RUTHFULLY YOURS

“”….This is the creed that I seek to promulgate both now, and forever. The Jewish people are free — and they of right ought to be free. No journalist, academic, professor, statesman, student, or governmental organization can ever take that right away. It is the spirit of that day which resides in me. It is the song that they sung that I will never cease to sing. And I will work to ensure that that song comes to reside throughout all the earth, eternally….”
When addressing contentions that run counter to such normative values as justice, morality, and truth, I believe it is my academic professional duty to analyze the details of the argument in question and illustrate to my audience why such contentions are sub-par, nefarious, and worthy of reproach.

Admittedly, it is difficult to analyze such pieces from a purely academic standpoint when invectives are hurled at me personally — not in a spirit of academic debate, but rather, to malign and denigrate my personal character. Indeed, I am tempted to speak out in an equally hostile tone against those who would attack me in a pejorative manner. However I will attempt to refrain from doing so here as it is my moral duty to be civil both to my enemies and to my friends, and because I do not believe it to be fitting to stoop down to the level of disrespectful persons. It is in that spirit of civility that I write this piece.

On February 22, a gentleman by the name of Richard Silverstein took considerable issue with an article I wrote in the The Times of Israel about the contentions of one Judith Butler, professor at the University of California, Berkley. I find Butler’s analysis regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict lamentably disagreeable.

Silverstein did not point out any possible faulty premises in my column. He did not question the evidence I presented. He did not find I was lacking in my analysis. Instead, to illustrate his (ahem) intellectual prowess, he shared a Facebook status linking to my column and in his commentary, wrote: “They finally did it: found a Negro Zionist: Uncle Tom is dancin’ for joy!”

It’s no accident that “Israel Apartheid Week,” an annual two-week extravaganza that began this week, focuses on Western college campuses. It’s not just because that’s where young, impressionable future leaders can be found. It’s also because, as a new study reveals, the educated mainstream is the mainstay of good old-fashioned anti-Semitism in today’s West. That counterintuitive finding explains why college campuses are such fertile ground for attacks on the Jewish state.

Prof. Monika Schwarz-Friesel of the Technical University of Berlin reached this conclusion after studying 10 years’ worth of hate mail–14,000 letters, emails, and faxes in all–sent to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli embassy in Berlin. In an interview published in Haaretz yesterday, she said she fully expected to discover that most of it came from right-wing extremists. But in fact, right-wing extremists accounted for a mere 3 percent, while over 60 percent came from educated members of “the social mainstream – professors, Ph.Ds, lawyers, priests, university and high-school students,” she said. Nor were there any significant differences between right-wing extremists’ letters and those of the educated mainstream, Schwarz-Friesel said: “The difference is only in the style and the rhetoric, but the ideas are the same.”

To be clear, these letters weren’t just criticizing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians; we’re talking about classic anti-Semitism–as evident from the samples Haaretz cited:

“It is possible that the murder of innocent children suits your long tradition?” one letter said.

“For the last 2,000 years, you’ve been stealing land and committing genocide,” said another.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/25/israeli-minister-bennett-to-bbc-host-would-you-hand-over-half-of-britain-to-someone-who-keeps-on-killing-you-video/ Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday turned the tables in an interview on BBC’s Hard Talk when he asked host Stephen Sackur, “Would you hand over half of Britain to someone who keeps on killing you?” In the combative interview, Bennett countered Sackur at every turn. Asked about his resistance to the internationally acclaimed […]

Multiculturalism’s Child Brides
Recent reports of under-age marriages in Australia are evidence that the authorities need to do more to enforce marriage laws in Western nations, and in particular to restrict the practice of unregistered ‘clandestine’ religious marriages, particularly Islamic marriages.

This article was first published on Quadrant Online (here).

