Raised on Hatred

From the NYT, 17 Jan 2013, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali*:
EGYPT’S newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was caught on tape about three years ago urging his followers to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists. Not long after, the then-leader of the Muslim Brotherhood described Zionists as “bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians,” “warmongers” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”
These remarks are disgusting, but they are neither shocking nor new. As a child growing up in a Muslim family, I constantly heard my mother, other relatives and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered our darkest enemy. Our religious tutors and the preachers in our mosques set aside extra time to pray for the destruction of Jews.
For far too long the pervasive Middle Eastern qualification of Jews as murderers and bloodsuckers was dismissed in the West as extreme views expressed by radical fringe groups. But they are not. In truth, those Muslims who think of Jews as friends and fellow human beings with a right to their own state are a minority, and are under intense pressure to change their minds.
All over the Middle East, hatred for Jews and Zionists can be found in textbooks for children as young as three, complete with illustrations of Jews with monster-like qualities. Mainstream educational television programs are consistently anti-Semitic. In songs, books, newspaper articles and blogs, Jews are variously compared to pigs, donkeys, rats and cockroaches, and also to vampires and a host of other imaginary creatures.
Consider this infamous dialogue between a three-year-old and a television presenter, eight years before Morsi’s remarks.
Presenter: “Do you like Jews?”
Three-year-old: “No.”
“Why don’t you like them?”
“Jews are apes and pigs.”
“Who said this?”
“Our God.”
“Where did he say this?”
“In the Koran.”
The presenter responds approvingly: “No [parents] could wish for Allah to give them a more believing girl than she ... May Allah bless her, her father and mother.”
This conversation was not caught on hidden camera or taped by propagandists. It was featured on a prominent program called “Muslim Woman Magazine” and broadcast by Iqraa, the popular Saudi-owned satellite channel.
It is a major step forward for a sitting U.S. administration and leading American newspapers to unequivocally condemn Morsi’s words. But condemnation is just the first move.
Here is an opportunity to acknowledge the breadth and depth of the attitude toward Jews in the Middle East, and how that affects the much desired but elusive peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
So many explanations have been offered for the failure of successive U.S. administrations to achieve that peace, but the answer is in Morsi’s words. Why would one make peace with bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and monkeys?
Millions of Muslims have been conditioned to regard Jews not only as the enemies of Palestine but as the enemies of all Muslims, of God and of all humanity. Arab leaders far more prominent and influential than Morsi have been tireless in “educating” or “nursing” generations to believe that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.” (These are the words of the Saudi sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, imam at the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.)
In 2011, a Pew survey found that in Turkey, just 4 percent of those surveyed held a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” view of Jews; in Indonesia, 10 percent; in Pakistan 2 percent. In addition, 95 percent of Jordanians, 94 percent of Egyptians and 95 percent of Lebanese hold a “very unfavorable” view of Jews [pdf].
In recent decades Israeli and American administrations negotiated with unelected Arab despots, who played a double game. They honored the formal peace treaties by not conducting military attacks against Israel. But they condoned the Islamists’ dissemination of hatred against Israel, Zionism and Jews.
As the Islamists spread their influence through civil institutions, young people were nursed on hatred.
In the wake of the Arab Spring, as the people take a chance on democracy, they and their new leadership want to see their ideals turned into policy.
For too many of those who fought for their own liberation, one of those ideals is the end of peace with Israel. The United States must make clear to Morsi that this is not an option.
This is also a crucial opportunity for the region’s secular movements, which must speak out against the clergy’s incitement of young minds to hatred. It is time for these secular movements to start a counter-education in tolerance.
*Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of the books “Infidel” and “Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations.”

