QOTD: Confucius

QOTD: Confucius (via Motley Fool)

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

The Old Arik

Bret Stephens describes how the old Ariel Sharon ran Gaza.

Ariel Sharon once ruled Gaza. From July 1971 to February 1972, Mr. Sharon, then the officer in charge of Israel's southern command, suppressed a PLO guerrilla insurgency with one of the most inventive and relentless campaigns in modern military history. To stop Palestinian boys from stoning Israeli infantry, Mr. Sharon gave their fathers a choice: Discipline your children, or face deportation to Jordan. To uncover underground PLO bunkers, Mr. Sharon assigned a bulldozer to every search-and-destroy patrol, literally rooting out Palestinian fighters from their hiding places and possibly burying some of them alive. To facilitate military operations in refugee camps, Mr. Sharon widened alleyways into streets, demolishing whatever housing stood in the way.

And to make certain Gaza would never again pose a security problem for Israel, Mr. Sharon recommended the building of several Jewish settlements that would divide the Strip into four zones. "If in the future we wanted to control this area," Mr. Sharon recalls in his memoirs, "we would need to establish a Jewish presence now. Otherwise we would have no motivation to be there during difficult times later on."

The Right Questions to Ask

QOTD: Bret Stephens in WSJ

In Israel..., suicide bombings are commonly understood by the foreign press as acts of desperation by a people who have lost all hope for a better future. Ease the economic hardships of Palestinians and end the occupation, so the thinking goes, and terrorism will be deprived of its motive.

It's a convenient notion, which more or less excuses mass murder as the deeds of men who have been robbed of their property, pride and patrimony. But is it right? What if suicide bombings aren't an act of despair at all but something approaching the opposite: a supreme demonstration of contempt for everything Westerners hold dear, not least life itself? What if, too, suicide bombers are no poor-man's F-16 but a robust expression of confidence that the Palestinians are infinitely more ruthless than Israelis in what amounts to a zero-sum game?

...There are lessons here for us today. If, for example, you think the Palestinian national movement headed by Yasser Arafat seeks only to form a state within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, then the answer to the problem is to get the Israelis to make way. If, however, you think Palestinians are in the grip of a fantasy ideology, acting as the vanguard for a Muslim counterattack against a latter-day Crusader state, then granting a Palestinian state becomes a bit like allowing Hitler to march into the Rhineland: It perpetuates a fantasy that deserves to die.

Fuel Cell Fantasy

The NYT explains why we're not moving away from an oil-based economy to a fuel-cell one.

the least-expensive methods of hydrogen production use fuels like coal or natural gas, and those create pollution, experts say. Hydrogen is also difficult to ship and store. In addition, power from fuel cells is far more costly than
the same amount of power from a gasoline engine...

[According to Joseph J. Romm, the chief Energy Department official in charge of conservation and alternative energy in the Clinton administration,] Most hydrogen produced today is made from natural gas, he said, and using that gas to make electricity, and thus replace coal-based electric plants, would do more for the environment than using the gas to make hydrogen to replace gasoline. He said society would get more energy from a cubic foot of natural gas burned in a modern gas-powered electric plant than if it was converted to hydrogen.

Gaza Redux

A7 describes the history of Jews in Gaza.

Contrary to popular perception, Gaza has long been a Jewish area, and is in fact included in the Biblical Land of Israel; a dispute among traditional Jewish commentators exists only regarding the area west of El Arish in northern Sinai. It is mentioned as land that should have been conquered by Joshua; was home to Jews during the times of the Hasmoneans and the redaction of the Mishna; and its Jewish population was strong enough to withstand an attempt by Constantine in the 4th century to build a Christian church there. More recently, Jews lived there from 1885 until World War I, and a renewed Jewish community remained there until the Muslim pogroms of 1929. Kfar Darom was established there in 1946, lasting only until the War of Independence two years later, and in 1973, Netzer Hazani - the first of 17 Jewish communities that now exist in Gaza - was established.

The Crux of the Middle East Conflict

Jonathan Tobin says that the crux of the Middle East conflict is the value placed on human life by each side.