Two cases recently came to public attention of NSW girls being married to older men in unregistered religious ceremonies, allegedly with the approval of their guardians. The first case was of a 14-year-old girl who reported she was deceived into marrying a 21-year-old. After being subjected to years of sexual and physical abuse she fled the relationship. Her case came to light in October, 2013, when she needed to pursue custody of her daughter through the courts.

The second case was of a 12-year-old married to a 26-year-old overseas student by her father, an Australian-born convert to Islam. Imam Riaz Tasawar, who allegedly conducted the ceremony, has been charged by the police, which is remarkably the first prosecution in NSW for at least 20 years of someone for solemnizing a marriage without being an authorized marriage celebrant. The father has also been charged with procuring his daughter for sexual intercourse and being an accessory to a sexual offence against a child.

During a press conference on January 14, French President François Hollande revealed that French intelligence services believe more than 700 French nationals and residents have travelled to fight in Syria. This figure is more than double the previous estimates.

One month into 2014, Islam-related controversies continued making headlines in newspapers across Europe. The most salient topic involved the dramatic increase in the numbers of European jihadists participating in the war in Syria.

An ominous foreboding is unfolding over Europe, as counter-terrorism officials intensify their warnings about the negative security implications surrounding the return of hundreds—possibly thousands—of battle-hardened jihadists to towns and cities across the continent.

But Syria is only one of many concerns. What follows is a brief survey of some of the more noteworthy stories involving Islam in Europe during just the month of January 2014.

In Britain, a Muslim extremist who hacked a soldier to death on a London street in May 2013, launched a taxpayer-funded appeal against his murder conviction. Michael Adebolajo, 29, who tried to behead the British soldier Lee Rigby with a meat cleaver, maintains he should not have been convicted because he is a “soldier of Allah” and therefore Rigby’s killing was an act of war rather than premeditated murder.

Adebolajo and his co-defendant, Michael Adebowale, 22, were found guilty by a jury in December 2013, but have yet to be sentenced. The judge in the case, Nigel Sweeney, is said to be considering a whole-life prison term, but is awaiting legal guidance from the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. That court is currently reviewing a ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which states that whole-life terms violate the rights of prisoners.

Also in London, a Muslim woman was arrested by counter-terrorism police at Heathrow Airport on January 16 as she was preparing to board a flight to Turkey. Nawal Masaad, 26, is accused of trying to smuggle £16,500 ($27,000; €20,000) in her underwear to jihadists in Syria. She and her alleged co-conspirator, Amal El-Wahabi, 27—a Moroccan who does not work and claims British social welfare benefits for herself and two young sons—are the first British women to be charged with terrorism offenses linked to the conflict in Syria.

In a separate but related incident, two 17-year-old schoolgirls were arrested at Heathrow over suspected terrorism offenses. Police say they were “inspired by jihad” and were attempting to fly from Britain to Syria to fight in the civil war there.

The head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit, Commander Richard Walton, revealed that 14 British minors were also arrested on charges linked to the Syrian conflict in January, compared to 24 for the whole of 2013. Calling the figures “stark,” Walton said it was shocking to see “boys and girls enticed” to join jihadists fighting in Syria. He said he believes it is “almost inevitable” some fighters will try to mount attacks in Britain upon their return.

In a sign of further challenges ahead for Britain, an analysis of recent census data published by the Daily Telegraph on January 10 shows that nearly ten percent of the babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim. The percentage of Muslims among children under five is almost twice as high as in the general population. By way of comparison, fewer than one in 200 people over 85 are Muslim, an indication of the extent to which the birth rate is changing the religious demographic in Britain.

The long-running war on free speech in Britain continued apace in January, when a British Muslim lawmaker was threatened with beheading after he posted an image of Jesus and Mohammed on his Twitter account.

Liberal Democrat Maajid Nawaz (an MP who is also the co-founder of counter-extremism think-tank the Quilliam Foundation) posted a cartoon on January 12 of Jesus and Mohammed greeting one another with the caption, “This is not offensive and I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it.” Furious Muslims launched a petition to have Nawaz removed from Parliament.