Bloodthirsty Liberal

Hardly a shock that a country’s corruption index and its poverty level are directly proportional.

Take a look at the Middle East:

Transparency International issued its 2009 Corruption Index, which rates 180 countries on a scale of corruption from 0 (highest) to 10 (lowest).

The following is the rating of the Middle East countries by rank and score:

22 Qatar 7.0

32 Israel 6.1

39 Oman 5.5

46 Bahrain 5.1

49 Jordan 5.0

61 Turkey 4.4

63 Saudi Arabia 4.3

65 Tunisia 4.2

66 Kuwait 4.1

89 Morocco 3.3

111 Algeria 2.8 [same rating as Egypt]

126 Syria 2.6

130 Libya 2.5

150 Yemen 2.1

168 Iran 1.8

176 Iraq 1.5

176 Sudan 1.5

179 Afghanistan 1.3

180 Somalia 1.1

Good job, Qatar, for placing first in the region. Israel has nothing to be ashamed of, either.

But did you check out the bottom of the table? Below Libya, below Iran, below Syria—below even Sudan—is Afghanistan, just above Somalia. And those two were the worst in the world, btw, not just the region. Even Myanmar, Haiti, Uzbekistan, and Chad rated higher.

Good luck building a nation out of goat s**t, Mr. President.

PS: You’ve got more than just corruption on your hands:

Rape in Afghanistan is under-reported, concealed and a human rights problem of “profound proportions,” the United Nations said on Monday.

Norah Niland, the United Nations’ human rights representative in Afghanistan, said field research conducted late last year and early this year found rape affected all parts of Afghanistan, across all communities and social groups.

“Women and girls are at risk of rape in their homes, in their villages and in detention facilities,” Niland said at a news conference in Kabul, as part of a 16-day activism campaign against gender violence.

“It is a human rights problem of profound proportions.”

Niland said feelings such as shame exacerbate the problem and are often attached to victims rather than perpetrator.

Rape occurs within the family and beyond and victims are often prosecuted for committing adultery, she said.

I remember how proud I felt when I learned how we had brought liberty to those poor people enslaved under the Taliban, especially the women. Now, I can’t even remember what that feeling felt like. I still believe liberty can be brought, but whether it takes root or not is up to the people themselves.

There may still be Afghanis worthy of our pity, but for pete’s sake, they live in a s**t-hole. Meet us halfway, and maybe we’ll give you a hand.

While America, Canada, and Europe mark the 11th day of the 11th month as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day (or Veterans Day here in the US), Hezbollah has its own name for this solemn, hallowed day:

Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah slammed US President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying, “When he was elected, many relied on him and believed it would mark a major turnaround in favor of the Arab world, but this notion quickly dissipated.”

Speaking in Beirut on “Shahid Day,” the Shiite group’s leader claimed that Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security was evident in his speech aired this week during a memorial ceremony in Tel Aviv marking the 14th anniversary of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.

He said the world hoped that the new leadership in the US would “try and change the savage American policy, but the result was a complete American commitment to Israel’s interests and security.”

I don’t know what he’s drinking, but I can only imagine how they celebrate Shahid Day.

Isn’t that so typical of the Arab terrorist mind? Take the symbol of mindless butchery, bloody murder, the end of civilization—and make a holiday out of it!

Balloons, cake, pin the missile on the Jew—any occasion for a party.

The reviews are still coming in on President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win (where he narrowly edged out Buddy Hackett, I am reliably told).

The Arab states are ecstatic:

Lebanese Daily Al-Mustaqbal: Obama Embodies the Principles of Justice and Peace

Egyptian Columnist: Obama Deserves the Prize – And More!

Qatari Columnist: “Obama Has Some of the Merits of Gandhi and Mother Teresa” [Surely, that should read Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa—ed.]

But then there are the critics:

Editor of PA Daily: Obama Has No Accomplishments At All

Saudi Columnist: The Prize Is Made of the Blood of Innocents

Syrian Government Daily: It Is Syria that Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize – As Well As Iran, Venezuela and Turkey

Saudi Columnist: Saudi King Should Receive Prize, Not Obama

If there were a Nobel Prize for Comedy, the Syrian and Saudi papers would have it locked up.

Have you heard about the latest settlement in the Middle East? Didn’t President Obama just yesterday dismiss settlements as illegitimate?

BASHAR Masri is a man with a vision. Standing on a windy hilltop about 10 kilometres north of Ramallah, Masri points to where the main street will run in the future city of Rawabi. ”This will be the first time in the history of the Palestinian people that we have planned a city of our own,” he says.

