The Fruits of Cowardice and Appeasement…writes Isi Leibler

January 13, 2015 by Isi Leibler
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The ill winds that have been gathering over Europe descended with a tornado last week in Paris with the barbaric Charlie Hebdo massacre, followed by the horrific terror attack at a kosher supermarket – a total of 17 dead in three days. But alas, the horrors will in all likelihood soon recede and life will continue as usual until the next attack.

Isi Leibler

Isi Leibler

Let me say at the outset that, while obviously condemning the murders and unequivocally defending freedom of expression, I do not associate myself with the “Je suis Charlie” movement. In condemning these barbaric acts, we are not obliged to identify with the racism and vulgarity of the victims. Charlie Hebdo was obscenely offensive to Christians and Muslims and promoted vulgar antisemitic satire. On the other hand, some Mormons were presumably outraged by the satirical musical “The Book of Mormon” but that did not grant them license to embark on a killing spree of the producers.

Western governments have yet to internalize the reality that what happened in Paris was not merely another instance of “terrorism” but a classic manifestation of the “clash of civilizations.”

Aside from murderous attacks primarily directed against Jews in Europe over recent months, there have been ongoing massacres and atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists throughout the world. To name a few: the butchering of 2,000 Nigerians this week in the wake of the Boko Haram enslavement of 300 schoolgirls; the murder of 130 schoolchildren in Peshawar, Pakistan by the Taliban; the barbaric videos broadcast of hostages being decapitated; ongoing mass murder in Syria and Iraq; oppression of women; and gruesome persecution, expulsion and murder of Christians in the Middle East.

Today, as the global impact of Islamic fundamentalism with increasing manifestations of brutal terrorism grows exponentially, Western leaders lack the courage even to identify the enemy. It has ominous parallels to the struggle with Nazism. Then as now, Western governments initially sought to avoid conflict by appeasing the barbarians – which only served to embolden them.

This originates in 9/11 when U.S. President George W. Bush, in his call for concerted military action against global Islamic terrorism, sought to placate his Arab allies by describing Islam as a “religion of peace.” This absurd mantra was repeatedly chanted whenever Islamic terror was mentioned and has become an overused term of the political lexicon.

But it was President Barack Obama and his administration that, despite the dramatic mushrooming of Islamic terrorism, must be held accountable for systematically denying its existence, even avoiding the term “Islamic terrorism.”

The same obstinate refusal to face reality and an effort to appease their increasingly radicalized Muslim communities motivated all European governments – in particular the French – to repeatedly state, despite all evidence to the contrary, that these acts of terrorism were unrelated to Islamic radicalism and were the actions of “lone wolves” or demented individuals. Even now, when the massacres were accompanied by calls of “Allahu akbar” and “We are avenging the Prophet Muhammad,” French President François Hollande refused to use the word “Islam,” merely referring to “obscurantist” forces. However, in stark contrast to Obama, Hollande at least condemned the kosher supermarket attack as a “dreadful antisemitic attack.”

Throughout the world, jihadist mullahs and preachers promote hatred and extremism. In European cities, second-generation homegrown Muslims and converts are indoctrinated to endorse and in some cases participate in jihad and the murder of infidels. Those who convert are not necessarily from the underprivileged, but “ideologues,” many of whom belong to comfortable middle class families and are university graduates.

But worse has been the unspoken acquiescence of most governments and the media, preventing any meaningful discussion of the threat from Islamic extremism. Apart from downplaying and often even denying the overriding Islamic element in acts of terror, governments and media have disgracefully branded as “Islamophobic” any serious effort to discuss and analyze the problem, even promoting “hate speech” legislation to stifle any such public discussion. The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference has attempted to make blasphemy (i.e., criticism of Islam) a crime in international law.

They have been further emboldened by the failure to immediately prosecute Islamic extremists who threaten violence against those who express criticism or dishonor Islam. What is truly ironic is that many of those on the Left who normally endorse the crudest outbursts against Christianity and Judaism, are the first to accuse any critics of Islam of Islamophobia and they display far greater concern for the sensitivities of Muslims. In many instances, Obama and European leaders have apologized and even groveled every time some crude outburst against Islam was expressed by individuals, many of whom were of marginal importance.

