Rael Jean Isaac

TRADING ISRAEL- FOR NOTHING

In a shocking move, the Bush administration is reported (New York Sun, Sept. 18) to be offering “progress on the Israel-Palestinian front” (aid to the Hamas government, an “international peace conference”) as an inducement for European and Arab countries to hold firm against Iran’s nuclear program and support “the war on terror.” Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Rice, explained the “thinking” (if one can use that word for something so addlebrained) behind the policy: “For the Arab moderates and the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is the sine qua non for them to cooperate actively with the United States on the things that we care about.” (This strongly suggests that Israel is not numbered in “the things that we care about.”) If this goes forward, U.S. policy could be summed up as “Feed Israel to the Terrorists to Win the War on Terror.”
It hardly need be said that such a policy would do absolutely nothing to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Its only effect would be further to enhance Iran’s standing in the Islamic world — proving the mere prospect of its bomb shifts U.S. policy on Israel.

SUING KHATAMI

All right, in the end it probably won’t work, but it was nonetheless exhilarating to hear that seven Jewish-Iranian families had spoiled Mohammad Khatami’s evening, serving him with papers as he preened in the midst of CAIR acolytes at a reception in Arlington, Virginia. The suit, filed in federal court under the Alien Torts Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act, contends former Iranian President Khatami is responsible for the kidnapping and torture of their family members between 1994 and 1997, that he instituted a policy of imprisoning them without trial and refused to supply any information about their whereabouts, which are unknown to this day.

THE POPE SPEAKS

On one level the attacks on the Pope’s speech are absurd, yet another violent collective paroxysm by Moslems whenever some slight to their sensibilities, real or, as in this case, far-fetched, ignites the Islamic rabble round the world. (Never mind that these same Moslems insist on the inalienable right of their own religious leaders to describe Jews as “sons of apes and pigs” and Christians as little better.) The offending words were a quotation the Pope used in the preface to the body of a speech he gave to scientists at the University of Regensburg, a disquisition on faith and reason (the latter wholly foreign to much of the Moslem world). It was a quotation from a 14th century Byzantine emperor who had sharp words for Mohammed. The Pope probably selected the quote because he hoped it would take the place of a joke at the beginning of a talk and wake up his audience. He was illustrating the candor of a long-gone ruler, not offering his own assessment of Mohammed or Islam.
But on another level, the speech was indeed a truly fundamental challenge to the Moslem world. For the Pope’s theme was that that faith must be divorced from violence. The Pope argued that anyone who engages in violence ceases to be a believer: anyone who goes along with violence opposes Reason and God who is the source of Reason. What could be a greater indictment of a Moslem world drunk with jihad?

A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE

While the Israeli public debates the merits of its Prime Minister in the wake of his faint-hearted pursuit of the war against Hezbollah, Olmert has won endorsement from none other than Hezbollah chief Nasrallah: “If we have to choose between a foolish Prime Minister and another who is strong and capable, we prefer that the fool remain.”

SHIMON SAYS

Cabinet fixture (now vice premier) Shimon Peres laments (alas, we fear, too soon) that the “one sided realignment plan has disappeared because of what happened in Gaza and what happened in Lebanon.” Says Shimon: “We evacuated Gaza and Lebanon and they continued to fire from there like fools.”

The fool, of course, is Peres who expected a different outcome. Amazingly, in Haaretz, far-left winger Yossi Sarid has written a scathing portrait of Peres as a hot air balloon. Sample: “As the reality of life declines, Peres’ vision rises, and as the vision is more ridiculous and more divorced from the reality, its owner increases in stature as the prophet of the generation.”

BLAIR'S FOLLY

Tony Blair (NY Post, May 27) declared the international community would be “hugely empowered” in the Arab world by creation of a Palestinian state“This is a dispute,” he said, “which casts a shadow over all attempts at reconciliation. Under its cover, global terrorism recruits.”

This shows how little Blair understands the Arab jihadis he claims to oppose. What will be empowered by the triumph of this first stage in the Islamic war against the West are precisely the Islamist zealots. Fired by their milestone victory, global terrorism will win vastly more recruits.

“Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed,” 17th century Swedish minister Axel Oxenstierna declared.

ELLISON TO CONGRESS

With his victory in the Democratic primary, black convert to Islam Keith Ellison is assured of becoming the first Moslem in Congress. He is not a reassuring pioneer. In 1989 and 1990, under the pseudonym Keith Hakim, Ellison called for reparations for blacks and for a new black country made up of Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. At a rally on behalf of defendants on trial for murdering a Minneapolis police officer he declared: “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.”

Ellison told reporters he was never a member of the Nation of Islam but was “affiliated” with the group (whatever that means) for about 18 months. In fact there is evidence Ellison was involved with the Farrakhan outfit for nearly a decade. In addition Ellison has failed to pay his taxes, had his driver’s license suspended and filed incomplete campaign finance reports. Predictably none of this was uncovered by the mainstream media; but by blogs, notably MinnesotaDemocrats-Exposed.com and the national blog Power Line.

What is especially unsettling is that Ellison was endorsed by American Jewish World, the Jewish paper of Minneapolis. Three Democrats were running in the primary against Ellison. Why did the Jewish newspaper endorse the worst candidate?

RADICAL VERSUS PEACEFUL ISLAM

Professor of Islamic History Moshe Sharon mocks those who differentiate between radical and peaceful Islam. “All of a sudden we see that the greatest interpreters of Islam are politicians in the Western world. They know better than all the speakers in the mosques, all those who deliver terrible sermons against anything that is either Christian or Jewish. These Western politicians know that there is good Islam and bad Islam. They even know how to differentiate between the two, except that none of them know how to read a word of Arabic.”

SUICIDE BY OSLO

Thanks to Boris Shustoff for drawing our attention to an interview of Fatah leader Ziyad Abu Ein on Al-Alam TV on July 4 (translated by the indispensable MEMRI).

“There would have been no resistance in Palestine if not for Oslo….Throughout the occupied territories, we could not move a single pistol from one place to another. If not for Oslo, the weapons we got through Oslo, and if not for the ‘A’ areas of the Palestinian Authority, if not for the training, the camps, the protection provided by Oslo, and if not for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners through Oslo – this Palestinian resistance could not have carried out this great Palestinian Intifada, with which we confronted the Israeli occupation.”