I am really moved by so many of your passionate words on my behalf. For those who wish to continue receiving my articles please write to me through my website and I will add you to my mailing list–if you are not already on it. You can also continue to read my work at my website www.phyllis-chesler.com

What can one say about the times in which one lives? Everything must be said,  and everyone must do the saying. While power corrupts, absolutely powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Thus, speaking truth to power is one way of asserting one’s power, especially when evil seeks to devour us all.

I, too, would have preferred to live a safe, charmed life, free of care, without being obliged to take unpopular and risky stands. We all would. But we no longer live in Paradise and our purpose here on earth is to do good deeds and to pursue justice. Often,  telling the truth is controversial; peace can fly right out the window.

Perhaps peace, truth, and justice may exist only in the next world.

If I sound a wee bit Biblical today, it is no accident. The Jews are about to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai again and these words of wisdom all come straight from that Holy Book and what the Jewish people have made of it.

Below, please find further selections from  my work at Pajamas.

The Blood Libels at National Geographic Magazine

May 18, 2009

Menacing anti-Israel demonstrations in the street, rabid anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, obsessive anti-Israel boycott resolutions among western academics, relentless anti-Israel headlines in the world media are “politics as usual,” involving the young and the fanatic. Most civilians barely notice it.

Honor Killing Averted: Muslim Convert to Christianity Flees For Her Life August 13, 2009

Yesterday afternoon, my living room was filled with lights, cameras, and two very friendly ABC crew men. We were taping an interview for Good Morning America which appeared today and which is preserved at their website. We talked about honor killings and the plight of Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim teenager from Ohio who converted to Christianity and who ran away from home because she knows her father will kill her.

Rifqa Bary

The Burqa: Ultimate Feminist Choice? August 31, 2009

Women in chadors are really feminist ninja warriors. Rather than allow themselves to be gawked at by male strangers, they choose to defeat the “male gaze” by hiding from it in plain view.

A niqab-clad woman trying to eat spaghetti

The Jihadist is Always the Victim November 5, 2009

The moment I first heard about the mass murders at Ft Hood I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslims.

Call me “Islamophobic,” call me “psychic,” call me what you will.

It now seems that there was only a single shooter: Major Malik Nidal Hasan, a Muslim man of Palestinian/Jordanian descent but an American citizen..

A Balkanized Imagination versus Zealous Uniformity November 17, 2009

Well, as they say, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Try to help others, indeed, devote your life to doing so and you will inevitably find yourself attacked, especially by the people on your own side.

“I Hope the West Does Not Give In” November 30, 2009

This interview with Turkish-German lawyer, Seyran Ates, first appeared in the land of the fjords, the land of oil, the home of the political correctniks who choose and bestow the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Seyran Ates

Vienna, My City of (Anti-Semitic) Dreams/Nightmares December 14, 2009

This past Saturday evening, Chabad rabbi Dov Gruzman was conducting the annual ceremony to light the public Chanukah menorah in Stefenfaltz Square in Vienna, Austria. Suddenly, a local Muslim rushed over, began cursing the Jews, then “hurled himself” at the Rabbi, punching and kicking him.

Europe Cracks Down on Honor Killings December 17, 2009

A decade ago in London, a father terrorized, then plotted to honor-murder his 15-year-old daughter. After attacking her twice, the girl simply…disappeared. Nevertheless, due to a British police decision to revisit and reclassify old cases, the father has just now been convicted of her honor murder.

The Lonely, Murderous Sons of Allah: A Psycho-analytic View December 29, 2009

One is the 17th son; the other is the 16th son. Neither are the sons of a first wife. One is an engineer; the other was an engineering student. Both have ancestral roots in Yemen. Both are educated and come from wealthy families.

Artists4Israel 2 the Rescue January 7, 2010

In 2004 and 2005, a group of “oldsters,” myself included, decided that what was really needed to combat the steady stream of sophisticated propaganda against Israel and America was an instantly recognizable, credible, “catchy” way to tell the truth to high school and college-age “youngsters.”

Honor Killers: Prosecuted in Europe, Seen as Psychiatric Victims in America January 14, 2010

When it comes to honor killings and honor-related violence, America had better start learning a few things from Europe.

On October 20, 2009, near Phoenix, Arizona, Noor Al-Maleki’s father, Iraqi-born Faleh Hassan Al-Maleki, ran over his 20-year-old daughter with a two-ton jeep.

Noor Almaleki

Lancet Study Blames Palestinian Wife-Beating on Israel January 24, 2010

It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal Lancet has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps Lancet is no longer a leader but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work.

Obama Is Our First Muslim Presidential Contender In The Same Way That Clinton Was Our First Black President February 26, 2008

Talk Radio (The Mancow show) called last night and asked me to join them this morning to comment on the Obama-Farrakhan matter.

I believe that Obama is our first Muslim Presidential contender.

No, I am not saying that he secretly is or ever was a Muslim. Obama is a Muslim in the same way that Bill Clinton was allegedly our first Black President.