Of course not all Muslims are terrorists. But the number of radicals is dramatically increasing and like al-Qaida in the previous decade, Islamic State is providing them with a sense of empowerment and imbuing them with a willingness to die in pursuit of their objectives. The Paris massacres exemplify what we can expect from the thousands of well-trained indigenous battle-hardened assassins imbued with a fanaticism to sacrifice their lives to promote Islam and terrorize infidels, especially Jews, after returning from Middle East conflict zones.

While local Muslim leaders and heads of Islamic states condemned the massacres, it is chilling to witness the extent that popular public opinion, especially in the Arab world, supports terrorism. We should remind ourselves that it originated with the Iranian ayatollah’s fatwa to murder novelist Salman Rushdie, which was overwhelmingly endorsed in the Islamic world.

Even if only 20 percent of the Muslims are considered pro-jihadist – and there are in all probability more than that – this would represent two or three hundred million potential terrorists. To persist in denying the existence of such a huge Islamic terrorist presence is utterly delusional.

Above all, this undermines the moderate Islamic forces striving to stem or isolate this poisonous fanaticism that has arisen from within. Yet the Obama administration has mollycoddled the Muslim Brotherhood (a more nuanced but nevertheless direct extension of the terrorist network) and condemned the leader of the largest Muslim Middle Eastern country, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Ironically, in a historic and critical New Year address, largely ignored by the mainstream press, Sissi publicly expressed what Obama and Western leaders have been denying. He stated explicitly that jihadism and terrorism were linked to “the corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries.” He warned that this was “antagonizing the entire world,” that “this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed … by our own hands,” and that “we are in need of a religious revolution.”

Clearly, now that all parties engaged are no longer committed to democracy, this is a time to review our multicultural policies. Western governments must cease their groveling, impose draconian measures against Islamic extremists and intensify pressure on Muslim communities to purge themselves of these elements.

Issues of civil liberties must be considered secondary when the safety of innocent civilians is at stake. If that requires special surveillance and interrogation of suspect Muslims, so be it. It is common sense, not bigotry, to racially profile and concentrate on those from whose midst 99 percent of terrorist outbreaks originate.

It will require intensified penetration of mosques and Islamic community centers to identify and deal with those mullahs and fanatics promoting jihadism, including the Saudi financed Wahhabi outlets in the immigrant ghettoes. It will necessitate a rigorous monitoring of Muslim schools and Internet outlets to eradicate and prosecute the extremists who are transforming youngsters into beheaders.

Failure to act will intensify the prevailing massive swing toward parties opposed to immigration and parties of the far Right like the National Front in France, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, is now the frontrunner in presidential polls.

Jews have reassumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the frontlines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support. Indeed, until recently Western governments ignored the carnage in Syria, Iraq and other countries, preferring to concentrate on condemning Israeli housing construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and regarding Israel as the major lubricant to Islamic extremism. French support of the PA application to the U.N. Security Council on December 30, obviously designed to curry favor with local Muslims, did not deter terrorists from committing their massacres in Paris a week later.

For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying. Robert Wistrich, the world’s leading scholar on antisemitism, says that antisemitism in France is now in “an advanced stage of disease” that cannot be reversed. There were a series of antisemitic murders in France and Belgium preceding the Paris massacre but they failed to raise the same level of outrage as the Charlie Hebdo murders. There were no popular campaigns saying “Je suis Juif.” Indeed there seemed to be greater concern about “Islamophobia” than the targeted Jewish victims.

Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall.

For Jews, the Zionist vision has once again been tragically vindicated.

Isi Leibler lives in Jerusalem. He is a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.1

