Why Target Jews?
"Muslims hate Jews because the Jews killed Muhammad."
John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State (1953-58)
"Islam is a religion of Peace."
President George W Bush
The massacres in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, last week stunned and horrified the world. From the lone surviving terrorist Indian authorities have learned that the carnage was the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Muslim extremist group operating in Pakistan with ties to Al Qaida. Although created by Pakistani intelligence to fight against Indian rule in Kashmir, the group was banned by Pakistan in 2002. (1)
Pakistani leaders have denied any responsibility for the attack, and I believe them. The current government is pro-Western, and has tried to improve relations with India. The unfortunate truth is that the government of Pakistan does not control large sectors of its own territory (especially those bordering Afghanistan), and disloyal soldiers in its own army are allied with the terrorists.
Apparently, there were only about ten killers (2) in the gang that attacked Mumbai, yet they managed to kill at least 174 people, wounded hundreds more, and almost destroyed the Taj Mahal Hotel. Most of the target buildings were filled with hundreds or even thousands of people: a train station, major hotel, and a cafe. If the Lushkar terrorists were trying to kill as many people as possible, why send two of them (about 20% of the strike force) to the Chabad House, where there were only about eleven people (3) ?
I contend that Lashkar leaders had a special goal of killing Jews, worth far more to them than much larger numbers of other victims. This is part of a pattern seen in other Al Qaida-related attacks on Jewish targets in Tunis and Istanbul. One of the reasons that the World Trade Center in New York was targeted on Sept. 11, 2001, was that Arab terrorists knew that thousands of Jews worked there. (4)
Some may attribute the lethal hatred toward Jews among Muslims to the "Palestine Question," but I believe that the Israel-Arab dispute is only part of the motivation. For the source of this hatred, let us look into the book that all Muslims venerate: The Quran. (5)
For example, verse 2:61 states "They (the Jews) disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully." The Quran goes on to speak of punishing the Jews for usury and cheating people out of their money in verse 4:161 : " We have prepared a painful punishment." Verse 5:60 says that Allah transformed some Jews into "apes and pigs" to punish them for violating the Covenant. Books of quotations of Muhammad (hadiths) written after his death include orders to "Kill any Jew who falls into your power!"
Although not all Muslims are devout, those who join jihadist groups like Lashkar most certainly are, and they take the words of the Quran as a literal guide to life. These quotations, and similar ones from the Quran and the hadiths, have been used by Muslim preachers to incite hatred toward the Jews, the State of Israel, and by extension, those who befriend the Jews.
It is only fair to note that the New Testament portrays Jews who did not accept Jesus, especially community leaders (the Pharisees), as responsible for his crucifixion. Christians have persecuted Jews for two thousand years because of this . Although Nazism was not a Christian doctrine, there can be no doubt that Christian anti-Semitism inculcated the hostility toward the Jews of Europe that enabled Christians to carry out Nazi orders without guilt.
Since the end of World War II, major Christian denominations (especially the Catholic Church) have downplayed the Jews' role in the Crucifixion, and condemn anti-Semitism. This transformation has not occurred in the Muslim world, however, and the ancient verses of the Quran that denigrate the Jews continue to motivate the criminal acts we see today.
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(1) Associated Press, December 1, 2008.
(2) Nine were killed, and one was captured. It is possible that some terrorists escaped.
(3) Including the nanny and the boy she saved.
(4) Most people who worked at WTC escaped before the towers collapsed, but hundreds of NY firefighters (of whom very few were Jewish) were killed when they fell.
(5) All the Quaranic verses quoted here are translations from The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History by Andrew G Bostom (Prometheus Books).
John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State (1953-58)
"Islam is a religion of Peace."
President George W Bush
The massacres in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, last week stunned and horrified the world. From the lone surviving terrorist Indian authorities have learned that the carnage was the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Muslim extremist group operating in Pakistan with ties to Al Qaida. Although created by Pakistani intelligence to fight against Indian rule in Kashmir, the group was banned by Pakistan in 2002. (1)
Pakistani leaders have denied any responsibility for the attack, and I believe them. The current government is pro-Western, and has tried to improve relations with India. The unfortunate truth is that the government of Pakistan does not control large sectors of its own territory (especially those bordering Afghanistan), and disloyal soldiers in its own army are allied with the terrorists.
