The Message is the Medium

Spiritual leader of well over a billion faithful of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI sought to appeal to humanitarian compassion in his Easter "Urbi et Orbi" blessing and speech. The time for lamentation and rejoicing as good a time as any to remind the faithful and the world at large that human beings have a practical and moral obligation to one another.

Pope Benedict must think in terms of human goodness as he gives his benediction to the waiting crowds. He must not submit to the reality that human goodness and compassion eludes too many in this world of warped entitlements and values. He remains for the faithful the embodiment of God's promise to humankind; that the faithful will be redeemed.

In his elevated station as the interceder between the Almighty and the people, it remains his obligation to instill hope and the need for kindness and consideration; to elevate the souls of his followers. He speaks of diplomacy and dialogue triumphing over conflict, that kind words are a worthy replacement for violence and arms.

This is the world that he lives within, but not the one that humanity struggles to endure. "In the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, may all citizens, especially young people, work to promote the common good." A noble sentiment, without one shred of doubt. But the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, particularly the young people, are extremely busy slaughtering one another.

Tribal antipathies, regional disputes; territorial boundaries; acquisition of natural resources; religious and sectarian, ethnic and clan hatreds thrive, helped by the greed of their totalitarian rulers, and the endemic poverty left as the lot of the people whose human rights have been violated. But the crucible of hatred and violence does not need the impetus of poverty to set it alight; hatred of the other will do very well.

Pope Benedict has little option, as the spokesperson for good in the world, relaying God's wishes for humankind, but to call for peace: "That the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence" in the Middle East. The 'inviolable right' to dignity and basic human rights is violated because it cannot be guaranteed.

Visceral distrust, hatred and violence sadly express humankind's ultimate degradation, one all too quickly resorted to with particular fervour in the Middle East, a brimming cauldron of resentment and paranoia.

Solve that and God will indeed have descended to Earth.

Vanguard Leadership Group

US Black Students Demand Arabs Stop Calling Israel Apartheid
by Maayana Miskin

The African-American student organization Vanguard Leadership Group is standing with Israel when it comes to use of the term “apartheid.” The term is “false and deeply offensive” when applied to Israel, the group said in advertisements published on Thursday.

The Vanguard Leadership Group spoke out in response to “apartheid” claims from the group Students for Justice in Palestine. Under an ad titled, “Words matter,” the group said, “We request that you immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

“It is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis' record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa's,” the group said.

Students for Justice in Palestine “has chosen to manipulate rather than inform with this illegitimate analogy,” Vanguard Leadership said. “Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate mischaracterizations of Israel.”

Ceasing use of the term “apartheid” when discussing Israel would be a “first step toward raising the level of discourse,” the letter concluded.

Anti-Israel groups have long accused Israel of being an “apartheid state,” borrowing the term from South Africa, where for many decades a small white minority ruled the black majority by force. Racial discrimination was enforced by law, and black residents were denied citizenship, given inferior public services, barred from using white theaters, pools, churches, and other facilities, and judged under different laws.

In Israel, Arabs and other non-Jewish minorities are full citizens, with the same rights and obligations as any other Israeli. One exception is the fact that Arab citizens are not required to serve in the IDF, although they are allowed to do so, and a handful choose to enlist.

Palestinian Authority Arabs are not granted rights as citizens because they do not wish to become citizens, but rather, hope to create a new Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Similarly, Israelis have no rights under PA law, and in fact, are forbidden to own land or even to enter PA-controlled areas.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 11 April 2011

Bigoted Racism also called Anti-Semitism

One supposes that Post Media and the National Post think it's a cute little idea to get their readers interested, however ironically and tauntingly in the proposed Canadian 'Freedom Boat to Gaza', attempting to raise the $300,000 it will require to equip and provision said ship and send it sailing off to the Middle East to confront Israeli authorities with a Canadian-backed blockade-breaking protest against Israeli 'occupation' of Gaza.

The trouble with the premise of 'occupation' that Canadians of an activist-leftist persuasion righteously acting in solidarity with Gazans is that Palestinians have themselves to hold accountable for their current predicament. In self-defence Israel did once occupy part of Gaza, and there were indeed Jewish settlements there, after the refusal of Palestinians to accept their portion of the historical UN-mandated division of the geography where Israel was given its accepted portion in which to create a Jewish state.

The unilateral Government of Israel decision to leave Gaza, to uproot the Jewish settlements there and leave the geography in the hands of Palestinian Gazans simply created more violence among Palestinians themselves. Hatred for Israel did not abate when Israel left the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, and the Palestinian Gazans did not benefit themselves by striving to create a viable quasi-state for themselves in anticipation of an eventual official state.

Instead, the squabbling violence that reigned in dysfunctional Gaza with its tribal adversities and grievances invited the governing occupation of Hamas, a militant group obsessed with and committed to the obliteration of the State of Israel and the repossession of the land on which it sits for a greater Palestinian state. In essence, this is what is accepted as just and fair by all those who commit to supporting 'the Palestinians' in Gaza.

Within Canada, the coalition of especially created groups who express sympathy for Gazan Palestinians and by extension ruling Hamas, is committed to that same goal. That coalition has come together to join in the popular activism of countries like Ireland and Turkey in mounting challenges to Israel's completely internationally and legally sanctioned attempts to protect her sovereignty by forestalling the importation of lethal weaponry to the possession of Hamas in Gaza.

Groups like Palestine House, CUPW, Alternatives, the Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange, Gaza Freedom March, rabble.ca, People for Peace, Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine, StopWar Coalition, the Canadian Peace Alliance, the Canadian Arab Federation, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Independent Jewish Voices Canada, all loftily claim their solidarity with the beleaguered Palestinians.

They all stand in firm judgement against the Government of Canada for its support of Israel. They all reject the fact that Hamas is considered a terror group by Canada, the U.S.A. and the European Union. And they are all firmly supportive of labelling Israel an apartheid, violence-prone governing body and are determined to see 'justice' done for the Palestinians.

Gaza is a territory governed by harsh Sharia-led Islamist rule through the auspices of Hamas. It is also a territory rife with various militia groups all of whom are steadfastly committed to the destruction of Israel. Many of these groups are also at war with one another. Palestinians living in Gaza are not well served by their Hamas overseers. But they are also not living with severe humanitarian deprivations as claimed by outside 'sympathizers'.

The Canadian coalition working to launch their Freedom Boat for Gaza have no sympathy for the ongoing bombardment of Israeli communities and towns by rockets hurled from Gaza. They are completely invested in their denunciation of 'fascist' Israel, and 'helpless' Palestinians.

The slander that Israel suffers as a result of the Canadian coalition's progressive stance on behalf of the underdog has been quaintly extended through an invitation to the Canadian public to get involved by helping to name the Canadian blockade-busting ship before it sets sail. A roster of proposed names has been published, all of them uniquely, obscenely despicable, mocking the history and the purpose of the State of Israel.

The indelible impression of an impassioned, humanistic Canadian coalition of sensitive, touchy-feely progressives denigrating a legitimate, Democratic-liberal state in a geographical cesspool of theocratic autocracies, dictatorships, kingdoms and violently Islamist states does not reflect well on the collective intelligence of the Canadian coalition.

Assaultive, Insulting Censorial Insensitivity

"Celeste heard about the runaway Elias as she was eating the last of her ash cakes. She did not like Elias but she, too, was happy for him. What she herself could not have she always wished for someone else, so her food went down well that morning. After he got the word, after he ate his breakfast, Moses went up and told Henry, "Master, that new nigger's in the wind."

