Ben & Benjamin

On a Sunday afternoon a few years ago, I found myself in a West Midlands town, delivering a presentation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in front of the local CLP (Constituency Labour Party).  Towards the end of my presentation, there was a sudden commotion at the back of the room: Labour’s candidate for MP of that constituency had arrived.  A big man in an elegant suit rendered incongruous by everybody else’s informal, decidedly working-class attire.  A few people jumped to help him to a seat and he was introduced to me as a former British Army officer recently retired and on his way to becoming a great political leader.

I ended my presentation and spent the next twenty minutes or so answering questions from the audience – most of them genuine and courteously posed.  Then the candidate MP produced a pointed little cough, indicating that he was now going to speak.  The room went quiet as the Big Man intoned in a low, confident voice, heavy with self-importance: “I’ll tell you how this type of conflict should be dealt with.  I served in Northern Ireland.  What you have here is basically one race of people living in the same place, speaking the same language – but fighting because of religion…”  “But”, I tried to object, “Israelis and Palestinians don’t speak the same language.”  “Don’t interrupt me!” he growled.  “I’m not talking about differences in accent.  My point is – you are one people.  You need to negotiate and find a way to respect each other’s religion.  Build trust and learn to get along with each other.”  He continued for a couple of minutes in the same vein, before ending with the punchline.  “I’ll tell you a joke that shows how stupid these conflicts are.  A Jewish person had business in Belfast.  On the way from the airport, the cab driver asks him whether he’s a Catholic or a Protestant.  The man says he’s Jewish.  ‘Yeah,’ says the cabbie, ‘but are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?’”  The audience laughed merrily and, before I could respond, the Big Man declared that he had another meeting to attend.  Everybody else headed for the local pub.

I was reminded of all this when I read a recent article penned by Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP.  A former captain in the British Army (i.e. second-in-command of a sub-unit of up to 120 soldiers), Wallace served as Defence Secretary under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.  Entitled ‘Netanyahu’s tactics are weakening Israel’, his article accuses Israel’s Prime Minister of presiding over “a killing rage”, to cover his “shame . . . for not foreseeing the October 7 attacks”.  Netanyahu’s actions, declares Rt Hon Wallace, “are radicalising Muslim youth across the globe”.

The Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP

In passing, let us remember that Rt Hon Wallace was Minister of State for Security (i.e., in charge of counter-terrorism) at the time of the Manchester Arena bombing.  Not exactly the kind of spotless pulpit from whence to preach about other people’s shame and failures!

A government’s most basic job is providing national security.  Clearly, on this occasion the government of Israel failed in that task.  And, as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu bears ultimate responsibility.  As usual, Israelis rallied under attack; one does not change leadership in the middle of a war.  But Netanyahu’s days in power will be coming to an end soon.

So I have no desire to defend Netanyahu, who – to put it elegantly – screwed up royally.  But I feel that in this article ‘Netanyahu’ is code for ‘Israel’, just like ‘Zionists’ is so often for ‘Jews’.  I don’t know what Mr. Wallace’s experience is in the UK government, but in Israel Prime Ministers does not make personal decisions on war and peace.  There is a security cabinet, a full cabinet, a parliamentary coalition, the Attorney General and the Supreme Court…  There are also military leaders who typically rose ‘a bit’ higher than the rank of captain, who possess actual combat experience and who have been known to speak their minds forcefully on matters of strategy.

What ‘informs’ Rt Hon Wallace’s analysis is… you got it: his experience in Northern Ireland.  The article begins with the following statement:

“There isn’t a single soldier who served in Northern Ireland who didn’t curse, at one time, the events of Bloody Sunday under his breath. The hours spent in the bogs of South Armagh, or the back streets of West Belfast were testament to a conflict that had been ignited by the events on that day in 1972.”

It mentions Northern Ireland also in the concluding paragraph:

“The path to peace, just like in Northern Ireland, means we have to keep trying and do all we can to marginalise the extremes. With the Oslo accords we came close to realising a two-state solution. Now is the time to re-energise that process.”

For non-British readers: in a series of incidents on ‘Bloody Sunday’ (30 January 1972), units of the British army opened fire at Catholic protesters (none of whom was armed) in the Northern Irish city of Derry/Londonderry, killing 14 and injuring at least 15 others.  These days, pretty much everybody accepts that there was no justification for the shootings.  However, no British soldier has ever been jailed; only one soldier has been prosecuted – the case started in 2019 (47 years after the event) and is still ongoing.

In between, the two paragraphs reproduced above, there are additional Northern Ireland references.  Such as:

“Northern Ireland internment taught us that a disproportionate response by the state can serve as a terrorist organisation’s best recruiting sergeant. For many, watching the events in Gaza unfold each day makes us more and more uncomfortable.”

These UK/Northern Ireland vs. Israel/Gaza comparisons are based on a ‘logic’ that escapes me.  I understand that this is the only conflict Ben Wallace has personal experience of.  True, the Irish Republican Army and its various offshoots carried out many terrorist attacks, including against civilians in England.  But at no point did it invade England with thousands of terrorists; at no point did it lay to waste entire villages by torturing, murdering, raping and taking hostage thousands of innocents.  Indeed, the Northern Irish conflict was – very, very clearly – about who should rule Northern Ireland; not whether England had a right to exist.

The Troubles, of course, were not “ignited by the events on that day in 1972”; they started in the late 1960s, and the conflict’s roots go way deeper than that.

Nor can I see how the outcome of the Northern Irish conflict can be used to support Mr. Wallace’s conclusions with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian one.  Last time I looked, ‘UK’ stood for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  There was never any “two-state solution” in Northern Ireland: that ‘country’ is still firmly UK sovereign territory.  The British Army never withdrew from there; nor did it evacuate the hundreds of thousands of Protestants who – let’s face it – are descendants of English and Scottish ‘illegal settlers’.  What Northern Ireland has these days is merely ‘devolution’, i.e. a form of limited autonomy under the Northern Ireland Executive (called this way to avoid any implication that it may be a ‘government’).  Security and foreign relations are the exclusive domain of the UK government – which can also, if needed, suspend the Executive and assume direct rule…  As for the Catholics of Northern Ireland: despite being numerically the majority, they have to share power with the Protestant ‘settlers’ in a consociational system designed to preclude decisions that do not command cross-community support.  Am I forgetting something?  Oh yes – the IRA agreed to disarm…

Comparisons are a funny thing: one can find certain similarities even between a city bus and a concert hall (they both have seats, etc.) – if one is so disposed; but experience in riding a bus doesn’t exactly teach one how to conduct a symphony.

