Is it my imagination, or were the only black people at the rally onstage when the OJays sang “Love Train“?
Also, funny, isn’t it, that Stewart didn’t introduce Yusuf Islam by his full name? Oh, wait. I forgot. Cat Stevens has decided to drop the Islam bit for PR purposes.
I still love Cat Stevens’ music. I just refuse to buy it. I wish he’d go back to being a Buddhist.
Lair Simon said it best:
To compete with UPS, FedEx in Yemen changes motto to: “When it absolutely, positively has to kill Jews overnight.”
The stupider members of the anti-Israel left pointed to al Qaeda’s naming of Israel’s “occupation” as one of the reasons they attacked us on 9/11. The fact that they mentioned Israel after the attack never seems to matter, but I’d like to see them spin this attack on Jewish synagogues in Chicago as the result of building in suburbs of Jerusalem. (Some will, I know, but again, they are the stupider members of the anti-Israel left.)
These were real bombs. There was a SIM card and electrical circuit in at least one of them. The bombs were made out of PETN, the explosive of choice for underwear and shoe bombers. They were heading towards Jews—on a Friday.
Ms. Harman, who was briefed by John S. Pistole, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, also said that both packages contained computer printer cartridges filled with the explosive, with one using a cellphone as a detonator and the other a timer.
[…] Counterterrorism officials declined to identify the synagogues to which the suspicious packages found in Dubai and Britain were addressed; they did say they did not include KAM Isaiah Israel, which is across the street from Mr. Obama’s Hyde Park home.
So it wasn’t a plot to kill Obama. It was a plot to kill Jews. Did they think they’d strike on a Friday, when synagogues are filled with Jews? Was their plan to have the packages in the offices on a Saturday, also a high-attendance worship day? Or did they just pick a day, any day, and any Jew would do?
We’re not just the canaries in the coal mine. The very existence of Jews is an affront to Islamic terrorists and extremists. The existence of the State of Israel stands in stark contradiction to their promise that Muslims will reign supreme over the rest of the world, and Israel’s victories in every war since 1948 stick in the craw of the Muslim supremacists. (Let’s call a spade a spade—that’s what al Qaeda are, Muslim supremacists.)
Yeah, sucks to be them.
I suspect Chicago Jews will worship this morning a little more nervously than the rest of us. And the Jewish populations in big cities all over America will be a little more careful from now on. They’ve targeted us specifically. Not Zionists. Not Israelis. American Jews.
I live in a little podunk town near a small city with a small Jewish population. Odds are very high that al Qaeda doesn’t even know the name of my city. So no, I’m not scared.
I’m just angry.
Time to reflect on six years of teaching little Jews to become big Jews, which is my best weapon against the Jew-haters. I’m throwing a party in a few weeks and will be seeing many of my former students. Al Qaeda’s legacy is hate and fear. Mine is knowledge and pride in being Jewish.
I think I win.
The Presybterian church (PC-USA) wants to boycott and divest from all companies that do business with Israel. Great idea, guys! You don’t want to support the country that gives us new and better ways to detect cancer with a simple blood test:
Prof. Aryeh Admon of the biology faculty claims that the test will provide doctors with a rich variety of information that until now has not been available and is suited to the trend of “personalized medicine,†in which treatment is suited to the genetic and other characteristics of the patient. The development was part of the doctoral work of Dr. Miochal Bassani- Sternberg and will help suit medication to the patient.
As opposed to current blood tests for cancer which merely note whether cancerous cells are still in the blood stream, the new test will be able to differentiate between different kinds of cancers and tumors as well as other diseases. Scientists are now working on the technique.
That’s right, boycott Israel. Because you’ll be taking money away from companies that are creating new methods of fighting antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Or killing HIV cells and preventing AIDS.
Or you can totally boycott General Dynamics, which will be building an infantry fighting vehicle that was developed in Israel, but that will be made more cheaply in the USA.