Moses had just told Henry that Elias was gone when they heard Robbins's voice and they both went around the side of the house to the front. Robbins had awakened that morning and not remembered the encounter with Elias the night before, that he had taken Elias back to his plantation and chained him to the back porch. His cook came in and reminded him at the breakfast table.

Robbins now said to Henry, "Good mornin. Sweet good mornin. Are you and Caldonia well?" Elias, chained, stood next to Robbins, only inches from his booted foot in the stirrup.

"Yessir, Mr. Robbins, we well enough," Henry said.

"I have something of yours," Robbins said, and he kicked Elias and the slave fell to the ground. "Picked him up on the road home last night. He has a wound somewhere in his leg, but it won't kill him and it won't amount to anything if you decide to sell him off one day. Less he had a very noticeable limp." He laughed, a little joke between them, because Robbins was even less inclined those days to sell a slave and that was what he always advised Henry. He had said once, "Niggers appreciate in value, so appreciate them."

Yes, that "N" word, prominent in the narrative of a compelling novel. A new novel, relatively speaking, published in 2004. By a black author, Edward P. Jones, whose "The Known World", from which the above has been extracted for the purpose of this blog entry was a New York Times 'bestseller' and acclaimed Book of the Year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Booklist, the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, People, Publishers Weekly, San Antonio Express News and USA Today.

Furthermore described as one of the New York Times Top 25 books of the last 25 years. This is the story of slave-owning Manchester County, Virginia in the mid-1800s. This is the story of a black man who was a slave and whose father bought him from his master, after he had previously bought his own freedom, that of his wife, and finally his son. The son, grown to maturity, dismayed his parents by himself becoming a slave-owner. Under the influence of his former master, he felt owning slaves, black men, women and children just like himself, was good business.

Where is the outcry from the black community, from the oh-so-politically correct white literary and academic community? There is none. There is praise for a book consummately well imagined and written. In language congruent with its times. Although it does, intriguingly, shift on occasion to the present time when discussing historical matters of concern and note. There is no one to censor what this remarkable book portrays, what its skilled author tells us in the language of 1840 slavery.

But censors have been busy-bodying about the legendary brilliance of a writer no longer among us and thus unable to protest that one of his most remarkable books has been tampered with. Samuel Clemens wrote another amazing book, titled The Misanthrope, a book that revealed his apprehensions about human integrity, intelligence and compulsion. As Mark Twain, the incomparable author of his time, his wry observational humour and cleverly capable genius as a writer paved the way for those who followed him.

Surely he deserves better than to have one of his most familiar books, Huckleberry Finn, expurgated of its 'offensive' nomenclature of Negroes in the slave-owning American South? His admiring public, the readers who valued his description of time, place and human activity certainly deserve better. What arrogance, academic and publishing, to mar his legacy by this underhanded manipulation. An apology is due and the insult to the integrity of Mark Twain's original work overturned.

Representing a rare instance when specific and very particular copies of a book might be considered to be destined for a blazing fireplace.

Laughing Ourselves To Death

There are some people who are simply invested in fomenting hatred against others. It is not hard to imagine they are anything but malevolently psychotic in temperament as evidenced by the ferocity of their vile imprecations against those whom they have identified as their hate objects.

Not surprisingly, given the history of Jews and their place in society from time immemorial, it is most often that group of people who have been singled out as different, invested with unspeakable traits that represent the target of racists.

It is more than likely that psychopaths who spend their lives destroying what others have built, who present as the very social dregs of abysmal human behaviour are simply fulfilling their purpose as human beings bereft from birth of normal human emotions leading to empathy and compassion for others.

Society is rife with sociopaths and psychopaths whose inability to construct emotional attachments to other people is legendary. These are people for whom normalcy in human relations is utterly foreign. Such individuals burn with an entirely different kind of passion than those whose genetic endowments have not short-changed them in the balance of emotions.

They are not merely people who have lost faith in humanity. These are people who do not recognize humanity as other than a great amorphous mass of people whose existence represents a nuisance to them personally. People readily disposed of should they become too great an impediment to whatever the desires of the psychopath happen to be.

From this psychically maladaptive cauldron of failed human beings come the haters, the cruel manipulators of humankind, the tyrants and the despots incapable of, and disinterested in caring about the well-being of others. From their distorted imaginations come visions of destruction on a mass scale.

These are the genocidal murderers of innocent populations, the volatile war-mongers who lay waste to civilization. When these individuals are identified for the monsters they are they have already committed their unspeakable crimes.

Some are called to the International Criminal Court to be judged on behalf of humanity, and they laugh derisively at the human construct that would hold them to account for their monstrous behaviours. Most of these monsters consider themselves impervious to human justice and indestructible in their power-hungry appetites.

Most, like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, will become admired footnotes in history that their would-be successors make every effort to emulate. Many, like Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mussolini, Nicolae Ceausescu, Omar al-Bashir and Osama bin Laden, damage society and eventually justice is seen to be done.

Their legions of admirers enlist in their deadly destructive games in an effort of social upheaval to reflect their chaotic values. There is nothing that society at large is able to do to extirpate their influences, to attempt to halt their progress, to limit the damage they inflict on society.

Now that the technological advances of the 20th Century gave birth to those of the 21st Century and accelerating rapidly to bring us to hitherto-unimagined levels of instant global communication, the messages that they convey and the ill deeds they promulgate appear to proliferate at lightning speed.

Web sites that declare their intention to annihilate great swaths of populations, and teach recruits how they may join in the conflagration abound. Representing in a viral way the genie that leaped out of the bottle that confined it when humankind first learned the skills of manipulating and controlling fire.

The fire that civilization is now learning to live with is that of incendiary hatred for one another. The divisions that separate us through ideology, politics, culture, religion appear to become wider, the gulf more dire between human connection than ever before.

The more readily we are able to communicate, the more incessant and dire the message: to reject and to spurn and to deride and to foster hatreds that will not be remedied by the good will of the hapless majority in fear of the unexpected that has proven to descend with no warning to stir terror in our hearts.

Nasty little viperous charlatans whose inability to adjust to societal norms strut about on the Internet in emulation of al-Qaeda's vile messaging. And the al-Qaeda offshoots take inordinate pride in their growing ability to initiate further contacts, encouraging others to promote terror.

Still there is hope.

A website that claims "Our web site does not advocate terrorism or genocide against any people. All information on this site is for informational purposes only" - when the site itself is totally given over to the hopeful destruction of Jews and the State of Israel, extending those good wishes further to include Western democracies such as Australia, Europe and North America as tools of the Jews - demonstrates that even monsters may possess a droll sense of humour.

And isn't humour both a weapon and a potentially useful emotion to be leashed for agreeable compromise? We may yet end up laughing ourselves to death.

A Christmas of Fear

"We love Christmas but this year it feels bitter. You sit somewhere and you're afraid; you go shopping and you're afraid; you go for a walk and you're afraid. Iraq has become a hell."

Christians, needless to say in the Middle East, long pre-dated the introduction of Islam. Yet within the Middle East, Christians have become an endangered species. Like Jews before them, Christians have lived in various countries of the Middle East for millennia. And Jews and Christians lived among Muslims, albeit as second-class residents, for an additional thousand years.

There are now scant few Jews living anywhere in Muslim-dominated countries of the Middle East, despite a heritage of Jewish life in Arab countries. With the creation of the State of Israel, Arab states disenfranchised their Jewish populations, and exiled them, first taking possession of their worldly goods.

