffiyeh; loose-fitting clothes with ‘Free Palestine’ badges attached; a low-slung woollen hat at the obligatorily jaunty angle; a pair of dangling, white, silent earphones that rhythmically swing from their pivot at the neck of his shirt; and various modish accessories representing figures such as Guevara, Chavez, Stalin and Castro. He is the son of an infamous champagne socialist.

Now compare him with Osama Bin Laden.

(more…)

An informal blogpost here by Sam Westrop, Director of IMED, about the challenges facing the discussion of Israel on campuses in the UK.

This turn of events is not the aim of StandforPeace. Instead, we are an unashamedly pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian group – that is, we encourage both Jewish and Palestinian self-determination. The emotional hatred perpetrated by groups such as Action Palestine, PSC and Viva Palestina prevents any progress or hope. Their tactics are devoid of the progressive, liberal and veritably Jewish sense of optimism and forward thinking. They appear more interested in preventing Jewish self-determination than actually ever encouraging Palestinian self-determination. The negation or rationality also prevents identifying where moral culpability lies – show a picture of a dead baby, and it is the product of Israel’s cruel and wanton agenda to genocidally murder; it is never the fault of Hamas firing rockets or planting IEDs in the baby’s nursery.

It is a specious tactic to describe ‘activists’ or groups such as Action Palestine as ‘pro-Palestinian’, because they are not; they are almost solely anti-Israeli, and show little drive for peace.

…

Much like the flotilla activists, the white, middle-class, pro-Hamas PSC persons were also armed; in this case, with a McCarthy-esque biography of me, poorly researched claims from the Internet. There were wild accusations that I took money from the far right, I had a paid agenda to slander ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists, I was in cahoots with the Ayn Rand Institute. Only three days before, several National Front and BNP members had accused me of similar crimes, switching far-right for far-left. Potato, potahto; tomato, tomahto – let’s call the whole thing off.

…

Accusations of racism are often the refuge of the weird and the virulent ideologues. Who can forget Ahmadinejad and Mugabe leading the speeches at the UN’s anti-racism conference? – an event that appeared to be solely dedicated to hatred of Israel, an event led by two genocidal dictators – the former the patron and supporter of most of the terror and suffering in the Middle East.

Described by some fellow Amnesty activists as ‘quiet and unfriendly’, Fraser is not a manifest lunatic like Jamie ‘Stan’ Stanley, but he is someone who is slightly more sinister. Slightly more intelligent than Stanley, Fraser has the nihilist fascinations with suffering and vulgarity. He proudly boasts that his first ‘book’ was banned under obscenity laws.

Read more!

It looks very much as if the Conservative Party (the Tories) will be returned to power in this year’s general election under the leadership of David Cameron.

It will not be a big change. Such differences as there are between Cameron’s Conservatives and Brown’s (or Blair’s) New Labour socialists are small and few. The Conservative Party of today bears little resemblance to that of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

Our British editor, Sam Westrop, has posted two articles in which he expresses his disappointment with the character and behavior of several people who may well be future leaders of the Conservative Party, not this year but in a few years from now.

While this is chiefly of interest to our British readers, it does give Americans a glimpse into what is happening in the political arena over there.

The only Party which could make a difference if it came to power is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which wants above all to detach Britain from the undemocratic, politically-correct, incorrigibly collectivist European Union (EU), governed by ukase from Brussels. But although UKIP might win some seats in Parliament, it cannot hope to become  a governing majority.

The greatest threat to the nation is Islamization, but no political party is willing to tackle it, or even talk about it above a low murmur, except the British National Party (BNP), which is neo-Nazi (and not so very neo). The refusal of both the major parties, the Conservatives and New Labour, to formulate policies that might deal effectively with it, is driving many voters into the arms of the BNP.

The result is highly likely to be civil strife, violent and bloody.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has written a report stating that Iran can now make the bomb and is now developing a missile delivery system.

