PA child: Fatah Conference taught me to be a combatant and fight Israel
Ahmad Abd Al-Wahab:
"I came here following the conference elections. I hope that there will be more conferences like the 6th Fatah Conference (August 2009). These conferences are important for us because it makes us aware of leadership and that we will be combatants and wage resistance (violence) against the Israelis." PMW
Muslims furious with media portrayal as terrorists and criminals
SMH
ADELE HORIN
July 12, 2010
AUSTRALIAN-MUSLIM families have good relations with other Australians, and feel safe and happy here. But they are furious with the media for depicting Muslims as terrorists and criminals, a report for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship reveals.
Hey those Crazy, Whacky, Zany,Muslims are at it again, seen here pissing themselves laughing at the Sydney Morning Herald’s latest example of appeasement to their Multicultural Masters, portraying the Labor Party and the left’s’ preferred Australian’s, yet again as the “real victims” in their world wide war against civilization aka. the Infidels.
''The families felt strongly the media was gunning for Muslims; it was a huge concern for them,'' said Ilan Katz, the director of the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW, and a co-author of the study. The research is part of a wider project commissioned by the department to understand the concerns and needs of Muslim Australians.
Based on in-depth interviews with 72 family members, it found people traced a change in the media's depiction of Muslims from the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
''They felt community attitudes had hardened towards them since then because of the media,'' said Dr Katz.
An Iraqi father said: ''The media portrays us as terrorists; the media is against us.'' A man from Sudan said, ''Australians listen to the media, that is what they believe.''
Yet the Australian-Muslims were mainly positive about their daily interactions with ordinary Australians, friends, workmates, and passers-by. On the whole they felt accepted and appreciated what Australia could offer. Another father said: ''Australian government high schools even have a mosque [prayer room] … and the students perform midday and Friday prayers there.''
However, a major concern was low income, with some blaming workplace discrimination. Some parents were troubled their children had become more religious than they were. ''The daughters were wearing the hijab but the mothers weren't,'' Dr Katz said. Others were anxious about their children's involvement with drugs, sex or alcohol.
Nadia Saleh, 42, of Punchbowl, calls Australia ''this remarkable country'' that she came to from Lebanon 21 years ago. With her husband Karl, 52, she has raised four children.
''We have got some people who do the wrong thing but it is unfair to criticise the entire Islamic community,'' said Mrs Saleh, a manager at the Riverwood Community Centre.
The study highlights the diversity of Australian-Muslims, who come from countries as disparate as Albania and Nigeria.
Dr Katz found Imams were a main source of guidance for parents with family problems and needed more help and resources from government and non-government agencies to do a better job of pastoral care.
There are thousands of hours of film of Hitler and his fellow Nazi’s laughing and joking in the same sort of propaganda pap pieces to show the world what a great bunch of happy go lucky mass murderers they were also, they still believed in the total elimination of those who did not share their view of world domination, the difference between Nazi’s and Muslims is that the Nazi ally’s, the Muslims, are still a functioning today and have succeeded in almost every objective they swore to achieve back in WW2, Islamism , Nazism what’s the difference ? Islam is Terrorist Organization in almost every Nation on earth,a “Religion” yeah right, and I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.
Ok so how about we see what was reported in the months of June and July 2010 after reading these reports it’s no wonder Muslims are demanding our Media not be allowed to report their activities in Sydney and Australia generally, I simply don’t have time or room to report what happens in Melbourne with the African Muslims why they are even more happy go lucky and carefree than the Sydney Muslims.
“This appeal was an attempt, McHugh argued, to turn the case into one about ''freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and that the appellant has been unfairly branded as a racist, homophobic, terrorist-supporting, woman-hating bigot when all he was doing was expressing views consistent with his Islamic faith and his role as a prominent Australian Lebanese community spokesman … The question here is whether the deliberate peddling of grossly sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic filth is not dangerous and disgraceful and an incitement to violence and racist attitudes in Australia in 2010. The most extraordinary claim is that his extreme views are [a] 'Muslim view'. This ought not to be accepted.''
