Tag Archives: al-Qaeda

Jun 17 2013

Glenn Greenwald: Hamas and Hezbollah are NOT terrorist movements

We reported recently that Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald has been speaking at the annual Marxist-Leninist conference, and we posted a few clips of his 2011 appearance at the conference, held in Chicago.  During his talk (titled ‘Civil Liberties under Obama’), the CiF columnist defended American al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki, and downplayed the “scope” of the 9/11 attacks – which he suggested were much more limited (in the scale of violence) than what the U.S. has perpetrated in the Arab world.

Additionally, the following is a short clip from his 2012 presentation (also held in Chicago) in front of the ‘revolutionary socialist group’, where he addresses the topic of terrorism and how the word is, in his view, misused.

As Greenwald would have you believe that the sole objectives of Hamas and Hezbollah is to protect the citizens of Gaza and Lebanon respectively, here are a few facts about the putatively benign ‘anti-imperialist’ movements which may be useful:

Hamas

  • Hamas is the Arabic acronym for “The Islamic Resistance Movement” and grew out of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood movement which arose in Egypt in the 1920s.
  • Hamas’s founding charter cites the wisdom of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to “prove” that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, and cites a Hadith which calls for the murder of Jews.

Hezbollah

  • Hezbollah’ is a Shiite Islamist group founded in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in 1982 as an extension of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and adopted much of the Iranian doctrine, including the use of terror as a means of attaining its objectives.  Among the group’s goals in Lebanon is the creation of a fundamentalist Iranian-style Islamic republic and removal of all non-Muslim influences.
  • Before 9/11, Hezbollah killed more Americans than any other terrorist group:  More than 300 were murdered in six separate attacks, including 243 Marines in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. 
  • Hezbollah has incited its followers to carry out suicide bombings against Western targets all over the world (including in America), and the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, has said the following: “Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute [...] Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America.”
  • The continuing military presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon (particularly their weapons smuggling) represents clear violations of UN Resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1701 (2006), both of which call for the disbanding of all such illegal militias which threaten the sovereignty of the country.
  •  Hezbollah has engaged in terrorist acts in Europe, Africa, South America, N. America and even in Arab states – including in Yemen and Bahrain.
  • Hezbollah’s Nasrallah has explicitly stated that Jews anywhere in the world are legitimate targets. Specifically, Nasrallah has said: “If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide”. (Daily Star, Oct. 23, 2002)

In addition to the risible suggestion that the two violent extremist groups are merely trying to protect Palestinian and Lebanese civilians from Israeli aggression, Greenwald was simply not telling his socialist friends the truth when he claimed the groups haven’t targeted American citizens. Moreover, as his willingness to defend even al-Qaeda operatives demonstrates, his apologias on behalf of violent Islamist extremists are clearly not limited to the Middle East. 

In contextualizing Greenwald’s columns in both Salon.com and the Guardian – where he routinely excoriates the U.S. for all number of ‘imperialist’ crimes against the Arab world and expresses sympathy for even the most violent, reactionary Islamist movements – it’s difficult not to marvel at the ideological dynamics within UK and U.S. politics whereby some genuinely see Greenwald as a “progressive” political voice.  

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Jun 14 2013

Glenn Greenwald at Marxism Conference: Defends Anwar Al-Awaki, calls 9/11 attacks “minimal in scope”

As was revealed in the blogosphere yesterday, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who helped Edward Snowden launch the NSA leaks scandal, has addressed the International Socialist Organization’s  annual conference in 2011 and 2012 - and is set to address the radical group again later this year in Chicago.

The International Socialist Organization (ISO) is one of America’s main Marxist ‘revolutionary’ parties, and represents the “Marxist tradition, founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and continued by V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky.”

The upcoming ISO event – which features, among other radical speakers, Ali Abunimah, as well as an anti-Zionist Jew named Sherry Wolf, who has justified Hamas terrorism, and characterized Zion­ist Jews as “white suprema­cist racists” - is sponsored by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC).  CERSC is the publisher of International Socialist Review and Haymarket Books (which has published books by Abunimah, and sponsors the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss) and the publisher of Socialist Worker.

Here’s the official trailer for the 2013 event.

What follows are clips of Greenwald at the ISO Conference in 2011 speaking about Anwar al-Awlaki, and other related issues.  Al-Awlaki was an American and Yemeni Imam, and the al-Qaeda regional commander (killed by U.S. forces after Greenwald’s 2011 speech) who was a senior ‘talent recruiter’ for the group, and who likely influenced the jihadist rampage of the Fort Hood shooter and the attempted attack by the ‘Underwear Bomber‘.  

Greenwald can be heard during the video characterizing al-Awlaki as someone whose only crimes were ”speak[ing] effectively to the Muslim world about violence that the U.S. commits in [Yemen] and the responsibility of Muslims to stand up to this violence.”

Here’s a clip of Greenwald later in the same speech where he expresses his hope for a weakening of the United States and its malign “imperialism”, and characterizes the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda as very “minimal in scope”.

(Here’s his full 2011 speech. And, here is his speech to the ISO in 2012.)

As I argued recently, Greenwald is not a mere civil libertarian or a ‘progressive’ commentator but, rather, a radical, anti-American activist, who aids our enemies by amplifying their toxic rhetoric.   

Whatever may come from the debate currently underway about NSA surveillance techniques, we can not let those, like Greenwald, inspired by a palpable loathing of America frame the debate concerning how best to defend the country against reactionary Islamists extremists openly committed to the murder of our citizens. 

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Jun 13 2013

‘Comment is Free’ contributor Abdel al-Bari Atwan sympathizes with Osama Bin Laden

Abdel al-Bari Atwan is the editor-in chief of the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and has been named among the 50 ‘most influential Arabs’ by Middle East Magazine.  His pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist politics can be best summed up by his fanciful boast a few years ago that he would dance in the streets in London’s Trafalgar Square if Iranian nuclear missiles were to hit Tel Aviv.

iran

In fact, Atwan’s satisfaction when contemplating the murder of Jews wasn’t theoretical, and certainly was not a one-off.  

In March 2008, for instance, Atwan said that the Mercaz HaRav Jerusalem terrorist attack, in which a Palestinian gunmen murdered eight students (aged 15 to 26), was “justified”, and that the celebrations in Gaza following the attack symbolized “the courage of the Palestinian nation”.  Atwan also praised the 2011 Palestinian terror attack on civilians in southern Israel which resulted in 8 dead and 25 injured, and was even critical of Mahmoud Abbas’s recent condemnation of the abduction of Israeli soldiers, in an essay which praised Hamas for its achievement in releasing over 1,000 prisoners as part of the Gilad Shalit deal.