Apparently, there were only about ten killers (2) in the gang that attacked Mumbai, yet they managed to kill at least 174 people, wounded hundreds more, and almost destroyed the Taj Mahal Hotel. Most of the target buildings were filled with hundreds or even thousands of people: a train station, major hotel, and a cafe. If the Lushkar terrorists were trying to kill as many people as possible, why send two of them (about 20% of the strike force) to the Chabad House, where there were only about eleven people (3) ?
I contend that Lashkar leaders had a special goal of killing Jews, worth far more to them than much larger numbers of other victims. This is part of a pattern seen in other Al Qaida-related attacks on Jewish targets in Tunis and Istanbul. One of the reasons that the World Trade Center in New York was targeted on Sept. 11, 2001, was that Arab terrorists knew that thousands of Jews worked there. (4)
Some may attribute the lethal hatred toward Jews among Muslims to the "Palestine Question," but I believe that the Israel-Arab dispute is only part of the motivation. For the source of this hatred, let us look into the book that all Muslims venerate: The Quran. (5)
For example, verse 2:61 states "They (the Jews) disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully." The Quran goes on to speak of punishing the Jews for usury and cheating people out of their money in verse 4:161 : " We have prepared a painful punishment." Verse 5:60 says that Allah transformed some Jews into "apes and pigs" to punish them for violating the Covenant. Books of quotations of Muhammad (hadiths) written after his death include orders to "Kill any Jew who falls into your power!"
Although not all Muslims are devout, those who join jihadist groups like Lashkar most certainly are, and they take the words of the Quran as a literal guide to life. These quotations, and similar ones from the Quran and the hadiths, have been used by Muslim preachers to incite hatred toward the Jews, the State of Israel, and by extension, those who befriend the Jews.
It is only fair to note that the New Testament portrays Jews who did not accept Jesus, especially community leaders (the Pharisees), as responsible for his crucifixion. Christians have persecuted Jews for two thousand years because of this . Although Nazism was not a Christian doctrine, there can be no doubt that Christian anti-Semitism inculcated the hostility toward the Jews of Europe that enabled Christians to carry out Nazi orders without guilt.
Since the end of World War II, major Christian denominations (especially the Catholic Church) have downplayed the Jews' role in the Crucifixion, and condemn anti-Semitism. This transformation has not occurred in the Muslim world, however, and the ancient verses of the Quran that denigrate the Jews continue to motivate the criminal acts we see today.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Associated Press, December 1, 2008.
(2) Nine were killed, and one was captured. It is possible that some terrorists escaped.
(3) Including the nanny and the boy she saved.
(4) Most people who worked at WTC escaped before the towers collapsed, but hundreds of NY firefighters (of whom very few were Jewish) were killed when they fell.
(5) All the Quaranic verses quoted here are translations from The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History by Andrew G Bostom (Prometheus Books).
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 9:29 AM
3 Comments:
Excellent post and here is one of the same theme from Prager.
Ivan
The Rabbi and the Terrorist
By Dennis Prager
FrontPageMagazine.com | 12/2/2008
It was obvious to observers around the world that one of the designated targets of the Pakistani Islamist terrorists was the Mumbai Chabad House, the one Jewish center in Mumbai. The 10 Islamic terrorists who came from Pakistan to India chose their targets with great care.
If one assumes that the terrorists’ primary goals were to destabilize India, weaken growing Indian-Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorism, and greatly increase Indian-Pakistani tension, hopefully to the point of military war between the two countries, every one of the targets made strategic sense. Slaughtering as many people as possible in India’s major economic center, including as many foreign tourists as possible at Mumbai’s finest hotels, also made sense.
But one target seemed to make little sense. In fact, until the attack was over people were uncertain whether the terrorists’ attack on the Jewish center known as the Chabad House was part of the original plan or chosen spontaneously. Only when the lone terrorist who was captured told his interrogators that the Chabad House was planned a year earlier was it indisputable that killing the Rabbi, his wife, their children and any other Jews present was part of the plan.
