Yesterday, I wrote about how pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli propaganda managed to find its way onto a site devoted to “avoidable medical deaths in the hospital.”

Today–guess what? The same propaganda has now variously appeared higher up on the list on the first page–but so has my own blog!

I am not sure what to make of this. Did I send even more readers to the Palestine Monitor site? Did those who oppose what I wrote send even more readers to that same site?

Only the Shadow knows.

And which Arab, Muslim hospital has rushed ambulances to the streets of Jerusalem to assist the civilian victims of the Israeli Palestinian criminal terrorist who yesterday brutally mowed down four innocent souls and wounded 57 additional civilians? In a sense, this, too, is an example of an “avoidable” out-of-hospital death–just like the Palestine Monitor’s examples.

Interestingly, the Grey Lady has not carried news of this attack on its front page (it appears on pg A6) nor have they shown us any photos of the bloodied victims. They do have a photo of the bloodied murderer whom, according to the Times, an Israeli police officer finally shot to stop his rampage. The closest the Times comes to showing us the damage from an Israeli point of view is Rina Castelnuovo’s photo of a huge Israeli bus which the killer turned on its side. Their article suggests that the killer’s rampage was one of divine justice because he used the same kind of Caterpillar “construction vehicle” which Israelis use “to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land.”

Thus: the homes of terrorists, orchards, and new Jewish settlements are equivalent to living, breathing, and innocent human beings.

You may see some photos HERE
of the crushed cars, overturned bus, and of an Israeli rescue worker holding an infant–the very infant whose life was saved by her mother when the mother threw the child out the car window before she and the car were utterly crushed by the terrorist bulldozer.

Congratulations to Solomonia for publishing these photos.

While we in the West blunder on, the diabolically crafty and patient Palestinian leadership and its many supporters have been busy inserting their propaganda into every conceivable forum. I have written before about such propaganda taking over the United Nations, international human rights groups, and large chunks of the Western media and universities. Wikipedia has also been infected with anti-Israel bias and with maps that do not show the Jewish state.

Of course, what the propagandists publish, film and say in the Arab and Muslim world about Israel, Jews, and America is unimaginably worse.

And now, for my own little discovery. I have been researching a health-related piece. When I googled some relevant subject areas I was surprised to find something about Palestine and against Israel on the first Google page. This means that someone has been publishing anti-Israel material and then doing whatever is necessary to get a huge number of people to press on the link; this is what gets an article on the first Google search page.

Thus, if you google “avoidable hospital deaths” HERE you will find ten examples on the first page. The first seven and the last two articles concern what happens in American and British hospitals. The eighth piece is titled “Palestine Monitor. Avoidable Tragedies” and it links to a site devoted to “exposing life under the occupation.” Seven Palestinian patients are listed, four of whom died, allegedly because they could not enter Israel due to the closing of various “crossings.” (And no, of course not, the site does not explain why Israel has had to set up checkpoints and close crossings).

I do not know whether any of these Palestine Monitor examples are true or false. Based on the epidemic “Pallywood” and faux-tography tactics of the Palestinians, these people may not even exist and their deaths, like that of the iconic Mohammed al-Dura, may not even have occurred. Or, their deaths may not be due to the Israeli “occupation.” (And no, the site does not explain that most Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals).

Nevertheless, if this Palestine Monitor has managed to get itself on the first Google page–I wonder how many other highly politicized examples of Palestinian propaganda which are unrelated to the topic at hand have nevertheless managed to land themselves on the first Google page? All the other examples on this Google page concern unnecessary or avoidable deaths in hospitalsdue to medical error or staff neglect. The Palestinians who allegedly died were not in hospitals. There is no other example that Google links to which offers a political-military reason for hospital-based avoidable deaths.

Gotta hand it to them. (How many nerds do they have seated at computers pressing away?) We may not only have to learn from our enemies or “stoop to their level;” we must absolutely outwit and outlast them in terms of creating and combating such propaganda. We must also come up with lasting surprises of our own.

Does anyone have any ideas? Please post a comment and I will respond.

Right to Left: Sol Stern, Phyllis Chesler, Alan Johnson, Paul Berman, Michael Weiss and Austin Dacey

What happened to the old New Left? How did it become a supporter of totalitarianism, Islamist fascism, nihilist isolationism, and the narrowest of party lines? When did it lose its “decency” and moral sanity? A growing number of us have been asking these questions for a long time and more have joined us since 9/11.

Britain’s Alan Johnson is a professor at Edge Hill University and a co-author of the Euston Manifesto HERE and Unite Against Terror. Together with Abdullah Muhsin, Johnson also co-authored Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions. Johnson founded what has become an influential online journal, Democratiya, which addresses these and related questions. Some of Democratiya’s interviews are now available in book form: Global Politics After 9/11. This is a serious but highly readable volume of interviews with Jean Bethke Elshtain, Paul Berman, Kanan Makiya, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and is introduced by Michael Walzer.

