An organization that specializes in killing civilians “condemns” us for killing a man they call a “warrior.”

Apollo posted this at 8:49 AM CDT on Monday, May 2nd, 2011 as Another Great Victory For Jihad, Arafatistan

No Comments »

Not much can be added to Mark Steyn:

Just to add to Jonah’s observation on Reuters below, Louise Bagshawe, the chick-lit author and Conservative MP, wrote a piece for the London Telegraph wondering why she hadn’t heard about the Fogel murders until she read my Corner post “Dead Jews is no news.” Where, she asks, is the BBC coverage?

As I said in my post, there are circles of depravity: The relatively small number of people willing to decapitate a baby; the larger number of Palestinians happy to celebrate the decapitation of a baby; and the massed ranks of Western media anxious to obscure the truth about the nature of the event. The comments below Miss Bagshawe’s column provide a glimpse of a fourth circle — the large numbers of Westerners who, even when confronted with the reality of what happened, are nevertheless eager to rationalize it as a legitimate response to a legitimate grievance.

For all the frictions between the aging, fading natives of Europe and their young, assertive Muslim populations, on this one issue at least there is remarkable comity.

Hubbard posted this at 11:00 AM CDT on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 as Arafatistan

No Comments »

I’ve largely ignored what appears to be a glut of recent news about the “Middle East” (i.e. Israel – whatever happened to the term “Near East”?) “peace process,” because I think it’s inane. However, I came across this John Podhoretz post that got me reading and thinking about two things, in ascending order of importance.

1. Mahmoud Abbas’s elected term ended in January 2009, and there weren’t additional elections. The guy just seems to be staying in power by his own fiat, even though the most powerful faction in half of his country (Hamas) does not acknowledge his legitimacy. Yet here he is, trompsing about as though he were the legitimate leader of his people. This is the sort of thing that caused me to stop reading about “the Middle East” – the degeneracy of one side is so complete that I would prefer to simply ignore them.

2. In a news story I missed in February, Abbas visited Hiroshima.

Mr. Abbas wrote in the museum guest book: “My heart is aching for the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” He then said to the press: “People in Palestine have also been afflicted by war. War causes destruction of humans and civilizations. . . “

I cannot think of anything that would cast the Palestinians in a less favorable light than to compare them to the Japanese. As much as Abbas and other Palestinians like to wallow in their own misery, it simply pales in comparison to what the Japanese, and specifically the residents of Hiroshima went through. For years during the war, the Japanese underwent starvation, the mass deaths of loved ones fighting in foreign campaigns, and American bombers destroying entire cities and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

And as though these apocalyptic events were not enough, America went and invented a theretofore inconceivable weapon that would in an instant annihilate 90% of Hiroshima and leave the wretched who survived afflicted with burns, radiation sickness, and cancer. Abbas can say what he wants about Hiroshima, and Hiroshima’s civic leaders are generally whiny enough that they soak up that sort of crap, but in no actual sense do Palestinians have a clue what Hiroshima went through.

Where the comparison gets unflattering is what Hiroshima, and Japan, did after the bombing. By combining hard work with what is, to me, an unfathomable ability to put the past behind them, the Japanese rose from their own ashes as the greatest industrial power in Asia, and second only to America worldwide. Hiroshima itself became a bustling metropolis of three times its pre-war size, the fifth wealthiest city in Japan (warning: PDF). The Japanese today are a free and prosperous people, lovers of baseball, allies with their former enemies, and friends of liberty worldwide. It is a story that cannot be told enough, and never ceases to amaze.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, still have refugee camps from a war that ended over 60 years ago, just three years after Japan’s war ended. Their level of economic development can best be characterized as “miserable,” and it’s only that good because of massive amount of foreign aid, constituting about 1/3 of the Palestinian economy. They have refused to move on from their lost war, continue to [futilely] fight the nation that defeated them, and have developed a national persona that revolves around their status as supposed victims.

Even if you look at 1967 as the date the Palestinians lost their war, the comparison is unfavorable. 43 years after the annihilation of Hiroshima, 1988, there were concerns throughout the Western world that the Japanese were going to overtake us, outproduce us, and buy us out, and that “the Japanese way” was, simply, superior to the Western way. Today, 43 years after the end of the 1967 war, the Palestinians have a self-appointed leader for life whose main purpose is to tell foreign audiences how miserable the Palestinians are.

