The Palestinian UN Gambit is Illegal

The following letter signed by dozens of experts in international law and lawyers from both North America and Europe has been sent to Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. (HT Melanie Phillips)

It outlines the main legal and historical reasons for why a recognition of a Palestinian State based on the 1967 "borders" would be illegal and without force.

It is of great educational value to those who do not know the background of the conflict.

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon,
Secretary-General of the United Nations,

1st Avenue & 44th St., New York, NY 10017

May 25, 2011

Excellency,

Re: The proposed General Assembly resolution to recognize a Palestinian
State "within 1967 borders"- an illegal action

We, the undersigned, attorneys from across the world who are involved in
general matters of international law, as well as being closely concerned
with the Israeli- Palestinian dispute, appeal to you to use your influence
and authority among the member states of the UN, with a view to preventing
the adoption of the resolution that the Palestinian delegation intends to
table at the forthcoming session of the General Assembly, to recognize a
Palestinian state "within the 1967 borders".

By all standards and criteria, such a resolution, if adopted, would be in
stark violation of all the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians,
as well as contravening UN Security Council resolutions 242(1967) and
338(1973) and those other resolutions based thereon. Our reasoning is as
follows:

1. The legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel was the
resolution unanimously adopted by the League of Nations in 1922, affirming
the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People in the historical
area of the Land of Israel. This included the areas of Judea and Samaria and
Jerusalem, and close Jewish settlement throughout. This was subsequently
affirmed by both houses of the US Congress.

2. Article 80 of the UN Charter determines the continued validity of the
rights granted to all states or peoples, or already existing international
instruments (including those adopted by the League of Nations). Accordingly
the above-noted League resolution remains valid, and the 650,000 Jews
presently resident in the areas of Judea, Samaria and eastern
Jerusalem, reside there legitimately.

3. "The 1967 borders" do not exist, and have never existed. The
1949 Armistice Agreements entered into by Israel and its Arab
neighbors, establishing the Armistice Demarcation Lines, clearly stated that
these
lines "are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary
lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto". Accordingly
they cannot be accepted or declared to be the international boundaries of a
Palestinian state.

4. UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)called upon
the parties to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and
specifically stressed the need to negotiate in order to achieve "secure and
recognized boundaries".

5. The Palestinian proposal, in attempting to unilaterally change the
status of the territory and determine the "1967 borders" as its recognized
borders, in addition to running squarely against resolutions 242 and 338,
would be a fundamental breach of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian agreement on
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in which the parties undertook to
negotiate the issue of borders and not act to change the status of the
territories pending outcome of the permanent status negotiations.

6. The Palestinians entered into the various agreements constituting what
is known as the "Oslo Accords" in the full knowledge that
Israel's settlements existed in the areas, and that settlements would be one
of the issues to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations.
Furthermore, the Oslo Accords impose no limitation on
Israel's settlement activity in those areas that the Palestinians agreed
would continue to be under Israel's jurisdiction and control pending
the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations.

7. While the Interim Agreement was signed by Israel and the PLO, it was
witnessed by the UN together with the EU, the Russian Federation , the US,
Egypt and Norway. It is thus inconceivable that such witnesses, including
first and foremost the UN, would now give license to a measure in the UN
aimed at violating this agreement and undermining major resolutions of the
Security Council.

8. While the UN has maintained a persistent policy of non-recognition of
Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem pending a negotiated solution, despite
Israel's historic rights to the city, it is inconceivable that the UN would
now recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state, the borders of
which would include eastern Jerusalem. This would represent the
ultimate in hypocrisy, double standards and discrimination, as well as an
utter disregard of the rights of Israel and the Jewish People.

9. Such unilateral action by the Palestinians could give rise to
reciprocal initiatives in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) which
could include proposed legislation to declare Israel's sovereignty over
extensive parts of Judea and Samaria, if and when the Palestinians carry out
their unilateral action.

Excellency,

It appears to be patently clear to all that the Palestinian exercise, aimed
at advancing their political claims, represents a cynical abuse of the UN
Organization and of the members of the General Assembly. Its aim is to by-
pass the negotiation process called-for by the Security Council.

Regrettably this abuse of the UN and its integrity, in addition to
undermining international law, has the potential to derail the Middle-East
peace process.

We trust that you will use your authority to protect the UN and its
integrity from this abuse, and act to prevent any affirmation or recognition
of this dangerous Palestinian initiative.

Sincerely,

Ambassador (Ret) Attorney Baker Alan, Ambassador (Ret) Dr. Rosenne Meir, Dr.
Arnon Harel. Adv.
Prof. Einhorn Talia, Prof. Shochetman Eliav, Abu Lior, Adv., Asraf Shlomo,
Adv. (LL.B, LL.M)
Baba-Nahary Merav, Adv., Benjamin Aryeh N., Adv. LL.M Ben-Shahar Meir, Adv.
LL.B, LL.M
Bulshtein Ariel, Adv., Burstyn Yitzhak .adv LL.M, Carmi Anat, Adv.
Cohen Hila, Adv. Daniely Mirit, Adv., David Liat, Adv. (LL.B, LL.M)
Dermer Yossi, Adv., Eagle Shira, Adv. Eisenberg M., Adv Elad Cohen, Adv.
Elkalay Shimrit, Adv., Friedman Shlomo, Adv., Fuchs Yossi ,Adv.
Ganan Yuval. Adv. Goelman Avinoam, Adv. Goldman Ezra Adv.,
Guggenheim Chanania U., Adv Hacohen Itay, Adv. Harshoshanim Ariel, Adv.
Hershkovitz David, Adv. LL.M Jarden Elon ,Adv., Kavatz Gad, Adv.
Koslowe Avital Adv. (LL.B, LL.M) Lapidot Harel, Adv.
Lapidot Ohad Ziv, Adv., Levy Yechezkel, Adv. LL.M. Magen Alon, Adv. LL.B
Meiri Eddy, Esq. Morginstin Philip B.,Adv Nadel Gill, Adv.
Naor Avi, Adv., Nimni Eliyahu, Adv. Nir-Tzvi Doron, Adv. Orbach Nir, Adv.
Peretz Yitzhak, (LLB, Hons.) Adv. Rotenberg Zvi E. ,Adv., Shaya Dotan, Adv.
Shimon Yehuda Arye, Adv. Shmuelyan Eli, Adv., Tamari Amir, Adv.
Tamari Ilana, Adv., Teplow Michael I., J.D adv. Vaknin Emanuel, Adv.
Weistuch Elad, Adv. Wiseman Gabriel, Adv. Yamin Uri, Adv.
Zell Mark, Adv.

Melanie Phillips discusses this letter and the hypocritical and despicable recent actions of David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the UK in a recent post.

Michael Horton on Israel

A reader of a previous post on Israel "Hatred of the Chosen People is Rooted in Hatred of God" asks me what my take is on this post by Michael Horton "Biblical Foreign Policy?" in which Horton criticizes Jack Hayford's recent call for Christians to stand with Israel as a "holy nation."

Horton argues that this is not a biblical position. Why not? He points to Hayford's dispensational theology as the basis for Hayford's argument that Israel is a holy nation and claims that if one does not accept dispensationalism, one has no basis to think of Israel as anything but a secular nation. As such, it has no claim on Christian support any more than any other nation.

