La FONATINE IN THE "ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF BRADFORD."
British "Liberal Democratic" Member of Parliament for Bradford East, David Ward wants to bomb Israel and David Galloway MP, representing Bradford West, calls for making Bradford an "Israel Free Zone." Representing the wishes of their constituents faithfully, wall to wall, from east to west, in a city that justifiably earned its sobriquet: " The Islamic Republic of Branford," IRB, these MPs are unwittingly highlighting the very nature of the "underlying cause" of all conflicts of the Middle East. Coexisting peacefully with non Moslems in what is considered to be Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, has been, is and will be the principal source of war between Israel and Islamist extremism epitomized by Hamas and its genocidal "Mission Statement." In the radical jihadist world view, Dar al- Islam will always be at war with Dar al- Harb. In a zero sum game, no one splits the difference: there are only losers and winners.
It is not only the IRB that has to be "Israel Free," but in the credos of radical Islamists, the entire region has to be "free" of all the minorities, although these people have dwelt in these lands from time immemorial, preceding the advent of Islam by centuries. It seems that there is no room in the "New Middle East" for Jews, Copts, Maronites, Samaritans, Baha'i, Druze, Yazidis, Turkmens, Mandeanists, Shabakists, Zoroastrians and a myriad of Christian sects. The massacres, beheadings, crucifixions, rapes, mass executions, live burials, attacks on and destruction of places of worship, forced conversions, sexual enslavement of minority women and ethnic cleansings have decimated these once proud communities.
Clearly, the "darling buds" of the left's weltanschhauung – where the dogmas of inclusiveness, toleration, multiculturalism and color blindness reign supreme – do not blossom well in the wastelands of theological tyrannies. And yet, the deafening silence of the left over the absolute negation of every notion it holds scared in fundamentalist realms reminds me of Pascal's notion of the "eternal silence of these infinite spaces." The eternal silence of the liberals and the left concerning the obliteration of entire communities in the Middle East should be compared and contrasted with their vociferous castigation of Israel for defending herself against those who would not hesitate for a second to visit on Jews what ISIS is inflicting on the Yazidis. This shameful silence is the most eloquent expression of the left's moral disarmament which preceded its ideological suicide by contradictions.
Nothing gives more substance to this allegation other than the fact that in the "Islamic Republic of Bradford", young army cadets who volunteer to sell poppies to raise funds for the Royal British Legion, have to be provided with 'unprecedented security' to protect them from the barrage of attacks they suffer year after year. On the Centennial of the First World War, Bradford may well become a "Poppy Free" zone and we ought to wonder for whom those who rest "Between the crosses, row on row" died.
In a Britain where busses and underground stations are bombed, off duty military men are publicly beheaded, MI5 surveys over 2 000 potential terrorists living in the UK and hundreds of British jihadists are about to return from Syria and Iraq as trained suicide bombers, nothing agitates the usual suspects more than Israel refusing to have its cities bombed.
There is no need to search for the "underlying causes" in the stratosphere when we are all confronted witch such implacable hostility not amenable to gentle suasion or civilized discourse. What is there to discuss with the young Canadian jihadists Farah Mohammed Shirdon who tweeted just before he was killed in Syria that "beheading Shias is a beautiful thing"? The underlying cause of terrorism is terrorism. Period.
The refusal of Hamas to live in peace with Israel is the only "underlying cause" of this crisis: nothing else. To continue to blame Israel, as some do, for the lack of progress in resolving the Israel-Palestine dispute, clearly flies in the face of the facts pertaining to the concrete concessions that have been made by Jerusalem over the years. What has Israel received in exchange for what she has given up, for the sake of an uncertain peace, in the Oslo Accords, the Hebron Protocol, the Sharm el Sheikh Memorandum, the Camp David and Taba Summits, Road Maps [to nowhere], the Agreements on Movement and Access, the Annapolis Conference, the Wye River Memorandum, unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Prime Minister Olmert's unprecedented and comprehensive proposals and many interim agreements? What she has received is a bunch of M320 missiles reaching Naharia!
The pretension of some key international actors that Hamas' fundamental refusal to accept Israel's right to live in peace, anywhere in its ancestral land, is not the "underlying cause" of this conflict is frankly deeply troubling. And to the extent that Israel's friends insist that they have only Israel's best interests at heart, as the press Jerusalem to make more concessions to those they themselves consider as terrorists, is appalling. Indeed, to force Israel to split the difference with Hamas, at a time when the blight of rampant genocidal radicalism is sweeping the lands of the east, is tantamount to doing "something stupid" in foreign policy. This whole business of Israel's "friends" "addressing" Hamas' extortions, for the sake of Jerusalem, no less, reminds me of the famous Lafontaine fable: The Bear and the Gardener.
"One day his friend was in profound repose,
When one of these [fly] sat sporting on his nose.
Bruin in vain to chase him tried :
" I'll have thee somehow or somewhere," he cried.
He said, and seized a stone, which straight he threw
Against the fly, and broke his neighbor's skull.
A clever marksman, but in logic dull :
He crushed the fly, and killed his neighbor too.
Better a foe, if wisdom be his lot,
Than make a friend of such a stupid sot."
The danger here is even worse as some may unintentionally save the fly but kill the Gardner!