The inanity of Wallace’s comparisons is matched only by the man’s intellectual dishonesty.  As UK Secretary of State for the Defence, the Rt Hon justified Turkey’s 2019 attack on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).  In a NATO meeting, he opined:

"Turkey needs to do what it sometimes has to do to defend itself."

The problem is that the SDF did not invade Turkey and never contested Turkey’s right to exist.  With the exception of Turkey, no country considers SDF a terrorist organisation.  Quite the opposite, the SDF cooperated with the US and UK forces in their fight against the ‘Islamic State’ – and lost many fighters in the process.  SDF’s anti-Islamist character is obvious also from the fact that is the only Middle Eastern army – other than the IDF – to incorporate a large number of women, including in senior and combat positions.  So how exactly did the SDF threaten Turkey and precisely what justified the latter’s ‘defensive’ cross-border assault, which used NATO weaponry to kill and maim a large number of civilians?  What bothered Turkey was that the SDF included a large proportion of Kurdish fighters – a fact that might have provided not just pride, but also aspirations to independence among Turkey’s own long-oppressed Kurdish minority.  Nothing bothered Ben Wallace – for whom this was perhaps an opportunity to secure Turkey’s support in his quest to become NATO’s next Secretary General.

As for Wallace’s accusation that Netanyahu’s (or Israel’s) “actions are radicalising Muslim youth across the globe” – I struggle to make up my mind: is it utterly stupid, or just disingenuous?  Surely someone who’s been in charge of UK’s Defence Department knows that there were radical Islamists long before Netanyahu became Prime Minister; and even before there was a State of Israel.  From 7/7 to Manchester Arena to London Bridge and Borough Market, the UK experienced plenty of Islamist violence having little connection to Israel and a lot to do with UK’s own military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – as well as with a track record of colonialism, racism and imperial oppression.  Ben Wallace was already a ‘Rt Hon’ at the time when tens of thousands of Muslims from 85-odd countries travelled – no, not to ‘Palestine’ or to Gaza, but to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS.  They included circa 750 British Muslims.

Research by Tahir Abbas, Chair of Radicalisation Studies at Leiden University in the Hague, Netherlands, revealed:

“Since the 1980s, radicalisation has been a characteristic of the Muslim experience in Britain. It is the belief that social and political grievances, as well as a sense of being unsupported, contribute to the appeal of radical ideas.”

Radicalisation (no doubt caused by Israel) on the streets of London...

Still, the Rt Hon’s contention deserves a bit of close scrutiny.  Notice that, despite the recurring waves of Palestinian atrocities and the broad manifestations of antisemitism that they trigger – including in Mr. Wallace’s own country – he is not worried about the radicalisation of Jewish youth.  Subliminally, he does not expect Jews to perpetrate acts of terrorism – or to riot on the streets of London; but he is obviously worried about Muslim radicalisation.  The question is – why?  Are Muslims more prone to radicalisation?  Are British Muslims more loyal to their coreligionists in Gaza than they are to their non-Muslim conationals in the UK?

Do video clips – however horrible – really generate radicalisation?  Or is it radicalisation – itself caused by hate ideologies – that generates video clips and other propaganda tools (placards, slogans, Der Sturmer-like caricatures, speeches by fiery preachers and articles by stupid politicians) designed to propagate that hatred?

Two millennia of humiliation, discrimination and persecution failed to produce Jewish terrorists.  Even Auschwitz – think huge piles of emaciated corpses being bulldozed into a shallow mass graves – did not ‘radicalise’ Jews into murdering, torturing and raping random Germans.

By assuming – based on no evidence other than ‘data’ supplied by a terror outfit – that Israel went on “a killing spree”, Wallace has revealed his own Judeophobic prejudice.  Is that accompanied (as it often is in the West) by Islamophobic bias, causing him to imagine ‘radical Muslim youth’ hiding under his bed?  Or does Ben Wallace – as former Secretary of State for Defence – know something we don’t about the extent to which Islamist propaganda has already been allowed to pump hatred into the hearts of defenceless youngsters?

A government’s most basic job is providing national security.  Just like a captain’s epaulets, the letters ‘Rt Hon’ are not there just for ornament; they symbolise a task, a responsibility.  One that was discharged admirably by Winston; but not by Neville Chamberlain.

If you think Islamist radicalisation is a threat, Wallace ol’ chap, then the answer is not appeasement – it’s deradicalisation.  Now be a lamb and do something about it.  Otherwise, one day we will all say that you failed in that duty – just as abysmally as Netanyahu did!

Don’t slam Islam; but don’t tolerate intolerance, either!

Paris is in shock again and with it the entire civilised world.  Although, truth be told, this has not come as a surprise.  Nor have the reactions of Western politicians and journalists.  On one hand, we hear again the predictable but oh-so-idiotic claim that acts perpetrated in the name of Allah and Muhammad ‘have nothing to do with Islam’; on the other hand, we are treated to the bigoted implication that believing in Allah and Muhammad counts as ‘fifth column’ membership.  Both approaches are cowardly populist; both are terribly wrong; worse – both are pathetically unhelpful.

No, we can’t start accusing or suspecting everyone who embraces Islam as his/her religion; or even as his/her main identity.  But neither should we stick our heads in the ground, close our eyes to reality and plug our ears with politically-correct cotton wool, denying that a certain strand of Islam has everything to do with terrorism.

There will never be a shortage of imbeciles eager to find excuses and to ‘explain away’ terrorism.  Yes, the West has made war in Iraq and Afghanistan; but then, Russia is making war in Ukraine – and yet Ukrainians don't blow themselves up in Moscow’s stadiums or in Sankt Petersburg’s concert halls.  Yes, Western colonialists have left a lousy legacy in the Middle East; but they did worse, much worse elsewhere.  Indians don’t try to blow up the Wembley Stadium.  Armenians don’t murder patrons in Istanbul’s restaurants and Israeli Jews don’t fly airplanes into Frankfurt’s office buildings.

