Teaching the Little Tykes About Anti-Israel Protesters

So the JTA recently posted an article about how kids apparently have trouble dealing with anti-Israel protesters. Time for the Zionist Lapdog primer!

A burst of black balloons ascended toward the gray sky as thousands of area Jews marched down the Philadelphia boulevard waving their blue-and-white flags in support of Israel. . . . "I don't get it," a 9-year-old said to his parents as they tried to explain that these balloons were not meant as symbols of celebration.

Simple, kid. There are people out there that hate Israel. And they will continue to hate Israel, regardless of what Israel does or tries to do to make them happy. So don't bother trying to make them happy or to hate you less. Do stand up for what you believe is right.

With Israel and its supporters marking the nation's 60th anniversary with festivities around the world, pro-Palestinian groups have been unusually assertive in pressing their case that Israel's birth marked a "nakba," or catastrophe, for the Palestinian people.

Message for 9 year-olds: In wars, there are almost always winners and losers. And the losers are usually pretty pissed off that they were not able to vanquish the winners. That does not mean the winners should not be celebrating like there was on tomorrow that they stopped the losers from driving them into the sea.

The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition that includes many anti-Israel organizations, is launching an advertising campaign in New York in advance of the city's June 1 tribute to Israel, which is likely to be the largest celebration of Israel outside the Jewish homeland itself.

I can't wait. Incidentally, the name of that organization is a flat-out lie. It's not a campaign just "to end the Israeli Occupation" (whatever that ultimately means). Rather, this organization favors the so-called "Right of Return." This means they want to flood Israel with millions of Arab "refugees", most of whom have never spent a minute of their lives in the Holy Land, so that the
Arabs can overwhelm the Jews demographically and ultimately take over the country.
Indeed, according to their FAQ, if you're just for "ending the Israeli Occupation" but don't favor this large scale Arab invasion of Israel, "then this would become grounds to review [your] membership with the Campaign." Ain't that sweet?

While debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is commonplace among adults, for children it can be unsettling to see large signs and graffiti denigrating the very state they are celebrating.

I don't really see the big deal here. Kids see unsettling things every day. That's why adults are around to explain things to them as best they can.

In Philadelphia, the parade marchers persevered down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the city's grand boulevard. Spontaneous singing erupted with songs of peace and hope -- "Oseh Shalom," "Hatikvah," "Lo Yisa Goy el Goy Cherev."

The conversations between parents and children were heard everywhere, as the adults sought to explain why protesters were raining on their parade.

Because they hate Israel and have no desire to allow Jews to have their own country.

For some it was an opportunity to educate, to explain and in some instances re-explain that Israelis and Palestinians both claim the land of Israel, that Israel has sought to make peace with the Palestinians but that many Palestinians have opposed it -- some violently -- and that people have the right to express their opinions as long as they do so peacefully.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Not about people being able to express opinions peacefully -- that's fine. But you don't say that "Israelis and Palestinians both claim the land of Israel" as if each has an equally legitimate claim. That is simply not true whether one looks at the Bible, the secular historical record, or international law.

You explain that Jews have the legitimate right to settle and have sovereignty over the land of Israel and that the Arabs have actively and violently opposed this for over a century. They have oppressed Jews in their own Arab lands and have sought and continue to seek to destroy Israel. The fact that the Arabs have failed to do this and are lamenting over their "Nahkba" is exactly why you are celebrating so joyfully.

For others it was more black and white. "Some people want to destroy Israel; we want it to live," one mother was overheard telling her children.

Praise the Lord!

At Israel parades and celebration events nationwide, this confusion has increased with organized anti-Israel activity. From an educational symposium in San Francisco to parades in Sacramento, Milwaukee and beyond, pro-Palestinian activists have been a forceful presence this year.

Nakba events have made a "strong showing this year," said Josh Ruebner, the director of national advocacy for End the Occupation.

"It is very important to put across an alternative message," Ruebner said. Pro-Palestinian groups believe that "the overwhelming discourse about Israel minimizes or ignores the fact that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948."