Horton says that Hayford roots his argument in the Abrahamic Covenant, but the Abrahamic promises were conditional. The land was part of the blessing but Israel's disobedience led to the forfeiting of the land and the promises are all fulfilled in Christ. He writes:

I can agree with the point that “This relates not only to a people (the Jews), but it also relates to a land (Israel),” and that God did in fact judge Israel’s enemies. Nevertheless, God’s covenant with Israel was itself conditional. It is not Israel’s land, but God’s, and if Israel breaks the covenant, then the land will “vomit out” Israel as well (Lev 20:22). God himself will lay the nation waste through other nations and send his people into exile “east of Eden.” The land will no longer be holy, but common, even though God continues to work through the holy line—the “stump of Jesse,” from whom David and eventually the greater David (the Messiah) would come. Throughout the law (especially in Deuteronomy), the temporal promise of “long life in the land” is conditioned on Israel’s faithfulness to the covenant it swore at Mount Sinai. It is distinct from the unconditional promise of everlasting life and peace through Abraham’s Seed, through whom all families of the earth will be blessed.

The way the Gospels, but especially Hebrews and Galatians, interpret these passages is to recognize that the Sinai covenant was temporary, conditional, and typological. It was a shadow of the things to come—namely, Christ and his kingdom. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus announces a “regime change” from the civil laws of the theocracy. Instead of driving out the enemies of God, the True Israel—those united to Christ—are to endure suffering for the gospel and to pray for their persecutors. God’s common grace is shed on the just and the unjust alike in this age. Having fulfilled its job, like a trailer for a movie, the old covenant is now “obsolete” (Heb 8:13). Christ’s ministry, far greater than that of Moses, fulfills the everlasting promise that God made to Abraham. Now, blessing has come from the Jews to the ends of the earth in Jesus Christ, the true Israel, the true and faithful Son of David, the true Temple.

Now I myself am an amillennialist and there is much in this interpretive approach that I can agree with. The Reformed approach needs to be wary of veering too close to a hard line dispensationalist approach, on the one hand, and also be careful not to give aid and comfort to Marcionism, on the other. I have two problems with Horton's post: one theological and one political and they are closely connected.

The first problem I have with his post is that he comes close to supersessionism in saying that all the promises made to Israel are fulfilled in Christ. (This is not outright Marcionism, but there is definitely a bad odor of Marcionism in the air.) He does explicitly say that he believes that the Church has not replaced Israel and that in the last days there will be a great outpouring of God's Spirit on Israel and both of those statements are true and I am grateful that he makes them. The problem comes when he says that God's future plan for blessing Israel has nothing to do with the State of Israel. Nothing? Isn't that going a bit far? Isn't "not replaced" a rather weak way to describe God's on-going concern for Israel? In fact, if God is not protecting Israel now (and all through the centuries between the first and second comings of Christ) then how could Israel even endure all this time, longer than any other recognizable people? He has to preserve them if He is going to be able to bless them in the last days.

We can agree that the modern State of Israel is not a fulfillment of biblical prophecy in the sense of being the literal fulfillment of OT promises about returning to the land without going so far as to say that the (modern, secular) State of Israel has nothing to do with God's continuing concern for Israel.

When Horton says that there will be an outpouring of God's Spirit on Israel in the last days, he is referring to Rom. 11:26 "All Israel will be saved," which Paul refers to as a mystery. (25) That honors one important Pauline emphasis. But Paul also expresses concern for Israel in the period of "hardening" while the Gentiles are coming in (i.e. now). He warns the Gentiles not to get too proud and urges them to remember that they are being incorporated into Israel, not the other way round.

"But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you." (Rom. 11:17-18 ESV)

It is this consciousness of the Church being dependent upon the root (Israel) and God's on-going concern for Israel now that I find missing in Horton's post. And it leads to an indifference to Israel as a state. If the State of Israel is part of God's providential provision for Israel's continued existence throughout history as we move toward the last days when "all Israel will be saved" then I think Christians have a theological reason to be concerned for Israel.

The second issue is a political one and it follows directly on the theological context just sketched. There is no doubt that Israel is a secular, nation state. But to think that God cannot and does not work through kings, empires, nation-states etc. in working out His Providence would be an unbiblical notion. Scripture explicitly teaches in both Testaments that God raises up kings and states and casts them down according to His mysterious purposes. He brings judgment on oppressors and He causes a witness to His glory to be made possible.

In this context, we need to see the State of Israel as God's gracious provision for the protection of His people. It may well be that the worldwide anti-Semitism of the mid-Twentieth century was just a warm-up for the coming hatred of the Jews to be displayed through the UN and most nations of the world. We don't know, but it is hardly far-fetched to suggest that God's plan for preventing the extermination of the Jews might include a nuclear-armed Israel upon which God's temporal blessing is even now being poured out.

None of us know the future; all we can go on is observations made in the present. Maybe the State of Israel will not endure until the Second Coming, which may be a long way off. Unlike my Dispensational friends, I am agnostic on those points. All I am insisting is that God is using the secular nation-state of Israel to perform a task right now and that that task is the protection of the Jews. I have no problem believing that God can and does accomplish His purposes in history through secular politics. (Ironically, the Orthodox Jews who do not believe in the State of Israel may end up being saved because of it. Such ironies abound in history.)

Politically, Israel is an outpost of civilization in a sea of tyranny and barbarism. Israel is a liberal, democratic, state which honors the rule of law and has a limited government. The only Arabs in the world who enjoy full human rights and the blessings of parliamentary democracy live in Israel. The IDF is the most moral and conscientious army in the world. Israel is a highly educated
country full of people who just want to live in peace. Despite all this, Israel has been attacked repeatedly by Islamofascists whose ideology owes much to Hitlerism and who openly brag about wanting to finish what Hitler started by driving the Jews into the sea.

Under these circumstances, I don't see it as an option, or even as debatable, for Christians to do anything but stand with Israel. Indifference is a moral outrage, just as it was in the 1930s. The only defensible political position I can see is to be pro-Jew and pro-Israel. Anti-Zionism and anti-Israel politics seem to me to be inextricably bound up with a just-below-the-surface anti-Jew attitude. Of course, not all Western anti-Israel activists are anti-Jew, but the number who are is extremely disturbing.

The final sentence of Horton's post is the really problematic one for me:

Yet, by acknowledging that God’s promise of a temporal, geo-political theocracy and land were conditional and that this covenant now lies in the past, we are free to support our friends in Israel and Palestine in their pursuit of a stable peace that will doubtless require trust and negotiation on both sides.

How many problems are packed into that one sentence!

First, he seems to say, contra Paul in Rom. 9-11, that God's covenant with Israel lies in the past. Maybe he does not mean that, but it sure sounds suspicious. Horton seems out of sync with the authoritative Word of God at this point. Paul asks: "Has God rejected his people?" and replies: "By no means!" (Rom. 11:1) He also says: "As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Rom. 11:28-30) For Paul, the covenant with Israel does not lie only in the past; it is a present reality.

Second, he implies that we Western Christians have friends equally in Israel and Palestine, which implies a moral equivalence between the two sides which simply does not exist. (see above)

Third, he says that both sides are required to trust, but who is Michael Horton to demand that Israel trust people who teach anti-Semitism in their schools, name town squares after suicide bombers and claim that a Jewish Temple never stood in Jerusalem? And that is just Fatah; Hamas is far worse!