As my colleague Hadar Sela recently noted, Atwan is regular guest on BBC’s Newsnight. He is also, unsurprisingly, a frequent contributor to ‘Comment is Free’ – having penned 12 essays at the Guardian blog over the past two years.

Most recently, MEMRI reported, Atwan told Egypt’s Channel 2 on June 2nd that Osama Bin Laden was only “half a terrorist,” since his organization’s attacks against American forces in Saudi Arabia could not be considered terrorism, before adding:

If you support the Palestinian resistance, you do not consider [Bin Laden's attacks] terrorism. But if you are with America, Europe, and Israel, you do consider it terrorism…It depends on your definition of terrorism.

Here’s the video:

According to Atwan, who in 2010 characterized the late al-Qaeda leader a “great man“, the question of whether or not Bin Laden was in fact a “terrorist” depends on your definition of the term.

Sound familiar?

As we’ve reported on multiple occasions, ‘Comment is Free’ correspondent Glenn Greenwald has advanced similar arguments, alternately decrying the “meaninglessness” of the word, suggesting that the term is ‘racially loaded’ and that it typically represents rhetorical propaganda exploited by the U.S. to justify ‘state violence’ against Muslims. 

However, lost in the “debate” about whether fanatics like Bin Laden are terrorists is the much more important truth regarding the ideology which inspires their tactic of terror.  The West opposes al-Qaeda, and other Islamist extremist groups, not merely because they support the use of violence against innocent civilians, but also due to the fact that their political objectives include replacing liberal, democratic governments with Taliban-style tyrannical regimes antithetical to democracy, religious pluralism, gender equality, and sexual freedom.

Terrorism, for al-Qaeda and like-minded jihadists around the globe, represents merely a ‘strategy’ in their dangerously reactionary political crusade. 

As those like Atwan and Greenwald continue to engage in such cynicism and sophistry – in an attempt to make us debate the narrow question of the meaning of the term “terrorism” – it’s vital to remember that we fight such enemies not solely due to the extremist (terrorist) methods they employ, but because their political vision is diametrically opposed to the progressive values we cherish.

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May 27 2013

Guardian report avoids obvious conclusions about radicalization of Woolwich terrorist

On May 23 we commented on a Guardian report about the terror attack on a British soldier named Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death in Woolwich by two men (including Michael Olumide Adebolajo) which buried the lead regarding Adebolajo’s radicalization under the influence of UK extremists Omar Bakri Mohammed and Anjem Choudary.

The report, by  ,  and , made almost no mention of why both Choudary and Bakri are ‘considered’ extremists – information regarding their reactionary, pro-jihadist ideology which we provided in the post.

However, a May 26 Guardian report by Benn Quinn, Woolwich suspect’s change in character can be traced to Kenya arrest – friend, is even more stunning in its failure to acknowledge the most obvious causation concerning Adebolajo’s radicalism.

Here are the first several passages of Quinn’s report:

A fuller picture is beginning to emerge of how the alleged killers of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich were radicalised.

In the case of Michael Adebolajo, the 28-year-old filmed at the scene of the killing declaring he was fighting for “almighty Allah”, one area of focus is during and after his time at Greenwich University, where he lived in student accommodation between 2004 and 2005.

Born in Lambeth into a church-going family of Nigerian origin, he is thought to have converted to Islam around 2003.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, the cleric who founded the now-banned extremist group al-Muhajiroun, has said he tutored Adebolajo after his conversion and the young man started coming to meetings of the group at a time when anger was high over the war in Iraq. The cleric described him as a shy man who would ask questions about when violence was justified.

Another potentially significant event was Adebolajo’s arrest in 2010 in Kenya close to the border with Somalia. Kenyan authorities say they believe he was preparing to train and fight with the al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group al-Shabaab.

So, based on Quinn’s source Adebolajo’s radicalization at the point of his travel to Kenya in 2010 was not related to UK policy, and in fact was so extreme that he was willing to fight for al-Qaida linked terrorists outfit named al-Shabbab – a group which controls large swathes southern Somalia where it imposed its own strict form of Sharia law, and wages jihad against all “enemies of Islam”.

al-Shabbat logo

al-Shabbab logo

According to the US State Department, the group is responsible for the killing of thousands of Somali civilians, Somali peace activists, international aid workers, journalists, and African Union peacekeepers.

Quinn continues:

Adebolajo was later deported, but not before he was tortured, according to a friend who said the Londoner had gone abroad to study. Abu Nusaybah, who was arrested shortly after making the allegations in a BBC interview, in part attributed Adebolajo’s radicalisation to his alleged ill-treatment in Kenya.

Nusaybah said he believed that his friend became radicalised about six months ago, when he noticed what he regarded as profound changes in Adebolajo’s character, which he attributed to his experiences in Kenya and to events on his return to Britain.

Quinn neglects to note the stunning inconsistency in the friend’s claims – which implies that Adebolajo only became radical after he had already volunteered to fight on behalf of al Qaeda – and fails more generally (in the text of the report and accompanying headline) to acknowledge the timeline of what occurred.  

1. Adebolajo was from a devout Christian family but converted to Islam in 2003 at the age 19.

2. In the mid 2000s, Adebolajo was radicalized by UK radicals such as Anjem Choudary (and Omar Bakri Mohammed), and was a regular on radical marches in East London – in which demonstrators sometimes carried placards exhorting: ‘Behead those who insult Islam’ – and ”often attended incendiary protests and lectures”. (Some terror experts have suggested that the language used by Adebolajo in his video right after the killing was similar to the rhetoric used by Choudary and fellow extremists.)

3. In 2010, Adebolajo made the decision to join an al-Qaeda linked terrorist group fighting to impose sharia law in Somalia.

4. In 2013 – three years after his decision to fight for al-Qaeda in Somalia – he hacks a British soldier to death in broad daylight while yelling “Allahu Akbar!”

Is isn’t really difficult to piece together a timeline, and determine that – based on the fact that he had already made the decision to fight for al Qaeda – Adebolajo was clearly radicalized prior to his trip to Kenya (not as a result of his treatment by Kenyan authorities), and, due to the influence of British Islamists, was determined to wage jihad all over the world to promote the hegemony of radical Islam.

For those not consumed with an ideologically inspired desire to avoid even the most obvious conclusions, a linear account of Adebolajo’s descent into Islamic extremism is not very difficult. 