Explosive argument behind Trad's defamation reasoning
SMH
PAUL SHEEHAN
June 14, 2010
The man carrying a legal bomb into courtroom 11A in the NSW Supreme Court building on Friday morning did not look menacing and is not menacing under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. This was cultural war. The legal bomb was brought to court by the once leonine figure of Clive Evatt, a veteran defamation lawyer who now walks with the aid of a cane, on which his severely bent frame leans heavily.
As Evatt took his place at the plaintiff's bench, the man on whose instructions he was acting, Keysar Trad - a thickset, bearded man wearing a grey suit, blue shirt and tie - sat alone in the back row of the public gallery.
Trad is no stranger to litigation. Over many years he has expended untold hours making formal complaints to the NSW Supreme Court, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, the Anti-Discrimination Board, the Human Rights Commission, the Press Council, other review bodies and, above all, the media, where he has operated as a quote-machine representing the Muslim community in Australia.
He was in court on Friday because of a disaster of his own making. After delivering a hostile tirade against Sydney's top-rated radio station, 2GB, during a ''peace'' rally in 2005, Trad was himself criticised the next day by a 2GB presenter, Jason Morrison, though not in the same language Trad had used at the rally where he claimed to speak on behalf of Muslims in Australia.
Trad sued for defamation. He was the star witness for his own case. The senior judge, Justice Peter McClellan, the chief judge of common law in the NSW Supreme Court, found against Trad, and found him to be a witness of little credibility, a man of extreme views and, in summary, ''a disgraceful individual''.
Such was Trad's performance under oath that on Friday the counsel for the defence, Richard McHugh, SC, delivered this devastating portrayal of his credibility under oath: ''[Trad] attempted to evade responsibility for his statements by claiming he was misquoted, by claiming he was taken out of context, by claiming he had changed his mind, or by claiming he did not even know what he had said or written at the instant he said or wrote it. He was entirely disbelieved.
''[His] evidence that he did not know who was the author of Mein Kampf - and his feigned attempts at a thought process to recollect the author's name - were a low point in this trial. The transcript in this case can supply only a colourless picture of the evidence at trial.''
Even before this appeal, Trad was facing legal costs exceeding $250,000. He decided to up his risk. On Friday morning, I counted 16 lawyers in the court. At this level, justice is neither fast nor cheap.
The Trads
His appeal was based on several major grounds but the most prominent and contentious, made repeatedly in oral and written submissions, was that Justice McClellan had erred fundamentally by taking Trad's provocative comments over the years out of the context of the Muslim community. To quote Evatt: ''His honour did not take into account that Australia is a multicultural society and the viewpoints of ethnic groups are recognised by the Australian community even though not all members of the community agree with them.''
And this: ''His honour did not refer to or even consider the likelihood the average citizen would recognise that the views expressed by [Trad] were similar to beliefs shared by Muslims throughout the world including Muslims in Australia.'' And this: ''His honour appears to have given no weight to the fact that the speech was made to Muslims in a mosque and not in an address to the general community.''
And this: ''His honour overlooked the fact Sheikh Hilaly's speech [defended by Trad] was not made to members of the Australian community but to Muslims and others who attended the Sidon Mosque in Lebanon.''
This is an explosive argument. It means this aspect of the appeal may rest on the argument that the Muslim community operates under different standards than the rest of society and cannot be judged using the same standards. Further, these standards, even if judged to be extreme by the rest of society, should be respected.
It is fair to say the bench became restive on Friday. There were plenty of tart exchanges from the three judges, justices Murray Tobias, Ruth McColl and John Basten. But this was nothing compared with the fire and brimstone from the defence.
This appeal was an attempt, McHugh argued, to turn the case into one about ''freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and that the appellant has been unfairly branded as a racist, homophobic, terrorist-supporting, woman-hating bigot when all he was doing was expressing views consistent with his Islamic faith and his role as a prominent Australian Lebanese community spokesman … The question here is whether the deliberate peddling of grossly sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic filth is not dangerous and disgraceful and an incitement to violence and racist attitudes in Australia in 2010. The most extraordinary claim is that his extreme views are [a] 'Muslim view'. This ought not to be accepted.''
If Trad does prevail in his appeal, this case, Trad v Harbour Radio, will be corrosive to the idea of mainstream Muslim moderation, and to the ideal that most Muslims are naturally part of a cohesive element in the weave of Australia's culture rather than functioning under de facto Islamic law while giving mere lip service to the Australian legal system and the values it upholds.