Why are Israelis so willing to trade so much for a single life when the Palestinians are willing to expend their own so needlessly? I suspect that it may be not so much a matter of devaluing life as it is the greater value they place on the ultimate victory they seek.

This is more than a philosophical question, because if we think that Israel's foes share our horror at the conflict, then we will always try to appease them with concessions. If their goals are different from those of the Jews, then a change in long-term strategy may be in order.

We may not understand why Arabs honor murder and Jews don't, but at this point in history, we're forced to at least pose the question. If, rather than a dispute about territory, something darker within Palestinian society is driving t his terrible war, then every debate about the peace process is ultimately moot. And that is a possibility very few of us wish to acknowledge.

Gaza Notes

David Bedein reveals some interesting and probably lesser known tidbits about Ariel Sharon's proposed pullout of Gaza.

The popular media will undoubtedly report that Sharon's settlement abandonment policy will sit well with both the PLO and the U.S.

Most reporters have not noticed the map of "illegal settlements" published by the Palestinian National Authority, indicates that all of the settlements that Israel established after the 1948 war, especially in the Negev region of southern Israel, would be considered to be "illegal."

For that reason, Arabs in Gaza have a legal problem with Israeli Jewish settlements that were established after the 1948 war, not with the Israeli settlements that were established after the 1967 war.

Menachem Begin, who advocated Israeli settlement activity in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan, made a cardinal rule when he became Israeli Prime Minister in 1977, which was that no Israeli community in the Golan, Judea, Samaria or Katif would cause Arab villages to be uprooted.

Begin reversed the post-1948 policy allowing Israeli Jews to claim abandoned Arab properties and entire Arab villages for settlement purposes.

What has been forgotten is that the U.S. never recognized Israel's acquisitions of land in the 1948 war. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles made that point when he visited Israel in 1953, and placed the U.S. on the record as opposing Israeli settlement in the "conquered" Negev and the Galilee regions.

For that reason, the U.S. never recognized the 1949 or 1967 cease-fire lines as the borders of Israel. Those cease-fire lines are mistakenly believed by many to be fixed borders.

What the popular media will probably also miss is that the agricultural produce of the 17 farming communities in Katif successfully competes with the agricultural produce of the hundreds of Israel's collective farms -- a factor that has figured into the Israel Labor Party's enthusiastic support for the eradication of their agricultural competitors.

You Have to Laugh

A7 has this ironic quote from Shimon Peres.

Opposition leader Shimon Peres is opposed to forcibly removing citizens from their homes. He said last week, "You're going to force them to move? They don't want to, and you can't just do things by force. They are Israeli citizens with rights and obligations just like yours and mine... Listen to them. They are saying, 'We are connected with our place, we were born here, this is our land, we are citizens of the country.' What can you answer them?"

In case the context is not clear, Arutz-7's Ariel Kahane notes that Peres was not referring to the Israeli citizens of Gush Katif, but rather to the Israeli-Arabs of Um el-Fahm. It was announced last week that Prime Minister Sharon was entertaining the possibility of trading Um el-Fahm, an Israeli city of close to 40,000 Arabs bordering on Samaria, to the Palestinian Authority, in exchange for Jewish-populated areas in Judea and Samaria.

Whitewashing the Palestinian Leadership

Francisco J. Gil-White "converted" from a pro-Palestinian Arab point of view to a pro-Israel point of view in this interesting article.

Here is what I used to believe about the Middle East (all of these beliefs are quite popular):

1) That the media (at least the American media) has a uniformly pro-Israel bias;
2) That Arafat’s Fatah is a secular nationalist organization trying to combat the fundamentalist influences of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Islamist terrorists;
3) That Palestinian terrorism is not anti-Semitic, but aims at national liberation;
4) That the Palestinian leadership has attempted to implement the Oslo accords in good faith, but the Israelis have sabotaged the process;
5) That Israel is a state overwhelmingly made up of European and American Jews who moved into Palestine and displaced Middle Eastern natives;
6) That historically, Jews were well-treated in the Arab world, and that current Arab hostility therefore stems from the current conflict.

