My Israel Holiday

“We caught a bus to Tel Aviv, which doesn’t sound too bad if you say it quickly!” (Thanks to Mrs Blogger for this quote). A warning to the day tripper, the Jerusalem Central Bus Station like its Tel Aviv counterpart was built with the intent of improving the flow of traffic.  In fact as transportation hubs they are both of them, as advertisements for Israel, disasters, the Tel Aviv Station being unmitigated in its experiential quality.  Ascending an Egged bus is an unforgettable act of sheer will; an act of aggression that tries the patience and the humanity of the aggressor and the victim.  It is a pickpockets paradise, (don’t expect any warning, either signposted or over the intercom).

First the theory:  Purchase tickets at the cashier’s office, stand in an orderly queue and wait your turn. The buses always run on time.  Now the reality:  Buses operate in contempt of timetables; people pour in from all sides, from adjacent bus stops, they even enter the station from the road and then push to the front as the buses arrive. They endanger lives and they are contemptuous of security (which by the way appears to be breathtakingly lax). Only concerted, relentless and unscrupulous determination rewards the traveller with a place for which they have already paid.  I witnessed two families (one, a Finnish family with three young children) bewildered as the maelstrom of human flesh engulfed them. It was probably terrifying for the children lost in the crush of legs and abdomens but not moving forward.  A little girl was screaming and people were shouting for the rabble to let her through.

The solutions are simple. The question is why the will is absent?  The two bus stations represent a public relations canker. The indifference from those running the stations is a blot on Israeli society. For this alone, the excuse that pushing is Middle Eastern is at least racist and at best a spurious excuse for slovenly inaction by a third rate transportation monopoly provider and it places Israel squarely in the developing world at its least attractive. It is a reminder of the pockets of third world maladministration and human contempt that intermittently pierces ones consciousness.  It is offensive and it is wholly unnecessary.

Travelling should be a positive experience that reinforces the voyagers’ recollections of a memorable holiday.  But most Israelis if they can afford to drive will not approach the bus station, and certainly not if any travel is involved.

Information booths are a farce. Companies do not offer help in journey planning unless the entire journey is provided by their company alone.  Ticket sellers sometimes know what they are doing.  They randomly provide travel information (I guess it depends on how they feel or who you are). Bus drivers sell tickets which of course delays travel.  Basic maths knowledge appears to elude them, which creates further delays as they multiply 6 by 4 on their phones calculator app.  Pickpockets operate with impunity.  It is not the problem of the Bus companies after all.

In Britain, A former Deputy Prime Minister was known as “Two Jags” because in spite of his solid (Left wing) union background he liked being driven around in one of the two official Jaguars with which he was provided, even if the journey was barely worth the flick of the ignition key. Israel’s parliamentarians have embraced the greed of their parliamentary perks too, and they have left the people to their own devices for far too long. It is time they too pushed their way onto an Egged bus.

I have been shocked, angered and disgusted by the total indifference shown by the State of Israel for those of us who are unfortunate enough to have to take the buses.  The question that must be asked is whether this is part of the contagion of elitism that has for far too long been endemic to all parts of Israel’s political classes (and that includes the radicals).

So in summary, pickpockets, a panicked public and an apathetic driving fraternity create an environment of chaos.  This alone is reason enough to advise tourists to stay clear of the two cities if, they have to pass through the two central bus stations.

Qatar urges “Judaization” probe

The arrogance of our enemies should be our greatest concern.  In a world of hyper-individuality the group becomes the victim of identity fascists.  They arrogate the right to pass judgement on others without possessing knowledge and with even less concern for the truth; they are able to do this simply because it fits neatly into established prejudices or prior political conduct.  And yet we appear impotent to respond to a narrative that is religiously offensive and historically colonialist.

The Nazis and their collaborators adopted the term “Judaization” to describe the accession of individual Jews to positions of power within the German State and its satellite dominions.  Where-ever fascism metastasized the term “Judaization” was used to sow fear amongst the ignorant and hatred amongst the prejudiced.  Where-ever Jews gained equality and therefore empowerment there were always people who felt threatened. Acceptance negated domination, if Jews successfully escaped persecution a new cause would need to be found and a new narrative created to justify it.