Apr 30 2013

Guardian/AP story on Tunisia’s Jews omits history of antisemitic persecution

An AP story written by Bouzza Ben Bouzza, and published by the Guardian on April 27, entitled ‘Jews ease back into Tunisia for famed pilgrimage‘, reports on a three-day Jewish pilgrimage (which took place over the weekend) to the Ghriba synagogue.  Ghriba is the oldest synagogue in N. Africa, and traces its origins to Jewish exiles who fled the destruction of the first Temple  in 586 BCE.

Rabbis at the entrance of El Ghriba synagogue Djerba, Tunisia, 1940's

Rabbis at the entrance of El Ghriba synagogue
Djerba, Tunisia, 1940′s

The pilgrimage to the Tunisian island of Djerba – where the ancient synagogue is located – is linked to the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, and, in past years, has attracted thousands of Jews from Europe, Israel and the US.

The AP/Guardian story aptly describes some of the more interesting details of the synagogue, such as the following:

The site is rich with legend. The first Jews who arrived were said to have brought a stone from the ancient temple of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Babylonians. The stone is kept in a grotto at the synagogue. Women and children descend into the grotto to place eggs scrawled with wishful messages on them.

The report also provides some proper historical context – such as the deadly Islamist attack on the synagogue in 2002 which significantly deterred Jewish participation in the pilgrimage for several years.  

At its peak in 2000, about 8,000 Jews came — many from Israel, Italy and France, where they or their forebears had moved over the years. Such crowds haven’t returned since an al-Qaida-linked militant detonated a truck bomb at the synagogue in 2002, killing 21 people, mostly German tourists — and badly jolting the now-tiny Jewish community.

And, the report also includes the following passage accurately citing events during the “Arab Spring” which affected the pilgrimage:

The pilgrimage was called off in 2011 in the wake of Tunisia’s revolution, when major street protests ousted longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia, and some ultra conservative Muslims called Salafis chanted anti-Semitic slogans at their rallies. Last year, the pilgrimage resumed on a tiny scale: Only 100 or so foreigners came. This year, community leaders hope 300 to 500 will have come.

However, the report then provides the following highly selective history of Tunisia’s Jews. 

Jews have been living in Djerba since 500 B.C. The Jewish population has shrunk to 1,500, down from 100,000 in the 1960s. Most left following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries, and Socialist economic policies adopted by the government in the late 1960s also drove away many Jewish business owners.

First, this truncated history entirely leaves out the oppression of Tunisia’s Jews during the Nazi period.

Jewish Virtual Library (JVL) explains:

In 1940, as Tunisia was subjected Vichy policy discriminatory, anti-Jewish legislation was implemented. By 1942, the Nazi’s were occupying Tunisia arresting Jewish leaders and sending many Jews to North African Nazi camps. According to Robert Satloff, “From November 1942 to May 1943, the Germans and their local collaborators implemented a forced-labor regime, confiscations of property, hostage-takings, mass extortion, deportations, and executions.” At least 160 Tunisian Jews were deported to European death camps.

Moreover, there is much about the roughly 99% decrease in Tunisia’s Jewish population during the latter half of the 20th century that the writer left out.

For instance, per JVL, even before the Six Day War antisemitic policies enacted by the Arab government caused many Jews to flee.

When Tunisia gained independence in 1956, the new government passed a series of discriminatory anti-Jewish decrees. In 1957, the rabbinical tribunal was abolished and a year later the Jewish community councils were dissolved.  The government also destroyed ancient synagogues, cemeteries, and even Tunis’ Jewish quarter for “urban renewal” projects.

Additionally, as JVL further explains, it wasn’t Tunisia’s economic policy which drove away Jews but, rather, antisemitic persecution and violence by local Arabs.

During the Six-Day War, Jews were attacked by rioting Arab mobs, while businesses were burned and the Great Synagogue of Tunis was destroyed. The government actually denounced the violence and appealed to the Jewish population to stay, but did not bar them from leaving.

The increasingly unstable situation caused more than 40,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to Israel and at least 7,000 more to France. By 1968, the country’s Jewish population had shrunk to around 10,000.

Whilst the Tunisian government may have historically treated their Jewish citizens a bit better than other Arab governments, the antisemitic persecution which largely served as a catalyst for the Jewish exodus certainly mirrors what occurred in the rest of the Middle East – a regional ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands which continues to represent one of the most underreported crimes in recent history.

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Apr 28 2013

Glenn Greenwald on the sage foreign policy wisdom of the ‘Underwear Bomber’

Glenn Greenwald’s response to the terrorist attack in Boston should come as no surprise to those familiar with his ‘Comment is Free’ blog, and his previous blog at Salon.com.

In addition to smearing as ‘Islamophobic’ anyone who suggested, in the early hours and days of the investigation into the attack which left 3 dead and over 200 injured, that the culprits may be Islamists, his reaction once it seemed clear that the terrorists were radicalized Chechnyan Muslims was to argue, in a fashion similar to Richard Falk, that such attacks should ‘inspire’ us to reflect on US policy in the Mid-East.

Greenwald’s April 24 post at ‘Comment is Free’, entitled ‘The same motive cited for anti-US terrorism is cited over and over‘, provides another good example of such reasoning.

Greenwald writes thusly:

In the last several years, there have been four other serious attempted or successful attacks on US soil by Muslims, and in every case, they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world – violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children.

He then quotes the complaints against US foreign policy expressed by several convicted Islamist terrorists, such as Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American convicted of an attempted bombing attack at Times Square in 2010, Nidal Hasan, who will soon stand trial in a military court for the Fort Hood massacre, as well as the ”Underwear Bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

bomberGreenwald cites the following grievances of Abdulmutallab, which he expressed in a US court before pleading guilty of trying to murder hundreds of people on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day in 2009:

I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for US support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.”

Greenwald, while making it clear that violence is still not justified, added the following:

But it is nonetheless vital to understand why there are so many people who want to attack the US as opposed to, say, Peru, or South Africa, or Brazil, or Mexico, or Japan, or Portugal.

…

…so many Americans, westerners, Christians and Jews love to run around insisting that the only real cause for Muslim attacks on the US is that the attackers have this primitive, brutal, savage, uncivilized religion (Islam) that makes them do it.

…

As the attackers themselves make as clear as they can, it’s not religious fanaticism but rather political grievance that motivates these attacks. Religious conviction may make them more willing to fight (as it does for many in the west), but the motive is anger over what is being done by the US and its allies to Muslims.

…

it’s crucial to understand this causation because it’s often asked “what can we do to stop Terrorism?” The answer is right in front of our faces: we could stop embracing the polices in that part of the world which fuel anti-American hatred and trigger the desire for vengeance and return violence.

However, to add some context to Greenwald’s explanation of ‘why they hate us’, here’s a relevant passage from the court transcript at Abdulmutallab’s sentencing.