Okay, we dealt with this issue in the last posting. So I won't rehash my arguments here. Just read the last paragraph for my response to this attempt to put forth an "alaternative message." I don't think there's any obligation to mourn the suffering of the losers who tried to destroy you or to disseminate their propoganda while you celebrate your victory. But I'm, like an extremist and stuff.

Like many of the anti-Israel protesters at several of the demonstrations, Ruebner is Jewish.

"As a Jewish person, I don't believe we should be celebrating at the expense of another people," he said." This is profoundly opposed to Jewish traditions."

That's a profoundly ignorant statement. What do we celebrate on Passover? The destruction of the Egyptain army as we were freed from slavery. On Purim? The killing of Haman and his 75,000 followers who tried to destroy us. On Chanukah? The victory of the Jews over the Syrian-Greeks. And that's just a sampling.

There are few things more central to Jewish history and traditions than the celebrations of our victories over those who attempted to kill us. And the Arabs are no exception to that.

At the JCC of San Francisco, during a May 8 educational symposium in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, anti-Zionist activists staged the largest anti-Israel protest ever to take place in the building, according to a JCC official. Twenty of these protesters were escorted out by the San Francisco Police Department, which was well equipped to deal with the situation due to intense security preparations for the event.

According to Doug Kahn, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, the protest was loud and there was much chanting.

But since the Bay Area is known as a hotbed of action on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian fence, “there was a smooth and effective response," Kahn said.

So apparently they trespassed and attempted to disrupt and educational event by heckling it down. Good to know that such people are so in favor of freedom of expression.

The rest of the article basically deals with parents explaining to their kids that protesters are free to protest under the First Amendment. That's undoubtedly true, but it's not an adequate response or explanation. You have to explain to children why these people are protesting, and why they're wrong.

Israel, The Refugees and the Lebanon War

Counterpunch is a pretty radical Left Wing newsletter that, for whatever reason, devotes a highly disproportionate amount of its time and bandwidth to Israel-bashing. A piece written a couple of days ago by Kathleen M. Barry was no exception. The article is styled as an "open letter" to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi protesting Pelosi's celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary (can there be a greater war crime?).

The first sentence of this screed lectures the Speaker of the House to "[c]heck your history books." Since I am now anticipating an authoritative lecture on the history of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, I naturally skim to the bottom of the article to investigate the author's qualifications to give such a lecture:

Kathleen Barry is Professor Emerita of Penn State University. A feminist and sociologist, she is the author of Female Sexual Slavery, Prostitution of Sexuality: Global Exploitation of Women, and Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist and is now completing Expendable Lives, a new book on masculinity and war.

Nothing there indicates that Barry possesses any level of expertise on the Middle East or that she has read or written even a single sentence about the Arab/Israeli Conflict. Of course, this alone does not discredit her arguments (after all, facts are facts, regardless of who presents them), but it does provide some explanation and context for the silly and completely unsubstantiated arguments that are to follow.

Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel is celebration of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine, the celebration of the expulsion of 750,000 Arabs who generations later still people the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordon [sic], who still mourn their families slaughtered by Zionists as they completely destroyed Arab villages in Palestine, who still hold keys to their homes that were seized by the new Israeli state in 1948.

There are so many mistakes here that it's just laughable. First, her 750,000 figure is inflated. As explained by Middle East scholar Dr. Mitchell Bard in his exhaustively-researched book debunking numerous myths surrounding the Arab/Israeli Conflict:

Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947-49. The last census was taken by the British in 1945. It found approximately 1.2 million permanent Arab residents in all of Palestine. A 1949 Government of Israel census counted 160,000 Arabs living in the country after the war. In 1947, a total of 809,100 Arabs lived in the same area.¹This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower figure — 472,000, and calculated that only about 360,000 Arab refugees required aid. (emphasis added) (citations omitted)

Second, there was no "ethnic cleansing" in Palestine, at least by any rational definition of that term. After the 1948 War of Independence, about 160,000 Arabs remained as citizens of Israel, and that figure has grown to over 1 million today, which comprises roughly 20% of Israel's population. If one counts the Arab population in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, the total Arab population in what the Arabs consider to be "Palestine" is nearly equal to the Jewish population. So if Israel was engaged in ethnic cleansing, they're, like, really bad at it and stuff.