Islam's man of a million comments
SMH
October 2 2002
Recent events have focused attention on Muslims in a way never before considered. Deborah Cameron profiles one of the Sydney community's leading lights.
Pink pickled turnip and little sprigs of mint tumble out of the pita bread as Keysar Trad hits the kerb in his big old Pajero.
He is taking a short cut between his favourite falafel shop and a cafe where the walls are lined with jars of honey and bottles of rosewater.
The wheel thumps hard. The four-year-old in front lets out a squawk. His wife, Hanifeh, sitting in the back with the two-year-old, tut-tuts at him driving, eating, talking and winding down the windows, more or less at the same time.
Pulling up at the Farouk and Chehade El Bahsa Sweets shop in South Bankstown, everyone is ready for the ice-cream which comes in about 10 colours. It is practically an insult to order one scoop of pistachio. "You must taste every colour," insists Trad, handing over a deep silver bowl and spoon.
Outside it is warm. Hanifeh, covered from head to toe in a long dark-coloured dress and headscarf, looks cooler than she probably feels. For a woman of 38 with nine children, no money to spare and a husband devoted to voluntary community work, her face is free of worry. She is even at ease with what she calls "Keysar's pet topic": a second wife.
Trad is director of the Lebanese Muslim Association and, because the times have demanded it, an increasingly well-known community spokesman. He is a refugee advocate and translator, an essayist, a spokesman on political issues, a critic of racial labelling by police, a close adviser to the Mufti Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly and a calm interpreter of Islam to the nervous broader community.
He gets frustrated with the association and has quit at least twice this year but returned out of a sense of duty and an instinct that it would revert to a "no comment" approach to the media which would be wrong at a time like this. Within his community he is criticised for publicly discussing refugees, Lebanese gang rapes and Islamic attitudes.
"They say when a Muslim speaks it is an admission that Islam has a problem," Trad says. "They say you don't see them filming churches when a Christian commits a rape or a murder, so why are you letting them come to interview you at the mosque? They don't realise that the media comes anyway. They tell me - just say "no comment" - but I have a million comments. They cannot censor me. I answer the questions sensibly and we have got nothing to hide."
TRAD and Hanifeh have been through a lot. They met in Lebanon when they were both about 22. They married after three weeks and she came to live with her new husband and mother-in-law in Yagoona. Trad worked at the Australian Tax Office while Hanifeh took English classes. "I find it hard to believe these mothers who cannot understand their children's language or who are dependent on their children for translation," she says.
Hanifeh, a law student in Lebanon, worked as an editor and journalist on Arabic publications in Sydney and studied computer science after emigrating. But when her fourth child was born, family took over.
It has not been easy and they remember 1998 as their worst year when Trad fell in love - "became obsessed", his wife says - with another woman. In desperation, Hanifeh proposed marriage on her husband's behalf to the other woman. "We were having a terrible time. He fell in love and I wasn't thinking about myself," she says. But his obsession passed. "He became more compassionate after it," Hanifeh says. "God meant for him to go through this experience and it made him a better person and more emotionally aware. It knocked him off his perch."
Hanifeh was not heartbroken. A second wife would have meant divorce (though he was against it) or living under the same roof as her husband's mistress. As long as the arrangement was fair and had the consent of all involved, it would be acceptable. Hanifeh loves her husband and the children, but says she is not strong enough, physically or emotionally, for more babies.
Aware that Australian law prohibits polygamy, they know a second wife could never be official. But their religion allows a man four wives and though a lot of what they say to each other about polygamy amounts to teasing, there is also a serious thread. It was Hanifeh who first raised it, approvingly, before they married.
Trad and Hanifeh say Islam is central to their values and the most important thing they can impart to their children. A strong set of beliefs is needed to resist society's temptations. Both were raised in large devout families - Trad the eldest son of his father's third wife, and Hanifeh a middle daughter in a family of 12 - and they have accepted the same model for themselves.
Trad arrived in Australia at 13 as part of a family reunion complicated by polygamy. His half-brother who had settled in Sydney got permission to bring his mother and siblings from Lebanon. Because his mother was married, she was able to bring her husband. At the time her husband was married to two other women. One of them (Trad's mother) came along, too, with her children. The older wife divorced her husband in Australia and the patriarch lived with Trad's mother.
