Paradigms provide overarching frameworks within which people try to understand major issues. An example of a major paradigm shift occurred in astronomy when scholars realized the earth and planets revolved around the sun instead of the sun revolving around the earth. People require frameworks in all areas of life in order to function, because they help us measure the relative importance of any given detail or its causes and effects. On the other hand, all paradigms have weak points, are necessarily partial, and must confront data that does not perfectly “fit”. If we are to honestly look at the world then we must explore the anomalies in our paradigms. Refusal to do so contributes to dogmatism or blind adherence to a chosen “truth”.
Political paradigms are more problematic and uncertain than scientific paradigms. Because political paradigms deal with subjective value judgments, they involve one’s beliefs, values, and personal morality. In this subjective terrain one can find many more anomalies, especially when political climates change. No political paradigm can justify a claim as “scientific” or “objectively true”.
Despite these weaknesses, political and social paradigms are as important as scientific paradigms in orienting our thoughts and behavior. They attempt to explain the behavior of important people and current events. When people align themselves with a political paradigm, they often also express their own faith or lack of faith in others. People may prefer one paradigm over another less for its explanatory abilities than because they like its philosophy.
But choosing a paradigm for the wrong reasons can be dangerous. When people are committed to a certain set of conclusions, regardless of the evidence, the paradigm ceases to aid an accurate assessment of reality and asserts a zero-sum relationship to any other approach to the issue. You are wrong because I am right. One of the key indicators that paradigms have become dogmatic is the presence of verbal “landmines”: when one says certain things (see the “catch phrases”) from one paradigm, adherents of the other immediately either turn off or get hostile, accusing the person of racism, fascism, idiotarianism, islamo-bolshevism, etc.
As a result paradigms becomes dogmatic, a tool to wield, or a weapon with which an activist can strike, rather than a map to explore. Ultimately, this shift to blinding activism can have a huge negative impact on our world, even as it promises to further our hopes. It can insist on a “truth” that directly contradicts important evidence, and proposes solutions that will backfire in real life.
Ultimately, we need to be able to apply both paradigms, exploring our social and political world by treating them as working hypotheses that get confirmed or disproved in any individual case, rather than axiomatic truths that impose “right” on every case. Then different paradigms can have a positive-sum relationship, and improve our ability to solve problems by increasing our ability to understand them.
As promoters of civil societies, unfair judgments are exactly what we try to avoid. If we want to reduce moral failures at home and around the world, we might start at home, by judging fairly. If we don’t, we may find that poor judgments encourage the very evils we think we oppose. And in today’s current climate of terrorism, judging poorly and taking sides unfairly can be suicidal.
Sunday, 29 April 2007
Saturday, 28 April 2007
Eurabia
This political agenda has been reinforced by the deliberate cultural transformation of Europe. Euro-Arab Dialogue Symposia conducted in Venice (1977) and Hamburg (1983) included recommendations that have been successfully implemented. These recommendations were accompanied by a deliberate, privileged influx of Arab and other Muslim immigrants into Europe in enormous numbers.
The recommendations included:
1. Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread the Arabic language and culture in Europe,
2. Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals,
3. The necessity of supplying European institutions and universities with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans,
4. The necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists in order to present a positive picture of Arab-Islamic civilization and contemporary Arab issues to the educated public in Europe.
These agreements could not be set forth in written documents and treaties due to their politically sensitive and fundamentally undemocratic nature. The European leaders thus carefully chose to call their ideas “dialogue.” All meetings, committees and working groups included representatives from European Community nations and the European Council along with members from Arab countries and the Arab League. Proceedings and decisions took place in closed sessions. No official minutes were recorded.
The recommendations included:
1. Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread the Arabic language and culture in Europe,
2. Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals,
3. The necessity of supplying European institutions and universities with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans,
4. The necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists in order to present a positive picture of Arab-Islamic civilization and contemporary Arab issues to the educated public in Europe.
These agreements could not be set forth in written documents and treaties due to their politically sensitive and fundamentally undemocratic nature. The European leaders thus carefully chose to call their ideas “dialogue.” All meetings, committees and working groups included representatives from European Community nations and the European Council along with members from Arab countries and the Arab League. Proceedings and decisions took place in closed sessions. No official minutes were recorded.
