From The Times
August 12, 2008
A festival of grovelling to terrorists
If works of art are withdrawn because of fear of reprisal, we lose the chance for open debate
Mick Hume

[bold script in square parenthesis are my comments - MP]

Have you heard about the first novel by a young American woman that has become the “new Satanic Verses”, sparking terrorist attacks on the publishers and riots by Islamic militants that make the protests against Salman Rushdie's book look like an English tea party?
No, you probably won't have, since there is no book for anybody to riot about. The US publishers Random House pulled The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, due out today, on the ground that it “might be offensive to some in the Muslim community” and “could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment”. An executive told the author that they had stopped her racy historical novel about Aisha, young wife of the Prophet Muhammad, out of “fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims” and concern for “the safety and security of the Random House building and employees”.

[I'm sorry but I am starting to get pissed off! The true enemy out there is not only Islam but our own liberal thinking. This constant apologizing for imagined wrongs is just too wimpy for me. I will write what I want, when I want to, about whoever riles me and I will use any and all epithets in my arsenal, human rights commissions be damned!]

There had been no acts of violence or terrorism, nor even threats or protests. All that happened was that one non-Muslim associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas, who was sent a proof copy, apparently cautioned that the book would be seen as “a declaration of war... explosive stuff... a national security issue” and more offensive than The Satanic Verses. There swiftly followed a riot of retreating publishers, and the book was blown out before anybody had the chance to set light to it for the cameras.

It looks like another example of a quiet wave of self-censorship and cultural cowardice sweeping Western art circles. Two years ago, when the Deutsche opera in Berlin scrapped a production of Mozart's Idomeneo for fear that it might offend some Muslims, I described it as “pre-emptive grovelling”. This now appears to be the modus operandi of the transatlantic arts elites.
It has just been reported that the BBC has dropped a big-budget docu-drama, The London Bombers. A team of journalists had spent months researching it in Beeston, Leeds, home of some of the 7/7 terrorists, and a top writer was preparing the final draft, when it was scrapped. The journalists were reportedly told by BBC executives that it was Islamophobic and offensive.
Last year, the New Culture Forum published a survey of similar cases, from the BBC hospital soap Casualty changing Muslim terrorists into animal rights activists, to the Barbican cutting out scenes from Tamburlaine the Great and the “cutting-edge” Royal Court Theatre cancelling an adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, both for fear that they might offend some Muslims.
The threat to freedom here does not come from a few Islamic radicals, but from the invertebrate liberals of the cultural establishment who have so lost faith in themselves that they will surrender their freedoms before anybody starts a fight. The mere suggestion of causing offence to some mob of imagined stereotypes is enough to have them scurrying for a bomb shelter, their creative imaginations blowing up small protests into the threat of a big culture war. Of course, such pre-emptive grovelling only encourages any zealot with a blog to demand even more censorship.

[Europa, what ails thee? Where are the macho europeans that destroyed Nazi Germany? why are you kowtowing to a bunch of towel-headed, sheep shagging, camel jockeys? Where are your cojones? why isn't the average European Joe out in the streets waving some banners with a few good insults on them and claim back his country? Come on, people, Israel can't do it all by itself for you, we have our own problems]

Who needs book burners if “offensive” books are not allowed to be published in the first place? Why bother to protest against provocative plays if the theatres will turn the lights off for you beforehand? There is no need even for a polite exchange on Points of View if the controversial programmes never get made.

The quality or lack of it in the self-censored works is not the issue here. That associate professor from Texas condemned the novel about Muhammad's wife as “soft porn”. But so what if it was? Free expression should mean freedom for what others see as filth, too. If there are artists childishly causing offence for its own sake, feel free to ignore them, but not to gag them.
Pre-emptive grovelling, encouraged from the top down by our illiberal authorities, is bad for the arts and for society. The arts can only flourish in a climate of cultural anarchy rather than compulsion and conformity. The attempt to limit what can be said must have a chilling effect, encouraging other writers and artists to pull in their horns.

Such self-censorship is also dangerous for those who don't much care about high culture. There is indeed a lesson from the Satanic Verses controversy, but not the one often cited. The dominant response to that clash of cultures was to try to bury it beneath worthy multicultural claptrap about celebrating difference. After more than 15 years of such attempts to suppress honest debate, the tensions festering beneath the surface exploded on the London transport system. As one female Muslim writer critical of the decision not to publish The Jewel of Medina says: “The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.”

