Update

I am now blogging here.

Update

I have a new article over at Butterflies & Wheels:

'A Critical Examination of the Qur'an'.

It's spread over four pages and starts here:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=384

If you would like to comment on the article, please do so at the B&W comments section:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/letters.php

Cheers.

CLOSED FOR BUSINESS

Since I have become part of the Harry's Place team and I'm busy in the real world, I have decided to finish posting here.

I will continue to contribute posts to Harry's Place and articles to Butterflies & Wheels, and you may see writing of mine popping up at Jewcy and the Z-Word Blog (and possibly elsewhere) from time to time as well.

Thanks for the support and comments at I Kid You Not.

'Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God'.

In a blog post at The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg recalls a meeting he had with Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas leader recently killed during Operation Cast Lead.

I saw him last in Gaza two years ago, at a mosque in the Jabalya Refugee Camp ... He was one of the more Islamically-learned Hamas leaders I've met ... In particular, Rayyan was interested in the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, with a special interest in hadith that painted Jews in a negative light.

And what did this learned Hamas leader have to say?

This is what he said when I asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (or cease-fire) with Israel: "The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don't need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel." There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. "Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God."

I asked him if he believed, as some Hamas theologians do (and certainly as many Hezbollah leaders do) that Jews are the "sons of pigs and apes." He gave me an interesting answer that reflects a myopic reading of the Koran. "Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce. So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people."

What are our crimes? I asked Rayyan. "You are murderers of the prophets and you have closed your ears to the Messenger of Allah," he said. "Jews tried to kill the Prophet, peace be unto him. All throughout history, you have stood in opposition to the word of God."

And here's some more on Rayyan from the BBC:

"We will never recognise Israel," he told Reuters news agency in early 2007. "There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination."

[...]

When Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007, he said there would be no dialogue with Fatah, the secular Palestinian movement it ousted, "only the sword and the rifle".

Operation Cast Lead was launched to combat men like Rayyan, someone who drew his inspiration not simply from injustices against Palestinians but from an extreme and vitriolic form of Islamist theology, a man for whom hatred of Jews was a duty to God, and a man who presented not simply Israel itself, but the Jewish people as a whole throughout history as 'cursed' enemies.

Nizar Rayyan is a reminder of exactly what Israel is up against in its fight against Hamas, a group that puts out TV shows aimed at indoctrinating children with ideas of anti-Jewish genocide:

And a group whose ideology promotes a hateful and supremacist version of Islam:

Those who delude themselves that Hamas is simply a 'resistance movement' would do well to listen to the words of Nizar Rayyan and to take seriously the real message being promoted by Hamas, a message that presents cease-fires as re-arming periods and which proclaims the long-term existence of Israel to be 'an impossibility'.

Che and what he stood for

This entry is cross-posted at Harry's Place.

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The BBC website has a feature on 'Che today' in which we read:

Most in Latin America could probably not tell you specifically what Che stood for. They use him mainly as a symbol of hope, of independence, of freedom, of something to sing about.

Most of the 'progressives' in the West who are so addicted to Che's image probably couldn't tell you much about what Che stood for either. Take this lady with a pink Che flag at a London 'Stop the War' rally for example.

Well, here are a few things that Che stood for:

1. Hatred. Che wanted to see 'Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine'. He considered Americans to be 'hyenas ... fit only for extermination'.

2. Mass murder. Che wanted to launch a nuclear attack on New York City. He desired 'atomic extermination' of the 'hyenas' (read civilians) who lived there and in November 1962 he boasted to The London Daily Worker of the nuclear weapons, 'We would have used them against the very heart of the US, including New York City'. Even Che's sympathetic interviewer from the Daily Worker considered him to be 'crackers from the way he went on about the missiles'. It's only thanks to the intervention of Nikita Khrushchev that Che's plans came to nothing.

3. Terrorism. With the nuclear attack plans shelved, Che instead attempted to launch a terrorist campaign in New York City. Had it have worked, Macy's, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal would have been hit with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. To give some perspective, the 2004 Madrid train bombings used 100 kilos of TNT and killed and maimed almost 2,000 people.

4. Sacrificing the people of Cuba. At the First Latin American Youth Congress in July 1959, Che proudly claimed: 'These people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names ... they would feel completely happy and fulfilled'.

5. Executions without trial. Che delighted in ordering and carrying out executions and considered the need to present a legal case and to give the accused the right to defend him or herself to be 'archaic bourgeois details'. 'I don't need proof to execute a man, I only need proof that it's necessary to execute him!', Che declared in 1959.

6. Persecution of gay men. In Che's Cuba, 'effeminate behaviour' became a crime and gay men were consigned to forced labour camps with the words 'Work Will Make Men Out of You' posted over the entry gates.

7. Totalitarianism. Che demanded that 'individualism must disappear!' Perhaps his greatest support for this principle is found in his relationship with the USSR. Indeed, according to KGB official Alexander Alexiev, 'Che was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship'.

These are a few things to bear in mind next time a 'leftist' invites you to 'Party Like It's 1959' or you see a 'liberal' comrade sporting a Che t-shirt.

Holding Hamas Accountable

Via the Counterterrorism Blog:

Hamas is dead set against a two-state solution, whether it joins a unity government or remains in the opposition. Indeed, Hamas deploys suicide bombers specifically aimed at derailing progress toward peace. Engaging Hamas will not help the peace process, but it will legitimize the group most violently opposed to such progress.

Meanwhile, as renewed rocket attacks make clear, Hamas remains committed to the use of violence targeting civilians. Engaging in direct diplomacy with Hamas while it targets civilian population centers would empower a movement designated as a terrorist group by both the United States and the European Union. It would also pull the carpet out from under Palestinian moderates who are truly interested in pursuing peace and are vying with Hamas for popular support.

Al-Qaradhawi on Hamas leaders

Remember, Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, invited to London by then mayor Ken Livingstone?


"I welcome you as an honoured guest."

Here's his view on the Hamas terrorist organisation's leadership:

'a model of heroism and manliness'.