Death By Excessive Effervescence

Today's "Fun Fact": You are more likely to be killed by a flying champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.

"The Buck Stops There"

Obama's motto.

What's the Deal With "Liberal Zionists"?

They're so angsty--and soooo annoying:

To be a “liberal Zionist” is about key words and key people. Everyone reads Beinart and Grossman. They speak about “moral struggle” and they see Zionism as primarily being a movement one argues with, not that one is truly a part of. These “liberal Zionists” don’t discuss Israel the way progressives in France or the US discuss their countries. They don’t even discuss it the way Palestinian radical leftist communists discuss Palestine. They are profoundly only operative as an oppositional group. They put Israel on an Israelocentric pedestal, mark it as the cause of much of the region’s problems and the cause of most anti-semitism, and subject it to a tirade of critique they don’t subject any other movement or nation to...

"Run for the Tunnels"

My name for the this year's Run for Palestine, which is being held today, rain or shine or homemade Easy-Bake oven rockets.

Canadian Council of Imams Condemns ISIS for Eschewing the Laws of The Dhimma, Dammit

The gist of its missive is that ISIS's primary faux pas is its failure to hew to sharia law's strict regulations for Jews and Christian living under Islamic rule (a.k.a. the dhimma pact):

Since their advent, ISIS mercenaries have caused nothing but destruction and corruption and have violated core Islamic teachings and principles such as the sanctity of life and the importance of treating others with dignity and respect. By self-admission, ISIS has terrorized different religious and ethnic communities in Syria and Iraq and they have destroyed Mosques and Shrines of Muslim scholars and leaders. Anyone who disagrees with them is murdered and they expropriate the property of others. 

ISIS attacks on non-Muslim minorities in Syria and Iraq, who have lived peacefully for centuries alongside Muslims, clearly demonstrate the deviant nature of this group and their renunciation of the Prophet Muhammad’s (peace and blessings of God be upon him) teachings and clear instructions regarding the full protection, privileges and rights to people of other faiths [reference: for example, see the Charters of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mount Sinai by Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) in 628 CE]. Muslims throughout the centuries have honoured and applied these rights in all lands they ruled. 

At the present, we call upon all Canadian Muslims to denounce this deliberate perversion of the Muslim faith and to dissociate themselves totally from such a despicable ideology and dangerous people who intentionally use the name of Islam in their ongoing campaign of distortion and destruction.

So that's our choice? Decapitation or dhimmitude? 

Thanks for nothin', imams.

Justin Trudeau's Right Hand Man Is Helping Him Lock Up That All Important Pro-Sharia Vote

Ezra Levant writes:

Of course, most Canadian Muslims want to live in peace and freedom like the rest of us. But many don’t abide Harper’s strong support for Israel. And according to a 2007 Environics poll of Canadian Muslims, taken after the arrest of the so-called Toronto 18 terrorist plotters, a significant number actually support terrorism. Fully 13% of Canadian Muslims said the planned terrorist attacks would have been either completely or somewhat justified.

There are about a million Muslims in Canada – which means about 130,000 actually support a massive terrorist attack on their own country. Add to that Muslims who wouldn’t go so far as to support terrorism against Canada, but who merely despise Harper’s support for Israel, and you’re talking about a very large voting block – especially in certain ridings, including Trudeau’s own.

Which is precisely why Trudeau has targeted them. And he’s hired the right guy for the job: Omar Alghabra, the Saudi-born extremist who used to run the anti-Semitic Canadian Arab Federation. That lobby group claims that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorists. Normally, in politics, Alghabra is someone you keep far away from you. But Trudeau keeps Alghabra very close – he’s been the key to unlocking the anti-Israel vote, the anti-Semitic vote, the pro-Hamas vote, and the pro-sharia vote.

Sounds like a winning strategy to me, one based on the appeal of bouncy hair and Zionhass.

Imbecillic Dhimmitude Down Under

Are these the dumbest, most supine infidels on the planet? I vote "yes":

Christian and Jewish leaders have rallied to support the Muslim community, asking members of the Australian public to join them in a campaign called “We’ll love Muslims 100 years”. 

