The Other Tsunami

There is no parallel on earth to what “Jew” means to millions of Muslims.

It is very difficult to hate babies.

It takes a special person.

As morally wrong as it is to murder innocent adults, mankind seems to have a built-in revulsion against killing babies. If a baby does not evoke any tenderness, if a baby is regarded as worthy of being deliberately hurt or murdered, we know that we have encountered a degree of evil that few humans — even among murderers — can relate to.

That is why what Palestinian terrorists did to a Jewish family on the West Bank this past weekend deserves far more attention than it received. Normally Palestinian atrocities get little attention — certainly far less attention than an Israeli apartment building on the West Bank receives. But this particular atrocity got even less attention than usual because the world was focused on the terrible tsunami that hit Japan.

On Friday night, Palestinian terrorists slipped into a Jewish settlement, entered a home, and stabbed the father, the mother, and three of their children to death: an eleven-year-old, a four-year old, and a three-month-old baby.

In order to understand what those actions mean, a seemingly separate incident needs to be recalled: the prolonged sexual attack by up to 200 Egyptian men on Lara Logan, chief foreign-affairs correspondent for CBS News, in Tahrir Square, Cairo, a few weeks ago. It was reported that after stripping her naked and then molesting and beating her, the men kept shouting “Jew, Jew!”

The two incidents tell the same tale. In much of the Arab Muslim world, and some of the non-Arab Muslim world (such as Iran) today, “Jew” is not a person. “Jew” is not even merely the enemy. In fact, there is no parallel on earth to what “Jew” means to a hundred million, perhaps hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Think of any conflict in the world — Pakistan–India, China–Tibet, North Korea–South Korea, Tamil–Sinhalese. There are some deep hatreds there, and atrocities have been committed on one or both sides of each of those conflicts. But in none of those conflicts nor anywhere else is there something equivalent to what “Jew” means to millions of Muslims.

There really is only one historical parallel, and it, too, involved the word “Jew.” The Nazis also succeeded in fully dehumanizing the word “Jew.” Thus, for Nazism, it was as important (if not more so) to murder Jewish babies and children — often through as cruel a means as possible (being burned alive, buried alive, or thrown up in the air and impaled on bayonets) — as it was to murder Jewish adults.

The human being does not have to learn to hate. It seems to come pretty naturally. Nor does the human being have to learn to murder, steal, or rape. These, too, seem to be in the natural human repertoire of evils.

But the human being does have to learn to hate children and babies, and to regard the torture and murder of them as morally desirable acts. It takes years of work to undo normal protective human attitudes toward children.

That is precisely what the Nazis did and what significant parts of the Muslim world have done to the word “Jew.” To them, the Jew is not just sub-human, the Jew — and his or her children — is sub-animal.

Palestinian and other Muslim spokesmen and their supporters on the left argue that this unique hatred is the fruit of Israeli policies, not decades of Nazi-like Jew-hatred saturating Islamic education, Islamic television and radio, and the mosque. But for this to be true, unique hatred would have to be matched by unique evil on the Israelis’ part. Yet, among the injustices of the world, what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians would not even register on a moral Richter scale. The creation of Israel engendered about 750,000 Palestinian refugees (and an equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries) and the death of perhaps 10,000 Palestinian Arabs. And all of that came about solely because Arab armies invaded Israel in order to destroy it at birth. Yet, when Pakistan was yanked from India and established as a Muslim state at the very same time Israel was established, that act engendered 12.5 million Muslim refugees, and about a million dead Muslims (and similar numbers of Hindu refugees and deaths). Why then doesn’t “Hindu” equal “Jew” in the Muslim lexicon of hate?

IDF investigation: Egyptians took part in attack near Eilat

Three of the Islamic terrorists who perpetrated the attack are not Palestinians but Egyptians. And they were aided not only by Bedouin Arabs in the Sinai, but also by Egyptian Army soldiers

The IDF did everything in its power to prevent Egyptian troops from getting hurt in last Thursday's multiple terror attacks near Eilat, inquiries conducted by both the IDF and the Egyptian army showed. The IDF also found that at least three of the terrorists were Egyptian citizens.

Head of the General Staff's Planning Branch Amir Eshel, who traveled to Cairo early this week to present to Egyptian officials the findings of the IDF's initial investigation, even brought photographic evidence to the fact.

Related stories:

• Report: Al-Qaeda group behind attack
• Egypt: Recalling our envoy was never an option
• Op-ed: Yes, apologize to Egypt
• Op-ed: No apology to Egypt
  

The evidence shows that contrary to Egyptian media reports, the IDF's attack helicopters avoided hitting Egyptian military vehicles and troops stationed at the border.