For sixteen hundred years Jews were ethnically cleansed by Christianity because the Church was incapable of accepting our equality or, like people of black skin, our humanity. For one thousand three hundred years Islam ridiculed us, it despised our weakness and in stages it ethnically cleansed us from our religious heartland.

But in post Renaissance Europe and in the Islamic world ‘Reason’ became a threat to the hold of both Church and Mosque on the peasantry and therefore the reins of power inevitably slipped from the grasp of the aristocracy controlling those religious institutions. If emancipation meant empowerment for Jews then it would inevitably follow that the lower classes would also succeed in freeing themselves of their shackles.  Marx was right to refer to religion as an opiate but I have no argument with opiates – used intelligently they can be a force for good.  A life of moderation in everything may not deliver great works of art or Nobel Prizes but contrary to Marxism's extremist world-view, it is the path to peace.

So when The Left in its mendacity adopts the terminology of Islamic colonialism to justify (once more) ethnically cleansing “The Jews” from Judea and Samaria or “The Jews” from The HaGadah HaMaaravit (The West Bank – the Jordanian colonialist term for its previously conquered territory); or when The Left adopts the revanchist ideology of Islamic colonialism / Nazi racism to once again justify ethnically cleansing the Jews from any part of Palestine, or even, from Jerusalem; then please, do not be surprised when the Anti-Left Wing narrative starts describing the anti-Israel Left as the Neo-Nazi Left.

When one adopts the tactics and terminology of Evil, one cannot complain when one receives the moniker of evil personified.

The Titanic and The Shoah

The debate around Israel’s right to self-defence is focused on delegitimization of those most human of entitlements; the right to protect ones-self and ones family; and the right to self –determination. In the UK there is a never-ending stream of self-righteous liberals and intellectuals lecturing “those Jews” on just how tired “everyone” is of hearing about the Holocaust.

The ‘Holocaust’ is from the Greek and is usually translated as ‘Purifying Fire’, as in a sacrifice.  The Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ is more appropriate, it means calamity.

“You, of all people, should know better” is one racist euphemism meant to shame us. We all too often hear it uniquely expressed towards “those Jews again” as if only in suffering can a Jew approach equality with his or her betters.  Another expression we too often hear is: “You (Jews) should be more like us (Christians/Muslims).” i.e. you should learn to “turn the other cheek” It would be churlish, perhaps even salacious to point out that the two missionary faiths have been responsible for a quarter of a billion martyrs to prejudice in less than the last two thousand years.  Jews, for most of that period of history, turned the other cheek.  It was only when they did not, that they survived.

Shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. It sunk early on the morning of the 15th of April 1912.  1,517 men, women and children died (almost 90% of the deaths were men).   In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and over the next 12 years he, the Nazi party and Fascism’s collaborators across Europe were responsible for the waging of a war that claimed fifty million victims.   It is estimated that Nazi death squads harvested between 11 and 17 million souls in their quest for racial purity. They murdered Jews, Gypsies, Russian POW’s, Russian Civilians; Poles, Serbs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Homosexuals, those of mental or physical disability, and of course, in typical non-democratic fashion, their political or religious opponents.

There are similarities between the Titanic and the Shoah. The International Ice Patrol was formed as a direct consequence of the sinking of the Titanic and almost 100 years later it continues to monitor the stretch of ocean around Newfoundland, warning shipping of the dangers that exist.  World War 2 caused an exasperated USA to look for a means to once and for all harness mankind’s energies against war. The United Nations Organisation was supposed to facilitate the realisation of this noble ideal and it has failed spectacularly to create even a dent in humanities blood lust. One hundred million people have died in war in the period following the creation of the UN.  But many Jews were instrumental in the creation of The Convention for Human Rights overseen by the UNO.  This is just one of the exquisite ironies of the UN tragedy. Conceived in pain and suffering, created as a political body, it was born in original sin. Usurped by racist nations exploiting what is essentially the political nature of international relationships it precludes any serious discussion or action ever being taken against ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Britain is obsessed by the Titanic.  This cruise liner was a magnificent engineering feat of construction. And an ice-berg slid through its hull like a knife through warm butter.   And here in Britain we continue to worship the marvel of its design. In the idolisation of its beauty we are blinded to its fatal defect.