The Palestinianization of Europe
The Palestinianization of Europe
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 26, 2007
Frontpage Interview's guest today is Bat Ye'or, the world's foremost authority on dhimmitude. Her latest study is Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, which has just come out in an Italian version.
FP: Bat Ye'or, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Bat Ye'or: Glad to be here again. Thank you Jamie.
FP: Your book on Eurabia came out in a French edition in 2006, and is now just out in Italian. Dutch and Hebrew edition will follow in autumn. Is there a difference with the American version?
Bat Ye'or: Yes, there are differences. I wrote the American edition in 2004, hoping to alert the American public to the changes that were profoundly affecting Europe on the demographic, religious, cultural and democratic levels. These transformations will modify Europe's relations with America and increase the gap between both. This situation is not specifically related to President Bush, albeit his strong Christian faith is one major reason why he is extremely unpopular in Europe. The core problem is connected to the satellization of Europe by the Arab and Muslim world -- the result of a policy pursued for over 30 years by choice, fear and greed. The demographic Arab and Muslim weight in Europe combines with the flow of Arab capital, the globalisation of markets and the huge European financial investments in Arab lands.
All this creates important Euro-Arab links and pressures which determine a policy based on economic opportunism. The European Union (EU) runs several student programs for Arab foreigners; it finances countless pro-Arab NGOs, and has established strong Euro-Arab networks to coordinate a common position against the U.S.A. and Israel, between academics, opinion-makers, journalists and union workers. European states fund and structure the ideological Palestinian war against Israel. We have seen recently that the Britain National Union of Journalists voted for a boycott of Israeli products. Last year it was the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) which voted to adopt a "silent boycott" of Israelis universities, professors and students. This policy is instituted by the Euro-Arab networks that bind together European and Arab syndicates.
There is a weighty, almost iron collaboration at all institutional level between Europe and the Arab League countries. European anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are built within this Arab and Muslim political nexus. Unless America accepts to enter into the same parallel disintegrative process of surrender and moral support to jihadist ideology that is rotting Europe, European hostility will not pass; on the contrary, it will increase. Europe now is chained to the Arab-Muslim world and cannot disengage or change direction. Blair tried to do it and failed miserably. In fact, after ten years at the head of government, he bears the main responsibility for this hapless situation.
FP: What has changed since the publication of Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis in America (January 2005)?
Bat Ye'or: The situation has aggravated on every front. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, (in Spring 2003) there was some hope that a democratic government would take over and would bring justice and peace to its people. But the elimination of tyranny, thanks to the Coalition forces, only brought to the fore the worst evil and inhuman forces that consume Arab-Muslim societies. The war in Iraq exposed American's shortcomings, Western divisions and unreadiness to confront global jihad. The chaotic situation there and the nuclearisation of Iran have fortified the Islamists. Moreover, the lamentable response of the Olmert government against Hizbollah in Lebanon and the electoral triumph of Hamas in Gaza, comfort the impression in the Arab and Muslim world of an Israeli and a Western debacle. Britain was humbled and did not react firmly to the kidnapping of fifteen of its sailors by Iran. Instead, British journalists and academia turned with violent hatred against Israel to appease Muslim governments and particularly the Palestinians who had abducted, for ransom, a BBC journalist. Such behaviour is typical of dhimmitude: the Christian dhimmi, being too afraid to attack his Muslim oppressor, directs his impotent frustration against a weaker and innocent dhimmi victim, the Jew. Those triangular relationships are constant in the social and political fabric of dhimmitude for more than a millennium and till today.
The hatred of America, the antisemitic culture, the cynic inversion of truth, the support given to, and the siding with killers and abductors, express a humiliating feeling of impotency. Britain has become the barking dog of its protectors: both Islamists and Palestinians. This situation is not limited to Great Britain, but maybe because it was one of the proudest and most powerful countries in Europe, one of the three major victors of World War II, that this wilful decline and abasement are so traumatic. Some Europeans, of course, oppose such policies but the EU directives tend to paralyse democratic rights within a web of totalitarian control of culture, media, and universities.
Moreover, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Latino-Arab alliance encouraged by the Andalusian Zapatero isolates America even more. The tactic to divide the West in order to weaken it, is succeeding.
FP: You have introduced a new concept: "Palestinianism." What does it mean exactly?