To Trad's regret his father, in his 60s then, did not adjust. He could not find full-time work in Sydney. "Isn't it a shame for a grown man not to have a job," he would say, even as he neared death at 80. His father eventually returned to Lebanon which left Trad - as a teenager - responsible for his mother and the younger children.
After ice-cream, the family returns to the house Trad calls "the untidiest in street". In the lounge, three couches are pushed back against walls in need of painting. Bits of jute poke out of the plaster rubbed raw by chairs. A coffee table is laid with almonds, preserved green plums, sweet biscuits, glasses of cold delicious Lebanese cordial tasting like liquified quinces, and the baby capsule bearing the youngest child cooing and kicking his legs.
Trad is opening mail and wonders whether a letter from the council might be to direct him to mow the grass. Instead, it concerns the baby's immunisations. "Give this to your mum," he tells the four-year-old who has walked into the room prattling about The Simpsons and clutching a pencil case, two colouring books and an oven mitt.
In the same post is a statement from the Public Service superannuation fund. He reads out the balance which is tiny. "Money means nothing to me," he says. The family qualifies for low-income support. Trad is prepared for more years of financial hardship.
For the children, it means few toys and a scant wardrobe. "I can see when my son needs new pants but he doesn't talk about it," Hanifeh says. "The kids don't ask for too much." Hanifeh reads the employment section on his behalf, but one of the children put it well: "Dad doesn't need a job; he needs a miracle to make him rich."
The mayhem that comes with nine children in a modest house does not faze them. Even on a school day with six of the kids at local public high and primary schools, the three youngest are a distraction. Conversation occurs against a background of slamming doors, kids yelling and toys being dropped, with neither parent worried. They wipe runny noses and finish complicated anecdotes.
"Imagine if our children grow up with good values like we are trying to give them,"says Trad, "Imagine what great people they'll be for society. I have to make sure that they are positive, contributing members. I will be happy if their sense of social justice is very strong."
Trad's faith has had its phases. It was least strong in Lebanon when he lived among non-practising Muslims who rarely prayed at mosques and did not have access to religious texts. Arriving in Australia he was advised by his half-brother to keep quiet about religion, to be careful around women and to change his name. His half-brother went by the surname Wilson.
For the first few years Trad did not talk about his religion. "People could see that my mother covered her hair; they knew that I was Muslim but I couldn't talk about it because I didn't know where to begin," Trad says.
He was gradually drawn in, especially after a 1987 pilgrimage to Mecca with his mother that he regards as his spiritual turning point. After that he prayed five times a day on schedule, even at the office.
"I was adamant that if someone could take a five-minute break for a ciggie, I could sit at my workstation and pray for five minutes," Trad said. "I was on good terms with my boss and she said it was OK. Initially people made jokes about me headbutting my head against the carpet or by flicking rubber bands while I was praying. But they were my close friends so it didn't matter. It was nothing."
Trad resigned from the ATO at the end of 1998, the year of his infatuation. It was a decision with some familiar elements for anyone who has had a mid-life crisis or considered a sea change. A decade after his Mecca visit he wanted to do religious work. He travelled with his family to Lebanon for three months and returned home to write.
Known at the Lakemba Mosque as a translator, the Mufti asked him to take a more prominent role. Trad is a natural communicator in a community that is not blessed with them and, with his Public Service background, knows the limits in political debate. (When an Iraqi acquaintance once made a colourful reference to Jews, Trad ticked him off.) Instead of being suspicious and defensive with talkback callers, politicians and journalists, he is prepared to explain.
The Public Service also made him confront some of his practices - he cropped his beard and, after a debate with himself, started shaking hands with women. "I kept saying, 'Please don't be offended' but a couple of them were honest and said that they were offended. And I thought - do I really have to be so strict?"
Martyrs on holiday - a nice cruise in the Med
Piers Akerman
Daily Telegraph
Friday, June 04, 2010
SPARE me the pathetic preaching of the pro-Palestinian “peace activists” and their Western propagandists. It is now obvious that the goal of a number of those stupid enough to attempt to breach the Israeli blockade was martyrdom not the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
In the previous 24 hours, the wife of Ali Haydar Bengi, one of the nine killed when they confronted Israeli commandos boarding the MV Mavi Marmara, said he “constantly prayed to become a martyr”, according to a report in The Times of London. A friend of Bengi’s, Sabir Ceylan, confirmed this, saying that “before embarking on the journey, he said he desired to become a martyr”.
