A poster at Jihad Watch recently referred to an excellent article about Israel by Thomas Sowell as "the same tired Zionist propaganda...."
How, one wonders, is what Thomas Sowell wrote about the silliness of these ceaseless, unceasing, never to permanently lead to a permanent peace but only to more war followed by more ceasefires, an expression of the "same tired Zionist propaganda"? And what "tired Zionist propaganda" is that, anyway? For the last forty years, all over the world, the Arab and Muslim propaganda machine has run circles around the naive Israelis, who seem incapable of understanding the nature of the enemy they face, or are unable for reasons of realpolitik to describe accurately that enemy.
Perhaps this is out of fear of damaging morale: no one likes to be told that the threat to his nation is a permanent one, prompted by the immutable tenets of a belief-system with hundreds of millions of thoroughly brainwashed believers.
From the 1967 defeat on, the Arabs have carefully redefined the conflict for the consumption of Infidels. Some of those Infidels were non-Western: in black Africa, for example, whose leaders were bribed in all sorts of ways to cut the very beneficial ties with Israel that had been formed in the 1950s and 1960s, and which were based on Israel's excellent aid programs, especially in the area of agriculture. In return, a few despots were paid off, but black Africa received nothing of the promised Arab aid. Ever since then, black Africa has been taken contemptuously for granted by the inheritors of the Arab slaving-mentality. As some Western students of Arabic can testify after a semester in Cairo or in Damascus, the most open and virulent expression of anti-black racism is to be found in Arab countries. And of course the support by Muslims, including those Egyptian pilots who strafed Ibo villages during the Biafra War, for local Muslims has been clear, as everywhere Christianity and black African Christians have been attacked by the forces of Islam -- most obviously in the southern Sudan.
And in India and other countries of Asia and, to a lesser extent, Latin America, the Arabs presented themselves as fellow members of the so-called "Third World," even though those same Arabs and their states were, because of an accident of geology, the beneficiaries -- entirely unmeritorious beneficiaries -- of the largest transfer of wealth in human history. Funny, was it not, how Bolivian peasants and the poor of Calcutta supposedly have so much in common with the rich Arabs who make up nearly all of the membership of OPEC.
But in the Western world, there had to be something else. And that something else was of course to appeal to Western guilt, however unnecessary that guilt may have been, and to invoke a "colonial" past that hardly applied to the Arab countries, save briefly (40 years) to parts of North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia). For it was the Arabs who were freed from Turkish rule, and who within a decade or two received their freedom from the benign rule of mandatory powers in Iraq, in Syria, in Jordan. Or they had been beneficiaries of the British who ran an efficient and honest civil service in Egypt (for the first and last time in Egypt's modern history), and who in the Gulf kept the peace by forcing those "truces" or hudnas to be observed between the naturally, and preternaturally, aggressive and violent Arab tribes of the area -- hence the very name "Trucial States." Only in Algeria was there a long period of semi-colonial rule. And it was in that period, from 1830 to 1962, that universities and hospitals were built for the first time and the non-Muslims and non-Arabs treated decently (the Jews, because of the loi Cremieux, passed in 1870; and the Berbers, who were seen by many of the French as superior in their civilizational level to the Arabs). North Africa was temporarily made safe for Christians to openly practice their religion, and civilization was brought to Algeria through that mission civilisatrice, of both a linguistic and cultural kind. The effects of this can still be seen in the pockets that remain of the French influence in what is reverting, alas, to Islamic type.