There’ll also be bigots who will point to passages from the Qur’an and claim that there’s something inherently violent in Islam.  But I can equally quote passages from the Torah and from the New Testament that would seem to incite to violence.  What about the injunction to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven”?  And didn’t Jesus say “I came not to send peace, but the sword”?  Oh, and I can find for you Qur’anic verses praising peace – just like one finds in every scripture.

No, Islam is not a religion of peace; nor is it a religion of war.  Religions aren’t ‘of’ anything; people are.  There is no denying that acts of terrorism are currently more likely to be committed in the name of Islam than in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Shintoism.  If a suicide bomber detonates himself tomorrow, it is more likely that he’ll be called Muhammad, rather than Paul, Moshe or Jitendra.  That is a fact.  Most Muslims are not radicals; it's just that there are more radicals among Muslims.

But why?  Islam is not fundamentally different from Christianity or Judaism.  It is just younger, much younger.  It appeared on the grand scene of history about 14 centuries ago.  Christianity is considerably older – more than 2000 years; Judaism is ancient.  Age is of consequence: religions (like all human endeavours) have a life of their own.  Just like human beings.  Youngsters are more impetuous; more impulsive; less patient and less tolerant.  Thankfully, they mellow as they grow old.  So do religions.  Want to understand radical Islam?  Violent Jihad?  Think 14th century Christianity, with its crusades and Inquisition.

In 14th century Europe, religion pervaded every aspect of human life; so it does these days in most parts of the Middle East.  14th century Europeans may have called themselves ‘French’, ‘German’ or ‘English’; but their primary identity was ‘Christians’.  Just as these days hundreds of millions of people will tell you that they define themselves first and foremost as ‘Muslims’.

Jihadis are nothing more – and nothing less, and nothing else – than the ‘modern’, Muslim version of medieval Crusaders.  They may be armed with assault rifles and grenades, rather than swords and maces; but they are just as blood-thirsty; just as self-righteous; just as ready to achieve martyrdom and earn their ticket to heaven.  Are you still wondering why they behead people?

OK, you’ll say; that may well be so, but how does this help?  Will we have to endure centuries of Jihad?  Well, not necessarily.  Things have changed somewhat from the real 14th century.

Think about it: why did so many people (not just kings and knights, but simple peasants and tradesmen) leave behind their homesteads, their families, their lives – to make war on the infidels?  To kill, maim, pillage and rape?  No, Popes did not use Twitter to stir up trouble – not in those times.  They used preachers.  That has not changed: it is still the preachers of hate that brainwash people into becoming butchers.

Wanna deal with Jihadi terrorism?  You can try to track all the tens of thousands that have already been radicalised – and the millions that will be; or you can go after a few thousand hate preachers. Those preachers may not practice violence themselves; but they kill, maim, pillage and rape – however indirectly.  Jail them if you can; kill them if you have to; or just prevent their odious message from reaching its target.  That means tighter border controls.  It means closing websites, monitoring social media, controlling school activities, raiding mosques, banning radical madrassahs.  If that implies changing our laws, so they protect the tolerant, rather than tolerating the bigot – then so be it; if it means making law enforcement more intrusive, then that’s a price we’ll have to pay, for our safety and that of our children.  Make no mistake: it’s the price we’ll have to pay to maintain rule of law; to avoid rule of the mob.  There will have to be limits to freedom: your freedom must end where you want to take away mine.

That won’t stop tomorrow’s terrorist attack; it won’t provide an instant solution.  But, in time, it will choke the flow of hatred.

The Torah says “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, so that you and your offspring will live”.  I’m sure the Qur’an won’t disagree.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to ‘Comprehensible Terrorism’

Much (and much junk!) has already been written about the most recent wave of terrorism that shook Israel.  While random Israeli Jews were being stabbed and shot in the street, much of the Western media was busy, as usual, trying to put a ‘pro-Palestinian’ spin on the ‘story’.  This tendency manifested itself, among other things, in a keen effort to discover ‘reasons’ for terrorism.  That in itself may not be a bad idea; but for so many of today’s lazy, talent-less and politically regimented ‘journalists’, the term ‘discover’ does not mean ‘investigate’, but rather ‘speculate’.  To Israeli ears, such attempts to present ‘reasons’ sound very much like finding justifications for terrorism.

Stephen Sackur

That’s what Yair Lapid – a former Finance Minister who now leads one of Israel’s opposition parties – told BBC presenter Stephen Sackur, who was interviewing him for a programme entitled HARDTalk.  Sackur had said:

“The Palestinians are quite clear, as Mahmoud Abbas has said, ‘we are living’, he says, ‘under unbearable conditions’.  And when that is the case, you get the kind of desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future, that results in violence on your streets.”

After Lapid accused him of justifying terrorism, Sackur countered:

“You use the word ‘justification’; I never used that word.  I’m trying to place what is happening in a context, trying to maybe explain it, not justify it.”

Sounds logical, doesn’t it?  He wasn’t justifying terrorism; just placing it in context, ‘explaining’ it.  Nothing wrong with that, surely?  Well, two things are very wrong with that, actually.

Firstly, such valiant attempts to use European logic in order to ‘explain’ Middle Eastern terrorism are only ever made when Israelis are its victims.  Mr. Sackur would not use a similar ‘logic’ to ‘explain’ 9/11, or 7/7.  When Muslim terrorists killed a random British soldier outside his barracks, no one at BBC ‘explained’ the act as “desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future…”

Secondly, even assuming that ‘context’ and ‘explanations’ are necessary, why is it that, when Israel is involved (and only when Israel is involved) a particular ‘context’ is chosen, a particular ‘explanation’ is embraced as self-evident, with no attempt to actually investigate the reasons?  Where does such ‘explanation’ come from?  Mr. Sackur tells us in so many words: it comes from Mahmoud Abbas.  But is Abbas a credible source?  “The Palestinians are quite clear”, says Sackur.  Really, are they??  Who speaks for “The Palestinians”?  Abbas has become president 10 years ago, ‘winning’ stitched-up elections; there were no presidential elections since then.  The latest parliamentary elections (2006) were won by Hamas – Abbas’s arch-rivals.  Mahmoud Abbas speaks for the Palestinians just as Bashar Assad speaks for the Syrians.

