ALL of Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital

John R. Houk

© March 31, 2012

The American people have spoken via their representation in Congress that Jerusalem must be recognized as the capital of Israel. This happened in 1995. Every President since then through today has not honored American representation to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. That would be two Democrats and one Republican: Clinton, Bush and Obama.

As far as Israel is concerned Jerusalem is the capital. Jerusalem is the City of David. Jerusalem is the citadel of Zion. Jerusalem is the city of God’s Presence. If Israel was more Jewish Observant than secular, there would be a stronger feeling the Temple Mount is being desecrated with the existence of two non-Jewish Mosques where the Temple of God should exist.

It is the existence of those two Mosques and the violence of Islam that the nations of the world refuse to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In 1948 Israel fought for its existence to be an independent nation as all the surrounding Muslim nations vowed to invade the nascent nation to drive all the off their land of heritage and into the sea. Israel was greatly outnumbered. The Arab-Muslim army that was the most successful against the emerging Jewish Defense Forces (IDF) was Jordan’s army then dubbed the Arab Legion. The Arab Legion’s success against Israel can be attributed to one factor. The officer leadership of the Arab Legion was British including the Arab Legion’s commanding General.  Under the leadership of the British the Arab Legion drove to the gates of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City Jerusalem. Israel was forced to surrender the Old City which was the Eastern half of Jerusalem. In effect the Old City half of Jerusalem was conquered by Jordan with the help of Great Britain.

Under the protection of the Arab Legion; Muslims desecrated Jewish Synagogues, graves, Jewish places of historical significance and forced Jews of the Jewish Quarter to leave their homes that had roots into the thousands of years. That was 1948. In 1967 another alliance of Muslim-Arab nations tried to destroy Israel. Israel won handily and recovered East Jerusalem along with the Judea-Samaria area dubbed the West Bank by Jordan.

I believe it was a miracle of God Almighty that Israel was preserved and became the Jewish State. Israel became a safe haven for Jews to move back to without worry of a government persecuting them for being Jewish. Unfortunately the trade-off of freedom from persecution was to live in eternal vigilance to repulse Jew-haters that desire Jewish blood for merely returning to a sliver of land that was promised as an eternal possession from God Almighty to be a blessing to all the nations of the world.

Jewish people will disagree with this but part of that blessing is the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ the Son of God. Salvation is of the Jews. Jesus has brought Redemption to all who believe in His death, burial and Resurrection as Lord. Redemption is here for individuals but full Redemption will come for nations and the earth at the Messiah’s Second Coming. Salvation is of the Jews. Jewish possession of Israel and the Holy City of Jerusalem is a precursor to the Second Coming Jesus Christ the Son of God and the son of David. In the plan of God the Jews are essential in the Redemption of the nations and the earth.

Whether a Biblical Christian (UNFORTUNATELY there is a large segment of Christianity that is more influenced by humanism and less influenced by the Bible) or a Jewish person, it should be agreed upon that Jerusalem is Jewish and is the capital of Israel.

That being established I am on record that the United States of America has played the dhimmi by not backing Israel by joining Congress and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The American diplomatic corps via the State Department has the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv as do the other nations of the world that have diplomatic relations with Israel. America does have a Consulate in Jerusalem. I understand from Caroline Glick that the State Department via the Consulate is downright hostile to Jewish Israeli citizens that approach with personal business. Glick relates a personal tale about the American Consulate in Jerusalem that reflects the attitude of President Barack Hussein Obama toward Israel. Check it out and be prepared to be annoyed.

JRH 3/31/12

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The State Department's Jerusalem syndrome

By Caroline Glick

March 30, 2012, 8:28 AM

CarolineGlick.com

I went to the US Consulate this week to take care of certain family business. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I think it is ironic that two days after my extremely unpleasant experience at the consulate, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to say what the capital of Israel is. It was ironic because anyone who visits the consulate knows that the US's position on Jerusalem is in perfect alignment with that of Israel's worst enemies.