Bin Laden Threatens America, NYC Welcomes Tariq Ramadan March 25, 2010

Earlier today, on Al-Jazeera, Osama Bin Laden threatened to start killing Americans taken hostage if America executes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom Bin Laden described as a “mujahid and hero.” Despite President Obama’s attempts to appease the Muslim world, nothing he’s done (yet) is good enough for either Ahmadinejad or Bin Laden, who said:

Jews Confront the Abyss April 13, 2010

What more can be said? Are mere words sufficient? By now we know that Jew haters are never deterred by facts—only by force. We also know that the Arab-Muslim world has brainwashed its citizens and the world with a steady stream of blood libels against Jews and Israel.

Islamic Homosexual Pederasty and Afghanistan’s “Dancing Boys” April 21, 2010

Last night, I watched the saddest little movie, a brave Frontline documentary about the “Bacha Bazi,” the underage “dancing boys” of Afghanistan. These children are sex slaves to older, powerful Afghan men–in this instance, former Northern Alliance warlords, who have purchased them from their impoverished families or, as orphans, simply taken them off the street. When they try to escape, they are found and punished—or they are murdered.

An Afghan "dancing boy"

Why Is the Washington Post Afraid to Use the Words “Muslim” And “Honor Killing” In The Same Article? May 26, 2010

In the last seven years, the print version of the Washington Post has covered honor killings sparingly, tangentially, briefly, and only in passing. Clearly, the mainstream media believes that some news is not fit to print.

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To My Dear and Faithful Readers:

I am moved, humbled, comforted and uplifted by your comments in response to the news of my leaving Pajamas as a regular blogger. Thank you.

This is the week in which the Stuxnet “worm” infiltrated 30,000 computers in Iran, including those which run several nuclear facilities there; the week in which the price of gold has soared; the day on which Israel has intercepted nine Jewish activists who sought to break the blockade of Gaza (truly, the blockade against arms, not anything else)–I thought we could take a short “tour” of some of my past work here, a mini-retrospective. I have arranged my choices in chronological order and hope that you find this reading refreshing, still timely.

Today, I have selected articles from 2007 and 2008. On Thursday, I will probably choose articles from 2009 and 2010.

As always, you can find me at my website www.phyllis-chesler.com

Enjoy!

Welcome to My New Blog October 8, 2007

I want to welcome you all to my Pajamas Media XPRESS blog. I am delighted to be with you. I hope that what interests me will interest, enlighten, strengthen, inspire and delight you. Of course, some postings will also enrage and amaze you since, among many other subjects, I write about Islamic gender and religious apartheid, jihad, Islamist fundamentalism, Muslim and ex-Muslim dissenters, the new anti-Semitism, the demonization of Israel, terrorism, anti-Americanism, and Big Lie Propaganda and the way in which it has increasingly penetrated culture.

Towards a Universal Doctrine of Human Rights October 9, 2007

For years, feminists–myself included–focused on women as victims. We argued, correctly, that women were not only being discriminated against economically but were the objects of horrific psychological, sexual, and physical violence.

In North America and Europe, women are still being raped, incested, battered, trafficked, tortured, and murdered. However, after forty five years of feminist activism, such acts are increasingly viewed as crimes, and are increasingly reported and sometimes punished. Rape as a weapon of war, (think Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, Congo) is now seen as a crime against humanity.

My Book, “The Saudi Lobby” Still Awaits Its Publisher October 30, 2007

The lead article today in ArtsandLettersDaily is taken from the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article, written by Evan R. Goldstein, is tltled “Waltheimer on the Hot Seat,” and presents Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer as martyrs of truth, lone critics, and near-pariahs for having dared write about the allegedly enormous influence of the Israel Lobby.

The Heroic Nonie Darwish Faces Muslim “Mean Girl” Power at Wellesley October 22, 2007

“The radical Muslims on American campuses are getting more belligerent, far more militant,” author and lecturer Nonie Darwish tells me. “They have perfected their intimidation and disruption techniques.”

Up Close and Personal: The Shunning of Israel November 30, 2007

At the recent Annapolis meeting, behind closed doors, up close and personal, the assembled Arab foreign ministers refused to shake hands with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s Foreign Minister. She asked her Arab counterparts, especially her Saudi counterpart, why they did not want to shake hands with her. “I am not plague-ridden” Livni said. According to the Dutch minister, all the Arab ministers backed away from her as if “she were Dracula’s sister.” According to Fern Sidman, an unnamed Israeli source confirmed that “the Saudis refused to shake hands and the Syrians refused to say anything nice.” (Of course, another unnamed Israeli source also told Sidman that “at least they came to the meeting”.) These details are also contained in the Washington Post and in Guysen International News.

Tzipi Livni

We Will Not Tolerate Honor Killings in the West December 17, 2007

Aqsa Parvez, the tragic sixteen year old slain by her father in an honor killing in Canada, was buried secretly and privately. Her teenage friends arrived hours too late at the Islamic Center where they had been told her funeral would take place. The kind of family and culture capable of honor murder (she and her family are all Pakistani immigrants) is also quite capable of denying her Canadian friends the opportunity of paying their last respects.

Aqsa Parvez

Jihad Comes to Dallas March 10, 2008

“I have been warned to shut up. But when Yasser Abdul Said killed those girls he did not just spill Muslim blood on American soil. He shed my blood. I am not going to be quiet. I made a promise at their funerals that I would speak out.”