Name: Jeremy Bowen; Occupation: anti-Israel militant masquerading as BBC's Middle East Editor 

Yet Sackur is not the only Western journalist adopting such irrational ‘reasoning’.  He is not even the only one at BBC.  Beeb’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen is also fond of ‘context’ and ‘explanations’ – when it comes to terrorism directed against Israel:

“Violence does not come out of the blue. It has a context. Once again, the problem is the unresolved conflict between Palestinians and Jews. It is at the heart of all the violence that shakes this city.

A big part of the conflict is the military occupation of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, that has lasted for nearly 50 years. It is impossible to ignore the effects of an occupation that is always coercive and can be brutal.

In successive Palestinian generations, it has created hopelessness and hatred. In some cases, that bursts out into murderous anger. Jerusalem this week is crackling with tension and hate, directed by both sides at each other.”

Again, if violence always has ‘a context’, then perhaps Mr Bowen should explain what was the ‘context’ of 9/11 and 7/7?  What ‘unresolved conflict’, what ‘coercive and brutal occupation’ caused that burst of ‘murderous anger’?  And, if that’s the ‘logic’ that he chooses to apply, shouldn’t the despicable murder of Drummer Lee Rigby be ‘explained’ as a consequence of the ‘coercive and brutal occupation’ of Iraq and Afghanistan – Muslim lands situated thousands of miles from British shores?

Karl Vick of Time Magazine: the face of Western comprehension 

It seems to me, however, that the award for The Most Stupid Comment in Years belongs by rights to Time Magazine’s Karl Vick.  After blaming the terrorist attacks on Israeli-induced Palestinian hopelessness, including of course an obligatory quote from Mahmoud Abbas, Vick calls Israel and ‘the Palestinian territories’

“the one part of the Middle East where the source of strife is comprehensible to Westerners: the aspiration–on the part of both sides–for a national home.”

The Middle East, of course, has no lack of conflicts: it’s Muslims against Christians, Muslims against Yazidis, Sunnis against Shi’a, Alawis against Sunnis, Kurds against Arabs, Turks against Kurds, Persians against Arabs, etc. etc.  All that, Mr. Vick confesses, is incomprehensible to the Western brain; the one conflict that is different is that between Arabs and Jews.  Why?  ‘Coz when it comes to Jews, Arabs only want a national home.

Given Karl Vick’s admirable comprehension of that 100-years-old conflict, I thought I’d ask him a simple question; one that none of the oh-so-knowledgeable Western journalists has yet asked: where are the Christians?

No, I don’t mean the hundreds of thousands of Christians that have been persecuted out of the Middle East; we know where they are.  What I mean is: why aren’t there any Christians among the terrorists?

Christians account for circa 2.5% of West Bank’s Arab population (they were 4% only a few years ago and circa 10% in 1948 – as they still are among Arab Israelis).  Yet none of the terrorists involved in the recent wave of attacks was a Christian.  And if you think that the number of those attackers is too small for reliable statistics, here is another fact: since 1993, circa 200 Arab Palestinians have blown themselves up in attempts to kill Jews; yet none of them was a Christian.

It’s not that Christians are uninvolved in the ‘Palestinian national struggle’.  They pay their dues.  God (or Allah) help them if they don’t!  Under the loving ‘guidance’ of their Muslim ‘brothers’, Christian ‘spiritual leaders’ (whose flock is increasingly fleeing that same tight ‘guidance’) lambast Israel at every possible opportunity, including appeals to foreign coreligionists to boycott the Jewish state out of existence.  Yet no Palestinian Christian has been involved – for decades now – in a serious terrorist attack against Jews.

This is understandable if, as Israelis assert, such acts of terrorism are the result of religious extremism, just as they are in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and many other places.  But if, as Messrs. Sackur, Bowen, Vick and numerous other Western 'useful idiots' seem to believe, Palestinian terrorism is an expression of ‘desperation’ and frustrated ‘national aspirations’, then let them explain what makes Palestinian Christians less ‘desperate’; or why are Christians (who, historically, have been the flag-bearers of Arab nationalism) less keen to express their longing for a ‘national home’ – by stabbing, shooting or blowing up a few Jews.

Oh, he's just a bit frustrated...  It's because of the occupation... and the settlements...

It is Islamist fanaticism that begets stabbings, beheadings, suicide bombings and plane crashing all over the globe – from New York to London, from Madrid to Bali, from Moscow to Kunming, from Baghdad to Damascus and in many, many other places.  Not in Jerusalem, though – in that place terrorists are not Muslim extremists, but nice people who want a ‘national home’ and just got… well, a bit impatient waiting for it.  Welcome to Vick’s Planet!

Imagine... Gaza

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one…
               (John Lennon)

I’d like to think I’m a sober pragmatist – I rarely indulge in flights of fancy.  Yet sometimes one has to pause, disconnect for just a few brief moments from the grim reality and imagine what could have been…  Call it a learning exercise.

Almost exactly 10 years ago, an Israeli government (one that much of the world viewed as ‘right-wing’ and ‘hawkish’) implemented the country’s ‘disengagement’ from the Gaza Strip.  That euphemism was used to describe a complete withdrawal: every single Israeli soldier was pulled out of the Strip; every ‘Jewish settler’ was evicted (occasionally by force); every ‘illegal Israeli settlement’ in the Strip was evacuated – even the dead Jews were dug up and moved to the Israeli side of ‘the 1967 border’.  As a token of further intentions, four ‘settlements’ in the West Bank were also dismantled.

It could have been, it should have been a momentous change: for the first time ever, Palestinian Arabs gained not just complete control over territory – but also freedom of movement: the Agreement on Movement and Access (concluded in November 2005 between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the European Union) opened the Rafah Crossing, allowing Palestinian Arabs to travel freely between Gaza and Egypt, with only European – not Israeli! – supervision.  The Agreement also opened the Karni Crossing between Israel and Gaza to non-military exports and imports; it provided a ‘safe passage’ allowing Palestinian Arabs to travel between the West Bank and Gaza, crossing Israeli territory; it authorised the construction of a seaport in Gaza and initiated negotiations towards the building of an airport in the Strip.

Just a few months later – uniquely in the entire Arab World – Palestinian Arabs voted in free elections.  Amazingly given the bitterness of the conflict, Israel cooperated – enabling even residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the Palestinian elections.

It was exactly what the ‘international community’ had been asking Israel to do: concede ‘land for peace’; courageously assume risks by allowing ‘the enemy’ freedom of operation; take a bold step towards ‘the two-state solution’.