Rabbi Zalman Kastel will join Australian Christian Churches pastor, Brad Chilcott, Tim Costello and other denominational leaders in three events in New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia on Friday to declare their support for Australian Muslims. 

The title makes a play on a recent headline in the Weekend Australian, “We’ll fight Islam 100 years”, which accompanied a story quoting a former head of army Peter Leahy saying that Australia must prepare for a war against radical Islam lasting for the rest of the century. 

Leaders will hold a banner headline, “We’ll love Muslims 100 years”, under a mock-up newspaper masthead called The Welcoming Australian. 

He also described as divisive the “us and them” language developing around Christians being killed but not acknowledging Yazidis and Muslims were also being targeted. 

Muslim leaders have expressed their disquiet at the national political debate in response to terrorism in the Middle East. 

“That headline would be like running a headline ‘we’ll fight Christianity for 100 years’ in response to the sexual abuse allegations within the churches,” said Chilcott, who is national director of Welcome to Australia. 

“Young Muslims in all walks of life are feeling very alienated by this conversation. They are uni students, engineers, doctors, all rightly feeling they are contributing to Australian life.” 

Kastel, who was raised in an “ultra orthodox” Jewish tradition, is national director of a multi-faith organisation, Together for Humanity Foundation. His foundation has a Muslim president, a Christian chairman and atheist Janet Holmes a Court as patron. 

Kastel said he felt compelled to act because of “shrill, harsh talk” against Muslims in mainstream and social media. 

“I was concerned about shrill, harsh talk we see both in social and mainstream, even though there is a lot of good interfaith work going on in Australia every day,” he said. 

“As a result, we have Muslims who are made to feel like terrorists in the past few years and they report the atmosphere is similar to post-9/11 and it is simply as a result of cultural incompetence. 

“We are all on the same team, if I may use that word, in terms of the result, and that is peace.”...

Well, some on the Muslim team (including Hamas and ISIS) are working hard to bring about peace in the sharia sense of things. And, sure, Christians and Jews can play on that team, too, provided they're willing to kowtow to Islam and cough up the jizya, the dhimmi poll tax.

That's a small price to pay to ensure that Muslims don't "feel like terrorists," right?

ISIS Is a Joooish Plot Sez Dutch Minister of Justice and Security

What a loon!

What Harpoon Siddiqui Knows About Israel Couldn't Fill a Pygmy's Belly Button

The Toronto Star's resident shill for the Islamic perspective claims that the Israeli right's hatred of Arabs is endangering the joint's status as a democracy.

Re the "hate": I see it as yet another instance of a Zion-loather projecting his own animus onto the Joooos.

"Moderate" Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy Gets a Death Threat From ISIS

Sheesh, you'd think his work on behalf of sharia law and his "human rights" complaint re the publication of those blasphemous Motoons would have exempted him from ISIS's ire.

Deborah Lipstadt's NYT Piece on the "New" Jew-Hate Misses the Boat (i.e. the Islam)

She defines the latest version of anti-Judaism here:

The differences between then and now are legion. When there is an outbreak of anti-Semitism today, officials condemn it. This is light-years away from the 1930s and 1940s, when governments were not only silent but complicit. Memory also distinguishes the present from previous events. Now, in contrast to the 1930s, we know matters can escalate. Jews today are resolute in their determination: “Never again.” 

And despite all this I wonder if I am too sanguine. Last month, pro-Gaza protesters on Kurfürstendamm, the legendary avenue in Berlin, chanted, “Jews, Jews, cowardly swine.” Demonstrators in Dortmund and Frankfurt chanted, “Hamas, Hamas; Jews to the gas!” And a pro-Hamas marcher in Berlin broke away from the crowd and assaulted an older man who was quietly standing on a corner holding an Israeli flag. 

On the eve of Bastille Day, a group of Parisian Jews were trapped in a synagogue by pro-Palestinian rioters and had to be rescued by the police. A few weeks ago signs were posted in Rome urging a boycott of 50 Jewish-owned businesses. In central London last week, anti-Israel protesters targeted a Sainsbury’s grocery, and the manager reflexively pulled kosher products off the shelves. (The supermarket chain later apologized.)

