RUTHFULLY YOURS

A third intifada has not yet been officially designated by Haaretz or The New York ‎Times or National Public Radio, though it may feel as if one is underway, when ‎over 60% of Israelis in the latest public opinion survey say they now fear for their ‎personal safety. So too, there is no evidence yet that the wave of Palestinian ‎attacks or — new to this current campaign — the attempted mass crossings from Gaza, ‎have peaked. ‎

Certainly, the reporting on the current events in Israel reflects old habits about ‎how most journalists cover stories of Palestinian violence and Israeli responses. ‎Two standbys always work. One if that there is “a cycle of violence” ( a pox on both ‎your houses), always leaving unclear who the original perpetrators were in an ‎individual attack or group of attacks. A second is to keep a daily scorecard of the ‎comparative body counts, especially when there are more Palestinian casualties ‎and fatalities than Israeli, courtesy of Israeli police or soldiers responding to ‎stabbing attacks, not all of which prove lethal before the attacker is neutralized. ‎This narrative leads to the inevitable charge of disproportionality, one that has ‎become the principal media assault on Israeli responses to terror emanating from ‎Gaza in recent years. As in every other instance in recent years, Haaretz is playing ‎its appointed role of feeding the many international journalists in the country with ‎the “truth in English” as it sees it, and as the international media want to receive ‎and see it, confirming all their established biases about Israel behavior.

Il Giornale

Spurred by a lie, namely that the Al Aqsa Mosque is in danger and that Israel wants to destroy the status quo, violence is escalating in Israel. Fatah’s leadership is capitalizing on such a lie: despite the enormous mess in Syria, the whole Islamic world must set now its sights on the tired Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But this is also a dangerous lie, as it lights the fuse of religious fanaticism and brings the confrontation further away from any political solution. After that dozens of people were hit in a week by stones and knives that made dead and wounded, the stabbings on Friday have been three: a 14 year old boy was injured in Jerusalem, an Israeli Arab woman has been hit in Afula to the north, and a soldier on guard was assaulted in Kiryat Arba.

In turn, a deranged young Jew wounded three Arabs in the city of Dimona out of personal revenge. The act was immediately condemned by Netanyahu. At the border with Gaza, while Ismail Haniyeh recognized the participation of Hamas in the clashes, the army killed seven Palestinians attempting to go into Israel amid a demonstration of four hundred people. Heniyeh asked his people to go and pursue terrorist attacks inside Israel, and some tenths succeeded in entering the border.

I have long resisted saying this, but the ongoing Arab violence in Jerusalem has pushed Arab idiocy beyond my capacity for tolerance. I now need to say it and to say it publicly: I am embarrassed to be an Arab.

From the start, we have refused to accept the existence of one tiny Jewish state. We fought that state tooth and nail using all the venom and anti-Semitism that we could muster. We isolated and mistreated our own Palestinian siblings so we could use them as tools against the Jews. We have not relented. We have not shown an ounce of compassion, humanity, or even smarts. We made the destruction of the Jewish home our signature cause. We made hate our religion. When will this nonsense stop?

Even some of us Arabs who have the privilege of also being Israeli have not learned to behave like civilized people. We dismissed, threatened, and silenced Mohammad Zoabi, one of our own, because he dared profess love for his country and revulsion towards terrorists. We have demonstrated in support, not of our own state, Israel, but in support of the terrorists who want her destroyed.

Their philosophies are antithetical, but the common ground of their contempt for liberty, free speech and all who disagree has spawned an alliance of convenience. How much longer can a supine West tolerate the erosion of institutions, values and public safety?
Back in January, when Curtis Cheng was still alive to return every night to his family and nobody had heard of Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, Quadrant Online published the essay below. Today, with PM and Opposition Leader alike reacting to the third Islamic terror attack in less than 12 months — Endeavour Hills, Martin Place and, now, Parramatta — by expressing their immediate sympathy for the Muslim community that keeps spawning these monsters, the topic of Islam’s incompatability with democracy is worth re-visiting.

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For many years we have been sold the idea of multicultural Australia as a significant and energising factor in our national evolution. Cultural differences are supposed to be gradually absorbed into the mainstream, leaving it enriched and reinvigorated in the process. When multiculturalism means colourful costumes, exotic recipes and unusual music, there may be some truth in this. At least there is little appreciable harm.

But what happens when those imported cultures involve more than mere fancy dress, when they arrive with their own power relationships, their own political ideologies and a parallel legal system, all of which is incompatible with Australian norms and traditions? What happens when new arrivals have no intention of relinquishing these features of their cultures and integrating into the mainstream? What happens when the intent is first to modify the host culture and, ultimately, to replace it? How do multiculturalism’s promoters propose to deal with a scenario in which one or more of its celebrated minorities is fully committed to promoting its own political agenda?