The rest is, of course, history: as is often the case in the Middle East, concessions were interpreted as signs of weakness, rather than desire for peace; they were met with harsher demands, rather than generous gestures in return; they emboldened additional extremism, rather than empowering the moderates.  To the great surprise of hapless Western supporters of ‘the Palestinian People’s right to self-determination’, the electorate in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusatook the power away from the ‘nationalist’ Fatah and handed it to Islamist Hamas – the local branch of the pan-Islamic organisation Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas’s first ‘act of government’ was to repudiate the Agreement on Movement and Access, kick out the European supervisors and use its control of the border to smuggle in weaponry.  It used that weaponry to wrestle complete power from the rival Fatah and to subject Israeli towns and villages to a bombardment with mortar shells and ever-more-sophisticated rockets.  With Gaza Strip officially ‘enemy territory’, Israel declared a military blockade, a war tactic which interdicts the movement of people and all but essential goods.

Brainwashed Westerners usually describe Gaza Strip as ‘tiny and overcrowded’.  It is actually larger than European Union member state Malta; it is somewhat smaller but definitely less crowded than Singapore and Hong Kong…  But that is where any similarities end.

No, this is not Gaza City...  It's 'overcrowded' Singapore.

Ten years after the ‘disengagement’, Gaza remains yet another sore point in the Middle East.  Although movement restrictions for people and goods have been relaxed somewhat, they are still in place, driven by war and fear, rather than peace and hope.  There may be an affluent middle class in Gaza – but there is also huge unemployment; one may find markets abundant in products, but also lots of abject poverty…

Under the rule of Hamas and with the 'kind collaboration' of a few other terrorist organisation, the territory produces a more-or-less constant ‘drizzle’ of missiles which hit Israeli territory, disrupting, threatening and occasionally destroying life; whenever the ‘drizzle’ turns into a ‘rain’, Israel has to resort to military operations which – despite unprecedented precautions – cause death and injury also among innocents.  To most Israelis, ‘land for peace’ is these days a bitter joke; the belief in ‘two states for two peoples’ has made room to a fierce ‘us or them’ determination.

A by-now routine tweet from the Police Commissioner: another murder attempt
disguised as 'resistance' to 'occupiers in absentia'.

But it did not have to be like this.  Imagine…  Imagine an alternative history in which the ‘liberated’ Gazans cease to attack Israel, choosing instead to focus on developing their now un-occupied, ‘settler-free’ territory.  There is no denying their diligence and skill: imagine that the efforts put into digging hundreds of miles of smuggling and terror tunnels were used instead to build hundreds of miles of roads, of water conduits, of sewage pipelines.  Imagine that all that wealth of intelligence, creativity, passion and determination were placed in the service of happiness and life, rather than hatred and death.

Imagine that, instead of trading fire with Israel, Gaza traded goods: how many Israeli entrepreneurs would have leaped  to take advantage of that new opportunity?  Imagine scores of ships docking in Gaza Harbour and dozens of airplanes taking off from the newly-built Gaza International Airport.  Imagine European kids traveling to Gaza to get a tan on its golden beaches, rather than fraternise with terrorists.

And imagine Israel alongside this peaceful, stable, prosperous Gaza: who – other than perhaps a handful of fanatics – would not trade land to extend such permanent bliss to the West Bank?  How many Jewish mothers would choose to cling to a few more square miles of land, rather than ensuring peace, quiet and happiness for their children?

Imagine Gaza, in an alternative 2015: a positive model for the entire Middle East, rather than an epitome of violence and misery.

Imagine…  Yes, imagine.  Perhaps that is what’s lacking in the Middle East: a bit of imagination.

A Tale of Two Agreements: what do Greece and Iran have in common?

Two important agreements have been concluded recently, almost at the same time: one dealt with Greece and its economy; the other – with Iran and its nuclear programme.  The former was said to remove a threat to the financial health of the Eurozone; the latter is purported to remove a danger to the security of the entire world.

The Supreme Leader smiles with satisfaction...

There are both similarities and differences between the two ‘deals’.  In both cases, negotiations have been long and difficult – though in the case of Iran brinkmanship was taken to an entirely new level: overtly or covertly, various wheeling and dealing has been going on for 12 years, until just 2-3 months separated the mullahs’ regime from its first nuclear weapon.  Both with Greece and with Iran, extreme economic pressures ultimately made the agreement possible.  Both countries were about to reach the end of the rope from a financial point of view – Greece through years of mismanagement and economic profligacy, Iran through the piling up of international sanctions.

A broken Greek Prime Minister on national
television: “I fully assume responsibility
for mistakes and oversights, and for signing
a text that I do not believe in, but that I am
obliged to implement... The hard truth is
this one-way street for Greece was imposed
on us...”

But a humbled Greek government was ultimately brought to its knees and – in return for a measure of financial relief – was forced to accept incredibly harsh terms negating its core ideological basis; in contrast, the mullahs’ regime will be granted full relief from nuclear-related sanctions, along with consent to continue its nuclear programme, although banned by six UN Security Council resolutions.  The democratically-elected Greek government has been forced to admit, in front of their own people, that all they could achieve was a “bad deal”, preferable only to an even-worse alternative; conversely, Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei could smilingly thank his negotiating team for its great achievement.  The Greek population – which only a few days ago voted to reject the terms – gloomily received the news of their country’s capitulation to European pressure; whether spontaneously or at the behest of the regime, Iranians celebrated in the streets.  Democratic Greece has been forced to accept blatant, colossal violations of national sovereignty – in practice relinquishing control over its own economic policy; the rogue ‘Islamic Republic’ has won recognition of its ‘sovereign right’ to enrich uranium under its own control, upon its own territory.

Barely a day after the signing of the Greek ‘bailout’ deal, none other than the International Monetary Fund (the ultimate financial experts) cried ‘the Emperor is naked’: in a publicly issued report, they basically conclude that the ‘deal’ has zero chances of being executed as agreed.  Similarly, nobody but a handful of starry-eyed naïves truly believes that the ‘Iran nuclear deal’ will ever be implemented as agreed.  In fact, not even the deal’s most enthusiastic supporters seem to entertain such illusions.  Writing about a month ago in the Time Magazine, one such supporter (a chap called Ian Bremmer) admited that

“The history of Iran’s nuclear program says it will cheat, and inspectors won’t catch every violation. In fact, Tehran may already have started, reportedly growing a nuclear stockpile it had promised to freeze.”