Car attacked by the terrorists who wore IDF uniforms (Photo: Defense Ministry)

Videos shot from the aircraft show that the troops intentionally diverted fire from the Egyptian all-terrain vehicles and soldiers towards open areas near the border base, from which the terrorist sniper fire originated.

The terrorists, who positioned themselves a few dozen meters from the Egyptian military post, launched an RPG rocket at one of the helicopters, and directed machine gun fire at it.

In addition, an examination of the bodies of the terrorists killed by the IDF clearly showed that at least three of them were Egyptian citizens. One was a member of a radical Egyptian group who was tried in the country.

From left: Maj.-Gen. Rousso, Defense Minister Barak and Chief of Staff Gantz at scene of attack (Photo: Defense Ministry)

He escaped from prison during the first days of the Egyptian revolution, when several Cairo prisons were broken into as hundreds of imprisoned Jihadist terrorists escaped to Sinai. Many had also reached the Gaza Strip and Egypt is demanding that Hamas extradite them.

The Egyptian terrorists joined Palestinian operatives from the Popular Resistance Committees and together they perpetrated the coordinated attacks. Israel also has further proof that joint Palestinian-Egyptian terror cells were in Sinai for weeks and were assisted by Bedouins in the region.

Egyptian ignored terrorists at first

Also according to the IDF investigation, the Egyptian troops noticed the presence of the terrorists even before the attack was launched, but did nothing about it. Only later that evening did an officer and a few soldiers leave their post, evidently to stop the ongoing sniper fire. The terrorists, who were wearing uniforms similar to those of the Egyptian army, resisted.

Possibly at this moment, when the troops and the operatives merged together, the Egyptian soldiers were shot. It remains unclear who fired the deadly shots, as the soldiers' bodies have yet to be autopsied by the Egyptian authorities.

Protesters in front of Israeli embassy in Cairo (Photo: AFP)

Israel has photographic evidence that GOC Southern Command Maj.Gen. Tal Russo personally ordered the forces fighting on the ground and in the air to be careful not to hit the Egyptian military post and its soldiers.

Israel was aware of these facts last week, but decided against releasing them in order to avoid embarrassing the Egyptian army and to dodge a media dispute over the versions of the events.

However, the information was submitted to Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which in turn invited an IDF representative, Maj.-Gen. Eshel, to present the findings in Cairo. Some of the findings were published in an Egyptian newspaper on Wednesday.

The Big Pharaoh and the average Egyptian

-- Mirror? What mirror?

-- Welcome suicide bombers!

Big Pharaoh (hat tip PJMedia) lives up to his reputation for straight shooting in his analysis of an Egyptian website poll showing that 49% of those who voted believe that the Mossad blew up Dahab — twice as many people as any other possibility. He discusses the response of a well educated friend:

“Israeli tourists don’t go to Eilat (a southern Israeli resort) anymore. Dahab and Sinai is much more cheaper and so they come to Egypt instead of spending their holidays in Israel” she explained.

“So you’re telling me Israel targeted a resort that is frequented by its own people and could have killed Israelis just to stop them from sunbathing in Sinai???” I asked.

“Yes. They could kill a few of their citizens to save the tourism industry there” she shot back.

Now this logic is particularly interesting since it concerns purely internal Israeli financial calculations. By this logic, Egyptians do not even figure in the calculus, it’s all about Israeli economic interests.

As students of conspiracy theory regularly point out, the way that people imagine the conspirators represents a projection that tells you about the way they think. Here a member of the Egyptian elite (on top of the prime divider) contemplates a government strategy that, for a minor economic advantage, kills a couple of dozen people (including “their own”) without a second thought. That’s not Islamic fanaticism, that’s classic aristocratic contempt for the rest of mankind.

Moreover, the sheer casualness of the analysis — of course Israelis would kill a few of their own civilians for an uptick in the Eilat tourist trade — gives a stark insight into one half of the Moebius strip of cognitive egocentrism. The Israelis are capable of any disgusting deed, including knocking off their own people for temporary economic gain to the owning class. Never mind that they will sacrifice their own soldiers’ lives to avoid casualties to the enemy’s civilians. No wonder Jenin must be a “massacre.” If it were seen for what it was, how could people go on with this kind of analysis. No wonder there can’t be peace between these people, when one side cannot begin to imagine what’s going on on the other side — and the two sides are not! the same.