On the 11th of March 2011 two Arabs, both adult Muslims, took knives and beheaded a three month old baby; they killed two other children and their parents.  After the two murderers were captured they proudly re-enacted their heinous crime. It was called by the press a nationalist crime.  If I was a religious man I would call it a blood sacrifice, an act of fealty and re dedication on the devils altar. No sane ethical human being can today, imagine murdering a child. That the perpetrators were praised for their evil by a significant number of Arabs of all classes is truly frightening.

On the 19th of March 2012 a French Citizen, an Arab man, a Muslim, grabbed a struggling 8 year old girl by her hair and murdered her because she was Jewish. He also murdered a father and his two sons’ aged 3 years and 6.  He was proud of his act of infanticide; his brother, when caught, expressed familial pride in his siblings’ carnival of killing.

If it was the Arab world only that celebrated these separate displays of evil we could fear this Arab toxicity as aberrant. But when Pakistani Muslims murdered some 164 people in Mumbai on the 26th -29th November 2008 their handlers (purported to be members of Pakistan’s Intelligence community – the ISI) were recorded by Indian Intelligence, in conversation with the killers during the massacre, reminding them that every Jew killed was worth two non-Jews.

Is it this universal corruption that makes the Koran itself a threat not only to humanity but to the survival of the human species? The Jewish people are a sickness to a sick mind; they are the canary in the mine of human civilisation.

When an eight year old was murdered by an Arab racist, France mourned with the Jewish community.  When the Fogel baby was beheaded, the national British press ignored it, until that is, a Christian novelist and Member of Parliament asked in Parliament why this heinous act was dismissed by the British Press as not newsworthy. On the 12th of March 2012 it was reported throughout the day, in the national news programmes that a Titanic letter was returning to Northern Ireland. A benefactor had paid £21, 692 for a two page letter that was written by a surgeon on the Titanic, who had gone down with the ship. It will now be displayed in Belfast; a national treasure ‘returning’ to its home.

It is not our ability to internalise tragedy that is at fault. It is not the three million Muslims living in the UK that inform on our lack of sensitivity to events around the globe while we absolve our consciences with Live Aid Concerts and protest selectively against Jewish empowerment in a small and battered Jewish state. It is the choices we as a society choose to make that create our society.  UK Plc (Ltd) has always been in the business of making money and projecting power.  It supersedes every other consideration.  Here, in the UK we despise those who try to remind us of our inaction and therefore our complicity in the annihilation of European Jewry (and not just Jews who died as a result of our deliberate inaction in the face of genocide). We use the Shoah as a bludgeon and employ it against the Jewish State. Here in the UK we worship a maritime catastrophe as we celebrate the vehicle of its delivery.

 The difference in emphasis is as deliberate as it is vile in its contemplation.

JFJFP and the Failure of Hasbara

The local mayor visited our synagogue for a civic service. It was a measure of the mutual respect enjoyed by the political administration and the Jewish community that this event took place. But it appears that we were at best misled and at worst, conned by the mayor.

Returning from my synagogue the following week I was interested to see an exhibition / series of stalls near to the local mall.  There were stalls by Fair Trade, the Conservative party and a number of youth organisations. And then I heard an announcement for Palestine. Their stall was occupied by ‘jfjfp’ an organisation that purports to be a group of concerned people of Jewish religious faith supporting ‘justice for the Palestinians’. I found the presence of this organisation at a locally funded public event at best disingenuous. I felt it represented an act of deliberate racist incitement by our mayor.

I wrote to the Local Government Minister to enquire of the legality of this abuse of taxpayer’s funds and the Mayors’ representation at an event that was clearly socially divisive and politically biased.

Reading jfjfp’s manifesto leaflet I could argue that jfjfp are intellectually dishonest and religiously reprehensible for some of the key points they make even when they preface their propaganda by three words at the beginning, “we believe that”. This does not however excuse the involvement of my local council or its mayor in its participation in this event alongside of jfjfp. I asked the mayor whether he had invited someone from ‘the other side’ to provide balance to jfjfp. He refused to answer, even when I repeated the question.