A roughly equivalent number of oriental Jews were forcibly removed from Arab countries furious with the establishment of a Jewish state in their geographic midst, to those Palestinians who were convinced they should voluntarily and briefly leave 'Palestine', until the combined Arab armies vanquished the new state and returned the land to Arab Palestinians.

The culturally rich presence of Jews in Arab countries with their long histories and heritage was extinguished in a paroxysm of rage at the presence of a majority-Jewish state. Now, Christians within Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East have gradually been pushed to the edge of non-existence. They have been viciously targeted as 'infidels' for whom death is appropriate.

In Iraq death threats and violence and death itself has been visited calamitously on the half-million Orthodox Christian communities. Which represents half the number of Christians that existed there a decade earlier. Church congregations have suffered violent invasions by bomb-wielding Islamists who have splattered the walls of their churches with blood and gore, murdering priests, women, children and helpless men.

The Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk, in view of al-Qaeda-inspired threats against the country's Christian minority has stated: "The Christians of Kirkuk will not celebrate the feast of Christmas this year, except for masses, which will not be held at night but at 10 a.m., after myself and 20 other Christian personages received threats from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq."

The Christian Church in Iraq did not come to the defence of Iraqi Jews in their time of need. For those who could speak out and did not also viewed Jews as their enemies despite having lived alongside the Jews for thousands of years. Those who might have used their moral outrage did not because they felt no moral outrage.

Now the fate that transpired to overtake the destiny of Arab Jews in Iraq has turned in the direction of Arab Christians in Iraq. The lesson, however, is lost in the ephemeral shadows of history and humankind's inability to recognize its moral duty to one another.

A New Shoah: The human cost of the jihad against Israel

Giulio Meotti's A New Shoah: The human cost of the jihad against Israel

by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, posted online at Jihad Watch, 10 December 2010

Almost every day at Jihad Watch I chronicle yet another incident of jihadist mass-murder: jihadists kill sixteen with suicide bomb outside a church, jihadists kill ten with a bomb at a hospital, and on and on. So many murders, so many dead, and in virtually all the news stories about each jihad attack, the only thing we're told about the victims is their number.

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic," goes the old adage often wrongly attributed to Joseph Stalin, and it's true: it is all too easy to forget that behind the each one of the huge numbers of victims of the jihad today is a human story, an individual with a life, with loves, with plans, with hopes.

But it is essential that we not forget this, for our own sake - for the sake of our resolve in continuing to fight against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. It is essential that we not allow ourselves to become desensitized to the human cost of this great struggle for freedom. It is essential that we realize the full magnitude of what the jihadists are taking from us: the lives they are destroying, and the emotional devastation they are leaving in their wake: the burdens they're placing on people who are not combatants, who never expected to find themselves in the middle of a war, and who are being let down on a massive scale by those who have sworn to protect them.

That is what is so valuable about Italian journalist Giulio Meotti's A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism. Israel has lost 1,500 people to the Second Intifada over the last ten years - the equivalent of about 54,000 victims of jihad terror in the United States. Islamic jihadists have murdered them on buses, in restaurants, at synagogues, and anywhere else they could. Meotti interviewed dozens of the victims' families and survivors of jihad attacks, and introduces us to a few of the ordinary and extraordinary people whose lives were cut short by those attacks. He brings them back from the realm of "statistic" to that of "tragedy," and in the process, reminds us of the real reasons why we fight, why we resist the Islamic jihad against Israel and the West, why the U.S. must stand with Israel, and why we must prevail.

Meotti's profiles of Israeli victims of jihad terror are impossible to read without being overcome by sadness at the tragic waste of it all, and anger at the West's faltering in the face of this monstrous evil. We meet - to take just one example -- Carmit Ron, the only member of her family to survive a jihadist suicide bombing that murdered fifteen people at the Matza restaurant in Haifa during the Passover holiday on March 31, 2002. She says of her children, "I continue to believe that I'm about to wake up from a nightmare, that I'll go to check and find all three of them sleeping in their beds. But it doesn't happen. And I'm the one who has to go on living. I don't know why, but I feel that somehow I owe it to them, to Aviel, to Anat, to Ofer. And I will go on."

Yet as she does go on, the jihadists do as well, and it is still an open question as to whether the U.S. and Europe will summon the courage and clarity of vision necessary to defend themselves and stand with Israel against their efforts to end ever more lives in full flower. The propaganda aspect of the jihad can be as devastating in the long run as acts of terror themselves, for they rob us of the will to resist, the will we need to stand up and defend our civilization and culture before it is too late. Yet the Palestinians continue to wage their propaganda jihad virtually unopposed.

"The history of Israel," writes Meotti, "has been buried under a mound of falsehood." After detailing many of the Israeli attempts to forge a lasting peace with its Arab Muslim neighbors, he concludes that all of Israel's leaders "have repeated the word that Israel's neighbors never say: peace." The people he profiles in A New Shoah have given their lives for Israel - a role in history that most or all of them never expected or intended to play. It is up to us who have survived them to work to ensure that they have not died in vain.

Posted by Robert on December 10, 2010 4:03 PM

Courage and Character

Glad I'm a woman. Would have to think twice about being happy if I were a black woman, though. As though being a woman isn't enough of a punishment in a male-centered world. I remember when I was a young girl - and that was an awfully long time ago - wondering what it would be like to be a boy, and then making an effort to walk like a boy, and to be tough like a boy. It felt good for a while, and then it got boring and I missed being a girl so I reverted to femaledom.

Only a few years later I met a boy, was friends with him for years, and still am. Wish all men were like him. But then, if they were, what would make him so outstandingly different to me? People are imbued with their own idiosyncrasies, their inborn and inherited and nurtured and acquired characteristics. And biases, and perspectives. And talents and propensities. And then there's the darker side of character; those who are sociopaths, for example.

Those are the kinds of people - either male or female - that should be kept out of certain professions. Especially those who slop over from sociopathy into psychopathy. They make life a misery for everyone else. They're the bullies on the block, in the schoolyard, at the workplace. And although their humanity is often called into question, as long as they don't slip over the edge into the infliction of violence upon others, they take their place in society.

One might think that police forces have good reason to be especially vigilant that they do not afford entry to these types of personalities within their ranks. But one also supposes that it is not always readily apparent when screening appropriate candidates, to distinguish personalities that may at some future date unleash their venomous attitudes and physical abuse on the public.

Stacy Bonds, a 27-year-old woman on her way home on foot from a late-night party, was accosted by Ottawa police in 2008. A lone woman out walking alone in the wee hours of the morning might be encouraged to see police in evidence, assuring her safety. But these police had other thoughts; they stopped her to determine whether there was anything amiss about her being there; whether she posed some kind of threat.

Just a young woman walking on her own on Rideau Street, a main downtown Ottawa thoroughfare, on her way home. She identified herself, they ran her name, found nothing untoward and indicated she could proceed. She had the audacity to back up and ask why they had stopped her to begin with. Authority does not take well to being questioned. They arrested her. For public intoxication.

Took her in to the police station, where she was exposed to a scenario straight out of a Kafka novel. None of it made any sense, which was probably what made it all the more terrifying. She was physically manhandled, and sexually probed. The only time she attempted to defend herself was when a male officer slide his hand inside her pants toward her inner thigh.

And that's when she was slammed to the floor, her shirt and bra cut off her body, and after another few physical slugs for good measure, left in a prison cell half naked for almost four hours. That certainly taught her a lesson. Uppity young black women go around assuming police are there to ensure their security at their own risk.