Last time I went to the consulate was in 2007. At that time the building was located in the middle of an Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. It was unpleasant. In fact it was fairly frightening. Once inside the building I couldn't shake the feeling that the Americans had gone out of their way to make Israeli-American Jews feel uncomfortable and vaguely threatened.

But then, I was able to console myself with the thought that the US has been upfront about its rejection of Israel's right to assert its sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem. By treating Jews as foreigners in their capital city and behaving as though it belongs to the Arabs by among other things hiring only Arabs as local employees, the US officials on site were simply implementing a known US policy. True, I deeply oppose the policy, but no one was asking me, and no one was hiding anything from me.

The new consulate is much different, and much worse. The State Department opened its new consulate in Jerusalem in October 2010. It is located in the Jewish neighborhood of Arnona. It was built on the plot that Israel allocated for the US Embassy after Congress passed Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 requiring the US government to move its embassy to Jerusalem. I read that construction began in 2004. I haven't been able to find out whether when construction began it was to build the embassy or a new consulate so I don't know yet whether the Bush administration thought it was building an embassy that the Obama administration turned into a consulate or if the Bush administration thought it was building a consulate that the Obama administration completed.

Whatever the case, the fact that the building that was supposed to be an expression of US recognition of Israel's capital in Jerusalem is being used as the consulate is an unvarnished act of aggression against Israel and Congress.

If I am not mistaken, the US Consulate General in Jerusalem is the only US consulate in the world that is not subordinate to the embassy in the country where it is located. When it was located in a hostile Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, the fact that it was not subordinate to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv was upsetting. But it was also easily justified in light of US policy of not recognizing Israeli sovereignty in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.

But Arnona is in western Jerusalem. It is a Jewish neighborhood that even the most radical Israeli leftists don't envision transferring to the Palestinians in any peace deal. Putting the consulate in Arnona - and on the site reserved for the embassy no less - is the clearest expression of American rejection of all Israeli sovereign rights to Jerusalem imaginable.

And the fact that it is located in the heart of a Jewish neighborhood is far from the only problem with the building.

Israelis who live in Jerusalem and need US consular services are required to go to the consulate in Jerusalem. You can't just go to Tel Aviv to avoid the unpleasantness. This again is due to the fact that the US does not recognize ANY Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. From the State Department's perspective, people who live in Jerusalem -- even in Arnona and Rehavia and Ein Kerem etc. -- live in a DIFFERENT COUNTRY from people who live in Tel Aviv and Netanya. We can no more receive services from the embassy in Tel Aviv than we can receive services from the embassy in Amman.

I will be writing more about the US's adversarial treatment of Israel as embodied in its treatment of Jerusalem in next week's Jerusalem Post column. But suffice it to say here that Victoria Nuland's statement to AP reporter Matt Lee, (posted below in case you missed it), is a true depiction of America's policy on Jerusalem - and though it, on Israel.

VIDEO: Obama State Department Won't Say If Jerusalem Is The Capital Of Israel

It would be useful for someone to get Mitt Romney on record discussing his position on Jerusalem. Assuming that he says - like every other Republican presidential candidate - that he supports transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem, he should further be asked to explain how, if he is elected president, he will force the State Department to change its policies towards Israel and respect US law by treating Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

UPDATE from Yisrael Medad:

The following is an email I received from Yisrael Medad from the Begin Center. He writes an excellent blog www.myrightword.blogspot.com

Yisrael follows the US Consulate in Jerusalem far more closely than I and here is what he was to say:

I am old enough to recall pre-1967 when the Consulate in "West Jerusalem" was where it always was for some 150 years - at Agron Street.  The library was great.  And by the way, the building you mention is the offices of the consular section. Political, economic and other matters are still at Agron, where the Consul-General lives.

But to the politics:  A rather disturbing pattern of behavior has emerged from the US Consulate-General in Jerusalem over the past years that would point to a need for Congressional review and oversight.