Israel is having a U.S. firm (General Dynamics) manufacture 600 of the new Nemer IFV (infantry fighting vehicle) over the next eight years. The first hundred or so were built in Israel, but the rest can be built more cheaply in the United States. One infantry battalion is already equipped with Israeli built Nemers, and the other three battalions of the Golani Brigade will get Nemers over the next three years.
Damn those Israelis, sucking away American tax dollars. It’s not like they contribute jobs to the struggling Amerian economy or anything like that. Oh. Wait.
The news that the AP doesn’t bring you. But that’s why you read blogs.
Ethan Bronner reports in a letter from Tel Aviv on Remembering Rabin, Some See His Legacy Fading Bronner quotes Ben Dror Yemini:
“The truth is the opposite,” he wrote. “Rabin’s assassination saved the Israeli left wing.” He added that before the killing, “There were terror attacks that gave rise to the phrase ‘the price of peace.’ The polls predicted a terrible fall for the Labor Party, and the strengthening of the right wing. The right wing not only ruled the violent and stormy street. The right wing also ruled in people’s hearts.”
Yemini’s statement is significant because it is the only metion in the whole article of terror. But it’s also significant because it refutes the common assumption – implicit in the Bronner article – that the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin was the downfall of the peace process.
Shortly before he was killed by an extremist named Yigal Amir, Rabin had passed Oslo II using a promise of power to get the necessary votes to pass the treaty. Terror which had increased after the conclusion of the initial Oslo Accords remained high. And Binyamin Netanyahu was running an effective campaign against Rabin. In October 1995, Netanyahu first surpassed Yitzchak Rabin in the polls. It’s easy to argue that Netanyahu’s election was the end of Oslo, but if Rabin had not been assassinated, Netanyahu would likely have cruised to victory in the 1996 elections.
In fact the only reason Netanyahu was elected after being blamed (unfairly) for the assassination of Rabin is because of the wave terror that was carried out against Israel in February and March of 1996.
In seeking to identify a legacy of Yitzchak Rabin, Bronner underplays the terror that accompanied the beginning of the peace process. True, I suppose, that Bronner does acknowledge:
But with the failure of the Oslo accords, the violence of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, the withdrawal from Lebanon that increased Hezbollah’s power and the rise of Hamas in Gaza after Israel pulled out, land-for-peace is viewed with skepticism by a rising portion of the Israeli public.
This seems like a reluctant afterthought. The Oslo Accords didn’t just fail, they were violated time and again by Yasser Arafat, the man who many gambled – incorrectly – had renounced violence when he hadn’t. He acquiesced to (if not encouraged) the growth of Hamas in areas where he had authority.
“[V]iewed with skepticism” is an interesting way to put it. But given that whenever Israel ceded territory (1995, 2000, 2005) Israel faced increased, not less terror, no rational person would conclude that concessions were working.
Bronner observes later|:
Meanwhile, international impatience toward Israeli treatment of Palestinians has been growing. Israelis may feel integrated into the global economy but they feel politically alone. Here, too, there is an internal debate. The left thinks Israel is partly if not largely responsible for the world’s hostility while the right argues that the antagonism is a result of anti-Semitism and opposition to Israel’s existence. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tends to favor the second argument.
What he omits here is that the Palestinians have a lot more control over their own lives than they had 17 years ago, despite the terror and Israel is still blamed for not doing more for peace. If the motivation for the condemnation is not antisemitism, what is it? There is no other country which would be asked to tolerate the terror and incitement that Israel is asked to.
In looking for a way to remember Rabin, Bronner has forgotten (or greatly downplayed) the terror.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Documenting Egyptian war crimes: But there won’t be a hue and cry over them, because they were committed against Israelis.
Wasted PR funds: The publisher and senior editors of the New York Times visited Ariel, the “settlement” city. My prediction: Won’t make a damned bit of difference, no matter how integrated Israeli Jews and Arabs are there.
Yeah, because it worked so well for Hong Kong: Apparently, the big Obama administration idea is to lease areas (for up to 99 years) in east Jerusalem and the West Bank from the Palestinians after the establishment of a state. See title.
