'We don't hate Jews, we hate Zionists'

As always I’ve been reading columnists from around the world and came across two lads bitching about pretty much the same thing. Firstly our own Dave Bullard who calls political correctness the curse of the chattering classes while Mark Steyn — who writes for far too many publications to mention here — was going on about free speech and political correctness as they apply to the Western response to the proposed burning of the Koran.

In respect of South Africa and the US, both authors succeed in outlining the hypocrisy and indeed the danger of euphemising terms and ignoring the reality of the situation on the ground.

As David correctly points out the fact that it’s called an informal settlement rather than a squatter camp doesn’t make it any more palatable to those who have to live there.

As Steyn points out :

“So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for “respect” and “sensitivity” toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.”

The problem, I’m afraid, is that through trying to bend over backwards to be politically and morally correct in the manner that it is being done now, people are in fact polarising society in a way that is becoming deadlier by the day.

Worse — those who do it aren’t brave enough to carry it through.

Let’s use an easy example; Israel with its tiny population and its miniscule territory.

The “moral champions” of our planet gasped in shock and horror when Israel invaded Gaza and some civilians were killed even though they were collateral to the targets being hunted. The same “moral champions” who ignored hundreds upon hundreds of rockets over years aimed at Israeli civilians where anything military would be collateral and which occasioned the invasion.

Then we read about the academics who would boycott an Israeli university because of its support for the Israeli government. A university that has in fact criticised that government’s policies but apparently not enough.

Yet genocide in Sudan doesn’t rate a mention among these giants of the academy, not one Zimbabwean university despite massacres and five million on the brink of starvation, Iran shooting its demonstrators — no call there — Stalin murdered between 30 and 50 million Russians but nothing said there and on and on and on.

May I point out to those academics in South Africa that I understand why you are calling for this particular boycott while ignoring all the rest.

The fact is that you are an anti-Semite.

And when you roll on the ground clutching your leg crying foul — please enclose ALL the boycotts of universities that you’ve originated flowing from gross abuse of human rights before you come bullshit me about the Israel university boycott. Then set out why Israel is more important than all the rest.

As for Jews who stand behind this boycott I can only admire the way you stand up for human rights. Please list those atrocities OTHER than the easy Israel scapegoat that you have been boycotting and set out why Israel’s problem is bigger than say Sudan.

The fact that you are Jewish by birth does not mean you cannot be an anti-Semite. Hell some of the worst anti-Semites are Jews.

Zionism versus Judaism? — a convenient cap to wear for hating the only Jewish country in the world. Why is it that nobody has a problem with a country being a Muslim country?

I don’t.

If the bulk of the people follow Islam why can’t it be a Muslim country or a Christian country as the case may be?

“We don’t hate Jews, we hate Zionists.”

Why — because five million Jews live there.

Nice to get all the politically correct garbage out the way.

The only reason people attack this tiny country with a minute population is because they are too afraid to tackle the big questions. As Steyn points out you can draw Jesus in urine but don’t even mention Islam. Yet in those countries the worst abuse of human rights, gays, women and any other trendy cause are going on daily.

How do we assuage our moral cowardice — attack Israel.

Two bombs after the World Cup in Uganda because they are helping the Somali government against terrorists and what response from these moral champions? Those blast victims had done nothing other than live in a country whose government happened to be assisting a neighbour fight Islamists and what do our academics say and do?

Sweet FA — and that’s not the body that looks after the Premier League.

Know why they don’t attack the onslaught on gays, women and every other human right in those Islamic countries?

Because they might be physically hurt.

Back to Israel hoh guys?

Yesterday the chickens finally started coming home to roost.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed that attempts to create a multi-cultural society in which people from various cultural backgrounds live together peacefully have failed.

More than half (58.4%) of the 2 411 people polled in Germany thought the about four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices “significantly curbed”.

“The study, by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank, showed that more than one third (34.3%) of those surveyed believed Germany’s 16 million immigrants or people with foreign origins came to the country for the social benefits.

Around the same number (35.6%) think Germany is being “over-run by foreigners” and more than one in 10 called for a “Fuehrer” to run the country “with a strong hand”.

The enormous swing to the right in Germany is being mirrored in Holland, Scandinavia and even the Swiss.

In the US the right-wing backlash to US president Barack Obama is becoming more evident daily. Just how far right, will become apparent in the November elections.

Britain is already seeing more and more right-wing protests.

Tony Blair who is at the forefront of Middle East peace negotiations said the West is being “outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised” by violent Islamic extremism.

The former prime minister said that there had been a failure to challenge the “narrative” that Islam was oppressed by the West which was fuelling extremism around the world.

He said too many people accepted the extremists’ analysis that the military actions taken by the West following the 9/11 attacks were directed at countries because they were Muslim and that it supported Israel because Israelis were Jews while Palestinians were Muslims.

“We should wake up to the absurdity of our surprise at the prevalence of this extremism,” he said

“Look at the funds it receives. Examine the education systems that succour it. And then measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful co-existence. We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised.”

Speaking in New York to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr Blair warned that it was impossible to defeat extremism “without defeating the narrative that nurtures it”.

Moderate Muslims who believed in co-existence and tolerance were, he said, being undermined by the unwillingness of the West to take on the extremists’ arguments.

“We think if we sympathise with the narrative — that essentially this extremism has arisen as a result, partly, of our actions — we meet it halfway, we help the modernisers to be more persuasive,” he said.

“We don’t. We indulge it and we weaken them. Worse, a reaction springs up amongst our people that we are pandering to this narrative and they start to resent Muslims as a whole.” (Associated Press).

In other words when Israel is gone the war will be against the Christians and the atheists whose actions right now — in tip-toeing around the extremists — is bringing it nearer by the day.

The rise of the right and the possibility of another Fuehrer are no longer far-fetched because the custodians of our morality are cowards who ignore glaring abuse of human rights and assuage their guilt by picking on scapegoats who won’t hurt them.

Into the lacuna — where moral bravery should be — will come an equal and opposing force but made up of extremists from the right.

World War III where people will have to choose between bad and very bad.