Except for matters of passports, visas and birth registration, all other activities whether social, educational, scientific, sports, etc. are blatantly discriminatory in that no Jewish American citizen, who lives in the area supervised by the Consulate, can benefit from or take part in.  They are intended for Arabs solely. 

Jews resident in the area of Judea and Samaria face a policy of exclusion and that, we maintain, would seem to be unconstitutional and illegal.  In the same geographical area under the jurisdiction of the Consulate there exist two separate and not equal populations: Jewish and Arab, whether Muslim or Christian.

Is what they are doing legal by American law?  Is it in the spirit of the democratic foundations of American democracy?  Can the Consulate adopt exclusionist policies that separate between peoples based on race in the same geographic area?  Can it create the "state of the West Bank"?

There are almost 350,000 Jewish residents in the communities located in the territory for which the C-G is responsible (the almost 300,000 Jews in the newer Jerusalem neighborhoods and within the Old City is another matter).  Almost 15,000 are American citizens.  They do not benefit from any of these cultural, social or funding outreach activities and other programs and monies.  Jews don't count, other than deserving consular needs like birth registration, visas, etc.

I think it would be a helpful for the House Foreign Relations Committee to hold hearings on the manner in which the US Consulate in Jerusalem is run. Jewish US citizen residents of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria should be brought in to give testimony.

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ALL of Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital

John R. Houk

© March 31, 2012

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The State Department's Jerusalem syndrome

About Caroline Glick:

I grew up in Chicago's ultra-liberal, anti-American and anti-Israel stronghold of Hyde Park. Hyde Park's newest famous resident is Barack Obama. He fits right into a neighborhood I couldn't wait to leave.

I made aliyah to Israel in 1991, two weeks after receiving my BA in Political Science from Beir Zeit on the Hudson -- otherwise known as Columbia University. I joined the Israel Defense Forces that summer and served as an officer for five and a half years.

From 1994-1996, as an IDF captain, I served as Coordinator of Negotiations with the PLO in the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. In this capacity I was a core member of Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestinians.

After leaving the IDF at the end of 1996, I worked as the assistant to the Director General of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

I then returned to geo-politics serving as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1997-1998.

From 1998-2000 I went back to the US where I received a Master's in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in June 2000. Although I spent most of my free time hiking in New England, it did not escape my attention that the vast majority of the faculty at the Kennedy School were not particularly fond of America -- or of Israel.

In the summer of 2000 I returned to Israel and … READ THE REST

© 2012 Caroline Glick

It's all about race now

Pat Buchanan stands up for the legal process to work rather than the evisceration by the MSM and Black activists pertaining to Hispanic-American George Zimmerman. If Zimmerman’s story checks out he killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense. That would be quite different than the portrayal of the MSM and Black activists like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

JRH 3/31/12

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It's all about race now

Pat Buchanan: Zimmerman is being 'crucified' in arena of public opinion

By Patrick J. Buchanan

March 29, 2012

WND

If it had been a white teenager who was shot, and a 28-year-old black guy who shot him, the black guy would have been arrested.

So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

And they may be right.

Yet if Trayvon had been shot dead by a black neighborhood watch volunteer, Jesse Jackson would not have been in a pulpit in Sanford, Fla., howling that he had been “murdered and martyred.”

Maxine Waters would not be screaming “hate crime.”

Rep. Hank Johnson would not be raging that Trayvon had been “executed.” And ex-Black Panther Bobby Rush would not have been wearing a hoodie in the well of the House.

Which tells you what this whipped-up hysteria is all about.

It is not about finding the truth about what happened that night in Sanford when Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his SUV, and the two wound up in a fight, with Trayvon dead.

It is about the exacerbation of and the exploitation of racial conflict.

And it is about an irreconcilable conflict of visions about what the real America is in the year 2012.

Zimmerman “profiled” Trayvon, we are told. And perhaps he did.

But why? What did George Zimmerman, self-styled protector of his gated community, see that night from the wheel of his SUV?