Her human rights were violated, she was humiliated and left to wonder what kind of world she inhabited and had taken for granted. And she was charged with public drunkenness and assaulting a police officer. The public prosecutor was adamant that she was charged for good reason, even though a video was available illuminating the entire disgraceful scenario.

The charges against her were put into intelligent focus by Justice Richard Lajoie, who reached the conclusion that she had been assaulted, her dignity abraded unconscionably, and there was no justice in this young woman having had to undergo such a dreadful ordeal. If adversity is good for building character, it looks as though Stacy Bonds has an abundance of super-charged character.

Leaving Ottawa Police Chief Vern White with a deplorable mess he will have to clear up. Clearly, the offending police officers, particularly Sgt. Steve Desjourdy who has been seriously implicated in previous human rights offences against women, has no place on the Ottawa police force.

Professional Ethics and Jewish Sensibilities

Jewish Surgeon Walks Out on Nazi Patient
by Chana Ya'ar

A Jewish doctor walked out of an operating room in Germany last week after seeing a Nazi tattoo on his patient’s arm.

“I will not operate on your husband,” he told the patient’s wife. “I am Jewish.” The patient, a 36-year-old man, bore a tattoo of the Reichsadler, the Imperial Eagle, perched on a swastika.

The 46-year-old surgeon had another doctor finish the procedure, according to the daily Bild, which published an article Friday about the incident in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Paderborn.

Public display of Nazi symbols has been illegal in Germany since the end of World War II. Violation of the law carries a sentence of up to three years in jail.

Prior to the rise of the Third Reich, the eagle was a German national symbol, and continued as such following the war. Currently it is called the Bundesadler.

Responses to the article posted on the newspaper’s website were mixed, with several readers expressing views that the doctor was unprofessional for not being able to separate his own personal feelings from his work. Others observed that the doctor might well have placed himself at risk by continuing: “Imagine, if anything had gone wrong and he was accused of being influenced,” one reader pointed out.

“A good call,” opined a third, who added, “he was doing the right thing for the safety of the patient,” because it was possible that he “could not continue with the operation with full concentration because of the tatoo (sic).”

The doctor’s actions, and the article, also affected at least one reader’s perceptions of Jews as a result:

“I’m glad I read this, as I’m always falling out with an Israeli friend over Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and I feared that I might be anti-Semitic,” he wrote. “I agree 100 percent with the doctor, given that he handed over to another surgeon. He didn’t do the guy any harm, but set (sic) a signal.”

Published online at Arutz Sheva, 14 November 2010

The Muslim World

In London, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a day that Western countries commemorate variously as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans' Day, with grave ceremony and sadly proud remembrance, some representatives of the Muslim community felt obliged to offer their contempt for this signal occasion by burning the symbol of the day, a red poppy.

That is the red poppy that is worn in remembrance over the heart, of people who remember the misery and dread atrocity of conflict, but still recognize the need to offer physical resistance to the would-be tyrants and aggressors on the world stage. And offer their emotional remembrance in the sacrifices of their countries' young who marched off to offer resistance to murderous totalitarian regimes.

Islamic protesters, some dressed in dark clothing, some masking their faces, carried banners, chanting slogans like "British soldiers: terrorists", confronting police officers whose presence was there to offer them protection against the outraged counter-protest by the English Defence League. For living in Britain, the Islamic protesters had the freedom to offer their opinion however outrageously, vindictively grotesque and culturally insensitive and blatantly counter to British values.

The Muslims, about thirty-five in number said they represented a group called Muslims Against Crusades: "The British soldiers you remember on this day are soldiers who have taken innocent lives in illegal occupations and unjust wars. Our aim is not violence but if people come to us with violence, Muslims will defend themselves."

Fair enough. They might wish to explain whether they also march in disgust and anger when sectarian Muslim atrocities occur, as they do with startling regularity. The news media are never idle in their incessant reports on vicious bloody attacks by Muslims against other Muslims in Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan - and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

The question must be asked, and deserves a thoughtful response: Why is it that the greater Muslim community - the ummah, does not stand up in righteous protest against the slaughter that Muslims perpetrate against one another? Why is it acceptable that Sunni Muslims can characterize Shia as 'apostates' and feel justified in murdering them?

Why are the lesser sects - in terms of size of their faithful - of Islam, like the Ismaelis and the Ahmadis not recognized as true Muslims and suffer huge intolerance of constant perpetration of murderous onslaughts while praying in their mosques? Mosques represent the ultimate place of refuge, do they not? Why are they continually being bombed, and those within slaughtered?

Why is it that it is the Western world that stands up in protest when Iran flogs and stones women whom they accuse of being adulteresses? Why is it that Saudi Arabia is able to sentence young men to be beheaded, without protest? Why is it that Afghanistan can declare a death sentence for a Muslim transferring allegiance to another religion? How is it that when a Pakistani court sentences a Christian mother of five to death for blasphemy it is acceptable?

And when the Pope speaks out finally on behalf of the Christians living in Muslim-dominated countries to plead for an end to car bombings, assassinations of Christian clerics, slaughter of their parishioners, destruction of their churches, not an iota of concern is heard emanating from Muslims complacent in their belief that Islam, as a religion of peace, can do no wrong.

Lynching Black People

Isn't that a great way to distinguish themselves? Win a Halloween-event costume contest by a truly innovative costume design. One that must have taken great creative skills to put together. Are there closet racists alive and well in Campbellford, Ontario? In Ontario? Hardly, let's get real. Canadians aren't bigots and racists. Are they?



In the heart of Ontario? Multicultural Canada? Not a chance.

"A guy in a Ku Klux Klan uniform, Confederate flag attached to the back, with a hood on, was holding a rope. And on the end of the rope was a guy in blackface, and the rope was really a noose around his neck. You know when you look at something and you can't believe what you see? That was my reaction." Mark Andrade

Mr. Andrade clearly got the shock of his life. Mr. Andrade, a proud citizen of Campbellford, Ontario, owner of the Rubbs Barbecue Bistro, down the street from the Campbellford Legion Hall, which he visits on occasion to share a beer with his friends and neighbours, would never have imagined that he would ever be exposed to anything quite like it.



It represents a nightmare experience he will not soon forget. One that will most certainly colour the way he looks at his friends and neighbours. He left the Legion Hall in shock and disgust, and was informed later by people who came by his restaurant from the Legion Hall that the brilliant costuming had taken away first prize in the competition.



Mr. Andrade had previously felt that nothing like that blatant display of racism could ever occur in his town. He'd lived there for over a decade, after all, and never experienced anything he could remotely consider to be racist. The formal apology that came his way, expressed through the Legion branch's president, somehow rings hollow to Mr. Andrade.

"Their members, their executive members, are the ones that organized this party, are the ones that hosted this party, are the ones that allowed those people to come in and then judged them to win first prize. For them to say that this is not the opinion of our members, that's wrong. Apparently it is the opinion of some of their members."

It may make him feel slightly better that the president of the Legion branch informed him that she had received hundreds of complaints. After the fact. He heard no one objecting, however, at the time of the occurrence.

"If they thought that was in good humour and funny enough to win a prize, that's disgusting. If that's their opinion, and they think there's nothing wrong with lynching black people, that's totally disgusting. Either way, there's nothing right about what happened."