When completed, Rawabi - which means ”hills” in Arabic - will provide a style of middle-class housing that has been previously unavailable to Palestinians.

Far from the mayhem of other Palestinian cities such as Ramallah and Hebron, or East Jerusalem, life in Rawabi promises the kind of urban serenity one might expect to find in the Yarra Valley. Modest-sized apartment blocks and townhouses spaced between manicured lawns and tree-lined walkways make for a thoroughly modern style of Palestinian living.

Sounds nice, although I wouldn’t hold my breath.

But this fellow raises an interesting point:

[H]as any part of Rawabi been set aside for refugees? It’s unlikely. …

Why is there so little concern among the elite of Palestine for the poorest of their fellow citizens? Because “Palestinian” is an artificial category, and a very weakly felt one. The track record dating back to 1947 provides little evidence that the Palestinians’ new-found national identity trumps their clan, religious, political, or class differences. In Israel, we shuddered at the barbarism of the Fatah-Hamas fratricide in Gaza in 2006 — the Palestinian “wakseh” or humiliation — when Palestinian families were gunned down by other Palestinians and political opponents were thrown from tall buildings.

During the waves of immigration to Israel of Soviet and Ethiopian Jewry in the 1980s and 1990s, I recall dozens of my neighbors donating furniture to the new immigrants and assigning companions to help settle them in the neighborhood and maneuver through the absorption bureaucracy. Children were happy to tithe from their toys for the new kids on the block who arrived with nothing. If only such a spirit were evident among the Palestinians.

Beyond the Palestinians’ lack of community feeling lies the so-called “right of return.” Palestinian leaders claim that each family has a right to reoccupy the land it held before Israel’s war for independence. Settling refugees comfortably in other areas would weaken their claim to this “right,” while keeping them in camps is a harsh but effective way to maintain pressure against Israel from the international community. What stands in the way of prosperity for Palestinian-controlled areas is the deep brainwashing of Palestinian children that there must be an actual physical return to their ancestral homes, along with an international and Israeli recognition of the “injustice” done to them.

More on that last point:

The following is the transcript from the children’s program Tomorrow’s Pioneers:

Nassur: “There won’t be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They’ll be erased.”

Saraa: “They’ll be slaughtered.” (Manhurin naher)

Nassur: “And just like we will visit the Qaaba [in Mecca]… everyone will visit Jerusalem.”

[Seven-year old Palestinian child on phone tells how his father, a member of the Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades, “died as a Shahid (Martyr).”]

Nassur to child on phone: “What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?”

Child on phone: “I want to kill them.”

Saraa: “We don’t want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land.”

Nassur: “We want to slaughter (Nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?”

Saraa: “Yes. That’s right. We will expel them from our land using all means.”

Nassur: “And if they don’t want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter.” (Shaht)

We learn from the second citation above that the Palestinians are not a people, but the last citation raises the question if they are even human. Creatures like that don’t live in autonomous states, they live in zoos.

Tell me you aren’t intrigued by that title.

You will not be disappointed:

Egyptian author Dr. Khaled Muntaser: Dr. Faysal, let us begin by defining the kind of sex education that needs to be taught at school. When you incorporate the “colonialist, Crusader invasion” into our discussion, it’s like saying that teaching about the digestive or respiratory systems constitutes colonialist invasion. How can we say that sex education and teaching the reproductive system amounts to a colonialist invasion?
[…]
Al-Azhar university scholar Ibrahim Al-Khouli: What [the imam] Malik and [the imam] Al-Shafi’i said about the minimum and maximum terms of pregnancy is based on life experience. They set the principles according to the norm.

Khaled Muntaser: What, in the past pregnancy lasted four years and now only nine months?

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: I didn’t say that.

Khaled Muntaser: So what life experience are you talking about?

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: You’re not listening to me.

Khaled Muntaser: This is about science.
[…]
Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Some books of jurisprudence say that pregnancy lasts four years, while others – like Ibn Hazm and Averroes, who are among the greatest jurisprudents – say the norm for people is nine months.
[…]
A fetus can spend more than nine months [in the womb]. This happens in cattle. A cow can become pregnant and give birth…

Khaled Muntaser: Are we talking about cattle now?!

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Allow me!

Khaled Muntaser: Next thing you’ll bring us the elephant. What cattle are you talking about?

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: You people turn human into cattle. Cows are pregnant for nine months. Sometimes it lasts for ten months. That’s the truth. It’s very normal, but rare.
[…]
It was the Koran that taught the world to respect science, man. Before that, Europe had not heard about science and knew nothing about it. We are the ones who taught it about science.