He saw a male. And males are 90 percent of prison inmates. He saw a stranger over 6 feet tall. And he saw a black man or youth with a hood over his head.

Why would this raise Zimmerman’s antennae?

Perhaps because black males between 16 and 36, though only 2 to 3 percent of the population, are responsible for a third of all our crimes.

In some cities, 40 percent of all black males are in jail or prison, on probation or parole, or have criminal records. This is not a product of white racism but of prosecutions and convictions of criminal acts.

Had Zimmerman seen a black woman or older man in his neighborhood, he likely would never have tensed up or called in.

For all the abuse he has received, Geraldo Rivera had a point.

Whenever cable TV runs hidden-camera footage of a liquor or convenience store being held up and someone behind the counter being shot, the perp is often a black male wearing a hoodie.

Listening to the heated rhetoric coming from demonstrations around the country, from the Black Caucus and TV talkers – about how America is a terrifying place for young black males to grow up in because of the constant danger from white vigilantes – one wonders what country of the mind these people are living in.

The real America is a country where the black crime rate is seven times as high as the white rate. It is a country where white criminals choose black victims in 3 percent of their crimes, but black criminals choose white victims in 45 percent of their crimes.

Black journalists point to the racism manifest even in progressive cities, where cabs deliberately pass them by to pick up white folks down the block.

That this happens is undeniable. But, again, what is behind it?

As Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has written, from January to June 2008 in New York City, 83 percent of all identified gun assailants were black and 15 percent were Hispanics.

Together, blacks and Hispanics accounted for 98 percent of gun assaults.

Translated: If a cabdriver is going to be mugged or murdered in New York City by a fare, 49 times out of 50 his assailant or killer will be black or Hispanic.

Fernando Mateo of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers has told his drivers, “Profile your passengers” for your own protection. “The God’s honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these guys are blacks and Hispanics.”

Fernando Mateo is himself black and Hispanic.

To much of America’s black leadership and its media auxiliaries, what happened in Sanford was, as Jesse put it, that an innocent kid was “shot down in cold blood by a vigilante.”

Yet, from police reports, witness statements, and the father and friends of Zimmerman, another picture emerges.

Zimmerman followed Trayvon, confronted him and was punched in the nose, knocked flat on his back and jumped on, getting his head pounded, when he pulled his gun and fired. That Trayvon’s body was found face down, not face up, would tend to support this.

But, to Florida Congresswoman Federica Wilson, “this sweet young boy … was hunted down like a dog, shot on the street, and his killer is still at large.”

Some Sanford police believed Zimmerman; others did not.

But now that it is being investigated by a special prosecutor, the FBI, the Justice Department and a coming grand jury, what is the purpose of this venomous portrayal of George Zimmerman?

As yet convicted of no crime, he is being crucified in the arena of public opinion as a hate-crime monster and murderer.

Is this our idea of justice?

No. But if the purpose here is to turn this into a national black-white face-off, instead of a mutual search for truth and justice, it is succeeding marvelously well.

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Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of nine books. His latest book is "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"

© Copyright 1997-2012 All Rights Reserved. WND.com Inc.

Western Superiority

John R. Houk

© March 30, 2012

If you do not fear political correctness allow me to put a question to you. But first let me set up the question.

Western society is roughly represented by European culture and its influence in North and South America. In the case of the evolution of Liberty and Freedom one can narrow the nations of Western Culture to the ones that have been the most successful in providing a strong representative government that employs some level of liberal (i.e. “liberal” in the classical sense rather than the Socialist/Marxist/Leftist sense) democracy for its citizens. In my estimation this is Western Europe, America and many other nations formerly of the once immense British Empire such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada to name a few. Of these nations I believe I can say that we can narrow this even further to the United Kingdom, America and France. These three nations have made huge contributions to the concepts of modern Liberty. And of course being the American Exceptionalist that I am, I can safely say one nation stand above all others in modern Western culture and that is the United States of America. All of the Western world pays homage to the historical contributions of Greek, Roman and Judeo-Christian influences in developing Liberty.