Defendant poses a significant, ongoing threat to the safety of American citizens everywhere. As noted previously, in pleading guilty, defendant reiterated that it is his religious belief that the Koran obliges “every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them,” and that “participation in jihad against the United States is considered among the most virtuous of deeds in Islam and is highly encouraged in the Koran.”

The court sentencing document continues to explain what inspired him to jihad:

In August 2009, defendant left Dubai, where he had been taking graduate classes, and traveled to Yemen. For several years, defendant had been following the online teachings of Anwar Awlaki, and he went to Yemen to try to meet him in order to discuss the possibility of becoming involved in jihad.

Anwar Awlaki was the American and Yemeni Imam, killed in a US drone strike in 2011, who U.S. government officials believe was an al-Qaeda regional commander, and a senior ‘talent recruiter’ and motivator for the terrorist group – and who is believed to have influenced the jihadist rampage of the Fort Hood shooter.

Here’s an additional passage from Abdulmutallab’s sentencing:

Defendant by that time had become committed in his own mind to carrying out an act of jihad, and was contemplating “martyrdom;” i.e., a suicide operation in which he and others would be killed. Once in Yemen, defendant visited mosques and asked people he met if they knew how he could meet Awlaki.

…

Thereafter, defendant received a text message from Awlaki telling defendant to call him, which defendant did.

…

Defendant took several days to write his message to Awlaki, telling him of his desire to become involved in jihad, and seeking Awlaki’s guidance. After receiving defendant’s message, Awlaki sent defendant a response, telling him that Awlaki would find a way for defendant to become involved in jihad.

So, in short, the ‘Underwear Bomber’ sought out the advice of a senior leader of an Islamist movement which calls for global jihad, seeks states governed by religious autocracies similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, advocates death for homosexuality, and believes Jews are the embodiment of evil.

The suggestion that we should listen to the foreign policy ‘analysis’ of such homicidal jihadists is akin to imputing wisdom to the suicidal rants of conspiracists and radical cults – as if we should see the “revolutionary mass suicide” initiated by Jim Jones as a learning moment about the need for “social justice”, or that the US should incorporate the militia movement-inspired complaints of Timothy McVeigh into federal policy.

The ideological proclivity of some on the far-left to empathize with those, like Abdulmutallab, who willfully embrace the most violent, reactionary and racist movements in the world represents a dynamic as dangerous as it is baffling. 

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Apr 23 2013

Glenn Greenwald condemns the word ‘terrorism’ as racially-loaded

Our recent posts about the Guardian’s appalling use, on at least two separate occasions, of the term “political prisoner” to characterize violent Palestinian terrorists who murdered, or attempted to murder, innocent civilians weren’t exercises in rhetorical nitpicking.  Rather, our efforts to secure the definition of the term – which reasonable people intuitively understand as ‘those who are imprisoned for their political beliefs’ - represents an attempt to fight back against the manipulation of language, in service of an extreme ideological agenda, by the Guardian and their fellow travelers.

Similarly, Glenn Greenwald’s ongoing war against the term terrorism, which most who are not influenced by the far-left understand broadly to refer to  ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents’ (or some variation of this), should be understood as a broader battle against common sense and moral sobriety.

Here is a passage from his latest post at ‘Comment is Free’, on April 22, entitled ‘Why is Boston “terrorism” but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tuscon, and Columbine?:

The word “terrorism” is, at this point, one of the most potent in our political lexicon: it single-handedly ends debates, ratchets up fear levels, and justifies almost anything the government wants to do in its name. It’s hard not to suspect that the only thing distinguishing the Boston attack from Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook and Columbine (to say nothing of the US “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad and the mass killings in Fallujah) is that the accused Boston attackers are Muslim and the other perpetrators are not. As usual, what terrorism really means in American discourse – its operational meaning – is: violence by Muslims against Americans and their allies.

Here’s another quote by Greenwald, in a post at Salon.com in 2011:

Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target. 

Here’s a quote by Greenwald in a post at Salon.com from 2010:

The term [terrorism] now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.  It has really come to mean:  ”a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies.”

If we’re really going to vest virtually unlimited power in the Government to do anything it wants to people they call “Terrorists”, we ought at least to have a common understanding of what the term means.  But there is none.  It’s just become a malleable, all-justifying term to allow the U.S. Government carte blanche to do whatever it wants to Muslims it does not like or who do not like it (i.e., The Terrorists).  It’s really more of a hypnotic mantra than an actual word:  its mere utterance causes the nation blindly to cheer on whatever is done against the Muslims who are so labeled.

Greenwald is attempting to essentially proscribe the word ‘terrorism’ as politically loaded, subjective, prejudiced – arguing that the urge we have to condemn such willful and intentional attacks against innocent civilians, by using such clear moral language, is necessarily compromised by a deep-seated racial animus.

First, it needs to be pointed out that Greenwald’s specific claim about the term’s “operational” use is easily refuted by the simple fact that the media, civil rights groups and federal authorities also refer to political violence which is not committed by Muslims, or Islamist groups, as “terrorism”.  Examples of groups the FBI labels terrorists, for instance, include violent anti-government right-wing groups, environmental and animal rights extremists, Sovereign citizens movements, anarchist groups, white supremacists - and even fringe extremists such as the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

Greenwald’s mantra that terrorism is only used in reference to Muslims has no basis in fact.

Moreover, in addition to Greenwald’s specious implicit claim that use of the term “terrorism” is racially loaded, there is another factor involved – one which those on the Guardian-style Left often try desperately to avoid acknowledging in their reports and commentaries:  That while, of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims aren’t extremists or terrorists, empirical evidence regarding the disproportionate percentage of terrorist acts committed by those influenced by radical interpretations of Islam is undeniable.

 According to the National Counter-Terrorism Center, over the past several years the overwhelming majority of terrorist-related fatalities world-wide were the result of attacks by Islamist (Sunni) extremists.

nctc

Fatalities from terrorism, charted by ideology of perpetrator: NCTC Chart, 2011 (Last year data was available)

Not only are such facts concerning Islamist terrorism uncontroversial to most people, but, interestingly, even a large majority (60%) of American Muslims polled by Pew Global in 2011 stated that they were either “Very” or “Somewhat” concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the U.S.  Would Greenwald suggest that even American Muslims are influenced by “Islamophobia”?

Ultimately, what Greenwald is, in effect, doing is attempting to stifle debate about the very real threat to our values posed by Islamist extremism – attempting to convince the overwhelming majority of non-ideological Americans to doubt what they know instinctively (and empirically) to be the truth.