How horrible is Sudan? This horrible: “We would prefer to die than be returned to Africa.” Netanyahu is offering to bribe pay African states millions of dollars to take back their refugees. I understand that Israel cannot accept illegal immigrants, but this has too many echoes of the Jewish past. And of course, the world utterly ignores these actual refugees, and keeps throwing money at faux Palestinian refugees that should now be citizens of the Arab nations to which they fled.
The other day Elder of Ziyon blogged about The Palestinian Arab plan for de-legitimizing Israel, 1968 and observed:
While the PLO has not been as successful in rallying the Arab nations behind it in recent years, its propaganda plan has been executed flawlessly. Even though their plan describes how the Palestinian Arabs are part of, and depend on the help of, the much larger Arab nation, they present themselves as an isolated, tiny, besieged and victimized entity to the West, compared to the huge Israel/World Zionist/imperialist alliance.
It couldn’t have worked without the active complicity of the UN. As the late Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote in How the PLO was legitimized:
NOT long after Khrushchev articulated these distinctions, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted them. Where the Charter permitted force by member states only to defend themselves against attack, GA Resolution 2708 XX (1970) created a new category of “legitimate” force which could be used against member states. This new right was confirmed in subsequent resolutions approving the struggle of “liberation” groups against “colonialism” by “all necessary means at their disposal.”
Step by step the new doctrine was codified in the General Assembly. In 1970, with U.S. and Western support, the General Assembly adopted the “Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Nations” which further expanded the rights of “peoples” and restricted those of states by providing, inter alia, that “all peoples have the right freely to determine without external influences their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development, and every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.”
Moreover: “Every state has the duty to refrain from any forcible action which deprives people … of their right to self-determination and freedom and independence. In their actions against resistance to such forcible action in pursuit of the exercise of self-determination, such peoples are entitled to seek and receive support, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter” (emphasis added).
With this declaration, the General Assembly, more clearly and unambiguously than ever, took the position not only that “peoples” had rights superior to those of member states, but that states resisting the rights of “peoples” could themselves become a “threat to peace.” The General Assembly thus subordinated the principle of the “sovereign inviolability” of states to the struggle of “peoples” against “colonialism” and put important new restrictions on the right of states to self-defense.The U.S. and the other Western nations joined in these resolutions without much hyought, dismissing them as without significance outside the halls of the United Nations. This fundamentally frivolous attitude ignored the cumulative impact of such resolutions in focusing attention, in expressing what is widely considered to be “world opinion,” and, finally, in having an impact on international law.
We really live in a world where “war is peace,” don’t we?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
But it’s anti-Zionism! Jordan, the nation that signed a peace treaty with Israel, does not allow Jewish religious symbols. It used to mean no religious Jew could bring t’filin into the country. Now, you can’t even wear a yarmulke. In fact, you can’t even wear a hat with a brim that makes you look Jewish, apparently.This is why there will be no peace with the Arabs. It isn’t anti-Zionism. It’s anti-Semitism.
“What’s really annoying about the whole thing is that together with us at the border crossing was a group of post-army youngsters with IDF training t-shirts who were so obviously Israeli citizens. They didn’t give them any hard time, while with us they insisted.”
Ew, Jew cooties!
England’s little problem: The most popular name for newborn babies in England and Wales in 2009? Mohammed, in its myriad ways of spelling. Next came Oliver. Now, it’s not really a problem until some of those Mohammeds go into the British jihadi mosques and get radicalized. You know, the mosques that the Brits refuse to do anything about, even after 7/7?
Worst. Excuse. Ever. Islamic Jihad says that the reason the Turkish Mavi Mumbleton activists posed in terrorist uniforms and weapons is because PIJ is trying to keep them alive until they get out of Gaza. They’re protecting them, presumably from the IDF. Even better excuse: PIJ says the photos were just “souvenirs.” You know, like the way you can dress up in Wild West costumes when you visit some American tourist spots? Well, this is just like that. Visit Gaza, dress like a terrorist! Oooooh! Scary! Just in time for Halloween.