He's perfectly correct.

partygoers at the Campbellford, Ont. Legion, one wearing a Ku Klux Klan costume and leading another in blackface by a noose, won first place in the night’s costume competition.">

Outraged witnesses say these two Halloween partygoers at the Campbellford, Ont. Legion, one wearing a Ku Klux Klan costume and leading another in blackface by a noose, won first place in the night’s costume competition.

Human Rights Tribunals Appointing University Deans...

It seems breathtaking in the scope of its arrogant determination that the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, agreeing to hear the claims of a female academic who insists she was hard done by, concludes that it has the authority and the right of deciding whom a university should appoint as a dean.

To begin with, the claim by Professor Emily Carasco that she was unfairly passed over for consideration of Dean of Law at University of Windsor appears to have little basis in reality.

How can there possibly be any real trust in the veracity, professionalism, capability of an academic who plagiarizes work, claiming it to be her own, and when she is discovered to have done so and taken to task over it, claims herself to have been a victim of racism?

She contends that her candidacy for the position of Dean was demolished through the ill will of a highly respected academic of impeccable professionalism.

It isn't all that difficult to claim that one has been a victim of bigotry, and to insist that this and not one's own failure as an honest and clear scholar lies at the crux of the matter. When, in fact, her own lack of scholarship and integrity led to her candidacy failing the grade. Yet the Ontario Human Rights Commission responds with righteous alacrity to any claims of racism, however bogus in nature.

A reasonable person might assume that all the facets involved in the case would be examined - and the knowledge that plagiarism disqualified an academic from being awarded an elite position in academia was the reasonable conclusion, and not a trumped-up charge of racism - but might be surprised that the Commission would assume otherwise.

The University of Windsor now faces a rather awkward situation where academic malfeasance can be overruled as a causative of disqualifying a candidate for departmental head, and where, because a disqualified candidate can call upon the Ontario Human Rights Commission to judge the situation in terms of purported racism, their decisions can be overturned by an outside authority.

And it is evidently legal under a section of the Ontario Human Rights Code, which empowers the tribunal to make such an order in compliance with the Act. This outright interference in the decision-making authority of a university to elect to a hierarchical position of scholarly influence a candidate of choice is beyond absurd; who is more qualified to make that decision, the university or the tribunal?

Academic freedom is not, obviously, guaranteed or untouchable, but can be breached to advantage an individual who claims racism when none exists, and where scholarship itself is the question and has been found wanting.

Blazing Cat Fur: My Muslim patients used to be pleasant and religion was not discussed...

Blazing Cat Fur: My Muslim patients used to be pleasant and religion was not discussed...

My Muslim patients used to be pleasant and religion was not discussed...

"I am a physician in practice for twenty years.

I am also Jewish. I have never hidden this from my patients.

Not too long ago, I had a Muslim lady, wearing a veil, bring a young child to me. The patient had been having long-standing bowel problems and was losing weight. No other physician had been able to help.

In one visit the problem was solved. The mom called to make an appointment for me to see her other young child who also had a health problem that other physicians had been unable to help.

Before I saw the second patient the mother sent me a long e-mail. She announced that she had joined an international effort to boycott anyone, group or business that supports Israel. She wrote that if I support Israel she would no longer allow me to care for her children. She went on at length about how the Israelis are oppressing Muslims and are criminals who must be brought to justice.

I replied that I do support Israel as a Jewish state. I added that I question the wisdom of any mother who would deny her children quality medical care based on her politics.

She then sent me a short email saying that I am arrogant and that the real reason she will not return is that her kids hate me.

In twenty years of practice caring for people from many backgrounds I have never experienced such a situation.

My Muslim patients used to be pleasant and religion was not discussed. However, in the last few years something has changed with many of them. They are now demanding that I act according to their view of things or be punished in some way.

This ideology is demanding power and will never accept "No" for an answer."
....


Perverse as this story may appear it is not the first instance I have come across, Dr. Sion Houri of Israel's Save A Child's Heart foundation related a similar tale of parental fanaticism and abuse. The name, location and practice specialty of the physician involved have been withheld for obvious reasons.

Update: Barbara Kay writes in response - "I think it would have been very interesting if he had replied to her query, "I do not ask my patients what their politics are and I do not think it approrpriate to discuss mine with my patients. It is my job to offer the best professional service I am capable of." Period. He rose to her bait. She had no right to put him in that position. If he had said that and she dropped him as a doctor on suspicion, then she knows she is guilty of pre-emptive racism. This way she feels justified - that she had a "reason" for not availing herself of his servies - and he "enabled" her to feel that way. I don't blame him; his response was instinctive, but this should be a warning to other Jewish doctors that if they are going to lose Muslim patients (and clearly this one is no loss at all, although it is tough on the kids), then they, the Muslims, will have to take ownership of their own bigotry."

The Doctor responds to Ms. Kay: "I knew what she was up to and I wanted to let her know that I am proud to be a Jew and a supporter of the Jewish state. I will never be polite in the face of Muslim intolerance or bullying. The people who act this way are cowards at heart. They are bullies pure and simple. I wanted to let her know what I thought and I did. I would not handle it differently if I had to do it again. Yes, I feel so sorry for her kids. The little girl was incredibly sweet and we really bonded during our visit. I spent about 1.5 hours with all of them because I wanted to make sure that she was on the right track, health wise. I also liked the mom and still do, politics aside.

I went into my profession to help people, regardless of their opinions and beliefs."

>> Posted by Blazing Cat Fur

The Damned

Jews think of themselves as the universal scapegoat, the racial minority within the world's population held in distrust and resentment. There's good reason for this acknowledgement, given the position of Jews throughout history. Where their religion - although heralding in the word's first-largest and prominent and second-largest and problematical religions - was held to be inferior. And where the culture inspired by Judaism, and the heritage related to its historic past in were treated with contempt.

The ethnic characteristics of Jews were identified and captured in a series of hateful caricatures, physical, spiritual and behavioural, making them social outcasts. That status allowed Jews to be exploited, slandered, herded into ghettos, held accountable for all the ills of the world through their sinister exploits and machinations to eventually control the world's finances, news organizations and social institutions.

Jews were disowned as citizens, their futures thwarted, laws and obligations imposed on them singly among all other groups of peoples; forced to be homeless, landless, held in general contempt as worthless sub-humans whose criminal minds could never be entrusted to equality of citizenship. That among Jews arose many whose superior intelligence and brilliant capability in all areas of human endeavour was a reality, made little difference.

The world was certain it distastefully harboured too many Jews and the elevation of fascist Germany to world-class status as a formidable warrior class intent on elevating itself to ultimate power led to its being permitted by a complicit world to eliminating a high proportion of existing Jewry. Post-war guilt drove a universal acceptance of Jewish rights and freedoms.

Soon enough eroded after the creation of the State of Israel which swiftly exhibited all of the unfortunate group and individual traits hitherto attributed to Jews. Zionism, the ultimate search for national survival for the world's Jews, resulted in a state that is universally damned for securing itself by denying the human rights of others. A resurgence of anti-Semitism has triumphed.

And another traditional outcast society has emerged to suffer the same insults and tribulations that have been visited on Jews. On a perhaps less ambitious scale, particularly with respect to wholesale extermination, but representing as a pale reflection in its relentless hounding and rejection of another ethnic minority whom the world appears to loathe.

Roma have been persecuted for centuries. Their caravans have been greeted throughout Europe as a blight on society. While living in dire poverty, rejected as normal and deserving people, they have been driven from one geography to another. Petty crimes have been committed of a people denied the capacity to earn a legitimate wage, for no one would hire them. They resorted to excelling in the art of cunning exploits, to survive.