Sarah and Amina Said

The New York (Islamic) Times March 27, 2008

How do we cut down on honor murders in the West? According to some people, you do whatever it takes to keep the girls from dishonoring their families so that their families do not have to honor-murder them.

According to the New York Times, “home schooling” the girls in America, re-creating a feudal, rural, parallel universe in California in which girls and women are kept hidden and apart, is the sensible, merciful alternative to honor murders in The New World.

The Hoax That Launched the Al-Aqsa Intifada May 22, 2008

The same mainstream media that ran front page photos of the Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, allegedly being murdered in his father’s arms by Israeli soldiers–are, shamefully, not running any stories about the hard-won Karsenty decision in Paris.

Mohammed al-Dura with his father

CNN Newspeak in Atlanta: Honor Killing=Cultural Misunderstanding July 9, 2008

Well, this time, the mainstream media is actually beginning to cover the honor murder in Atlanta. I do not understand why they never covered the honor murder of the Said sisters in Dallas about which I have previously written many times at this blogsite. But–in only a matter of days, CNN not only wrote about it; they also turned to an alleged expert who says that honor murders are no different than domestic violence cases world-wide.

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I will be leaving Pajamas at the end of this week. The Powers-That-Be have suggested that I become an independent contributor to PJM, which will allow me to work on a new book, conduct a series of studies about honor killings, and continue publishing pieces at FOX, Middle East Quarterly, Newsrealblog, Arutz-Sheva, the Jewish Press, as well as at Pajamas from time to time.

You will always be able to find me at my website www.phyllis-chesler.com where I archive my work. You will be able to write to me through my website and continue to honor, inform, challenge, and entertain me with your comments both there and wherever I blog.

I first began my internet publishing career at Frontpage in 2003. I happily stayed there until Pajamas offered me my own blog (in addition to the blog I began to publish at my own website). I accepted and named it Chesler Chronicles. I have been blogging at Pajamas Media for three years now, since the fall of 2007. The years have flown by, during which time I have published more than 400 articles at Pajamas and nearly 18,000 of your comments.

I have been your most passionate Israel advocate, your expert on Islamic gender and religious apartheid, the “new” anti-Semitism, honor killings in the West and in Muslim countries, the nature of Islamic imperialism, and the long-term jihadic persecution and massacres of infidels, including Hindus, Jews, and Christians. I have worked with, befriended and written about brave and knowledgeable Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists. I’ve been your psychoanalyst-in-residence for terrorist-jihadists and for the Westerners who make common cause with them.

No, I do not excuse them. I try to understand them so that we can stop them.

I have argued for America’s virtues and defended Western, Enlightenment values. I have argued against cultural relativism, boycotts of Israel, honor-related violence, including honor killings, and against the burqa. In fact, I am about to publish an important paper in the next issue of Middle East Quarterly on banning the burqa in the West. I have exposed the filthy demonization of both America and Israel by Big Lie propagandists. I have opposed the Islamization of the United Nations as well as President Obama’s base appeasement of Islamists and of the Muslim world. I have exposed the horrendous biases of the mainstream media, which have now gravitated to “learned” scientific journals.

Here, at this site, I have discussed the way in which far too many feminists have abandoned their own vision of universal human rights for women, and have romanticized or at least underestimated the most dangerous misogynists on Earth.

I have also written about films and operas, about a most wonderful debutante ball at the Waldorf Astoria, about personal family events, including a wedding, and about the ways in which hospitals can be very dangerous.

Along the way, and to my surprise, I discovered that I actually love “blogging.” I will certainly continue to do it. It is the perfect “art” form with which to respond to events as they are happening.

I will miss you all — but we will definitely continue to meet again, both here and elsewhere on the web.

To come: An author’s choice of some of my most memorable articles that first appeared at Pajamas, and which often went “viral.”

Here, for your visual pleasure are some photos that accompanied articles of mine in this time period.

Phyllis Chesler and Ralf Schroeder. June 2006.

Phyllis Chesler and Nonie Darwish. March 2007.

Phyllis Chesler and Wafa Sultan. March 2007.

Left to Right: Christina Hoff-Sommers, Phyllis Chesler, and Ibn Warraq. October 2007.

Left to Right: Gilles Dreyfus, Phyllis Chesler, and Philippe Karsenty. May 2008.

Phyllis Chesler and Pierre Rehov. March 2009.

Left to right: Valentina Colombo, Seyran Ates, Phyllis Chesler Zeyno Baran. Not shown: Zeinab al-Suwaij, Samar al-Mogren, and Elham Manea. September 2009.

Phyllis Chesler with the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam. January 2010.

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I have been writing about a possible second Holocaust against the Jewish state for a long time now.

I am pleased — but that is not the right word — I am saddened, sobered, and frightened by the fact that others have now joined me in this view. Many of the distinguished academic presenters at Yale University’s superb conference on global anti-Semitism shared at least a part of this vision.

Aaron Klein wrote a book with the terrifying title: The Late Great State of Israel. Recently, Italian parliamentarian and author of Israel is Us: A Journalist’s Odyssey in Understanding the Middle East, Fiamma Nirenstein, asked me to write a piece for the important Italian newspaper, Il Foglio. My piece will appear in their pages right before an October 7^th rally for Israel which will take place in Rome at the Temple of Hadrian.  Speakers include the former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, professor Shmuel Trigano, politician and journalist Giuliano Ferrara, plus scores of European parliamentarians and intellectuals.