In May 1948, Jerusalem, both east and west, had enjoyed a Jewish majority since approximately 1828; that is, for 120 years prior to Israel’s War of Independence.  A British funded, British armed and British officered military force captured the Old City of Jerusalem and the remainder of Eastern Jerusalem.  It proceeded, one must assume with British Foreign Office agreement, to ethnically cleanse the city of its Jewish residents and then to obliterate any physical evidence of a Jewish presence within the areas controlled by the Arab Legion.  This followed on from a massacre some two weeks earlier, just outside of Jerusalem, at Kfar Etzion on May 13, 1948 again, by British funded forces.  Over 100 Palestinian Jews and a Palestinian Muslim family living in peace and co-existence amongst their Palestinian Jewish brothers and sisters were murdered by a unit of the British officered Arab League.

In the case of a massacre carried out by British forces Britain suffered only momentary diplomatic embarrassment but it was also a message of what Britain was offering its Arab friends in support against Jewish self-determination. Britain was in fact, one of only two nations at the UNO that recognised Jordan’s subsequent expropriation (annexation) of the captured lands.

Until Arab defeat in the 1967 Six Day War, Arab archaeological and cultural vandalism continued without interference; the excision of any evidence of a Jewish presence in the Old City and East Jerusalem was ignored by the UN, by the clergy here in Britain and of course by our cultural and political elite here in the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All this was in open contempt of Article VIII of the 1949 Armistice Agreement which demanded Israeli Jewish access to the Western Wall).

It was only after 1967 when Israel recaptured and began to restore the Jewish presence in the area that that silence miraculously evaporated.

I have been a supporter of Palestinian rights since before the practical Palestinian renunciation of the three no’s of Khartoum (no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel and no recognition of Israel).  Self determination and independence for all communities including Coptic Christians, Kurds and many other fragmented and persecuted minorities present within the Arab world will never be achieved by either blaming it all on the Jews or the Zionists; or by stating that Israel is to blame for the violence and corruption, the greed and the hatred of the Arab world. Nor will peace be achieved when organisations such as jfjfp declare that Israel is responsible for the “corruption of Judaism’s humanitarian values” (as one of the jfjfp leaflets given out by the mayors apparent proxies declared).

To be brutally frank, I do not blame the Christian world for the wars in which countries that proclaim their Christianity, participated over the last 120 years, nor do I blame Christianity for some 250 million violent deaths during that period of history. Nor do I blame Islam for this. But if I defer to jfjfp philosophy I should. The Muslim world, with its racist missionary goals and its exposition (by its extremists) of ethnic cleansing and genocide could as easily be assigned the blame for all the suffering that believers of the Islam faith have caused during this same 120 year period of time.  I do not blame the extreme left or Islamists for the violence that is too often perpetrated against people like me with whom, they disagree. Similarly, it would be breathtakingly offensive of anyone to state that Britain is globally responsible for the corruption of humanitarian values because of people with views such as those mentioned in this paragraph.

But an organisation that states publically its opposition to any nation based on religion is not only offensive, it is also racist. And I would be happy to argue the polemics of this definition if my local council or any other group would like to be involved in this dispute.

That I find jfjfp to be offensive and intellectually superficial in its arguments does not preclude its presence in my area, it does however when its presence is formally officiated at by the local mayor, who was identified as such and wearing his chains of office.

The mayor has committed an unforgivable abuse of his position as representative of all of our citizens and tax payers, not just its political and religious racists to which the mayor’s office has clearly given its support.

Please therefore investigate both the circumstances of jfjfp’s presence in my area under the auspices of the local mayor and any possible abuse by the mayor’s office.

Please also inform me whether any other ethnic or religious groups have been offered the same access provided to jfjfp and if not, why not?