The sad legacy of a people being forced from temporary and permanent places of refuge because they are not accepted into general society has its genesis in a special place that once seemed to have been reserved for Jews. Native, aboriginal populations living throughout the Americas have a fairly vivid understanding of the process by which ethnic populations are devalued and dehumanized.

Germany, the Czech Republic and France have all expelled their Roma populations. Those that remain are left to live desperate lives of poverty, plying trades that allow them to live as indigents, devoid of economic and social security. Children of Roma, born in the more economically and socially advantaged countries of Europe find themselves, after believing themselves to be German or Czech or French in nationality, adrift in alienation in their 'countries of origin'.

These outrages against human dignity and human rights take place in the very countries that advance those virtues, and accuse other, non-democratic countries of abusing human rights with their populations. The level of hypocritical sanctimony emanating from the European Union is nauseating and humanly untenable.

The plight of the globe's Roma should be of concern to every decent community. That it remains below the radar of public concern and that no powerful national, political, humanitarian groups have taken up the cause shames us all.

Who Is A Jew? A Whole Bunch, Dammit!

There goes another illusion. Should we really care? Does it really matter what intransigently fanatic religious fundamentalists insist on observing?

Reflecting the truism that fanatics are truly miserable fanatics. That all ideologies, religions and traditions are imbued with a minority of single-minded, indomitably-certain individuals and groups whose fanatical impact is fraught with danger for the moderates among them. Who, while in the majority as reasonable and tolerant beings are still somehow overruled by the minority bigots.

Judaism is by no means exempt from having its own share of ultra-Orthodox mental misfits insisting that their version and interpretation is the only one truly reflecting the wishes of the Holy One. So, who then is a Jew? Traditionally the descent from mother to child guaranteed authenticity. To be a Jew is to be a Jew. One who inherits the mindsets, values and the soul of a people who have shared sorrow and tribulation throughout time immemorial.

That person is a Jew who considers him/herself a Jew. Having to prove nothing to anyone. Belief in self, pride of self, adherence to that belief is what matters. Whether religious or secular, a Jew is one who feels themselves to be a Jew. Irrespective of having any social, traditional, historical, emotional ethos in common with the greater population of Jews; if the Jewish soul is present, the Jew is, also.

Oops, wrong? A draft bill introduced into the Knesset, you say, whose purpose is to stringently narrow and define the acceptance of Judaism in accord with an ultra-Orthodox strand of belief? In Israel, the country that defines a nation? Israel, the country that holds its arms out enticingly, imploringly, to international Jewry, to the diaspora, to come home? That sacred "right of return" yanked out from underfoot?

Even as Israel was created by Zionists whose singular concern was a haven for Jews, and whose secular outlook was undeniable? An Israel whose founding parents were secular in vision and outlook and practise? As descendants of Israel, are not all Jews welcome to return to their ancestral home? Is it possible a foam-mouthed cabal of fundamentalists can exert such power and pressure as to overturn all of that?

People who in good faith have converted to a religion whose adherents are well known to have suffered the most malign slanders and the most horrendous atrocities to be committed against any allied, ethnic, religious, group in history must now face the potential of their conversion being denied? What insanity is this?

When even Conservative North American congregations are in denial over the possibility of the narrowing of recognition of Judaic identity, how can it be possible that a relatively small group of ultra-fanatic religious Jews can dictate to an entire country how they will henceforth be regarded and what their entitlements may be, and whose will be revoked?

This, then, is self-destruction. No outside intervention required.

Shooting From The Hip Lip

Reality brief: get the facts, not the factoids. The meat, not the giblets. Act in haste, you know you'll be held to account when the facts emerge, and then publicly repent, with sulphur-odoured egg smeared all over your face. Makes you look like the dolts you don't want to resemble, the knee-jerky idiots who took a story, edited it to suit their purpose and cried 'reverse-racism!' because it made their day and headlines, as well.

Here was Shirley Sherrod, a fine upstanding American who understands well, through personal experience and keen observation of the passing scene what racial intolerance and hate-inspired isolation produces. And who did her utmost throughout an honourable service-career to help people survive catastrophic circumstances that would lead to a penuriously dismal failure.

Tasked by her position as an enabler, an administrator of rural development, she assisted hundreds of farmers, black and white, to sustain their livelihoods through joint interaction and shared potentials, surmounting the difficulties of economic difficulties in depressed farming markets. Sharing some signal moments in her past with the NAACP, her statements were videotaped and worked over with sinister intent.

Released on a super-heated right-wing blog and going viral in the news media who picked it up as the latest example of institutionalized racial intolerance in reverse, to stab the current administration with an example of one of their own shafting whites. Even the NAACP, whose conference gathering heard her complete speech, accepted the out-of-context accusations.

Not only leaving her to dangle high in the wind, alone and betrayed but supporting the contentions of those who were responsible for deliberately misreading and misinterpreting her story. "Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race", the national president solemnly condemned.

They were appalled by her actions. No different than the abuse of power against people of colour. "I didn't discriminate", she begged to differ. "I didn't have to help that farmer. I could have sent him out the door without giving him any help at all. But in the end, we became very good friends, and that friendship lasted for some years."

The wife of the farmer in question, now 82, still considers Shirley Sherrod her "friend for life", who was singly responsible for helping her family avoid bankruptcy. "She's the one I give credit for helping us save our farm" (decades previously). The executive director of the nonprofit organization informed CNN: "I can't praise Shirley enough. She holds no malice in her heart."

But unfortunately Shirley Sherrod was urged, encouraged, then finally forced to leave her position as Georgia director of rural development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By an Obama administration horrified that they might be conceived of being linked to someone who behaved so atrociously as was reported by Fox News, thanks to Tea Party activist Andrew Breitbart.

What a difference a day makes. The White House that was so anxiously determined to fire this woman, now agonizes over its rash reaction to a vicious, unproven accusation of racism. "Without a doubt, Ms. Sherrod is owed an apology. I would do so on behalf of this administration. Everybody involved made determinations without knowing all the facts and all the events." The White House regrets the "injustice".

You can bet they do. And an reinstated Shirley Sherrod will just go back to doing what she always did, representing the very best interests of her clients in an unbiased, empathetic and humane manner, a credit to her personally, and to the U.S. administration by default.

Oh, Those Canadian Heroes!

"Activists", those who dedicate themselves to the support of the hard-pressed, the unfortunates of the world. They are admirable indeed. Going out of their way to lend their passion and their efforts to thankless work on behalf of the down-trodden, the oppressed. Their target - the world bully, Israel. Now that's a popular target, so support should be readily accessible. All $300,000 of the funding to launch a ship to effect a breach in Israel's blockade of poor shuddering Gaza.

Of course, knowing that the de facto government of Gaza is held by Canadian law to be a terror group, it is not their intention to support Hamas, but to bring comfort and solace and desperately-needed provisions to Palestinian Gazans. The huddled masses of Palestinians living in fear and desolation in their squalid refugee camps, abandoned by the world to their fate, slowly disintegrating with a howl of pained despair. Struggling to survive the lack of goods, of opportunities, of freedom.

Are these humanitarians on an enlightened teaching mission? To bring to the attention of the Gazan masses an ameliorating potential? That recognizing the right of existence of the State of Israel will most certainly, and with great alacrity, present them with all the freedom, opportunities and goods that their aggrieved hearts long for? That to inform their government that it is their collective wish to lay down arms and cease threatening Israel and its citizens will result in peace for all?

