A Realistic Assessment and a Fantasy for the New Year* - Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Prof. Paul Eidelberg



What is to be done about Iran?—

(1) its development of nuclear weapons;

(2) its potential control of Persian Gulf oil on which the world’s economy depends;

(3) its regional power via proxies and alliances;

(4) its global Islamic ambitions;

(5) its imminent threat to Israel’s existence.



While appeasement is entrenched in Washington, defeatism holds sway in Jerusalem, where the Netanyahu government has endorsed a Muslim state in Israel’s heartland.



Consider some simple facts. Estimates of the number of Muslims worldwide that support Jihad vary from 15 to 50 percent (and higher). Given 1.5 billion Muslims on planet earth, this means that between 225 and 750 million Muslims have been conditioned by the Quran, which exalts the Muslim who “slays and is slain for Allah” (Sura 9:111). It’s hardly reassuring to say “not all Muslims are terrorists.”



The prospects are worse than you have been told. Even if most Muslims were “moderates,” virtually all harbor the ethos of Islam. Hence the vast majority of Muslims are at hand to be recruited by “extremists” So what is to be done?



As long as the White House is occupied by Barack Obama, who bowed to Saudi King Abdullah, and purrs to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—the two principal patrons of Jihad—no serious policy will be taken by the United States to put an end to Islam’s threat to the free world. This was the paramount failing of the Bush administration.



Can it be that only Israel stands between civilization and barbarism, as Israel did almost 2,000 years ago when it planted the seed of Christianity in pagan Rome?



Today Europe, the home of Christianity, is dying of neo-paganism. Having replaced the God of Israel, the creator of life, Europe is succumbing to the Islamic god of death. Is this Europe’s punishment for the death camps of the Holocaust?



All talk of fostering a moderate Islam is spineless obfuscation of Islam’s essence: necrophilia. Islam’s religious nihilism is more deeply engrained in Muslims than Nazism was engrained in Germans. Mein Kampf is tepid compared to Islam’s turgid hatred of “infidels.” Some 56 states exalt of the Quran, which Winston Churchill called “the Mein Kampf of war.” Germany under Hitler did not use German children as human bombs. And unlike, Ahmadinejad, the sadistic beasts of Nazi Germany did not use thousands of German children to walk through enemy mine fields. The fools in Washington and Jerusalem have learned nothing from the enormity of evil manifested in the Nazi Holocaust; that evil now manifested in Islamic chants: “Death to America!”—“Death to Israel!”



The cult of hatred and death is everywhere. Can anything be done to save civilization? Here let me mention a proposal I published after 9/11—when George W. Bush was President, a proposal rendered obsolete by the election of Obama. Since Islam is not localized in a single nation state:



The President, I suggested, should call in all Muslim ambassadors. He should warn them—for starters—that the US will submit a resolution in the UN General Assembly stipulating that all Islamic states have 30 days to renounce militant Jihad, a doctrine that violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Failure to do so will result in expulsion from the UN.



Of course this proposal was not realistic. It’s not realistic to educate the American people about the nature of the enemy that destroyed the World Trade Center and almost 3,000 innocent human beings. Realism has taken a vacation from Washington.



President Bush did not tell the American people that 9/11 was nothing less than an Islamic declaration of war on the United States, evidence of which goes back to November 1979, when Iranian militants stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took some seventy Americans captive for 444 days. Nor did he mention the Islamic bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, or the Islamic bombing of the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Nor did he mention the Islamic attack on the USS Destroyer Cole that killed 17 American sailors in 2000.



These were acts of war, ignored as such by a decayed American government more concerned about Arab oil than American blood. The deadly significance of the 9/11 has yet to be grasped. This direct attack on the American homeland was cheered by the Islamic street. This worldwide Islamic hatred of America should be related to research conducted by the Center for the Study of Political Islam, which concluded that Muslims have slaughtered some 270 million Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other non-Muslims since Muhammad added the veneer of monotheism to paganism. The unvarnished truth obscured by Western elites—politicians, academics, and journalists—is that Islam is at war with Western Civilization, or what’s left of it.



Lee Harris, the “philosopher of 9/11,” describes Islam as today’s “enemy of civilization.” By civilization he means a standard that can be applied across cultures and history. Civilization requires three basic ingredients: (1) the co-operation of individuals pursuing their own interests, (2) the ability to tolerate or socialize with one’s neighbors, and (3) a hatred of violence. Islam lacks these ingredients. Syrian-born Wafa Sultan, a psychiatrist now living in the United States, denies that Islam is a civilization.



Even those who refer to Jihadists as merely a radical element of Islam are tainted by “political correctness” or timidity. The issue is Islam per se from Muhammad to Ahmadinejad. World War III is all around us. Don’t worry: the United States is not about to declare war on Islam, let alone devastate Mecca or Medina to shatter faith in this creed.



It’s more realistic to be silent about evil, to remain on the defensive, to worry about airline safety while Jihadists plan their next attack—like exploding a “dirty” nuclear bomb in New York to bring the United States to its knees. This is Israel’s policy of “self-restraint.”



Israel and the United States are following the road map to self-destruction, regardless of the differences between their respective leaders. The addiction of Israeli prime ministers to the policy of “territory for peace” is independent of which party or party leader rules the nation. On this vital issue there is no basic difference between Shimon Peres and Netanyahu. Both endorse a Muslim state in Israel’s heartland, and no one should be deceived by Netanyahu’s spin about demilitarization. The Palestinian Authority is armed beyond the limits of the Oslo Agreement—a quicksand of lies that has ensnared Israel.



The government under Netanyahu has no more intention of disarming the PA than the Obama administration has of disarming Iran. Neither has the stamina to adopt a policy of victory. While Obama apologizes to the world for American greatness and is anxious to humble America vis-à-vis despotic Iran on the basis of moral equality, Netanyahu retreats from the idea of a “greater Israel,” and is anxious to humble his country vis-à-vis the despotic Palestinian Authority on the basis of “reciprocity.” But just as Ahmadinejad has ignored Obama’s self-effacing policy of “outreach,” so Mahmoud Abbas has ignored the self-effacing “outreach” policy of Netanyahu. Muslim pride trumps Western humility.



But wait! Isn’t Obama by Islamic law a Muslim? Didn’t he speak with Muslim pride in Cairo last year? Hasn’t he taken an imperious position toward Israel?



These discomfiting remarks provide a realistic assessment for the New Year. So let’s amuse ourselves with a fantasy. Imagine a future Israel going on the offensive like this:



(1) Israel demands that all Islamic states be given 30 days to renounce Jihad or be expelled from the United Nations.

(2) Israel demands that President Ahmadinejad be indicted for violating international law by vowing to “wipe Israel off the map.”

(3) Israel demands that the Palestinian Authority be dissolved on the grounds that it is nothing but an alliance of terrorist groups whose constitution calls for the annihilation of Israel, a member of the United Nations.

(4) Israel demands that the Government of the United States abide by international law, including the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine, which was ratified by the US Senate and subsequently proclaimed by President Calvin Coolidge on December 5, 1925. This treaty, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration, remains in force to this day as the supreme law of the land. Hence, the letter and spirit of this treaty, along with the US Constitution, are violated when American officials insist on creating a Palestinian state in the Land of Israel.

(5) Finally, Israel declares that any state that threatens Israel’s existence is signing its own death warrant, like Ahmadinejad’s predecessor in the Book of Esther.



Happy New Year!

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*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, 4 January 2010.