The question is why?
Why would a terrorist group of Islamists from Pakistan whose primary goal is to have Pakistan gain control of the third of Kashmir that belongs to India and therefore aimed to destabilize India’s major city devote so much of its efforts -- 20 percent of its force of 10 gunmen whose stated goal was to kill 5,000 -- to killing a rabbi and any Jews with him?
The question echoes one from World War II: Why did Hitler devote so much time, money, and manpower in order to murder every Jewish man, woman, and child in every country the Nazis occupied? Why did Hitler -- as documented by the late historian Lucy Dawidowicz in her aptly named book “The War against the Jews” -- weaken the Nazi war effort by diverting money, troops, and military vehicles from fighting the Allies to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps?
From the perspective of political scientists, historians, and contemporary journalists, the answer to these questions is not rational. But the non-rationality of an answer is not synonymous with its non-validity.
For the Islamists, as for the Nazis, the destruction of the Jews -- and since 1948, the Jewish state -- is central to their worldview.
If anyone has a better explanation for why Pakistani terrorists, preoccupied with destabilizing India, would expend so much effort at finding the one Jewish center in a country that is essentially devoid of Jews, I would like to hear it.
With all the Pakistani Islamists’ hatred of Hindus, they did not attack one Hindu temple in India’s major city.
With all their hatred of Christian infidels, the terrorists did not seek out one of the 700,000 Christians in Mumbai.
To reinforce my point, imagine a Basque separatist terrorist organization attacking Madrid. Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous. But no one seems to find it odd that that Pakistani Muslim terrorists who hate India and want it to give up control of Indian Kashmir would send two of its 10 terrorists to kill perhaps the only rabbi in Mumbai. As Newsweek reported during the siege, “Given that Orthodox Jews were being held at gunpoint by mujahideen (sic), it seemed unlikely there would be survivors.” Newsweek, like just about everyone else, simply assumes Islamists will murder Jews whenever and wherever possible.
They are right.
For years I have warned that great evils often begin with the murder of Jews, and therefore non-Jews who dismiss Jew-hatred (aka anti-Semitism, aka anti-Zionism), will learn too late that Jew- and Israel-haters only begin with Jews but never end with them. When Israeli Jews were almost the only targets of Muslim terrorists, the world dismissed it as a Jewish or Israeli problem. Then it became an American and European and Filipino and Thai and Indonesian and Hindu problem.
Two final points:
One is that it is exquisitely fitting that the same week the murders in Mumbai were taking place, the United Nations General Assembly passed six more anti-Israel resolutions. As it has for decades, the U.N. has again sanctioned hatred for a good and decent country as small on the map of the world as the Chabad House is on the map of Mumbai.
Two: Statements from Chabad in reaction to the torture-murders of a 28-year-old Chabad rabbi and his wife called on humanity to react to this evil “with random acts of kindness.” Evil hates goodness. That’s why the terrorists targeted a Chabad Rabbi and his wife.
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Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Los Angeles. He is the author of four books, most recently "Happiness is a Serious Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com. To find out more about Dennis Prager, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
One more thing, it can and will happen here AGAIN.
Ivan
December 1, 2008
From Mumbai to Minneapolis, WHY it WILL happen here
By Douglas J. Hagmann, Director
I hope everyone takes a really deep, hard look at what happened last week in Mumbai, India, and at the terrorists who perpetrated the attack. And I hope this is done quickly, with a high degree of intellectual honesty and without the encumbrance of political correctness. The safety of every American, Canadian, Australian, and all Westerners, in fact depends on it, as does the security of our respective nations.
If recent history provides us any insight, however, we will fall woefully short in our official analysis of this event, and fail to learn the lessons of Mumbai. We’ve already demonstrated this pattern of failure in the many instances since 2001. Although there is enough blame to go around, I will place special blame squarely at the feet of a select few: members within our current administration, who have succumbed to the pressures and influences of such special interest groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations to needlessly convolute the facts about Islamic terrorism; the corporate media, for their failure to call an Islamic terrorist an Islamic terrorist; some nationally syndicated political right-wing talk radio show hosts who have a platform and vast audience, but fail to use their programs to provide you with the whole truth, and many of you, who strive to be so liberal and open minded that quite simply, your brains spill to the floor. Syndicated columnist Mark Steyn wrote last Friday that Mumbai could happen just about anywhere ( http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ideology-mumbai-gunman-2242227-muslim-terrorists ). He’s correct, and be forewarned, it will happen in America. It will happen in Canada. It will happen in Australia and just about any Western country you can name.