Western leftists in the media and in liberal Protestantism continually hammer away at the theme that both sides are equally to blame for the conflict. Informed students of the conflict know that is not true. You can't negotiate with people who want to kill you; you can only allow them to do so bit by bit or else resist.

I would argue that there is a compelling set of theological and political reasons for Reformed Christians to stand in support of Israel alongside our Dispensational friends, secular Jews, political liberals and others. In our haste to differentiate ourselves from Dispensationalism let us not run straight into the arms of the Marcionism that has dogged modern, liberal Protestantism since Harnack.

It is ironic that as conservative a theologian as Michael Horton would come to a conclusion on this issue that is such a neat fit with the views of the most liberal of contemporary liberal Protestants. My argument is that avoiding Dispensationalism need not take us so far in that direction.

Hatred of the Chosen People is Rooted in the Hatred of God

The form that the ancient and primal hatred of the Jews takes today is being anti-Israel. (It also often took this form in past eras, such as the Second Temple period.) The hatred of God's Chosen People is rooted in the Fall - in the hatred of God. Obviously, the people of God are easier to get at than the Creator Himself and so they bear the brunt of Satanic/human wrath all through history. You can read about it in the book of Revelation.

Hatred of the Chosen People is irrational, unprovoked and unlike the usual run-of-the-mill ethnic jealousies and prejudices. It is religious: anti-Semitism is the ultimate in religious war. So it quite ironic that today it is the most secular of Western elites - proud and smug that they are not religious fanatics like those other men (like American Evangelicals, for example) - who succumb to this particular fanaticism.

Melanie Phillips, in her column in the Spectator, has a column entitled: "And now, those on the side of civilization." She quotes Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who stands in a great tradition of British Judeophilia. He has some very interesting things to say about today's anti-Israel prejudice:

This malevolent portrayal of the Israeli Defence Forces is carefully and systematically planned, cultivated, developed, expanded and relentlessly driven forward. It is the key part of what amounts to nothing less than a pernicious and increasingly dangerous global conspiracy of propaganda aimed at the total delegitimization of the state of Israel. A conspiracy that has so far exceeded in its international scope, anything dreamt of even by that master of propaganda, Dr Josef Goebbels himself, spreading the idea that Israel is so evil that it has no right even to exist, aiming for the point where that idea becomes an acceptable, mainstream argument in our societies.

It is no surprise of course that such a campaign has great popularity in the Arab and the wider Islamic world any more than Goebbels’s twisted propaganda machine succeeded in persuading so many Germans to his murderous cause. But what is truly shocking is the traction that this propaganda has gained in the west among student bodies, teachers, university authorities, academics, think tanks, human rights organizations, aid agencies, parliamentary bodies, and – perhaps most damaging of all, the mass media.

...The Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission into the 2009 Gaza Conflict, better known as the Goldstone Report, accused Israeli forces of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, deliberately killing, wounding and terrorising innocent civilians...only last month, Judge Richard Goldstone retracted the most serious allegations that he had made, saying that Israel did not in fact intentionally kill or wound innocent civilians. He wrote that if he had known at the time of his investigation what he knows now, the Goldstone Report would have been a very different document. Well, I, with my far more limited resources and access, could have told him a great deal of what is now apparently new to him.

In fact, I did tell him at the time of his report, in evidence I gave to the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2009:

“During its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

I based my opinion on 30 years of experience fighting terrorists and insurgents, of my detailed study of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, of my extensive knowledge and understanding of the Israeli Defence Forces, and of my knowledge of Hamas and its military strategy and tactics. The same strategies and tactics used by insurgents and violent jihadists in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other parts of the world.

Many people have contradicted my assertion about the IDF. But no one has been able to tell me which other army in history has ever done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone. In fact my assertions about the steps taken in that conflict by the Israeli Defence Forces to avoid civilian deaths are inadvertently borne out by a study published by the United Nations itself. A study that shows that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymetric conflict in the history of warfare.

The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to-one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan: three-to-one. In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia.

In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.

This extremely low rate of civilian casualties flatly contradicts many of Goldstone’s original allegations, and the bleating insistence of various other human rights groups about Israel’s alleged crimes against humanity.

His entire speech is well-worth reading; you can read it here.

The world-wide propaganda campaign currently being carried on against the IDF is spear-headed by Muslim nations in cooperation with Western left-wing media, government and union elites. It uses the United Nations as its tool and is in the process of totally discrediting the UN in so doing. In a line from his speech not quoted by Phillips, Kemp said:

A favourite vehicle for the anti-Israel conspiracy is the United Nations Human Rights Council. While continuing to neglect the woefully abused rights of 350 million citizens of the Middle East, not to mention the rights of many more people the world over, the Council focuses its attention almost exclusively on Israel.

I invite you to do some reading on the UN Human Rights Council. It is dominated by human-rights abusing countries and is a complete sham. Its only function is to attack Israel, which it does relentlessly and without regard for the truth. It is so unbalanced and one-sided that its activities can only be described as anti-Jewish propaganda.

It is a particularly pernicious and evil thing to attack the only Western democracy in the Middle East as the incarnation of all evil. Those who let themselves be drawn into anti-Israel propaganda need to beware of the snares of the Evil One. This is not just politics; it is a spiritual war.

Who are the Real Nazis in the Middle East?

In Academic, among professional historians, it is common knowledge that German Fascism took root in the Middle East during World War II and the anti-Semitism that characterizes radical Islam today is directly influenced by German anti-Semitism of the kind that powered Hitler's National Socialism.

The following article, "Iranian Antisemitism: Stepchild of German National Socialism" is by German academic Mathtias Kuntzel and was published in The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan. 2010/5769, pp. 43-51. Kuntzel's book, Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, is published by Telos Press and won the Grand Prize at the 2007 London Book Festival.

"Many Iranians — including those in exile — claim that currently there is not any antisemitism in Iran. They point to the fact that the Jews of Iran today constitute the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country, which is true, and that even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not attack “the Jews,” but rather “the Zionists.”

At the same time, no other regime in the world is as antisemitic as that of the Mullahs in Tehran. It is true that Ahmadinejad does not attack “the Jews”, but instead claims that “two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.”^[1] He says, “For sixty sears now, the Zionists” have blackmailed all western governments.”^[2] “The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors.”^[3] “The Zionists” are responsible for the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists” are responsible for the destruction of the dome of the Golden Mosque in Iraq.^[4] Of course, he invests the word “Zionist” with exactly the same sense with which Hitler once invested the word “Jew”: namely, that of being the incarnation of all evil. Whoever makes Jews responsible for all the ills of the world – whether as “Judas” or “Zionists” — is clearly driven by antisemitism.

Thus, in the special case of Iran we have both individual Jews, who are afforded some degree of protection as long as they agree to live in accordance with the religious concept of Dhimmitude and maintain a low profile, and the Jews in the abstract, i.e. “the Zionists,” who are considered to be the embodiment of global evil.

It is not hard to explain why individual Jews are more or less accepted in Iran: At least since the beginning of the rule of Reza Shah in 1925, the Iranian concept of “Aryanhood” included non-Muslim religious groups such as Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews. This concept of national integration (which also embraces Jews) remains somewhat applicable to this day.