As a final point of order, in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the Islamic attack on 911 that resulted in some 3,000 innocent human beings being murdered, all of our local council’s political parties were represented in a celebration that took place on that same day. The date was in no way a coincidence.  The inauguration of an enormous mosque in the centre of town opposite City Hall was a huge police operation as the area became a virtual police state in order to ensure the day went without incident. Uniformed and plain clothes police were at every entrance into town and their visual presence throughout the city was not meant to reassure anyone who lived here.  The anticipated right wing protest did not occur as anyone looking remotely ‘suspicious’ was denied entry to the town! The only thugs that made their presence felt were the trouble makers bussed in from outside London some of whom were allegedly seen to have concealed nail studded weapons in their mosque clothing.  Fortunately this potentially lethal show of triumphalism came to nothing. Nevertheless it is morally wrong that our counsellors turned a blind eye. The police also saw and did nothing to intervene.

When the state by its inaction encourages a violent demonstration of identification we may justify it by labelling our supposed protectors as cowards, but when cowardice has become public policy then governance, even when it is local governance, becomes state sanctioned prejudice.

The question must therefore be asked, has prejudice here become public policy?

Shlomo Benizri and Political Particularism

Former Shas minister Shlomo Benizri is a convicted felon who was found guilty of breach of trust, accepting bribes and obstruction of justice. After release from prison on the 1st of March 2012 he gave an interview with an ultra-orthodox radio station in which he pronounced the mental anguish he suffered for being 'wrongfully imprisoned' greater than that which Gilad Shalit suffered. Benizri was jailed for four years and served two.  Gilad was incarcerated in a windowless cell for five years and four months. He was held by HAMAS, the racist, misogynistic and genocidal anti-Semitic Arab organisation that governs Gaza.  He was, in effect, living under a sentence of death for all of his confinement. One readers’ judgment on Benizri’s post release delusional rant says it all; he called it a 'Classic Narcissistic Personality Disorder'.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4197436,00.html

But the psycho-babble acts as a deterrent to addressing the real threat in the man because we dismiss his demagoguery as the words of a buffoon, which he is not.  Benizri is an obscenity; a delusional, self-obsessed narcissist.  His words should make him ineligible from holding any public office not because he does not have the right to express how he feels but because he is divisive and confrontational and politics should be about healing, reconciliation and inclusion. Clearly, this is not a space in which Mr. Benizri feels comfortable. A rabble rouser belongs in the gutter, not in the halls of power.

The issue that is implicit from the interview he gave is the desperate state of Israeli politics. For a nation of thinkers, philosophers, scientists and workers too – the parlous condition of Israel’s political and moral leadership is one of incompetence and narrow sectarian superficiality.  We can look for policy but instead we receive cant.  How can a state that has survived so many trials in its short history have such a pathetic gaggle of leaders?  Shlomo Benizri represents unreason and bigotry, superstition and intolerance. That we continue to hear from him fills me with despair and horror.  He fails to acknowledge the bankruptcy of his own constituency where there is so much poverty and frustration.  Israel needs to unite its citizens but instead, (and the militantly secular that dwell amongst us are equally guilty of this crime of tribal separation) on his first day out of prison he reaches out to the extremists in anger rather than in calling for a new dialogue towards reconciliation.

The more I consider his words, the greater my contempt for him grows.

In order to understand where the ultra-orthodox fit into the melange of meaningless political poseurs that inhabit the Israel political landscape one must begin with the understanding that in a nation built on competing aspirations, recognition means acceptance. The rights and wrongs of competing narratives make a refusal to recognise the humanity of an adversary easier than any discussion on a revisionist history.

For instance, the Arab ‘Magic Show’ defines all non-Jewish Arab immigrants as Palestinian by birth, perpetually classed as ‘refugees’ and this is supported through UN complicity and Western funding. It provides sanction to Arab particularism which has in turn blossomed into an entire field of Political and Ethical particularism encouraged by the Left. Perhaps this is because the Left is itself morally ambiguous and therefore, promiscuous in choosing its friends and allies.

How does this connect to Shlomo Benizri? Let me explain.

Jews that fled Arab persecution did not have the luxury of UN ‘protection,’ formalised refugee status endowed on them.  Although their numbers exceeded those of the Arabs that fled before their brother and sister ‘freedom fighters,’ from Israel in 1948, their persecution was the normal state of Arab behaviour towards any minority living in their midst and it was thus, never of any humanitarian concern.

