Maligning the Awful Truth

The usual suspects respond to Jonathan Kay's review of Martin Gilbert's In Ishmael's House. First up, the CAIR-CAN flak:

Jonathan Kay weaves a narrative that presents Muslims as pathological Jew-haters, and Islam, at its very core, as anti-Judaism. The inference is that Muslims either hate Jewish people or (at best) are the adherents of a religion that is hateful. What are people to take from away from such commentary? If I were not Muslim, it would encourage me to despise Muslims, and if I were Muslim, it would encourage me to despise myself.

Julia Williams, human rights and civil liberties officer, Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ottawa.

What are people to take away from such unpleasant and inconvenient truths? How about this: for Jewry, living in Ishmael's house was rather like being Cinderella living in her stepmother's house. Worse, even, because while stepmama and her ungainly daughters may have been really mean and looked upon Cindy as lowly and second class, they didn't liken her to beasts (specifically, the monkey and the swine) and didn't compel her as per sharia laws to ransom her life each year in a painful and humiliating manner while paying a dhimmi tax. Nor did Cindy have to worry she'd be killed in a sudden pogrom.

Next, Khaled Moummar, head of the Canadian Arab Federation:

The article resorts to accusations and name-calling without considering that Israel's actions have resulted in its political isolation. After investigating Israel's assault on Gaza last year, Justice Richard Gladstone accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A UN Human Rights Council investigation found that Israel broke international laws during a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last May.

The recently approved loyalty oath is viewed by various Israeli politicians and academics as not only discriminating against non-Jews but also as revealing a hatred of liberal values. Labour Party Minister Isaac Herzog warned that it is another step towards Fascism. Israeli professor Gavriel Solomon said that "the idea of Judenrein (Jew free zone), or Arab-rein is not new," and he compares the proposed mandatory Israeli oath to the racist laws passed by the Nazis in 1935.

Flotilla? UN? Judge, er, Goldstone? Jews as Nazis? Gotta take my hat off to you, Khaled. You managed to ignore/avoid/block out every wretched thing Kay wrote about, the whole horrid narrative of Muslims' historical treatment of Jews, and confect a poisonous little ode to Israel's supposed infamy.

You da champ!