Now, having spent time studying the historical record, I believe I was wrong about all six points.

Why They Hate Us

QOTD: Bernard Lewis in the WSJ.

For 300 years, Mr. Lewis says, Muslims have watched in horror and humiliation as the Christian civilizations of Europe and North America have overshadowed them militarily, economically and culturally.

"The question people are asking is why they hate us. That's the wrong question," said Mr. Lewis on C-SPAN shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. "In a sense, they've been hating us for centuries, and it's very natural that they should. You have this millennial rivalry between two world religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be winning."

He continued: "More generally ... you can't be rich, strong, successful and loved, particularly by those who are not rich, not strong and not successful. So the hatred is something almost axiomatic. The question which we should be asking is why do they neither fear nor respect us?"

Gas on Ice

Technology Review contains an interesting article, entitled Gas on Ice, that shows promise for expanding our available natural gas supplies.

Hydrate forms when gas, usually methane, mixes with water under just the right temperature and pressure conditions. A lattice-work of frozen water molecules encases each molecule of the gas, creating a flammable, ice-like substance....If we could produce gas from only 1 percent of all the hydrates in the world, says USGS researcher Tim Collett, we would have enough natural gas to last more than 170,000 years at the present U.S. consumption rate of 23 trillion cubic feet annually.

This seems to me to have much greater promise than solar ever will. Hydrogen as well, given the amount of investment in exploration, production, and distribution for petroleum and natural gas products in the world.

"Moderate" Damage

This description of the latest suicide bombing should be read in its entirety; however, this quote about "moderate" wounds" is telling. This was an eye witness account by Bret Stephens, the editor of the Jerusalem Post.

Erik's wounds were described as "moderate." What that meant was that his knee-cap had been shattered and that he had sustained shrapnel wounds and vascular damage. He will spend between three and six months in recovery.

Palestinians' Misery Self-inflicted

Craig Weiss in the Arizona Republic describes how the Palestinians have brought their own misery on themselves.

Palestinians have a long history of preying on Israel's humanity. Palestinians have often used Red Crescent ambulances to transport terrorists past Israeli checkpoints. In the past three years alone, Palestinian terrorists have been captured at Israeli checkpoints, posing as ambulance drivers, doctors and patients.

Palestinian terror groups have hidden explosive suicide belts under gurneys carrying sick children and in the garments of pregnant women.

As a direct response to these Palestinian abuses of international law and human decency, Israel has been forced to establish checkpoints and search ambulances. Palestinian complaints about what happens at checkpoints should cause us to think of the story of the child who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the judge because he is an orphan.

Palestinian atrocities are why checkpoints were created. Virtually all of the checkpoints in the territories were dismantled 10 years ago, after the signing of the Oslo accords. Israelis were filled with hope in the peace process, and the belief that the Palestinians would use their freedom of movement to tackle terrorism and begin the task of responsible nation-building.

It was only during the last three years, which has seemed to Israelis like one long Sept. 11, that these checkpoints needed to be re-established. Yet, Palestinians never accept responsibility for the reality that they have brought upon themselves.

Human Rights Groups Exposed

David Trimble, Ulster Union leader and Nobel Peace laureate, confirms what Israelis have seen of "peace" NGOs.

Nobel Peace laureate David Trimble called human rights organizations a "great curse" Friday, accusing them of complicity in terrorist killings.

"One of the great curses of this world is the human rights industry," he told the Associated Press news agency at an international conference of terrorism victims in Madrid. "They justify terrorist acts and end up being complicit in the murder of innocent victims."...

He made his comment as one of the keynote speakers at the first international congress of terrorism victims, which ended in Madrid on Tuesday night. He backed another politician at the conference, the Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos, who said that human rights groups were hindering progress towards peace in his country. "For human rights organizations to call [the Colombian rebel group] FARC 'armed opposition groups' undermines the struggle of those who have decided to side with democracy," Santos said. "That is not right. It is unacceptable."