Pajamas Media’s very own editor and writer, Michael Weiss, (who is, hands down, the very brightest and most promising of his generation’s thinkers), brought Alan to my home. Gathered together were a group of my friends, most of whom are former leftists, who have all lived history both passionately and consciously.

To my delight, former Ramparts editor and currently City Journal’s contributing editor and unparalleled Education expert, Sol Stern, (and my dear friend), toasted me as the “Rachel Varnhagen” of our times–high praise indeed. (She ran a hot salon in Europe).

Sol of course came with the ironic-sardonic humored Ruthie–his better and Israeli half who has just received her Ph.D. Congratulations Ruthie!

Alan came in with Paul Berman–I said the gathering was glittering. Professor Berman’s book, Terror and Liberalism, is a hugely important work and his incisive and wide-ranging mind takes no prisoners. Paul, who currently teaches at New York University, and I have met before but this evening he reminded me of no one so much as Pete Seeger–or of a 1950s style kibbutznik, in his jeans and open shirt.

Also gathered were: The-man-who-knows-almost-everything-and-is-willing-to-tell-you: My equally dear friend, History Professor and author Fred Seigel and his Professor wife Jan Rosenberg. Fred, Jan, and I all raised our sons in Park Slope, in Brooklyn, at the same time and they will always feel like family.

Professors Nahma Sandrow (Yiddishist, retired Professor and all-round lovely soul) and her husband, Bill Meyers, a true Renaissance man (playwright and photographer extraordinaire) also came–an honor indeed, since they are grieving the loss of their wonderful son. They brought their son Isaac’s fiancée, Margot, (whose last name I can’t recall: Margot, please forgive me), a lustrous young poet.

And, my dear friend Ibn Warraq, the author of Defending The West, came shyly in and stood most of the time, rather quietly. Even I could not get him to say much–not that there was any lull in the conversation. He brought his comrade-in-arms, Austin Dacey, philosopher and secularist who works with the Center for Inquiry, and who co-ordinated the first Islamic Dissident Conference in a very impressive fashion.

A very good time was had by all. I strongly recommend that you read Democratiya and its Interviews, contained in Global Politics After 9/11.

Happy Reading!

Alan Johnson

From Left to Right: Jan Rosenberg, Fred Seigel and Bill Meyers standing

 From Left to Right:Ruthie Stern and Alan Johnson

Right to Left: Margot, Nahma Sandrow, and Sol Stern 

Sometimes justice is served.

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Spatt, sentenced 46 year-old Varsha Sabhnani, a millionaire who enslaved and tortured two Indonesian female maids in her Muttontown, Long Island mansion, to 11 years in jail. Her husband, Mahender, will receive a lesser jail term today. One maid, Samirah, arrived in 2002, the second maid, Enung, arrived in 2005. Their passports were immediately confiscated and they became “virtual slaves.”

The couple own a world wide perfume business and have both been convicted of “forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.” According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lesko, “This did not happen in the 1800s. This happened in the 21st century.” You may see the Sabhnanis, their children, (who claim that no abuse occurred), their lawyer–and the demonstration organized by domestic workers on video. HERE

Varsha, a striking, even beautiful woman, has been dubbed “Cruella de Ville.” Both she and her husband are from India and are Hindu Sindhis from wealthy families. According to testimony, Varsha once interrupted one of the maids while the maid was praying and told her: “I am your God. I can make you dead.” Varsha, who grew up in Indonesia and married Mehender in an arranged marriage when she was 18, did not take the stand in her own defense. However, she was quoted as saying: “I love my children very much. I was brought to this Earth to help people who are in need.”

Clearly, she is not playing with a full deck but whether or not she is mentally ill is irrelevant. According to her lawyer, Jeffrey Hoffman, Varsha once weighed 325 pounds but her decision to starve herself down to 135 pounds made her “angry.”

What–is this an anti-Twinkie defense? Dan White, the man who shot Harvey Milk, the gay member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and the mayor, George Moscone, tried to argue that “the (sugar in the) twinkie” made him do it.

Whether or not starving herself led to a “chemical imbalance” or not, she engaged in criminal, evil actions over a long period of time. Only in America and in the West would such an “employer” be indicted and convicted.

For millennia, female domestic servants have been brutally abused. They have been underfed, overworked, underpaid, never paid, sexually harassed, raped, and impregnated by their employers, tortured, and even murdered–all without recourse. This is still a common scenario in the Middle East, Far East, India, Africa, and in South America. Diplomats, including United Nations officials who hail from these countries, continue such foul practices when they live and work in the West.

I first saw this in action when I lived in Kabul, Afghanistan in the early 1960s. The mistreatment of female servants, often by female employers, was shocking and not something I have ever forgotten.