As students of Soviet history, and communist movements more broadly, can attest to, propagandistic attempts to radically change politics by perverting ordinary language has a long and decidedly reactionary pedigree – one which genuine progressives need to furiously and passionately resist. 

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Apr 21 2013

Glenn Greenwald’s baseless charge that Jane Harman was stoking ‘Islamophobia’

Boston-Marathon-Bombing-US-flags (1)In an April 17 post, we called out Guardian contributor Glenn Greenwald on his rank hypocrisy in condemning the ‘rush to judgment’ in the aftermath of the April 15 Boston Marathon terrorist attack that killed 3 and injured over 180.

In Greenwald’s CiF commentary, ‘The Boston bombing produces familiar and revealing reactions’, April 16, he ‘named and shamed’ those whose eagerness “to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence”, which, we noted, was remarkably audacious in light of his own rush to judgement in the aftermath of the attack on the US consulate in Libya last September.

Greenwald, we noted, immediately (a day after the Sept. 11, 2012 assault) parroted false reports that the attack which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was caused by a film produced by an “Israeli Jew” and funded by “100 Jewish donors” – charges Greenwald was later forced to revise when it was demonstrated that the filmmaker was an Egyptian Christian, and that the film had no role whatsoever in the pre-meditated Islamist terror attack.

However, in addition to the hypocrisy of Greenwald’s sanctimony over the ‘rush to judgement’ in the Boston terror attacks, we recently observed another one of the Guardian commentator’s signature habits of using hyperlinks which don’t in fact support the allegation being made.

Here’s the relevant passage in Greenwald’s April 17 CiF commentary:

The rush, one might say the eagerness, to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence. The New York Post quickly claimed that the prime suspect was a Saudi national (while also inaccurately reporting that 12 people had been confirmed dead). The Post’s insinuation of responsibility was also suggested on CNN by Former Bush Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend (“We know that there is one Saudi national who was wounded in the leg who is being spoken to”). Former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman went on CNN to grossly speculate that Muslim groups were behind the attack.

So, did former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman “grossly speculate” that “Muslim groups” were behind the attack?

Well, the link goes to a site called ‘The Examiner’ which claims the following:

Former congresswoman Jane Harman, currently the President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars told CNN News on April 15 that there is a very real possibility that the Boston Marathon bombings could be Al-Qaeda related. The bombs used in the attack are very similar to bombs used by Al-Qaeda in terrorist attacks across the world.

So, clearly, the first link demonstrates that Harman, former Chair of the US House Intelligence Committee, didn’t blame “Muslim groups”, but merely speculated on the possibility that one fanatical Islamist group which very few Muslims actually support may be responsible.  Further, the second link Greenwald used goes to a Twitter page with a series of Tweets in which others commented on Harman’s interview on CNN.

Whilst many of the Tweets similarly noted Harman ‘s naming al-Qaeda as a ‘possible’ suspect, one Tweet in particular on the page, which Greenwald decided to ignore, quotes Harman during the CNN interview speaking more broadly about the victims of such Islamist attacks around the world:

Harman:

A lot the victims, if it turns out to be anything related to Al Qaeda, a lot of the victims of these attacks are Muslims.

Further, while information is still coming in about the two suspects - Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after a shootout with police , and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who was taken into police custody on Friday – it does seem clear that they are both indeed radical Chechen Muslims who were inspired by Islamist propaganda which promoted jihadist attacks on innocent civilians.

So, to recap:

Jane Harman’s suspicion that the Boston terror attack may have been perpetrated by followers of radical Islam appears to have been accurate.

Contrary to Greenwald’s claims, Jane Harman did not blame “Muslim groups” for the incident in Boston, but in fact cautioned that, if the attacks were inspired by al-Qaeda or groups sympathetic to its ideology, it was important to understand that innocent Muslims are often the victims of deadly terrorist attacks by such Islamist terror movements.

Finally, Greenwald has a history of using meaningless hyperbole and hyperlinks which don’t support his wild allegations, and his latest baseless smear of the former congresswoman should come as no surprise to those who already understand the dishonest lengths Greenwald often goes to buttress his pre-established extreme left narratives. 

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Apr 17 2013

Benghazi to Boston: Glenn Greenwald’s hypocrisy in condemning ‘rush to judgement’ over marathon attack

In response to the bomb attack at the Boston Marathon on Monday which killed three people and injured more than 175, Glenn Greenwald did what he does best: vilifying America and warning about racist-inspired assumptions regarding the religious identity of terrorist perpetrators.  

In his CiF commentary, ‘The Boston bombing produces familiar and revealing reactions’, April 16, Greenwald lectures Americans outraged by the assault that they are in no position to make judgements in light of the “horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade“

Greenwald is of course largely referring to the US military’s drone campaign against Islamist terrorists - in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere - who plot attacks against innocent American civilians.  (The use of such unmanned aerial assaults against enemy combatants is supported by most Americans, but has become something of a negative obsession for Greenwald and other Guardian commentators.)

Additionally, Greenwald spends a large percentage of his column condemning those on Twitter and elsewhere in the traditional and social media for their alleged ‘rush to judgment’ over the suspected perpetrator(s) of the Boston attack:

The rush, one might say the eagerness, to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence. The New York Post quickly claimed that the prime suspect was a Saudi national (while also inaccurately reporting that 12 people had been confirmed dead). The Post’s insinuation of responsibility was also suggested on CNN by Former Bush Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend (“We know that there is one Saudi national who was wounded in the leg who is being spoken to”). Former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman went on CNN to grossly speculate that Muslim groups were behind the attack. 

Wild, unverified accusations with “zero evidence” singling out a minority group for responsibility over a deadly act of violence?  That sounds familiar.

Indeed, the day after the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, Greenwald, in a post titled ‘The tragic consulate killings in Lybia and America’s hierarchy of human life‘, wrote the following:

Protesters attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Tuesday night and killed four Americans, including the US ambassador, Chris Stevens. The attacks were triggered by rage over an amateurish and deeply hateful film about Islam that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as, among other things, a child molester advocate, a bloodthirsty goon, a bumbling idiot, and a promiscuous, philandering leech. A 13-minute trailer was uploaded to YouTube and then quickly circulated in the Muslim world, sparking widespread anger (the US embassy in Cairo was also attacked).

Further, Greenwald repeated completely unverified (and ultimately false) claims that the film-maker (Sam Bacile) was “an Israeli real estate developer living in California” and that he had made the film with “the help of 100 Jewish donors.”

Greenwald’s wild speculation about the cause of the attack, and the putative Israeli and Jewish connection (also parroted by the Guardian’s Julian Borger and Caroline Davies), however, was completely unfounded.