We’d all be better off if Mr. Abbas had spent more time in Hiroshima and absorbed some of its atomic sunshine.

Apollo posted this at 12:25 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 as Arafatistan, Those Wacky Foreigners

4 Comments »

Without judging its propriety — it may well be the best choice available — the terms of Israel’s upcoming exchange of twenty Palestinian criminals for a mere video of one of its soldiers who was captured three years ago is simply outrageous.  We get a score of prisoners of varying importance, you get to know for certain that you haven’t executed  one of your guys.  Yet.  Deal?

Israel is neither a hapless victim nor a blushing maiden, but it’s a decent and productive country that wishes little but the saftey and liberty of its citizens.  In contrast, the Palestinians have produced a loathsome, hate-filled, kleptocratic society that brainwashes children and glorifies the worst kind of violence.  They deserve neither our sympathy nor our support.

Tom posted this at 12:01 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 as Arafatistan

No Comments »

Those who thought it was possible, in the face of raving post-modernism and anti-semitism on the left, to elect a pro-Israel Democrat to the White House . . . and particularly those who thought that Jeremiah Wright’s most famous parishoner was that Democrat . . . well, they were wrong.

Of course, this is, remarkably, a campaign pledge that he backtracked on during the campaign, so I guess he’s not breaking his word now. One would hope that the few remaining pro-Israel Democrats would see what their party really thinks of Israel and leave it. But they’ve been continent in being tools for this long, so I don’t suppose this will be enough to open their eyes.

Apollo posted this at 12:24 AM CDT on Monday, July 20th, 2009 as Arafatistan, CHANGE!

No Comments »

This is preposterous. Iran’s nuclear missiles have nothing whatsoever to do with Palestinians, and it’s just a pile of crap that the administration either a) believes the Arab claptrap that the Palestinians are the most important issue in the region, or b) is willing to blackmail our closest and most powerful ally this way.

Israel is an independent country, the ravings of some American anti-semites notwithstanding. The Israelis will do as they please, and if we do not help provide them with security, they will find security through their own means. That is, taunting Israel like this achieves absolutely nothing aside from making an Israeli strike against Iran more probable.

Peace is possible only when people feel secure. When you remove security, when you present Israel with the prospect that we will stand by as Iran prepares the weapons needed to destroy Israel, you risk war.

Apollo posted this at 8:33 PM CDT on Monday, May 4th, 2009 as Arafatistan, CHANGE!

2 Comments »

Using my head as a prop, an old teacher gave some good advice to a young teacher.  The older one said, “Be careful what you put in here [tapping my forehead] because you’ll never get it out again.”  What we teach children lasts, and sometimes the little things—like a teacher using you as an example—can make an impression decades later.

What, then, are the children of Palestine learning when the youth orchestra is disbanded for playing to Shoah survivors?  [Emphasis added below.]

Palestinian authorities disbanded a youth orchestra from a West Bank refugee camp after it played for a group of Holocaust survivors in Israel, a local official said on Sunday.

Adnan Hindi of the Jenin camp called the Holocaust a political issue and accused conductor Wafa Younis of unknowingly dragging the children into a political dispute.

He added that Younis has been barred from the camp and the apartment where she taught the 13-member Strings of Freedom orchestra has been boarded up.

“She exploited the children,” said Hindi, the head of the camp’s popular committee, which takes on municipal duties. “She will be forbidden from doing any activities…. We have to protect our children and our community.”

(H/T)

When learning history and music and paying tribute to survivors takes second place to propaganda, there’s no real hope for the future.  Is there an Arabic word for doublespeak—how does preventing an orchestra from playing “protect our children”?

Hubbard posted this at 9:15 AM CDT on Monday, March 30th, 2009 as Arafatistan, Ex Pede Herculem, We're all DOOMED

No Comments »

Some countries are going to give $4.5 billion to the Palestinians over two years. What makes this truly remarkable is that the GDP of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank combined is $6.64 billion. For the next two years, these donors will increase the Palestinian GDP by 1/3! Considering that Gaza is substantially poorer than the West Bank (the CIA no longer lists their economies separately, but the last I checked Gaza had a per capita GDP of around $600), and that most of these handouts will surely go to Gaza, it’s possible that this single conference will nearly double the GDP of Gaza for the next two years.