The two Indonesian housekeepers, Samirah and Enung, were semi-starved and therefore forced to eat from garbage cans–but they were then punished for doing so. Their punishments included being beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, burned with boiling water, forced to climb stairs, take freezing showers, digest dozens of hot chilli peppers and then eat their own vomit as punishment when they could not keep the peppers down. They slept on mats on the kitchen floor. Each housekeeper was paid nothing but their families back in Indonesia received $100.00 a month. After years of what federal prosecutors called “modern day slavery,” one of the housekeepers escaped. The police found the second housekeeper cowering in a closet.

Federal prosecutors want the Sabhnanis to pay back wages of 1.1 million dollars. Their lawyer has said that $200,000.00 will be sufficient.

I hope this decision makes other Third World immigrant or diplomatic families think long and hard before they enslave domestic workers here on our soil. This fine decision is yet one more example of why America remains the last, best country standing.

Sometimes, novels are prophetic. I am thinking of George Orwell and Jean Raspail who both imagined life in the late 20th and early 21st century. Raspail is the novelist who imagined that a dark-skinned barbarian horde would take over France. His work, The Camp of the Saints(1973) was originally condemned as “racist.” Slowly, over time, European government leaders began reading his novel and consulting with Raspail. I have written about his work before HERE and HERE in my book, The Death of Feminism.

In January of 2006, Ilan Halimi was brutally tortured for three full weeks in Paris by gangs of African Muslim immigrant torturers. The media did not describe them as “Muslims,” but rather as “youth,” “militants,” “gang-members, “immigrants,” and “immigrants from Africa.” Neighbors took turns and joined in torturing Halimi. Other neighbors heard his screams and did nothing. Some came to watch. Halimi died on February 13, 2006. The ringleader of the gang, Youssouf Fofana fled to Ivory Coast in Africa but was extradited back to France. He and 18 others are facing a trial in his torture and murder. American expatriate journalist, Nidra Poller, has written about this horrific case.

Now, a visibly Jewish, kipah-wearing 17 year-old, Rudy Haddad, walking in a Jewish quarter, was set upon by 15-30 “African immigrants.” No one is saying whether they are Muslims or not. Alright, Martians from Africa beat Haddad with iron bars and fractured his skull. Haddad, like Halimi, and like their attackers, are also of African or possibly Arab descent–as was Sebastien Selam who was murdered in Paris in 2003. Haddad has just come out of a medically induced coma. According to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report:

“While French officials were quick to condemn the attack, most fell short of identifying the crime as anti-Semitic, saying the police first needed to complete their ongoing investigation. French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters while visiting Israel this week that he was “particularly shocked by what happened to a young French boy, on the pretext that he was wearing a kipah,” the AFP news agency reported. In an initial presidential statement Sunday, Sarkozy denounced the attack but did not draw such conclusions.” Read the JTA REPORT, HERE.

However, various representatives of the French Jewish community have denounced this horrific crime as “anti-Semitic” which, when last I checked, is also considered a form of racism.

So, where are all the anti-racists now? I hear no condemnations. The silence is chilling. And all too predictable. Where are the mainstream media? Where is FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and the International Herald Tribune? (Only ABC ran a Reuters’ 190 word story earlier today). When I googled this story, the first three pages consisted of stories filed by small bloggers and mainly by Jewish and Israeli media. (Military Photos carried a story as well). But where are The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times? For heaven’s sake: Where is Le Soir, Le Monde, and Figaro? Has France’s Channel 2 covered this?

Arguably, Channel 2 bears a great responsibility here for that is the channel that broadcast the fake murder of Mohammed al-Dura and that sued for defamation when Philippe Karsenty described the coverage as a hoax. As we all know, the French Court found that Karsenty’s criticism was not “libelous.” Charles Enderlin, of Channel 2, has vowed to appeal this decision and has gotten 300 of his journalist-buddies to form a circle of support for him.

I think that Haddad’s grieving family and the Chabad community (to which Haddad was apparently connected since he was on his way to pray at the Beth Chaya Mouchka Lubavitch synagogue), might explore a lawsuit (or at least a demonstration) against the state-owned Channel 2 and against Enderlin. If you think this is a far-fetched suggestion, please consider the other options.

Indeed, what is to be done? Do Jews world-wide, beginning in Europe, and particularly in the 19th arondissement in Paris, need Israeli Defense Forces to guard them as they walk to Parisian synagogues?

Do French police officers need to guard individual Jews just as they have been forced to guard each and every synagogue and Jewish Center ever since Palestinian terrorist leader Yaser Arafat began his murderous campaign in the late 1960s of airplane hijackings, hostage taking, and synagogue and airport bombings, etc.?