Third, the implication here is that the refugee problem was somehow caused by the Zionists, who willfully and relentlessly dispossessed the Arab population. This is a complete distortion of the historical record. Historian Efraim Karsh has spent considerable amounts of ink debunking such ridiculous claims. As he wrote in an excellent essay:

The claim of premeditated dispossession is itself not only baseless, but the inverse of the truth. Far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, the Palestinians were themselves the aggressors in the 1948-49 war, and it was they who attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to "cleanse" a neighbouring ethnic community. Had the Palestinians and the Arab world accepted the United Nations resolution of November 29, 1947, calling for the establishment of two states in Palestine, and not sought to subvert it by force of arms, there would have been no refugee problem in the first place.

It is no coincidence that neither Arab propagandists nor Israeli "new historians" have ever produced any evidence of a Zionist master plan to expel the Palestinians during the 1948 war. For such a plan never existed. In accepting the UN partition resolution, the Jewish leadership in Palestine acquiesced in the principle of a two-state solution, and all subsequent deliberations were based on the assumption that Palestine’s Arabs would remain as equal citizens in the Jewish state. As David Ben-Gurion, soon to become Israel’s first prime minister, told the leadership of his Labour (Mapai) party on December 3, 1947:

"In our state there will be non-Jews as well-and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well."

In line with this conception, committees laying the groundwork for the nascent Jewish state discussed in detail the establishment of an Arabic-language press, the improvement of health in the Arab sector, the incorporation of Arab officials in the government, the integration of Arabs within the police and the ministry of education, and Arab-Jewish cultural and intellectual interaction.

That's just a sampling. That whole essay is a must-read. Bard also further debunks the idea that it was the Zionists who forcibly expelled the Arabs. Of course, the fact that there are Arabs suffering in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and wherever else leads to the question of why those countries have allowed that situation to continue. But that is an issue that Barry never addresses. Instead, she writes:

I stand with Jews, with Palestinians, with every people who seek protection from persecution, but never with those who persecute others, who conduct well documented ethnic cleansing to gain their own protection which in six decades of Israeli wars has been no protection at all for Israelis.

Well, it's good to know that the so-called Palestinians don't persecute others. Israel could only dream of one day becoming the beacon of tolerance and pluralism that is the Palestinian Authority. And indeed, six decades of wars have provided no protection for Israel, other than to, like, ward off attempts to destroy it and stuff.

After criticizing Israel for its Original Sin of, um, existing, Barry then goes off on some weird tangent about the 2006 Lebanon War:

I expected George Bush to align himself with the war mongering far right wing government of Israel. He after all provided most of the millions of laser guided smart bombs Israel directed at apartment buildings and cluster bombs that still take lives in the south of Lebanon. Israel’s crimes against humanity in the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon go unnoticed by you and your delegation as you are only concerned with Hezbollah’s threat to Israel, kidnapping of three soldiers. In that war, the Israeli Air Force launched more than 7,000 air attacks on about 7,000 targets in Lebanon between 12 July and 14 August, while the Navy conducted an additional 2,500 bombardments. Does that sound at all proportional to the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers? Neither are justified, but reason is required, although with your personal convictions override reason making you very dangerous in a position of leadership.

Are those the Israeli tags of kidnapped soldiers you carry from that war? Do you wonder at all about the families of the 1200 dead Lebanese while you worry for those soldiers? Check the details Nancy, Israel’s aggression of Lebanon’s borders has outnumbered Hezbollah’s.

Okay, you heard it here first, folks. The ruling Kadima party is the "war-mongering far right-wing government of Israel." As the link explains, the platform of these Kadima guys and gals is to achieve peace with the Arabs by making land concessions. Filthy war-mongerers!!

In any event, the object of this rant within a rant is to criticize Israel for acting disproportionately in response to the kidnapping of its two soldiers by the Hizbullah terror gang. I hope we can all agree that kidnapping soldiers is an act of war. When you fight a war, the object is to get the enemy to surrender. This is usually done by hitting him with more force than he is able to bring to bear against you -- i.e., by hitting him with disproportionate force. Barry's claim that Israel's aggression somehow "outnumbered" Hizbullah's (huh?) is especially odd given that Hizbullah's missile attacks forced Israel to effectively depopulate the northern portion of the country and make roughly 300,000 people homeless. If anything, the force employed by Israel was not disproportionate enough because those two soldiers unfortunately remain in captivity.