The Madrid conference ended with a powerful declaration which went some way to supporting Trimble. It said: "We call on NGOs and other civil organizations that stand for the defense of human rights to make a commitment to defend victims of terrorism and to identify terrorist acts for what they are, regardless of their cause or pretext and without striking balances or blurring the distinction between victims and executioners."

Why It?s Islam Vs the Rest of the World

Tavleen Singh explains to moderate Islam why Islam is perceived as the problem.

It would, in my view, be a terrible mistake to try and understand the causes of Islamic terrorism. And, please let us call it Islamic since nearly every terrorist act in recent years has been committed by Muslims in the name of their so-called jehad. These terrible acts of violence cannot be excused on political grounds. There have always been political disputes and there always will be but the solution is not terrorism. As for ??socio-economic?? causes we need to remember that none of the hijackers of 9/11 were poor, illiterate or underprivileged. Many of them have abandoned their repressive home countries for comfortable, middle-class lives in Europe and the United States but were so consumed by hatred of the West that they were prepared to die for it.

Moderate Muslims need to ask why just as they need to ask why, despite all their oil, even rich Muslim countries are unable to create just and enlightened societies instead of ones that produce disaffected, desperate youths who are prepared to give their lives to kill innocent people. If the West is such a terrible place and America Satan incarnate then why do so many Muslims choose to migrate to cities like New York and London? Why are they not happy to live bigoted, blinkered lives in Riyadh and Jeddah?

There would be no problem with Islam, no ??clash?? of any kind, if it would restrict its jehad to its own boundaries. It is precisely because it has chosen to internationalise its ideological and religious battle that there is trouble. Just as young Muslims think their way of life is worth fighting and dying for, so young people who are not Muslim feel their way of life is worth fighting for. And, whether Muslims are prepared to admit it or not modernity does mean questioning ancient religious beliefs and demanding answers. A religion that is based on the belief that the last word or ideology, faith, social mores and law was written fourteen hundred years ago will always find itself in conflict with change. Modernity is in its essence the ability to accept change.

This is the jehad that needs to be fought but it needs to be fought within Islam so that moderate, rational voices can rise above the violence and hatred of the bigots who seem to be the only ones able to speak for Islam.

The European Predicament

Excellent article by Robert J. Samuelson on the structural economic problems of the European "socialist democratic" states.

Its economy is enfeebled by high taxes and regulations. Unless leaders take unpopular steps today, Europe faces dire consequences.

From PLO Terrorist to Lover of Zion

Interesting article on Walid Shoebat, a former Islamofascist terrorist, now a Christian Zionist.

"After reading the Hebrew Bible, about all of the righteous wars of Israel – from biblical times until the present – it dawned on me," said Shoebat. "How could it be that Allah is the true God if the Six-Day-War in 1967 resulted the greatest victory for the Jews since Joshua’s encirclement of Jericho. What’s more is that Israel’s victory – unlike Muslim conquests full of rape, pillaging and massacre – brought freedom for all peoples and religions. Everyone [his fellow Arabs living in Jericho at the time –ed.] saw and everyone remembers this but unfortunately people today deny the truth of what they."

Shoebat decided at that point to turn away from the path of terrorism and Jihad.

He explains what we face.

When confronted with what has become somewhat of a mantra since September 11th – that “true Islam is a religion of peace,” Shoebat responds, “I grew up there – I was there at the mosques, the ummahs and the religious schools. I know what is still being taught today in the textbooks and by the religious leaders – so my challenge to those who claim Islam is not the religion of terror we see today, is what have you done to stand against it and say ‘this is wrong’?”

“What the West does not understand about Islam,” Shoebat said on Tovia Singer’s radio broadcast, “is that Jihad has stages. If Muslims have the upper hand then Jihad is waged by force. If Muslim’s don’t have the upper hand then Jihad is waged through financial and political means. Since Muslims do not have the upper hand in America or Europe, they talk about peace while supporting Hamas and Hezballah. The whole idea of Islam being a peaceful religion emanates from that silent stage of Jihad."