As an old libertarian of the Left, who has long upheld the Right to Be Offensive, what makes me most angry today is to see fearful self-censorship and pre-emptive grovelling in the name of liberal values. That really is something worth intellectually rioting about.
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Olmert to PA: We'll quit West Bank when you retake Gaza


By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

[comments in square parenthesis are mine - MP]

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has presented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a proposal for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank to take place after Abbas' forces have retaken Gaza as part of an agreement in principle on borders, refugees and security arrangements between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

Olmert, who met with Abbas this week, feels there is time to reach an agreement during his remaining time in office. He is now awaiting a decision from the Palestinians.

[ surely he is jesting, how can a Prime Minister who is weeks from terminating his office make any lasting agreements when he doesn't have the backing of the Knesset or even everyone in his own party]

The centerpiece of Olmert's detailed proposal is the suggested permanent border, which would be based on an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank. In return for the land retained by Israel in the West Bank, the Palestinians would receive alternative land in the Negev, adjacent to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians would also enjoy free passage between Gaza and the West Bank without any security checks, the proposal says. A senior Israeli official said the Palestinians were given preliminary maps of the proposed borders.

[Ehud Barak was forced out of office for doing almost the same thing. If there are going to be early elections in Israel Barak has a chance of winning and we would be back where we were at Camp David. We need to find someone who is willing to announce that we are not interested in a two-state solution]

. Under Olmert's offer, Israel would keep 7 percent of the West Bank, while the Palestinians would receive territory equivalent to 5.5 percent of West Bank. Israel views the passage between Gaza and the West Bank as compensating for this difference: Though it would officially remain in Israeli hands, it would connect the two halves of the Palestinian state - a connection the Palestinians did not enjoy before 1967, when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control and the West Bank was part of Jordan.

The land to be annexed to Israel would include the large settlement blocs, and the border would be similar to the present route of the separation fence. Israel would keep Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, the settlements surrounding Jerusalem and some land in the northern West Bank adjacent to Israel.

Since Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently approved more construction in both Efrat and Ariel, two settlements relatively far from the 1949 armistice lines, it is reasonable to assume that Olmert wants to include these settlements in the territory annexed to Israel as well.

Olmert's proposal states that once a border is agreed upon, Israel would be able to build freely in the settlement blocs to be annexed.

The settlements outside the new border would be evacuated in two stages. First, after the agreement in principle is signed, the cabinet would initiate legislation to compensate settlers who voluntarily relocate within Israel or to settlement blocs slated to be annexed. Over the past few months, Olmert has approved construction of thousands of housing units in these settlement blocs, mostly around Jerusalem, and some are intended for the voluntary evacuees.

In the second stage, once the Palestinians complete a series of internal reforms and are capable of carrying out the entire agreement, Israel would remove any settlers remaining east of the new border.

Olmert will to try to sell the deal to the Israeli public based on a staged program of implementation. The present negotiations, which started with the Annapolis Summit in November 2007, are intended to reach a "shelf agreement" that would lay the foundations of a Palestinian state. However, implementation of the shelf agreement would be postponed until the Palestinian Authority is capable of carrying out its part of the deal.

Olmert's proposal for a land swap introduces a new stage in the arrangement: Israel would immediately receive the settlement blocs, but the land to be transferred to the Palestinians and the free passage between Gaza and the West Bank would only be delivered after the PA retakes control of the Gaza Strip. In this way, Olmert could tell the Israeli public that Israel is receiving 7 percent of the West Bank and an agreed-upon border, while the Israeli concessions will be postponed until Hamas rule in Gaza has ended.

Abbas, for his part, could tell his people that he has succeeded in obtaining 98 percent of the West Bank from Israel, along with a promise to remove all settlers over the border.

The Palestinians' proposal had talked about a much smaller land swap, of about 2 percent of the West Bank.

Compared to previous Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Olmert proposal falls between the one then prime minister Barak presented to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000 and the one he offered at Taba in January 2001. The Palestinian proposal is similar to the ones offered during the Arafat years, which would have allowed Israel to annex only a few settlements, along with their access roads - a proposal nicknamed "balloons and strings." All these Palestinian proposals ruled out allowing Israel to retain the settlement blocs.

Since then, however, the separation fence has been built in the West Bank, and a new physical reality has been created in the areas where the fence has been completed.

Israel also presented the Palestinians with a detailed model of new security arrangements under the proposed agreement. The security proposal was drawn up by a team headed by Maj. Gen. Ido Nehoshtan, now commander of the Israel Air Force, but previously head of the army's Plans and Policy Directorate. The proposal has also been passed on to the Americans, in an effort to obtain their support for Israel's position during the negotiations.

The security proposal includes a demand that the Palestinian state be demilitarized and without an army. The Palestinians, in contrast, are demanding that their security forces be capable of defending against "outside threats," an Israeli official said.