Bat Ye'or: I think that it is, precisely, "Palestinianism" which is at the root of Europe's decadence. It is an ideology based on a replacement theology whereby Palestine replaces Israel. As it has been conceived and instigated together by European and Arab intellectuals and politicians, it combines the worst of both cultures. For the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinianism embodies the ideology and aims of jihad against a rebellious dhimmi people. It is therefore based on a Muslim culture and theology that deny territorial independence and sovereignty to any non-Muslim people.
Palestinianism opposes Israel on two main points: 1) Jews being a dhimmi people cannot rule Muslims, even less liberate and govern their country, especially if it has been formerly conquered and colonized by jihad -- such as Israel, Spain, the Balkans, Hungary and parts of Europe. Jews must be brought under the yoke of Islam. And this, of course, applies to Christians as well; both must be reduced to submission and dhimmitude. 2) Muslim doctrine rejects the Bible, it does not accept that it is the history of the people of Israel and the source of Christianity. Muslims believe that the biblical narrative, as it is transcribed in the Koran, is the story of the Muslim people and of Muslim prophets. For this reason, they deny the historical patrimony and ancestry of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land. For them, both Testaments have an Islamic source and describe an Islamic history since the people in the Bible and Jesus himself (Isa) were Muslims. Judaism and Christianity are seen as a falsification of Islam. This is the inner core of the ideology -- even a doctrine -- of Palestinianism, and of its war against Israel.
The European trend has added to it traditional Christian antisemitism which condemns the Jews to perpetual exile till they convert. The Palestinian war against Israel, strongly encouraged by many in Europe, came as a magnificent opportunity to continue and maintain the culture of hate and denigration against the Jews -- now the State of Israel -- and by lending a moral and political support to a second Holocaust. Europe has been the biggest supporter and subsidizer for the Palestinians, as well as their ideological teachers.
FP: Europe has been Palestinianized hasn't it? What have the consequences been to Europe?
Bat Ye'or: The consequences for Europe are manifold, profound and it seems irreversible. Palestinianism has been the most effective tool to divide, weaken and destroy the West. But this process could only happen because an institutional apparatus, the European Community (EC) -- which in 1993 became the European Union -- could impose Palestinianism over all its member-states as a common foreign policy.
While in the Arab and Muslim world Palestinianism was the jihadist tool to eradicate the independence and freedom of the Jewish dhimmi people, in Europe it assumes another signification. The EC unofficial support for the Arab League jihad to destroy Israel restores a culture of hate that is self-destructive for Europe itself. Whatever Europeans may believe today, their whole spiritual and humanistic culture come from the biblical prophets, from the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery, and the promotion of human equality and dignity, from the salvific virtue of humility, self-criticism and the asking of forgiveness, from the praise of peace and the separation of religion from the state, and so on. All Christian feasts are Christianized Jewish feasts; Jewish holy books are Christian holy books.
Joining the jihadist camp involves the suppression of those links that structure and support Christianity, thereby weakening it, and leaving it ready to fall apart. And hate destroys its bearer more than its victim. It means to adhere to the jihadist ideology that seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamic rule over the world, a view that does not conceive of human plurality in equality, or accept criticism, or freedom of expression and opinion. It means that Christianity as much as Judaism, as religions and civilizations, are denied and deserve to be destroyed.
Palestinianism endeavors to suppress the links between Christianity and Judaism because it professes that Christianity was born from Islam, from a Jesus who was a Muslim prophet -- the Koranic Isa -- and very different from the Jewish Jesus described by the four evangelists -- themselves nurtured by the First Testament and not the Koran. In Europe, the theological replacement of Judaism triggered by Palestinianism, affects also politics. Except for derogatory comments, the media avoids mentioning Israel as if already it didn't exist, thus suppressing it by a silent boycott. Another European trend consists in imposing a strict historical similarity and equivalence between Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians, whereas there are none.
Since Palestinianism is now the foremost ideology of Europe, it has determined European support for jihadist tactics. And jihad is not like any war, it represents a whole theological war corpus, with its holy strategy and ritual tactics. Europe justified the PLO aim to destroy Israel from the 1970s, its abductions and killings of civilians, its air piracy, kidnapping and terrorism, blaming the victims instead of the perpetrators. In order to justify these crimes that are so contrary to humanist values and morality, Europe had to demonize Israel, to paint it as the biggest enemy of peace and has therefore rejuvenated its passionate love to hate Israel, vilifying it with its own crimes.