Turkish Journalist Outspokenly Defends Israel

From United with Israel, 15 Jan 2013, by Rachel Avraham:

Burak Bekdil, Turkish journalist

Hurriyet Daily News writer Burak Bekdil is not shy about expressing his beliefs, despite the fact that he is living presently in Ankara, Turkey under AKP rule. At times, his outspokenness has gotten him into trouble, since he received an 18-month suspended sentence for insulting the Turkish judiciary in 2002. However, this has not deterred him. Bekdil is known as a frequent critique of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and despite it being unpopular in Turkey, has defended Israel on a number of occasions in his writings as well.
In one article titled “Nazi teen and the occupation of Jerusalem,” Bekdil went as far as arguing “a counter occupation is no occupation at all.” He claimed, “Now, dear Islamists, I have a “witness” whom I guess you could hardly refute. Forget my words and listen to what Turkey’s top Muslim cleric, Professor Mehmet Görmez, had to say: ...
“After the Prophet Omar conquered al-Quds he was invited to pray at a church (since there were no mosques in Jerusalem). But he politely refused because he was worried that the (conquering) Muslims could turn the church into a mosque after he prayed there.””

Bekdil continued, “Now, read that line once again, or a thousand times if you wish to: “After the Prophet Omar conquered al-Quds…” And think about why there were no mosques in Jerusalem at the time of the conquest. Still no clue? Allow me to explain:
Because Jerusalem was not a Muslim city.
And now you claim it back because it is under “Jewish occupation!” The refusal to pray at the church was very noble of the Prophet Omar. I personally do not expect you, dear Islamists, to behave as virtuously and gallantly as the prophet, but at least you can do something easier: Stop fighting for a city that belonged to other faiths before your ancestors conquered it.”
In another article, titled “Is Hamas real or a bad joke,” Bekdil wrote, “I am not sure if Hamas is unhappy or happy with Israel’s use of “disproportional force” each time the jihadists escalate indiscriminate rocket attacks against Jewish targets. I am not sure if we poor souls can ever understand the jihadists when they say “they love death more than we love life.” Hamas’ rhetoric stinks of death, nothing but death – indiscriminate death. Be it “our” death or “the enemy’s.” And it never metamorphoses into something more humane, something less nihilist.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir

Bekdil also wrote a three part series of articles speaking about why he believes that Golda Meir was correct in stating that there will not be peace between the Muslim world and Israelis until the Arabs learn to love their own children more than they hate the Jewish people. He asserted that one million Muslims were killed during the Iran-Iraq War, 300,000 Muslim minorities were killed by Sadamn Hussein, 80,000 Iranians perished during the Iranian Revolution, 25,000 Muslim Palestinians were killed by the Jordanian Monarchy during Black September, and 20,000 Islamists were killed by the elder Assad in Hama.
...over 11 million Muslims have been killed since 1948 and over 90 percent of them were killed by fellow Muslims.
Bekdil furthermore criticized Erdogan for falsely claiming that Israel knows how to kill, even though Arab deaths in the Israeli-Arab conflict since 1948 only make up 0.05 percent of all deaths in all conflicts or 0.4 percent of all Arab deaths by conflict generally since 1948. He also is disturbed that Erdogan ignores the fact that the majority of Muslims that have been killed since 1948 were killed by fellow Muslims. Bekdil wrote: “Someone else could have simply asked: I am addressing Turkey’s good Muslim rulers: I do not know if you are worthy of being called good Muslims. Have you said a single thing about what happened in Sudan? […] Which religion is the perpetrator of never-ending murders in the Middle East and North Africa (including Syria)? Why do Muslims kill other Muslims en masse, then turn around and tell the entire world that ‘Muslims don’t kill?’” He sarcastically asked, “Who really knows better how to kill?”

Hagel's nomination means: smaller military, blindness to terrorism, a nuclear Iran

From the Washington Post, 11 Jan 2013, by Charles Krauthammer:

"This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility."
— Barack Obamato Dmitry Medvedev, March 26, 2012

The puzzle of the Chuck Hagel nomination for defense secretary is that you normally choose someone of the other party for your Cabinet to indicate a move to the center, but, as The Post’s editorial board pointed out, Hagel’s foreign policy views are to the left of Barack Obama’s, let alone the GOP’s. Indeed, they are at the fringe of the entire Senate.
So what’s going on? Message-sending. Obama won reelection. He no longer has to trim, to appear more moderate than his true instincts. He has the “flexibility” to be authentically Obama.
Hence the Hagel choice: Under the guise of centrist bipartisanship, it allows the president to leave the constrained first-term Obama behind and follow his natural Hagel-like foreign policy inclinations. On three pressing issues, in particular:

(1) Military Spending
Current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in August 2011 that the scheduled automatic $600 billion defense cuts (”sequestration”) would result in “hollowing out the force,” which would be “devastating.” And he strongly hinted that he might resign rather than enact them.
Asked about Panetta’s remarks, Hagel called the Pentagon “bloated” and needing “to be pared down.” Just the man you’d want to carry out a U.S. disarmament that will shrink America to what Obama thinks is its proper size on the world stage; i.e., smaller. The overweening superpower that Obama promiscuously chided in his global we-have-sinned tour is poised for reduction, not only to fund the bulging welfare state — like Europe’s postwar choice of social spending over international relevance — but to recalibrate America’s proper role in the world.

(2) Israel
The issue is not Hagel’s alleged hostility but his public pronouncements. His refusal to make moral distinctions, for example. At the height of the second intifada, a relentless campaign of indiscriminate massacre of Israelis, Hagel found innocence abounding: “Both Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a war not of their making.”
This pass at evenhandedness is nothing but pernicious blindness. Just last month, Yasser Arafat’s widow admitted on Dubai TV what everyone has long known — that Arafat deliberately launched the intifada after the collapse of the Camp David peace talks in July 2000. He told his wife to stay in the safety of Paris. Why, she asked? Because I’m going to start an intifada.
In July 2002, with the terror still raging, Hagel offered further exquisite evenhandedness: “Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace.” Good God. Exactly two years earlier Israel had proposed an astonishingly generous peace that offered Arafat a Palestinian state — and half of Jerusalem, a previously unimaginable Israeli concession. Arafat said no, made no counteroffer, walked away and started his terror war. Did no one tell Hagel?

(3) Iran
Hagel doesn’t just oppose military action, a problematic option with serious arguments on both sides. He actually opposed any unilateral sanctions. You can’t get more out of the mainstream than that.
He believes in diplomacy instead, as if talk alone will deter the mullahs. He even voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization at a time when they were supplying and supporting attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most tellingly, he has indicated that he is prepared to contain a nuclear Iran, a position diametrically opposed to Obama’s first-term, ostensibly unalterable opposition to containment. What message do you think this sends the mullahs?
And that’s the point. Hagel himself doesn’t matter. He won’t make foreign policy. Obama will run it out of the White House even more tightly than he did in the first term.
Hagel’s importance is the message his nomination sends about where Obama wants to go. The lessons are being duly drawn. Iran’s official media have already cheered the choice of what they call this “anti-Israel” nominee.
And they fully understand what his nomination signals regarding administration resolve about stopping them from going nuclear.
The rest of the world can see coming the Pentagon downsizing — and the inevitable, commensurate decline of U.S. power. Pacific Rim countries will have to rethink reliance on the counterbalance of the U.S. Navy and consider acquiescence to Chinese regional hegemony. Arab countries will understand that the current rapid decline of post-Kissinger U.S. dominance in the region is not cyclical but intended to become permanent.
Hagel is a man of no independent stature. He’s no George Marshall or Henry Kissinger. A fringe senator who left no trace behind, Hagel matters only because of what his nomination says about Obama.
However the Senate votes on confirmation, the signal has already been sent. Before Election Day, Obama could only whisper it to his friend Dmitry. Now, with Hagel, he’s told the world.

The Arabs Fear a ‘More Jewish’ State of Israel

From The Jewish Pres, 13 Jan 2013, by Mordechai Kedar*:

A boy in Hebron.
Photo Credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90

The elections  are approaching in Israel, and polls are predicting what the Arab media calls, with great dread, “the meteoric rise of the radical right in Israel.” ...Why is the Arab world so concerned and what are they worried about? One possible answer is that the radical right will take over the country and Israel will go to war against the Palestinians in order to destroy the Palestinian Authority and undo all of the achievements, especially the international recognition that they won in the General Assembly of the UN about two months ago. ...it doesn’t seem to me that this is the real reason for the anxiety, because there are many – especially in the Palestinian Authority – who wish to dissolve the PA, as we saw last week...