The cliches -- which form that "same tired Arab and Muslim propaganda" that we are all so used to -- consisted among other things of trying to persuade many that the establishing of a Jewish presence in the Holy Land from the late 19th century on, through land purchases and gigantic efforts at land reclamation of what had over the centuries become the desolate and ruined landscape of Israel or the Holy Land or "Palestine" (as it was known in Western Christendom, but not to the Arabs or Muslims, who started to appropriate the term only after the establishment of the state of Israel), was illegitimate. Yet this Jewish population included the ingathered Jews from all the Muslim countries, where nearly a million had lived and endured the existence that dhimmis always had to endure, whether economically prosperous but physically insecure in Baghdad, or as chattel slaves in Yemen. If Israel could, preposterously, be depicted as a "white, European, colonial state" and the local Arabs as "dark-skinned" victims of those "colonists," the Muslim propagandists would win hearts and minds in the West, and they knew it. Yet in many cases those supposed "European colonists" had never left the Middle East. Some had never left Jerusalem, Safed, or Hebron. All three cities had a continuous Jewish presence. And of course the effort to rebuild the Jewish commonwealth in one of the most resource-less, most uninviting plots of land in the world was hardly an example of "colonialism." Furthermore, there was no "colonial" mother country to derive benefit from whatever these "colonists" might have achieved. But such was and is the power of "tired Arab and Muslim propaganda": it permitted the greatest of the world's imperialists, linguistic and cultural as well as economic and political imperialists, the Arabs, to conduct their Jihad against Israel while couching the whole thing in the language of "anti-colonial struggle."
And then that "same tired Arab and Muslim propaganda" did one more important thing after the 1967 defeat made clear that this was to be a Slow Jihad, requiring the diplomatic and economic and political isolation of Israel from its natural allies and admirers. That was to rename the local Arabs, the ones in Gaza and in the "West Bank" (as the Jordanians had renamed the area of Mandatory Palestine they seized in the 1948 war), now territories won by Israel in that war, as the "Palestinian people." It had its effect. For most people, most of the time, know very little about anything. And if the area was once known, in the Western world, as "Palestine," and if there was now a group of people called the "Palestinians," well then -- that was it, wasn't it? The Jews must have taken their land, the land of those "Palestinians," unfairly. And all those poor "Palestinians" and their justifiably outraged supporters wanted was just a little bit, just a tiny bit, of what they should have had -- and thus it was that tiny Israel, existing on 22% of the land area originally planned for Mandatory Palestine, which was created for the sole purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home (read the Preamble to the Mandate for Palestine, for god's sake -- do a little homework, find out something), is now portrayed as the huge aggressor state. It is now the Arabs who, preposterously, use the exact same figures, claiming that "even if we get Gaza and the West Bank, that is only 22% of 'Palestine.'"
And so the Lesser Jihad against Israel was disguised, for obvious reasons, as merely a matter of the "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people." Neither Israel itself, nor many in the outside world, seem willing to comprehend that there is no solution, one-state or two-state or n-state, to the Jihad. There is only the matter of remaining overwhelmingly -- and perceptively -- more powerful, capable of wreaking great damage on those who would attack. No treaty with Infidel states, and Israel is such a state, can conceivably be permanently honored by a Muslim signatory. Pacta sunt servanda is a Western idea. In the Muslim world, treaties are not to be obeyed, but if made with Infidels, to be violated as soon as the Muslim side feels itself strong enough to press its advantage. The model for all time -- see Majid Khadduri -- is Muhammad's Treaty with the Meccans in 628 A.D.
That, of course, is never mentioned by Muslims to non-Muslims. And such an omission is an important part of that "same tired Arab and Muslim propaganda" that the poster to Jihad Watch and so many other remain unaware of. Instead, they have a deep belief in a "tired old Zionist propaganda" machine that does not exist. That belief itself has been encouraged, most successfully, by the "tired " -- no, not "tired" but vibrantly alive, and energetic, and fabulously well-financed, "Arab and Muslim propaganda" that is to be found at the BBC, and The Guardian and Le Monde, and Agence France Presse, and all over the world's radio, television, and newspapers. This is a fabulous tribute to the power of oil money, and to the Western hirelings, including public relations experts, that it can buy. And it is a fabulous tribute also to the laziness and mendacity of so many journalists who promote the Islamic party line in so many different yet entirely recognizable ways.
I have come to more easily identify a Muslim spinmaster when I see one.
When I hear someone mention Zionist Propoganda or the plight of the Palistanians, the bells and whistles go off.
Muslins cannot tell the truth easily and will easily point the weakminded or dhimmi orientated individuals along the wrong lines of thinking.
I learn a lot here, I try to pass along everything to anyone who will listen.
Of course, I know some dhimmicrat types--It is like talking to a box of rocks., but I try.