VIENNA — Experts at the world’s top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press.The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency’s leaders share Washington’s views on Iran’s weapon-making capabilities.It appears to be the so-called “secret annex” on Iran’s nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA’s chief.The document says Iran has “sufficient information” to build a bomb. It says Iran is likely to “overcome problems” on developing a delivery system.

A Daily Telegraph report has more:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has always publicly denied any ambition to build a weapon. But the IAEA report says that he wanted to acquire nuclear weapons as long ago as 1984, when he served as president. He allegedly told a meeting of senior officials that a “nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God’s soldiers”.

Emanuele Ottolenghi also writes in Standpoint about the Iranian nuclear programme and the West’s possible response:

The American report was a game changer. It declared that Tehran had “halted its nuclear weapons programme” in autumn 2003. It suggested that Iran had suspended its military programme “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.”

There were many caveats to this judgment, buried in the footnotes and intervening text, but the headline was that Iran no longer pursued nuclear weapons. The report undermined any residual credibility to the threat of US military action. Diplomacy was the only option left. George W. Bush endorsed it — and a new proposal was delivered to Iran with the signature of the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in June 2008. President Obama picked up where Bush left off, and made engagement with Iran a centrepiece of his new foreign policy. Then, recently, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a nuclear umbrella to US allies in the region, as if to suggest that the US was now resigned to a nuclear Iran.
…

The answer came recently, in two separate reports that were leaked to the press. Last March, a German intelligence report was submitted to Germany’s Constitutional Court to back the conviction of a German-Iranian businessman accused of supplying Iran with technology for its nuclear programme. The defence had cited the NIE to suggest that the transaction, which occurred in 2007, could not have been used to supply Iran’s military programme, given that the latter had been halted four years before. The court upheld the conviction based on the intelligence, which contradicted the NIE — the weapons programme, the German spies said, had never been suspended. A more recent report, published in July in The Times, cited Western intelligence sources as suggesting that Iran had indeed halted its weapons programme in 2003 but only because by then it had been successfully completed.

If the report is accurate, it answers the question the NIE did not address. Iran stopped its nuclear weaponisation programme in 2003 because its strides had far outpaced the enrichment programme. The decision to suspend had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq or with the much-vaunted secret negotiations between the US and Iran that were ongoing in Paris at the time. It mattered little that IAEA inspectors had started snooping around the recently exposed nuclear installations. Rather, Iran had finished the weaponisation part of the programme before it had completed perfecting a delivery system and mastering the enrichment process.

Iran’s decisions have never been influenced by offers and incentives. The only thing that has ever mattered to Tehran was time. The only reason Iran might still be willing to negotiate is again time: if it still needs time to complete its goal of nuclear weapons capability. US engagement will not change this. Iran can build a bomb, has been busy building one and has never even considered changing its mind.

There are some analysts who believe that the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) will prevent war between Israel and Iran. IMED believe this to be completely untrue. Iran’s autocratic regime is not rational, and the concept of self-destruction in the name of religious self-sacrifice is not just likely; it is expected. After all, praise and encouragement of suicide bombers is not an uncommon sight in Iran.

This excellent article by Shmuel Bar explains the need to negate the (apparently) comforting theory of MAD:

The countries of the Middle East will probably be more predisposed than the Cold War protagonists to brandish their nuclear weapons, not only rhetorically but through nuclear alerts or nuclear tests, leading to escalation. Once one country has taken such measures, the other nuclear countries of the region would probably feel forced to adopt defensive measures, leading to multilateral escalation. However, such multilateral escalation will not be mitigated by Cold War-type hotlines and means of signalling and none of the parties involved will have escalation dominance. This and the absence of a credible second-strike capability may well strengthen the tendency to opt for a first strike.