Still, Mr. Bremmer advocates the deal, on the basis that

“Even if Iran one day builds a nuclear weapon, it’s unlikely to use it…”

The rest of us, who are rather less cavalier and not endowed with Mr. Bremmer’s enviable clairvoyance, can only guess how “unlikely” that possibility really is; we can try to figure out what degree of ‘likelihood’ (that some jihadi finger will pull the nuclear trigger and obliterate our families) we are happy to tolerate.

You may wonder why anyone would conclude agreements that have – from the word ‘go’ – zero chances of being implemented.  And why was the mullahs’ regime (a rogue theocracy sponsoring global terrorism and regional sedition) treated so differently from democratic, tame Greece?

Some Western politicians (especially the self-appointed ‘progressives’ among them) appear to believe that non-Western or non-white people (especially if they are Muslims) must always be treated with kid gloves; that they have a God-given right to misbehave and that their misbehaviour must be treated with a degree of tolerance – like that of children.  Feel free to attribute that attitude to post-colonial guilt, to moral relativism, to some form of ‘Stockholm syndrome’ or to sheer stupidity; I think it stems from deeply entrenched (albeit carefully – perhaps too carefully – concealed) racism.

It’s called reverse racism.  Rather than viewing people as complete equals in rights and responsibilities, irrespective of faith or the colour of their skin, reverse racists tend to infantilise Muslims.  The latter are seen as having rights – even special rights, like children or disabled people; but, again like children, they are not expected to manifest complete responsibility for their actions.  In effect, reverse racists subliminally place Muslims (and less frequently other non-Western people) under some form of mental tutelage.

Reverse racist attitudes are manifest not just in the über-tolerant treatment of Iran versus the harsh handling of Greece.  They are visible everywhere: when ‘the government’ (i.e. a ‘paternal figure’) is expected to prevent young Muslims from being radicalised – rather than their own families and communities; when older men are allowed to take advantage of young girls simply because the men are Muslims and the girls white; when indoctrination and extremist propaganda in schools and mosques are seen as cultural peculiarity, rather than criminal activity…

And here is another, perhaps less obvious example of reverse racism: President Obama’s famous Cairo speech.  Made at the beginning of his first presidential term, the speech is full of nice words.  So nice, in fact, that they often stray far, far away from the truth:

“I am honoured to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar [a famous school of Sunni Islamic doctrine] has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress.”

“Harmony”? “progress”??  “advancement”???  Oh, pleeease!  There was, there is very little “harmony” in Egypt, a country ruled at the time – and now – by a ruthless dictator who imprisoned opponents and turned Al Azhar into just another propaganda tool; there was even less “progress” in a country where poverty was – and is – rife, where homosexuality is not even tolerated, let alone accepted, where one in every three women can't read and write.  Mr. Obama knew all this, just like every Egyptian knows it.  Yet he chose to ‘beautify’ the truth, rather than spell it out in its candid nakedness.  Some will say that he was just being courteous; but where does ‘courtesy’ end, at which point does it turn into brazen lie?  Why do tyrants deserve courteous lies more than their hapless subjects deserve the courtesy of being told the truth??  Would Mr. Obama have used such language, had he spoken to a Western audience?

The Cairo speech was made in the capital of a failed country – one that cannot feed its people, let alone develop and fulfil their natural abilities; yet one word could not be heard among the more than 6,000 uttered by the President: reform.

Yet Mr. Obama knows how to advocate reform.  Hear the tone of another speech – one made less than a year later, not at Cairo University, but at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.  The topic was healthcare reform:

“… every single President has said we need to fix this system.  It’s a debate that’s not only about the cost of health care […].  It’s a debate about the character of our country – about whether we can still meet the challenges of our time; whether we still have the guts and the courage to give every citizen, not just some, the chance to reach their dreams.  […]  George Mason, the time for reform is right now.  Not a year from now, not five years from now, not 10 years from now, not 20 years from now -- it’s now.  We have had a year of hard debate.  Every proposal has been put on the table.  Every argument has been made…”

Question: when did the President sound like speaking to children who need to be placated and cajoled – and when did he seem to address mature, responsible human beings, who need to make crucial decisions about their future?

But let us go back to the Cairo speech:

“I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap and share common principles – principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings…”

Reading these exhortations about Islam and “Muslims around the world”, one may think that this was the Pope speaking, or perhaps a Chief Rabbi.  Yet Mr. Obama is neither; nor was he speaking in the name of Christianity.  So why did the leader of a nation (the United States of America) purport to speak not to the host nation, but to the followers of a religion??  Simply: Mr. Obama was trying to manifest ‘empathy’ with the concept of ‘Muslim nation’ (ummah).  But why?  That concept is one promoted not necessarily by Muslims, but by Islamists.  Surely Mr. Obama does not believe that followers of Islam (whether in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, Europe or the Americas, whether speaking Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Turkish or English) belong to one nation and should therefore aspire to reconstitute the Islamic Caliphate.  No, he was just cajoling, ‘making nice’ to his audience, just like one tends to do with children.

I don’t pretend to know how “Muslims around the world” feel, but I suspect that, like everybody else, they feel in various ways – as individuals rather than collective; and I know that, were I a Muslim, I would feel deeply offended by such patronising, paternalistic and ultimately racist attitude.  Perhaps that is why Mr. Obama’s speech, replete with such over-schmaltzed attempts at ‘endearment’, was ultimately received with coldness, as just another expression of Western hypocrisy.  Perhaps it would have been better if he spoke and acted towards Muslims with the same unadulterated conviction, with the same honest bluntness that he uses towards Western audiences.

Folks, there is nothing remotely ‘progressive’ about reverse racism.  It does not compensate for past wrongs, it perpetuates them in the present and exacerbates them in the future.  The key word in ‘reverse racism’ is ‘racism’ is ‘racism’ is ‘racism’.

Nothing to do with Islam?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a basketball legend and, no doubt, a role model for tens of millions of young people around the globe.  Which is probably why, in 2012, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed him Global Cultural Ambassador, with special emphasis on education to tolerance.  Add the fact that Kareem is a Muslim – and you'll understand why I read with extreme interest a commentary he penned for Time Magazine, in the wake of the recent terror attacks in Paris.