Bathing in self-congratulations on Israel’s 60th anniversary, without any acknowledgment of the Naqba, the disaster wrought upon the Palestinians by Zionist in what was then Palestine, you have told me and all Americans clearly that as Speaker and therefore head of the people’s house, you are not representing Americans. You are representing the current Israeli government without ever questioning, in fact, implicitly condoning their crimes against humanity.

Okay, here's the climax. The rest of the article is basically non-substantive filler so here we go. The whole basis of this article seems to be that it is somehow improper to celebrate Israel's independence without bowing your head to mourn the Nahkba, the tragedy of those who were, of course, dispossessed so the greedy Zionists could have their homeland. Shame on those like President Bush who recognize that, while neither side is perfect, there are good guys and bad guys here, and Israel is the side worthy of celebration. And people without neurotic guilt have no problem celebrating victory over the bad guys even when the bad guys suffered as a result of the war. This isn't really that radical a concept when you think about it. Every July 4, we celebrate this country's independence as a generally positive event. I have never once heard anybody claim on July 4 that we were somehow wrong to celebrate our freedom while ignoring the plight of the victimized Loyalists who opposed the Revolution and therefore were forced to flee the country after having their property confiscated. This happened to tens of thousands of people. Yet you would have trouble finding even one American who expresses a scintilla of guilt over that. As I have written before, I don't do guilt well when it comes to the Arab/Israeli Conflict.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Latest Western Outrage Against The Musliim World

Once again, the Imperialist (tm) West has invaded the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia is being infiltrated by . . . KABBALAH BRACELETS!

"Dr Abdullah Al-Yusuf, professor of sociology at Imam Muhammad Bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that any imported foreign trendwill have an influence on the society to which it has been introduced and that the consequences of such a trend are considered a form of cultural invasion as new behaviors are adopted..."

Now, granted this is a major concern because the last thing anybody would want is for Saudi Arabian society to change its behaviors, right? Last I checked, Saudi Arabia is a pretty awesome place to live.


Oh, and Hamas thinks Bush is, like, a vampire and stuff. Good day.

Ahmadinejad Wishes Israel a Happy Birthday

Yeah, I know. I haven't posted in a week. The fact is I've been bored with most of the stories surrounding Israel of late. Lately, the most amusing story has been the silly catfight between pro-Israel CAMERA and and anti-Israel Electronic Intifada over Wikipedia, and that's not even entertaining enough to comment on.

But then I hit the jackpot. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, everybody's favorite cuddly psychopath, wished Israel a happy 60th birthday yestderday. Swell of him to take time out of his schedule like that. One thing about Ahmadinejad -- you know if he opens his mouth, something crazy and immensely entertaining is going to come out.

If the "Zionist Regime" (Mahmoud and those who think like him don't like to use to the "I" word) is dying, then why is Mahmoud spending so much time thinking and talking about it? It's really amazing just how obsessed Mahmoud and his ilk are with the "Zionist Regime." Think about it. He's taking time out of his day that could be spent accomplishing something constructive for the Iranians and giving a speech just to say how much he ain't a fan of Zionism. His country spent most of the first day of the Preparatory Session for the World Conference Against Racism trying to kick the Jews out. Not to mention the fact that he's spending billions of his country's wealth (that, again, could be used for more constructive things for Iranians) to build nuclear bombs just to launch at Israel, which, to my knowledge, has never done anything hostile toward Iran. I have to be honest -- I find this obsession to be a tad unhealthy. But more fun awaits:


>>"They should know that regional nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if the smallest and briefest chance is given to regional nations they will destroy it."<<

Wait, Israel's neighbors hate it? Fo shizzle? Now, "criminal" regime I can sort of understand because I guess you're saying (wrongly) that Israel violates international law. Of course, threatening to destroy a country is a pretty basic violation of Articel 2, Section 4 of the UN Charter:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

That's not exactly complicated legalese. So yeah, Mahmoud, the next time you want to ID a criminal regime, look in the mirror. He also called Israel "fake". Fake? Israel is a real country with a real government and is a recognized member of the community of nations. Unlike, say, Palestine, which is a fake non-country with a bunch of mass-murdering terror gangs kind of pretending to be a government.