The reasons for the concern are deeper than this, and stem from the cultural mindset of the region. An Israel that has a strong character and is confident of itself and the justice of its cause, might stop behaving like a dishrag, as it has done in the past, more than once, under the irresponsible leadership of the bleeding hearts who are the “Pursuers of Peace”, and might adopt a pattern of behavior typical to the Middle East.
More than a few Israeli politicians, some of them prime ministers, who sought “a solution now” have earned for Israel the image of “peace seekers”, according to their point of view, but which the Middle East understood as “Obsequious beggars pleading for a little peace and quiet”. In the Middle East only the vanquished, pleading for his life to be spared, begs for peace, and usually he will get a big, strong kick that will hurl him all the way down the stairs. Peace is the last thing you get when you beg for it.
In the embattled region where Israel is situated, the weak individual gets beaten up: he is shot at, missiles rain down upon him, his buses are blown up, he is de-legitimized, marginalized diplomatically, sued in international courts, states are established on his back that threaten him and declare their violent struggle against him again and again, and he – the weak one – must take all of this garbage that is rained down upon him and say, “It’s only words”. Sometimes he issues a warning but few take him seriously because he is weak and obsequious; he “seeks peace”.
In contrast, only the strong and self-confident, he who can pose a threat, who does not restrain himself at all from utilizing full force, who will not surrender anything due to him, will have peace and tranquility. Everyone else will leave him be because they fear him, and this is the only peace that is recognized in the Middle East.
Peace belongs to the one who responds with great power to the first missile that falls into his territory, even if it falls in an open area; who doesn’t say on the radio, “no damage was caused”, because the truth of the matter is that indeed great damage was caused to his sovereignty, and nothing is more important than his sovereignty.  Would a normal person accept someone shooting at his house, even if “no damage was caused”?
The Arab world fears an Israel that after the elections might be – good heavens – more Jewish, because then the world might remember that the Jews, not the Israelis, were expelled from here 1942 years ago, and now the Jews have returned to their historic land – Judea. A more Jewish Israel might be a “bad” example to Europe, where a sense of national identity is in continual decline and where they watch with indifference the alien invasion that is threatening the character of Europe. The strengthening of the Israeli Right might therefore encourage the European Right to put an end to the great immigration of the masses who expect to turn Europe into their land.
A Jewish Israel could be a magnet attracting Jews the world over to immigrate to Israel and to make Israel the center of their life, and thus it will be strengthened demographically, economically, socially and politically. This process might be encouraged by the antisemitism in Europe, which is rising as the Jews lose their influence and the public weight is transferred to groups of immigrants that don’t become part of the society of old, sleepy Europe.
A Jewish Israel will  concentrate within it the educated Jews, the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the developers and the cutting-edge scientists who brought the Jewish people a prodigious number of Nobel prizes, and thus Israel will become a bastion of science, technology and development, innovation and entrepreneurship, while everything around it – chiefly in the past two years – becomes a quagmire of blood, fire and tears, pillars of smoke, destruction and devastation.
A sovereign and self-confident Jewish Israel will prove to its neighbors again that the Jews are not just another “protected people” (“ahl dhimmi” in their language) who must live according to rules determined by the imams, and must “pay the head tax in a humiliated condition” (Qur’an, Sura 9, Verse 29) according to the Saudi Arabian custom in the seventh century CE.
A Jewish Israel will cling with more determination to Jerusalem, the capital of the Jews since 3000 years ago, long before the sons of the desert broke into it and invented a history that supposedly grants them the rights to Jerusalem since the creation of the world.
With a Jewish Israel, the mutual bonds of responsibility will be strengthened among Jews, and they will establish a more just, unified, fair and humane society, and Jewish society will be stronger and more robust, more determined and more able to stand the tests  of life that anyone who wants to survive in the Middle East are subjected to. This society will have a clearer self image, and will not need to discriminate against minorities only in order to prove to itself that it is “different”. As a result of this, the way the state relates to minorities, especially the Muslim minority, will be more humane and understanding, because – after all – many of the Jewish majority and the Muslim minority see eye to eye concerning the true problems of traditional society in a modern and permissive physical and virtual environment. Jews and Muslims alike aspire to promote the education of the young generation, ethical behavior of the sons and daughters of their society, restricting the use of drugs and alcohol, honoring parents and teachers and adherence to religious and traditional values.
A Jewish Israel will present a solid wall of defense against Islamic radicalization and tribalism in the Arab world, and will prove that only a people who clings to its identity and is faithful to its heritage can stand strong against the tidal wave of radicalization and violence that engulfs the Middle East, and this is exactly what frightens our neighbors: those who hoped that with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, Israel would be paralyzed with fear and would flee from all of its assets, discover that, contrary to their theory, Israel is the state of the Jewish Brotherhood, and will not flee from an enemy.
A Jewish state such as this will prove to those near and far that the Jews have returned to their historical and eternal homeland and will remain there forever and ever, and only this way will Israel win peace from her neighbors. It will not be a peace of hugs and kisses, because there is no such thing in the Middle East, but rather it will be a peace that stems from our neighbors’ recognition of the reality that the Almighty has imposed upon them, and the realization that they have no choice but to accept it as it is. Within Islamic tradition, there is a way to give peace to infidels who are invincible; temporary peace that continues as long as the enemy is invincible.
This is the peace that Israel can win from her neighbors, and it will continue forever, but only if Israel is invincible forever.
A more Jewish Israel will ensure peace among all of the citizens and will oblige her neighbors to leave her in peace, and this is the reason that her neighbors fear a more Jewish Israel.