Khaled Muntaser: And where have we gone since then?
[…]
When a gym teacher forbids girls from participating in gymnastics, claiming that their hymen might be torn, he is committing a sex crime. When a kindergarten teacher separates boys from girls at the age of four, and forces four-year-old girls to wear the hijab, she is perpetrating a crime in sex education.
[…]
Ibrahim Al-Khouli: I have visited London. Haven’t you seen the sex shops there?

Khaled Muntaser: What are you talking about? We are talking about sex education at school.
[…]
Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Sex was given moral values and an existential role in the life of mankind only in Islam. The ancient Greeks degenerated to the point that they worshipped the sexual organs, and others despised them, like in India. Islam does not say such things.
[…]
Don’t you realize that everything that is happening is the implementation of the The Protocols?

Interviewer: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Yes.

Interviewer: You mean that sex education is a conspiracy?

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Let me finish.

Interviewer: Go ahead.

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: When Freud says that man lives for the sake of his sex organ, and when Marx says that man lives for the sake of his belly – they are not really talking about humans, but about herds of cattle.

Khaled Muntaser: Are you talking about the Freud we know?

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: They are trying to apply this to humans. People are not like that!
[…]
Khaled Muntaser: Sex, according to Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli, is only about child bearing.

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Not true!

Khaled Muntaser: For him, sex is a factory for children…

Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Not true!

Khaled Muntaser: If they invent a machine, maybe we should get it. Just like a machine makes ice-cream, it will be able to produce children.
[…]
Ibrahim Al-Khouli: According to scientific reason, the idea leads to action. When you get an idea, you start thinking about how to implement it. When a child is exposed to such information, he tries to imitate it. He will do it with his sister. That is one of the most catastrophic problems.

Teach Arabs sex ed, and next they’re doing their sisters. Boy, does this explain a lot.

I never guessed Jews were behind sex (you should pardon the pun). All those JAP jokes must be wrong.

Anyhow, this exchange is funnier than the Abbott and Costello “Who’s on first?” routine.

Oh, this is brilliant. How did we miss it ourselves? Because we’re not that brilliant—but we’re brilliant enough to recognize brilliance in others.

Speaking in Ghana on Saturday President Obama lectured Africans on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability. The startling contrast to his June speech in Cairo was revealing. Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy.

In Egypt, he chose not to utter the words “terrorism” or “genocide.” In Egypt, there was nothing “brutal” he could conjure up, no “corruption” and no “repression”.

In Ghana, with a 70% Christian population, he mentioned “good governance” seven times and added direct calls upon his audience to “make change from the bottom up.” He praised “people taking control of their destiny” and pressed “young people” to “hold your leaders accountable.”

He made no such calls for action by the people of Arab states–despite the fact that not a single Arab country is “free,” according to the latest Freedom House global survey.

Exactly.

He tears Africa a new Dark Continent, but Araby gets a pass. What’s the matter, he doesn’t like black people?

This is proof that President Obama is not Muslim, by the way. If only a black person could call Africa a continent of losers (which he did, you have to admit), only a Muslim could go to Cairo and tell the Muslim world to try modernity for a change. His literal bowing and scraping to Saudi royalty, rather than calling them the corrupted, perverted bedouins they truly are, is all the proof I need of his Christianity.

Part of the reason President Obama has been so timid in response to Iranian Islamo-fascism (by his own admission) is that he doesn’t want to appear to be meddling in internal affairs.

But as MEMRI makes amply clear, that same reservation hasn’t stopped the Arab press.

A few examples:

Iranian Elections

Iranian Truths

Iranian Regime’s Vain Attempts To Block Internet Media

“Terrorism” and “Nuclear Program” Jump for Joy at Ahmadinejad’s Election Win

Great, the Saudi and Kuwaiti media speak more truth to corrupt power than does the so-called leader of the free world. I’m so proud.

By their own words shall ye know them:

Jihadist Magazine: ‘The Spread of Democracy – A Victory for the U.S. and Israel’

In an anti-democracy article titled “The Spread of Democracy – A Victory for the U.S. and Israel,” Abu Taha ‘Abdallah Al-Miqdad enumerates democracy’s crimes against humanity, and particularly against the Muslims, and warns that support for democracy is apostasy from Islam.

Why read more? He’s said it all right there. Bush and Cheney knew that to combat the Big Idea of Islamism (and I’m paraphrasing Mark Steyn here), we needed to offer a Big Idea of our own: Democracy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that democracy in the Muslim world will fully resemble ours, but when you look at Massachusetts, Chicago, California, New York, etc. ad nauseam, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Vol. MDCCLVIII

He seems to think that by bullying Israel to take down a couple of wigwams and yurts, Arabs in response will fall over themselves offering olive branches and freeing doves.