Shall the remnant of Jewish life in Europe wearily pick itself up and leave, either to Israel, Australia, or America which is still the last country standing? Will Jewish-Israeli expatriates to Germany actually leave?

Will Europe finally consider not allowing any further immigration of African or Arab Martians? Will Europe finally dare to consider outlawing radical and unevolved Islam as a criminal enterprise?

How about deportation then?

Or must France, and for that matter, all Europe, start deporting African and/or Muslim immigrants? (Oh I can just hear the civil libertarians shutting down their minds. Even I’m slightly queasy about this suggestion). Or must France consider deporting only African and/or Muslim immigrant gang-members? (What if a gang member reforms and is rehabilitated and we deport him back to a country which practices torture and kidnaps young children as soldiers in their barbarian armies?) Well then, how about deporting African Muslim immigrant gang members who have previously been convicted of violent crimes? (But you can’t hold someone’s past against them, it may not predict their future, they may turn over a new leaf, etc.) Alright, then. What is the magic formula that will allow Europeans to act against the barbarians in their midst without having to live with something that is worse than barbarism, namely, that most-dreaded of accusations: “Racism?”

Clearly, Europe is willing to sacrifice its Jews to African immigrant and/or to Muslim barbarism. Will it prove willing to allow secularists or Christians to also be sacrificed to barbarism as well?

I am getting to dread the weekends because then I have even less of an excuse not to read all the newspapers. And that means I have to read the New York Islamic Times. Well, I don’t have to but in order to keep my–and your–disgust fresh this is what I must do.

This past weekend, The Paper of Record had a ball. A columnist attacked Israeli settlers HERE and the rather interesting lead story HERE attacked American military interrogation methods as practiced on known, al-Qaeda terrorists. The magazine had a piece by my very favorite journalist, Harvard law professor, Noah Feldman, who once more defended the rights of Muslims and Muslim immigrants in Europe HERE. (Yes, he’s the one who finds orthodox Judaism barbaric but defends Islam’s rights to veil its women; go figger. The Jews are a little crazy.)

The fact that Ethan Bronner actually penned a fourth piece HERE which was somewhat sympathetic to Israelis who are being rocketed and shelled is like throwing a bare bone to a starving dog. This kind of piece is the exception, not the rule, and it will disappear beneath the radar of the steady propaganda.

I have written about Feldman before HERE and HERE. This time, Feldman argues that Muslims are, regrettably, becoming “pariahs” in Europe and he cautions Europeans to remember that they once perpetrated a Holocaust on another “pariah” people: Jews. Feldman fails to note that Jews were never violent and that, for the most part, both wished to assimilate and did so with pride. The problem today with many first-, second-, and third-generation Muslims (and yes, of course, there are many exceptions), is that they do not want to become assimilated, modern Europeans but wish to re-create the Punjab in Britain; Algiers in France; Istanbul and Tangiers in Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia, etc.

But please understand that what Feldman is doing is this: He is sacralizing regrettably hostile, radically fundamentalist and anti-assimilationist Muslims by falsely or at least glibly confusing them with six million dead Jews. He is trying to transfer the sacred power of Ultimate Victimhood to all Muslim immigrants, including the Islamists and the terrorists. Feldman writes:

“This leaves another, more controversial explanation for anti-Muslim attitudes in Europe: Even after 60 years of introspection about the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust, Europeans are not convinced that culturally and religiously different immigrants should be treated as full members of their societies…Hitler’s’ horrifying success at killing so many Jews meant that the burgeoning postwar societies of the continent never had to come to terms with difference.”

I disagree with this analysis and have suggested another approach in my book, The New Anti-Semitism and in many subsequent articles. Europe has reaped the karmic whirlwind. Because Europeans refused to integrate the non-violent, Semitic group that respected their ways and that were at their mercies, (that’s my people, the Jews), Europe has inherited the Semitic group that is violent and wishes to Islamify Europe. Also, guilty but tired-of-being-blamed-for-the-Holocaust Europeans, including Europe’s intelligentsia, are now ready to embrace a far more traditional Semitic group in the service of thanatos, Death.

Opera composer Wagner and Hitler, his most ardent fan, would understand what is happening. It is the Gotterdammerung.

Finally, last but not least, is Nicholas Kristof’s column at the back of the Week in Review. This was unexpectedly shocking. Kristof’s work on sexual slavery and Islamic gender apartheid is so inspiring. How did he come to write such a biased piece about Israel in Hebron without checking his facts more carefully?

I am not saying that what he saw with his own eyes is not true. He saw Palestinians waiting at checkpoints and he saw Israelis whizzing by on Israeli-only highways. He does not really present the history or context for either reality. And, Kristof repeats what he has been told about pregnant Palestinian women who lose their unborn babies because they are forced to wait at checkpoints. He has been totally taken in by both Palestinian/Islamist/western propaganda and by the valorously obsessional propaganda of left Israeli groups.