That is a worthy mission and we passive onlookers can only commend these brave Canadian souls. Oh, they have a mercenary mission do they, not quite the humanitarian one we envisioned? They plan to act as retail middlemen, to pick up Palestinian goods in Gaza to be sold abroad, they say? What Palestinian goods? Weren't we given to understand by this charitable group of Canadians and other activists before them that the problem for Gaza residents is that they are bereft of goods?

Oh, right. The goods that are being daily smuggled through those notorious tunnels, the route that weapons and the smuggling of terrorists also take, swifting through those tunnels. But these Canadians must then be referring to the civilian goods, the refrigerators, electronic equipment, luxury vehicles that have been smuggled into Gaza. They envision smuggling them back out, loading these goods onto their ship, and sailing off with them?

Where? Ah, to Canada? They'll be sold back here in Canada? And the proceeds of the sales to be divided between the fences - um - Canadians enablers and the Palestinians? How very thoughtful! But puzzling. Help us out here. The reason for the blockade, for the Turkish one that went awry, for the Libyan one just docked in Egypt, is to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinians; food, building materials, pharmaceuticals, baby diapers, right?

So what's with the loading of goods from Gaza for the purpose of selling it elsewhere? Oh, to see that the Palestinians get some spending money. Don't they know, these humanitarians, that the Palestinians get ample spending money courtesy of the UN, the EU, the US, and yes, even Israel? Here's another little secret they might like to have shared with them, in the interests of enlightenment. Israel regularly transfers hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA's bank accounts.

There is a Protocol on Economic Relations between Israel and the PLO whereby Israel transfers to the PA value added taxes collected on behalf of the PA. Israel, in fact, transfers even more than is collected in the interests of strengthening the economy of the Palestinian Authority. A strong econony, you see, results in a more independent, confident PA and citizenry, one more clearly prepared to embark on a mission of responsible government that should result in a peace arrangement between the two. Logically.

And here's more interesting information. Since Israel, due to international pressure, has lifted the blockade to make accessibility to a whole range of consumer goods a trifle less onerous Gazans, and particularly Hamas, have been thrown into a tizzy. Too many options, too much choice for such a small market to absorb. Especially since Hamas has been loathe to pay the salaries of those Palestinians dependent upon them, from the Hamas government's cash reserves.

Hey, don't believe it? The Al Ayyam newspaper, published in Gaza reports that clothing retailers lament an overabundance of goods in their market. Soft drink manufacturers and the local furniture industry are upset they now have to compete with lower-priced Israeli goods. They're insisting that Hamas do its duty and prevent Israeli products from entering their market, because they're hampering their sole-source production to meet local market requirements. The competition is so stiff they may be forced out of business.

For its part, Hamas claims the situation is "part of the plot by Israelis, Arabs and Europeans to restore the rule of (Fatah) Palestinian Authority in Gaza". See what a tangled political, ideological, social web you're infringing on? You will not be welcomed with open arms by Hamas. They're the government, stupid.

But of course, we're overlooking your agenda. The furtive one you don't much mention, the one that underlies the humanitarian mission on behalf of the poor Palestinians in Gaza. The one that targets Israel, the one meant to highlight yet again that all the world's ills start and stop with Jews. Interfering in everybody's business, bringing unrest to the world because of their determination to - well, you know - rule the world?

Damn them.

A Malevolent Mind

Now that really is malign, a mind so ferociously obsessed with spewing the filthy bile of pure, unadulterated hatred. "Yes, I am a fanatic. I am ready to kill millions. We must never cease in our efforts to eliminate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Their permanent liquidation and destruction is the only solution."

Tch, that 'solution' again. And here we thought it was all over with the Final Solution, didn't we? Aren't we so dreadfully naive?

The brain in which that mind exists should be pickled in brine and studied by scholars seeking to discover the origins of human failure. Just as the brilliant scientist Paul Broca studied the human brain to discover the speech production centre located in the frontal lobes, scientists could probe the brain of Salman Hossain to ascertain whether it really is a brain, or a malfunctioning (anal) sphincter.

Imagine, with that study completed, the understanding of virulent racial hatred could be revolutionized and that dreadful dysfunction might be amenable to alteration.

It might be conceived that the strictured, walnut-sized organ passing for a brain in those species of homo sapiens like himself, could be anatomically corrected through extensive surgery which, while rendering the patient inarticulately dumb, might result in an average-size brain with an average capacity to understand equality and human decency.

In the meantime, the vile creature has fled its roost. After spewing his garbage of racial annihilation for far too long, public security authorities may finally have reached the conclusion that this sad vestige of quasi-humanity appears in dire need of assistance that might only be achieved through the intervention of a lobotomy.

But he has fled, alas. Some base and elemental instinct must have alerted him to imminent apprehension.

The Bangladeshi-Canadian whose parents must surely wonder what they had given birth to, has returned to the country where Islam may look kindly upon his utterances; surely he meant to travel on to Pakistan, to Saudi Arabia, to Iran? They would be most eager to take advantage of the rapier-sharpness of his silver tongue laced with deadly vitriol for the Western dross, the infidels; above all the Jews.

That the Ontario Attorney-General has managed to wake himself out of his slumbering sense of beneficent doubt to arrive, however tardily, to the realization that this pathetic impostor of a human being might represent some slight threat to civility within the province, is quite wonderful. A big hand of appreciation for Attorney-General Chris Bentley!

And, on second thought, it is easy to imagine why the man whom his mother considers "stupid, an idiot and immature" would seek to achieve infamy here and the fame of notoriety there. All that adoring attention from the ranks of the Islamofascists works to produce a never-ending adrenaline rush.

It is so heady to be so beloved, and venerated, almost as though one were Allah himself.

And the happily defiant notes to the world through the blog of this creature resonate with the calm assurance of righteousness, the intent to complete what others failed to do, despite their solemn promises; let's hear it for a Thousand-Year-Rich Islamist Empire!

Seriously, if the world of Islam really is as invested as its clerics and academics claim they are in presenting Islam as a religion of peace and goodwill, then why is there no popular Muslim outcry against the filthy bile of fanatical Muslims like this piece of drek?

Canadian Values and Faith Journeys

Well bugger the Canadian dedication to egalitarianism, to a well-adjusted and well-functioning pluralist society where people from various ethnic backgrounds, different cultures, heritage, class and ideologies, not to mention religions, are meant to get along famously with one another. The wide open fresh-air spaces of the country, its guarantees under the law to all and sundry of its citizens, the capacious social welfare infrastructure and the wealth of its natural resources and its industry, just automatically seem to invigorate people with the hale conscience of brotherhood and sisterhood.

Once immigrants take up Canadian citizenship they become magically transformed - make that reasonably transformed - into accepting and becoming meaningfully-gracious citizens of the country. Equality under the laws of the land. The challenges to learn about one another, and appreciate the diversities that bloom within society, lending an air of exoticism to Canadian stodginess, makes us more well-rounded, more interesting, more challenging, more attractive.

That's the theory, isn't it?

It's an amazing transformation; all social, political, religious enmities left behind in the original societies and political cultures that fostered them. Once people reach the shores of Canada they relinquish the suspicions and the mistrust they harboured against other people. Simply because they become more reasonable because of the fact that they are now, within Canada, with its freedom-guarantees, part of a social culture that fosters amity between people.