We know that Jews were savagely, repeatedly persecuted and murdered all over Europe, which culminated in a Holocaust in which six million Jews died. People may not realize that Italy also persecuted, massacred, taxed, and humiliated its Jews for 2000 years; the word “ghetto” comes from the word for “an iron foundry” which was the site of the Jewish ghetto in Venice.  Indeed, Italy later surrendered the Jews of Venice to Hitler. The great Italian-Jewish author, Primo Levi, was captured in the Italian Alps by Italian fascists and sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis.

I am thrilled that Italy and other Europeans will be standing for Israel. Poor Europe: They persecuted and murdered the friendly Semites, the productive and assimilated Semites, and now they are being overrun by more hostile, non-assimilated Semites. One might view this as cosmic justice, but I can’t; European ideas, art, and people have meant too much to me, and, despite its morally flawed history, I want European civilization to survive this onslaught.

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Gil Ronen is an editor and journalist at Israel National News (Arutz-Sheva). He called my attention to a recent story of his which shocked me. I should not have been surprised. I have also seen feminists in America pressure each other not to report certain rapes—lest feminists appear to be “racists;” to deny certain rapes (think Bill Clinton/Juanita Broderick/Paula Jones/Kathryn Willy), and magnify non-rapes (think Clarence Thomas), when it was deemed politically necessary to do so.

I understand: Issues that mattered more (to these particular feminists) were at stake i.e.. Liberal and Democratic   Party funding. The fight to keep abortion legal, equal employment rights, and gay rights, trumped all the other burning issues (rape, domestic violence, incest, pornography, prostitution) that also mattered to feminists.

Here’s an article I published yesterday in Newsrealblog on this subject.

Female Troubles on the West Bank

It’s the 1960s all over again, and I am talking about the dark side, not the glamorous, glorious side.

What is happening on the West Bank reminds me of the American 1960s, when idealistic young white and Jewish women, who thought they were volunteering for Martin Luther King’s non-violent movement for black civil rights, found themselves up against many angry, sociopathic, criminal, and sexually violent members of the Black Panther Party. I was one. I have my war stories.

Today, privileged, young, white, Jewish, and Arab women who travel to the West Bank to “protect” Palestinians from Israeli soldiers, also seem to be facing similar troubles. According to one recent and very disturbing report, foreign (American and European) and Israeli Jewish and Arab left-feminists are being routinely harassed, raped, and even forced into marriage by the very Palestinians whom they have come to “rescue.” More shocking is the alleged pressure brought to bear on those activists who wish to press charges about being raped or abducted into marriage; their own movement presumably pressures them not to do so because the alleged Israeli “occupation” of Palestine is far more important than the violent “occupation” of any woman’s body.

Continue Reading

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“Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord”…but they have also glazed over many times when I read the endless and long list of people’s names who are willing to publicly state that Israel is the most—perhaps the only–evil country on earth. They wish to boycott Israel, its products, its academics, its people. Many are well-known names, distinguished names. They are also all conformists and hypocrites, whose standards for Arab and Muslim countries are so low that they do not expect anything but severe violations of human rights among them. Thus, contrary to their own “amour-propre,” their happy little view of who they think they are, in my opinion, they are racists, willing to condemn Muslims and people of color to their murderous leaders—all to avoid being called “racists” themselves. They are also racists because they do not understand that their anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism=racism.

Anti-Semitism is indeed the only acceptable racism and it is not seen as such.

Thus, Hollywood and Broadway stars, both Jewish and non-Jewish, both Americans and Israelis, have now initiated a boycott of the Ariel Cultural Center in Israel.

I have just written a piece which I’ve titled “Artists Without Borders” in which I suggest that other actors, playwrights, painters, academics all visit and perform their magic in the city of Ariel—a city which is currently being targeted with a world-wide boycott of its Cultural Center because it stands “over the Green Line.”

If you are a playwright, performer, rapper, poet, etc. please contact either me through my website (www.phyllis-chesler.com) or Craig Dershowitz at Artists4Israel who may be found through their website HERE.

Artists Without Borders

Why not?

We understand that doctors and other emergency care personnel cross borders and leave their own political point of view behind. If quake victims happen to live under a dictatorship—no matter; if a girl’s face has been burned away by an acid attack, or her nose and ears mutilated by Muslim madmen—no matter; the doctors will continue to treat both the victims and those who attacked them if necessary.

Indeed, in Israel, physicians treat their own victims of terrorism as well as the Arab, Palestinian terrorists who tried to murder them.

Composing music, painting, dancing, singing, acting, writing, thinking, all have the power to delight, illuminate, and console the human spirit. Artists pride themselves on refusing to recognize false boundaries. Once, they believed, as Keats did, that “beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”

That was well before the era of propaganda artists and their propagandized offspring. Artists should not politically censor themselves or each other. Artists should not limit their audience only to those with whom they agree. Communist and Nazi regimes once did this to their artists. Muslim/Islamist regimes have taken up that dubious mantle. And prominent Western artists are joining them.

