Obama's dusty helmet

"...And commissars in dusty helmets  

will lean in silence over me".  -Bulat Okudzhava, Sentimental March

The epigraph is from a Russian song from the late '50s, the brief period of the so-called "thaw", after Stalin's death and the official denouncement of his "personality cult" (it's hard for Communists and other totalitarians to keep from pharaonic deification of their chieftains - the bloodier he is, the likelier). 

The song's author was an immensely popular "bard", which was the vernacular and endearing term for an unofficial and officially unrecognized (at least, at first) poet who also composed and played tunes to his poetry, accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar. Official recognition was important because without it nobody in the USSR could publish, and any public activity like concerts would be extremely limited if not precluded. The genre was also called "author's song", uncommon in the Soviet Union where usually a special category of poets would write lyrics and a special category of composers would write tunes to be played by an orchestra - smaller or bigger, depending on the ideological value and pathos of the song. Okudzhava's poetry, when it was not naively grandiloquent, grave and full of sincere fervor (which eventually allowed him to reach official status), was also in the category of "city romance", where human feelings of love for familiar old Moscow streets, a girl next door, and the smell of freshly baked bread were themes in a pleasant contrast to the pompous hypocrisy or empty levity of the Soviet official art. The Commissars, however, were non-denominational, belonging to both official and unofficial mythology realms. The song, after all, was indeed a march, albeit a "sentimental" one. The Bolshevik commissars - the political minders attached to every Red Army commander in the Civil War, were believed to be stern but just idealists, keepers of the sacred flame and virtuous against all odds. The "dusty helmet" (aka будёновка, budyonovka), a Red Army uniform until late '30s, was shaped after medieval pointed metal headgear, but, made of felt, was much less useful. Borrowed from the imagery of Russian fairy-tales, it was part of communist myth-mongering. 

Another part of that during the thaw time was the opinion of many in the half-informed and semi-blind from propaganda poisoning intelligentsia circles  - enthusiastic young people intoxicated by the whiff of freedom - that Stalin had been bad, but Lenin on the right track. Never mind that Stalin's repressions and concentration camps were nothing new relative to the Red Terror and the camp system enacted by Lenin. The Red Army fighting the Whites in the Civil War was supposed to be good too, the war was a bloody but necessary part of the class struggle, and the millions that died were justifiable sacrifice on the altar of the communist idea - for the future generations to dwell in bliss.  It did not help that the Whites, many with a medieval mentality of serf-owning landed gentry, disdain for the plebs (literally, to the "blackness", чернь) and cruelty, were not an attractive alternative either, even though it was Bolsheviks who usurped power from a democratic government and caused the civil war.

So, in its basic messianic self-deceitful belief in the inevitability of communism for the whole humanity, the thaw generation was no different from those who had bought into the communist quasi-religion during Lenin's and Stalin's eras, the importance of some differing details notwithstanding. The thaw generation was, like the march, sentimental Bolsheviks. The path to paradise on earth, through mass graves and torture, was understandably beset with complications. Stalin, for instance, made an astonishing discovery that, of course, immediately became part of what was then the communist dogma. He stated that as the socialist (Soviet) society gets closer to its ideal of communism, the class struggle intensifies. It seemed to make no sense, as the supposed paradise on earth, the communist society, would presumably be classless. Sense and logic, however, have never had much currency among communists and the left in general. The enemy figure, on the other hand, had to be always maintained, to explain and justify the inevitable shortages and economic downfall after the commissars whom nobody elected had taken all they could from whoever had or could create anything. 

Similarly, today we are fed regurgitated Marxian slogans of the "fair share" that the nefarious "millionaires and billionaires" do not want to give back to the government - for it to redistribute to the anxiously waiting and suffering hungry masses. Those of Solyndras, Solar Trusts and other "stimulated" money pits, and of the corrupt "Palestinian Authority" that names its schools and squares after their "martyrs", otherwise known to the rest of humanity as mass murderers and child-killers. And to the new radical Muslim Egyptian government, to support its military needs - probably to defend itself from the "Zionist entity", as they call Israel, implicitly rejecting not only the peace treaty but even recognition.  It is class struggle all over again - complete with Enemies of the People, which you might have guessed who by now, the Republicans. The vitriol and hatred exuded by the progressives at the about half of the US population that still cling to their Bibles sends shivers down one's spine when that one has a history like mine. 

And so does the new morality - so alike the new "proletarian" morality of the Bolsheviks, who declared moral everything that serves the interests of "the people". There is a rarely cited but very telling quote from Obama: 

So for me, at least, the lack of wealth or significant corporate support wasn't a barrier to victory. Still, I can't assume that the money chase didn't alter me in some ways. Certainly it eliminated any sense of shame I once had in asking strangers for large sums of money. - The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, p. 136. New York: Random House, Inc., First Vintage Book Edition, 2008.