So it stands to reason, obviously, that the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is set to host the third annual Journey of Faith Conference, organized by its chairman, Imam Saed Rageah of the Abu Huraira Centre and Toronto mosque to help Muslim youth find their way back to Islam. To more fully appreciate the roots, the values and the justice system, and the need for spiritual struggle to fulfill their obligations to Islam.

Inspirational speakers have been invited to loud acclaim from among the community for whom the Toronto mosque and its imam remain so highly regarded. And it is, under these faithful circumstances, disquieting to learn that the federal government of this country has become involved to disturb the serene proceedings of faith. Refusing to issue a visitor's visa to the featured speaker at the conference, Muslim televangelist Zakir Naik.

How utterly untoward. The organizers of the annual Journey of Faith are rather dismayed, but not deterred, for on their website for this grand event they bravely declare:

"The organizers of the 3rd Annual Journey of Faith conference regret to announce that Dr. Zakir Naik will be unable to attend this year's conference due to the uncertainty of his admission to Canada. The conference will go on as planned and Dr. Zakir Naik will be joining us via live video conferencing."

What a relief, he will be as good as there. Virtually there, as it were. What's up with the government? Oh, some unease with the presence of Dr. Naik just because one of the Toronto 18 terror suspects declared his appreciation of the sermons issued by this televangelist? Oh, just because the man preaches hatred and is a severely divisive figure? Hatred? As in "every Muslim should be a terrorist", that Jews are "our staunchest enemy", and support for Osama bin Laden?

Hmm, right. And the other featured personalities? Espousing violent jihad, right. Exposing the Jews as the "extremists of the world", right. Oh, and the correct way to go about beating one's wife, right. Yes, that does not quite seem to reflect Canadian values, to be sure. And the mosque, and its faithful, and its imam, are all aware of the controversy, and the fact that their version of the journey of faith does not reflect Canadian values or social mores?

Um yes, they're intent on 'spreading Islam'. Allah above all. And these are Canadian citizens? Canada has admitted these people, considering them to be capable of adjusting to Canadian values, and accepting the Canadian system of equality, and understanding that racism and bigotry are not commensurate with those values? This demographic, deeply immersed in their faith which they claim is one of peace, agitates for division and hatred?

That the very government that agreed to give them safe haven, and to guarantee them all manner of individual freedoms and legal protections under our system of liberal democratic governance rejects the admission of a hate-monger whose message appears to resonate with them, gives them no hint of their inattention to Canadian values? Their defiant disregard of those values appears, on sincere reflection to speak to their inability to adjust to universal civility.

Intriguingly enough the topics "Women in Islam", and "status of women in accordance with the Qur'an" and "What non-Muslim personalities say about Islam and Prophet Muhammad", speaks volumes about what the agenda is. Attesting to the unsuitability of these people to Canadian citizenship and residence. That's ten thousand young Muslim men and women in our midst who embrace a version of Islam that is obviously antithetical to Canadian values.

That's ten thousand too many.

Why Pride?

This is a really peculiar phenomenon, a study in social behaviour that is truly difficult to parse and to make intelligent sense of. But it most certainly is a reality. One that has been demonstrated time and again. Jews tend to empathize, have a natural sympathy for any group within society that is perceived to be among the downtrodden. That may have a great deal to do with Jews' historical difficulties in being accepted throughout the diaspora in whichever country they have settled.

They know what it feels like to be dispossessed, to be scorned and maltreated.

That knowledge gives greater impetus to the natural human impulse to be compassionate and caring toward others. What they have suffered through the millennia, they wish no other group to struggle with. And Jews have always for a myriad of reasons been in the forefront of social events leading to the kind of change that would bring in forward-looking and socially-valuable alterations in the social compact, changes that would result in equality.

During the French Revolution Jews were among those who brought about change, and who benefited from it. In South Africa, during Apartheid, Jews were influential in doing what they could to effect the downfall of that socially corrosive, divisive situation. During the American civil rights movement, Jews were often there, right in front, marching with the leaders of the black movement. Jews have also represented the need for fair and just treatment of aboriginals.

During the Russian Revolution that led to the downfall of the Czar and the royal family, and the triumph of Communism, leading to the USSR having domination over its neighbours in a great big unhappy family of communal rule in the name of equality, Jews were also in the forefront. In the liberalization of society finally accepting the inevitable, that homosexuals were not sub-natural but yet another expression of human sexuality, Jews were present as agitators for change.

In each and every one of those instances, brotherhood and sisterhood and freedom and liberation and joyfulness suffused those who were involved, and there was total acceptance and gratitude for the efforts of all involved, and Jewish inclusiveness and respect was guaranteed. In each and every one of those instances, after a period of time, a nasty, grumpy return to another kind of normalcy occurred, where Jews once again became a symbol of the 'other', and bigoted reactions to their presence resulted.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is yet another one of those manifestations of a group having enjoyed liberation through their own efforts at normalizing acceptance in society, and where Jews have had a hand, and where the movement itself seems to require a mission to seek out what they consider to be offensive entities whom they can in their turn spurn, scorn and relegate to a position of scurrilous demonization. In the case of Toronto queers, Israel has surfaced as their mission.

Attributing to Israel the kind of apartheid that was forced by an unaccepting society upon them, even while they cannot be ignorant of the fact that those whom they champion, whose religion they accept as just and fair targets those of their like in Muslim countries for death, under Shariah law. But it is Israel that is the villain of the piece, the Jewish State which accepts and protects the freedoms of gays. Israel has the misfortune to be a Jewish country and that alone is what propels those who express their hatred of it.

Toronto's Gay Pride parade has its counterpart celebration in Tel Aviv. There is no event even glancingly approximating such an event in any Muslim country. In most Arab Muslim countries and in Aryan Muslim Persia, the death penalty is called for; imprisonment and torture at the very least. Homosexuality is seen as an offence against Islam. Judaism accepts the justice of treating all people with grace and respect. None of which means all Jews are perfectly well behaved and subscribe to generously sensitive acceptance of others. But the preponderance do.

There are no perfect societies. There cannot be any in existence for the simple fact that human beings are not, have never been and never will be perfect. People will always chafe at the sight and the sound and the thought of others very much unlike themselves. But most reasonable people, once they have thoughtfully weighed the differences against the shared likenesses that we all share, accept equality for it brings us closer to the angels than the demons within us.

And then there are those who must hate, who must find an object of social derision, even if they were themselves once subjected to that miserable state of social rejection. And it really is a pity that Toronto's gay community has allowed itself to be manipulated, their code of humanity violated, their attention turned to vilifying and slandering people just like themselves, believing because they want to, that they are righteously justified in doing that.

This signal human failing renders them utterly despicable. There is no excuse, none whatever, for a 'social justice' or 'activist' group to spout hateful invective against others, nor to foment an aura of false accusation, nor to elevate themselves as caring because they support the 'cause' of the Palestinians through a garishly-sordid public relations display meant to dehumanize and degrade Jews. The Middle East conflict is a long, complex one, whose details obviously deliberately escape these social-justice 'activists'.

It is simpler to just protest, to take sides and find the aggressor. During which process they lose the patience and respect of those who helped them free themselves from the chains of social misunderstanding. Their behaviour is worthy of sociopaths passing themselves off as socially-conscious, enlightened souls. They would be further enlightened should they offer to travel to Iran or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, to inform and educate the population there of the social niceties, to respect gays.

From the dank, dark prisons in those countries they can smuggle out postcards to friends and supporters, telling them how preferable it is to live in those countries than in a horrible, human-rights-abusing country like Israel where Muslim gays live openly among the Jewish gays.