The Western Jewish Leadership of the nascent State of Israel already had a tradition of secular enchantment with art and literature, revolutionary politics and science.  They saw their Arab Jewish cousins as uncouth and uncivilised.  They viewed them as ‘less than’ the Arabs that for over a thousand years had kept them politically and socially disenfranchised.  They were ‘weak’; they had not fought their oppressors as Secular Western Jews had done. It is an all too common failure of all revolutionary winners that they are blind to their own arrogance and to the pain they inflict for the greater good.

But within a generation of Jewish independence, in Israel, the intermarriage rate amongst ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ (Arab) Jews was over 20% and increasing at a percentage point every year.  Arab Jewish culture flourished in spite of the ignorance of the ruling administration. Arab Jews became successful politicians, generals and business leaders.  The professions were never deliberately closed to them they just had further to travel to get there.

Today, most Secular Israeli Jews in their teenage years or twenties would laugh at you if you suggested a marriage based on ethnically particularistic lines.

There does remain though, a justifiable chip on the shoulder of many Arab Jews. A large number turned to the Western Orthodox elite for religious guidance and the ultra-orthodox tradition for their pride. The Western ultra-orthodox elite were successful because they aggressively sought political power for its concomitant economic benefit, not the least of which was patronage.  Coming from a conservative background that emphasised tradition, Western Ultra-orthodoxy offered comfort in what was for the first two generations, an alien and unwelcoming environment.

Israel would best be served by lancing the boil of ethnic anger.  Initiate a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ starting with examining internal Jewish conflicts that continue to simmer to this day.  Israel should strengthen anti-discrimination legislation by taking funding away from any group that is found guilty of deliberate prejudice and applying those funds to combating this prejudice.  An easy early win would in this case be Western ultra-orthodox schools that discriminate both against Arab Jews and Ethiopian Jews.

Arab Muslims and honorary ‘Arab’ Christians have a different issue.  Any attempt at truth and reconciliation would first require revisiting their history and a renunciation of their religious hegemonic pretensions. As members of the two missionary faiths, dominance is more than a national aspiration; it is a theological imperative, even for those that profess a secular affiliation.  It is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Let us start with lancing that Benizri boil then perhaps the confrontational character of Israeli politics may finally dissipate and Israel’s boundless energies will be channeled into more productive areas of interest.

Obama and a Failure of Leadership

In 2008 Obama’s bid for the Presidency of the United States of America became embroiled in controversy because of his support for his pastor and long term friend, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright.  In support of Obama’s dubious associations a journalist and great nephew of Martin Luther King, writing for the Chicago Tribune, (also named King) advised Senator Obama to support his local church and its pastor because he was black and it was part of his identity.

In what was for me a remarkably succinct note (two short paragraphs) I emailed Mr King and reminded him that the second word of the country in which he lived was ‘United.’ I explained further that in order to be electable Senator Obama would need to convince people that he could be the President of all the people and not just his Afro-American constituents.  The fears expressed that this potentially divisive, controversial and close personal friend might have tainted Barack Obama’s views were reflected in the column inches given to the Reverend Wrights pronouncements.

What defines leadership is the ability to rally others towards a common goal. It is in times of crisis that leaders provide comfort even in the face of ongoing terror.  What defines a great leader from the mediocrity with which they are often surrounded is that during periods of uncertainty and confusion they guide their flock.

What is happening in Afghanistan is an abomination.

The last time someone committed violence against the Koran (in April 2011), in Afghanistan over a dozen people working for the UN were slaughtered, some were beheaded. The press initially suppressed this fact because they wanted to show the virtue in Islamic outrage.  And now it has happened again.  But this time the Taliban are alleged to have hidden instructions to prisoners in a copy (or copies) of the Koran sent to their people.  The over-enthusiastic guards discovered this and subsequently burned the book (s) in which the instructions were concealed.

The apology delivered by President Obama to the Afghan people for the destruction of a copy of the Koran had no balance in the face of violence and murder by a population so enthusiastic for killing.

Why should we demand balance?  We should not forget that the barbarians chipping away at Rome’s empire in the 4th Century AD (CE) were not devoid of culture. ‘Barbarian’ was simply a derogatory term for one who came from outside the Roman Empire.  A lopsided condemnation encourages violence by people who need none, and it sends a message to the barbarians that we will not defend the values we cherish.