That's not all. Most Europeans do not agree with such policy. Many denounced it and fought against it. Hence, through a coordinate campaign monitored by the networks of the European Union bodies, a system linking politics to markets, culture, universities, media and opinion makers, has spread its totalitarian grip over the member-states in order to impose a despicable culture of lies and denial that support Europe's pro-Palestinian foreign policy.
FP: This is all very depressing Bat Ye'or. Is there any hope in the West's confrontation with militant Islam? Is Europe lost for sure? What should those of us in the free world do? What can we do?
Bat Ye'or: The only hope for the West lies in its perception of the global jihad's aim and dangers. This is not a military war only, it is even more a spiritual, intellectual and political debate. But the European Union is taking the opposite direction by even imposing a lexicon that will censure from debate the word "jihad" and its existence in history. The cowardly European position discourages courageous Muslims who struggle for a democratization and modernization of Islamic thought and societies. Europeans are so well conditioned by Palestinianism to hate America and Israel that they are not only in denial but anesthetized.
What we can do? First, in Europe and America reclaiming our universities which have become bastions of 'Saidism'. Rooted in Palestinianism, this school named after the Egyptian Christian Edward Said, replaced Orientalist scholarship with ignorance and hate indoctrination against the West and Israel. We must also put the discussion of ideas in the open and bring it to the public without censorship, boycott and threats. It is the only way to prevent a racism based on frustration and impotency. But -- above all -- Europeans must decide on their values, their future, and fight for their democratic institutions and against the subversion of their culture. They must recover the control of their own security rather than beg for the protection of jihadists and be ransomed.
FP: Bat Ye'or, thank you for joining Frontpage.
Bat Ye'or: Thank you Jamie for inviting me.
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 26, 2007
Frontpage Interview's guest today is Bat Ye'or, the world's foremost authority on dhimmitude. Her latest study is Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, which has just come out in an Italian version.
FP: Bat Ye'or, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Bat Ye'or: Glad to be here again. Thank you Jamie.
FP: Your book on Eurabia came out in a French edition in 2006, and is now just out in Italian. Dutch and Hebrew edition will follow in autumn. Is there a difference with the American version?
Bat Ye'or: Yes, there are differences. I wrote the American edition in 2004, hoping to alert the American public to the changes that were profoundly affecting Europe on the demographic, religious, cultural and democratic levels. These transformations will modify Europe's relations with America and increase the gap between both. This situation is not specifically related to President Bush, albeit his strong Christian faith is one major reason why he is extremely unpopular in Europe. The core problem is connected to the satellization of Europe by the Arab and Muslim world -- the result of a policy pursued for over 30 years by choice, fear and greed. The demographic Arab and Muslim weight in Europe combines with the flow of Arab capital, the globalisation of markets and the huge European financial investments in Arab lands.
All this creates important Euro-Arab links and pressures which determine a policy based on economic opportunism. The European Union (EU) runs several student programs for Arab foreigners; it finances countless pro-Arab NGOs, and has established strong Euro-Arab networks to coordinate a common position against the U.S.A. and Israel, between academics, opinion-makers, journalists and union workers. European states fund and structure the ideological Palestinian war against Israel. We have seen recently that the Britain National Union of Journalists voted for a boycott of Israeli products. Last year it was the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) which voted to adopt a "silent boycott" of Israelis universities, professors and students. This policy is instituted by the Euro-Arab networks that bind together European and Arab syndicates.
There is a weighty, almost iron collaboration at all institutional level between Europe and the Arab League countries. European anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are built within this Arab and Muslim political nexus. Unless America accepts to enter into the same parallel disintegrative process of surrender and moral support to jihadist ideology that is rotting Europe, European hostility will not pass; on the contrary, it will increase. Europe now is chained to the Arab-Muslim world and cannot disengage or change direction. Blair tried to do it and failed miserably. In fact, after ten years at the head of government, he bears the main responsibility for this hapless situation.
FP: What has changed since the publication of Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis in America (January 2005)?