I have the ability, authority and have earned the right to make such a statement because I’ve personally investigated potential terrorists who are in this country that appear to be training for just such scenarios. I’ve published my investigative findings, complete with photographs, only to be called an alarmist, racist, bigoted, and religiously intolerant. I’ve seen my findings skewed by the media, who complain that they cannot find corroborating witnesses as they point cameras and shine lights on sources that fear for their safety. And I've garnered the wrath of a top Pakistani terror kingpin ( http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/Gilani ) for exposing the activities of his followers here in the U.S. and Canada.
My investigative findings into one such Pakistani terrorist group, (Pakistan now suddenly being important, considering all of the dead bodies in Mumbai) Jamaat ul Fuqra, have been cited by the Regional Organized Crime Information Center in their 2006 special research report. Prolific author and researcher of Islamic terrorism, Dr. Paul Williams, devoted nearly an entire chapter to my findings in his recent book The Day of Islam.
Despite the evidence presented, there is an incredible disconnect from reality by otherwise rational and reasonable individuals, people in leadership, and some at higher levels in our own law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Why else would one treat with sickening malaise the existence of a bullet-ridden school bus situated on the grounds of a private Islamic commune located at the base of the Catskill Mountains in New York State? This would be the same Islamic compound “of Qu’ranic study” that is outfitted with a firing range, where area residents often hear the sounds of automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire.
How was this group dealt with by local community leaders? Not with the slightest scintilla of suspicion or even curiosity, but with a parade. An actual parade, through the streets of Binghamton, NY, to celebrate interfaith dialogue. What about law enforcement? Well, they consider this commune “good residents,” mostly because they have not had to respond to any “trouble calls” to that location.
The fact is this: there are well armed Muslim men and young boys who are training for urban combat terrorist scenarios inside the United States and Canada, as India continues the process of identifying their dead. I have seen them, and have documented their activities.
They don’t wear nametags that identify them with any particular Islamic terrorist organization, and are not limited to groups like LeT and Jamaat ul Fuqra, but make no mistake: they all adhere to the same philosophy and ideology taught by fundamentalist Islam, and their training is derived directly from the texts, manuals, and videos authored and published by al Qaeda.
Such groups here are well funded, in many cases by receiving money from Saudi Arabia through mosques and Islamic Centers. In cases like Jamaat ul Fuqra, they establish charities, and send their money to top terrorist leader Sheikh Mubarek Ali Gilani, who in turn uses those funds to recruit, equip and expand his terrorist network.
Westerners in general, and Americans specifically have a serious case of memory deficit disorder. This disorder will continue until the hallways of the Waldorf Astoria in New York, and the concourses at the Mall of America, for example, run with the blood of innocent men, women and children who have died because we have failed properly and unapologetically deal with the threat of Islamic terrorism within this country.
For economic and political reasons, we are being lied to everyday about the actual threat level that exists in this country and in Canada. And without asking even the most basic questions, the major media in this country perpetuate the lies of those in leadership who successfully hoodwink the masses by the carefully constructed use of catch-phrases like “no specific threat,” unsubstantiated threat, “no specific intelligence,” and my personal favorite, “no connection to terrorism” to nauseating extremes.
Now, the war in which we are engaged is being moved from the battlefield and relegated to U.S. courtrooms. This tactic started long before the Bush administration, but one that received his active support. It’s disingenuous and even silly to think that we can fight a war through our court system and expect to win. This has been demonstrated on numerous occasions since 9/11, and in a number of significant previous instances.
[....]
[....]
To hell with the U.S. Constitution in that case, apparently. It only applies to the constitutional rights of Islamic terrorists, not the political elite. Apply constitutional requirements to the treatment of the Islamic terrorists who have killed, and want to kill us here in America,....