The hatred of the abstract “Jew” and of Israel is more difficult to explain. Israel and Iran have no territorial disputes and there is no Iranian refugee issue; indeed, the pre-1979 period saw decades of good relations with Israel quite unlike the strained relation between Iranians and Arabs. In addition, the delusion of a “global Jewish power” was unknown in the Shia Muslim tradition. It is a hallmark of modern European antisemitism.

Thus the main question is when and how this kind of modern antisemitism, this hatred of the “abstract Jew”, was transplanted to Iran?

In the course of researching my study on the German-Iranian relationship over the past hundred years, I discovered archival documents that at least partly answer this question — documents relating to a period when the intensity of German-Iranian relations reached its peak: during World War II.^[5]

- - snip - -

Politically, the two countries shared common enemies from World War I onwards. Although Iran was officially neutral in both world wars, the hearts of most Iranians beat for Germany. They were battling the same adversaries: the Russians and British and later the Americans and Zionists or Jews. In addition, Germans became immensely popular in their role of technicians and engineers. In the mid-1920s, Germany provided Iran with both the backbone of its industrial infrastructure and the trained personnel needed to run it. Soon the German work ethic was legendary in Iran.

- - snip - -

By the beginning of the World War II, bilateral cooperation between Iran and Germany had become extremely strong. In 1940, Germany accounted for 47,1 percent of all Iranian exports and 42,9 percent of imports.^[6] Eighty percent of all machinery in the country came from Germany. But that is not all that was imported: at the same time, European antisemitic ideology was brought to Tehran in Farsi via a Berlin-based short-wave radio transmitter.

Iran was of strategic importance to Germany. As Hitler envisaged it, after the assault on the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht would also occupy the Caucasus and in so doing, open the way to the Middle East. Then Iran and Iraq would be conquered and the British Empire destroyed from the south. A pro-German movement in Iran reinforced by a concentrated propaganda effort would prepare for the German invasion of that country.

At that time, most Iranians were illiterate and used to listened to the radio in town squares or in bazaars and coffee houses. The German short wave radio station, called Radio Zeesen, was the most popular one in the country.^[7]

“Even if we do broadcast in Persian,” British Ambassador to Tehran Reader Bullard wrote in 1940, “we cannot hope to rival the Germans in interest, as their more violent, abusive style, with exaggerated claims … appeals to the Persian public.”^[8] Bullard had identified one reason for Radio Zeesen’s success. The programs were rabble-rousing rather than factual. Their aim was not to inform, but to incite antisemitism and to boast of German successes. They were targeted at a mass audience rather than intellectuals. Thus, the United Nations was dubbed the “United Jewish Nations,” and the Jordanian king, Emir Abdullah, was mocked as “Rabbi Abdullah” for wanting to negotiate with the Zionists.

The programmes were, however, produced professionally. Inflammatory harangues were skilfully interspersed with Koranic citations and musical interludes adapted to local tastes. In addition, the reception of Radio Zeesen was better than that of any other station broadcasting, since its Berlin transmitter had been upgraded for the 1936 Olympics. Last but not least, in the person of Bahram Sharokh, Radio Zeesen had a first-rate presenter with a good voice and excellent diction at its disposal. A 1941 survey of German propaganda achievements in Iran boasted that “Sharokh [was] always praised as a brilliant speaker and was more popular than even others, including the enemy ones.”^[9]

- - snip - -

It was understood that German-style antisemitism would have little resonance in Iran. “The broad masses lack a feeling for the race idea,” explained the propaganda expert of the German embassy in Tehran. He therefore laid “all the emphasis on the religious motif in our propaganda in the Islamic world. This is the only way to win over the Orientals.”^[12] But how exactly could Nazi Germany, of all countries, conduct a religious propaganda campaign? Ettel had an idea.

“The way to directly connect up with Shi’ite ideas is through the treatment of the Jewish question, which the Muhammedan perceives in religious terms and which, precisely for this reason, makes him susceptible to National Socialism on religious grounds.” Just as hatred of Jews would provide the point of entry into the Shi’ite faith, so religion would serve as the natural medium for the propagation of Jew-hatred. “A way to foster this (anti-Jewish) development would be to highlight Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in ancient times and that of the Führer in modern times,” Ettel recommended to the Foreign Office. “Additionally, by identifying the British with the Jews, an exceptionally effective anti-English propaganda campaign can be conducted among the Shi’ite people.”

Ettel even picked out the appropriate Koranic passages: firstly, sura 5, verse 82: “Truly you will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans”; and, secondly, the final sentence of chapter 2 of Mein Kampf: “In resisting the Jew, I do the work of the Lord.” “By successfully bringing the country’s clergy under the sway of German propaganda, we can win over broad layers of the popular masses,” Ettel wrote in February 1941.^[13]

Ettel’s proposal demonstrates that the Nazis sought to use religion to create an implacable hostility to the Jews. The first step was to awaken religious anti-Judaism, using references to Muhammad and the Koran. Thus, they built on the foundations of a centuries-old Muslim anti-Judaism while at the same time radicalizing it. One way of doing that was to depict Britain as being under Jewish control. Britain was in any case detested by the majority of the Iranian people. They were well-disposed, however, towards the US, as Ettel bitterly complained.

Thus, from late summer 1942 onwards, Radio Zeesen’s antisemitism was mixed with a special type of anti-Americanism as well. For example, Radio Zeesen emphasised “that the Jewish power policy in the Middle East is being implemented by the Americans.” This linkage is “regularly employed to reinforce our anti-American propaganda in Iran.”

- - snip - -

Among the regular listeners to this material was a man of whom the world was later to hear much more: Ruhollah Khomeini . . .

Here is Kuntzel's conclusion:

"It is not the technology that makes the Iranian nuclear programme so dangerous, but the ideological context within which it arises. For the first time since the splitting of the atom, we find the destructive force of the bomb linked to the fury of a holy anti-Jewish war.

“Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it”, suggested Tawfik Hamid, a former member of Jamaa Islamiya, an Islamic terrorist group led by Dr. Aiman Al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al-Qaeda.^[23] Today, this challenge applies not only to Iran, where hundreds of thousands of opponents of Ahmadinejad want to know what went wrong with Khomeinism and why. The impact of Radio Zeesen also ought to be discussed also in the Western world, where still too many pundits are wrongly trying to scapegoat Israel for the old and new antisemitism of the Iranian regime."

Read it all here. This history is why the term "Islamofascism" is correct as an objective description of radical, antisemitic, political Islam. There is much in Islam's past history that is anti-Jewish going all the way back to the early days of the Prophet. But in the 20th century a dangerous mutation occurred as traditional Islamic-Jewish rivalry fused with the virus of modern, antisemitism of European origin.

For the American administration naively to address Islam as the religion of peace and to treat Islamic terrorism as the work of individual crackpots here and there is just inadequate as a response. It makes Neville Chamberlain's response to Hitler look strong and uncompromising - and the analogy is exquisitely appropriate.

Is Worldwide Anti-Semitism as Bad Today as it Was in the 1930s?

The growing anti-Zionist, anti-Israel rage is fueling the ancient plague of Jew hatred that is the disease of the human spirit which refuses to be stamped out.