One has to to admire the man’s honesty. On the other hand, one does not have to be a Freudian to see that by that statement Obama informs his fellow worshippers that he’s lost any sense of shame regarding other people’s money - in general. That would be a warning enough to heed, even without the hindsight of the money binge of his presidency. But then, it is easy to read much beyond the money verbiage in that statement. In fact, he informs his readers that he has no sense of shame at all and is “audacious” enough to say that in your face. Talmudic wisdom says that transgression in public is worse than in private, as it gives a bad example to others - definitely a powerful example when served by no less than a US President. Obama also implies that his means in getting support have been different from an average politician’s and he plays by a different set of rules that does not involve sense of shame: 

In many ways, I was luckier than most candidates in such circumstances. For whatever reason, at some point my campaign began to generate that mysterious, elusive quality of momentum, of buzz; it became fashionable [!] among wealthy donors to promote my cause, and small donors around the state began sending checks thought the Internet at a pace we had never anticipated. Ironically, my dark-horse status protected me…. 

Obama feels unbounded by conventional rules. As he poignantly observes, “the problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought”. This is for a senator. The book that was first published in 2006. A memoir of a 45-year old man with less than 10 years of public service. The “buzz” continues, and his status remains "dark-horse" - now through the willing self-deceit of his admirers who are in deep denial of Obama's dictatorship, domestic and foreign. The latter is particularly revealing, with his bowing to and serving the enemies of America and betraying America's friends, - but remains unheeded by the enthusiastic believers in the power of the state and its divine leader, embodying everything the progressive America's quasi-thaw generation ever dreamt of: a "black", young, left, multicultural and America-bashing president. Doing his utmost to "redistribute wealth" as handouts to those abstract  ordinary people in order to manage them.

Today (April 3), he characterized the Republican budget proposal as "thinly veiled social Darwinism". Unnoticed by the media, this is not the first time he uses this accusatory term - in 2007 he called that also Bush's "strategy...  that basically says government has no role to play in making sure that America is prosperous for all people and not just some." The latter formula is absurd: nobody could deny government's role in a country's prosperity. A country's prosperity, however, cannot be translated into an individual's prosperity - with or without government's role. In fact, the need in anybody's help, let alone government's, is antithetical to the notion of individual prosperity (unless you are the government). Aside from that, however, accusation in "social Darwinism" was the Soviet propaganda's staple expletive for criticizing the capitalist society, synonymous with Nazi pseudo-science. According to the Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary, the "most reactionary variants of social Darwinism served as the ideological justification of the class domination of bourgeoisie, and militarism and expansionism in foreign policies".  There is no doubt that Obama invokes the same connotations - surely not from the audience of Plumber-Joes who hardly heard of Darwinism, but from the sympathetic audience of the progressive intelligentsia who would take their cues from Marxist ideological opponents of any application of evolution to human social behavior like Rose, Gould and Lewontin.

Personal wealth, a direct connection to resources, particularly when applied to a notion of a class rather than of an individual, is a threat to those who seek power as a metaphor of resources. This is why Bolsheviks, who were to become the ruling class, sought to eliminate "bourgeoisie as a class". That is why Obama, riding on the same political horse of class antagonism, uses Bolshevik slogans of redistribution of wealth and the "rich getting richer and poor getting poorer". The left intelligentsia is happy to feed him these slogans as their chosen representative, through whom they would attain power and rule vicariously. He, in turn, is happy to consume them, imprinted by his unusual upbringing and the "spiritual" advice of Rev. Wright, a purveyor of racial antagonism, paranoid antisemitism, and hate for capitalist America.

Listening as a youth to Okudzhava's song, popular as it was, I used to joke that the words used in the epigraph were a perfect description of a nightmare: silent killers leaning over their victim.

Jewishness, an antisemite's cover

From: Vanyukov, Michael 

Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 10:51 AM

To: 'letters@nytimes.com'

Cc: 'action@honestreporting.com'; 'letters@camera.org'

Subject: P. Beinart, To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements, New York Times, 3-18-2012

Dear Editor:

It is symptomatic that Beinart, calling for another boycott of Israel, has to refer to his Jewishness, “belong[ing] to Orthodox synagogues”, and sending children to Jewish school to offset the fact that “[b]oycotting other Jews is a painful, unnatural act”. It is indeed unnatural for any normal person, not just a Jew, to use the same weapon against the democratic Jewish state as has been used by antisemitic Arab/Muslim regimes – regardless of what he thinks of the “settlements” and “settlers”. The latter are misnomers, just as “West Bank” is, the only correct observation in his article. In his boycott call Beinart joins other unnaturally anti-Israel Jews, be it Orthodox Neturei Karta or his own J Street. Like they, he is only concerned of rendering the disputed territories Judenrein, never mentioning that the only reason they have come and remained under Israel’s control was Arab aggression and terror, which continue to this day and are codified in the governing charters of both PLO and Hamas. Beinart’s article may help him as free advertisement of his upcoming anti-Israel book as well as provide additional support to the antisemites of the world, to whom his distorted perspective ultimately caters. The Jew-haters are always happy to point out another Orthodox synagogue-attending Jew who can’t tell Israel from apartheid South Africa.

Lying tradition of "Palestine"

Somehow, Arab/Muslim propaganda does not need consistency. It asserts that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem has always been "Palestinian" capital; then the contemporary Jews are not real Jews by "blood", but Khazars, so they have no rights in Jerusalem (why would they, if that was not a Jewish city in the first place?); that Jesus is a prophet of Islam, but somehow nothing that connects him with prophecy, e.g., preaching at the Temple, is true in the eyes of Muslims (there was no Temple, was there?). No history of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans (and by Nebuchadnezzar before) exists for the Muslims - it is not even replaced by any coherent lie. 
 

