I do not like what is happening. When I said this nearly a decade ago, I was a voice crying out in the wilderness. Today, although many more people are “crying out,” our voices have not yet changed the course of certain historical events.
Pune, 125 miles away from Mumbai (which was the scene of a jihadic mass murder at the end of 2008), has just endured a horrific bombing of its own. And yes, the bomb went off right near another Jewish Chabad Center, near a Pune bakery which caters to tourists. Nine women, four of whom were foreigners, were murdered and 45 were injured. The Indian Home Minister told reporters that Pakistani-American businessman David Headley (aka Daood Sayed Gilani), who is now in American custody, is the very man who scouted out both the Mumbai and Pune locations. However, as yet, no one has claimed responsibility.
Must be the Buddhists at it again.
Dutchman Geert Wilders is concerned about jihadic terrorism and has produced a brief film, Fitna, showing just such scenes of horror—for which he has not only been slandered as a “right wing fascist and racist” but for which he has been placed on trial by the burghers of political correctness. His crime? Telling the “inconvenient” truth about jihadic Islam. Wilders the truth teller is being treated like a common criminal.
This past week, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, a consummate intellectual and the author of critically acclaimed books, including Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 To The Present, delivered a speech at the University of California at Irvine where he was menaced and heckled as a dirty Zionist Jew. The mainly Muslim students shouted: “Murderer!” “Killers!” “How many Palestinians did you kill?”
To me, it is like Durban all over again, but this time it’s a series of mini-exploding Durbans in which Israeli athletes must brace themselves for heckling when they compete internationally and Israeli officials dare not set foot in certain European countries lest they get arrested.
The mainstream media have not covered Ambassador Oren’s mistreatment or what it means. This is worrisome too. Does such public mistreatment perchance presage the burning of Jewish books—or of Jewish professors? This has certainly happened before.
In 2003, more than a lifetime ago, I experienced what I described as the “Brownshirt phenomenon” on the American college campus. After delivering a well-received speech about woman’s inhumanity to woman, the title of one of my books, I was unexpectedly and unpleasantly grilled about my position on “Palestine.” I have written about this incident before. This may have been one of the earliest such incidences of this kind of both orchestrated and spontaneous rage unleashed against a perceived defender of Israel and a critic of Islamic gender and religious apartheid. (No, I had not raised either subject until the feminist mob started their grilling and menacing behavior.)
There would be many more such occasions, not only for me but for many others, and not only on American campuses, but at international conferences and at the United Nations.
I do not like what is happening.
J Street is in ascendency in the mainstream media, Jonathan Pollard is still, obscenely, behind bars, the infamous Goldstone Report is being used to demonize Israel yet again.
Where is a book about the Saudi Lobby? Where is a Goldstone Report about Somalia, Sudan, or Iran?
When will President Obama understand that the Iranian mullahs intend to wage a nuclear war, first against Israel, next against Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and then against the West?
God, I’ve been saying this since 2004. Is anyone listening?
Finally, Gita Saghal, the head of Amnesty International’s gender unit, publicly shared her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organization headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee. Saghal has condemned Amnesty’s leaders for “appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender.” In her view, this is a “gross error of judgment.”
Begg believes in global jihad. Saghal most certainly does not. Amnesty is choosing to chill their relationship with Saghal and not with Begg. Amnesty suspended Saghal after she went public. And, she has not, as yet, been able to find any lawyer who is willing to go up against Amnesty on behalf of her right to employment. Worse: She now fears for her own and her family’s safety. Sahgal says: “I know the nature of what I’m up against. I didn’t do what I did lightly.”
I do not like what is happening to truth speech and the way in which hate speech and lies are glamorized and the way in which its liberal-left supporters insist that hate speech is protected by our hard-won concepts of free speech and religious tolerance.
I’ve been saying this for the last seven years. I am tired of being proved right, wearied by having so many examples that keep proving my point.
I do not like what is happening. Do you?
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