One of the late Mr Bengi’s shipmates aboard the Turkish-flagged ship was the one-armed Amin Abou Rashed. He was formerly a Palestinian national but is now the happy owner of a Dutch passport.
Mr Rashed is known to be a senior official in the Hamas terrorist organisation.
He is also listed on the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement for international Islamic domination as one of the organisers of the martyrs’ “Let’s Go to Gaza” cruise.
The so-called Free Gaza Movement, another of the organisers of this ill-fated cruise, has its roots in the International Solidarity Movement. This is yet another radical pro-Palestinian organisation that advocates what is euphemistically known as “direct action” in support of its destructive goals.
In 2003, the late American ISM activist Rachel Corrie - a foe of both Israel and her own homeland - applied a form of direct action when she misguidedly decided to kneel directly in front of an armoured Israeli bulldozer.
The bulldozer was engaged in searches for hidden tunnels at the time. Sadly for Corrie, she placed herself in a position where she could not be seen by the Caterpillar’s operator.
She is remembered today for the futility of her gesture.
Greta Berlin, the group’s 69-year-old co-founder and spokeswoman, agrees with Hamas that Israel has no right to exist.
However, she justifies her view as being part of a larger philosophy that is opposed to all national borders.
While there have been the usual raging anti-Israel demonstrations staged by Islamist sympathisers here and elsewhere, their case has been totally undermined by the videos now circulating.
These show activists aboard the Turkish-flagged Marmara chanting radical Islamic slogans before the clash. The circulation of those videos has done a great deal to take the sting out of this story for open-minded viewers.
We Con the World “Abadone Reason” via Atlas Shrugs
Dr Abd Al-Fatah Shayyeq Naaman, a lecturer in Shariah law at a university in Yemen, also indicated that the Islamist violence was premeditated.
He told an interviewer: “The [Gaza] flotilla commander said: ‘We will not allow the Zionists to get near us and we will use resistance against them. They will resist with their fingernails. They are people who seek martyrdom for Allah, as much as they want to reach Gaza, but the first [martyrdom] is more desirable.” In Western cultures, there is a saying: “Be careful what you wish for.”
But when you belong to an insane Islamist death cult that worships martyrdom and preaches it to kindergarten-aged children, as the Palestinian Authority does through its bizarre television network, wishing for death is seen as a rewarding pursuit.
It was interesting to watch the angst-ridden faces of Western newsreaders conveying urgent updates on the fate of the useful idiots who lent their presence to this terrorist-sponsored cruise of the Mediterranean. It was dramatically apparent that these talking heads had no idea at all that the blockade on the importation of weapons and certain dual-use items into the Gaza Strip is imposed by both Israel and Egypt.
Among this concerned crowd, it doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet that there have been no reports of riots outside Egyptian embassies.
Nor do the public hand-wringers seem to understand that Israel has permitted about 2000 tonnes of humanitarian goods per day to flow into Gaza, along with access to medical care, power, and funds for the army of NGOs and the salaries of those working for the Palestinian Authority.
The flotilla was carrying the equivalent of five days’ supply of goods. In return, more than 1000 rockets, smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt, were launched from the Gaza Strip by Hamas at Israel where the targeted population is commonly given just a 45-second warning to seek shelter. The pro-Palestinian lobby is working overtime to tug at the heartstrings of the guilt-ridden middle classes to suggest that the blockade is creating critical shortages of food in Gaza. But just last week Financial Times reporter Tobias Buck wrote from Rafah that the volumes conveyed through tunnel smuggling are such that: “[The] prices of many smuggled goods have fallen in recent months, thanks to a supply glut that is on striking displays across the [Gaza] Strip.”
The tunnel smuggling, he wrote, had “become so efficient that shops all over Gaza are bursting with goods. Branded products such as Coca-Cola, Nescafe, Snickers [chocolate bars] and Heinz ketchup - long absent as a result of the Israeli blockade - are both cheap and widely available.”