True, we may safely assume that the leaders and peoples of the Middle East have no desire to be the targets of nuclear blasts. However, the inherent instability of the region and its regimes, the difficulty in managing multilateral nuclear tensions, the weight of religious, emotional and internal pressures and the proclivity of many of the regimes in the region towards military adventurism and brinkmanship do not bode well for the future of this region once it enters the nuclear age.

For news on Iran and the nuclear programme, visit IMED’s blog – also look out for our campaign against the Iranian nuclear programme, coming soon in the UK.

A fascinating article by Nick Cohen on the horrific oppression of women in the Middle East.

“If this sounds harsh, consider that Sharia adultery laws state that
a raped woman must face the next-to-impossible task of providing four
male witnesses to substantiate her allegation or be convicted of
adultery. When rapists leave Pakistani women pregnant, the court takes
the bulge in their bellies as evidence against them. In Nigeria, Sharia
courts not only punish raped women for adultery, but order an extra
punishment of a whipping for making false accusations against
“innocent” men. In Israel, ultra-Orthodox gangs in Jerusalem beat up
women seen in the company of married men. In the United States, the
Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints give teenagers to old men in arranged
marriages and tell them they must completely submit to their wishes.
In Saudi Arabia, women live in a theocratic state that stops them
walking unaccompanied in the street, driving a car and speaking to men
outside the family. After unwisely taking a sprig of the bin Laden
family to be her husband, Carmen Dufour described the consequences.

‘At first, I wasn’t even aware of what seemed so strange about this
country, but then it hit me: half the population of Saudi Arabia is
kept behind walls, all the time. It was hard to fathom, a city with
almost no women. I felt like a ghost. Women didn’t exist in this world
of men.’

To move from ghosts to corpses, if the Taliban
retake power in Afghanistan, they will once again ban women from public
spaces, thus depriving them of employment, and thus closing the health
and education services. Any teacher who presumes to teach them to read
and write will be executed. Meanwhile the Islamic Republic of Iran has
almost certainly renewed its terror tactic of raping women prisoners
before killing them. Because religious law declares it illegal to
execute a virgin, the guards arrange a “wedding” ceremony and rape the
prisoner once it is over.”

There was an appalling case in Israel recently of an Orthodox women who was cruelly starving her child. When the police intervened, there was a strong and horrifying backlash from the Orthodox community. The Jerusalem Post correspondent Alisa Ungar-Sargon speaks of the divide between some of the orthodox Jewish community and the secular majority.

“With the haredi woman suspected of starving her three-year-old son,
the evidence from doctors, social workers, and police appears to leave
little room for doubt regarding the severity of the situation. The
woman was allegedly a danger to her child, and thus measures were taken
to protect him from further harm.

The facts are presented; the evidence is concrete. Yet there
are people rallying to her defense who are convinced of her innocence.
They call the whole situation a blood libel, a condition of malicious
slander and a vengeful nature. Whether or not her actions were
intentional does not change the effects, yet the haredim purport to be
certain. How can a community be so confident that she is not guilty
when everyone else is resisting their every claim?

…

The general animosity between the haredi and secular communities is
rooted in the State of Israel itself. While none of the haredim support
the state, the mainstream sects at least cooperate with it and agree to
participate in the elections.

…

Dr. Yehuda Goodman, a lecturer and anthropologist at Hebrew University,
explains that the tendency to riot is a part of the haredi identity.
“They feel it’s invading and corrupting and fighting to break down
their way of life,” he says. The haredi community is not just a ghetto,
set up to keep out those who would threaten their way of life, Goodman
says, it must also fight and maintain the superior stand they feel that
they have over the secular world. He explains that the haredim need
these fights as a part of the formation of their identity, in finding a
symbolic place to fight the social other.

…

Whether or not the haredim actually believe in the woman’s
condemnation is irrelevant at this point. They can testify for her
character and they can portray her doctor as evil incarnate, but it is
immaterial since their loyalties would not allow them to operate any
other way. They will argue for her since to them, she represents their
community to the outside world.”