Has everyone forgotten that the Indian novelist, Salman Rushdie, had to spend a decade in hiding because his work of fiction “offended” Ayatollah Khomeini? Do people remember that the Dutch artist, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered because he made a pro-woman film which “offended” the Islamist sensibilities of his Moroccan murderer? Do they understand that Kurt Westergaard has had to live under armed guard around the clock because his fairly inoffensive Mohammed cartoons “offended” Muslim/Islamist sensibilities? Draw a line between Westergaard and his Danish newspaper, Jyllens-Posten (which was recently the target of an attempted bombing attack), and our own Seattle-based Molly Norris, who suggested that we have a “Draw Mohammed Day” and whom the FBI has just turned into a “ghost” for her own safety?

It is tragic when artists boycott only one country on earth—any country for that matter….

Continue Reading at Newsrealblog.

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Muslim groups have just called for “tolerance.” They “decry bigotry.” The Muslim leaders said: “We stand for the constitutional right of Muslims and Americans of all faiths to build houses of worship anywhere in our nation as allowed by local laws and regulations…Ground Zero belongs to all Americans.”

Technically, these words are both true and stop short of an outright endorsement. However, given the situation, these are also fighting words. Given the groups which attended the meeting and issued this statement, (e.g. Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, etc.), these are disingenuous words meant to falsely pacify, confuse, and disorient the infidel listener. They are words of “taqiyya.” This approach is but one example of how belligerent Islamists—not peaceful Muslims–use Western laws about tolerance in order to justify an era of anti-infidel intolerance.

These groups have known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other known terrorist associations. We now also know that Imam Rauf has himself been a slumlord in New Jersey and that his real estate partner has failed to pay taxes; even worse, we know that Rauf’s own books reveal his hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Zionism. Read Ibn Warraq’s recent piece about this in The National Review.

On September 30, 2001, on “60 Minutes,” Imam Rauf himself said that “American policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” on 9/11; that “America has been an accessory to a lot of…innocent lives dying in the world…In the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.” Rauf refuses to condemn acts of terrorism.

He does not sound like a mystical Sufi to me. Nor does he sound like a peacemaker or a bridge-builder. Indeed, Rauf’s latest argument is that if Americans do not allow him to build his mosque in this specific location, American national security will be endangered because the Muslim world will rise up in anger.

Sounds like a Mafia-like threat to me.

A friend of mine lives near the mosque on East 96^th Street. He told me that the mosque had, this past Friday, used their loudspeakers to amplify their call to prayer–and possibly their prayers.

“They used to do that, but then they stopped. Now, it’s begun again.”

I can only wonder why. Is the planned Cordoba House mosque near Ground Zero and the acrimony it has caused the catalyst for the mosque loudspeakers? Or was it the fact that a Muslim Summit was coming to town—one which would undoubtedly, carefully, cannily, lawfully, support Cordoba House near Ground Zero?

Over the years, New York City police have told me that hundreds, possibly thousands of taxicab drivers park illegally outside the city’s mosques in order to pray. The police choose not to ticket or arrest anyone. They don’t want “trouble.” In addition, I have seen Muslims block traffic in order to pray in the streets. In western terms, their prayer service looks like a belligerent demonstration—a protest, perhaps, about the small size of a particular mosque. In Muslim terms, it is simply one’s custom, one’s right, to stop wherever you are and pray at the appointed time. Such street prayer “protests” are very common all over Europe. This is what it means when the mosque and state are “one.”

In Saudi Arabia, the religious police pull people out of restaurants and throw them out of shops if they have lingered beyond the time for prayer.

I have lived in the Muslim world.  Mosques are, indeed, lovely, even “feminine”—although in my time, Muslim women did not go to the mosque; even today, they are only welcome to pray apart, in a separate room, or at the back, often behind thick curtains. Recently, in Washington D.C., the metropolitan police were used to eject six Muslim women who had chosen to sit in the main sanctuary, in the back.

I have visited the Islamic Cultural Center of New York (the East 96^th Street mosque). More and more women are wearing burqas. They are also begging outside in burqas. Those women who wear hijab which tightly frame their faces, also wear heavy, dark, long coats which they button up to their chins—even on the hottest days. I note that their bearded husbands wear comfortable, light-weight western-style clothing.

Something is very wrong with this picture.

The Muslim Summit has called for a “week of dialogue” in which non-Muslims are invited to visit mosques in an effort to “ease tensions.”

Why, then, am I so uneasy? Why does it feel like New York City and the West are being attacked by those who have hijacked the so-called religion of peace which, more and more, feels like a religion of war?

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Why Israel? Why the Jews? Why are so many presumably “civilized” people, “good” people, educated people, so eager to join the Jew-hating, death-eating barbarians–century after century, country after country? In the Book of Esther, set in ancient Persia, Haman, the Viceroy, plots the genocidal extermination of the Persian Jews. He tells the King: “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from every other group and they do not observe the King’s laws. Therefore, it is not befitting the King to tolerate them.”

Jews are everywhere, Jews are “different,” Jews hold themselves apart, they have dual loyalties, or no loyalty to the realm, only to God.

Here we have it, the universal accusation and the justification for anti-Semitic persecution. Luckily, the King fancies the very Jewish Esther, takes her into his harem, “chooses” her as his beloved—and through her efforts (and that of the entire Jewish community), Esther saves the Jews. And King Achashverosh kills Haman and his entire family instead.