  • On Sept. 12, reports already began to appear contradicting claims that Bacile was an Israeli Jew.  And, a day later it was confirmed that he was an Egyptian Christian. 
  • The Guardian was forced to correct Greenwald’s false claim about the Jewish identity of the film-maker

Reports regarding the importance of an obscure, low-budget anti-Muslim film represented merely a ruse, designed to divert the attention of those in the media already ideologically inclined to blame Jews, Israel and the West for deadly Islamist terror attacks. 

Greenwald’s ‘shock’ over the ‘racist’ rush to judgement of those who disseminated unconfirmed reports that the terrorist attack in Boston was committed by al-Qaeda (or other Islamist terror groups) again demonstrates the Guardian contributor’s stunning moral hypocrisy.

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Feb 24 2013

Revealed: CIA is reading your mail!

A guest post by Green Glenwald

purimAs part of my ongoing series about the way the CIA, the Mossad, the Zionists, the Obama administration, MSNBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post and the little green people under your bed are controlling your lives, this revelation should finally lay any doubts you might have to rest.

The CIA is reading your mail! 

Yes – the CIA, not content with sending drones from Afghanistan to Mali to kill innocent civilians, are using them to intercept the letters you should have received that contain tips for dodging their illegal activities and keeping your RPGs and human shields safe!

Without a doubt this represents the most outrageous proof of the prima facie illegal, warrantless mail-tapping, contrary to the Geneva conventions and international law (which only applies to the USA and Israel) that is one of the disgusting hallmarks of this administration and its relentless attempts to keep America insecure by creating thousands of new terrorist postmen.

This is happening under the direct management, right from the top, of the most evil administration this country has known. Wikileaks revealed, and now we have proof, that there are weekly meetings at the White House in what the people running this program call “the mailroom” (something they find amusing, no doubt) where the President himself selects the mail that will be intercepted and read.

A source on an unknown Internet TV channel where I appear weekly (we keep it secret so that the CIA and others cannot watch it and I can post little videos of myself talking to myself in this column) has revealed that Obama’s poor performance during the first debate with Mitt Romney was due to the fact that he was not trying to read his talking points, as many have assumed, but debating with himself as to which envelope he should open first.

As I learned in law school:

headline

… any person who—

…. knows, or has reason to know, that such device or any component thereof has been sent through the mail or transported in interstate or foreign commerce; or

(iv) such use or endeavor to use (A) takes place on the premises of any business or other commercial establishment the operations of which affect interstate or foreign commerce; or (B) obtains or is for the purpose of obtaining information relating to the operations of any business or other commercial establishment the operations of which affect interstate or foreign commerce; or

(v) such person acts in the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or any territory or possession of the United States;

The President (who live in the District of Columbia, in case you did not know that) is clearly in violation of allowing al Qaeda to continue its regular business operations pursuant to the very laws he is sworn to uphold and should  be impeached.

Update:

Following publication of this article, I was asked for advice on how to defeat this program.

In case your envelope has been intercepted, here are a couple of tips from one that made it past the CIA’s illegal mail-tapping that have proven useful:

The document includes advice such as “hide under thick trees” (believed to be bin Laden’s contribution), and instructions for setting up a “fake gathering” using dolls to “mislead the enemy”. 

If dolls are not available in your cave or under your tree, make use of the local population – local women and children are convincing alternatives you should use to keep yourself safe.

 Happy Purim!

Feb 22 2013

Guardian print edition story on UK terror plot adds info previously missing about Jewish targets

Yesterday, we noted that Guardian reporter Linda Laville published nearly 5000 words (in four reports on Feb. 21) devoted to the recent conviction of three Birmingham Jihadists who were conspiring to launch a large-scale terror attack in the UK, and didn’t mention that Jews were among the possible targets.

Here’s the relevant passage in Laville’s account:

Although no target was ever discussed, their ambition was to outdo the bombers from the 7 July 2005 attacks in London. Naseer told his associates the plan was for “seven or eight [bombs] in different places with timers on at the same time, boom, boom, boom”

However, we noted that the jury in the trial heard recordings made by police of the three men (Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali) specifically mentioning the possibility of targeting a British synagogue, a fact which was reported by other news outlets, including the Telegraph.

Indeed, as we observed in our post, this latest plot represents the third recent case in which Islamist terrorists have targeted British Jews, and is thoroughly consistent with Al Qaeda’s broader strategy of targeting Jews in the West.

Last night, I had this exchange with the Guardian’s Laville. (Laville was responding to someone who re-tweeted our original post)

Interestingly, however, an alert reader in the UK informed us this morning that today’s print edition of the Guardian (scanned below) contained a slightly different version of one of the online reports by Laville.

As you can see, the story was the lead:

print

Here’s a scan of the specific story in the paper:

print

 

Here’s the passage we highlighted:

No firm targets were ever identified by the police and security services although the plotters made various threats against groups including soldiers, women, anyone in crowded places and synagogues.

So, why the change to the print edition version of the original online story?

Perhaps only Linda Laville knows for sure, but we certainly have our suspicions. 

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Feb 21 2013

Guardian reports on UK terror plot ignore facts regarding potential Jewish targets

A Guardian report on Feb. 21, Three would-be suicide bombers found guilty of terror plot, by Sandra Laville, the paper’s crime correspondent, began thus:

Three would-be suicide bombers have been convicted of plotting to carry out terror attacks in the UK which would have been more deadly than the 7/7 bombings in 2005.

The three men, Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, Laville explained, were key figures in a Birmingham-based terror cell which planned to detonate multiple suicide bombs which, according to prosecutors, could have caused “death and injury on a scale greater than the 7/7 bombings”.

Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali

Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali

All of the three convicted men had ued online material from Inspire, “a self-help guide produced by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)”, while two of the men had visited Al Qaeda training camps in North Waziristan.

Laville actually published three separate reports (and over 3000 words) on Feb. 21 at the Guardian on the terror plot, but one piece of information wasn’t available: any details on the targets the three had selected.  

Here’s what Laville wrote in one of her reports:

Although no target was ever discussed, their ambition was to outdo the bombers from the 7 July 2005 attacks in London. Naseer told his associates the plan was for “seven or eight [bombs] in different places with timers on at the same time, boom, boom, boom”

Interestingly, however, as the CST and other media, including the Telegraph, reported today, the three had indeed mentioned Jewish institutions as one of their possible targets.

Tom Whitehead, the Teleraph’s Security Editor, noted,  in a Feb. 21 report, that the British jury in the terror case heard how Naseer justified attacking non-believers because they “act like animals”.  Whitehead added the following:

Conversations between them and others were secretly recorded by the police. 