Meanwhile, it appears that Obama will be the man selected to inherit the already fatally flawed war doctrine of the Bush administration and either by accident or design, will further endanger our national security, and the safety and security of every man, woman and child of the West.
Instead of a local parade celebrating interfaith dialogue on Main Street in Binghamton, NY, you can now expect one to be held on Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead of war prisoners being held in war prisons and tried as war criminals, you can now expect them to be thrust into the already overburdened criminal justice system.
There is something else you can expect, too. Expect to experience the carnage of Mumbai on any street in America, Canada, or Australia.
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/
Posted on December 1, 2008 at 4:32 PM PST
I agree with Ivan, excellent post. I would make one correction.Your comment, "Some may attribute the lethal hatred toward Jews among Muslims to the 'Palestine Question,' but I believe that the Israel-Arab dispute is only part of the motivation" makes it sound like the Israel-Arab dispute is somehow unrelated to Jihadist Jew-hatred; whereas I believe that the "dispute" is based on Jihadist Jew-hatred. Even the secular PA's Jew-hatred is based on a tradition of Jihadist Jew-hatred. There is no rational reason for the Arabs to hate Jews. This is not a border dispute - it is a refusal to accept Israel's existence. So let's not buy into the smoke-screen that this is a border dispute that can be negotiated.
Here are 3 excellent additional articles on Mumbai by 1) Caroline Glick, 2) Bret Stephens (former Jerusalem Post editor, now a WSJ columnist) and 3) Melanie Phillips (author of Londonistan):
Our World: The jihadist-multicultural alliance
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Doctors at the Mumbai hospital who treated the victims of the past week’s jihadist attacks were rendered nearly speechless by the carnage. As two doctors explained to the Indian news Web site rediff.com, violent gang wars and previous terror attacks didn’t hold a candle to what happened.
The bodies of the victims showed clear signs of preexecution torture. The worst tortured, they said, were the Jewish victims. As one doctor put it, “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the [first day of the assault]. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again.” India’s Intelligence Bureau revealed that a captured jihadist explained that they were instructed to seek out foreign and especially Israeli victims.
In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it is hard to imagine that there is anything as pernicious as the jihadists who sought out and murdered non-Muslims with such cruelty. But there is. Their multicultural apologists, who enable them to continue to kill by preventing their victims from fighting back, are just as evil.
The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts throughout the world, were motivated to kill by their adherence to totalitarian Islam. Totalitarian Islam calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of all other non-Muslims.
The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts from Gaza to Baghdad to Guantanamo Bay, have been defended, and their acts and motivations have been explained away, by their allies and loyal apologists: Western multiculturalists. Multiculturalism is a quasi-religion predicated on both moral relativism and a basic belief in the inherent avarice of the West - particularly of the US and Israel. Multiculturalists assert that Westerners - or, in the case of India, Hindus - are to blame for all acts of violence carried out against them by non-Westerners. IN THE case of the Mumbai massacres, the jihadists’ multicultural defenders began justifying their actions while they were still in the midst of their torture and murder spree. In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria hinted that Indian Hindus had it coming.
“One of the untold stories of India,” he explained, “is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted.”
Then too, the multicultural media suppressed the fact that the jihadists were targeting Jews. Outside of Israel, it took the media nearly two days to report that the Chabad House had even been taken over by the jihadists. And once they did finally report that Jews were being targeted, they made every effort to downplay the strategic significance of the jihadists’ decision to send a team off the beaten path simply to butcher Jews.
Emblematic of the Western media’s attempts to play down the story was The New York Times. Two days into the hostage drama, the Times opined, “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.” JEWS WERE not the only ones who had their identity obscured. The jihadists did too. For almost an entire day, major news networks in the West suppressed the fact that the murderers were Muslim jihadists, claiming oddly, that they could also be Hindu terrorists. This was odd not because there are no Hindu terrorists, but because the perpetrators referred to themselves from the outset as “mujahideen,” or Islamic warriors.