The following commentary by Nelson Ascher has been going around the blogosphere. It is on the pajamas media site and several bloggers, including Roger L. Simon, have linked to it. But if anyone has not seen it yet, here it is. It is short, but a very important and thought-provoking analysis on how anti-semitism is used:
http://politicscentral.com/2006/08/15/the_uses_of_antisemitism_by_ne.php
The article by Nelson Ascher to which a link is given above, and which I have just read, makes a point which has so often been made here. The sucesss of Arab and Muslim propagandists can be partly explained by their appeal to, and exploitation of, pre-existing mental conditions, chief of which are antisemitism and anti-Americanism. This has created, in Western Europe, a denial of the Muslim threat to the peoples and polities of Western Europe itself. If attention can be focused on the putative misdeeds of Israel (read: the Jews), so that Muslim behavior, Muslim demands, Muslim aggression and openly stated plans for the future takeover of Infidel lands far from the Middle East, in Europe itself, by employing th money weapon, and Da'wa, and demographic conquest, can be ignored. "If only" Israel could be brought to heel, "if only" the Israelis would give up this and give up that, "if only" Israel were to disappear altogether, none of this misunderstanding, none of this "clash of civilizations" (and yes, we in the West are at fault, don't forget -- we had the Crusades, we denied the worth of "the Other," we seem to think that our civilization is somehow superior to that of Islamic peoples -- but just look at that calligraphy, and look at those mosques, and look at those family values) would have happened. There is no need for dilating unduly on what, why, when, how, whither this antisemitism. The point is that it exists. It has different sources in Europe, and even in Europe, where the theological roots of Christian antisemitism have been pulled up and sprayed with Roundup, and where so many "post-Christians" now exist who are indifferent to Christiainity, antisemitism nonetheless survives, and is watered daily by the cascades of misinformation and malice in the reporting about Israel's gallant -- far too gallant -- attempts to defend itself against a relentless, never-ending, and monstrous Jihad.
believers in restates at greater length what has so often been stated here: antisemitism is a pre-existing mental condition (like anti-Americanism) that has been cleverly exploited by Arab and Muslim propagandists, and their willing collaborators, in order to create an atmosphere in the West, but especially in the Western world, that will sunder the two sides of the transatlantic alliance.
More on antisemitism as a security risk in the 1930s and now, can be found in the followiing article from Oct. 3, 2005:
Fitzgerald: The State Department nest of ninnies
Reinhard Gehlen was a Nazi, Hitler's Intelligence Chief for the Eastern Front, and a man up to his neck in murder. But he and his former Nazis managed to fool the CIA into thinking they were of value. After the war a number of Americans, some outright immoral, others merely guilty of the shallowest and stupidest kind of false machiavellianism, wanted to use Gehlen's supposedly valuable "network" in the East. The CIA fell for Gehlen's pitch, and contributed millions to him until, finally, in 1956, it stopped. And as anyone might have concluded, the network was useless and riddled with double agents who, as so many Nazis did, now worked for the KGB -- that is, for its variously-named predecessors such as the NKVD. There were those who were useful to the Americans in Eastern Europe.
But it was not Gehlen and his Nazis who were useful, but rather the former anti-Nazis, many of them Jewish, such as those associated with the Red Orchestra. Some day it will all come out, and all sorts of people, from Buffalo Bill's grandson to the suave mustachioed brother of a celebrated Harvard archeologist of White Russian descent, will get their due. And then there were others --what in god's name did Gehlen and his murderous turncoats contribute to the defense of the West? Nothing. And what is worse, they muddied the waters, and often misled.
The kind of CIA men and State Department men who effectively killed denazification themselves deserve to be studied for their own prejudices and stupidities. The spirits of Breckenridge Long, and Loy Henderson live on in Michael Scheuer and others who, at this particular moment in history, as in the 1930s and 1940s, are in fact, given their obvious prejudices which causes them to misread the situation, security risks. At MI5, or its predecessor, Vernon Kell appointed Maxwell Knight, a fascist and antisemite. In May, 1940, Churchill cashiered Kell. Then, as now, antisemitism is not only distasteful -- but now it is far more: it is a security risk. Anyone who displays its symptoms is unlikely to be sufficiently clear-headed to deal with the worldwide Jihad. Churchill did not tolerate such security risks when he became Prime Minister. And such security risks cannot be tolerated now.