They steal Jewish Psalms, like they have stolen the lands they've declared theirs - North African, Asian and European, like they've stolen Jewish and Christian prophets, following in that Muhammad's example. Plagiarism is always pathetic, an ugly child of intellectual impotence - be it by a writer or a politician like the current US vice-president, - but that is of negligible consequence when compared with the global repercussions of Muhammad's and Islam's plagiarism and distortions - of time, space, past and present, names and events. From the warp-speed night travel of Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem (Koran never mentions Jerusalem, and says, to "the farthest mosque", "Masjid al-Aqsa" - but today's Islam places it in Jerusalem where the al-Aqsa mosque was built when Muhammad had long been dead, on the Temple's ruins) - to the 500 Jenin civilians "massacred" by Israel, a Goebbelsian lie stated by  the "Palestinian" chief negotiator Erekat and (mis)Information Minister Abed Rabbo, and readily repeated by mainstream news agencies and supported by European politicians. 
 

Hard to understand how so many people, including intellectuals, can be satisfied by the Koran, a disjointed hodge-podge of inventions and ad hoc justifications of Muhammad's horrific actions, imitating divine revelation, childish in its scary-fairy-tale refrain of hellish punishment sadistically executed on unbelievers by Allah, the deity, himself. Then again, it is not surprising, as the same people, the "Palestinian" Authority, declare recently found shekels of year 66 CE, bearing the inscription of "shekel of Israel", a "Palestinian" coin. That is especially amusing because "Palestine" would not be invented, by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, for another 66 years.  Amusing, that is, if one is not thoroughly disgusted by insults to intelligence, doublethink and constant fantastic rewriting of history that is so peculiar to the Muslim culture.  "Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah: The Prophet said, 'War is deceit.'" (Sahih Bukhari, 4:52:269). The war goes on.

Disgusting "Economist" bloggery

The Economist, to put it mildly, is not pro-Israel. The thugs... oops, bloggers to which The Economist provides its web space, are worse. In response to one of them, I sent a letter to the editor. It was two days ago. I am waiting for its publication with bated breath. Here it is, with the robot's response on top:

>>>The Economist thanks you for your letter, which will be edited if it is chosen for publication either in print or online. [skipped]

>>>

Dear Editor,

In the Soviet Union, where I came from, anti-Israel pieces in the newspapers were often published anonymously as editorials. That was intended, on the one hand, to suggest that the article expressed the Party line rather than a personal opinion, and, on the other hand, allowed the author to avoid a personal stigma of antisemitism that, when displayed openly, was still considered inappropriate in educated circles. I am not sure about the party line, but it seems that  the above referred article from March 6, 2012 (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/03/israel-iran-and-america), took the same approach at least in regard to the cowardly cover of the author's identity, protecting him/her from the personal mark of Jew-hater. As it was in the Soviet Union with its relentless anti-Israel/pro-Arab propaganda largely driven by traditional antisemitism, the article is full of distortions, as is, for instance, its implication that Israel's control over the territories is the result of its imperial ambitions, like Britain's or Portugal's. Besides the absurdity of comparison between the territories obtained for imperial colonization by those countries and the historically Jewish land captured by Israel in a defensive war, the author neglects to note that immediately after hostilities ceased in 1967 Israel offered to return all the territories it captured - in exchange for peace. The "three 'no's" of the Khartoum Resolution were the Arab response.

The author brands pathological the Israeli perception of Iranian  threat, when this threat is unambiguously and repeatedly expressed by the top of Iranian leadership, and it would be pathological or criminal for Israeli leaders to take that threat in any other way than on its face value. The "ghetto mentality", contrary to the author's view, is not the readiness to exercise strength for self-defense, which the Israeli leaders hopefully have, but cowering  in hope that the pogrom mob will miss you, which the author has reserved for Israelis. The author's derision for Israel, Israelis and the Jews in general is unmistakable in his/her referring to the "familiar ideological trope from the Jewish national playbook: the eliminationist anti-Semite", as if such an antisemite is something inconceivable, and the elimination of Israel has not been promised by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. History teaches that promises like that are not given in vain.

In the Soviet Union, we had a name for "anti-Zionist" articles like this, hateful, lying and distorting: a pogrom paper. Papers like that used to be published on the eve of another tightening of anti-Jewish and anti-dissident policies. Those papers were usual for Pravda. It is painful and revolting to see such an article on the pages of The Economist.

Fox News: Terrorists as "Rocketeers"

Leland Wittert, reporting today from Jerusalem (America’s News HQ with Shannon Bream), referred to Arab terrorists launching rockets from Gaza at Israeli cities as “Rocketeers”. The fictional Rocketeer is a super-hero fighting Nazis. To attach this character’s name to the terrorists, whom Wittert, as many other Fox reporters, habitually also misname “militants”, is not just a bad taste. It implies that the terrorists represent good, while the Israelis are equivalent to Nazis, a frequent calumny of the Arab/Muslim propaganda. It also makes light of the crimes against humanity committed by the would-be mass-murderers – members of designated terrorist organizations, who do not recognize the right of Israel, or the Jews for that matter, to exist.  This is a disgrace for a news channel that purports to be “fair and balanced”.