I wanted to bang my head against a wall!

I have said countless times before that the root cause of the darkness we’re living in is our unwillingness to look in the mirror and start criticizing ourselves and the cult of death we allowed to infect our society. We don’t want to admit that many of our children are willing to kill themselves in order to massacre others. We don’t want to admit that religion needs renewal and reform to suit the year 2006 and not 1006. We don’t want to admit anything of that. Do you know why ladies and gentlemen we don’t want to do that? We’re just busy and in a constant state of denial. We’re busy hating America. We’re busy blaming Israel.

We are also living in a disgusting state of narcissism. We think we are the best nation handpicked by God. Our nations have the best religion approved by heaven. Nothing wrong can be in us, nothing wrong can be in our culture, and nothing wrong can be in our religious beliefs. It must be the evil “outsiders.”

This is a good example of “chosenness as privilege” rather than as “responsibility.” It gives an excellent view of the “normative” view of chosenness that historically has informed both Muslim and Christian supersessionist thinking — we are the new chosen people who replace the old (for Christians, Jews; for Muslims, Jews and Christians). When one then projects that envious and imperialist notion of chosenness back onto the Jews, one gets the widespread dislike of Jews for being so arrogant as to think of themselves as the chosen people.

There is no doubt whatsoever that all Egyptians condemned this terrorist attack and were shocked when it happened. Yet I am not really talking about this specific attack. I am referring to our general condition that gave birth to murderers from Bali to New York. Many are to blame here. Our repressive governments, the economic disaster they created, the humiliation millions of youth are feeling, and above all the deadly religious rhetoric that wants to draw us hundreds of years backward.

Allow me to add to your list, a media (both Arab and Western) so eager to believe the worst about the Israelis, so ready to forgive any excess from the Palestinians (chosen people of the left), that when the bombings first started many people — even good-hearted people — they found it relatively easy to say, “what choice do they have?” So in addition to your own cultural problems, Big Pharaoh, you have a supposedly enlightened West eagerly (if unconsciously) feeding your people’s own worst instincts. It’s hard to fight that.

I thought we’ll finally start looking in the mirror once we ourselves get bombed by terrorists. I thought that once we get torn into pieces by suicide bombers we’ll realize that the Palestinian suicide bomber will not end up in paradise but in the lowest pit of hell. Unfortunately, I was wrong. We’re still so busy to look in the mirror and see the ugly face there.

One could restate this in terms of a European lament: “Once the suicide terrorism has hit us, then we’ll rethink our championing of the Palestinians.” But Madrid and London, like 9-11, had mixed results. Many rushed to appease and self-criticize (really to blame the West), and only some people began to rethink the situation rather than to continue to slide into moral disorientation. Apparently there are too many psychological factors lying behind the demonization of Israel and the “chosenness” of the Palestinians for a mere suicide bombing or two of one’s own people to cause such a massive paradigm shift.

My condolences to you, your people, and your painful predicament, and my apologies for the unconscionable ways in which my culture’s supposed progressives contribute so irresponsibly to all our suffering, yours, ours, the Muslims who must live through this wave of fascist theocracy, and, perhaps in first place, the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Uh-Oh, A Foretaste of The New Democratic Egypt: Radical Nationalists and “Liberal Islamists”

by Barry Rubin

young child, posed by his father, stands amidst the crowds [Tahrir Square, Egypt] wearing a mock suicide vest and holding a mock 'katyusha' rocket

There is still confusion regarding some details of the terrorist assault by Gaza Palestinians affiliated with al-Qaida, from Egypt, into Israel, and then back into Egypt. Israeli survivors of the attack say the terrorists were wearing Egyptian army uniforms.

At one point, either confused or after the terrorists hid among a group of Egyptian soldiers dressed the same way, Israeli soldiers fired and reportedly killed three real Egyptian soldiers. Israel has apologized in line with international norms.

Amr Moussa, the man most likely to be Egypt’s next president and known for his hatred of Israel and strong dislike of the United States (a radical nationalist who opposes Islamism but might make a deal with the Brotherhood to get into power and to govern thereafter) gives a foretaste of his demagagic tendencies if elected. He tweeted:

“Israel has to realize that the days in which our sons are killed without an appropriate and strong reaction are forever gone.”

That sounds rather like a threat of war. Oh, he’ll be just fine running Egypt, right? For the record, let’s note that Egypt failed to guard its border, the shortcoming that made the whole shoot-out happen in the first place. Presumably Egypt won’t be apologizing to Israel. In fact, it has withdrawn its ambassador.