Thus, in effect, Kristof damns Israeli settlers, especially in Hebron, and praises both Palestinians and left-wing Israelis who critique Israeli policy. He fails to note that the Israeli left has few Palestinian counterparts. Kristof has been told that Israelis are interlopers, colonialists, in Hebron. Mind you: I was opposed to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza from the start. The Intifada of 2000 forced me to rethink my position as did what happened after Israel pulled out of Gaza entirely.

But my oh my: Kristof has absolutely no idea that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Hebron for thousands of years; that Abraham purchased a burial cave there more than 4,000-5,000 years ago. Psycho-analyst Perry R. Bransom, citing Professor Barry Rubin, has an excellent blog about how Kristof’s piece demonstrates routine unconscious biases against Israel. Bransom also quotes our mutual colleague, colleague, Ed Bialek, who is also a member of LiberalHawks, a fairly wonderful listserv group. Bialek musters the requisite passionate indignation and information:

“How is it that the NY Times editorial page just outdoes itself Sunday after Sunday? How is that Nicholas Kristof talks about an impractical Jewish settlement (in Hebron) that has no right being there? How is it that he talks about Jews “stealing” the land? How is it that he paints a picture of the Jews as a completely alien presence in a land where he implies the Palestinians are the sole indigenous population?

How is it that an article such as this never even mentions the Jewish presence in Hebron for thousands of years? How is it that he fails to mention that Hebron is the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world? How is it that he never mentions that the downtown area “expropriated from the Palestinians” by the Israelis is the site of the “expropriated” historic Jewish community? How is it there is no historical context to provide an understanding of the complexities here, as if there were none? How is it there is no discussion and no mention of the Cave of Machpela? How is it that there is no mention of how and when that Jewish presence came to an end, how the Jews were “transferred” from that city?

How is it that he talks about the patient Palestinians who are only now beginning to support terror against the Jews? How is it he implies that the patient Palestinians have just put up with being pushed around by these invading, thieving Jews for too long? How is it he fails to mention the brutal massacres of Jews in Hebron in 1929 long before there ever was an Israel, long before there were ever so-called Jewish settlers?

How is it that he states that the only decent Jews are the ones documenting and condemning these colonial, imperial Jewish settlers, these Jewish interlopers?

How is it that the demonization of Jews is consistently promoted by the Times, in one ahistorical rant after another lacking nuance and fact, masquerading as level-headed, moderate analysis while really proselytizing Jew hatred?

How is it that this editorial page still has a shred of credibility?”

I have taken the time to visit only one issue of the New York Islamic Times. Imagine the effect of such a newspaper day after day, week after week, year after year.

My friends: Here is our problem. Many more people will have read Kristof’s words than will have read Ed Bialek’s words, which I gratefully quote above. Day after day, the mainstream media continue to publish unbalanced and half-truth propaganda which inevitably brainwashes its readers. Yes, Ed and I still have a First Amendment right to criticize propaganda–but how many people will read our words?

Those of us with blogs are essentially standing on brave little soapboxes in the cyberspace park but we’re up against 21st century satellite technology which commands millions, possibly billions of captive viewers and readers.

Cassandra lives. No, I am not talking about the ancient Trojan prophet whose visions went unheeded and whom the Greek conquerors enslaved. This is another kind of Cassandra. Her visions of danger and doom concern what happens when an American woman marries an Arab and Muslim man. Cassandra herself was once married to an Arab Christian and, based on that experience has, so far, written two books: Escape from an Arab Marriage. Horror Stories of Women Who Fled From Abusive Muslims Husbands (2006) and Thirty Three Secrets Arab Men Never Tell American Women (2008). In the first book, she tells the stories of many American women who married Arab Muslim men and what happened to them.

The stories are gripping, terrifying, highly dramatic–and depressingly similar. At first, the men are utterly charming, generous, solicitous of their American girlfriend’s every need. After they are married to American citizens and can claim their own citizenship, they revert to form: Almost overnight, they become cruel, condescending, physically abusive, suspicious, insanely controlling, unfaithful, deceptive, and highly secretive. Look, she is not writing about the happy marriages; as her title suggests, she is writing about “abusive Muslim Husbands.” The need to balance everything out, to allow every point of view, will prove our undoing.

These are men who do not support their wives but expect their wives to support themselves, the household, and the children, even while they are pregnant or ill. And then, things always take a turn for the worse. This behavior accurately describes the family life of double honor murderer, Yasir Said, of Dallas, Texas. I have written about this case for PJM many times. See HERE and HERE for example.

Here’s what’s worse. These spoiled and pampered sons kidnap their American children, which forces their American wives to live in dangerous and unfriendly Muslim countries and households, (often with first or subsequent wives), and that’s if they’re lucky. Just as often, the American mothers may simply never see their children again. The American government, Embassies, and Consulates do not help such American citizen-hostages to return home. Once an American woman marries a foreign national, she and her children are no longer entitled to any American citizenship rights.