What has come to pass in Afghanistan over the last 33 years can only be recounted with shame.  The ethnic cleansing of Eurasian Muslims by Islamists has been all but ignored as has the destruction of The Buddha’s of Bamiyan (two 6th century monumental statues, the tallest in the world, carved into the side of a cliff, they were dynamited and destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001).  Between 1980 and the overthrow of the Taliban following 9/11 (also in 2001), it has been estimated that 1,800,000 Afghani’s died in the series of conflicts that took place there (Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes).

I do not understand why we keep silent when our values are attacked or trampled into the dust.  In Saudi Arabia a bible carried into the country is thrown into the garbage by passport control since no religious books other than Islamic ones are allowed into this state of malevolent bigotry, described as the centre of the Muslim world. The humiliation of non-believers has been a too common practise of missionary faith for all of human history.  When a sacred Jewish site in the West Bank was destroyed, the conquering Muslim ‘freedom fighters’ murdered the 6 soldiers guarding the site who thought that by their surrender they would protect the edifice and its contents; in an act of execration they defiled Torah scrolls and dozens of Jewish prayer books before burning them.  Missionary theology seeks humiliation and violence as proof of superiority.

We are not perfect.  Some years ago a secular member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, made some disparaging comments about King David.  Ancient Jewish personalities are human, so unsurprisingly, they display human foibles.  Being mortal, from time to time they erred.  It is the lessons we have learned from discussing their all too human failures that has helped to make humanity better.  King David plotted the demise of his love rival. An ultra-orthodox member of the Knesset was furious that the secular could criticise King David.  But it is a sanitised version of David that is the abomination and not the criticism.  I was not surprised an alienated and secular society would ignore the challenge of reclaiming David’s narrative; it is what one expected of a leaderless and mediocre Knesset.

Celebrating brutality and the propensity for taking Islamic tribalism to its logical extreme; enjoying a savagery and contempt for human life makes Afghanistan a tainted country.  It is a land that has enjoyed Pakistani, Saudi as well as Iranian spiritual, military and financial support. We tend to place all the blame on Soviet and American proxy wars but omit the Islamic angle at our peril.

Leadership means more than displaying a talent for oration and embracing every photo opportunity. Barack Obama must manage his diplomatic global responsibilities based on an American vision and that means having tolerance towards book burners of all faiths. He has no obligation to placate his diabolical Afghani ally. Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, all of them want geopolitical control of Afghanistan. It is the choices we make as well as the choices we fail to make that define our place in history. President Obama’s shallowness is his greatest disappointment to me. The president represents not just America but also the free world.  What the New York Times described as ‘visceral disgust’ (23rd February 2012) is what I feel for this kowtowing to religious hysteria.

If it is wrong to destroy a book written by humans because we worship the book or what the book stands for then we are guilty of idolatry.   It is wrong to commit murder in the name of a deity, or their saints, or their prophets.  And if it is indeed correct to do so then humanity is incapable of salvation. The enemies of civilisation and their acolytes take comfort from the blood sacrifice.

President Obama has not been the global statesman we expected of the so called leader of the ‘free’ world. As The Leader this is his greatest failure.

Anti-Semitism & the Pseudo Intellectual question

Whenever someone in the news asks the question “why are ‘the Jews’ an object of persecution” and “are they responsible for their own suffering” (“why are people anti-Semitic” is a slightly more subtle take on the question) I momentarily sadden and then in a rush of mental images I formulate the answer. Only afterwards do I feel any anger towards the questioner.

The question is no more than a pseudo intellectual dialectic employed to sanitise a racists’ position.  I will not dwell on the identity of the most recent questioner (a leading British Catholic writer) because to do so is arguably irrelevant. He could have been as easily a she and ethnicity or faith is similarly of little consequence other than to provide the historical fertiliser for this fetid and facile denunciation of me and my kind.  Repetition reinforces prejudice and promotes bigotry. We have banished an anti-black narrative and are wary of stereotyping Arabs. In Britain Anti-Muslim sentiment has been similarly cast out from the quality media. In fact the BBC has stated publicly that it would trash the Talmud and bury the New Testament but will never touch the Koran.