The Imam (Islamic cleric) of Orange County, California, a guest on Singer’s radio show as well, took issue with Shoebat’s claims, saying that ‘Jihad’ represents an inner struggle and not the genocidal slaughter of infidels called for by Osama bin Ladin. Shoebat unblinkingly refuted the cleric’c claims, reciting verse after verse of Koranic scripture in its original Arabic and translating into English. “There are over one hundred quotes by Mohammad regarding Jihad – I could recite each one of them but we would be here all day. Every single one refers specifically to Jihad by the sword, by killing, by taking no prisoners – with only one quote referring to an internal struggle – called for by Mohammad after the complete conquest and occupation of Arabia.” He said that such claims were typical of the Islamic leadership in America, and are consumed eagerly by western audiences who do not want to believe that one of the major world religions poses such a danger to humanity.

Asked whether he believes that Musims in America truly adhere to the program of Jihad he described, Shoebat qualified his statements saying, “Afghans in the U.S. and Iranians who left Iran are predominately peaceful people. The Arabic speaking communities in America, however, do indeed support Osama bin Ladin and Hamas.” He cites a direct correlation between adherence to Islam and support of terrorism. “The less they know about Islam the more peaceful they are,” he said.

“There are those that reject many of the classical sources and truly focus on the peaceful verses of the Koran, seeking to twist the verses because they truly do not want to engage in violence,” said Shoebat, “but if those preachers would debate Osama bin Ladin, bin Ladin would clearly win because the words of the Koran are on his side.”

...

The fact is that Mohammed clearly demanded that one who changes his faith must be killed. What part of 'kill' is not understood by those who claim Islam is a religion of peace? Is it any wonder why I have to live in hiding and be so careful even though I live in a free society here in America?”

...

“Most Jews believe in a two-state solution,” answered Shoebat, “I do not believe in this. A Palestinian state will concoct its own rules and laws to continue the killing of Jews.” He suggested instead that Israel, “Wake up and smell the Hummus. We must return to the status quo – the occupation. There were jobs, people went to work and supported their families, and whoever got involved with terrorism was exiled or imprisoned – like any modern country in the world. I think Israel should stand strong and fight – dismantle Hamas and take away all the weapons, the way it used to be. The introduction of weapons into Palestinian society by Israel [under the Oslo accords, Israel gave assault rifles to Arafat’s ‘police force’ –ed.] was a disaster and they must be confiscated.”

Answering another question about life in Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) before the 1967 war, Shoebat described what life was like in Jericho at the time:

“We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians – they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all of the sudden we had a Palestinian flag.”

Shoebat feels very strongly that the ongoing war against Israel has nothing to do with an Arab desire for a Palestinian state. “Never in history was there a Palestinian state,” said Shoebat, “we never wanted a Palestinian state – even today the Palestinians do not want a Palestinian state…”

“Then what do they want?” asked Tovia Singer.

“They want the destruction of the Jews, period,” Shoebat said. “It’s a religious holy war. It’s in the culture, the tradition. Arafat is a chip off the same block as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Ahmed Yassin – they are all birds of a feather, they have small differences but are birds of a feather.”

Asked by Singer what his message to the Jewish people today is, Shoebat thought for a moment and responded: “Your God is an awesome God and your land and your people are awesome. Hold tight and be strong. Do not be weakened by the nations of the world and all those trying to weaken you and take your land.”

As an afterthought, but said with a sense of great urgency, the former terrorist turned lover of Zion implored the Nation of Israel, “Please take back the holy Temple Mount.”

Is France on the way to becoming an Islamic state?

Is France on the way to becoming an Islamic state?
By Barbara Amiel

France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase "les jeunes" is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.

Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?

The situation is not dissimilar elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic culture of the majority.

In theory, the cultural and legal assimilation of Europe's Muslims would be the ideal. This was supposed to be the notion behind the vision of the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of a "French church of Islam" with homegrown imams.

But knowledgeable observers say his "moderate" Council of Muslims has made radical Islam the government-sanctioned norm for all Muslims.