I know this is true because some of this also happened to me. Read HERE and HERE.

Custody of the children automatically belongs to the father and to his family. And the Arab and Muslim families routinely abuse the children just as they abuse their own children–only more so, because these are American children whose mothers are (unacceptably) Christian. And yes, Christians are hated and persecuted in Muslim countries. This is the truth, unpalatable as it might be.

In addition, according to Cassandra, recently, some members of Al Qaeda and of other terrorist groups have specifically come to America to gain American citizenship through marriage, create terror cells, brainwash their own American citizen children into jihad and recruit other Americans to Islamist jihad. Adam Gadahn of Oregon was apparently recruited this way by Hisham Diab, Sarrah Olsen’s Saudi husband. Olsen started calling the FBI in 1992, after her terrorist husband hosted the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (who is now in jail for having plotted against the World Trade Center), and Khalil Deck, who was arrested in Jordan while planning to blow up the U.S. Embassy.

The FBI did not take Olsen’s information seriously.

I can just hear the politically correct reader saying: C’mon, this can’t be true of every single Arab and Muslim man. Isn’t it unacceptably racist/colonialist to think this way? Isn’t this a form of intellectual profiling that leads directly to Abu Graib and Guantanamo? Doesn’t this play right into the allegedly fascist hands of American Homeland Security and Immigration Department racism?

Well yes, it could–but what if each and every story is true? What if what we in the West have finally begun to consider crimes (wife- and child-beating, incest, paternal non-payment of child support, child kidnapping, polygamous marriages arranged against a child’s will), are still normalized behaviors in the Muslim world? What if the truth itself is shameful and therefore offensive? Do we refuse to tell the truth? Refuse to hear it?

Many people do just that. And then there are the glorious, high-profile exceptions: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Alyami, Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Nonie Darwish, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Bassam Eid, Tareq Hegy, Ibn Warraq, Aaron Klein, Nancy Kobrin, Matthias Kunzel, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Wafa Sultan. Although some on this honor roll are Muslims, ex-Muslims, and “people of color,” they too have been accused of “racism” and “reactionary conservatism” for daring to tell the truth about jihad, Islam/Islamism.

Yes, the stories are strong, horrifying, and therefore border on “offensive,” but they are also true stories. Cassandra is not a scholar. She is passionate and personal. The stories she tells are real page-turners. Some of the praise for her books borders on the fanatically patriotic and is slightly vulgar and hysterical. But authors are not responsible for their admirers. In any event, such a tone is still decibels below its Arab and Muslim propaganda counterparts. Although I flinch when reading it, perhaps such loudness may eventually serve the cause.

Cassandra has chosen to self-publish (XLibris) because she needs to remain anonymous and wants to control the editorial content. Cassandra urgently wants to warn naive American women away from marriage to Arab and Muslim men. I beg everyone to read the stories and make up their own minds. In a recent email to me, she writes:

“In a nutshell, what I want to do next is to be instrumental in turning the tide against Muslim terrorists and help eradicate their agenda forever in the U.S. and then the rest of the world.”

A worthy and difficult goal.

I will be writing about this again. And, let me recommend two other books which are due out much later this year. Dr. Nancy Kobrin’s book The Sheikh’s New Clothes: The Naked Truth About Islamic Suicide Terrorism and Nonie Darwish’s new book about women living under Shari’a law Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Sharia Law. They are fitting Cassandra-like companions.

Will contemporary Westerners pay attention to these new Cassandras or will they refuse to listen to them until we have been conquered?

Tim Russert, Bernard Goldberg and Me: Thinking For Yourself And Other Thought Crimes

Just as more and more information becomes seemingly available, we nevertheless seem to know less and less. Today, one has to know as much as a physician in order to make one’s own personal medical decisions. One must possess an advanced degree in history, Middle East Studies, political science, or law, in order to be able to evaluate what newspapers print daily.

In addition, internet sites are not necessarily trustworthy. There are no clear, common standards, few sites take responsibility for mistakes or for outright lies, and even “mediated” venues are known both for biased reportage and for refusing to publish facts, or points of view which in any way depart from their approved ideology. Of course, ideologues on both sides of the aisle are usually quite happy to read material that they already “know” and with which they agree however much this places the rest of us at a great disadvantage.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bernard Goldberg has a long piece about Tim Russert whom he claims was the only television journalist who dared interview Goldberg about his book “Bias.” Goldberg had worked at CBS for 28 years and his book exposed the media’s pervasive liberal bias. Goldberg now praises Russert for having understood that intellectual, ideological, and political diversity are crucial for both journalism and democracy.