The pretty sounds of Islam

Defending Islam is a job that is dark but far from lonely. While the whole world observes if not feels the effects of Islam daily - in the continuous warfare Islam wages against it, - apologists of Islam are legion. Moreover, the intended audience for Islamic propaganda is generally quite willing to accept it, happily providing it with high pulpits of the leading newspapers and magazines, and amplifying that propaganda with its own progressive and "tolerant" scholarly commentary. This is understandable - after all, if the world refused to deal with terror-producing Muslim countries, it would have to also refuse another product of theirs, without which it simply cannot survive. Oil, you know. Then there is so-called religious tolerance , which is a definitive sign of civilization and progress. Because Islam is known as a religion, it is immune from the just criticism and accusations that could target its very existence. Thus Muslim propaganda dutifully continues to be fed to the "well-informed" Western audience, which then builds its political sympathies on this information platform. Meanwhile, politicians that are drawn from the same progressive and educated audience know that it's best for them to be in tune with their constituency, and increasingly are on the side of Islam. We now have a US president who, having received Muslim education during his formative childhood years, refers to the call to Muslim prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset”. Perhaps it is worth remembering that this sound contains the same words as heard by Danny Pearl and others who shared his fate, before they were beheaded by other lovers of that sound, - "Allahu Akbar!" and the statement of acceptance of Muhammad as the Apostle of Allah. Barack Obama recites those words perfectly and knows their meaning well. It does not matter to what political orientation the willing or inadvertent propagandists of Islam belong - whether it's George "the Religion of Peace" W. Bush or the naive leftist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times - as long as the job is done, by omission or commission. 

The printed word from the sources accepted as serious and progressive, such as The New York Times, is perceived by the "educated" public like Pravda was by faithful Communists in the Soviet Union - unquestioningly, immediately becoming part of the foundational axiom. Our omniscient intelligentsia like to think of themselves as independent but follow the media's call like Pied Piper's - pick yourself the appropriate group of his listeners. Both their ignorance about Islam and disinformation are used by the Muslim propagandists. In this disinformation, the apologists of Islam employ deceptive cliches that, thanks to the progressive media, never get tired. Recently I wrote about one that was used by the Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison. To counter Bill Maher's characterization of the Koran as a "hate-filled book" (forward the video to 2:26), Ellison quoted a wonderful passage from that book, "anyone who takes the life, it's as if he killed the whole world" (Koran 5:32). What he failed to say, of course, was that the Koran gives that passage only as a quote from what the Jews were "decreed", nowhere indicating that this decree pertains to the Muslims. The Koran mentions this decree only to accuse the Jews of violating it, among their other transgressions ("And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors"), to justify the Koranic hate toward the Jews, unambiguous and lethal. It is remarkable that hardly any other Koranic quote is usually given to illustrate Islam's pacifism - so hard is it to find expressions of tolerance in the "religion of peace". One possible and oft-repeated exception is "There is no compulsion in religion", which is quoted without mentioning, of course, that it was abrogated by verses like "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Koran 9:5). The journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, kidnapped and forced to convert under pain of death, can testify to the veracity of "no compulsion".

No wonder that the same Jewish decree, lifted by Muhammad from somebody familiar with the Talmud, was cited by the 9/11 mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in his recent article, in which he tries to bring the reader to understanding that Islam is just another Abrahamic religion. That decree, having nothing to do with Islam and negated by the whole history of Muslim conquest, is the only support he could muster to his "fact ... that true adherence to Islam at its essence is as peaceful as true adherence to Christianity". These propagandist lies were published by another beacon of the Western capitalist freedom - The Wall Street Journal, which could not stay behind the progress. Now that we know what "true" adherence to Islam is, we only need to enlighten the miriad of Muslim clerics of the highest authority who swear by violent jihad as the primary virtue of a Muslim. Rauf has as much right to call Islam "Abrahamic" as a thief who stole an heirloom to claim his membership in the family he robbed. Muhammad used the Biblical names he learned from Jews and Christians who had lived in Arabia before he mass-murdered and expelled them. Pathetically plagiarizing the Scriptures while accusing the Jews and Christians in intentionally perverting Allah's word (Koran 5:13-15, 41), he distorted the meaning of and relations between those names, conflating Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the wife of Moses, and Haman with pharaoh. In contrast to the Pentateuch, the Koran never names Abraham's son in the sacrifice story, which results in the Muslims' belief that it was Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs, not Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews. Islam's founder and "perfect man" whose example is to be followed, Muhammad could do no wrong - whether he "married" a 6 year-old girl (Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64), murdered his critics, ordered genocide of the Jews, or reneged on treaties at a concocted pretext. 