On the refugee issue, Olmert's proposal rejects a Palestinian "right of return" and states that the refugees may only return to the Palestinian state, other than exceptional cases in which refugees would be allowed into Israel for family reunification. Nevertheless, the proposal includes a detailed and complex formula for solving the refugee problem.

Olmert has agreed with Abbas that the negotiations over Jerusalem will be postponed. In doing so, he gave in to the Shas Party's threats that it would leave the coalition if Jerusalem were put on the negotiating table.

[Here I agree with Shas....Jerusalem is taboo, no negotiation, period.]

Olmert views reaching an agreement with the Palestinians as extremely important. Such an agreement would entrench the two-state solution in the international community's consciousness, along with a detailed framework for achieving this solution. In Olmert's opinion, this is the only way Israel can rebuff challenges to its legitimacy and avoid calls for a "one-state solution." Such an agreement would show that Israel is not interested in controlling the territories, or the Palestinians, over the long run, but only until conditions arise that enable the establishment of a Palestinian state. This position has received strong support from the present U.S. administration.

Next week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the region to continue her efforts to advance the negotiations. However, Olmert opposes her proposal to publish a joint U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli announcement detailing progress in the negotiations since Annapolis. Olmert objects to publishing partial positions; he only wants to announce a complete agreement - if one can be reached.

[Here is Olmerts big chance if he wants to redeem himself in Israeli eyes, tell SecState to butt out! We have had enough of American meddling in our internal affairs, the price is just too steep. Let Condi leave with Bush and let Israel open a new page vi-a-vis our relationship with the new American administration, be it what it may.].

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Magazine publisher Levant wins Danish cartoon dispute

Joseph Brean, National Post
Published: Wednesday, August 06, 2008

After a year-long investigation, the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has rejected a complaint by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant over his republication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons.

The allegation that the February 14, 2006, issue of the now defunct magazine was likely to expose Muslims to hatred helped to spark a national debate about human rights law and free speech, and its rejection comes after similar complaints of Islamophobia against Maclean's magazine also failed.

. In a report on his investigation, which recommended the complaint not be referred for a panel hearing, AHRCC Southern Director Pardeep S. Gundara wrote that the cartoons are "stereotypical, negative and offensive," and they "do reinforce stereotypes," but they were "related to relevant and timely news" and were "not simply gratuitously included."

Yasmeen Nizam, a civil litigation lawyer in Edmonton and an ECMC director, said the Council is "certainly disappointed with the decision."

"Our whole idea was to educate people," she said. "We thought the cartoons did [expose Muslims to hatred], regardless of the context, because if you look at the broader context in a post-9/11 world, Muslims are at a higher risk of being discriminated against."

She said the Council decided to bring a human rights complaint because, unlike criminal hate speech prosecutions, the publisher's intent does not matter.

"We weren't shopping around for any laws. We thought this was a good way to bring our concerns to the attention of the public," she said. "Obviously we didn't want this to continue, so [another goal was] perhaps to discourage people from further maligning our prophet and our religion... We wanted this to have a deterrent effect."

She said she is unsure whether it actually has. What is certain is that this complaint, and others like it, have roused a broad contingent of free speech advocates to whom the bombastic Mr. Levant is a champion.

"I basically told them to f-off without using the swear word," Mr. Levant said of his response to the complaint, given during an interview with an AHRCC officer that he taped and broadcast on YouTube.

He said the complaint failed because he is "too big a fish for them to reel in."

"I was let go because I'm in the media every day. I've been down to [the U.S.] Congress to testify, I've been on CNN even. That's why I was let go, because if I caused them this much pain just in an investigation, imagine what the trial would be like," he said.

He does not consider this a victory, though.

"This censor approved what I wrote," he said. "His decision is not that I have freedom of speech. His decision is that I have his approval. I'm not interested in his approval. The only test of free speech is if I can write what he disapproves of with impunity. That's what freedom of speech is, to piss off some second-rate bureaucrat like Pardeep Gundara and know that you have the right to do so, because you're in Canada, not Saudi Arabia."

This complaint originally involved two other parties. A respondent, the Jewish Free Press, was dropped after the editor agreed in mediation to print a rebuttal. And an original complainant, Syed Soharwardy, national president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, dropped out after he had a change of heart.

Now that it is resolved, Mr. Soharwardy thinks the AHRCC made the right decision, even though Mr. Levant "twisted this whole thing" to turn himself into a victim.

"I never wanted someone's freedom of speech curtailed. I always wanted to sit down, with some third party, for mediation, and have a discussion," he said. "I withdrew my complaint because I was adding fire to the debate."

He also came to regard the entire human rights complaints process with suspicion.