Well, who’s going to take his place? Who is ready to step right up and take on Russert’s work? I (and many others) have had the same experience that Goldberg writes about but with an extra twist. My reasoned and passionate pro-America and pro-Israel stands led to my becoming almost persona non grata among most of my former friends and admirers on almost every liberal and left radio, television, newspaper, and internet magazine–and, because the conservative media liked and published what I was saying, the liberal and left media almost all refused to publish or interview me about my feminist/humanist critique of Islamic gender and religious apartheid.

Either you are for us or against us, there are no gray areas.

What we are experiencing is a crisis of individualism. People dare not speak their minds lest they offend their friends, relatives, employers, and political-social circles and since tempers are running very high on both sides of all the great ideological debates, one usually gets to hear only one side of a debate. Hearing more than that is treated as a thought crime.

This brings us closer to the very totalitarian culture that we pretend to abhor. It is crucial that people learn to become civilized towards and tolerant of differences–not just differences based on gender, class, skin-color, religion, or country of origin but differences of ideology, points of view, and “spin” on all the hot button issues.

And, we must judge, discriminate, discern the difference between barbarism and modernity, between fascism and freedom. We dare not remain multi-culturally tolerant of fascism or cannibalism.

While certain ideas may indeed be dangerous, it is even more dangerous to allow only one brand of truth to flourish.

Thus, in Tim Russert’s memory, I challenge–no, I implore–my old friends on the liberal left to interview me about…(the forbidden) Stuff. Our lives depend upon our talking once more. And, also in Tim Russert’s memory, I challenge my friends on the conservative right to interview me about…(the equally forbidden) Stuff.

Has everyone seen Thomas McCarthy’s universally praised film The Visitor? Or at least read the reviews about it? Having no idea what the film was about, I slipped in yesterday expecting to see a “romantic comic drama” which is how the snapshot review described it.

What I saw instead was a poignant, touching film about illegal immigration in post 9/11 America which, I now understand, has been embraced by almost every film critic.

Now, guess where the illegal immigrants are from. Which country or countries with terrifyingly surreal human rights records and almost permanent civil wars do our sympathetic heroes hail from? Congo or Sudan perhaps–or is it Rwanda or Somalia? How about Algeria, the former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Chile, even Mexico since Mexican immigration is such a hot-button issue for us?

Of course, the illegal immigrants Tareq, Zainab, and Mouna (played movingly, brilliantly, by Haaz Sleiman, Dana Jekesai Gurira, and Hiam Abbass), are all Muslims from Syria and Senegal. They encounter a heartless, Orwellian American Immigration Department which detains, transfers, and deports charming and innocent Arab Muslims. We, the viewer, share the hero’s growing involvement in their plight. Richard Jenkins plays the professor-hero, Walter Vale, who is inevitably drawn into their plight.

And, by the way, Mouna is Tareq’s mother and she is an utterly charming and beautiful character. Mouna lives in Michigan where there is a large, radically Muslim population. Mouna’s getting into bed with Walter her last night in America is not something that someone who lives in Dearborn, Michigan is going to do. This highly Westernized portrayal caters to Western sensibilities at the expense of reality. This is similar to what the film Paradise Now also did in terms of having a West Bank heroine who lives alone and lives quite an independent life. This kind of freedom is familiar to the West but forbidden and dangerous on the West Bank.

The Visitor presents a familiar story line which I have previously written about. For example, I have written about two British films: One, envisions the assassination of President George Bush and the other is a fictional feature titled The Children of Men. Both films show innocent, highly sympathetic Arab Muslims who are wrongly accused, on the run, living in hiding. I have also written about a movie in which a Arab Saudi-like Prince is seen as the potential liberator of his people, especially women, but of course, he is assassinated by CIA operatives.

While I personally know and love many sympathetic Muslim and ex-Muslim immigrants and totally understand that post 9/11 policy has led to tragic consequences for those Arab and non-Arab Muslims in flight from tyranny–I am equally concerned with the single-mindedness of the pro-Arab propaganda. Hollywood has not been making many films (and certainly no good films) about Arab Muslim terrorists. (There is The Kingdom, which I have also reviewed, but it received almost universal negative reviews. I thought it was an important film). They exist and the threat they pose is real but Hollywood is too politically correct to dramatize it. Their villains are still mainly white neo-Nazis, Nazi-era Nazis, and CIA agents.

Mind you: I am not saying that such villains do not exist; they do. But c’mon, Hollywood, the media, and the university world are afraid to describe anyone as “Arab” or “Muslim” lest the mere description of reality be seen as “racist.” Thus, countless mainstream media articles refer to the ethnic Arab Muslims who are gang-raping and genocidally slaughtering black African Muslims and Christians in Sudan as “insurgents,” “rebels,” “men on horseback,” “government sanctioned troops,” and sometimes as “Arabs” but rarely as Arab Muslims.