As far as chances to destroy Israel, Mahmoud is REALLY not making sense here. The Arabs have been given PLENTY of chances to destroy Israel. They just haven't succeeded. And that's why Israel is now 60 years old. Happy Nahkba Day, Mahmoud. May you and your terror gang friends celebrate many more.

Hamas Holocaust Fun

I've spent a decent amount of time on this Earth, but I still sometimes make the mistake of thinking I've seen and heard everything when it comes to Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. However, right when I start getting bored, out comes Hamas with something so amusingly insane that my night is made.

Tonight was one of those nights. According to the invaluable Palestinian Media Watch, Hamas TV ran an "educational program" outlining the truth about the Holocaust so that all of us who are so horribly misinformed can finally learn the truth. Buckle up, everyone, because you know what's coming is going to blow your mind. Apparently, Holocaust was a Zionist plot to kill . . . other Jews, specifically handicapped Jews! Upon seeing the title, I was immensely enthusiastic to see what evidence Hamas would be presenting to rebut over sixty years of Holocaust scholarship. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

The video begins with an apparent quote from David Ben Gurion (helpfully identified as "Zionist Leader - Israel's first PM," in case any of the viewers mistakenly thought he was a member of Hamas or something) stating that the "disabled and handicapped are a burden on the state." Now, I'm not too sure what "state" is being referred to here since there wasn't yet an Israel during the Holocaust, but whatever state it was I'm sure was like totally burdened and stuff.

A voiceover then kindly informs us that the "Satanic Jews" (nice) thought up the Holocaust to, well, off handicapped people. We then accused the "Nazis or others" (others?) so the Jews would seem persecuted and would benefit from international sympathy. As a bonus, we are told that these "Satanic Jews" were "the first to invent the methods of evil and oppression." I'm going to take a moment and relish in the awesomeness of that thought: Jews invented evil. I didn't know that evil could be "invented," but if we somehow managed to pull that off, that's kind of cool. Apparently, this particular plan was so meticulously executed that the best minds were misled for over sixty years. It took the Hamas brain trust to bring this nefarious plot to light.

Speaking of said brain trust, we are then introduced to Amin Dabur, the Head of the Palestinian "Center For Strategic Research." Dabur strategically researched this matter to death and concluded that the "Israeli Holocaust" (again, no Israel during the Holocaust) was "a joke," and the "perfect show." Ben-Gurion focused on young people and sent the handicapped off to die or something, curiously adding "if it can be proven historically." (He's unsure?)

Then my minute and a half of entertainment ends with a statement from the narrator that the "alleged" number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was "merely for propaganda." Jimmy Carter keeps great company. So, dear readers, how much of Judea, Samaria and Gaza do you think will satisfy these guys?

They're on to us!

Time for panic, people! The Pepsi connection has been exposed!

We knew this was coming. Just stick to the training:

1. Destroy all Pepsi-related documents immediately (but only with a ZOA-approved shredder to ensure maximum security). If you use a non-ZOA shredder and end up in a gulag, please do not write me a complaint letter. I won't want to hear about it.

2. You can PROBABLY still safely be seen drinking Mountain Dew or Gatorade, but personally, I wouldn't risk it.

3. If anybody with even arguably non-Zionist tendencies approaches you, do not be afraid to use our secret weapon. Your survival might depend on it.

4. If disaster strikes, and you are cornered, use your dying words to congratulate our enemies on their effective use of irony.

5. Nah, strike that one. If you're cornered by a bunch of Hamas radicals, ask them why they're stealing Iran's material from two years ago. Hamas used to be cool, but now Iran is fresh and with it when it comes to the forefront of Jihad. All Hamas can do is plagiarize them. While this sad reality sinks in, make your escape and help continue our quest for world domination!

More Jimmy Carter Awesomeness and More Fun with the UN

Today started off as a nice relaxing Sunday. I slept late and sat down to watch Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer as I ate my bagel and lox. Suddenly, Wolf announces he will be interviewing none other than our pal, Jimmy Carter about Jimbo's meetings with Hamas. You know my thought: awesome!