As for Islam being a religion, it is telling how imam Rauf describes himself in the article's footnote as "the founder of Cordoba Initiative, an independent, multifaith and multinational project that works to improve Muslim-West relations." Usually, in expressions like that "Muslim-West", a certain symmetry is implied: "Jewish-Christian", "capitalist-communist", "East-West". The "West", to be sure, is not a religion - but so is "Muslim", a totalitarian political ideology counter to the "West" democracy, with the goal of making Muslim both the West and the East, conquering Rome of the West as it did Rome of the East, Constantinople, reconquering Cordoba and Andalus, killing and subjugating the disbelievers - truly a "multinational" project. "True adherence to Islam", Rauf says, "would end terrorist attacks" - and he is right. Of course it would, as that true adherence, from the Muslim standpoint, is when the entire world adheres, and terrorism is needed no longer. When everybody hears the call to Muslim prayer as pretty, and the sounds of other faiths are heard no more, as they are in Saudi Arabia, the land of Allah's Apostle. 

9-11: Tears, no fury...

On the first anniversary of 9-11, I wrote, "On this day, a year after the fanatic Muslim—predominantly Saudi—attack on the American soil, it seems that the affect expressed by the administration as well as the American media has largely been that of teary frustration and pain, not unlike the 'why me?' feelings experienced and expressed by anybody in grief. There has been little anger, let alone fury, in words or facial expressions of the nation’s leadership; instead, there is a lot of solemnity, quivering lips, and—especially initially—calls for reconciliation with Islam that was translated by the President as 'peace' instead of 'submission'. The mighty thunder of the only great power left on Earth, which all terrorists in the world—from Arafat who donated his poisonous blood to injured Americans, to Saudi financiers of terror—braced themselves for, has never come. The mosques, planted in the US and everywhere in the world by the Saudis to teach hatred in preparation for the whole world to become Dar-ul-Islam, the 'abode of Islam', are still churning out brain-washed fanatics ready to die while killing unnumbered 'kaffirs' regardless of their age and sex. Arafat has just recently become undesired in the administration’s eyes, but still remains the 'leader of the Palestinian people' instead of being recategorized into the oldest living terror chieftain. The 'Palestinian' state is still discussed as a desirable goal, while the majority of its potential citizens support continued murder of innocent Israelis. The administration is still trying to convince Arabs that they should support an attack against Iraq, while even its European continental allies, faithful to their familiar tactic of appeasing the murderer, deny their support. And American airlines, ready to risk passengers’ lives in fear of offending “Middle Eastern” guests, waste the effort of their security personnel, incompetent as it is, on checking the underwear of grandmothers in wheelchairs for explosive nail clippers they could hide there.”


What has changed since? Arafat's poisonous blood has eventually killed him. The portrait of that brigand now decorates the office of his comrade-in-arms, Abbas, who is going to ask the UN for recognizing "Palestine" - a nonexistent state with an imaginary president: Abbas's "term", for what it's worth, ended in January 2009. Another US president has just declared now, "I’ve made it clear that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam." Never mind that this statement is irrelevant grandiloquence or worse - a chronic delusion: if militant Islam is at war with the United States as it is, so is the United States with Islam, however unwillingly. It would indeed make sense to say, "We do not want to be at war...", but it would make no difference. 


Yes, it is difficult to identify the enemy: the wars have been between nation-states for a long time. Those wars are "normal", I guess. It seems insane and abnormally regressive to speak in terms of religious wars. In fact, however, there is no need for it, nor would it be correct. This is not a religious war not only because the United States does not represent a religion in conflict with another. It is not religious because there is nothing in Islam relevant to a religion that concerns the non-Muslim world. Does it really matter to anybody but devout Muslims that they believe in having a deity by the name of Allah, who used to have three daughters  - until, that is, that information in the Koran was abrogated in the Koran? What is of concern to the non-Muslim world is Islam as a political ideology: the Koranic claim on the entire Earth and humanity, to be brought into submission to Islam. By force and terror or by dawa, Islamic indoctrination. 


There is nothing truly unfamiliar in this sort of war that is neither religious nor against a nation-state. The Western world has never come into a direct conflict with Soviet Communism - only with its numerous and weakly connected proxies who would kick their Soviet advisers out as soon as they were sure of attaining necessary power. Nonetheless, if it were a direct conflict, it would be an ideological one. The war with Nazism was an ideological war: even though the Germans were a "master race", that notion included, in their eyes, at least the Nordic nations. Also, their allies - Nordic or not - would benefit from Nazi victories. The Nazis were not worried much about the Semitic origins of the Arabs, or the Slavic origins of their SS divisions "Galizien" and "Handschar", organized from Orthodox Ukranians, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks - the latter with the able help of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, Arafat's relative. What mattered to Germans was those troops' zeal in exterminating the Jews, the Gypsies, and the enemies of Nazism. It's easy to forget that it was indeed Nazism and fascism that the world fought against in that war - because it is so much easier to identify the noun, Germany, and forget the adjective, Nazi, or just mean it as synonymous with Germans at the time but not now. Obviously, what's changed is not the nation - inasmuch as nations have continuity. It is the ideology that has dramatically changed. Even though we may conveniently think that it was Germany that was defeated, it was, in fact, Nazism, which had taken possession of the minds of Germans, like Islam has taken possession of the minds of Arabs and many others.