"It was a very amateur operation," he said, run by untrained people, which resulted in a "complete misunderstanding" of his goals.

"When I went through this whole process and I saw it very closely, I realized there was some serious loopholes in the processes," he said.

National Post

jbrean@nationalpost.com

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We Have To Change Tactics

by
Mike Packer



I used to be a left wing liberal, but no more!

I arrived in Israel on aliyah in historical times, 2 months before Anwar Sadat made his speech from the Knesset podium. At the time I was of a mind that here, at last, was our big chance for “peace”, first Egypt then the rest of the arab world.

Needless to say the arab world certainly didn’t kill themselves in the rush to follow Sadat, they killed Sadat.

This didn’t deter me from my liberal ideology although I did have a “right wing twinge” when the US forced us to let Yasser Arafat leave Beirut. I would have gladly cheered if the ship had been torpedoed on the high seas.
. I also had high hopes for the Madrid conference and was angry at PM Shamir’s attitude.

I was all gung ho over the Oslo accords albeit a little disappointed when the “palestinians” repeatedly reneged on agreements that they signed, agreements that the Israeli authorities deemed necessary for a lasting “peace”.

I was pleased with the decision of the Israeli government to disengage unilaterally from Gaza…. that is until the first Kassam rocket landed on Israeli soil.

I have now seen the light!

I say now, NO MORE!

Enough is enough, I no longer wish to search for “peace”. Let the arabs search for peace

Today I sit in my living room watching the TV coverage of the prisoner swap between us and Hezbollah and I am thinking to myself that the time has come for us to change our tactics vis a vis the arab world. We are in a direct war with two entities maybe three, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority through their Fatah Al Aqsa faction. Let us not fool ourselves, these three entities are embroiled in a struggle to relieve the world of its Jewish presence and we are involved whether we like it or not.

Israel has always played by the rules no matter what left wingers say to the contrary. We extended our hand in peace to all our neighbors on the birth of our nation and we are still seeking someone to shake it with. We have adopted the Geneva Convention accords, yet our enemies haven’t, we abide by international law apart from when it applies to us and our enemies twist it to suit themselves, we have fought all our wars according to the international rules of warfare, yet our enemies didn’t.

I say again, NO MORE!

Israel should demand reciprocity, visitation rights for visitation rights, information for information, live prisoners for live prisoners, dead for dead.…I would have liked nothing better than to send Samir Kuntar back in the same condition we got our soldiers.

The same goes for the rules of war the essence of which was mutuality. A state can’t violate them and expect its enemy to follow them. So much more so when the non-state is not a signatory to them, they are afforded no protection by them. Israel is MY COUNTRY I have the right and the duty to defend it with all the power at my disposal and I will do it without my gloves on, not according to the rules of warfare, the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules or any other obstacle that the international community wishes to put in my way….enough is enough.

When I came to Israel there was always the optimistic attitude of “my son/daughter will not have to serve in the army because the wars will be over”, well, this hasn’t come true and now I am saying the same thing about my grandchildren. This time I don’t want it to be an empty promise. I want the Israeli government to pluck up the courage to say that international pressure will no longer work that we have to do the job properly and if that means “collateral damage” then so be it!

That damage at the moment is, more or less, one-sided as I don’t see a much belated IDF response to the physical insults rained upon us by Hamas. Hezbollah or the Al-Aqsa brigade.

Israel is MY country and must act as it deems fit and not how the international community deems. I don’t advise any country in Europe how to run their business nor do I pressure the US to return Texas to Mexico. So who are they to tell us what to do? According to the decision of the League of Nations as pertaining to “Palestine” and which was passed unanimously by the 51 member states and which was later adopted, verbatim, by the United Nations, Israel IS the homeland of the Jewish people. The Jewish people will decide what is good or not for themselves by themselves.

I would like to conclude with a quote from the Congressional Record of the US House of Representatives which on June 30 1922 endorsed a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress:
“Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…..”
from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea.
President Warren G.Harding signed the resolution of approval on September 21, 1922.
Amongst the speakers on this resolution was Representative Walter M.Chandler of New York who set out three rules for the establishment of the National Homeland and they are:
(1) That the Arabs shall be permitted to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination, and with their civil and religious rights guaranteed to them through the British mandate and under terms of the Balfour declaration.
(2) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, they shall be required to sell their lands at a just valuation and retire into the Arab territory which has been assigned to them by the League of Nations in the general reconstruction of the countries of the east.
(3) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, under conditions of right and justice, or to sell their lands at a just valuation and to retire into their own countries, they shall be driven from Palestine by force.
I, personally, totally agree with him and as this proposal was later ratified by three more presidents, it seems that they did too.
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