In the 1930s people were convinced that Jewish bankers pulled the strings and manipulated the world for their own financial gain. The Left contended that powerful Jews and Capitalists conspired against the masses. Today the powerful state of Israel has taken the place of the powerful Jewish bankers in the fetid imagination of the Jew haters. This way of thinking allows them to claim not to hate individual Jews per se, but only to be concerned about the Bankers/Zionists who have money, power and influence. Basically, anti-Semites resent Jews having any power whatsoever and think that, if they are allowed to live, it should be in ghettos and with severe restrictions that keep them down. So it seems justified to them to resent it when Jews get uppity and dare to fight back against prejudice, hate and marginalization.

Today, the world-wide campaign conducted by the Left and Islam against the State of Israel is so successful that the media is biased, the European Union is almost completely anti-Israel and even Great Britain, which once, when Christianity was more influential in that country, was Israel's greatest friend, has now turned against Israel.

Here is a typical news story from Reuters headlined: "Israeli air strike kills two Hamas men in Gaza." I want to make some comments in [square brackets in red.]

[First, we cannot let the title go by without comment. Notice that they are "Hamas men" not "terrorists" or "extremists" or "child killers" - all of which would be more accuarate as we shall see.]

An Israeli air strike killed two militants from the Islamist group Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday as a fresh spike in cross-border violence continued for a second day. [And notice that the story leads with Israel's action as if it were not a response to an extreme provocation. The story does not say Israel's action was unprovoked; it doesn't have to when it can subtly imply this by the way it sets up the narrative.]

A Palestinian group said it fired two rockets into Israel around dawn and Israeli shelling also wounded two Hamas militants on a patrol.

The Israeli military said it had "identified two terrorist squads from Hamas" and had hit them from the ground and air.

Two years of low-level skirmishing on the border escalated suddenly last month when the Islamist Hamas group which rules Gaza fired a barrage of rockets at Israel, triggering a surge of fighting which killed 16 Palestinians. [Note the moral equivalence implied by the term "skirmishing." A more accurate way of describing it would be two years of Hamas attacks on Israel and Israeli attempts to prevent further attacks.]

Analysts in Gaza said Hamas wanted to bolster its claim to leadership of the divided Palestinian national movement and divert attention from popular demands -- fueled by the 'Arab Spring' -- for an end to the split with its Fatah rivals.

But it had miscalculated Israel's response. [Again, without saying so explicitly, the subtle implication is that Israel's response was extreme or overdone. "Who could have expected such a harsh response?" is the implication.]

That spurt of violence subsided, but fighting flared again on Thursday when Hamas gunmen fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, wounding two. [At last, halfway into the story we come to the real source of Israel's response. These murderous, evil, inhuman, thugs deliberately targeted a school bus. This is a war crime; it should be condemned as such by the UN, the EU, the US and the entire world. It should prompt international outrage and serious retaliation against Hamas - boycotts, loss of aid, etc. But the silence is deafening. Only Israel cares. Only Israel responds to protect innocent school children. After all, they are just Jews.] Israel retaliated with planes and armored forces, killing five Palestinians. [How could they be so restrained? This type of crime deserves a much more serious response.]

Hamas took responsibility for the bus attack, [They are proud of it! And they obviously, with good reason, expect no significant repercussions internationally.] and an Israeli analyst said it was plainly smarting from recent setbacks, including an April 2 Israel airstrike that killed three Gazans, and which it had vowed to avenge.

But firing a long-range anti-tank weapon at a clearly marked yellow school bus may have been a further miscalculation. [A "miscalculation"? This is the best Reuters can do? A "miscalculation"?]

"Red lines were crossed," Tal Russo, head of Southern Command, said on Israeli army radio. [The only moral language in this article comes in quotes of Israelis.]

The United Nations and European Union on Friday voiced concern over the rising tensions and called on the sides to show restraint and bring an end to the latest round of fighting. [Here is the pernicious "moral equivalence" again. The murderer slashing the victim's throat and the policeman's attempt to arrest the criminal are both morally equivalent. That is how they see it. Killing terrorist murders and shooting a missile at a school bus - exactly the same thing. So both sides need to be addressed in exactly the same way.]

NO "CALM" YET

Minister of Home Front Defense Matan Vilnai said Israel was locked in a "war of attrition" with Hamas.

"We are taking the proper steps, defensively and offensively. Yesterday, without a doubt, there was a serious deviation with the missile fire on the (school) bus," Vilnai told Army Radio.

He declined to say if operations were ceasing.

Gaza militants on Thursday fired 45 rockets and mortars into Israel. Israeli forces struck targets throughout the densely populated territory, including Hamas positions, smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt and Gaza's derelict airport.

Five Palestinians were killed and 30 others were injured.

Hamas has again said it was interested in restoring "calm" to the front and was trying to get smaller militant groups to halt attacks. [And Reuters just takes Hamas' word for it? School bus attackers are agents of restraint? It is Hamas the peace-loving freedom fighters try to calm down the wild, extremists in the IDF, I guess.] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take all necessary action to protect its citizens, but that he hoped the "situation will be contained."

During Thursday's barrage, Israel used for the first time its short-range Iron Dome interceptor. Its missiles destroyed in mid-flight a rocket heading for the city of Ashkelon.

Vilnai said Israel will consider deploying further Iron Dome systems near Gaza to join the two that are currently stationed there, but hinted at budgetary restraints.

Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The two wings of the Palestinian national movement remain enemies.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ari Rabinovitch; editing by Douglas Hamilton and Paul Taylor)

This article is typical. Such articles appear in the world press every day. And that is the measure of how biased the media is against Israel. The fact that these kind of articles, which portray Israel as being as guilty as Hamas, are common reveals the bias.

By the way, the idea that the "occupied territories" are the reason for the conflict is obviously untrue. All these rockets being fired into Israel now are coming from the Gaza Strip. Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and then unilaterally withdrew from it. So problem solved, right? Wrong. The issue is not the "occupied territories" but rather the existence of Israel. Nothing will satisfy the Islamofascists other than the destruction of Israel and, preferably, the genocide of all Jews.

And even, they will not be happy. They will simply turn all the resources, funding, weapons, fanaticism and energy into the Jihad against the West. Europe will be the next battleground. For the Islamofascists, Spain is as much part of the territory of Islam as Israel is. And Iran will soon have nuclear tipped missiles that can reach European capitals.

As always, Jews are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to human rights. Fighting anti-Semitism is the right thing to do in any case, but it is also in today's world a matter of enlightened self-interest for Westerners. Unfortunately, in order to act according to enlightened self-interest one first has to be enlightened. So until the West wakes up from its dark, nihilistic dreaming, it will continue to slide toward destruction. History repeats itself and the consequences for Europe and the world will be as horrifying as those of the early 1940s.

Defending Free Speech Against the Hard Left and Islam

Geert Wilders is fighting for freedom in Europe and there are two fronts: one is political Islam and the other is the hard Left. He is not a far right or fascist; he is one of the few true liberals left in politics in Europe.

He has an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled: "European Free Speech Under Attack" and this is how it begins:

""The lights are going out all over Europe," British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey famously remarked on the eve of World War I. I am reminded of those words whenever I read about Europeans being dragged into court for so-called hate-speech crimes.