It is the we-are-not-at-war-with-Islam-religion-of-peace attitude of a teary Bush that first portended today's situation, when, after Taliban has been defeated, it is still on the verge of return, when Saddam's Iraq has become Iran's Iraq with a Koran-based constitution, when "friendly" dictators are being replaced with Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey of Ataturk has become Turkey of a new Islamic sultan, Erdogan. It is a bit like leaving Mein Kampf as the foundation of social thought in Germany after Nazi defeat. The same intentional blindness is expressed in Obama's nonsense that "Those who attacked us on 9/11 wanted to drive a wedge between the United States and the world." What about those who attacked England on 7/7 and Spain on 3/11?  Are they also about "wedges"? Or are all these terror attacks by Muslims different, as the world perceives terror against Israel? With Israel, it's always Israel's fault - it's all "occupation", even though it's the same terror that tortured Israel before 1967 and any "occupation". What is so hard for the West to understand in that it's not because of "occupation", land, or any particular grievances? It would be good if it was: if we were the reason, we could and should be able remove it. No, we are not, and we can't. It is because Islam has finally gained sufficient strength to resume violent jihad bequeathed to Muslims by Muhammad, or Allah if you will: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Koran 9:5). Not enough strength to wage a war using armies and battles, but enough to blow up trains and restaurants, demolish buildings symbolic of non-Muslim might with thousands of the infidels inside, and shoot point-blank and cut throats of Jewish babies. It is cynical if not downright dishonest of the US president to claim that "people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence". Those unnamed "people", aka Arabs, have shown nothing of the kind: ask Israeli diplomats who have just fled from Cairo, or Lara Logan, raped in the Tahrir square, a symbol of Egyptian newly acquired "freedom".  It is still tears for those who perished on 9/11 - not fury at those who murdered them - that dominate the 9/11 affect. America's post-9/11 wars, delimited by time and not by victories, are indeed not with Islam. That's why they will not prevent terror, a stratagem in the war Islam wages on humanity.

What's in a name?

A lot. For instance, when the situation in the Middle East is discussed, it would help to use unbiased terminology. Whereas the “international community”, largely biased against Israel, may have accepted the absurd name, the “West Bank”, that was given by Jordan to the territory it illegally seized in the 1948-49 war, this should not be perpetuated if the discourse is based on intellectual honesty. The latter pertains also to the term “settlements”, which are Jewish villages and towns that differ from the Arab ones in the same area only by their civilization. Calling these towns and villages “settlements” biases the public perception by connoting their temporary character, ultimately targeting them for removal, as that has indeed happened in Sinai and Gush Katif. Needless to say, that was undisguised ethnic cleansing. The "international community" would not fail to classify it as such for anybody else, but not the Jews. But of course, when the Jews themselves invented a euphemism just for that occasion, "disengagement". Euphemisms are helpful to the "international community" when it deals with the Jews. When the Jews were shipped from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, the Germans called it "relocation".

Accepting the name “West Bank” for Judea and Samaria is no different from accepting “al Quds” as the name for Jerusalem. Compliance with the non-Jewish naming conventions is already expressed in the names’ changes from Yehudah/Shomron and Yerushalayim. This could well suffice. It is the Arabs who are settlers in the Land of Israel, not the Jews who are the natives of that land. Imagine what would happen if the mandate given by the League of Nations to the UK, which allowed it to create Trans-Jordan from 80% of the territory instead of the promised Jewish national home, were called not Palestine but by its historic names - Judea, Samaria, etc. - what would the "Palestinians" be called now? "Judeans" - or perhaps simply "Jews"? Our language forms our thinking and ultimately actions. Let's get it straight.

Kristof's tilted balance

Another piece in the New Ork Times from Nicholas Kristof, "Seeking balance in the Middle East". The balance he seeks is supposed to be obtained in the US Congress. It so happens that this elected body, in Kristof's eyes, has been entirely "obstructionist" - that is, obstructing the road to "Palestinian statehood". The reason is that the Congress does not follow the "clarion call for American reasonableness in the Middle East" - that of J Street, a Soros-funded organization whose members consider the IDF (Israel Defense Force) to be as terrorist as Hamas and support the BDS campaign (boycott of Israeli products, divestment from and sanctions against Israel). Kristof's "balance" does not include any demands from "Palestinians" - just give them what they want. Knowing that this is a blatant double standard and attempting to preempt this critique, he provides a straw man of "denouncing worse abuses by, say, Syria" and justifies his lack of demands for that by the lack of financial help to Syria from his tax dollars. No word, of course, about those American tax dollars - about a billion direct and much more in many other ways - that go to the terrorist and terrorist-supporting Palestinian Administration.

In his opinion, virtually the whole Congress is engaged in "tomfoolery", when it demands accountability from the "Palestinians" before they ask for the UN's recognition of their state. There is no reason to doubt that that state would be a terrorist one, with no responsibility for terror required from it, as Kristof considers Israel's operation in Gaza to halt rocket attacks an illegitimate "invasion". The only "intransigence" there, in his view, is Netanyahu's government's. His rule is false symmetry, whereby Israeli Jews' building kindergartens in "illegal settlements" (which are fully legal from the legal standpoint) is equal to Palestinian Arabs' slaughtering Jewish children - both are "extremism". It is therefore clear what is needed for the "balance" a la Kristof: to follow the marginal views of despicable J Street, which he is trying to present as the American Jews' mainstream.

