RUTHFULLY YOURS

For now, we have a Saudi ally in the young crown prince. So long as no one in Israel loses his head, and no one in Saudi Arabia exploits the alliance to chop off Muhammad’s head.

Have we entered a new period of sweetness and light with our Arab neighbors? On Monday The Atlantic published an interview the magazine’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg conducted with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.

The basic line, repeated by all major newspapers, is that the Saudi crown prince recognized Israel’s right to exist. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt gushed about it on his Twitter feed.

Referring to the interview as “amazing,” Greenblatt wrote that “all should watch [Muhammad bin Salman].

He is far from perfect [and] there is a long road ahead, but in a region long dominated by hateful despots, [the prince] envisions a very different future for Muslims, Jews, Christians and all in the Middle East.”

Other commentators were even more exhilarated.

Are the prince’s fans correct? Is his ascendance to the Saudi crown the harbinger of a reformation of Islam and the beginning of a new era in Islamic relations with the Jews and the world as a whole? Not really.

Most of the reports on the interview have focused on the prince’s remarks in which he ostensibly recognized Israel’s right to exist. But did he actually recognize Israel’s right to exist? Did he distinguish himself from all the other Arab leaders who to date have recognized that Israel exists but not admitted it has a right to exist? Let’s check the text.

Goldberg asked the prince, “Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland?” Muhammad replied, “I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

Does this mean that he recognized Israel’s right to exist in the Land of Israel? Maybe. Maybe not.

I have lived for years in these places in the Middle East and seen with my own eyes the cruelty and abuse that takes place under extremist Islamic law. I have heard the screams of families as their loved ones were tortured and slaughtered for the simplest acts — singing, dancing, voicing an opinion, or simply being a non-Muslim — all of which are crimes.

If we play the game of misinforming and misleading people about Islamism, by making irrelevant analogies to whitewash the violence and terrorism which are generated by Islamic fundamentalism, we are indoctrinating the literally millions of innocent children who will be either the perpetrators or victims of the next radical Islamic terror attacks — including Muslims.

Meanwhile the real scholars of Islam, such as Robert Spencer, who are trying to warn the public about these apologists, are called “Islamophobes,” poisoned, often fired from work, censored on social media and barred from entering democratic countries such as Britain.

When I was new to the United States, a so-called “moderate” Muslim scholar pulled me aside and gave me some “friendly” words of advice:

“In the West, there is a trend unfolding. If you follow it, you will find great success, more than you can imagine. It is very easy, all you have to do is stick to a few simple rules. No matter what your personal views are, you must be a Muslim apologist — an apologist for radical Islam — and present yourself as a ‘moderate’ Muslim scholar. If you can accomplish this, they will lap it up. You will never want for anything again. You will easily gain wealth and become the most in-demand ‘moderate’ Muslim scholar in the West!”

It sounded reasonable enough. “As you have the advantage of being from the region,” he continued, “you will come across as authentic.”

Angela Merkel’s Germany has a new coalition government and a new Social Democrat Party (SPD) Foreign Minister, 51-year old Heiko Maas, who replaced his controversial predecessor, Ingmar Gabriel. Last week was Maas’ first official trip to Israel, which began at Yad V’shem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. In the visitors book Maas wrote “Germany bears the responsibility for the most barbarous crime in the history of humanity.” He also vowed that Germany would continue to fight against anti-Semitism and racism “everywhere and every day.” On this, his preliminary foreign trip, Maas arrived in Jerusalem following visits to Paris, Warsaw, and Rome. On his two day trip he was visiting Ramallah for talks with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and he met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.

In recent months, the relationship between Germany and Israel has been pretty frosty, and the new foreign minister seeks to change that. In his inaugural speech in Berlin, Maas announced that he would travel to Israel to mark Israel’s 70th anniversary of independence, and pointed out that, “Personally, the German-Israeli history is not just one of historical responsibility, but it also represents a deep motivation in my political decision-making.” He added, “I didn’t go into politics out of respect for Willy Brandt or the peace movement, I went into politics because of Auschwitz.”

Maas’ statement about his motivation to enter politics is certainly commendable, considering that 42-years ago (1976), an Air France airplane from Israel bound for Paris was diverted it to Entebbe by German hijackers. Once there, the Germans initiated a Nazi-like selection, which separated Jews and Israelis from the rest of the passengers. German soil saw the murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Earlier in the 1960’s, German scientists helped Egypt’s Dictator Abdul Nasser develop missiles aimed to destroy the Jewish state. Given (Nazi) Germany’s murder of Six-Million European Jews, Germany’s moral responsibility to the Holocaust survivors in the Jewish state was not upheld. Blood money was indeed paid by the West German government, but at the same time, its scientists sought to finish Hitler’s work against the Jewish state.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hungary-and-the-strongman-1522795619

A mayoral loss for Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party in an urban stronghold in February was a warning that voters are growing disenchanted with his rule. Mr. Orban’s rhetoric about a George Soros -led conspiracy to inundate Hungary with migrants seems to be turning off many undecided voters. Corruption allegations against Fidesz politicians and supporters, which they deny, also weigh on support.

If Hungarian voters deal Mr. Orban a blow, they’ll have to do it without much help from the country’s opposition parties. The electoral system makes Fidesz beatable if voters choose the single most viable alternative candidate in each district. But many parties are reluctant to stand down their candidates for fear that they may win too few seats to make it back into parliament. The two most prominent opposition parties are also at opposite ends of the political spectrum—the Greens, and Jobbik, a formerly far-right party that claims to have remade itself as a center-right group. That leaves voters to figure out how to vote tactically in each district.

The stakes are high for Hungarians and their European and NATO partners. Mr. Orban has eroded freedom of the press by withholding government advertising from unfriendly media and encouraging his friends to buy newspapers and TV stations, and new laws target funding for civil-society groups that challenge his actions. Mr. Orban is a close friend of Vladimir Putin within the EU and NATO, where Hungary enjoys the same veto as other members. A supermajority would allow him to further entrench his power.

An embarrassment is that the EU hasn’t been more effective at blocking Mr. Orban’s authoritarian moves. Mr. Orban has been shrewd in befriending political groups in Brussels, and the EU doesn’t have much authority to punish countries determined to stray from democracy. That leaves Hungarian voters to defend their democracy as best they can, while they can.