So excuse me if I decline the opportunity to regurgitate someone else’s discrimination. I will however, answer the question my way.

We are all moulded by history. Two thousand years ago The Romans had an empire. The only significant opposition to Roman civilisation was Israel. The Jews had their own god and their own culture; they had a unique economic structure and an ethical system of government.  By their celebration of the Sabbath they rejected unrestrained capitalism and put limitations on the institution of slavery, both of which sustained the ancient world (and not just the ancient world, for without the two missionary faiths slavery could not have survived for as long as it did).

Israel and the Jewish system that clothed it was adopted by huge numbers of converts throughout the Roman Empire.  Judaism was embraced by patricians, by plebeians, by slaves and by barbarians alike.  Roman ethics were suited to conquest, domination and self-adulation. Israel was not.  In order to survive, early Christianity had to distance itself from both its roots and its ethical antecedents. Rendering unto Caesar ‘that which was his’ was a cop-out but it did enable Christianity to take control of Rome and ultimately the empire.  But in distancing itself from its roots it also had to justify its distance and the hatred it encouraged in order to convince Rome that it was not a threat was the price the Jewish people paid in facilitating the accession of Christianity to dominance.

There are two missionary faiths on planet Earth (if, that is, we exclude the extremist political movements that mimic religion in all but ceremony).  A faith that declares itself to be universal can only prove its worth by reference to its numeric superiority and the constant stream of converts to its flag.   Dehumanisation, persecution, conspiracy theories, violence and ethnic cleansing are tools without which a missionary faith soon loses focus and purpose. Without ‘the other’ to demonise, its own internal contradictions create a spiral of decay and violent renewal; unless its theological focus shifts away from and is a rejection of the original sin of its aggressive birth, entropy is as inevitable as the violence from which it is nourished.

1.700 to 1,800 years of anti-Semitic instruction, defining us as inferior, as worthy of derision, ridicule and hatred, will inevitably lead to intermittent rounds of persecution, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is Christianity’s legacy and few are willing to admit to this fact.  The Church spent almost 2,000 years telling its parishioners that they must turn the other cheek. But that instruction counted only to reinforce the control of the church hierarchy over its constituents and never applied to its conduct towards those it perceived as either competitor or enemy.

Islam, the other missionary faith, rejects ‘turning the other cheek’ as a meaningless concession to opposing forces and a theologically unacceptable sign of weakness. At best it is permitted to agree to a ‘Hudna,’ the Arabic term for an armistice. Based on an incident that is alleged to have happened during Muhammad’s conquest of Saudi, a truce is permitted as long as ten years is the maximum period required to overcome any disadvantage and defeat the enemy.  Ridiculing the infidel (the non-Muslim or non-believer) has been intrinsic to Koranic lore since Islam’s creation almost 1,400 years ago.  It is this active imposition of inferior status that reinforces the tension existing between the global Islamic nation and the rest of humanity.  I have known an eight year old Muslim child from an African refugee family to verbally abuse his teacher because she was inferior, Christian and a woman.  This 8 year old child spat out his words with an indifference that showed he was not angry, he simply lacked any sympathy for the other.  The child could only have absorbed this internal emotional and intellectual narrative from his parents.

Two missionary faiths have fought each other for as long as they have interacted with each other.  But the balance of terror has been sufficient to create uneasy fault lines which only occasionally slip.  As a perpetual minority the Jews have never been lucky enough to stand at a safe distance from the fault lines of religious struggle.

History is a cruel teacher.  If you tell enough lies about someone and if you hit them often enough; it is almost impossible to stop. By example: all those bleeding hearts that accept ‘Palestinian’ (i.e. Christian or Muslim) immigration to Palestine but label me ‘a colonialist’ are either intentional or unintentional anti Semites;  intentional if they appreciate the dishonesty of their position, remarkably stupid if they do not.

A neat definition of an anti Semite is a person who treats a Jew in a way that is different to the way he treats anyone else.

Despite my history I refuse to hate, but do not ask me to respect the questioner.