He cowardly repeats the antisemitic "Jewish money and influence" canard - without taking full responsibility for it: "Some see this influence of Jewish organizations on foreign policy as unique and sinister". There is certainly plausible deniability in that "some", isn't there, but in the end it is very hard for him to hide his sympathies, when he expresses his hope that J Street will help Washington to get a "new beginning" - along the lines of Arab Spring. Considering that the only thing changed so far as the result of this "spring" is that the friendly dictators are replaced with unknown ones but supported by peace-lovers like Muslim Brotherhood, it is clear what this new beginning would be like.

As the likes of Kristof always do, they demand everything for "peace settlement" from the side that is not waging the war. They think that the price is not for them to pay if another Munich 1938 happens. Fortunately, it seems the US Congress has more common sense and knowledge of history to understand that the "land for peace" principle should have died in the ruins of 1945 Berlin and in the ashes of Auschwitz.

Dreams from the Smartniks

Perhaps this can be of interest to those who like linguistic trivia. There is a mildly derogatory word in Russian, умник (pronounced "oomnik"), which can be translated as "smartnik", something like smartypants. It recognizes a possibility that somebody can be smart but not really wise. I am talking about the attention that the latest "rapture" story has received. I don't mean the media - hardly any source of the "news" missed the story. I am talking about Facebook, where some of my Facebook friends - doctors and professors - to the very presumed "world's end" - just could not keep from expressing their derision for the "morons", competing for a better disparaging joke. Now, I could readily understand the educated crowd's interest to this  story, had it raised interest to cognitive dissonance, research in which started by Leon Festinger from a similar story. But no, apart from using the benighted "morons" to celebrate their own incomparably higher intelligence, my educated friends evinced no other motivations for investing their considerable time and effort into this "fun" of observing a banal inconsequential illusion.

Am I not doing the same now, but on the account of my friends? I really would not care, were it not in such contrast with the lack of attention to what may really result in the world's end, jihadist Islam, which has just been supported by the American president. Obama called for Israel to return to the "1967 lines", a euphemism for the Auschwitz borders of the 1949 armistice lines. If indeed the future borders were the 1967 lines, Israel would have full control of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Sinai. In addition, as per Obama's diktat, Israel has to ensure that the "Palestinian" state is contiguous, thus Israel should cut itself, relinquishing its own contiguity. As usual, Obama did not mention anything tangible from "Palestinians" or other Arabs, except for unspecified "provisions" that "must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism, to stop the infiltration of weapons, and to provide effective border security". If such provisions were anywhere in the cards, would he himself  put the "profound and legitimate questions for Israel:  How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?" Doesn't it require deep cognitive dissonance of the president, who recognizes the impossibility of such negotiations, to demand these negotiations from Israel exactly when Fatah has openly joined openly genocidal Hamas? What "credible answer to that question" could these bandits in principle give? It is to these joined terrorist gangs that Obama wants Israel to make known the "territorial outlines of their state".

As usual, Obama draws false parallels between Arab terrorist murderers and Israelis who defend themselves from terror, between the victims of terrorist slaughter and Arab civilian casualties of anti-terror response that result from the terrorists' hiding behind civilians' backs. (It's hard to use military terms like "civilians", considering that the terrorists do not wear a military uniform either). He equates "suspicions and hostilities" for both sides of the "conflict" - the same "conflict" as illustrated in the video above. He equates the "issues of territory [for Arabs] and security [for Israel]", when anybody with any cognition understands that a territory cannot be taken back when security is violated. Let alone the simple fact that Israel's security is incompatible with the ruling charters of both PLO and Hamas, this incompatibility is embedded in the Koran, and no security for Israel can be guaranteed by any duplicitous verbiage of Abbas. This "president" of no country has just lied again about the history of the Arab "plight", mentioning nothing about their refusal to create their state, starting from 1947 

and many times since, as playing some role in that "the Palestinian state" is "long overdue". As Obama said, "Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist". "Palestinians" - whether Abbas's "authority", whose maps have no Israel on them, or Hamas with its call for exterminating the Jews in their entirety - have given no sign they they are stopping that denial. How then does that "never" play along with any "1967 lines"?

I find cognitive dissonance of those waiting for yesterday's rapture a healthy relief compared with delusions of Obama and his smartnik peace-mongering incompetent pro-Arab ideologues. The rapture gevalt will be forgotten tomorrow. Obama's nasty arm-twisting rewards terror and calls for more of it.

Burning Koran: the form and the substance

Considering the violent nature of the enemy and enemy ideology, Islam, the immense courage of Ann Barnhardt is unquestionable. The young American woman posted on YouTube her videos where she reads the horrible Koranic suras, followed by burning the respective Koran pages, and criticizes the US Senator Graham for his reaction to a Koran-burning by a Florida pastor. It is telling that "[m]any Afghans did not know about the Quran-burning [by the pastor] until Karzai condemned it four days after it happened." Graham and Gen. Petraeus, another accuser of the pastor and defender of Muslims' rights to passions, do not blame Karzai, a corrupt puppet, sitting on American bayonets that apparently are beginning to be more uncomfortable for him than the threat to follow Najibullah's footsteps if the Taliban comes back.