By the way, $900 million from U.S. taxpayers.

Apollo posted this at 2:33 AM CDT on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 as Arafatistan

No Comments »

Christopher Hitchens has gone mad. Here he is defending Rashid Khalidi, a man who, whatever he told Hitchens, spent several years apologizing for terrorists.

And Hitchens has particularly lost it when discussing Sarah Palin:

And it must be easy for a woman who couldn’t, when first asked, name a single newspaper or magazine that she had ever read…

The subtle distinction between “couldn’t” and “wouldn’t” isn’t one that Hitchens would normally miss, and one he particularly should not ignore in a column defending a man who defended terrorists. I wouldn’t complain about the “low blows” of others if, in the same column, I dishonestly painted the most popular governor in America as illiterate.

Apollo posted this at 7:27 PM CDT on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 as Arafatistan, Hitch-slapped!

No Comments »

If you’re already familiar with The Pioneers of Tomorrow — now featuring Assud the Rabbit following the martyrdoms of Narhoul the Bee and Farfour the Mouse — you can skip the first 5 minutes of the segment below. But you should catch the rest of it:

Assud: Who will host this show if you are martyred? Will 100,000 Saraas take your place?

Saraa: Allah willing, Assud.

Assud: We’ll take them from among the Pioneers of Tomorrow, Allah willing.

Saraa: Allah willing, there are thousands of soldiers of the Pioneers of Tomorrow.

Assud: Martyrdom for the sake of Allah is what we hope for, right?

Saraa: Right, Assud.

[snip]

Saraa: What do you have to say to the cartoonist who started all this and affronted the Prophet by drawing him?

Assud: He’s a criminal…

Saraa: Yes, a criminal.

[Tasnim, a caller to the show]: I say to him, and to all of them, that no matter how much they try to hide him, we will manage to kill him, to assassinate him.

Assud: Allah willing.

Saraa: I pray that Allah makes the earth swallow him up, so that he serves as a lesson to others like him, Tasnim.

As Geoff has said, what’s amazing about this show is that it manages to be fantastically evil while being fantastically lame at the same time. I mean, wow.

Tom posted this at 1:10 PM CDT on Friday, February 29th, 2008 as Arafatistan

3 Comments »

Hussam is so the cute Protector of the Homeland!

Hamas boy band to bring harmony to Gaza

By Tim Butcher

Last Updated: 2:07am GMT 31/10/2007

	The members of Protectors of the Homeland practise their song at the police headquarters in Gaza City

Hamas militants have launched a new weapon in their struggle with Israel: a troupe of honey-voiced singers known as Protectors of the Homeland.

Wearing crisply pressed fatigues in urban camouflage blue, the six band members gather each day to practise in an old office within the Gaza City police headquarters.

The small room throbbed with energy as their dusty 12-track amplifier screeched with feedback before being tamed by an engineer.

To the accompaniment of a backing track from a laptop computer, the men then started polishing their routine of songs, almost all of which have strong Islamic and militaristic content and titles like Change and Reform. Such uplifting lyrics as “By the shrouds of the dead we are inspired” are typical.

Video available from Reuters.

Tom posted this at 2:45 PM CDT on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 as Arafatistan

No Comments »

Amir Taheri gives us a glimpse of intra-Islam feuding [emphasis in original]:

Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects — most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth.

A Shiite Muslim can’t build a mosque in Cairo; his Sunni brother can’t have a mosque of his own in Tehran. Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran. The works of a majority of Muslim writers and philosophers are banned in most Muslim countries.

In Britain, all mosques are allowed; no Muslim author or philosopher is banned. More importantly, rival Muslim sects do not massacre each other, as is the case in half a dozen Muslim-majority countries.

The only time that the British media practice self-censorship is when an item might be seen as remotely anti-Islamic. Every British publisher has turned down at least one book proposal for fear of hurting Muslim feelings. “Taking Muslim sensibilities into account” is also the reason given for the cancellation of some art exhibitions and the selection of works on display in others.