When it would appear they just don’t have it in them:

Two east Jerusalem residents were killed Saturday during a brawl involving two clans in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan.

Several other people sustained wounds in the clashes.

Three residents of Silwan village, in east Jerusalem, were arrested under suspicions for being involved in the shooting during the skirmish Saturday that resulted from an inter-family feud. The suspects were transferred for investigation by the police’s minority department.

During the brawl, armed members of both clans opened fire at each other. One man died of gunshot wounds, while another man was killed after being run over by a vehicle. Both victims were taken to an east Jerusalem hospital.

And you know who was blamed:

Furious residents charged that Israeli police and Magen David Adom refrained from entering the east Jerusalem village, which is under Israeli jurisdiction, and putting an end to the battling. Red Cross ambulances eventually evacuated the casualties.

Nasty, mean old Jews. Why didn’t they try to separate these two rabid dogs?

According to police, large security forces entered the village after the violence subsided, and arrested three suspects for the shootings. The MDA ambulances did not receive police approval to enter the locale for security reasons, police added.

Okay, so maybe somebody wants to make the case that the Israelis have an obligation to walk into the middle of a Palestinian gun fight when hot lead is flying through the air. Do they then not have an obligation to prevent that gunfight, to provide security, to eliminate the possibility of violence among the Palestinians themselves or between the Palestinians and—oh, I don’t know—someone else?

Because Palestinians have a history of that. (Oops, did I say history?)

Of course, that’s nothing to the way Palestinians resolve their own differences:

Citing the example of Ramallah-based journalist Mustafa Sabri, who was arrested from his home for the tenth time on 21 April 2009 by Preventive Security forces, the forum condemned the use of arrest and torture against journalists. According to the forum, Sabri was taken to a hospital twice after his health deteriorated due to severe torture in PA custody.

Included in the report were files and correspondence with the Palestinian High Court and PA security services over a decision on 15 June 2009 ordering the release of Sabri, and indications from the PA security services that he would not be released, despite the court ruling.

But that’s just the Arab “white trash”, you object. The better-educated, the intelligentsia are much more civilized.

Oh really?

Look what happened to Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian culture minister who longed to head UNESCO.

The beginning of the story is well-known. All of Israel’s ambassadors and attaches wasted no effort to sabotage the Egyptian minister’s appointment to the desirable post. Every anti-Israeli remark, every word he mouthed critical of Israeli books and writers and every pronouncement against normalizing ties with Israel were meticulously gathered in a file of evidence against him. Indeed, how could an Egyptian minister, a painter and intellectual, be awarded this international post when he had announced he would burn Israeli books?

…

Netanyahu agreed to drop Israel’s objections to the appointment in exchange for a gesture of normalization on Egypt’s part. The gestures followed immediately.

Hosni apologized for his remarks and even announced he had ordered the translation of books by David Grossman and Amos Oz into Arabic. Heaven forbid, not from the original Hebrew, but from English and French versions.

…

But then there was an uproar. The culture minister became the object of derision. “Hosni will not stop short of courting Zionist influence to reach the UNESCO seat,” wrote the critic Wael Kandil.

…

Intellectuals and academics from Suez announced they would campaign against the invitations and even created an Internet site detailing Hosni’s crimes and submission to Zionism.

…

Farouk Hosni now understands very well he will pay too high a price in public opinion for what is seen as reconciliation with Israeli literature. The national hero directly fighting the Zionists has turned into a traitor, according to the principles of those intellectuals warring against normalization.

The guy concedes that maybe his first act as UNESCO director would not be to burn Israeli books, and he’s denounced as a traitor, a turncoat.

This post could go on for much longer, so multitudinous are the examples of Palestinian and Arab insanity and depravity. But this isn’t an issue of settlements and olive groves.

The only issue—and it’s an interesting one—is whether Arab anti-Semitism, so pervasive and so deep-rooted, is a separate psychopathy, or just part of their more generalized mental disorder. In either case, to lean on Israel to accommodate these dangerous (to themselves and others) lunatics is like asking the public to respond to a madman wildly swinging an axe by offering him a spare log or rail to split.

It’s not about the settlements.

PS: What was I just saying?

In recent weeks, the media proposed that an imminent agreement between Fatah and Hamas, along an Egyptian outline, will lead to the release of Gilad Shalit. But last week another round of talks in Cairo ended in failure, and the hope ought to be that the negotiations being conducted by Israeli coordinator Haggai Hadas for Shalit’s release have been separated from Egypt’s ambitions to obtain an inter-Palestinian accord.