Once the jig was up on their attempts to hide the identities of the perpetrators and their victims alike, the jihadists’ multicultural enablers started blaming the victims. For instance, on Sunday, The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by University of Chicago law professor Martha Nussbaum attacking Indian Hindus. After blithely dismissing the atrocities that were still under way while she wrote as “probably funded from outside India, in connection with the ongoing conflict over Kashmir,” Nussbaum focused her ire against India’s Hindus. Recalling the gruesome and apparently state-sanctioned violence against Muslims in India’s Gujarat state in 2002, Nussbaum cast the jihadists as nothing more than victims of a Hindu terror state which has been victimizing Muslims for no reason since the 1930s.
Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies
By BRET STEPHENS
Article
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For purposes of self-justification, Azam Amir Kasab, the only terrorist taken alive in last week's Mumbai massacre, offered that the murder of Jews in the city's Chabad House was undertaken to avenge Israeli atrocities on Palestinians. Two other terrorists cited instances of anti-Muslim Hindu violence as the answer to the question, "Why are you doing this to us?" before mowing down 14 unarmed people at the Oberoi Hotel. And if dead terrorists could talk, we would surely hear Abu Ghraib mentioned as among their reasons for singling out U.S. and British hostages.
David KleinOne suspects the terrorists spent far too much time listening to the BBC World Service.
Let's hasten to add that by no means should the BBC alone be singled out. When it comes to terrorists and their grievances, nearly all the Western media have provided them with a rich diet on which to feed.
In the spring of 2005, Newsweek ran with a thinly sourced item about the Quran being flushed down a Guantanamo toilet. Result: At least 15 people were killed in Afghan riots.
Newsweek later retracted the story, which was the right thing to do but also, in its way, exceptional. Compare that to the refusal of French reporter Charles Enderlin and his station, France 2, to retract or even express doubt about his September 2000 report on Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli soldiers during an exchange of gunfire in the Gaza Strip -- an exchange Mr. Enderlin did not witness.
In an exhaustive piece in the June 2003 issue of the Atlantic, James Fallows observed that the evidence that the boy could not have been shot by an Israeli bullet is overwhelming, while the evidence that the entire incident was staged is, at the very least, impressive. In France, the story has been the subject of various lawsuits. In Israel, however, and throughout the Muslim world, Durrah became the poster child for a five-year intifada that took several thousand lives.
Maybe Durrah was somewhere in the minds of the Mumbai killers. If not, there was no shortage of other Israeli "atrocities" for them to choose from, mostly fictitious or trumped up and all endlessly cited in Western media reports: the "siege" of Gaza; the 2002 Jenin "massacre"; the 1982 massacres (by Lebanese Phalangists) in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut; the execution of Egyptian POWs in 1967.
All these fables have real-world consequences, and not only for Israelis. In July 2006, an American named Naveed Afzal Haq ambled into the offices of the Seattle Jewish Federation and shot six people, killing one. One of the survivors testified that Mr. Haq "stated that he was a Muslim, [and] this was his personal statement against Jews and the Bush administration for giving money to Jews, and for us Jews for giving money to Israel, about Hezbollah, the war in Iraq." Wherever did he get those ideas?
In today's Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Travels With HillaryMumbai and ObamaMore Immigration Losers
TODAY'S COLUMNISTS
Global View: Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies
– Bret StephensMain Street: What's Good for GM Could Be Good for America
– William McGurn
COMMENTARY
Georgia Acted in Self-Defense
– Mikheil SaakashviliAIG Needs a New Deal
– Maurice R. GreenbergGovernors Against State Bailouts
– Rick Perry and Mark SanfordAs it turns out, often from terrorist suspects themselves, offering their testimonials of Israeli or U.S. malevolence to a credulous Western media. In the Quran-in-the-toilet imbroglio, for instance, the Nation's Ari Berman filed a piece titled "Newsweek Was Right," which cited accounts by former Guantanamo detainees of how their captors abused the Holy Book. Unmentioned in any of this were the instructions contained in al Qaeda's "Manchester Document," obtained by British police in 2000, that told followers to "complain of mistreatment while in prison" and "insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security."