Back then, the Jews, led by Esther’s uncle Mordechai, backed Esther, fasted for her, prayed for her. Today, many Jews join with Haman’s descendants. The psychiatrically deranged Hasidic sect, Neturai Karta, literally takes money from Ahmadinejad and participates in demonstrations against the Jewish state. But other, seemingly less deranged Jews insist that their anti-Zionist activism has been undertaken “for our own good” or for the greater glory of (their version of) Judaism.

Please understand: Such Jews are sincere, even zealous, very zealous. They believe that their anti-Zionism and anti-Judaism represents a specifically Jewish response to evil and a specifically Jewish pursuit of justice. They believe that only their approach will “save” Jews and all humanity.

Thus, in response to the Florida minister’s threat to burn a Qur’an, my old friend, Tikkun’s Michael Lerner, recently wrote to say that he would be doing a public reading of the Qur’an. He invited members of his network to organize public readings of their own.

Years back, a lesbian feminist rabbi (who is very learned and quite pleasant and who shall remain nameless) invited a member of the PLO to address her congregation on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) which fast approaches. Indeed, according to a discussion in the Talmud, only one holiday will survive after the coming of the Messiah—either Yom Kippur or Purim; the sages are not sure which one will still be celebrated after the End of Days.

More recently, some American Jews (Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Hedy Epstein, and Yael Korin), joined Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nobel Prize winner Mairead (Corrigin) Maguire and signed a California-based petition to boycott companies which do business with Israel; interestingly, Finkelstein, Epstein and Korin are children of Holocaust survivors. That’s a theme unto itself but for another day.

Some American and Israeli-born Jews also joined the ongoing international campaign to boycott Israeli academics—yes, even Israel’s politically correct left-wing academics. There are, so far, more than 700 signatories, including Bill Ayers, Mona Baker, Hamid Dabashi, Barbara Ehrenreich (no, she’s not Jewish), Charlotte Kates, and Joseph Massad. Some of the Jewish signatories are: Anna Baltzer, Judith Butler, Marilyn Hacker, Yael Korin (again), Ilan Pappe, Adrienne Rich (who is half-Jewish), Sarah Schulman, Adam Shapiro, and Ella Shohat.

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In 2008, Tapan Ghosh founded Hindu Samhati (Hindu Solidarity Movement), dedicated to strengthening Hindu identity and serving persecuted Hindu communities in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. A Physics graduate of City College in Calcutta, he first got involved with the Hindu Revivalist Movement in India in 1966 and led a mass civil disobedience campaign against the policies of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975-77. His work grows out of a long history of persecution, including genocidal persecution, of Hindus by Muslims in the region, beginning with the partition of India into Pakistan and India in the 1940s and furthermore into Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971. I had the privilege of interviewing him when he was in New York during a recent tour. This is the second part of that interview.

Chesler: Why has the Hindu media been so passive? What is the response when you send out a press release, make  a phone call, invite a journalist to view the destroyed property, the traumatized and re-kidnapped girls and women?

Ghosh: The role of the media, generally speaking, varies from being a passive onlooker, to being outright anti-Hindu. Let me give a fairly recent example regarding the meek surrender of the Bengali media to this extremism. When Islamic zealots ransacked the office of the renowned newspaper, ‘The Statesman’ in Kolkata, in retaliation for a mere reproduction of an article originally written by Johann Hari for The Independent (UK), the silence in the Bengali press, and for that matter, the national media, was deafening. Any reader of the article would know that there was nothing, even remotely derogatory against Islam and the article simply denounced religious extremism. In the end, while editor Ravindra Kumar and publisher Anand Sinha were arrested for offending Muslim sentiments, no action was taken against the rioters. Where was the freedom of press then? Now, we all know what happens when Hindu organizations protest against the Press, the news channels repeat the same footage for days at a time. While violence against the press cannot be condoned, why the double standards? As a general rule, while many Muslims resort to rioting at the slightest provocation, no one in the media wants to report these incidents to preserve their “political correctness” and for fear of being labeled “communal” (nationalist, “Islamophobic”).

Chesler: Why are the Muslims flooding over the border from Bangladesh into India? What do they really want? Is it strictly for economic reasons or do they have political and jihadic goals in mind?

Ghosh: Most Muslims who come from Bangladesh come for economic reasons, even though Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence and trans-national Jihadi groups also infiltrate their assets, using the cover of illegal immigrants. The immigrants are primarily interested in finding avenues of earning a living, but they carry with them the religious value system and teachings from the Islamic Madrassas of Bangladesh. They support radical Islam and carry with them the same ethos wherever they go. So even though, initially, they are overtly not working for the Pan-Islamic agenda and are only focused on earning a living, they become willing force multipliers to the goals of Jihad by supporting them when required.

Chesler: What do you need in order to keep your communities safe from such violence?

Ghosh: We need resources to increase our outreach and effectiveness. We also need people who are in positions of influence around the world to highlight the situation, so that our workers at the grassroots and the Hindu masses who are victims, feel that the story of their suffering is not falling on deaf ears.  Most importantly, enough pressure has to be placed on the government  and the Police, so that it acts against the Islamic expansionism- decisively.