As for Gehlen, he did less for Western security and the ultimate liberation of Eastern and Central Europe than did Leopold Labedz, sitting in his London flat, editing articles for Survey, or than Melvin Lasky, editing the CIA-funded magazine Encounter, the best magazine of the last century and possibly the best thing the CIA has ever done. Would that the kind of people who were behind that intelligent decision were in the CIA today. Or perhaps they are just joining up, at this very minute. But that appears doubtful.
The tutelary spirits of those in the State Department who deal with such matters, that is to say, matters connected to the Middle East and to Muslim terrorism, are two: one is that of Breckenridge Long, the Assistant Secretary of State who was so instrumental in keeping Jewish refugees from being accepted into the United States before and during World War II; the second is the late and unlamented Loy Henderson, he of the doleful countenance, who was so instrumental in moving heaven and earth in keeping the United States from recognizing the nascent state of Israel, and did what he could to help smother it in its cradle. The palpable want of sympathy of Long and Henderson continues to this day -- only now it is aided and abetted by the prospect of working as hirelings of Arab governments and the fear of recognizing the true nature of the Arab opposition to Israel -- which is simply a case of a classic Jihad against an Infidel sovereignty in the midst of dar al-Islam, carefully redefined as a struggle for "nationalist operations" of the recently (post-1967) invented "Palestinian people."
One regrets that the Secretary of State appears unaware of this problem. The refusal to understand the tenets of Islam in some quarters, precisely because a true understanding would make Israel's case stronger, and the Arab case weaker, is not surprising. In the 1930s, those with an inherited or acquired animus against "the Jews" were the last to see or admit to the threat that Hitler posed -- for precisely the same kind of reasons.
That is why even those who are not outraged at the hypocrisy of the treatment of Israel had better become outraged at the larger issue: the failure to come to grips with the Jihad as a natural and logical expression of central tenets of Islam, and not, as the State Department would still have us believe, simply the beliefs of a "handful of extremists," something that expresses a "sense of humiliation." No, it is not "humiliation" but a feeling of being thwarted, because Islam "is to dominate and not be dominated," as the celebrated phrase puts it. Any evidence that this is not happening goes against the natural order of the universe and is intolerable to Arab and Muslim beliefs and amour-propre.
The State Department is not, as a whole, a nest of ninnies, but in the area that is now of most concern -- that of the understanding of Islam, it certainly seems to be. Of course, there are those who have a glimmering of such understanding, who are horrified by the appeasement and apologetics that have characterized so much of what has gone on among those who deal with the Middle East. These include those now retired to posh positions elsewhere, and who like to assure one and all that "everyone agrees on the final disposition of things -- a two-state solution." This is said with a tone of complacent self-assurance by the likes of Edward Djerijian and his colleagues. But the evidence that this is an absurdity, that it ignores the uncompromising division of the world between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb and the real nature of the relentless Jihad against Israel (it is Israel in any dimensions that is the problem for the Arabs and those Muslims over whom they hold sway) is not even addressed. When people start prating about what "everyone knows to be true" or start invoking the word "solution" for something that in fact will exacerbate the problem -- that idiotic "two-state solution" -- then one's mental antennae should quiver.
In its coddling of the Palestinian Authority and relentless pursuit of moderate Muslims, those manning the relevant desks at the State Department show that they, at least, have learned little since the Nazi period. The same kind of impulse that allowed support for Reinhard Gehlen, because he or those under him could not possibly be anything other than stout anti-Communists, could they? is at work in the failure to analyze Islam, its theory and practice. This is partly inertia: the holdover-effect of decades of ignoring Islam, or still worse, believing it to be a Bulwark Against Communism and therefore A Good Thing (see all those Stinger missiles lavished on muhajirun in Afghanistan, see CENTO). It is partly the effect of decades of propaganda, either by the companies that constitued ARAMCO, or by those who could for their own benefit "recycle petrodollars" with various contracts for arms, hospital management, and so on -- in the AWACS fight nearly a quarter-century ago, United Technologies (arms) and Whitney (hospital management) led all those disinterested American corporations that were fully prepared to insist that Saudi Arabia was the truest-bluest ally of the United States and "the American people" that it could possibly be. But Saudi Arabia in 1980 was just as malevolent toward Infidels as it is now; the doctrines of Islam, and of Wahhabi Islam, were not born yesterday, or developed as a response to any behavior by the American government in the past 25 years or indeed in the entire period of its existence.