Recently, Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, had to stand trial in Copenhagen because he had criticized Islam. Mr. Hedegaard was acquitted, but only on the technicality that he had not known that his words, expressed in a private conversation, were being taped. Last week in Vienna, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian human-rights activist, was fined €480 for calling the Islamic prophet Muhammad a pedophile because he had consummated his marriage to a nine-year old girl. Meanwhile, my own trial in Amsterdam is dragging on, consuming valuable time that I would rather spend in parliament representing my million-and-a-half voters.

How can all this be possible in supposedly liberal Europe? The Dutch penal code states that anyone who either "publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in any way that incites hatred against a group or people" or "in any way that insults a group of people because of their race, their religion or belief, their hetero- or homosexual inclination or their physical, psychological or mental handicap, will be punished."

Early in 2008, a number of leftist and Islamic organizations took me to court, claiming that by expressing my views on Islam I had deliberately "insulted" and "incited hatred" against Muslims. I argued then, as I will again in my forthcoming book, that Islam is primarily a totalitarian ideology aiming for world domination."

This opinion of his - that Islam is a totalitarian political system disguised as a religion - is certainly an extreme opinion. But it is a reasonable point of view with a lot of actual evidence in its favor. It is not based on fantasy but on horrible violent acts and the historical record. What ought to upset every freedom-loving person is that both Islam and the hard Left both want to shut him down, silence him and prevent an open debate.

Every time the supposed "religion of peace" reacts to some provocation like the burning of a Koran or the publication of a cartoon by murdering, burning and raping, it simply adds support to Wilders' point. And every time he is hauled into court by left wing elitists or receives death threats from outraged Muslims he is proven to be right.

The world thought that the Fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of totalitarianism in Europe. How naive those who thought that look now. Wilders writes:

"My trial is a political trial. It is tragic that after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, political trials in Europe were not cast onto the ash heap of history. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has previously referred to the European Union as the "EUSSR." One of his arguments is that in the EU, as in the former USSR, there is no freedom of speech."

Just as the Greeks were conquered militarily by Rome and yet conquered Rome in language, culture and ideas, so the ideas of Marxism are slowly but surely taking over Western Europe and pushing the ideals of liberty to the curb. The secularist, ruling elites hate Christianity so much that even Communism and Islam - the two greatest threats to European culture in history - do not scare them. Their blind, irrational hatred of reason, science, freedom and the Christianity that created these cultural goods drive them to destroy Europe's freedom in the name of Secularism, Scientism and Socialism.

In the 1930s, two left-wing groups, the Marxists and the Nazis, fought each other but united against the liberal Weimar Republic. Both the International Socialist (the Communists) and the National Socialists (the Nazis) wanted power. But the both hated liberalism and Christianity so much that they united against liberal democracy. History has a way of repeating itself until we learn from it.

Geert Wilders is not right about everything. I disagree with him on some issues. But he is a hero and he is courageous. Those who would kill or silence him reveal themselves to be enemies of mankind in so doing.

Read it all here.

Appeaement Never Works: Free Speech is Basic to Western Culture

Western cultural elites do not understand what they are dealing with in radical Islam. They actually think appeasement will bring peace and good will. Appeasement does not work with fanatical, political movements that reject Christianity and Western principles of morality and justice. Appeasement only encourages and emboldens those who already think the West is so weak and hapless that a few good kicks will knock the entire structure down.

Rob Taylor writes in "The West Must Not Trade Free Speech for Islamic 'Good Will'":

In a stunning act of bipartisan moral cowardice, Harry Reid told the world that he’s considering a “probe” into the Florida pastor who burned a copy of the Koran, while Lindsey Graham announced his belief that Americans should give up their First Amendment rights to avoid offending Muslims. The irony that this shameful display happened on a show called “Face the Nation” was lost on the spineless appeasers who lack the dignity to feel ashamed when surrendering to barbarians thousands of miles away. In the wake of savages rioting in Afghanistan, two of our senior lawmakers are advocating the implementation of Shariah-like laws to protect one religious document above all others.

And what would we get in return? The “good will” of the Muslim street? The same “good will” displayed when Palestinians–who live off U.S. aid–danced in the streets after 9/11?

Why should we even want the "good will" of those who believe we are only fit to be their servants? How can rational bargaining with such irrational fanatics ever work? Or have we given up already? Are we merely managing our own decline? In many parts of Europe this is undoubtedly the case, but the US is too young and vigorous to give up now. I have to believe that America can do better than the likes of Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham.

Hopefully the Tea Party will take away Graham's Republican nomination next time around and after 2012 Harry Reid will no longer control the Senate. Will they be replaced by people who will stand up for freedom, justice and peace? Or will servile appeasers continue to multiply? We shall see.

Just to be absolutely clear: I repudiate as distasteful and unnecessary the burning of Korans. If all Reid and Graham said was that they abhor such and action and condemn Terry Jones, I would have no problem with that whatsoever. But when they are ready to take away American liberties and restrict free speech in order to placate violent, extremist, Fascists, then I have more of a problem with them than I do with either Terry Jones or the Islamofascists. Reid and Graham are United States Senators. They, at least, ought to know better.

Author of Goldstone Report Admits the Report is Wrong: Israel Did Not Target Civilians Deliberately

In a bombshell op ed piece in the Washington Post the author of the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians in its Operation Cast Lead against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, has now recanted. Mark Russell summarizes this stunning turn of events:

"The author of a UN report on Israel's 2008 Gaza invasion has retracted the explosive accusation that Israel deliberately targeted citizens, reports the New York Times, sending shockwaves through Israel. "Everything we said has proven to be true,” says PM Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for the report to be completely scrapped. “Israel did not intentionally harm civilians. Its institutions and investigative bodies are worthy, while Hamas intentionally fired upon innocent civilians and did not examine anything.” "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document," wrote Goldstone in the Washington Post."

Israel is not guilty of crimes against humanity or war crimes. Were civilians killed? Yes. Was it deliberate? No. Does Israel investigate specific incidents and punish anyone in its armed forces who breaks the rules of civilized warfare? Yes. Was Israel was telling the truth all along? Yes. Do those who were so quick to condemn Israel look bad? Yes.

Goldstone also says in the article that Hamas has utterly failed to investigate any of its own serious incidents of targeting civilians. This is not surprising, seeing as Hamas is a terrorist organization that targets civilians as a cornerstone of its strategy. Was Goldstone naive to think they would cooperate? Yes. Has he admitted the truth? Yes.

Here is Goldstone in the Washington Post:

"Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms."

Wait, he is saying the UN Human Rights Council should condemn these crimes. Does he mean to suggest that it hasn't? No, it has not condemned them. That gives you some idea of how biased the UN is. Goldstone again:

I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.

There is no good reason to trust anything the UN says about Israel. It is dominated by Arab countries and their European colonies and they, with the help of the radical Left in the West, have turned the UN into an anti-Israel and anti-America body. The UN has all sorts of political agendas but they all have one common thread: they are anti-Western. Israel gets the brunt of it because they are considered to be the most vulnerable, but don't think that the West will be spared if it offers Israel up as a blood sacrifice. That is what makes the European subservience to Islamofascism so horribly ironic and pathetic. The best they can be hoped for is to be killed last - not exactly the sort of courage and conviction that made Europe great.

Israel is a democracy. Is it perfect? No, but what country could be perfect in the face of the hatred, fanaticism and prejudice of the militant Islam that drives Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood? We should stand with Israel and pray for peace. But we should be leery of anything coming out of the UN.