There is a perilous inclination in the Western World to tolerate immorality on the part of others on the grounds that there is a cultural divide that cannot be infringed upon. Although this case in the more liberal and democratic Israel is of less notoriety than the more systematic problem of ‘gender apartheid’ of Saudi Arabia and the countless numbers of unpunished rape in Iran, it is just as horrifying.

The definition of tolerance in the West, Israel included, now seems to include turning a blind eye to depravity, in an attempt to avoid being seen as interfering and imperialistic.

The plight of women in the Middle East is just the tip of the iceberg, but where is the condemnation from the West? And as Nick Cohen concludes in his Standpoint article: ‘I accept that this may seem an odd thing to wish for, but what the
world needs now is an uncompromisingly militant feminist movement.’

Further reading:

Clive James on honour killing

Asad Abu Khalil on US policy and the suffering of Arab women

Some exercepts from female Saudi writers on the subjugation of women (Provided by MEMRI)

The question of whether or not there is anthropomorphic global warming has decidedly not been settled, no matter how many scientists and politicians claim that it has.

The Freedom Society of  York University, England, is to hold a conference on climate change. One of the organizers is our British editor, Sam Westrop, founder of the Freedom Society,who writes this:

Thomas Jefferson once said that, “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” And so, with that quote in mind, and the understanding that scientific theories must be falsifiable, the Freedom Society is hosting ‘Climate Week’, a five-day event from the 26th to 30th October at the University of York.

The week will question the politics and ethics of climate change science… We do not know if anthropogenic climate change is occurring or not, but in order for us to draw a conclusion – especially as non-scientists – it is vital that the science be liberal, objective and untainted by political pressure…

There have been many examples of ‘scientific consensus’. A useful illustration is the former fear of Global Cooling that gained momentum in the 1960s. The first paragraph of a New York Times article, from 30th January 1961, entitled SCIENTISTS AGREE WORLD IS COLDER; But Climate Experts Meeting Here Fail to Agree on Reasons for Change, read: “After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.“…

There are a growing number of cries that the IPCC has negated the traditional scientific method. The climatologist Roger Pielke, despite believing in anthropogenic climate change, has criticised the IPCC for its ill-gotten conclusions and has accused the scientific body of subjectively choosing data to support a selective view of climate change science…

Furthermore, the House of Lords Economics Committee has recently stated that, “We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.”

The IPCC has not just become a body of political scientists, but scientific politicians as well. These people’s professions have become adulterated with the idealism of environmental morality.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York brought to light the “absolute horror stories” about how some scientific journals and political bodies have engaged in the suppression of climate-sceptic scientists trying to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals. This conference included many afflicted current and former IPCC scientists from all over the globe.

The IPCC is not the only culprit … Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist at NASA, resigned because of the agency’s lack of scientific freedom.

Miskolczi said he wanted to publish and discuss his new research that showed “runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” but he claims that NASA refused to allow him. He recently said that, “Unfortunately, my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”

A consensus in one branch of science does not mean a consensus across all branches. For example, a recent survey of 51,000 scientists in Canada from the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists found that 68% of them disagreed with the statement that “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.” The survey also stated that only 26% of scientists attributed global warming to “human activity such as burning fossil fuels.” …

It becomes only too apparent that there is a desperate need for …  free debate, given the drastic choices that Governments are prepared to make. Whether such decisions involve the complete overhaul of our energy sources, or the (ethically questionable) prevention of industrialisation in developing countries, the need to end scientific censorship is vitally important…

The University of York Freedom Society’s ‘Climate Week’ will not try to cover the complicated and vast subject of the science itself; instead it will highlight the dangers of academic suppression and weigh the ethical questions involved when dealing with such proscription. …

Climate Week will see many scientists, politicians, journalists and environmentalists, from all over Europe and ever further afield, come together for the first time in the UK …

It promises to be an interesting event, where debate will be lively.