For Islamists, assimilation is contamination since, in Professor Bernard Lewis's words, "Muslims must not sojourn in the land of the infidel". Intermarriage should be another route to assimilation, though in France this usually involves an Islamic male and often the wife converts to Islam.

Meanwhile, the state of Christendom in France is perilous. Catholics may not have reached the secular nirvana of the Church of England's working party that declared the Sunday Sabbath redundant, but French Catholicism, except for little pools of the faithful, is taken with the notion that their Church will be borne forward only if the next Pope is ready to "dialogue" with Islam - a code word that augurs dilution of the faith.

Currently, Islamists are only a fraction of France's Muslim population. In last week's demonstrations against the headscarf law, only 20,000 people turned out. But as in all radical movements, the young are the driving force. As their numbers increase, the militancy of Islam is likely to increase as well.

Europe's chickens are coming home to roost. ...

European countries are not organically immigrant societies. The groups that went to America in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries did so specifically to become Americans. They wanted to shed their past and, within a generation, they did. America's emphasis today on faith and God is just an echo of the founding Pilgrims for whom Christianity was central.

Their beliefs were reinforced by many Christian groups, from Baptists to Mennonites, all in search of religious freedom. These founding fathers decreed separation of church and state, not to make sure the nation was secular, as in France, but to make sure no state religion could interfere with religious freedom.

European countries have none of this melting-pot principle. You cannot become German or Italian with the same ease with which you become American. Also, into this very different European environment came a very different sort of immigrant - people who had no interest in assimilation at all.

They came as settlers, wanting to establish their own communities; at best they favoured a merger - at worst, a takeover. Their approach was nurtured by notions of multiculturalism, a creed appealing to intellectuals, administrators and enforcers, but having almost zero appeal to the home population.

The cultural abrasions that developed, especially between the rapidly growing Muslim community and the French, became the problem that could not be talked about. All respectable political parties, journalists and academics felt it too volatile and far too politically incorrect. The field was abandoned to extreme Right-wingers and nativists who, by default, established the unpleasant tone of the debate and became exclusive owners of a subject affecting the whole nation.

In the absence of openness, the government's response was a cover-up - or, rather, an uncovering: to outlaw Muslim headscarves, shave beards worn for reasons of faith, or ban crucifixes if too large. In Britain, some school Nativity plays were forbidden.

There seemed to be a genuine belief among governments that they could solve this problem by violating Western traditions of religious freedom and by outlawing their own cultural traditions. Far from alleviating the situation, this only aggravated it. Worse, it gave fodder to the extreme Right.

Tribal friction has only two solutions: groups will either unite in the manner of Normans and Saxons, melding into a society that may have different religious practices but subscribes to the same laws and values - in which case headscarves, beards and demographics don't matter a fig. Or they will follow the pattern of warring tribes throughout history.

He Meant What He Said

Omer Bartov reviews Adolph Hitler's second book, published posthumously to see the lessons we might learn from it.

For we still do not seem to have learned a simple crucial lesson that Hitler taught us more definitively than anyone else in history: some people, some regimes, some ideologies, some political programs, and, yes, some religious groups, must be taken at their word. Some people mean what they say, and say what they will do, and do what they said.

Most liberal-minded, optimistic, well-meaning people are loath to believe this. They would rather think that fanaticism is merely an "epiphenomenal" fa?ade for politics, that opinions can be changed, that everyone can be corrected and improved. In many cases, this is true--but not in all cases, and not in the most dangerous ones. There are those who practice what they preach and are proud of it. They view those who act otherwise, who compromise and pull back from ultimate conclusions, as opportunists, as weaklings, as targets to be easily conquered and subdued by their own greater determination, hardness, and ruthlessness. When they say they will kill you, they will kill you--if you do not kill them first.

QOTD: The Root Source of Anti-Semitism

QOTD: Motty Berger, The Root Source of Anti-Semitism

In every generation, there are those who are plotting the absolute and total destruction of the Jewish people. The only question in each generation is how much power evil gets by those who are capable of creating tremendous amount of good not doing enough of that, how much power does evil get to carry out their drive.