Even the most rabid anti-West and pro-terror Islamist clerics are granted visas to come to the United Kingdom and spread their message of hatred (at times, as guests of Mayor Livingstone and his friends). Hamas and Hezbollah are strongly present in Britain; the Islamic Liberation Party, banned in all Muslim countries, has its headquarters in London.

A few thoughts and observations.  First, an Islamic civil war seems to be a possibility.  Should the West try to head it off?  Can it?

Second, if the Islamic Liberation Party is so extreme that it’s banned in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, what on earth is it doing headquartered in London?  

Hubbard posted this at 11:59 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 as Another Great Victory For Jihad, Arafatistan

No Comments »

The German foreign ministry went so far as to suggest that Hamas’ triumph necessitates increasing aid to Gaza because of the hardships Hamas rule will cause. It seems that if you choose terrorism, either at the ballot box or in the streets, the Europeans, like the good hands at Allstate, will be there to pay for the mess.
But there’s another, perhaps more important, lesson to be drawn from the Hamas ascendancy. The Bush administration pushed for democracy in the Palestinian territories and got what it wished for — in spades. The assumption behind the push for democracy in Gaza and in Iraq is that Arabs can be trusted to handle political freedom. Even the Democrats demanding an immediate pullout from Iraq hope that with democracy, the Iraqis will be able to sort out their problems themselves via some euphemistic “political solution.” That is unless the antiwar Democrats are really advocating turning all of Mesopotamia into one giant Gaza Strip — the far more likely result of U.S. withdrawal.
For many disciples of the “international peace process,” it’s a matter of faith that the Palestinians just have to want peace, because how else can you have a peace process? For many supporters of the Bush Doctrine, Iraqis have to want democracy, because if they don’t, what’s the point of having a freedom agenda? But what if these are just beloved Western fictions? We see a well-lighted path to the good life: democracy, tolerance, rule of law, markets. But what if the Arab world just isn’t interested in our path? As a believer in the freedom agenda, that’s what scares me most.

—Jonah Goldberg

Jonah’s line of analysis seems familiar. . .

Hubbard posted this at 9:46 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 as Arafatistan, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet

No Comments »

I believe that’s what Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller told each other. Otherwise, I have no explanation for this dispatch from a not quite parallel universe.

The United States and others should support Abbas and encourage progress in the West Bank, but smartly. Sticks for Gaza coupled with carrots for the West Bank will divide Palestinians, radicalize Gazans, provoke violence by those who are left out and discredit those the United States embraces.

Yes, we must at all costs avoid that situation. I shudder at the thought of a world where Gazans aren’t rational, Hamas is violent, and US wish is not law in Gaza.

Dividing Palestine geographically is no more a recipe for success than dividing Palestinians politically.

What makes these assertions so persuasive is that the authors provide not one wit of evidence for either one. A skeptical person might point out that in the lengthy history of this region, its most peaceful periods were when the Palestinians were ruled by outsiders as a small piece in a larger entity. Though I wouldn’t know where to find such a skeptic.

The diplomatic equivalent of the medical precept is do no harm.

Again, the persuasiveness of this assertion rests on its complete lack of support. That dastardly skeptic, if he should show himself in public, might point out that, aside from the fact that Henry Kissinger likes to be called “Dr. Kissinger,” diplomacy and medicine don’t really have much in common.

Since Hamas’s electoral victory, U.S. policy has helped strengthen radical forces, debilitate Palestinian institutions, undermine faith in democracy, weaken Abbas and set back the peace process.

Yes, I think any rational person would agree that it’s all America’s fault.

Added: For extra fun, check out the less-than-serious title the WaPo front page put on this:

Rejected headline: You Gaza Have Faith

Apollo posted this at 10:33 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 as Arafatistan

1 Comment »

I believe that H.L. Mencken once noted that democracy was the belief that men knew what they wanted and deserved to get it, good and hard.  Hence the mess in Gaza.  Cox and Forkum get it about right:

Hubbard posted this at 10:03 AM CDT on Monday, June 18th, 2007 as Arafatistan

1 Comment »