The sixth round of talks in Cairo began with much fanfare last Sunday, with a higher level of expectations than in the past….

The Arabs have a saying: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again and again and again and again and again.

I confess I didn’t pay much attention to PM Netanyahu’s speech on relations with the Palestinians because, like the good liberal I used to be, I don’t give much weight to statements made under duress or coercion. From what I saw, it looked like a hostage tape.

But others were watching and listening, and they didn’t much like what they saw and heard:

Palestinian Authority negotiations department head Saeb ‘Ariqat stated: “The peace process can be compared to a turtle, and now that Netanyahu has turned it over, it’s lying on its back. Not in a thousand years will Netanyahu find a single Palestinian who would agree to the conditions stipulated in his speech.”

…

Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority president, stated: “The speech has destroyed all peace initiatives and [chances for] a solution.”

…

PLO Executive Committee Secretary Yasser ‘Abd Rabbo stated: “Netanyahu’s speech was hollow, and it ruined the chances to advance toward a balanced settlement. … Netanyahu is a liar and a crook….”

…

Palestinian Ambassador to Egypt Nabil ‘Amro stated: “Netanyahu’s speech is nothing but a hoax [to deceive] America….”

…

Hamas issued an announcement, stating: “Netanyahu is offering the Palestinians a state without identity, sovereignty, army, or weapons; without Jerusalem or the right of return. And at the same time, it insists on leaving the settlements in place. He is offering an economic peace in return for normalization and recognition of the Zionist entity.

…

Hamas official Dr. Ahmad Bahr, who is acting speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, stated: “[Netanyahu’s] racist speech rests on denying the [existence of] the Palestinian people and on disregarding their suffering, and [affirms] that a racist entity [exists] on Palestinian soil. It is an arrogant Zionist speech, rife with threats and condescension towards the Palestinians as well as towards the Arab and Muslim peoples.

…

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called Netanyahu’s speech “akin to a declaration of war and an insult to the international community…”

Well, they’re Palestinians. No one expects them to be happy. Daily humiliation will do that to a people.

But you might have thought an Israeli PM’s concession to a Palestinian state would bring more of a positive reaction from our side:

U.S. officials reacted skeptically Monday to an Israeli proposal that the United States and other world powers guarantee that a new nation of Palestine remain demilitarized as a condition of its statehood.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said for the first time Sunday that Israel would be prepared to live side by side with a Palestinian state, but only if world powers guaranteed that it would be “demilitarized.” The proposal came in a major statement of his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that attracted attention worldwide.

…

“We take the security of Israel very seriously, but we need a solution that works, and this would be very difficult for the Palestinians to swallow,” said an official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the diplomacy. American officials “are a long way away from the point where we’d be talking about this kind of arrangement.”

I’ve got something the Palestinians can swallow right here, pal.

Exactly what need would the Palestinians have of “militarization”? They’ll be at peace with the Israelis, and all their other neighbors—Egypt, Jordan, even nearby Lebanon and Syria—are, if not always friendly, at least generally sympathetic.

No, the Palestinians need “militarization” because without “militarization” they’re not Palestinians. They’re just Arabs without guns, and that’s not much of an Arab at all.

Either that, or they have no intention of peaceful coexistence with Israel. You have to choose one.

This is all part of a death by a thousand cuts for Israel. We tell them what to say, then we tell them what we don’t like about it, then we tell them how it’s going to be.

I think Netanyahu was wise to take this step because there’s no way the Palestinians will reciprocate. You can see the statements above for proof, or you can just open your eyes.

PS: I just stumbled across another unhappy camper:

Today at the UN Human Rights Council, the Palestinian delegation attacked the Jewish nature of Israel. While critiquing the recent two-state solution peace plan proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it said its “most dangerous” aspect is “his request to our people to recognize the Jewish nature of the Israeli State.” Such a demand is “evidence of a systematic and organized racist policy.”

But at least he was answered:

Later in the session, one such Israeli delegate took the floor in his native Arabic to proudly declare that the Jewish nature of Israel in no way implies that it is racist. “The Jewish people have suffered over several ages because of racism,” he said. “Israel is a Jewish State committed to tolerance, democracy and human rights, and will always be a partner in the battle against racism.” The Israeli delegate also noted that some of the States that single out Israel for racism, including through the Durban process, themselves “commit the most flagrant violations against their own people.”

So is it now American policy to support the militarization of a Palestinian state, but not the Jewishness of a Jewish state? Just checking.