It would be simple to link all this outrage to events in Gaza. But this trend has been evident for a while. In March 2012, four people were killed at a Jewish day school in Toulouse, France. (Last month, a Jewish community center there was firebombed.) In December 2012, Israeli officials warned Jewish men who wanted to visit synagogues in Denmark not to don their skullcaps until they were inside the building. It is increasingly common for Jewish tourists in Western Europe to avoid carrying anything that might distinguish them as such. A shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May, a month before the latest Gaza conflict began, killed four people. 

I am unpersuaded by those who try to dismiss what is happening as “just rhetoric.” It is language, after all, that’s at the heart of the ubiquitous slippage from anger at Israeli military action to hatred of Jews.

In other words, Zionhass. That's only half of it, though. The other half: hating Israel because it is Jewish (as the Muslim supremacists do). Unfortunately, even Lipstadt, who should know better, has a hard time pinning the blame for such Jew-hate where it belongs--on what is written in core Islamic texts:

It’s true that this is not the anti-Semitism of the 1930s, which came from the right and was rooted in longstanding Christian views that demonized the Jews. Traditionally, Islam did not treat Jews this way. But in the past century a distinct strain of Muslim anti-Semitism has emerged. Built on a foundation of antipathy toward non-Muslims, it mixes Christian anti-Semitism — imported to the Middle East by European missionaries — and a more leftist, secular form of anti-Semitism. It is evident in political cartoons, editorials, television shows and newspaper articles.

The Hamas charter is an example. It contains references to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious forgery created by Russian czarist police officers in 1903 and later used as Nazi propaganda. The charter accuses Jews of relying on secret societies to foment global economic and political disasters. It calls on adherents to prepare for “the next round with the Jews, the merchants of war.”

Maybe so, but the Hamas Charter is pure, unadulterated, by-the-book supremacist Islam. Here, for example, is Bat Ye'or on the subject (from her book, Islam and Dhimmitude):

In the PLO's charter, an Arab state will replace the State of Israel; for Hamas, this state will be Islamic, yet both versions are idyllically described (PLO Charter; art. 6; Hamas Constitution, art. 6 and 31). Hamas expanded those ideas in classic terms:

[It] strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine. Only under the shadow of Islam could the members of all religions coexist in safety and security for their lives, properties and rights. In the absence of Islam, conflict arises, oppression reigns, corruption is rampant ands struggles and wars prevail. (art. 6)

[Hamas] is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes toward other religions [...] Under the shadow of Islam it is possible fo rthe members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism, to coexist in safety and security. Safety and security can only prevail under the shadow of Islam, and recent and ancient history is the bet witness to that effect. The members of other religions must desist from struggling against Islam over sovereignty in this region. For if they were to gain the upper hand, fighting, torture and uprooting would follow; they would be fed up with each other; to say nothing of members of other religions. The past and the present are full of evidence to that effect [...]

Islam accords his rights to everyone who has rights and averts aggression against the rights of others. (art. 31)

This, therefore, is a call for the idyllic state of dhimmitude for the Jews--and for anti-Zionist Christians. This future of peace and prosperity in the Islamic state which would supplant Israel was favorably described by Ismail R al-Faruqi, a Palestinian professor of Islamic Studies at Temple University, Philadelphia.

According to the author, in this new state--where Jews would no longer be Israelis--the Muslim leader will be able to repeat the message which the Turkish conqueror of Constantinople in 1453 sent to the Greek patriarch who, for his collaboration, was rewarded with Islam's protection. This is hardly a convincing conclusion in view of the almost total disappearance of the Greek population of Anatolia in the twentieth century...

But the denial of national characteristics is not limited to Israel alone; it is rooted in the conception of mankind, which should be compulsorily subjected to the shari'a. Nationalism has no legitimacy whatsoever and, as Hamas says, "When Islam appears, all the forces of unbelief unite to confront it, because the community of unbelief is one" (art. 22)--that is, the dar al-harb, the region of war. 

The obvious conclusion: Hamas may have embraced certain tropes of infidel Jew-hate, including the Protocols, but if such material did not exist Hamas's own brand of Islamic supremacism would be more than enough to inspire it to fits and feats of Zionhass.

Lipstadt, an exceptionally smart cookie, must know that. Which makes her line of reasoning here very odd indeed.