(A personal note. A couple of year ago, an Egyptian diplomat invited me to lunch in Tel Aviv. One of the things he said was that he had advised Israeli Arab citizens to reverse their policy of refusing to join Israel’ army. Then, he explained, they could get military training and have guns to use against Israel some day. They rejected the idea, he concluded. I’m not joking. That’s the way people really talk in the Middle East when they think it isn’t going to be reported. I should add that I never agreed on any confidentiality in that conversation.)

Nor will anyone in Egypt–not a single group, writer, or intellectual–publicly condemn the attack on Israel even though it was carried out by an al-Qaida affiliate that also wants an Islamist revolution in Egypt. Of course, the Egyptian military is attacking local al-Qaida revolutionaries within the country. But we are back to the pre-Sadat standard: Anything that kills Israelis is good.

What will happen when Hamas attacks Israel with rockets, mortars, and attempted cross-border attacks? Israel retaliates. President Moussa will again threaten war and while he probably would not go so far (“probably” does not make one feel secure), he would suspend the Egypt-Israel peace treaty or suspend the Israeli ambassador. Wouldn’t that make him a hero? And certainly Egypt would let money, Egyptian volunteers, and weapons flow freely into the Gaza Strip to help the “brothers” there confront “Zionist aggression.” The Arab world would cheer.

Here’s a good summary to remember this change: Hamas is to Egypt as to Hizballah is to Syria, a client and proxy terrorist group with which to hit Israel while avoiding direct confrontation. There are unconfirmed reports that Iran is cutting back on funding for Hamas–since Hamas wants Iran’s ally, the Syrian regime, to be overthrown. If that story is true, Egypt will be all the more important as Hamas’s new patron.

And what would President Obama do? One shudders to think but it might have something to do with playing golf.

Perhaps, though, Moussa won’t be president. Perhaps someone else will win the election. Either way, though, the president will have to deal with a strengthened parliament that will be around 40 percent radical Islamist, 10 percent far left, and much of the rest radical nationalist.

The New York Times has offered us, however, a definitional solution to the problem by creating a new political ideology. And I predict that we will be hearing a great deal about this new “movement” : the “liberal Islamist.”

“Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a liberal Islamist and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, released a statement asking the ruling military council to deal with the incident as a matter of national security and demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador as well as a halt of Egyptian gas shipments to Israel.”

Actually, though, Fotouh’s political role is not quite clear. He poses as a centrist nice guy who has split away from the Brotherhood. I rather suspect he is still a Brotherhood leader under cover. The Brotherhood promised not to run a candidate for president and Fotouh’s “split” give it a plausible deniability. But after all won’t the Brotherhood leaders and supporters be voting for Fotouh and reconcile with him immediately thereafter? Is there any real difference between Fotouh and the Brotherhood on substantive issues? Presumably “moderation” means going a bit slower in transforming Egypt into an Islamist state.

Of course Amr Moussa is more a representative of the old Egypt than anyone else in Egyptian politics today. But he is popular and demagoguery will make him more popular. Of course there are genuinely moderate people and parties that want to improve living standards, clean up corruption, and do other good things. The problem is, however, who will end up being in power.

If Amr Moussa is elected and the Brotherhood becomes the single biggest party in parliament we could well say “The revolution has been betrayed.” That would not be the first time in history that has happened. Others would say “The revolution has been fulfilled.” This is precisely what happened in Iran. Every day I hear from friends in Egypt how frightened or angry or upset or worried they are. I hope things will turn out well; as an analyst I must report what I see.

Incientally, even for a Middle East cynic like me the outpouring of Arab media support for the attack on Israel is surprising. After all, it is an al-Qaida operation and it would have been easy to pretend moderation, winning some brownie points in the West, by going tsk-tsk at the evil al-Qaida as opposed to the “wonderful” Hamas and Fatah.

Nope, even the official Palestinian Authority newspaper–rather than lay low to promote a nice image on the eve of the UN independence debate–praised the attack and cold-blooded murder of Israeli civilians. Presumably they don’t feel any need to pretend to be moderate since they know much of the Western media, academics, and even governments will give them a free pass no matter what they do or say.

Incidentally, NowLebanon, an excellent moderate source of news, estimates that almost 20,000 people have been killed in the “Arab Spring” (or as the Washington Post calls it, “Arab Transition,” disorders, mostly in Libya. The “Arab Spring” is not being followed by an Arab Summer, and next to come is the fall.