Israel’s partners in peace—yeah, right: The Palestinians presented Mahmoud Abbas with a stone model of the state of Palestine. It looks exactly like the State of Israel, but without Israel on it. But the Palestinians are the ones who want peace, not the Israelis. Just ask anyone.
The AP has two ways of describing situations: One way when Israelis are involved, and another way for everyone else. Witness:
Crowd harasses UN investigators in Beirut
Oh, so a crowd yelled slogans or something at UN investigators? Maybe they booed them? Not quite.
Dr. Iman Sharara, who runs the clinic, said two men – an Australian and a French national – showed up with a Lebanese interpreter for an appointment to go through some phone records.
When she went outside to speak to her secretary, she saw a large group of women force their way into the clinic, screaming and trampling on documents belonging to the clinic.
“It looked like a real battle,” she told reporters. “The investigators fled. The interpreter, they pulled her hair, they snatched things from them … I returned to my clinic, hid inside and called my husband.”
[…] A police official said more than 30 women stormed the building, with another 75 or so remaining outside. He added, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements, that the crowd shouted curses at the tribunal and one protester stole an investigator’s briefcase.
Wow. That’s quite a mob scene. Perhaps we should take a look at the AP’s take on a march by Israeli Jews through an Arab town.
Police, protesters clash in Arab Israeli town
What? The Israeli Jews clashed with the police? That’s terrible!
Dozens of Jewish extremists hoisting Israeli flags defiantly marched through this Arab-Israeli town Wednesday, chanting “death to terrorists” and touching off clashes between rock-hurling residents and police who quelled them with tear gas.
Wait, what? The Jews threw rocks?
Hundreds of police deployed in the town after Israel’s Supreme Court authorized the march, which took place on the outskirts of town. Some 350 Arab residents gathered in anticipation of the rally, and youths threw rocks at police, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas and stun grenades.
Oh. The Arabs threw the rocks at the police. So it was a riot. An Arab riot. All the Jews did was march and chant “Death to terrorists.” No wonder the Arab “youths” threw rocks at the police. So effectively, if we’re talking about a riot, it sure seems like both stories have what it takes for a headline including the word “clash,” and yet—the Lebanese women “harassed” the UN investigators. You know, by pulling hair, mobbing them, stealing a briefcase—all typically harassing behavior.
The AP: You can always count on them for pure, unbiased reporting.
A few days ago the Washington Post reported Halt to Palestinian peace talks could become permanent:
In perhaps the shortest round of peace negotiations in the history of their conflict, talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have ground to a halt and show little sign of resuming.
And of course what’s to blame?
The proximate cause of the breakdown is Israel’s decision not to extend a 10-month partial freeze of settlement building on Palestinian lands, but in the view of many analysts, the problems go much deeper.
Aside from the fact that this point is, at best, debatable (via daily alert):
If the settlements were really the major obstacle to peace, how come peace did not prevail when Israel destroyed all the settlements in Gaza and evicted more than 8,000 Jews from there? The major obstacle to peace is Iran and radical Muslims who want to destroy Israel, and not make peace with it. They are also threatening to kill any moderate Arab or Muslim who seeks to make peace with Israel.
An examination of online sentiments of Palestinians showed (via Daily Alert):
Finally, our data showed that a majority of Palestinians do not support regional peace efforts. Palestinian internet users often derided diplomatic initiatives; discussion of peace talks was overwhelmingly negative. Thus, despite Washington’s efforts to win Palestinian hearts and minds, the social media environment suggests that they have little support for a new peace initiative.
In line with this observation is a recent poll that showed that (via Israelly Cool!):
If direct talks fail, 41 percent of Palestinians support the resumption of an armed Intifada, according to a poll released on Thursday by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
And it’s not just the attitude of the Palestinian population, it’s the attitude of their leaders. Barry Rubin wrote about a cartoon in a Palestinian newspaper advocating the destruction of Israel and violent resistance and observed:
Remember, too, this is a PA newspaper. If “President” Mahmoud Abbas wanted to do so, which he doesn’t, he could pick up the phone and tell the editor to stop it. We aren’t talking about a broad spectrum of permissible belief or free competition of ideas here. Everything in the newspaper is what the PA wants to convey, indeed indoctrinate, its subjects and supporters to believe.