No doubt the merchants were further outraged by the efforts of the “peace” flotilla to further undercut the prices in the souk. Before and during their provocative cruise, the Islamist flotilla organisers were offered the opportunity to offload their cargo in the port of Ashdod and hand it over to the UN for delivery to Gaza.
While this would have ensured the cargo reached its destination safely and expeditiously, it would not have helped those who were seeking martyrdom.
It would also have relieved them of the dozens of knives, Molotov cocktails, detonators, metal pipes, clubs, slingshots and stones, large hammers, wrenches, sharp metal objects, gas masks and bullet proof vests that were later found - hardly the kind of equipment usually associated with charity workers.
Peeling away the layers of disinformation disseminated by the Leftist-media, there seems little dispute that the Israeli and Egyptian blockade has been largely successful. The popularity of the leadership of Hamas has fallen behind that of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah in the West Bank.
It is impossible to see how Hamas can be regarded as anything but a barbaric terrorist organisation while it maintains its core belief that the independent state of Israel must be destroyed.
In Western culture, all loss of life is regrettable.
However, it is clear that the organisers of this week’s voyage to disaster are now intending to attempt to further provoke the Israelis with another futile exercise in blockade-running in the next day or so - and possibly earn more martyrs a speedy pathway to paradise.
While ever there exist cults that prefer death to life, there will be dupes willing to buy one-way tickets to oblivion.
The MSM will no doubt run the usual line against Israel and for their pals in Islamic Sociopaths Inc.,telling anyone who will listen of the noble (savage) Islamic cause to simply offer supplies to their and the MSM’s Islamic brothers (in arms) in Gaza.
Full report at Atlas Shrugs
By: Oriana Fallaci
A French court on Nov. 20, 2002, dismissed a request to ban "The Rage and the Pride," the best-selling book by [leftist] Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that critics say incites hatred of Muslims. Oriana Fallaci, 73, is a former Resistance fighter and war correspondent best-known for her uncompromising interviews with world leaders.
I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem.
I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them "martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party."
I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries. I find it shameful that the youth of Holland and Germany and Denmark flaunt the kaffiah just as Mussolini's avant garde used to flaunt the club and the fascist badge.
I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-Semitism. That in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace Prize given to Shimon Peres in 1994 be taken back and conferred on the dove with the olive branch in his mouth, that is onArafat.
I find it shameful that the distinguished members of the Committee, a Committee that (it would appear) rewards political color rather than merit, should take this request into consideration and even respond to it. In hell the Nobel Prize honors he who does not receive it.
I find it shameful (we're back in Italy) that state-run television stations contribute to the resurgent anti-Semitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones. I find it shameful that in their debates they host with much deference the scoundrels with turban or kaffiah who yesterday sang hymns to the slaughter at New York and today sing hymns to the slaughters at Jerusalem, at Haifa, at Netanya,
at Tel Aviv.
I find it shameful that the press does the same, that it is indignant because Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that it is not indignant because inside that same church two hundred Palestinian terrorists well armed with machine guns and munitions and explosives (among them are various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aqsa) are not unwelcome guests of the monks (who then accept bottles of mineral water and jars of honey from the soldiers of those tanks).
I find it shameful that, in giving the number of Israelis killed since the beginning of the Second Intifada (four hundred twelve), a noted daily newspaper found it appropriate to underline in capital letters that more people are killed in their traffic accidents. (Six hundred a year).
I find it shameful that the Roman Observer, the newspaper of the Pope - a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of apology for the Jews - accuses of extermination a people who were exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms) the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated again.
I find it shameful that in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom they would all be unemployed), the priests of our parishes or Social Centers or whatever they are flirt with the assassins of those in Jerusalem who cannot go to eat a pizza or buy some eggs without being blown up.
I find it shameful that they are on the side of the very ones who inaugurated terrorism, killing us on airplanes, in airports, at the Olympics, and who today entertain themselves by killing western journalists. By shooting them, abducting them, cutting their throats, decapitating them. (There's someone in Italy who, since the appearance of Anger and Pride, would like to do the same to me. Citing verses of the Koran he exorts his "brothers" in the mosques and the Islamic Community to chastise me in the name of Allah. To kill me. Or rather to die with me. Since he's someone who speaks English well, I'll respond to him in English:
"f**k you."