Chesler: What do you hope to accomplish in your US tour?

Ghosh: The purpose of my visit is in sync with the aspirations of Hindu Samhati, that spreading awareness and raising concerted opposition to the advances of Islamic expansionism, is critical to the survival of secular, liberal democracies like India, the Hindu civilization and much of the western civilization, including the United States. During my stay here, I hope to create awareness about the current, ongoing religious tensions in rural Bengal and seek the help of Americans and their suggestions on how to best serve the population of Bengal. I will greatly treasure the opportunity that I had to meet a wide variety of people, from non-resident Bengalis to US politicians, think tanks, and other well wishing Indians and Americans. We have had a phenomenal response to the work done by our volunteers in the villages. Most agree that the situation is alarming and have responded very positively to help in any way they can.

Chesler: What would do you want the Indian government, police, and media to do?

Ghosh: We want the Indian government and the Police to:

• Apply Uniform Civil Code (so that Muslims do not have separate Civil law under a secular Indian judicial system), ban multiple marriages and enforce family planning laws.

• Stop illegal immigration from Bangladesh and send back all undocumented Muslims who came to West Bengal after 1971.

• Ban Madrassas and enforce secular education.

• Create a task force that is legally and logistically equipped to counter the Islamic expansionism by providing support to Hindus in areas where they are being forced to migrate, arresting and prosecuting known Islamic mafia kingpins and seizing their properties and resources.

We want the media to:

• Investigate and report the atrocities that are being perpetrated against Hindus.

• Eschew fear and double standards in addressing issues of religious apartheid.

Chesler: What do you want Americans and Westerners to understand? And to do?

Ghosh: People the United States must realize that the war on Islamic terrorism cannot be won without curbing religious extremism amongst the Muslim masses, be it in the suburbs of Detroit or Delhi or villages in rural Bengal. And this will require the active support and cooperation with each other ranging from cooperation at the highest level to those who work at the grassroots level. We hope that Americans and Westerners will come out and support the Hindus in Bengal in raising resources and creating awareness about our on-the-ground realities. Hindus need their socioeconomic support now, so that the situation does reach a point of no-return, and a military solution is the only option.

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A European colleague of mine lives and works in India. Recently, he came to visit. His story was unbelievable. For the last few years, every day, day after day, he, his wife, and his wife’s family have been harassed and attacked by Muslim marauders. Both his property and his medical clinic have been attacked; his Hindu wife and relatives have had their cows stolen and slaughtered, their outbuildings destroyed, their farm property taken over. The police would not help. He had to hire private security to guard his free clinic. Finally, Muslims attacked the clinic when it was filled with patients (including, of course, Muslim patients). At the last moment, before the clinic was entirely overrun, the police reluctantly came to his aid. He had to pay many bribes, pull many strings—and still, the matter is far from over.

He did not want me to write about this. “It is simply too dangerous for a Hindu to describe, accurately, what Muslims are doing to us in our own country.” He assured me that neither the government nor the media could be counted on to “do the right thing here. The media will not say that Muslims are criminally aggressive. They are too afraid to say so. They know there will be rioting. It’s already happened.”

Sound familiar?

And then, Mr. Tapan Ghosh found me. Ghosh is an incredibly brave and determined Hindu human rights activist who is taking on these Muslim immigrants, criminals, rioters, kidnappers, rapists, and traffickers of Hindu girls and women.

Tapan Ghosh

In 2008, Tapan Ghosh founded Hindu Samhati (Hindu Solidarity Movement), dedicated to strengthening Hindu identity and serving persecuted Hindu communities in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. A Physics graduate of City College in Calcutta, he first got involved with the Hindu Revivalist Movement in India in 1966 and led a mass civil disobedience campaign against the policies of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975-77. His work grows out of a long history of persecution, including genocidal persecution, of Hindus by Muslims in the region, beginning with the partition of India into Pakistan and India in the 1940s and furthermore into Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971. I had the privilege of interviewing him when he was in New York during a recent tour.

Chesler: How long has the Muslim violence against Hindus been going on? I know it has existed for 800 years or more. I am asking about the more recent series of events in West Bengal.

Ghosh: Though Hindus in Bengal faced massive attacks and massacres during the Partition of 1947 (when India was divided into India and Pakistan and 3/4^th of Bengal went to Pakistan), the violence never ceased. In West Bengal, violence against Hindus took place again in the 1950s and from 1964-65; violence continued until 1971, when it eased off for some time.  That was during the time when across the border, nearly 3 million Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were killed by the Pakistani Army, as part of their genocide to stop the creation of Bangladesh.

In recent times, the violence has been increasing (both in its spread and intensity) every day since the early eighties.

Chesler: What kind of violence did Muslims commit against Hindus in West Bengal and East Pakistan? Please be more specific.

Ghosh: Anti-Hindu violence started on the morning of August 16, 1946, when Muslim League volunteers forced Hindu shopkeepers in North Calcutta (in present day West Bengal) to close their shops and Hindus retaliated by obstructing the passage of League’s processions. With the tacit support of the police, the Muslim mobs went on a rampage, looting Hindu-owned shops, attacking Hindus with clubs and knives, and raping Hindu women. After a week of violence, an official estimate put the casualties at 4,000 dead and 100,000 injured. Other sources put the death toll at 6,000. Most of the victims were Hindus. The riots in Calcutta spread to other regions, reaching Noakhali, a remote district in present day Bangladesh, where a massive pogrom was organized against the Hindu minority. The death toll is estimated to be in the thousands, with 51,000 to 75,000 Hindus cleansed from this region.