I do disagree, however, with the form of Ms. Barnhardt's message - Koran-burning, - but not for the Petraeus and Graham reasons. Those reasons border on despicable, misplacing blame for Muslims' murdering people from the Muslims committing those murders to Americans destroying a book, the Koran, - from an expression of Islam to an expression of the American Constitution. My reason is a historic association of that form - book-burning - with the Church's burning heretical books and the Talmud, Nazis' book-burning, Soviet Communists destroying, censoring and banning  books, Muslims destroying Bibles, and other similar actions. The Heine maxim still warns that "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." The words are from Heine's play "Almansor", and the book burnt by the Inquisition in that play was, fittingly, the Koran. 

My view is that a possibility of such parallels in the expression of legitimate feelings towards the Koran, while protected by the Constitution, should be ruled out. Not by the law - which would indeed be dhimmitude - but by people's recognition of those historic parallels. The lack of historic knowledge or the desire to maximally dramatize the expression of one's rejection of Islam as an ideology can result in the effect opposite to the intended, raising negative reactions to the substance of the matter. The substance, with which I entirely agree: Islam is a totalitarian ideology mimicking religion, enslaving its followers and calling for them to enslave others, and pursuing global domination - from subjugation and murder of family members (women and children) to subjugation and murder of minorities in Muslim countries to subjugation and murder of "unbelievers" elsewhere and everywhere. The Koran needs to be read, and the terror inflicted by Muslims upon the world needs to be understood for what it is - following Islam as prescribed by that unholy book. Burning the Koran and calling for others to do the same is wrong in form, may prevent people from seeing the substance, and may hurt rather than help the fight against the totalitarian cult of Islam.

A familiar death

Arrigoni and Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh Photo: EPA

I read books about how and why people become terrorists. I've not seen any about how one becomes a supporter of terrorists, like these ISM people are. This is not quite true, though. These supporters remind me the stories about vampires and their human familiars. These familiars are in thrall to their lords, and follow all their commands. They also gain some benefits, picking up crumbs from their lords' tables, if not literally then by vicariously exercising power over other humans and perhaps hoping themselves to be turned. They also die in their lords' fights.

Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian member of the International Solidarity Movement, lived in Gaza. He called the phrase "How can a man without a heart have a heart attack?" - about Mubarak rushed to the hospital - the "most astute comment discovered on the network." This was followed by "Stay Human Stay Human Vik da Gaza city. Vik from Gaza City",  the exhortation that concluded each post of his on Guerrilla Radio, his blog. Happy about Israel boycotts. Regretful that "The sporadic firing of homemade rockets of the Palestinian guerrillas, now did not cause casualties in Israel, nor even less substantial property damage". "Vik" called Goldstone's mealy-mouthed admission of his blood libel of Israel's intentionally killing civilians "another green light for more massacres." He was "disgusted" - not by his friends shooting rockets at Israeli towns with the goal to kill and maim Israeli children, from among the Gazan women and children, but by the Israeli response to terror, in which, unfortunately, somebody else in addition to terrorists sometimes dies. That blood, as befits vampires, also feeds them, used for getting more sympathy to their cause and more hate toward the oh-so-hated Jews. Which calls for more Jewish blood. And if my rare reader thinks I am being too dramatic and the vampire comparison is far-fetched - it is not mine, but the Hamasniks' themselves: "We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children's thirst with your blood. We will not leave until you leave the Muslim countries."

It is easy to guess why one gang of Gazan terrorists, Tawhid wal Jihad, Wahhabi vampires, kidnapped Vittorio Arrigoni as a hostage to make another gang, Hamas, release Tawhid's leader. On the one hand, "Vik" was a valuable asset for Hamas as the rulers of Gaza: not so many Westerners like Arab terrorists so much as to live in Gaza and share, as he did, the vampire lords' convictions. So there was indeed a good chance Hamas could agree to that demand. On the other hand, if Hamas did not, their vampire competitors in the fight over the Jewish blood could make good on their promise to kill "Vik" without extra risk they would incur if they kidnapped and killed a Hamasnik. So they murdered Vik - a familiar outcome of a close encounter of this kind. As with other kinds of gangs, this murder probably also raised Tawhid's status in the terrorist-approving society.

What is not so easy for me is to understand what makes one become a familiar. Is it possible not to know that there would be no "suffering" and "massacres" of Gazan Arabs if they did not incessantly try to murder Israelis? Is it not clear that Hamas and the rest of Gazan bandits commit a double crime against humanity every time they shoot a rocket or a mortar at Israel: by trying to indiscriminately kill, and by using their own women and children as human shields? It can't be just ISM's or Hamas's blood money: however strong that or other temptation might be, the stench of violence that is in the Gazan air must be overwhelming for somebody who has not been raised in that culture (for lack of a better word). Is the Jew-hatred of "Viks" as strong as to mislead them into trusting their vampire lords' protection?

No wonder he had to remind himself to "stay human", living among vampires. He could have tried harder - by staying away from them. He would still be alive.