New Media

On this St. Patrick's Day, I'm reminded of a telling incident a Canadian working in Israel mentioned to me last week in Jerusalem:

There was this Irish guy working for UNRWA in the West Bank. He gets out of one of the armored vehicles in a convoy and steps gingerly onto the street. It's St. Patrick's Day, so naturally, one of us inquires as to why he isn't wearing green.

"Er, it might be misconstrued," he answered

Political correctness takes on a lethal seriousness in some parts of the world.

The saga of Amnesty International’s decision to stand by an extremist who characterizes the armed struggle type of jihad as “tourism” has gone from bad to worse. Gita Saghal, who was suspended from her position as head of Amnesty’s Gender Unit for criticizing this relationship in public, succinctly sums up the nefarious themes at work in a recent interview:

Amnesty has come out with a statement saying that Mozzam Begg defends something called defensive jihad. He believes in this concept and we do not believe, (that is Amnesty’s senior leadership) that it is antithetical to human rights. Now that is a most extraordinary statement which they have not made before they were forced to the media and to defend their position in the media…

Now it appears they feel his views are not antithetical to human rights and it seems that they do not understand anything about what defensive jihad means…

Is is extremely worrying if they think that ideologies that are promoting systematic violence and discrimination against women, against religious minorities…

This concept of jihad, according to Begg in an article he wrote, is an individual obligation on all Muslims. Now many Muslims would say that jihad is a spiritual obligation, it’s about an intellectual and spiritual struggle. Not everyone believes it’s about war. He specifically rejects that idea. He thinks that it is about war, and that it is an individual obligation and that people should go and fight.

What do you do when the leaders of an organization most associated with the protection of human rights decide to partner with someone whose agenda would lead to the systematic destruction of human rights? Revoking your membership with Amnesty International and canceling your monthly donations could be a start.

Gita Saghal on Amnesty and Mozzam Begg

H/T to Harry’s Place.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s much-publicized concern about civilians in Afghanistan might carry more weight if his thuggish regime wasn’t about to execute 3000 of them:

An Afghan parliamentary delegation, that recently visited the Islamic Republic, has reported that over 3000 Afghans there are awaiting their execution…

Reporting back to the 249 member lower house of the bicameral parliament, Mr. Mujahid stated, “They (Officials of the Iranian Supreme Court) have provided us these figures that in 5630 Afghans are in Iranian prisons and from them more than 3000 of them have been sentenced to death on the basis of final verdicts of the Supreme Court.”

How much longer will we have to wait for a demonstration at a Canadian university against the “Islamic Republic’s war on Muslims”?

I happened to be in the West Bank as Israel declared a security lock-down in anticipation of a “planned riot” by Palestinians. In this part of the world, nothing happens by accident — even supposedly spontaneous outbursts of fury.

From my latest in Rediscovering Israel: Quiet Riot

Premeditated or not, the threat of the riots was enough to prompt a security clampdown. “When it comes to the international media coverage, a police crackdown is going to look a lot better than a riot,” said one of my traveling companions from Canada, with a shrug.

What did the clampdown look like? Our van barely slowed down as we passed through the first checkpoint along the way. We were simply waved through. At the second checkpoint, we were actually stopped for about twenty seconds as a sentry asked our driver and guide a few questions. With a nod of his head as he stepped back from our vehicle, we were on our way.

Of course, Palestinians on their way out of Ramallah or other nearby towns might have been stalled in lineups elsewhere. The Israelis don’t rely on “magical thinking” when it comes to security — in a country where 100 per cent of terror attacks on Jewish Israelis come from Palestinian men (and very rarely, women), the political correctness of profiling is entirely beside the point, even if the thought of it makes outsiders squirm. But just as likely, the vast majority of Palestinians heard about the lockdown and barring an emergency, simply stayed in place.

Inconvenient for the Palestinians? Yes. Infuriating? Of course. But this is a different neighborhood than where I come from. You can’t avoid the fact that Israelis are very much the targets for all kinds of violence that is both planned, random and types in-between.

My colleagues back home might have noticed a tiny item in the news ticker at the bottom of their TV screen saying "Israel locks down West Bank". I only found out about the restriction as a colleague was checking her email on a Blackberry. We were traveling north towards a kibbutz in northern Israel along a road firmly located in the West Bank.

Why was the lock-down happening? Israeli police had been tipped off about a "planned riot" which was to be led in Jerusalem by certain malcontents from the West Bank.

The phrase struck me as odd. A planned demonstration, maybe. A scheduled protest, perhaps. But a "planned" spontaneous outburst of violent mob action?

But in this region of the world, "planned riots" are par for the course. Think back to the beginning of the Second Intifada. The popular myth is that it was sparked when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount. Sharon said at the time:

"I came here as one who believes in coexistence between Jews and Arabs… I believe that we can build and develop together. This was a peaceful visit. Is it an instigation for Israeli Jews to come to the Jewish people's holiest site?

According to reports in Western media in those days, it was.

We know now, from insiders such as the son of the founder of Hamas that the Second Intifada was completely premeditated by Yasser Arafat, who had rejected the peace plan of Oslo.

Mr. Yousef tells me that he was horrified by the pointless violence unleashed by politicians willing to climb "on the shoulders of poor, religious people." He says Palestinians who heeded the call "were going like a cow to the slaughterhouse, and they thought they were going to heaven."

Premeditated or not, the threat of the riots was enough to prompt a security clampdown. "When it comes to the international media coverage, a police crackdown is going to look a lot better than a riot," said one of my traveling companions from Canada, with a shrug.

What did the clampdown look like? Our van barely slowed down as we passed through the first checkpoint along the way. We were simply waved through. At the second checkpoint, we were actually stopped for about twenty seconds as a sentry asked our driver and guide a few questions. With a nod of his head as he stepped back from our vehicle, we were on our way.

Of course, Palestinians on their way out of Ramallah or other nearby towns might have been stalled in lineups elsewhere. The Israelis don't rely on "magical thinking" when it comes to security — in a country where 100 per cent of terror attacks on Jewish Israelis come from Palestinian men (and very rarely, women), the political correctness of profiling is made irrelevant, even if such practices makes outsiders squirm. But just as likely, the vast majority of Palestinians heard about the lockdown and barring an emergency, simply stayed in place.

Inconvenient for the Palestinians? Yes. Infuriating? Of course. But this is a different neighborhood than where I come from. You can't avoid the fact that Israelis are very much the targets for all kinds of violence that is both planned, random and types in-between.

Conflict management (as opposed to conflict resolution, which seems to be out of reach for now) dictates a level of security that people in other countries would find awfully intrusive and offensive — at least until they've experienced it themselves.