There is the Asian culture that is best represented by India, China and Japan in one way or the other. In modern times India and Japan have adopted many Western institutions of representative government that has blended in with their Asian culture. The Peoples Republic of China (commonly aka Red China or Communist China) has adopted the Western philosophy developed in Germany and Great Britain by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels into the ancient Chinese culture. Chinese Communism is a continuation of Chinese authoritarianism disguised as a peoples’ movement when it is still a top to bottom despotism.

Then there is a culture that can attribute its thinking to the theopolitical thinking established by the man known as Mohammed (or Muhammad or other variations). That religious cult is known as Islam. Unlike the West that merged Judeo-Christian principles with Greco-Roman principles, Islam’s Mohammed developed a society of monotheism in which culture is theologically and politically integrated that all society submit to the Allah created by Mohammed that all people must submit to under the guidance of religious-political leaders. Liberty as is known in the West is not comprehended because the whole goal of submission is to comply or die. The closest thing to Liberty in the Islamic world is freedom that does not insult or violate the Quran, Hadith, Sira and Sharia Law.

So here is the question: Which is the superior culture – Western or Islamic?

Are you brave enough to make an actual informed choice without being blinded by political correctness?

Okay, I am not afraid of political correctness. The superior culture is Western culture!

As much as you hear an Islamic apologist extol the bliss of the peace of Islam, a walk the news – even the Leftist oriented MSM that is in denial about Islam and peace can’t help but report the horrendous act of violence that occurs today in nations dominated by Islam. Of the MSM tries to sugarcoat Islamic violence by poverty and Western exploitation; however if you think about it that is a lame apologist load of crap. Poverty and exploitation occurred in Latin Americans at the hands of stronger Western nations. Today, do you see Latin Americans rioting in the streets and demanding the death of people that have turned from Christianity to Marxism or to crime? If anything it is Latin American Marxists and Crime Lords that are perpetuating violence in contrast to Judeo-Christian ethics.

Simply put – as much as anyone claims that Islam is peace – Islam is violent, murderous and completely lacking in Liberty and Civil Rights.

So does Western culture have something to protect? YES!

Does Western culture as a people and as nations desire to destroy Muslims to retain their heritage? NO!

Does Islamic culture as a people and as nations desire to destroy the people that stand with Western culture? YES!

A case in point is the recent burning of Qurans in Afghanistan. Did the coalition military led by America destroy Qurans to intentionally insult Islam and Muslims? You are an idiot if you believe this. The Qurans that were torched were first of all defaced by Islamic terrorists that used the Qurans to pass coded messages while imprisoned. When the Islamic terrorists were caught the Qurans were destroyed in the Islamic prescribed way because it is unholy to write in a Quran.

But it was the kafir that burned the Qurans. The Islamic terrorist propaganda spread the hatred and rioting among the populace proceeded and even American trained Afghan soldiers began shooting American soldiers because the Qurans were burnt by kafir. This is a mere example of the violence that erupts in Islamic society when Islam, Mohammed or Muslims feel insulted by non-Muslims. To get your fill of Islamic idiotic violence a good website to visit is TheReligionOfPeace.com.

Islam is the enemy of Western culture even if there are Left Wing Multiculturalists that are in denial of this fact. We have a Western culture to protect to protect! Shed off the chains of political correctness in the West and be sure that any part of Islam in the West that works to destroy the West must be dealt with. This is the case even if it goes against the grain of embedded religious tolerance in our minds.

David J. Rusin writes about the need for the West to gain pride in our Western Heritage. In regaining Western pride the Islam that is in our culture can be prevented from using our religious tolerance laws against the West to bring down the West.