Nor is this a recent phenomenon. It is the continuation of a policy that began in 1968:
In 1968, Israel was still considered the small – but admirable – survivor of a war meant to destroy, waged by the combined forces of much of the Arab world. Israeli were, to the Western world, the “good guys.”
It would be a gross understatement to say that this has changed in the intervening years. The entire framework of how Israel is viewed has been turned completely around, by a very successful campaign of de-legitimization that has cumulatively paid off in spades since then.
The blueprint for this sea change in how the world views Israel was written in 1968.
Making Israel into the bad guy; the obstacle to peace and the target of (justified) violence all go back 40 years or more.
So why the push for peace talks? It’s not because the Arab world cares. As demonstrated above, the Palesitnians aren’t much interested in them. Best I can figure is that it keeps a lot of people employed. (h/t Daled Amos)
Under the arrangement that was described to that Middle East hand, the NSC’s Dennis Ross would capitalize on his decent ties with Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu to be a main administration point of contact with the Israelis, Indyk would capitalize on his good ties with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (universally referred to as Abu Mazen) to be a channel to the Palestinians, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be in charge.
Indyk, who has served in a consulting role to the team of Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell, professed Tuesday in response to a query that it was the first he had heard of any such plan.
Meantime, the New America Foundation’s Steve Clemons said he is convinced that the man who can help Obama bring peace to the Middle East is former President Bill Clinton. That is the spouse of Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Say, that Obama-Syria outreach really worked! The latest insult from Baby Assad:
Bashar Assad told Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that the U.S. “created chaos in every place it entered.”
Smart power!
So, how’s that idea about separating Syria from Iran going, hm? Think you need to send John Kerry back to work harder?
Morons.
French newspaper proves Syria, Iran, and Lebanon are in violation of UNSCR 1701: Think there will be any outrage at this evidence that UN resolutions are being violated? Of course not, because it’s not Israel being accused of violating the resolution. Think UNIFIL will have anything to say about this? Shyeah. Let’s definitely solve the Israel/Palestinian problem by stationing an international force around the borders. What could go wrong with that?
Turkish “peace activists” pose with Islamic Jihad: So, those “peace activists”—the ones that the news media all lament Israel killed on the Mavi Marmaramaramaran? They visited Islamic Jihad while they were in Gaza. Go click the link. They’re posing with Islamic Jihad guns and uniforms. Think this will get any play in the mainstream media? Oh, please, of course that was a rhetorical question.
Ew, Jew Cooties: Israelis have been working secretly with students from the Arab world in a joint medical school program in order to foster better relations with the people of the Arab world. The program has recently come to light, with predictable results: The Arabs are outraged. There is apparently a “Jordanian Anti-Normalization Committee”—this, in the country that has a peace agreement with Israel. But hey, just ask Time Magazine: It’s the Israelis who don’t want peace.
With an article titled Some question insistence on Israel as Jewish State, the New York Times officially joins the anti-Israel crowd.
No doubt there are those who disagree with Netanyahu as to whether Israel should be called a Jewish state. However, since one of the premises of Palestinian nationalism is the denial of the historical connection between Israel and the Jews, the demand is of utmost importance. If the Palestinians cannot accept Israel as a Jewish state, they are not serious about peace.
It’s ironic. During Netanyahu’s first term in office he withdrew Israel from most of Chevron. He took a concrete step for peace. But even the most basic steps of showing acceptance of Israel are too much to ask of the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians don’t repudiate their denial of Jewish history, their commitment to peace is nonexistent. It makes their various “special sessions” moot.
As Jeff Jacoby recently wrote:
And yet to Israel’s enemies, Jewish sovereignty is as intolerable today as it was in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn Jewish state, vowing “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.” Endless rounds of talks and countless invocations of the “peace process” have not changed the underlying reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is not about settlements or borders or Jerusalem or the rights of Palestinians. The root of the hostility is the refusal to recognize the immutable right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in its historic homeland. Until that changes, no lasting peace is possible.