I find it shameful that almost all of the left, the left that twenty years ago permitted one of its union processionals to deposit a coffin (as a mafioso warning) in front of the synagogue of Rome, forgets the contribution made by the Jews to the fight against fascism. Made by Carlo and Nello Rossini, for example, by Leone Ginzburg, by Umberto Terracini, by Leo Valiani, by Emilio Sereni, by women like my friend Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti who was shot at Florence on June 12, 1944, by seventy-five of the three-hundred-thirty-five people killed at the Fosse Ardeatine, by the infinite others killed under torture or in combat or before firing squads. (The companions, the teachers, of my infancy and my youth.)
I find it shameful that in part through the fault of the left--or rather, primarily through the fault of the left (think of the left that inaugurates its congresses applauding the representative of the PLO, leader in Italy of the Palestinians who want the destruction of Israel)--Jews in Italian cities are once again afraid. And in French cities and Dutch cities and Danish cities and German cities, it is the same. I find it shameful that Jews tremble at the passage of the scoundrels dressed like suicide bombers just as they trembled during Krystallnacht, the night in which Hitler gave free rein to the Hunt of the Jews.
I find it shameful that in obedience to the , vile, dishonest, and for them extremely advantageous fashion of Political Correctness the usual opportunists - or better the usual parasites - exploit the word Peace. That in the name of the word Peace, by now more debauched than the words Love and Humanity, they absolve one side alone of its hate and bestiality. That in the name of a pacifism (read conformism) delegated to the singing crickets and buffoons who used to lick Pol Pot's feet they incite people who are confused or ingenuous or intimidated. Trick them, corrupt them, carry them back a half century to the time of the yellow star on the coat. These charlatans who care about the Palestinians as much as I care about the charlatans. That is not at all.
I find it shameful that many Italians and many Europeans have chosen as their standard-bearer the gentleman (or so it is polite to say) Arafat. This nonentity who thanks to the money of the Saudi Royal Family plays the Mussolini ad perpetuum and in his megalomania believes he will pass into History as the George Washington of Palestine. This ungrammatical wretch who when I interviewed him was unable even to put together a complete sentence, to make articulate conversation. So that to put it all together, write it, publish it, cost me a tremendous effort and I concluded that compared to him even Ghaddafi sounds like Leonardo da Vinci. This false warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, never putting on civilian garb, and yet despite this has never participated in a battle. War is something he sends, has always sent, others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who playing the part of Head of State caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation. No-no-I-want-Jerusalem-all-to-myself.
This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel's right to exist, and who as I say in my book contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is, so that you can never trust him. Never! With him you will always wind up systematically betrayed. This eternal terrorist who knows only how to be a terrorist (while keeping himself safe) and who during the Seventies, that is when I interviewed him, even trained the terrorists of Baader-Meinhof. With them, children ten years of age. Poor children. (Now he trains them to become suicide bombers. A hundred baby suicide bombers are in the works: a hundred!). This weather*** who keeps his wife at Paris, served and revered like a queen, and keeps his people down in the squalor. He takes them out of the squalor only to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the eighteen year old girls who in order to earn equality with the fate of their victims. And yet many Italians love him, yes. Just like they loved Mussolini. And many other Europeans do the same.
I find it shameful and see in all this the rise of a new fascism, a new n-a-z-i-s-m.
A fascism, a n-a-z-i-s-m, that much more grim and revolting because it is conducted and nourished by those who hypocritically pose as do-gooders, progressives, communists, pacifists, Catholics or rather Christians, and who have the gall to label a warmonger anyone like me who screams the truth. I see it, yes, and I say the following. I have never been tender with the tragic and Shakespearean figure Sharon. ("I know you've come to add another scalp to your necklace," he murmured almost with sadness when I went to interview him in 1982.) I have often had disagreements with the Israelis, ugly ones, and in the past I have defended the Palestinians a great deal. Maybe more than they deserved.
But I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews. I stand just as I stood as a young girl during the time when I fought with them, and when the Anna Marias were shot. I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans, I am ashamed of this shame that dishonors my Country and Europe. At best, it is not a community of States, but a pit of Pontius Pilates. And even if all the inhabitants of this planet were to think otherwise, I would continue to think so.
The Religion of Peace