University of California - Irvine Stands Up for Free Speech

The following video is long but you can get the main point by watching just the first few minutes. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was invited to speak by the Political Science Department. This is one of over a thousand such academic events held every year in the university. But it was disrupted systematically by Muslim students shouting and trying to prevent the speech from going ahead.

This kind of hateful attack on free speech takes place routinely on American and Canadian university campuses. It is carried out by Muslim student organizations such as the Muslim Student Association and the tactics are those of the hard Left. These Muslims are aided and abetted by left-wing professors, students and administrators, who are not liberal and not committed to free speech or the concept of the university as a place for the civil exchange of ideas.

What this video shows, however, is the university exhibiting (for a change) a bit of spine and standing up to the barbarians. Watch for yourself and compare the civilized and principled deportment of the organizers, the representatives of the university and the ambassador to the wild, fanatical, irrational and hate-fueled strong-arm tactics of the protesters.



These young students were born in the United States. Their anti-Semitism and hard-left attacks on free speech come as much from the American Left as from their Muslim culture. Both the Leftist ideology and the Islamist ideology constitute a clear and present danger to freedom, democracy, the rule of law, the protection of minority rights and freedom of speech. We must stand against those who would undermine our political system and our culture of freedom. We must understand who they are and what they stand for and we must not allow them to portray themselves as liberal for they are illiberal and fascistic.

If fascism comes to the US, it will not come from the Tea Party or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, but from people like these doing things like this. Remember, universities are where we are supposed to debate opposing ideas. When this is no longer possible, then universities no longer exist and a significant bulwark against barbarism has fallen.

Geert Wilders Speech in Rome: Facing the Potential Fall of the West Without Giving Up Hope

Andrew G. Bostom at American Thinker Blog reports on a speech given yesterday by Geert Wilders entitled: "The Failure of Multiculturalism and How to Turn the Tide." Bostom writes:

Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders made a seminal address yesterday evening (March 25, 2011) at the Annual Lecture of the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome, Italy.

As is his wont, Wilders presentation moved far beyond the timorous platitudes about the most obvious (and dangerous) failures of cultural relativism belatedly echoed by Western European leaders Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy, and David Cameron. Wilders demands that the West acknowledge the jihad-both cultural and military-being waged against it openly and incessantly by institutional Islam, Muslim nations, and the global umma. The Ducth Parlaimentarian concludes his eloquent and informative speech by insisting that four concrete measures must be taken immediately, quoting Ronald Reagan, so we can "...act today to preserve tomorrow."

When was the last time you actually heard somebody defending Western civilization as the highest and most advanced civilizaton in history? Yet, as a matter of objective fact, it is. We are throwing away a glorious heritage for a mess of multicultural pottage. Here is the beginning of the speech:

Signore e signori, ladies and gentlemen, dear friendsof the Magna Carta Foundation, molte grazie. Thank you forinviting me to Rome. It is great to be here in this beautiful city which for manycenturies was the capital and the centre of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture.

Together with Jerusalem and Athens, Rome is the cradle of our Western civilization – the most advanced and superior civilization the world has ever known.

As Westerners, we share the same Judeo-Christian culture. I am from the Netherlands and you are from Italy. Our national cultures are branches of the same tree. We do not belong to multiple cultures, but to different branches of one single culture. This is why when we come to Rome, we all come home in a sense. We belong here, as we also belong in Athens and in Jerusalem.

It is important that we know where our roots are. If we lose them we become deracinated. We become men and women without a culture.

I am here today to talk about multiculturalism. This term has a number of different meanings. I use the term to refer to a specific political ideology. It advocates that all cultures are equal. If they are equal it follows that the state is not allowed to promote any specific cultural values as central and dominant. In other words: multiculturalism holds that the state should not promote a leitkultur, which immigrants have to accept if they want to live in our midst.

It is this ideology of cultural relativism which the German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently referred to when she said that multiculturalism has proved “an absolute failure.”

My friends, I dare say that we have known this all along. Indeed, the premise of the multiculturalist ideology is wrong. Cultures are not equal. They are different, because their roots are different. That is why the multiculturalists try to destroy our roots.

He compares the situation in Europe today to the fifth century when Rome fell to the Germanic barbarian invaders:

In the 5^th century, the Roman Empire fell to the Germanic Barbarians. There is no doubt that the Roman civilization was far superior to that of the Barbarians. And yet, Rome fell. Rome fell because it had suffered a loss of belief in its own civilization. It had lost the will to stand up and fight for survival.

Rome did not fall overnight. Rome fell gradually. The Romans scarcely noticed what was happening. They did not perceive the immigration of the Barbarians as a threat until it was too late. For decades, Germanic Barbarians, attracted by the prosperity of the Empire, had been crossing the border.

At first, the attraction of the Empire on newcomers could be seen as a sign of the cultural, political and economic superiority of Rome. People came to find a better life which their own culture could not provide. But then, on December 31^st in the year 406, the Rhine froze and tens of thousands of Germanic Barbarians, crossed the river, flooded the Empire and went on a rampage, destroying every city they passed. In 410, Rome was sacked.

The fall of Rome was a traumatic experience. Numerous books have been written about the cataclysmal event and Europeans were warned not to make the same mistake again. In 1899, in his book ‘The River War,’ Winston Churchill warned that Islam is threatening Europe in the same way as the Barbarians once threatened Rome. “Mohammedanism,” Churchill wrote – I quote – “is a militant and proselytizing faith. No stronger retrograde force exists in the World. […] The civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” End of quote.

Churchill is right. However, if Europe falls, it will fall because, like ancient Rome, it no longer believes in the superiority of its own civilization. It will fall because it foolishly believes that all cultures are equal and that, consequently, there is no reason why we should fight for our own culture in order to preserve it.

This failure to defend our own culture has turned immigration into the most dangerous threat that can be used against the West. Multiculturalism has made us so tolerant that we tolerate the intolerant.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: Our opponents are keenly aware of our weakness. They realize that the pattern which led to the fall of Rome, is at play today in the West. They are keenly aware of the importance of Rome as a symbol of the West. Over and over again they hint at the fall of Rome. Rome is constantly on their minds.

But he argues that the threat today is much worse than in the fifth century. Whereas the barbarians envied and assimilated to the culture of Rome, Islam seeks to destroy and supplant it.

Having destroyed Rome, the Germanic tribes eventually tried to rebuild it. In 800, the Frankish leader Charlemagne had himself crowned Roman Emperor. Three hundred years later, the Franks and the other Europeans would go on the Crusades in defence of their Christian culture. The Crusades were as Oriana Fallaci wrote – I quote – a “counter-offensive designed to stem Islamic expansionism in Europe.” Rome had fallen, but like a phoenix it had risen again.

Contrary to the Barbarians which confronted Rome, the followers of Muhammad are driven by an ideology which they want to impose on us.

Islam is a totalitarian ideology. Islamic Shariah law supervises every detail of life. Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to our values. Respect for people who think otherwise, the equality of men and women, the equality of homosexuals and heterosexuals, respect for Christians, Jews, unbelievers and apostates, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, they are all under pressure because of islamization.