JRH 3/30/12

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Western Survival Depends on Western Pride

By David J. Rusin

March 28, 2012

Originally in FrontPage Magazine

Islamist Watch

Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, sparked a firestorm last month when he praised Western values as "superior" to the oppressive ones found elsewhere, namely the Islamic world. Yet the controversy did more to spotlight an area in which the West clearly trails its rivals: self-confidence. If a government official cannot extol the unique virtues of freedom and equality that define Western life without being cast as a bigot by the politically correct, how can they be safeguarded against the highly motivated forces of Islamism, which doubt neither the superiority of their own principles nor the righteousness of imposing them on others?

"Contrary to what the left's relativist ideology says, for us, all civilizations are not of equal value," Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, told a conference on February 4. "Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that do not," he averred. "Those which defend liberty, equality, and fraternity seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred" — a truth that would be hammered home a month and a half later by a jihadist murdering Jewish children in Toulouse. Thus, Guéant underscored the need to "protect our civilization."

The response from the aforementioned relativists was swift and hostile, led by the Socialist Party of François Hollande, the apparent frontrunner in this spring's presidential race. Pierre Moscovici, Hollande's campaign chief, called Guéant's observations "a premeditated, willful, conscious gesture" to secure rightist votes for Sarkozy. He is "targeting Muslims," Moscovici added. Prominent Socialist Harlem Désir condemned Guéant's words as a "pitiful provocation" reflecting his party's supposed "moral decline." Hollande spokesman Bernard Cazeneuve accused Guéant of attempting to "hierarchize humanity," while the Young Socialist Movement decried his speech as "xenophobic and racist." Serge Letchimy, representing Martinique in the National Assembly of France, went farthest of all when he addressed Guéant in parliament, saying, "You bring us back day after day to those European ideologies which gave birth to the concentration camps."

To their credit, Guéant stood by his remarks and Sarkozy supported him. "Obvious words to note that not all civilizations have the same worth regarding the humanist values that are ours," Guéant later explained to Le Figaro. "Who can contest that there is a difference in values between a civilization that favors democracy, protects individual liberties … promotes the rights of women, and a civilization that accepts tyranny, accords no importance to liberties, and does not respect equal rights between men and women?" Many people, it seems.

Guéant is hardly the first politician to be raked over the coals for touting the exemplary characteristics of the West and shining a negative light, directly or indirectly, on Islam. Indeed, the row recalls one that erupted days after 9/11 when Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister at the time, maintained: "We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights, and — in contrast with Islamic countries — respect for religious and political rights." The reaction was fierce. Belgium's prime minister cautioned that such "dangerous" language "could feed a feeling of humiliation" among Muslims, an Italian opposition leader chided Berlusconi for "using terms that no statesman worthy of the name has used," and another likened him to Osama bin Laden. Berlusconi quickly backtracked, with his office citing his "deep respect for Islam, a great religion … which preaches tolerance" and "respect of human rights."

Of course, the political figure best known for bluntly comparing the Western and Islamic worlds while suffering the establishment's wrath is Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. "We will have to end cultural relativism," he stressed in Rome last year. "To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity."

The ancient military thinker Sun Tzu taught that victory in any conflict is achieved by understanding not merely one's adversary, but also oneself. Applied to the struggle against Islamism, this starts with Westerners grasping that which they are charged with preserving: a unique cultural patrimony — born in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem and nurtured during the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and American Revolution — that sustains the freest and most prosperous civilization in the historical record.

Yet as the response to Guéant demonstrates, appreciation of this Western "self" has grown thin in many circles. Due to "post-modernism, moral relativism, and multiculturalism, the West has lost all self-confidence in its own values, and seems incapable and unwilling to defend those values," argues Ibn Warraq, author of Why the West Is Best. "By contrast, resurgent Islam, in all its forms, is supremely confident, and is able to exploit the West's moral weakness and cultural confusion to demand ever more concessions from her."

Warraq declares that if their system is to endure, Westerners must acknowledge that "the great ideas of the West — rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy — are superior to any others devised by humankind." Likewise, it is critical to compare Western ideals to those of the Islamists, which are antithetical to liberty and increasingly threaten it. A glance at how women and minorities are treated by strict Islamic law is sufficient to expose multiculturalism's "lie that all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom and democracy," to quote reformist Muslim Salim Mansur.