At first, I was thrilled: Kareem opened his article by acknowledging that “another horrendous act of terrorism has taken place”.  I was expecting some thoughtful analysis and well-pondered proposals on how to ensure that ’another’ will finally become ‘the last’.  But, soooo disappointingly, he proceeded to explain that “these barbaric acts are in no way related to Islam”.  And to complain that he even has to explain something so obvious.

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi,
self-styled 'Caliph' of the 'Islamic State',
preaching to supporters in Mosul, Iraq

To claim that Islamist terrorism is “in no way related to Islam” is absurd, pointless and unhelpful.

It is absurd, because home-grown Jihadi terrorists do not come from Mars, they come from within our society; and more precisely, they come from within Muslim communities.

It is pointless, because reasonable people don’t blame Islam and Muslims en-masse; and Kareem’s ‘washing of the hands’ is unlikely to convince the unreasonable ones.

Finally, it’s unhelpful, because it attempts to slam shut the door leading to analysis and solutions.  Kareem is right when he argues ‘don’t look at me, I’m not to blame for this’; but he is wrong when he appears to say ‘it’s not my problem’.

I cannot repeat this often enough: Muslims cannot, should not be blamed – either individually or collectively – for the acts of a few extremists.  But nor can, nor should it be ignored that there are issues within Muslim communities, issues that enable extremism to grow in their midst like a cancer – wrongly tolerated, recklessly unchallenged until too late.  Muslims like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are certainly free of blame; but that should not make them free of introspection.

US-born imam-turned-terrorist
Anwar Al-Awlaki

As mentioned in a previous article, 20% of US-born Muslims believe that suicide bombing aimed at innocent civilians is justified (whether ‘rarely’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’), in order “to defend Islam from its enemies”.  45% of European-born Muslims believe that “Jews cannot be trusted”.  Of course, not everyone expressing extremist, racist opinions will go on to commit acts of terror; but it’s from the toxic soil of fundamentalism and intolerance that those poisonous weeds draw their venom.

20%, 45%... These numbers may represent minorities; but not fringe minorities.  The sane majority of Muslims (to which Kareem Abdul-Jabbar belongs) cannot merely shrug them away and sanctimoniously intone “nothing to do with Islam”.  The toxic soil needs to be cleaned – and who if not that sane majority will do it??

Mr. Abdul-Jabbar does not appear to understand this; fortunately, other Muslims do.

In an article entitled “Only Muslims can change the world’s view of Islam”, Mohammed Wattad (a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Irvine), opines:

“Terrorism today stems primarily from Muslims in the name of Islam, and we cannot brush off accusations about our faith just by saying that the terrorists do not act in our name.”

In her acclaimed book ‘The Trouble with Islam Today’, Canadian activist Irshad Manji pleads:

“When he [the Prophet Muhammad] was asked to define religion, he reportedly replied that religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others.  A fine definition – simple without being simplistic.  And yet, by that definition, how we Muslims behave, not in theory but in actuality, is Islam.  Which means our complacency is Islam.  It also means the power is ours to restore Islam’s better angels, those who care about the human rights of women and religious minorities.  To do that, though, we have to snap out of our denial.  By insisting that there’s nothing the matter with Islam today, we’re sweeping the reality of our religion under the rug of Islam as an ideal, thereby absolving ourselves of responsibility for our fellow human beings, including our fellow Muslims. See why I’m struggling?  By writing this open letter, I’m not implying that other religions are problem -free.  Hardly.  The difference is, libraries abound in books about the trouble with Christianity.  There’s no shortage of books about the trouble with Judaism.  We Muslims have a lot of catching up to do in the dissent department.  Whose permission are we waiting for?”

Whose, indeed?  “[T]he power is ours to restore Islam’s better angels…”  Someone should tell Global Cultural Ambassador Abdul-Jabbar that education to tolerance, just like charity, begins at home!

Terror in Paris: at war with... what?

The latest bout of jihadi terrorism has shocked the free world.  What people find most difficult to accept is that the perpetrators were not some oppressed and brainwashed Saudi, Iranian or Yemenite peasants, but European citizens, born and raised in ‘liberal’, ‘enlightened’ and ‘multicultural’ France.

Cognitive dissonance notwithstanding, this is by no means a new phenomenon: three of four perpetrators of the 7/7 London bombings were born and raised in the UK; all four were British citizens.  So were the two suicide bombers that blew up a bar in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003.  So is ‘Jihadi John’, the ISIS terrorist responsible for the video-taped beheading of several innocent Westerners.  And while the 9/11 terrorists were all citizens of Arab countries, ringleader Mohamed Atta spent the last decade of his life in the free world.

With the initial shock waves beginning to wane, it is interesting to analyse reactions in the free world.  They tend to gravitate towards two opposite poles.

The extreme left position (espoused by the likes of Chomsky and parroted in various ‘diluted versions’ by left-inclining politicians, academics and media pundits) is that the Islamist attacks ‘have nothing to do with Islam’.  Depending on how far left a particular individual leans, s/he may also imply that such attacks are understandable (if not justifiable, excusable or just ‘marginal’, ‘desperate’, etc.) reactions to the free world’s ‘original sins’: colonialism, imperialism and support for Israel.  Left-wingers may add that Islam as such is a religion of peace; extremists are just a tiny minority, while most Muslims are ‘moderate’ (whatever that means), if not outright progressive and liberal.  Since for leftist ideologues capitalist economics are the source of all evil, it follows that extremists ‘find fertile ground for recruitment’ among Western Muslims, because of the latter’s socio-economic deprivation.

Conversely, the extreme right position (supported with a sympathetic wink if not overtly espoused by the likes of Marine Le Pen) implies that extremism is some sort of inherent manifestation of Islam, making all adherents of that religion suspect of harbouring terrorist designs.  For extreme rightists – whether they overtly say it or just slyly suggest it – Islam is a religion of war.

Frankly, I find both positions equally stupid.  They represent knee-jerk attempts to force reality into the rigid mould of pre-determined ideological convictions.  What is needed is a sober assessment of the reality, based on objective data, analysed with intellectual curiosity unpolluted by ideology or political correctness.

Dr. Ruud Koopmans is a Professor of Sociology and Migration Research at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Guest Professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Amsterdam; he is also Director of the Research Unit "Migration, Integration, Transnationalization" at the WZB Social Science Center in Berlin.  Under his scientific guidance, the latter institution has funded a study of Muslim immigrants and Christian native views in six European countries: Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Sweden.