…

In one Naseer…talks about other methods of killing people he was taught about while allegedly undergoing terror training in Pakistan.

He said: “Make it and put it inside like, you know like Vaseline or cream like that, like Nivea cream and put it on people’s cars.

“You know like the door handles on a whole, imagine putting it on whole like area innit overnight and when they come in the morning to work they start touching the, they open the door and then five minutes they die man, all of them start dying and that, kill about 1,000 people.”

He added: “Even if we can’t make a bomb, get guns yeah from the black geezers, Africans and charge in some like synagogue or charge in different places.”

The CST noted that this latest terror conviction represents the third recent case in which Islamist terrorists have targeted British Jews.

The Guardian’s curious omission is not insignificant, as the targeting of Jews worldwide is clearly part of Al Qaeda’s strategy.  

A cache of evidence found on the body of  slain Al Qaeda terrorist Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, killed by Somalian forces in 2011, noted the need to inspire young Muslims to initiate attacks against Jews in the UK, and included one document with the following instructions:

 “Our objectives are to strike London with low-cost operations that would cause a heavy blow amongst the hierarchy and Jewish communities.”

The document also outlined specific plans to attack the Stamford Hill and Golders Green neighborhoods in London, areas in which, the terror group chillingly noted, “tens of thousands of Jews” are “crammed in a small area.”

It’s curious, to say the least, that the Guardian reporter covering the terror plot, by self-radicalized Brits intent on causing mass casualties in the UK, evidently didn’t find it of interest to note that one particular often-targeted religious community was again singled out by the Jihadists for murder. 

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Feb 1 2013

Guardian analyst laments that Israel’s ‘far-right’ gov’t won’t make peace with global jihadists

A recent edition of the Guardian’s ongoing Middle East Live Blog (edited by  and ) added a bit of analysis to recent reports that the IDF has been striking sophisticated (possibly Russian made) weaponry which was reportedly on its way to the Iranian backed terror group, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Buk-M1-2_9A310M1-2

Version of the advanced anti-missile system that Israel reportedly intercepted in a Syria which was heading to Hezbollah

The reported strikes would be consistent with previous warnings by Israeli leaders of the possibility of military action to prevent the Syrian regime’s arms – including chemical and biological weapons – from falling into the hands of Hezbollah, or ”global jihadists” [such as al-Qaeda-linked rebel groups in like Jabhat al-Nusra], fighting inside Syria, especially in light of the increasing instability of the Assad regime.

The Guardian report notes the following:

Expect to see more Israeli air strikes against Syria, warns analyst Nicholas Noe, who is concerned that the crisis threatens to escalate into a regional conflagration.

Noe, co-founder of MidEastwire.com and expert on Hezbollah, said: “Unfortunately if the past is any guide to the future we are in for more Israeli air strikes, and a political process to settle this is not going to be forthcoming.”

Noe then is quoted thus:

“Unfortunately I don’t think this extraordinarily right wing Israeli leadership is interested in sending messages of peace.

They see some of the greatest enemies to the north, Hezbollah and Syria, as very vulnerable and I’m greatly concerned that there is a strong desire among parts of the Israeli establishment who want to use this opportunity to strike some strong blows against their strategic enemies.

Noe, a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor, would evidently have us believe that, if not for the “extraordinary right wing Israeli leadership”, peace between Israel, Syria, al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Hezbollah could possibly be forthcoming. 

This sage commentary by Noe, an “analyst” who has shilled for Hezbollah previously at CiF, suggesting that it is Israel which is the the military aggressor, represents yet another in a series of increasingly hysterical characterizations of Israel’s alleged “extreme right” political orientation – a specious and misleading narrative in the political context of the region, and one which evidently hasn’t been modified by contradictory evidence produced by the Israeli elections.

“Progressive” global jihadists and “liberal” Hezbollah leaders are no doubt increasingly depressed about the prospect of having their peaceful acquisition of sophisticated Syrian arms stymied by the belligerent Jewish state. 

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Oct 14 2012

Crude, childish and offensive: Peter Beaumont criticizes Islamophobia of “paranoid” Israelis

The Emmy-Award winning U.S. television drama ‘Homeland’, based on the Israeli series Hatufim (Abductees חטופים), is the subject of Observer foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont’s latest column. (The Observer is the sister publication of the Guardian.)

While the Israeli series depicts the lives of Israeli soldiers who were captured seventeen years ago while on a mission in Lebanon, and their return home, the American series stars Claire Danes as a CIA officer who believes that a U.S. Marine held captive by Al-Qaeda as a POW was turned by the enemy and now threatens the U.S.

The show has received much acclaim by critics (including by several contributors at the Guardian), and has even received praise from President Obama.

Beaumont’s piece, ‘Homeland is brilliant drama but does it present a crude image of Muslims?‘, Oct. 13, contains this strap line:

The slick US drama, now into its second series on Channel 4, draws praise from critics and viewers, but its ridiculous view of Arabs and Islam is a distortion of Middle Eastern realities

Beaumont writes:

[The] fictional drama tells us truths about ourselves in ways that can be as uncomfortable as they are unintended. The Emmy-winning Homeland on Channel 4 is a case in point. Its plotting is as ridiculous as it is exciting. But what makes it difficult to watch is its treatment of Muslims.

In the first episode of the new season we were confronted with a new character, a glamorous correspondent with a cutglass English accent, a Palestinian family and access to both the CIA and the US Congress. Like the Saudi prince from the last series and the academic, behind the scenes these high-profile Muslims living in the US share a secret: both willingly or otherwise they are covert helpers of Abu Nasir, the al-Qaida terrorist leader.

In other words, it does not matter whether they are rich, smart, discreetly enjoying a western lifestyle or attractive: all are to be suspected.

I admit I have no idea how the story arcs in Homeland will develop and what surprises are in store. What I do know is how both Arabs and Islamists have been portrayed thus far as violent fanatics, some of whom are powerful and influential infiltrators.

As someone who has spent much time in the Middle East, I find the depictions not only crude and childish but offensive.”

Beaumont later adds:

“Should any of this matter in a fictional series? The answer is yes.

…

The reality is that what Homeland portrays is a peculiar view of the Islamic world, one rooted, perhaps, in its genesis as an Israeli drama, where the view of the surrounding neighbourhood is more paranoid and defensive. It matters for this reason. Popular culture both informs and echoes our prejudices.” [emphasis added]

Beaumont’s moral inversion is extraordinary.

He’s not only criticizing the U.S. show for engaging in anti-Muslim racism, but arguing that such a pattern of ‘Islamophobia’ may be rooted, at least in part, in Israeli “paranoia” about their Arab and Muslim neighbors.