I have an Israeli friend who covers Culture for a variety of Israeli newspapers. She told me that many of the best Israeli filmmakers are focused on portraying Israel’s (small) role in Palestinian suffering. No Israeli filmmaker has depicted the (much larger) role that Arab and Palestinian leaders have played in Palestinian suffering. No Arab filmmaker has dared do so either. The Israeli films that are critical of Israeli policy are celebrated both in Israel and abroad. It speaks well for Israel that its artists and thinkers are free to criticize Israeli policy; if they are Jews, whether they are religious or not, they are actually fulfilling a Jewish religious commandment.

The problem: No Arab country allows its thinkers to publicly criticize its policies and thus, the Muslim world as well as Europe and America have come to believe that only Israel commits terrible human rights abuses. This belief is out of proportion to reality.

Who is funding what amounts to a perpetual propaganda machine against Israel and America? Inch by inch, film by film, people are becoming dangerously brainwashed. Thus, psychologically: All Arab Muslims are innocent victims; all Americans and Israelis are evil. Where will this end? What will become of us in the West?

I realize that most Westerners who are critical of their government’s policies do not really want to live in Afghanistan or Iran–but they fail to understand that if they don’t temper and balance their righteous criticism of western democracies, we might just end up living under even more repressive regimes.

For years now I have maintained that the hottest and most important war is the war of ideas or rather the propaganda war unleashed by ideologues in both the East and the West. The Arab and Islamist world is canny, strategic, and clever; they are also unbelievably bold liars. (Remember the Al Dura Affaire and the alleged massacre in Jenin). The politically correct West falls for the lies and treats them as sacred political truth.

Here are some recent examples of how the West is actively and foolishly collaborating in Big Lies to its own disadvantage.

Today, the BBC has defended the “grisly beheading of a Muslim by a Christian zealot in a new drama…The beheading scene comes in an episode dealing with the excavation of medieval soldiers from the time of the Crusades…It leads to the hunt for the cross on which Jesus was crucified which the Crusaders may have brought back from the Holy Land. Also keen to find the cross are right-wing Christian fanatics who also want to use violence to drive Muslims out of Britain.”

Who created this program at the BBC? Have they lost their minds? Were Muslims living in Britain in the middle ages? Who has really been be-heading people today: Christians or Muslims? Who today is persecuting and exiling infidels (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Bahai, etc.) from allegedly Muslim lands? Why present, even as fiction–especially as fiction–the exact opposite of both historical and contemporary reality?

But there’s worse. Just the other day, the British government gave a $70,000.00 grant to a Muslim hate site (Muslimyouth.net) in which suicide bombings and the beheadings of Daniel Pearl and Ken Bigley are praised. See HERE. This grant was awarded only weeks before the anniversary of the London 7/7/05 bombings by Islamists.

No doubt, the British government believes that such funding is a form of diplomacy and “sensitivity.”

But, Islamist immigrants in the West and Islamist totalitarian regimes also indulge in propaganda. The tyrannies of the Third World expend vast resources to tell Big Lies about Western democracies. Their persecution of Christians in Muslim countries is only exceeded by the brazen way in which they create “no go” areas for-Muslims-only throughout (Christian) Europe.

Two Muslim believers in “violent jihad” are now on trial in London. They had planned to create a secret Muslim state in the heart of Scotland where disgruntled Muslims who felt “oppressed” could live. See HERE. By the way: These two charmers possessed videos of beheadings of American hostages in Iraq.

Perhaps the BBC will fictionalize their story by reversing it and showing us Christians beheading Muslims in Iraq.

In addition, those countries who do not allow civil and human rights to flourish within their borders, do not hesitate to denounce and call for reform in Western countries. For example, a recent United Nations Human Rights Council recently argued that Britain should abolish its monarchy. See HERE Oddly enough, this august body has 29 members including Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Sri Lanka.

What–and no discussion of abolishing the Saudi monarchy?

According to the Telegraph, the UN report was also critical of the UK’s treatment of immigrants from Sudan.” What? No critique of the ethnic Arab Muslim genocide and gender cleansing of black African Sudanese? Well, of course not.

Finally, “Syrian representatives accused the UK of discriminating against Muslims and Iran complained about the UK’s record on tackling sexual discrimination.”

Truly, this is a Mad Hatter’s party given the savage suppression of both women and feminist activists in Iran and the nature of Muslim countries in which historically, all Jews were persecuted and ultimately forced to flee and all Christians currently remain endangered. Indeed, a few days ago, a Jordanian court annulled the marriage of a Muslim who converted to Christianity. According to the report, “Islam, Jordan’s official religion, forbids conversion to another faith.” The convert is on the run with his wife and children because another convert to Christianity had been seriously attacked in Jordan.

Quo Vadis my friends?