Comments

3 Responses to “The Fruits of Cowardice and Appeasement…writes Isi Leibler”
  1. Otto Waldmann says:

    Isi , mate, when you is right , you is right, but when you goes astray and base ALL your comments on ALL DISTINCT situations on the SAME rationale and even the same DATA, then, mate, one size an’t fitting all.
    I am happy and envy you for being in the best place , Yerushalaim, but when has you visited and had some serious insight into what’s goin’ on in France, because from what you is saying’ in your piece is as realistically related to what’s going on here in France, from where I am writing now as your possible craft in talkin’ Mandarin.
    For starters, the muslim presence and massive increase in France is a fact of irreversible kind and the incremental expansion compared to the old “natives” cannot be controlled. The KNOWN disposition of the same not so minor segment to adopt the host country’s old and necessary mores is as reliable as the Gazans becoming Bnei Akiba scouts . The official numbers of muslims in France is at some 4.7 million, but from where I’m sitting – a gorgeous medium size provincial Southern town – sippin’ a caffe au lait – you can say “cafay o lay “, every second bypassed looks just like me, Middle Eastern complexion of the wrong side of the fence – or security wall -.
    Blaming the French political set for being stupid – my words – in dealing, or actually, not dealing , with the problem is like blaming Isi Leibler for the expansion of the ISIS phenomenon.
    You tell us how to deal efficiently with the situation on hand, mate, and you’ll get that Nobel Price for being a real Groisse Moishe.
    Short of aiming at some civil war with the aim of cleansing French democracy of unwanted elements, ready made , of the rack, prey a porter Leibler solutions IS NOT ON THE CARDS !!!
    Incidentally, f you was watching some current affairs rolling out in the French media, you’d notice that analysis and criticism is dominating the vast scene down here.

    Also “Charlie Hebdo” has been till this morn a pissy little publication no more than 60,000 copies a week. Today’s edition exceeded FIVE BLOODY MILLION. I have me own copy and can tell you that, yes, there is a badly drawn antisemitic piece in it, but the slogan, message, meaning of ” Je suis Charlie” goes well beyond the limited version you offered us and, I for one,as well as lots of other local Yidds better informed than you, subscribe to it.

    P.S.
    You don’t need to be clever in EVERYTHING !!!!

  2. Paul Winter says:

    Every word that Isi says is true, but why does he omit:
    * Israel allowing treasonous Arabs to serve in the Knesset
    * Bedouin allowed to make land grabs and to practise polygamy
    * Arab aggression against Jews in Judea and Samaria ignored by the military administration
    * Arab aggression against Jews ignored by the police especially on the Temple Mount,
    around the Hebrew Uni and around the Mount of Olives
    * Arab no-go areas around Jerusalem
    * Israeli Arab hate preachers especially in Jerusalem and in the Galil
    * the abandonment of Jews near to Gaza
    * letting Arabs get away with water theft and non-payment of electricity bills
    * letting the PA get away with incitement and lawfare
    * letting Hamas start wars at its pleasure
    * letting foreigner agitators support Jew-hating Arabs
    * letting foreign governments and churches support anti-Israel agitators
    * allowing Qatar to finance Rabawi in Area C, supposedly under Israeli control
    * allowing mohammedan economic migrants to enter and then to perpetrate criminal acts against Jews

    The list can go on and on. The point is that criticising appeasement by nations not in the front line of the clash of civilisations is easy when the front-line state – Israel – is acting in the way the USA charmingly (and correctly) described its PM; chicken-shit. The very PM all Diaspora leaders swear is the only person who can lead Israel and who follow his lead in asserting themselves.

  3. Erica Edelman says:

    We are slow to react and slow to act. The threat of Barbarism is upon us and we sit and we ruminate. And dwell. And postulate. And talk political cheapness and niceties. Academic upon academic, expert after expert, peace-maker after peace-maker. Anti-terrorist professional after …..We have been warned by these clear-thinkers who can see clearly what the writing on the wall says.

    Special surveillance and interrogation of suspect Muslims is old hat.

    Racial profiling is not enough. We are looking in the wrong places at the wrong time. And Governments KNOW ALL TOO WELL where to look and what to do. It is time to act Government officials!

    “It will require intensified penetration of mosques and Islamic community centers to identify and deal with those mullahs and fanatics promoting jihad ism, including the Saudi financed Wahhabi outlets in the immigrant ghettos. It will necessitate a rigorous monitoring of Muslim schools and Internet outlets to eradicate and prosecute the extremists who are transforming youngsters into be-headers”. That would be just to begin with,Isi Leibler.

    It is incumbent upon EVERY special agency in EVERY country on our globe to wipe out Muslim radicalism and fanaticism – with RADICALIZED behavior! And soon. Nazism did not appear over-night. It crept up slowly and dangerously out of man’s inability to take action. Nazism developed because IT COULD. DO NOT let radical Muslim’s get away with challenging and changing our precious globe.
    I feel sick with helplessness. If we can’t depend upon our governments to act then what? We will reap what we sow – and our children and grandchildren will suffer the consequences. Be it upon our heads.

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