While we’ve often argued that the most egregious antisemitic habit at the Guardian Group involves their continuing sins of omission - ignoring endemic Judeophobia in the Muslim and Arab world – Beaumont, in imputing irrationality to Israeli concerns about Arab and Muslim terrorism and antisemtism, seems to suggest that Jews are in fact the racists in the region.

To such Guardian Left commentators it is evidently paranoid of Jews to express concern over polls demonstrating that roughly 95% of the citizens in Arab countries neighboring Israel admit to disliking Jews, and not merely Israelis, and that, within such cultures, the demonization of Jews (and Judaism) represents not aberrant but normative behavior.

Additionally, it is apparently a sign of Islamophobia for Israeli Jews to fear a Palestinian political culture which incites terrorism against Jewish civilians and promotes extreme antisemitism.

Similarly, those who take it seriously when one of the most popular Islamist spiritual leaders in the world literally calls for Allah to kill every last Jew on earth are, no doubt, engaging in fear-mongering or cynical Zionist ‘hasbara’.

For such faux-liberals, Israelis who merely ask that the world remember the nearly 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries – lands where their ancestors had lived for centuries – stand outside of their sympathetic imagination.

Finally, those who would characterize Israelis as paranoid somehow fail to recognize that non-Jewish Middle Eastern culture is dangerously susceptible to the most crude anti-Zionist (and antisemitic) conspiracy theories. 

What else other than paranoia would lead such a large number of Muslims to engage in Holocaust denial, believe that Jews were behind 9/11 or are even plotting to take over the world?

More broadly, the tendency of some on the left to ignore even the most conclusive statistics and reports – and the most chilling videos – attesting to the fact that the central address for Jew hatred in the world has clearly shifted from Europe to the Middle East represents more than merely a dangerous moral blind spot.  

Those who attempt to “contextualize”, or even excuse, such hatred towards Jews – sometimes masked by anti-Zionism and sometimes not – are making a broader point.  They seem to be suggesting that (unlike other times in history) this time those aligned against the Jews may be justified in their enmity; this time Judeophobic conspiracy theories could in fact be based on an understandable frustration; that, this time, it is the behavior of Jews, and not the Jews haters, that drives, antisemitism.  

“Is it possible to understand the rise of antisemitism?”, they seem to be asking.

This blog consistently attempts to provide a clear and unambiguous answer to various forms of such a maddening query: No, it is not.

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Sep 13 2012

Islamists attack American diplomats. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald attacks moral sanity

The reaction by Glenn Greenwald to the despicable murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens by Islamist terrorists in Libya represents a great indicator of just how low those schooled in the language of the anti-imperialist left will go to avoid even the most obvious conclusions about the motivations of our enemies.

Hours after Stevens and several others were killed – when the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya was rocked by grenades - the ‘Comment is Free’ correspondent implored his readers not to employ even the most intuitive moral reasoning and to remember who the real villains, as always, are in the story.

In ‘The tragic consulate killings in Libya and American hierarchy of human life‘, Greenwald reminds us early on who is to blame, basing his assertions on reports which have since been undermined.

“The attacks were triggered by rage over an amateurish and deeply hateful film about Islam…quickly circulated in the Muslim world, sparking widespread anger (the US embassy in Cairo was also attacked).

…

The anti-Islam film was written, directed and produced by an Israeli real estate developer living in California, Sam Bacile. He claimed, in an interview with Haaretz, that the film “cost $5m to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors”…

the intent seems clear: to provoke Muslims into exactly the sort of violent rage that we are now witnessing.

…

Sam Bacile and his cowardly anonymous donors are repellent cretins for producing this bottom-feeding, bigoted, hateful “film” that has no apparent purpose but to spread anti-Islamic hatred and provoke violent reactions.

All the rage and denunciations of these murders in Benghazi are fully justified, but one wishes that even a fraction of that rage would be expressed when the US kills innocent men, women and children in the Muslim world, as it frequently does.”

However, the initial reports about the attack are beginning to fall apart.  

In addition to the fact that the U.S. is investigating the possibility that the attacks were coordinated by either al-Qaeda or another Islamist group to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, and were not motivated by the film, reports now indicate that the film maker isn’t Israeli or Jewish but an American Coptic Christian, (a fact Greenwald acknowledged in an update).

Greenwald, well-schooled in the anti-imperialist cant of Noam Chomsky, then offers the following:

“Just compare the way in which the deaths of Americans on 9/11, even more than a decade later, are commemorated with borderline religious solemnity, as opposed to the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of foreign Muslims caused by the US, which are barely ever acknowledged. There is a clear hierarchy of human life being constantly reinforced by this mentality, and it is deeply consequential.”

Actually, there seems to be no basis whatsoever for the claim that “hundreds of thousands of foreign Muslims caused by the US.”

While the number of civilian deaths in Iraq (a nation which has suffered the largest casualty count where Coalition forces have been stationed) is often cited as over 160,000 since the start of hostilities in 2003, those citing this figure rarely note that the majority of deaths weren’t caused by American or Coalition forces.  

In fact, only 12% of civilian deaths in Iraq are directly attributable to actions by U.S./Coalition forces, based on a comprehensive study of casualties during the height of the insurgency 2003-2008.  Out of the remaining casualties, the perpetrators were soldiers in the Iraqi army and, mostly, homegrown, foreign (or unknown) terrorists.  So, the overwhelming majority of Muslim civilian casualties in Iraq have been caused by other Muslims.

Further, in addition to the unserious moral comparison between the intentional mass murder of American civilians by Islamist extremists and the unintentional killing of civilians by U.S. forces, even if the original reports were correct, the fact that a 13 minute video demonizing Islam could inspire some in the Muslim world to murder innocent Americans is a commentary on their culture, not ours.

If Jews where to riot and engage in murder every time a video was aired on YouTube containing vile antisemitism, the staggering volume of such hatred produced in the Arab and Muslim world would provide more than enough incitement for Jews to engage in such violence 24/7.

The stereotypical image of Jews as a “treacherous people” plotting to undermine the world of Islam is pervasive, and represents a narrative which the initial commentary by Greenwald and other leftist commentators – by evoking the specter of wealthy Jews undermining Islam and “provoking” the Muslim world by making a hateful documentary – only serves to reinforce.

The only ones who we should impute guilt to after the attack on U.S. embassy personnel are the cowardly “repellent cretins” who committed the act, and their apologists and enablers throughout the world.   

The ideals of the Arab Spring will never truly be realized until their culture begins to encourage the same kind of reflection and self-criticism that leftists in the West are always demanding of their own societies. 

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