General Yahya Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan, while speaking to his top military brass once said, “Kill three million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands.” The liberation movement for Bangladesh was characterized by an escalation of atrocities against the Hindus and pro-liberation Muslims. Hindus were specifically singled out because of their perceived proclivity to the Bengali language. Bengali, which has strong roots in the Sanskrit language and Hindu culture, was considered as a hindrance to the Islamisation of East Pakistan. In March 1971, the Government of Pakistan and its supporters in Bangladesh, the Jama’at- e-Islami (The Party of Islam) launched a violent operation, codenamed “Operation Searchlight,” to crush all pro-liberation activities. A large section of the Hindu intellectual community of Bangladesh was murdered, mostly by the Al-Shams and Al-Badr militia, (both were military wings of the Jama’at-e-Islami). Bangladesh government figures (officially accepted by the US State Department, which at that time of the Cold War, was openly supporting Pakistan) put the death toll at 300,000 even though nearly 3 million of them were never accounted for and are presumed dead. According to declassified documents from the George Washington University’s National Security Archives, consisting of communications between US officials working in embassies and USIS centers in Dhaka and in India, and officials in Washington, DC, the terms ‘selective genocide’ and ‘genocide’ were used to describe events.

The primary reason why Hindus have been forced to leave East Pakistan (and later Bangladesh) is a draconian law known as the Vested Property Act. According to this law, the government has the power to seize ownership of properties from individuals it deems enemies the state. It was formerly known as the Enemy Property Act (when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan) and is still referred to as such in common parlance. Abul Barkat, a professor of economics at Dhaka University who has conducted seminal research on this act, says that some 1.2 million or 44 per cent of the 2.7 million Hindu households in the country were affected by the Enemy Property Act and its post-independence version, the Vested Property Act, passed in 1974. Successive governments of Bangladesh have promised to repeal the act, but to date, some 35 years after independence, none have done so. According to one estimate, “Nearly two hundred thousand Hindu families have lost 2.2 million acres of land, including their houses, since 2001 alone. At the current market price, the value of the 2.2 million acres of land that the Hindu families were displaced from is about 3.6 billion dollars, which is more than half of the country’s gross domestic product.

Chesler: Please summarize the threats and crimes that have been perpetrated.

Ghosh: The atrocities that Hindus are facing in villages bordering Bangladesh are multifarious. The case of massive illegal infiltration is well known today. What the people of India and the United States don’t know is their activities. This includes crimes which target Hindu women; from relatively small cases of street harassment, to sexual assault, rape, kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam. Incidences of illegal migrants encroaching upon Hindu lands as well as organized land grabbing by Islamic criminal networks are also very common. There is also a sharp increase in the cases of rioting during Hindu festivals, destruction of Temples, desecration of Deities, and large-scale, provocative cow slaughter during Hindu festivals, even in Hindu-majority localities. Construction of large, illegal mosques, often upon encroached land, is happening in all border areas and has changed the landscape of rural Bengal. The establishment of massive Saudi- funded Madrasas across rural Bengal is only contributing to the growing religious extremism among Muslims, implementation of Sharia laws by Chalasi (Islamic) courts is quite prevalent in villages in the Malda, Murshidabad and North Dinajpur districts.

Finally, the Indo-Bangla border acts as a major conduit for smuggling by the terrorist networks and has grave consequences for national security. As a result of the growing Islamization of rural Bengal, Hindus are leaving the border area villages. This change in demography is well established in Assam, and I fear that the upcoming census will paint a grimmer scenario in W. Bengal too. Calls for a greater Muslim Bangla are not unheard of in Muslim-majority districts and my greatest fear is the day when Muslim zealots will give a call for Nara-e-takbir (cries of “Allahu Akbar”) and tell Hindus to either convert or leave Bengal. Where will we go then?

Chesler: Why have the Hindu police and Indian government failed to do anything to stop these crimes against their own citizens?

Ghosh: While India is constitutionally secular, it is also an electoral democracy which means that politicians care about winning elections and cannot ignore the 31% of the Bengali Muslim population that is believed to vote en-masse. The government, both at the State and Central level understand the problem, but do not want to show the political courage that is needed to talk about these issues and address them. Instead they just ignore them.

The Police response is also mixed. Though sometimes they take positive measures to stop these crimes, most often there is severe corruption, and a fear of tackling the Islamic mafia. The fact that governmental higher-ups will not be supportive of a pro-active response also demoralizes police officials at the grassroots level.

But it is not that the politicians and the government agencies are asleep, it is the middle class Bengalis that are in deep slumber. The entire Hindu Bengali intelligentsia and culturally enriched Bengali society could not provide protection to one Muslim lady, Ms. Taslima Nasreen, a poet and an intellectual who dared to raise her voice against Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh and had to escape to West Bengal. But the West Bengal government was so afraid, that it refused to give protection to her.

Coming soon in Part II: The role of the Media.

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