04 November 2004

Arafat "technically not dead"

Arafat is brain dead. An anonymous French source has told AFP that the old terrorist is in a vegetative state and that there is no chance of recovery. He can be kept "undead" for days or weeks according to this source. I have to wonder why not longer? There are many who live in vegetative states for years. But, let's hope for the best.

Did Arafat have AIDS? I haven't seen an analysis of the known facts from a physician yet, so I can only ask the question. According to my very limited understanding, his symptoms were not incompatible with that diagnosis. According to Ion Pacepa he was after all a pedo who like to bugger little boys. Whatever happened to the blood he was shown donating on 9/11?

Will France forever hide the truth? In stating that he wasn't getting proper medical care in Ramallah, is France trying to blame Israel for the state of the old terrorist's health? He was free to leave Ramallah at any time and go down the road to Hadassah hospital, accross the river to Amman, to France, wherever. Terrorists make life and death choices for others. He chose not to pursue proper medical care for himself -- he chose his fate.

Today is 9 years to the day after the assassination of Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient, Yithzak Rabin. The other co-recipient, Shimon Peres, is hopeful that the Palestinian people can now throw off the yoke of terrorist leaders.

03 November 2004

Robert Spencer on the death of Theo van Gogh

[Theo van Gogh's] death [is] something that everyone who values freedom should worry about.

[F]or such things to happen in Iran and Egypt, two countries where Islamic radicalism is widespread, is one thing; to have a ?blasphemer? gunned down on the streets of Amsterdam in broad daylight is another. Europe has for thirty years encouraged massive immigration from Muslim nations; Muslims now comprise five percent of Holland?s population, and that number is growing rapidly. But it is still largely taboo in Europe ? as in America ? to raise any questions about how ready that population is to accept the parameters of secularism. When Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn tried to raise some of those questions in 2002, he was vilified as a racist ? in line with the continuing tendency of the Western media to frame questions regarding Islam in racial terms, despite the fact that the totalitarian intransigence of the ideology of radical Islam is found among all races. And Fortuyn himself, of course, was himself ultimately murdered by a Dutch assailant who, according to The Guardian, ?did it for Dutch Muslims.?

The deaths of Fortuyn and now van Gogh indicate that the costs of maintaining this taboo are growing ever higher. One of the prerequisites of the hard-won peaceful coexistence of ideologies in a secular society is freedom of speech ? particularly the freedom to question, to dissent, even to ridicule. Multiculturalism and secularism are on a collision course: if one group is able to demand that its tenets remain above criticism, it no longer coexists with the others as an equal, but has embarked on the path to hegemony.

It is long past due for such considerations to become part of the public debate in Western countries.

After van Gogh was killed, thousands of people took to the streets of Amsterdam to pay him homage. Among them, according to Agence France Presse, was a Muslim woman who stated: ?I didn?t really agree with van Gogh but he was a person who used his freedom of expression.? ...

No one knows how many Muslims in Europe and America hold the views of the Moroccan woman at the rally, and how many would side with Pakistan?s Sharia Court ? and the killer of Theo van Gogh.

If Western countries continue, out of ignorance, fear, or narrow self-interest, to refuse to find out, they will find themselves playing host to many more incidents like the bloody scene in Amsterdam Tuesday morning. The longer this question is ignored, or attributed only to ?racist? sensibilities, the more likely it becomes that the killing of Theo van Gogh will not be a tragic anomaly, but a harbinger of things to come.

02 November 2004

You can stop doubting now - Jihad is here

It's hard to imagine the uncertainty that surrounds ordinary people in the lead-up to a war. Who is the enemy? Is the enemy strong enough to be of concern to us? The news never tells us straight out. The government may know things it isn't sharing. What's going to happen? This time it's different because the enemy isn't another nation, separate from us and off in a foreign land. The situation bears some similarity to the lead-up to a civil war. Is your neighbor on your side or does he mean to kill you? Many people in the Netherlands have had their eyes opened to this situation by the brutal murder of Theo van Gogh by a Muslim.
This post is reproduced here because it exactly sums up the situation. You can find much more incisive commentary like this at GoIsraelGo.
Theo van Gogh is dead. Murdered by a Muslim.
...
He was a controversial man. Prone to provoke debate, pushing free speech to the limits of a great many people.

Van Gogh abhorred religions, and religious people, but he was not partizan. And the more backwards he felt a religion to be, the more it suffered his withering ridicule. Clearly, Islam had an enemy in van Gogh.

On Tuesday morning van Gogh was riding his bicycle when a man also riding a bike, dressed in traditional Muslim garb passed him on the street. The man opened fire with a sidearm, and van Gogh fled on foot. The killer pursued him, firing, and van Gogh went down. The man then drew a knife and cut the throat of the already wounded van Gogh. When the murderer finished his job, he took out a smaller knife, stuck it through a piece of paper and plunged it into his victim's chest.
...
Van Gogh was hated by Dutch Muslims for several reasons. He routinely attacked Islam for all its backwards habits, but most of all for its oppression of women. He recently released a short movie called "Submission", a movie he produced in cooperation with Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, a Somali refugee who left Islam and is now one of Holland's strongest voices against the rise of Islam in the Netherlands.

