RUTHFULLY YOURS

No progress on peace will be possible until and unless “Palestine” becomes a pragmatic political project rather than a religious-ideological cause célèbre.

No surprises here: that’s the conclusion a reader might draw after making his way through “What Do Palestinians Want?,” Daniel Polisar’s comprehensive essay in Mosaic on Palestinian public opinion. Based on hundreds of polls conducted by different organizations over the years, Polisar’s study confirms, or rather reconfirms, that a large majority of Palestinians think the worst of Israel on all issues related to it.

One question worth asking at the outset is to what extent it is possible to know what Palestinians really think about Israel. Is the survey method, initially designed for marketing purposes and later applied to electoral politics in Western democracies, the most productive means of obtaining an accurate picture in a context removed from both commercial considerations and political trends in pluralist societies?

Is the Obama administration aware that it is trusting and dealing with a country that has just broken the world record in executions? Of course the President is aware of that, and it seems that he has decided to turn a blind eye to Iran’s increasing aggression and oppression inside and outside of its own country.

According to the recent and fifth report by the special United Nations investigator of human rights, human rights violations in Iran are rising even since the nuclear agreement was reached. Accordingly, execution rates have been increasing at “an exponential rate” in Iran. In 2014, 753 were executed and at least 694 people (including women and juveniles) were executed from January 2015 till mid-September. This is reported to be the highest rate of execution the Islamic Republic has had in 25 years.

If we take the ratio of the population into consideration, the Islamic Republic breaks the world record in number of executions per capita. As Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, pointed out, “The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to execute more individuals per capita than any other country in the world. Executions have been rising at an exponential rate since 2005 and peaked in 2014, at a shocking 753 executions[.]” According to the UN analyst, Iran is on track to execute more than 1000 people by the end of this year. Of course, these are only the official numbers being reported by the Iranian regime, the unreported number of executions by the government is likely much higher.

Jihadis do not mysteriously emerge from a culture free zone, only ‘accidentally’ parroting their religious credentials. They promote a violent, fascistic ideology which draws its energy from a reading of the verses and concepts of Islamic texts:

Francois Hollande described Friday’s massacre in Paris as an ‘act of war’. He was right to do so. But this is not a new war declared upon us by our enemies. For these atrocities are merely the latest in a long line of mass casualty Islamist onslaughts against civilians.

The terror in Paris was preceded by the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bloodbath of 2002, the Madrid train bombings, the Beslan school killings, 7/7, the massacres of Al Shabaab and many thousands of smaller scale strikes across the world.

France alone has suffered several attacks in the last year, with satirists, atheists, Jews and revellers being targeted with venom. Israel is being attacked every day.

My friend Ezra Levant reports from Paris:

France has developed a tolerance for terrorism. They accept terrorist violence as the new normal. They’re numb to it now.

Here’s proof. In January of this year, Muslim terrorists launched a series of five attacks that killed 17 people across Paris, including 12 at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. That led to a massive solidarity march through Paris, with millions of people — including many foreign leaders — swearing it would never happen again.

But it did happen again, ten times worse…

But there’s no massive march this time, no stream of foreign leaders coming to pay their respects. And even at the actual site of the massacre, the mood was subdued. As you can see in my video reports, there were a few hundred people milling around, but there was no resolve, no conviction, no purpose. Outside Bataclan, a street performer set up to entertain the crowd — and no-one seemed to find it inappropriate.

I hope Ezra’s wrong, but as I wrote four months ago:

So the cowardly and evasive “support” the world showed after January’s bloodbath was a very clear lesson to the survivors in the limits of global solidarity – and how it will go next time: We’ll be sad when you die, too! (Although probably not quite as sad and not in as many numbers, because, like, been there, done that.)

All cultures are equal, don’t you know?

Contributor and friend of Quadrant Michael Galak writes:

I do not want my children to be Eloi.

I have not been surprised or shocked by another massacre perpetrated by the Muslim terrorists in Paris. Sickened, disgusted and angered, but not surprised. I do not share “the deep shock” professed by Frau Merkel, Mr.Cameron and Messr. Holland. This trio of Western leaders has created the right atmosphere and conditions for the European jihadis to thrive.

Butchery is what jihadis do, it is their nature. They destroy, they maim and they kill. All in the name of the creed our leaders persist against all evidence in hailing as “the Religion of Peace”. In a sanctimonious rage against their own inability to function in the 21st century, these losers adopted the two most effective weapons of mass destruction: Islam and the Kalashnikov. The new barbarians appear suddenly from their underground, like the Morlocks of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, to kill their Eloi prey — and then they disappear until the next time.

Why should Western leaders feel genuine shock and dismay? They are intelligent people, and they have long known that the real-world translation of the nostrums they sprout amount to “acquiescence”, “prostration” and “appeasement”. They knew as much for years yet dared not deviate from the pablum of their favoured dogma. It is their silence, their craven silence, that has brought on the Paris attacks and so many other similar calamities. Simply put, they found murder and mayhem preferable to facing a thorny truth.

Malcolm Turnbull is fond of proclaiming that Australia is a multicultural society, but this is loose talk. A multicultural society is a contradiction in terms, since common cultural understandings are the glue that holds a society together. Just look at France and the way its very fabric is ripped asunder
We were about thirty hours from sending this issue of Quadrant to the printers when the news broke that terrorist attacks in Paris had killed more than a hundred people. It seemed an important enough event, throwing light on both European and Australian concerns, to justify commissioning serious commentaries on it. That in turn pushed us into re-shaping this Quadrant around the concept of France’s emerging civil war.