Wolf begins by playing a clip of a speech from President Bush denouncing Jimbo's meeting with the mass-murdering terror gang. Now, we know "Dubya" isn't exactly Abraham Lincoln when it comes to political oratory, and admittedly, yeah, he fumbled this one. Bush said almost nothing useful and stammered and stuttered about how Hamas would not recognize Israel, refused to endorse the so-called "Two State Solution," and was generally an "obstacle to peace." Of course, the problem with such a statement is that it implies that if Hamas were out of the picture, peace would be more likely to occur. Of course, as you know, faithful readers, this is a position I completely reject.

Carter responded by chortling mightily about how Bush OBVIOUSLY did not understand Hamas's TRUE positions because, dagnabbit, he met with their leaders, and while they seem all tough and musky on the outside, they're really just a nice bunch of guys who enjoy cuddling kittens and grooving to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

See, the Hamas leaders told Carter (after they crossed their hearts and hoped to die) that they wanted a ceasefire. And more important, they would recognize and abide by any peace agreement (including, Carter believes, one that would recognize Israel), so long as it was approved by a popular referendum of the Arabs living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Wolf, who is not completely oblivious, makes two points. First, Hamas spokespeople vigorously disputed Carter's account of the meetings and what was promised. And second, such statements fly in the face of what Hamas has proclaimed publicly, both to their own people in Arabic and to the West.

Carter's response was, well, Carter-like. He stated these Hamas spokespeople disputing his statements were low-level dudes on the totem pole, while he had met with the "high leaders" of Hamas. Unfortunately, Wolf didn't press Carter any further, and the conversation then moved to the Democratic Primary.

I really wish Wolf had confronted Carter with some of the statements that I have previously documented, along with the many others Hamas has made both disparaging Jews and declaring their unwillingness to recognize Israel.

At the very least, Wolf could have shown Carter the recent statement from Khaled Mashal (one of the leaders Carter met with) that the ceasefire, or "Tahdiah", that Hamas proposed "is a tactical means. It is a step within the resistance and is not detached from it." Mashal went on to say that:

"'It is only natural for any resistance movement, which cares about the interests of its people, to bear in mind the general Palestinian condition. At times, it generates an escalation, and at times, it withdraws a little. It is a process of ebb and flow, going up and down. This is how you run a battle. Hamas is renowned for this.

'In 2003, we began a tahdiah, and later renewed the operations. The same thing happened following 2005. Hamas conducted resistance from within the government, as well as when it was not in the government. This is a method of conflict management.'"

So, yeah, I guess it never occurred to Carter that Hamas might just be utilizing him as a useful idiot to improve their PR in the West.

In other news, there was a lot more fun at this Durban II Prep Session the past couple of weeks. Anne Bayefsky has two recent columns describing what went on. Both are excellent reads.

The April 23 column is especially fun. There, Bayefsky describes how the Arab/Muslim delegations argued that the only way to truly fight racism and oppression is well . . .with more oppression and less freedom (as I keep saying, satire is obsolete):

"The Egyptian representative gave a good summary of most everything wrong with Durban II. He claimed the conference and its preparatory process should focus on criminalizing “racial profiling,” “racism in the media,” “the challenges posed by Islamophobia since the events on 9/11,” and “instrumentalization of democratic processes for racist applications.” In short, racism is an evil Western plot to victimize Muslims, who can only be protected by the undermining of democracy, freedom, and law enforcement."

And then came my favorite part:

"While the European Union attendees stayed in their seats, the assault on democracy carried on. Algeria said “freedom of expression spread[s] hatred and violence and lead[s] to the burning of mosques in ‘advanced’ countries.” Syria ranted about “the crimes that are perpetrated in the name of democracy” and the “killers” that “are countries that advocate democracy . . . and give [a] free hand to perpetrate massacres.” *

Yes, indeed. Freedom of expression leads to mosque-burnings. I mean, what can I really add to that? Jimmy Carter could not have said it better. I fear that as I wrote this note, a child weeps in the distance as a mosque burns.

*Syria is, of course, uniquely qualified to educate the world as to what leads a nation to perpetrate an old-school massacre.