The movie shows Muslim women dressed in see-through gowns, with evidence of beatings and other forms of abuse clearly visible. There are voice-overs of Muslim women testifying about their suffering, brought on by their status under Islam.

Death threats already existed against Hirsi-Ali, and they have been intensified. She's been in hiding for years now, and is always under police protection.

Van Gogh refused all such protection. He simply refused to believe anything would happen to him. It was perhaps the only naivete he suffered from.

Holland is now abuzz. It turns out that several columnists, researchers and politicians have withdrawn from public life because they either felt or were in fact threatened. Threats by Muslims are to be taken seriously, no one doubts that.

So it seems that one way or another, Muslims are deciding for the Dutch what is still acceptable as 'free speech' and what is not.

Most Muslims interviewed strongly opposed this murder, some were truly horrified. But many also showed understanding, and simply failed to see the basic flaw of equating harsh and offensive criticism of your belief on the one hand with murdering the offender on the other.

This goes to the core of the conflict between Islam and the West. Moroccans (and most other Muslims) in the Netherlands really don't see what's wrong with killing a person who take such offense to a level that is intolerable to them. They may not do it themselves, but they fully understand the man that does. Whereas we can't understand how indignation, no matter how intense, may lead to murder, THEY cannot understand how van Gogh should expect anything else in the end. For most Muslims, this was simply a matter of time.

Like it is for Hirsi-Ali.

Like it is for Rushdie.

Like it is for all the people who simply utter words against Islam and its backwards practices, words that - unlike sticks and stones - hurt no one.

So now it turns out that many people in public functions have long been censoring themselves. Rationalizing it by saying "There are limits to free speech, one cannot simply offend and insult at will". This point may be correct, it is also irrelevant. If a person crosses the line by insulting an ethnic group (like van Gogh did to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike), the offended party goes to court. You file a complaint, and you sue.

Muslims feel totally justified in taking their own measures. And to them there's no disproportion between offensive language and shooting a person repeatedly, cutting his throat and then sticking a note to his corpse with a knife.

[H]is opinion was offensive to Muslims. And that gets you killed in the Netherlands these days.


Originally posted by Daniel (who has the most fabulous dog) at GoIsraelGo.

Dutch Filmmaker killed by Muslim as punishment for making a film critical of Islam

Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker who worked with Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali to create a 10-minute film about the Koranic punishments for "disobedient women" has been murdered by a Muslim.
One unidentified witness who lives in the neighborhood told the Dutch national broadcaster NOS that she heard six shots and saw a man with a long beard and wearing Islamic garb concealing a gun.
Another witness told Dutch Radio 1 the killer arrived by bicycle and shot Van Gogh as he got out of a car. "The shooter stayed next to him and waited. Waited to make sure he was dead," the witness said.

Van Gogh was killed in front of witnesses by a 26 year-old Dutch-Moroccan dual national wearing a djeballa. According to AP, police had recently dropped the watch on his house because there was no concrete evidence of a threat. The attacker left a note (allegedly in Arabic) on van Gogh's body.
In a written statement, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said "Nothing is known about the motive.

Yeah right.

A commenter on Jihad Watch reports from Amsterdam:
The assasination happened around the corner from where I live in Amsterdam Oost. I arrived on the scene five minutes after they killed Theo, as I was on my way to buy some bread with my two year old. I saw his body, with the knives still in it, covered with white linnen. Like this:
I worked with him at a radiostation, ten years ago. He lived around the corner, and never wanted to be surrounded by body guards, like Hirsi Ali and Wilders.
The police took his son out of the class room this morning to tell his father is dead. God bless Lieuwe.
Politicians now talk about societal problems, and that society is getting more violent. Off course, they don't talk about a war that is going on for 1400 years.

Hirsi Ali has been taken to an undisclosed safe location.
A man made death threats against her after "Submission" aired during her guest appearance on the show Zomergasten on August 29.
The man made the threats on an MSN forum after the broadcast. The Dutch police tracked down the man's email address with the assistance of the US authorities, raided three addresses in The Hague and made back-ups of the hard drives of the 12 computers found.
The Dutch court also ruled that by publishing Hirsi Ali's home address on the internet, he placed the MP in greater danger.
Man jailed for Hirsi Ali death threat

As my mother used to say: Let me tell you something. As soon as the jihadists feel they can get away with it, they will start expressing their displeasure with your opinions by intimidating you, and then suing you if you speak out against their tactics. And then they will escalate to killing you. They are doing it in Europe and they are poised to bring their intimidation and murder tactics to America any time they feel reasonably sure they can get away with it.