And then there is just laziness. How much easier it is to parrot party-lines, rather than actually sitting down, reading and re-reading Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, reading the real scholars of yore (of whom a representative sample is now easily avaiable in "The Legacy of Jihad," a compilation of texts old and new from Andrew Bostom). How much easier to go to receptions at various Arab and Muslim embassies, to take absurd figures like Edward Djerejian (now at James Baker's -- 'nuff said? -- Institute for somethingorother at Rice University), whose every prediction, every take on things in the Muslim lands, is vitiated by reality, every day. A confederacy of dunces, a nest of ninnies, well -- you are free to come up with your own brand-new terms of venery, just like Julian of Norwich."
I remember the good -- or relatively better -- old days when the British actress Vanessa Redgrave was ostracized for her pro-Palestinian views. Now it's practically the reverse situation in Hollywood, and in the world at large.
The infatuation of some of the post-war CIA principals with Gehlen's supposedly invaluable Nazi-network in the East did cause great harm. Nazi operatives who had been co-opted into the US intelligence services after WWII rapidly installed an unhealthy contiguity of American policies with muslim functionaries, for many years.
In the summer of 1942, according to Marc Erikson, when Rommel's Afrikakorps stood just over 100 kilometers from Alexandria and were poised to march into Cairo, Sadat, Nasser and their buddies were in close touch with the German attacking force and - with Brotherhood help - preparing an anti-British uprising in Egypt's capital. A treaty with Germany including provisions for German recognition of an independent, but pro-Axis Egypt had been drafted by Sadat, guaranteeing that "no British soldier would leave Cairo alive".
This was the Sadat who in 1940 wrote, "One day I invited Hassan al-Banna, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the army camp where I served, in the Egyptian Communication Corps, so that he might lecture before my soldiers on various religious topics. A few days before his scheduled appearance it was reported to me from army Intelligence that his coming was forbidden and canceled by the order of General Headquarters, and I myself was summoned for interrogation. After a short while I went secretly to El Bana's office and participated in a few seminars he organized. I like the man and admired him."
After WWII, King Farouk brought large numbers of German military and intelligence personnel as well as ranking (ex-) Nazis into Egypt as advisors. It was a bad move. Several of the Germans, recognizing Farouk's political weakness, soon began conspiring with Nasser and his free officers (who, in turn, were working closely with the Brotherhood) to overthrow the king. On July 23, 1952, the deed was done and Newsweek marveled that, "The most intriguing aspect [of] the revolt ... was the role played in the coup by the large group of German advisors serving with the Egyptian army ... The young officers who did the actual planning consulted the German advisors as to 'tactics' ... This accounted for the smoothness of the operation."
In 1951, the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of president Teddy, who in 1953 would organize the overthrow of elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh and install Reza Pahlavi as Shah) opened secret negotiations with Nasser. Agreement was soon reached that the US, post-coup, would assist in building up Egypt's intelligence and security forces - in the obvious manner, by reinforcing Nasser's existing Germans with additional, "more capable", ones. For that, CIA head Allen Dulles turned to Reinhard Gehlen, one-time head of eastern front German military intelligence and by the early 1950s in charge of developing a new German foreign intelligence service. Gehlen hired the best man he knew for the job - former SS colonel Otto Skorzeny, who at the end of the war had organized the infamous ODESSA network to facilitate the escape of high-ranking Nazis to Latin America (mainly Peron's Argentina) and Egypt. With Skorzeny now on the job of assisting Nasser, Egypt became a safe haven for Nazi war criminals galore. The CIA officer in charge of the Egypt assistance program was Miles Copeland, soon a Nasser intimate.