The advance of Islamism can be checked only if the West unabashedly reasserts its core values. As feminist icon Phyllis Chesler warns in her review of Warraq's book, liberalization of the Islamic world "will never happen unless Westerners engage in the most spirited defense of Western freedoms," because "this is the best way we can strengthen our like-minded allies who are trapped in theologically fundamentalist Muslim countries." The same vigor is required at home to reverse deleterious multicultural policies that have fostered extremism, not integration. David Cameron, the British prime minister, has contended that the remedy involves "less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism" that "believes in certain values and actively promotes them. … It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things."

At the very least, governments need to draw a clear line between Western principles that will not be surrendered and Islamist ones that will not be tolerated. Hints of the requisite approach are seen in Canada's citizenship guide, which states that the country's "openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices" such as honor violence and female genital mutilation, and the German interior minister's recent comments that "those who reject freedom and democracy have no future here."

Jihadists' ultimate success or failure at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within" and institutionalizing Islam in its place, a goal enunciated by the Muslim Brotherhood, depends more on the West than the Islamists. It will never come to pass unless it is facilitated by a slow-motion cultural suicide at the hands of leftist elites who insist that no society is better than any other, downgrade their own civilization's accomplishments, do nothing to protect the West, and smear anybody who contradicts them.

Will the decades ahead be shaped by unapologetic pride in the West's objectively superior system, as voiced by Claude Guéant? Or will the mindset of his critics prevail, thus sapping morale, projecting weakness, emboldening Islamists, and accelerating the decay? If the former, the West will survive — because it will have chosen survival. If the latter, the new barbarians will not have to climb over the gates as in days of yore; they will simply stroll through the ones opened for them by Western apathy.

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Western Superiority

John R. Houk

© March 30, 2012

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Western Survival Depends on Western Pride

David J. Rusin is a research fellow at Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

© 2007 - 2012 The Middle East Forum.

'Post-Racial' Lynch Mob

I wonder if the MSM stirred up Black Americans will form a contrite attitude when Hispanic (NOT WHITE) George Zimmerman is vindicated in shooting a Black American seventeen year old after the kid - Trayvon Martin – is proven to have attacked Zimmerman?

JRH 3/30/12

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'Post-Racial' Lynch Mob

By Ann Coulter

03/28/2012

Human Events

Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using the N-word in private meetings -- which turned out to be "St. Nicholas" -- the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn't even pause before conjuring a racist plot in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.

Like Captain Ahab searching for the Great White Whale, the NFM is constantly on the hunt for proof of America as "Mississippi Burning."

Over St. Patrick's Day weekend, the month after Martin was killed, gangs in Chicago shot 10 people dead, including a 6-year-old girl, Aliyah Shell, who was sitting with her mother on their front porch.

One imagines MSNBC hosts heaving a sign of relief that little Aliyah was not shot by a white man, and was thus spared the horror of being a victim of racism.

As it happens, Trayvon Martin wasn't shot by a white man either, but by George Zimmerman, a mixed-race Hispanic who lives in a diverse (47 percent white) gated community and tutors black kids.

But Hispanic is close enough for the NFM. They're chasing the Great White Whale of racist America and don't have time to check to see if the whale is actually a guppy.

Since the cat leapt out of the bag on Zimmerman being Hispanic, the media have begun calling him a "white Hispanic."

Not being a race-obsessed liberal, I don't particularly care, but it's indisputable that Zimmerman is brown. I saw his face carved on the side of a Mayan temple in the Yucatan. Using his mother's maiden name, he would be admitted to the University of Michigan law school on a full scholarship.

Apart from that, pretty much all that is known with certainty is that Zimmerman called the police to report a suspicious character in his neighborhood, and shortly thereafter he shot and killed Martin.

On the basis of little else, the media conjured a Hollywood script: A "white" man was "stalking" a little black kid -- who could be Obama's son! -- confronted him, beat him senseless as the small black child screamed for help, and finally shot the kid dead, "just because he was black."