Originally published at Middle East and Terrorism.

*About the Author: Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Ph.D. Bar-Ilan U.) Served for 25 years in IDF Military Intelligence specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups and the Syrian domestic arena. A lecturer in Arabic at Bar-Ilan U., he is also an expert on Israeli Arabs.

Sanctions are hurting Iran, but vigilance is needed.

From NYT, 10 Jan 2013, by Rick Glastone:
Despite onerous sanctions that have basically shut Iran out of the global financial system, the country is still finding some ways to bypass them, the Treasury Department said Thursday, describing what it called a small but “emerging threat” to the effectiveness of the sanctions effort.

Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which supervises American enforcement of the sanctions, said the Iranians were using private exchange houses and trading companies in other countries, masking transactions with fake identities and relying on the paperless practice known as hawala, common in parts of the Middle East and Asia, in which money is transferred informally and often illegally through trustworthy couriers.

Mr. Szubin’s office issued an advisory on Thursday aimed at informing American financial institutions about ...Iranian evasion techniques to circumvent the sanctions...

The most vexing sanctions, from Iran’s viewpoint, are financial prohibitions that have blacklisted many Iranian banks, denied them access to international money and credit channels and severely restricted Iran’s ability to sell oil, the most important Iranian export. A new law signed by President Obama this month expands the sanctions to include shipping, shipbuilding and energy concerns, which are likely to hurt many Iranian industries, including construction, machinery and automaking.

..."Increasingly we’re seeing them turn to trading houses in third countries,” [Mr. Szubin] said, “to facilitate movement of money that would ordinarily go through a bank.”

The practice of hawala, he said, is much more difficult to monitor and disrupt. “That said, hawalas are even less perfect substitutes for banks,” he said. “It’s a mechanism that only works if you have absolute trust of the individuals involved.”

...Iranian officials have increasingly acknowledged that the American sanctions, coupled with a European Union oil embargo that took effect in July, are causing severe financial difficulties and aggravating problems caused in part by the government’s own economic mismanagement. Even the oil minister, who had repeatedly denied the sanctions were having an effect, acknowledged this week that oil exports and revenue plunged by more than 40 percent last year compared with the year before.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Central Bank said the annual inflation rate reached 27.4 percent at the end of 2012, one of the highest rates ever quoted. But private economists say even that figure vastly understates the real inflation rate and fails to fully account for a plunge in the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, which lost about 50 percent of its worth against the dollar in the past year.

Steve H. Hanke, a Johns Hopkins University economics professor and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington research group, who has been following Iran’s case, said the official inflation rate reflected what he called the Central Bank’s “habit of failing to release useful economic data, and what it does release often has what I would describe as an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ quality.”

By Mr. Hanke’s calculations, Iran’s inflation rate last year was 110 percent.