But instead of questioning the Palestinian commitment to peace the New York Times does what’s comfortable: pretends that Israel is being unreasonable.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
So, the sky has thundered. The leader of one of most politically correct, sensitive and holier-than-thou countries in Europe finally delivered a coup de grâce to already dying unnatural creature called multiculturalism. It’s quite the time, and let’s be frank: the European (and not only European, but later about it) implementation of this inherently flawed doctrine is a wretched baby of governmental bureaucracy, “progressive” stupidity, natural laziness of most do-gooders and our other lesser foibles.
Multiculturalism, in many feverish progressive minds, was supposed to become an unending festival of mutual enrichment, poetic meeting of different cultures under the benevolent watch of the government sponsor, where foodstuffs, music, language, dance, love (don’t ever forget love) and other ethnic delights flow every each way unimpeded. In the grim reality of thousands so called European “projects” it turned out to be just lots of newly erected ghettos bringing alienation, lack of common language and, indeed, common culture. Well, lack of common culture was built into the idea of multikulti to start with, you would say, and you will be right. Of course, this is precisely the point. This is what ghetto tends to do to its inhabitants – a majority of them just don’t see any need to make an effort and integrate into the host society. And the host society hardly cares – as long as the streets remain clean, the cars are produced on schedule, the garbage removed etc.
But over time the source of cheap workforce becomes a source of troubles. The confession “We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn’t stay, but that’s not the reality” came at a cost to be paid by many generations to come. The newly born kids of the people who were supposed to be temporary (and paying) guests grow up as alienated from the life outside the ghetto as their parents are. As a result, ghettos become a major source of unemployed, idle and discontented youth or, in other words, excellent breeding ground for recruiters of extremist ideologies and/or religions.
In short the multikulti parents’ dream was about the natural solution to immigrants’ issues by just seeing them off to the “projects”, giving them low-paying menial jobs and waiting to enjoy the rich fruit of multiculturalism in action. The dream appeared to be just that – a dream. And Angela Merkel was only the first to voice the inescapable conclusion.
Absorption (an Israeli term for successful assimilation of a new immigrant) is a long and difficult process that requires a lot of attention, patience and investment from the government, from volunteers, from neighbors. When it is substituted by just settling the immigrants with common ethnic background together and hoping for the best, the results are always the same: poor to non-existent assimilation, lack of language, lack of understanding of local culture and customs. And the problem doesn’t go away with the first immigrant generation, it stays with the children. Israel (to take one example) is full of examples of successful and failed integration. All follow the same pattern.
Why do I refer to Israel, you may want to ask? For two reasons. One is already mentioned: Israel has a lot of experience – good and bad – with absorbing huge (compared to the size of its population) waves of immigration. Second reason is rather different: The rising wave of xenophobia in Europe is bad for all European minorities. It may start with Muslims, but Roma, Jews, Poles, Russians etc. are not far behind on the list. In fact, Roma may be the first on the European xenophobia list at the moment.
What else? Yes, it’s impossible not to mention the response to Merkel’s thunder from some “progressive” commentators. First there was silence for a day or two: the gurus just couldn’t believe their eyes and ears, apparently. Then the responses started trickling in. Like this rather pathetic one by Philip Oltermann, a German guy, full of good intentions, who tries to dispel the clear message of Merkel by anecdotal examples of his multikulti family and friends. Of course, population osmosis happens even in generally unsuccessful cases. People do leave ghettos, no argument about it – but what about the ones who stay there? Of course, Philip doesn’t have an answer.
Another way of attacking the message and the messenger was found quite quickly: according to many (too many to mention by name or to link), Merkel is anti-immigration in general, feeding the base instincts of the right wing (or worse) German electorate. And it’s patently untrue. Stephen Evans hit the bull’s eye saying:
In other words, her basic message is that integration has not worked – but it needs to.