Two weeks of nonstop hysteria later, it turns out that every part of that gripping plot is based on nothing that could be called a reasonable assumption, much less a fact.

The NFM's theory of the case might be true, just as it might be true that the loud bang I just heard outside my door is Godzilla returning to terrorize Manhattan. I, like the NFM, have no facts supporting my theory. (Although mine is more credible because Al Sharpton is not involved and none of my facts are provably false, such as the NFM's claim about Zimmerman being "white.")

First of all, there's no reason to believe Zimmerman followed Martin after the police told him not to, which is the linchpin of much excited reporting.

Zimmerman told the police, his friends and his lawyer that he walked back to his car after hanging up with the police and was waylaid by Martin. No witnesses have told the press otherwise.

We don't know if -– as the NFM has baldly asserted -- it was Martin yelling "Help!" during the struggle. Before the case became a nationwide sensation, the lead detective told the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel that the police had played all the 911 calls for Martin's father, and he said the voice crying "Help!" was not his son's.

(The father has subsequently retracted that.)

Before the shooting was even a twinkle in the eye of MSNBC, an eyewitness gave a detailed account to the local media, indicating that it was Martin who was on top of Zimmerman, pummeling him, as Zimmerman screamed "Help!"

The police report says Zimmerman's nose was bleeding and his back covered in grass stains when they arrived at the scene. His lawyer and friends say he was treated for a broken nose the next day.

There's no sense in arguing in public about such facts. The medical records exist or they do not.

Of course, the information contradicting the media's fantasy comes to us only in the form of witness statements and police reports appearing in the press, not as evidence in a formal criminal investigation.

It's hard to tell where the NFM's suppositions are coming from inasmuch as they simply report their version as hard fact. But all their evidence seems to come only from Martin's family and girlfriend. Can we start trying all criminal defendants based exclusively on the testimony of the victim's friends and relatives?

Among the reasons to be suspicious of the media as impartial judges of the evidence is that they keep showing us snapshots from Martin's childhood, rather than any recent photos.

Without doing research, the average person would think Martin was a slight 12-year-old whippersnapper at the time of the shooting, rather than a strapping 6-foot, 160-pound 17-year-old. Indeed, he was 3 inches taller than Zimmerman, according to the police report.

Why aren't they showing us Zimmerman's baby pictures? (And why didn't we get to see baby pictures of the Duke lacrosse players? I bet they were adorable.)

CNN ceaselessly reported the allegation that Zimmerman could be heard in the background of one 911 call using an archaic racial epithet. Before playing the tape, correspondent Gary Tuchman first announced what the slur was supposed to be ("f*****g coon").

There's nothing like suggesting the answer in advance to improve reliability! Police should try that in lineups.

Then the same network that couldn't find the Jeremiah Wright tapes for sale in a church lobby brought in "one of the best audio experts in the business" to enhance the tape -- take the bass away here, add volume there -- and played the 1.6-second loop again and again, just in case you were not suggestible enough the first time.

Still, all that can be heard on the enhanced tape is "cha-chu, cha-chu, cha-chu."

But Tuchman wrapped up this demonstration by saying, "You know, it sounds like this allegation could be accurate, but I wouldn't swear to it in court. That's what it sounds like to me."

To the small percentage of CNN's audience with triple-digit IQs, it was comedy gold. The only thing missing was Tipper Gore playing the audio backward to reveal satanic lyrics.

(Incidentally, the Nexis transcript of the indecipherable "cha-chu" sound reads: "ZIMMERMAN: F*****g coons, f*****g coons. F*****g coons. F*****g coons. F*****g coons." Except it doesn't use asterisks.)

All this may give you an inkling of why we rely on the criminal justice system to determine guilt in criminal cases and not the fervid imaginations of the race-obsessed media.

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Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Slander, Treason, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Godless, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America, and Demonic: How The Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.

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