And then things got truly complicated and messy. Having played a large role in Nasser's power grab, the Muslim Brotherhood, after the 1949 assassination of Hassan al-Banna by government agents, under new leadership and (since 1951) under the radical ideological guidance of Sayyid Qutb, demanded its due - imposition of Sharia (Islamic religious) law. When Nasser demurred, he became a Brotherhood assassination target, but with CIA and the German mercenaries' help he prevailed. In February 1954, the Brotherhood was banned. An October 1954 assassination attempt failed. Four thousand brothers were arrested, six were executed, and thousands fled to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon. Within short order, things got more tangled still: As Nasser in his brewing fight with Britain and France over control of the Suez Canal turned to the Soviet Union for assistance and arms purchases, the CIA approached and began collaboration with the Brotherhood against their ex-ally, the now pro-Soviet Nasser.
50 years later one can only hope that the US will finally realize that alliances with Muslim potentates will never be enduring. The only policy that will work to the advantage of our Western heritage in the long run will be to weaken the camp of Islam.
Posted by Hugo Schmidt-Fischer at August 17, 2006 04:13 PM
I get up and leave the room when my brother-in-law's father starts in about the Middle East "struggle" and the "Zionist mafia." Honestly, sometimes I feel if he wasn't an old man I'd slap his face. How did the intelligent, educated elite of the Western world ever become so deluded?
Nearly forty years of the steady drip-drip-drip of misinformation and malice will do it -- will do it for just about anyone who doesn't steadily keep the main facts in mind, such as the grotesque asymmetry of goals (on one side, the desire merely to stay alive, and on the other, the desire to annihilate), of resources (now 5-6 million Jews, 300 million Arabs and 1 billion Muslims, the former with only their own industry and enterprise to count on, the latter the beneficiaries of the greatest transfer of wealth, all of it undeserved, in human history).
If your brother-in-law's father needs a slap, don't give it to him. Give him "Battleground" by Katz, or better still, give him a few books on Islam and gently explain that the Lesser Jihad against Israel has, thanks to those OPEC trillions and Muslim immigrant millions, metastasized into the world-wide thing it now is. And others in the family -- dazhe shurin as N. B. Gogol will no doubt add from d'outre-tombe -- might benefit.
"The CIA officer in charge of the Egypt assistance program was Miles Copeland, soon a Nasser intimate."
-- from a posting above
And one of those CIA operatives of little value, the kind who combined complete lack of sympathy or understanding for Israel, a cold-war affection for going easy on Nazis, playacting at silly coups and meaningless derring-do, all of them entirely convinced that "Islam" is, was, will be "a bulwark against Communism." They didn't know what they were doing. They had no idea what Islam was, or why liberal democracies were hated even more than Soviet infidel Russia, and America, as the most powerful one, most of all.
Copeland's son, by the way (or was it two of the sons, putting their likely St. Alban's educations to good use) later made a name for himself as a rock star. I forget the group. The Police? They all sound alike.
The staffing of cold war Era Nazis in the CIA had long lasting reverberations until this day.
Ruud Lubbers the Dutch ex-Prime Miniseer explained in a radio interview in August 2005, that in 1975 and again in 1986 the Dutch authorities deliberately refrained from taking any action against the Pakistani master spy Abdul Khan, who was pilfering nuclear designs from the Urenco facility in the Netherlands. In both instances, Lubber alleged, the Dutch authorities desisted from moving in on Khan "on the behest of the CIA."
In 1986 the ministry for legal affairs recommended to drop legal proceedings against Khan. Lubbers who was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands at the time was himself not in favour of dropping the legal case, but says he eventually conceded to his ministers, because as he recalls in his radio interview in August 2005 “the last word in such matters always lies in Washington”
And thus we ended up with an Islamic bomb in Pakistan.
Any further information about Ruud Lubbers's 2005 interview, in which he speaks about A. Q. Khan being shielded from Dutch investigation, possibly through American pressure that itself reflected decades of misplaced American trust in Pakistan, never understood as the thoroughly Muslim, and therefore dangerous-to-Infidels country we now at long last understand it to be, would be gratefully received via RS.