Or consider the tale of Ali Shalal Qaissi, the subject of a New York Times story in March 2006. Mr. Qaissi, founder of the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons, claimed to be the black-hooded man standing on a box, attached to wires, ghoulishly photographed by the Abu Ghraib jailers. The Times thought enough of his story to put it on page one, until it turned out he wasn't the man. A March 18, 2006, "Editor's Note" tells us something about how these stories make it to print:
"The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account."
Of course, it's always possible to fall for a well-told lie. But it's worth wondering why a media that treats nearly every word uttered by the U.S., British or Israeli governments as inherently suspect has proved so consistently credulous when it comes to every dubious or defamatory claim made against those governments. Or, for that matter, why the media has been so intent on magnifying genuine scandals (like Abu Ghraib) to the point that they become the moral equivalent of 9/11. Some caution is in order: Terrorists, of all people, might actually believe what they read in the papers.
The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared world
By Melanie Phillips
Western commentators still don't grasp what the free world is facing. This was not merely a distant horror
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Around the world, people have reacted with horror to the vile atrocities in Mumbai.
For three days, our TV screens transmitted images of carnage and chaos as the toll of murder victims climbed to upwards of 190 people, with many hundreds more injured.
Despite the fact that Western citizens were caught up in the attacks, there is nevertheless a sense that this was nothing to do with us — a horrible event happening in a faraway place.
Among commentators, moreover, there has been no small amount of confusion.
Were these terrorists motivated by the grievance between Muslims and Hindus over Kashmir, or was this a broader attack by Al Qaeda?
If British and American tourists were singled out over Iraq — which many assume is the motive for such attacks — why were Indians targeted in the Victoria railway station?
And why was an obscure outreach centre geared to Jews marked for slaughter?
Such perceptions and questions suggest that, even now, Western commentators still don't grasp what the free world is facing. This was not merely a distant horror.
We should pay the closest possible attention to what happened in Mumbai because something on this scale could well happen here.
But because we don't understand what we are actually up against, we are not doing nearly enough to prevent this — or something even worse — occurring; and if it were to happen here, we would be unable to cope.
The Mumbai atrocities show very clearly what too many obdurately deny — that a war is being waged against civilization.
It is both global and local. It is not 'our' fault; it has nothing to do with Muslim poverty, oppression or discrimination.
The Islamic fundamentalist fanatics use specific grievances — Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya — merely as recruiting sergeants for their worldwide holy war against all 'unbelievers'.
The Mumbai attackers targeted British, American and Indian citizens simply because they wanted to kill as many British, American and Indian 'unbelievers' as possible.
Where they found Muslims, they spared them.
They also singled out for slaughter the occupants of an outreach organization geared to Jews with no Israeli or political agenda — underscoring the point that at the core of the Islamists' hatred of Israel festers their hatred of the Jews.
This was not, as is so often described, 'mindless violence'.
On the contrary, the terrorists precisely calibrated both their choice of targets and the way in which they attacked them. This tells us many things.
India was chosen in order to further two aims. First was to foment greater tension between India and Pakistan.
No less important was the wish to destroy the ever more vital strategic alliance between India and the West in common defense against the Islamist onslaught.
That was why British and American visitors in those two grand hotels were singled out.
And that was why Mumbai itself was chosen — as the symbol of India's burgeoning commerce and prosperity and its links with the West.
The manner of these attacks also carried a message.
Many hostages were taken, but no attempt was made to use them to demand redress of any grievances. They were simply killed.
That made a statement that the terrorists' agenda is non-negotiable.
The attacks demonstrated, above all, the reach of the perpetrators and the impotence of their designated victims.
Those who believe that Islamist terror can be halted by addressing grievances around the world are profoundly mistaken.
With these atrocities, moreover, Islamist attacks have moved much closer to war than conventional terrorism.
The Iranian-born foreign affairs specialist Amir Taheri has pointed out that the Mumbai attacks embody the plan outlined by a senior Al Qaeda strategist after the U.S. decided to fight back following 9/11 — a decision that the Islamists had not expected.
This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for 'low-intensity warfare' comprising bombings, kidnappings, the taking of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, beheadings and other attacks that make normal life impossible.
Such a simultaneous, multi-faceted onslaught quickly reduces a city and a country to chaos. It can be repeated anywhere — and our cities must be among the most vulnerable.
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