Researchers have assessed the level of ‘religious fundamentalism’ by asking 9,000 persons from a Muslim (Turkish and Moroccan) background whether they agree or disagree with the following statements:

-          “Muslims should return to the roots of Islam”

-          “There is only one interpretation of the Qur’an and every Muslim must stick to that”

-          “The rules of the Qur’an are more important to me than the laws of [survey country]”

The native Christian respondents have been asked whether they agree or disagree with the same statements, except that the references to Muslim(s). Islam and Qur’an have been replaced with ‘Christian’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘the Bible’.

The results are eye-opening: circa 60% of Muslims agreed that “Muslims should return to the roots of Islam”, as opposed to 20% of the Christians, who believe that “Christians should return to the roots of Christianity”.  75% of the Muslims agreed that “There is only one interpretation of the Qur’an and every Muslim must stick to that”; only 18% of the Christians believe the same about the Bible.  Finally, 65% of Muslims believe that religious rules are more important than the laws of the country; only 12% of the Christians shared that belief.  44% of Muslims agreed with all three statements, as compared to just 4% of the Christians.

Clearly, the levels of religious fundamentalism among European Muslims (as measured by this methodology) are not confined to a ‘tiny minority’.  They are held by a large proportion of that population.  Furthermore, this is in stark contrast to the Christian population, among which fundamentalist views do represent a tiny minority.

Next, Prof. Koopmans further analysed the data, to understand whether the discrepancy may be explained by differences in socio-economic parameters.  His conclusion is that

“regression analyses controlling for education, labour market status, age, gender, and marital status reveal that while some of these variables explain variation in fundamentalism within both religious groups, they do not at all explain or even diminish the difference between Muslims and Christians.”

So contrary to leftist lore, this has nothing to do with socio-economic status.

Moreover, the survey showed that in the case of Christians, fundamentalism was more frequently encountered among older people and was less common among the younger generation; but the younger generation of European Muslims was just as likely to exhibit religious fundamentalism as the older one.  In other words, not only has the West opened its gates indiscriminately, i.e. including to people who do not share its liberal values; more worryingly, it failed to impart those values to the next generation of Muslims, those born and raised in the free world.  And there is – at the very least – strong anecdotal evidence that, under the complacent noses of Western governments, fundamentalism is being instilled into yet another generation of young Muslims.

But should religious fundamentalism per se be considered a problem?  Surely not, some would say, unless these deeply held beliefs translate into some kind of anti-social attitudes.  To test the extent to which religious fundamentalism correlates with hostility towards ‘the other’, Prof. Koopmans’s team asked the respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with another set of statements:

-          “I don’t want to have homosexuals as friends.”

-          “Jews cannot be trusted.”

-          “Western countries are out to destroy Islam.” (Christians were presented with the mirror-image statement “Muslims aim to destroy Western culture.”)

While no less than 13% of Christians reject homosexuals as friends, that proportion is 60% in the case of Muslims.  45% of Muslims agree that Jews cannot be trusted, as opposed to 9% of Christians.  The presumption of ‘evil intentions’ by the other side is held by 54% of Muslims and 23% of Christians.  After studying the correlation between the two sets of responses, Prof. Koopmans concludes:

“[R]eligious fundamentalism […] turns out to be by far the most important predictor of out-group hostility and explains most of the differences in levels of out-group hostility between Muslims and Christians.”

In other words, religious fundamentalism is not just another innocent opinion; it is responsible for anti-social views and hostile attitudes.

What Prof. Koopmans did not measure is the propensity for such hostile attitudes to translate into violent acts.  Admittedly, this is difficult to determine using surveys.  However, we can gain at least an inkling from the results of a poll conducted by Pew Research in 2011.  Pew pollsters asked a sample of American Muslims whether they agreed that “Suicide bombing/ other violence against civilians is justified to defend Islam from its enemies”.  13% agreed (5% said that such violent means are 'rarely' justified, 7% said that they are ‘sometimes’ justified and 1% opined that they can often be employed.  Interestingly, that extremist opinion was more common among US-born Muslims: 20% justify suicide bombings aimed at civilians, as opposed to just 10% among foreign-born Muslims residing in USA.  This is, needless to say, further evidence of the West’s abysmal educational failure.  Of course, there is a difference between justifying acts of terrorism and actually committing them.  But it is also obvious that actual terrorists are recruited or recruit themselves from among the ranks of those believing that terrorism is justified (i.e. ‘just’ under certain circumstances).  Admittedly, 20% is a minority; by contrast, in the Middle East a majority of Muslims (according to Pew Research 78% of Palestinians, 62% of Egyptians, 60% of Lebanese) believe that suicide bombings aimed at civilians are justified.  Still, it is sobering to understand that one in five Muslims born in USA approves of indiscriminate violence directed against innocents, as long as it “defends Islam against its enemies”.

So, is Islam ‘a religion of peace’ or ‘a religion of war’?  Well, that’s a stupid question and a false dichotomy.  Islam is a religion – full stop.  A system of beliefs and precepts.  It cannot and does not make war.  Its followers, of course, can and do make war or peace – depending on how that particular group or that particular believer interprets/uses Islam’s beliefs and precepts.

“We are not at war with Islam” cried recently the Prime Minister of France, reiterating similar assurances given by the Presidents of the United States and Israel.  Indeed: we are not and have no reason to be at war with Islam.  If nothing else, that would place us inadvertently and foolishly at war with those Muslims who are not fundamentalists and certainly not extremists.  But they are not the enemy; on the contrary, they are natural allies.

So are we supposed to limit ourselves, instead, to a ‘war on terror’?  That would be just as foolish, because such a war cannot be won.  How is the free world – while remaining free – supposed to defend itself against the next attack, by an individual or cell acting in secrecy and isolation?

No, we cannot afford to combat (mostly post-factum) just the occasional bursts of extreme violence; we need to find and eliminate its root causes.  Which are not in Islam, but in Islamism.  And let no religious extremist and no right-wing propagandist fool you by conflating the two: Islamism is not Islam; it’s not a religion; it is an extreme, supremacist political ideology.  It is the enemy.

Let’s advocate against it; let’s legislate against it; most importantly, let’s educate against it.