And, of course, the august voice of UN didn’t hesitate for too long a time, warning Europe against “stereotyping that closes minds and breeds hatred“. Whatever that means and whatever it contributes (nothing would be my guess). And of course, we are being reminded how many neo-Nazis and their sympathizers there are in Germany, as if the problem of failed multiculturalism will be resolved once neo-Nazis disappear…
But what about Merkel’s own diagnostics of the problem? If indeed, as it is quoted here:
She stated that too little had been required of immigrants in Germany, and that they should learn German so they can better succeed in school and in the labor market.
Ms Merkel is barking up a wrong tree. There was nothing and nobody to encourage the immigrants to learn the language and to integrate. Now Europe is reaping what it saw for many years of carefree import of cheap workforce. As correctly (to my utter surprise) summarizes this Indy leader:
If integration is now to be the focus, however, the effort will have to be two-sided. As well as requiring migrants to do more, governments and the indigenous population will have to try harder, too. And this will take funds – for language tuition, better schooling and homes – at a time when money is in very short supply.
While this post languished in its draft form, something useful happened. A few days ago I’ve tried to take to task one Adrian Hamilton, an Indy scribe, who is denying Israel its right to be “a uniquely Jewish state” in the midst of “Muslim majority Middle East”. This, uniquely moronic and racist statement, is uttered by a person who surely considers self progressive. I have said about Mr Hamilton in that post:
A member of multi-cultural progressive British elite who in any other situation will risk his life for your right to express your personal ethnic “I”…
And here Mr Hamilton comes out swinging, in a spirited, albeit moronic, defense of multikulti.
Multiculturalism was once a term of tolerance, an acceptance of difference in an increasingly cosmopolitan and urbanised western world.
No, it wasn’t, dear Adrian. It was rather a surrender to the necessity to bring all these black, brown and otherwise colored heathen into the country for jobs you and your brethren didn’t want to do. It was also a good cover for unwillingness or inability to do what should have been done, once the people were brought in: invest money, time and good will into their real integration. But of course, our Mr Hamilton is not done yet. He anticipates criticism in his vacuous way, and succeeds, in two consecutive short paragraphs, to contradict himself in a brilliantly stupid (OK, what can I do?) manner:
It [Multiculturalism] wasn’t a policy of letting everyone do their own thing so much as a counteraction to the suspicion and hostility to difference that immigration was bringing.
Then:
Its assumption was that immigrants, just as the Huguenots and the Jews of the late 19th century had, would integrate through generations, that over time their children would grow up much like everyone else in their society.
So, on one hand, “do nothing” wasn’t exactly a policy of multikulti. It has just happened so, exactly as with them Huguenots and the Jews… over generations… oh boy…
In short: Europe is looking into abyss. And the only good thing is that some more courageous leaders are willing to face the facts, instead of hiding behind the mental paralysis of the “progressives”.
And if you want to know more about the extremes that failed multiculturalism leads to in some cases, you can do much worse than reading Terrorism and the British Academy (via Just Journalism). And connect the dots…
Cross-posted on SimplyJews
Had an amazing drive this afternoon. There’s a small farm in northern VA that sells (among other things) chestnuts, and as I am extremely passionate about the nut of the tree that used to cover America, I drove from Richmond to NorVA and picked up a few pounds of my favorite fall crop.
They are, without a doubt, the best chestnuts I have ever eaten.
I met a delightful retired couple who now raise various fowl and produce and fruits and nuts for a hobby, and got to see a part of VA that I’ve not yet seen. The mountain views, the farms, the horses and cows staring at me as I drove by—all wonderful. Coolest of all: The farm has a chestnut tree that was grown from, as legend tells it, a chestnut tree descended from Thomas Jefferson’s orchard. No, that was second-coolest. Coolest was learning how amazingly easy it is to grow chestnut trees. Next on my life-list: A house with enough property for my own orchard. It won’t be for a few years, but I can see me harvesting chestnuts from my own orchard someday.
In the meantime, I’ve made some new friends, and they’re only 45 minutes from the house of my friends in NorVA. I’ll be stopping by on the way home a few times a year, methinks.