Chance favours the prepared mind, it is said, and that concept had been planted in our minds the previous week when we received an article from our perceptive cultural critic Michael Connor titled “Paris, at Five Minutes to Midnight”. On a visit to France, Michael was struck by the unstable jostling blend of joyful cultural entertainments, car-burnings in resentful anti-white suburbs, the smart bookshops running out of republished Occupation-era fascist novels, all within a few stops on the Metro. “Nowhere in Paris is far from possible danger,” he writes. “The theatres and museums operate under strict security. Armed soldiers punctuate the street outside the Shoah Memorial, as they do outside Sacré Cœur.” An excerpt from his column in our next edition is below:

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In French bookshops this autumn is Lucien Rebatet’s Les Décombres (The Ruins). It was hastily reprinted after the initial 5000-copy print run sold out on publication day. It was also a best-seller during the occupation and this is the first uncensored post-war edition. The fascist and anti-Semitic must-read of 1942 now comes with a modern prophylactic introduction by a left-wing historian—strange when you think that the Left is now the home of anti-Semitism. A new translation of another wartime best-seller, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, will be in the bookstores in January 2016, after the author’s copyright expires.

Before then Paris will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 2005 banlieue riots. A nostalgic rock-throwing, car-burning veteran has been quoted as saying that next time it won’t be a riot, it will be civil war. A civil war suggests two sides but in France there might not be another side to take to the battlefield. Just in the last few weeks there have been major incidents with gypsy bands attacking gendarmes, burning cars and closing down some of the country’s main road arteries. With Holland appearing more and more like a Louis XVI bis there were few, if any, arrests. The Parisian banlieues already seem like a foreign concession—Dogs and Frenchmen Not Admitted. France does grand defeats on a grand scale—1870, almost happened in 1914, 1940, 1962, and possibly sometime very soon. When ISIS flags flutter along the Rue de Rivoli and Marais gays flap from the top of the Arc de Triomphe survivors may talk not of civil war but the War of Conversion circa 2016 ….

Secretary of State Kerry said of Friday’s terror attack in Paris, “These are heinous, evil, vile acts. Those of us who can must do everything in our power to fight back against what can only be considered an assault on our common humanity.” President Obama used the phrase “common humanity” as well.

They are wrong.

“Heinous, evil, vile” yes; but there is no “common humanity” with ISIS and their ilk. The attack in Paris was an attack on Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, which, in simple terms, is a modern standard of tolerance. President Obama actually called it, “liberte, egalite and the pursuit of happiness.” It was felicitous a slip of the tongue. To have liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness as government policy — whatever our personal social, ethnic or religious differences — requires tolerance. And tolerance is the specific contribution to humanity of Western democratic liberal governance. It is the antithesis of what Prime Minister Netanyahu called “medievalism” when he was in Washington last week. It is that which is under attack in the Middle East; that which was attacked in France.

In Erdogan’s Turkey, “protestors” could hold signs honoring the terrorists who had perpetrated the Paris attacks, as well as Osama bin Laden. No one was prosecuted under the articles of the Turkish Penal Code that regulate “praising crime and criminals.”

The two Turkish leaders do not hide their ambitions of building a “mildly Islamist” Sunni regime in Syria. Hoping that “mild Islamists” may one day morph into secular, pro-democracy crowds is an extremely dangerous deception, designed to advance Islamism. “Mild Islamists” often morph into jihadists.

It is the same Turkey which President Barack Obama said at the G-20 meeting was “a strong partner” in fighting IS. Have a nice sleep, Mr. President!

Alain Juppé, former French prime minister (1995-97), once said: “I would like to stress this point without reservation: France sees the Arab Spring as auspicious. The Arab Spring holds out tremendous hope — hope for democracy and the rule of law, hope for peace and stability, hope for better future in which every person can pursue goals commensurate with his or her needs, talents and ambitions.”

Ten years ago, in October and November 2005, a series of riots took place in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities. Rioters burned cars and public buildings at night. The rioters were mostly young immigrants from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa who declared Islam as an inseparable part of their identity.

Russia’s options in Syria are poor. While Vladimir Putin intervened to save his client Assad and Russian access to warm-water ports, it is beginning to look as if air power won’t do the job for Russia any more than it will for the U.S. – and the Russians are using much higher volumes. In addition, it appears that Russia will suffer now from pushback, the first incident of which might have been the jetliner downed over Sinai.What can Putin do? Cutting a deal with Saudi Arabia may be the least of several not-very-good options.

Putin’s goal was initially to stave off the imminent collapse of the Syrian regime. Assad’s army was suffering from large-scale defections, and Iran and Hezbollah were proving to be less than capable foot soldiers. (As a reminder, the Iranians were poor soldiers in the field during the Iran-Iraq war and consequently turned to asymmetric warfare in the late 1980s.) The Russians have hinted that Iran made repeated requests for intervention. Syria likely asked for help and – minimally – approved and facilitated Russian aircraft, pilots and support personnel coming into the country.

The emission-cut pledges will cost $1 trillion a year and avert warming of less than one degree by 2100.
The United Nations climate conference in Paris starting Nov. 30 will get under way when most minds in the French capital will still understandably be on the recent terror attacks. But for many of the 40,000 attendees, the goal is to ensure that climate change stays on the global economic agenda for the next 15 years.

The Paris conference is the culmination of many such gatherings and is expected to produce agreements on combating climate change. President Obama and the dozens of other world leaders planning to be in Paris should think carefully about the economic impact—in particular the staggering costs—of the measures they are contemplating.

The U.N.’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, says openly that the aim of the talks is “to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” That outlook will be welcome among attendees like the delegation from Bolivia. That country’s official material submitted for the talks proposes a “lasting solution” for climate change: “We must destroy capitalism.”