Europe is islamizing at a rapid pace. Many European cities have large islamic concentrations. In some neighbourhoods, Islamic regulations are already being enforced. Women’s rights are being trampled. We are confronted with headscarves and burqa’s, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honour-killings. “In each one of our cities” says Oriana Fallaci, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.” – End of quote.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: The multiculturalist Left is facilitating islamization. Leftist multiculturalists are cheering for every new shariah bank, for every new islamic school, for every new mosque. Multiculturalists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties.

He quotes Merkel, Cameron and Sarkozy, who all have recognized the failure of multiculturalism and rightly points out that they have no answers, no program, no alternative. They are caught in the trap of relativism out of which multiculturalism springs. So he offers his own program of action:

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for change. We must make haste. Time is running out. Ronald Reagan said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow”. That is why I propose the following measures in order to preserve our freedom:

First, we will have to defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. If we are free to speak, we will be able to tell people the truth and they will realize what is at stake.

Second, we will have to end cultural relativism. To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity.

Third, we will have to stop Islamization. Because more Islam means less freedom. We must stop immigration from Islamic countries, we must expel criminal immigrants, we must forbid the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in Europe already. Immigrants must assimilate and adapt to our values: When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Fourth, we must restore the supremacy and sovereignty of the nation-state. Because we are citizens of these states, we can take pride in them. We love our nation because they are our home, because they are the legacy which our fathers bestowed on us and which we want to bestow on our children. We are not multiculturalists, we are patriots. And because we are patriots, we are willing to fight for freedom.

Let me end with a final – and a positive – remark: Though the situation is bad and multiculturalism is still predominant, we are in better shape than the Roman Empire was before its fall.

The Roman Empire was not a democracy. The Romans did not have freedom of speech. We are the free men of the West. We do not fight for an Empire, we fight for ourselves. We fight for our national republics. You fight for Italy, I fight for the Netherlands, others fight for France, Germany, Britain, Denmark or Spain. Together we stand. Together we represent the nations of Europe.

I am confident that if we can safeguard freedom of speech and democracy, our civilization will be able to survive. Europe will not fall. We, Europe’s patriots, will not allow it.

I do not know of anyone else who sees the danger to the West in such a clear way, yet does not despair but declares that there is hope for the West. Wildeers is the Churchill of the 21st century. The question is: "Will Britain follow him?" because if even Britain will turn around and take a stand, Europe could be saved.

Read it all here, at Wildeers' website.

The War of Obliteration against Israel May Have Already Begun

Wednesday's bombing of a bus stop in Jerusalem marks a new and ominous stage in the Arab war against Israel. Caroline Glick has some depressing but possibly accurate analysis in The Jerusalem Post in a column entitled: "Understanding the Third Terror War."

What are we to make of the fact that no one has taken credit for Wednesday's bombing in Jerusalem?

Wednesday's bombing was not a stand-alone event. It was part and parcel of the new Palestinian terror war that is just coming into view. As Israel considers how to contend with the emerging onslaught, it is important to notice how it differs from its predecessors. . .

Like its two predecessors which began in 1987 and 2000, the new terror war's primary purpose is not to murder Jews. Killing is just an added perk. The new war's primary purpose is to weaken Israel politically in order to bring about its eventual collapse. . .

Fatah is in the midst of a global campaign to build international support for a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence in September. From Israel's perspective, the campaign is threatening for two reasons. First, a unilaterally declared Palestinian state will be in a de facto state of war with Israel. Second, if the Palestinians secure international recognition for their "state" in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the move will place 500,000 Jews who live in these areas in the international crosshairs.

Much of the discussion about this goal has centered on whether or not US President Barack Obama will veto a UN Security Council resolution endorsing such a declaration. And based on Obama's behavior to date, the Palestinians have good reason to believe that he may support their move. But in truth, the discussion about how the US will respond to the planned Palestinian declaration is largely beside the point. The point of the threatened declaration is not to get a UN Security Council resolution supporting it. The point is to get the EU to enact further sanctions against Israel.

And this brings us back to the new policy of not taking credit for attacks on Israel, and to the decision to launch a new terror war in general. On the face of it, at such a sensitive time for the Palestinians diplomatically, it would seem that they would want to keep their traditional good cop-Fatah, bad cop-Hamas routine going and have Hamas take the credit for the recent attacks. Indeed, it would seem that the Palestinians would want to hold off on attacks altogether until after they declare independence.

The fact that Fatah and Hamas have neither waited until after September to attack nor sought to differentiate themselves from one another as the attacks coalesce into a new terror campaign indicates strongly that the Palestinians no longer feel they need to pretend to oppose terror to maintain European support for their war against Israel.

The Palestinians assess that Europe is swiftly moving towards the point where it no longer needs to pretend to be fair to Israel. The British, French and German votes in favor of the Palestinians' anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution last month were the latest sign that the key European governments have adopted openly hostile policies towards Israel.

More importantly, these policies are not the consequence of Palestinian lobbying efforts and so Israel cannot hope to change them through counter-lobbying efforts. Europe's abandonment of even the guise of fairness towards Israel is the product of domestic political realities in Europe itself. Between the rapidly expanding political power of Europe's Muslim communities and the virulently anti-Israel positions nearly universally adopted by the European media, European governments are compelled to adopt ever more hostile positions towards Israel to appease their Israel-hating publics and Muslim communities.

Take British Prime Minister David Cameron for example. When Cameron called Gaza "an open air prison" last year, it wasn't because he had just spoken to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. And he certainly wasn't acting out of conviction. Cameron surely knew that his statement was an utter lie. And he also surely knew that Hamas is a jihadist terror group that shares the ideology of its fellow Muslim Brotherhood spin-off al Qaida.

But for Cameron, far more important than Gaza's relative prosperity and Hamas's genocidal goals was the fact that in the last British elections, the UK's Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC-UK) successfully ousted six members of parliament who expressed support for Israel.

The Palestinians recognize that they don't need to pretend to be good to get Europe to support them. After the people of Europe have been brainwashed by their media and intimidated by the Muslim communities, they have developed a Pavlovian response regarding Israel whereby every mention of Israel makes them hate it more. It doesn't matter if the story is about the massacre of Israeli children or the bombing of synagogues and nursery schools. They know that Israel is the guilty party and expect their governments to punish it.

What the Palestinian silence on who committed what atrocity tells us is that in this new terror war, the Palestinians believe they cannot lose. With Europe in tow, Fatah and Hamas feel free to combine their forces and advance both militarily and politically."

If Glick is right it means that we have reached a tipping point in a process that has been going on since the oil crisis of the 1970s when the Arab nations began to pressure Europe to bow to their demand to de-legitimize Israel. Europe has lived in fear of the Arab oil powers ever since and the left-wing intellectual elite has chosen the path of appeasement in apparent ignorance of the fact that this path has no end.

Obama will likely be defeated in 2012, so there is a window for a decisive war to destroy Israel in the next two years before a Republican, pro-Israel president is sworn in. From the Muslin perspective, both Arab and Persian, other key factors include the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The US is not cultivating new friends or defending old ones in the Middle East right now and this self-imposed weakness is increasing the chances of all-out war to destroy Israel. If Europe sides with Muslims, Israeli nuclear is balanced by Iranian nuclear weapons and the US is slow, dithering and indecisive, then Israel will stand alone in this fight.

And if Israel falls, God help Europe.