Bat Ye'or: The situation has aggravated on every front. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, (in Spring 2003) there was some hope that a democratic government would take over and would bring justice and peace to its people. But the elimination of tyranny, thanks to the Coalition forces, only brought to the fore the worst evil and inhuman forces that consume Arab-Muslim societies. The war in Iraq exposed American's shortcomings, Western divisions and unreadiness to confront global jihad. The chaotic situation there and the nuclearisation of Iran have fortified the Islamists. Moreover, the lamentable response of the Olmert government against Hizbollah in Lebanon and the electoral triumph of Hamas in Gaza, comfort the impression in the Arab and Muslim world of an Israeli and a Western debacle. Britain was humbled and did not react firmly to the kidnapping of fifteen of its sailors by Iran. Instead, British journalists and academia turned with violent hatred against Israel to appease Muslim governments and particularly the Palestinians who had abducted, for ransom, a BBC journalist. Such behaviour is typical of dhimmitude: the Christian dhimmi, being too afraid to attack his Muslim oppressor, directs his impotent frustration against a weaker and innocent dhimmi victim, the Jew. Those triangular relationships are constant in the social and political fabric of dhimmitude for more than a millennium and till today.
The hatred of America, the antisemitic culture, the cynic inversion of truth, the support given to, and the siding with killers and abductors, express a humiliating feeling of impotency. Britain has become the barking dog of its protectors: both Islamists and Palestinians. This situation is not limited to Great Britain, but maybe because it was one of the proudest and most powerful countries in Europe, one of the three major victors of World War II, that this wilful decline and abasement are so traumatic. Some Europeans, of course, oppose such policies but the EU directives tend to paralyse democratic rights within a web of totalitarian control of culture, media, and universities.
Moreover, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Latino-Arab alliance encouraged by the Andalusian Zapatero isolates America even more. The tactic to divide the West in order to weaken it, is succeeding.
FP: You have introduced a new concept: "Palestinianism." What does it mean exactly?
Bat Ye'or: I think that it is, precisely, "Palestinianism" which is at the root of Europe's decadence. It is an ideology based on a replacement theology whereby Palestine replaces Israel. As it has been conceived and instigated together by European and Arab intellectuals and politicians, it combines the worst of both cultures. For the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinianism embodies the ideology and aims of jihad against a rebellious dhimmi people. It is therefore based on a Muslim culture and theology that deny territorial independence and sovereignty to any non-Muslim people.
Palestinianism opposes Israel on two main points: 1) Jews being a dhimmi people cannot rule Muslims, even less liberate and govern their country, especially if it has been formerly conquered and colonized by jihad -- such as Israel, Spain, the Balkans, Hungary and parts of Europe. Jews must be brought under the yoke of Islam. And this, of course, applies to Christians as well; both must be reduced to submission and dhimmitude. 2) Muslim doctrine rejects the Bible, it does not accept that it is the history of the people of Israel and the source of Christianity. Muslims believe that the biblical narrative, as it is transcribed in the Koran, is the story of the Muslim people and of Muslim prophets. For this reason, they deny the historical patrimony and ancestry of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land. For them, both Testaments have an Islamic source and describe an Islamic history since the people in the Bible and Jesus himself (Isa) were Muslims. Judaism and Christianity are seen as a falsification of Islam. This is the inner core of the ideology -- even a doctrine -- of Palestinianism, and of its war against Israel.
The European trend has added to it traditional Christian antisemitism which condemns the Jews to perpetual exile till they convert. The Palestinian war against Israel, strongly encouraged by many in Europe, came as a magnificent opportunity to continue and maintain the culture of hate and denigration against the Jews -- now the State of Israel -- and by lending a moral and political support to a second Holocaust. Europe has been the biggest supporter and subsidizer for the Palestinians, as well as their ideological teachers.
FP: Europe has been Palestinianized hasn't it? What have the consequences been to Europe?
Bat Ye'or: The consequences for Europe are manifold, profound and it seems irreversible. Palestinianism has been the most effective tool to divide, weaken and destroy the West. But this process could only happen because an institutional apparatus, the European Community (EC) -- which in 1993 became the European Union -- could impose Palestinianism over all its member-states as a common foreign policy.
While in the Arab and Muslim world Palestinianism was the jihadist tool to eradicate the independence and freedom of the Jewish dhimmi people, in Europe it assumes another signification. The EC unofficial support for the Arab League jihad to destroy Israel restores a culture of hate that is self-destructive for Europe itself. Whatever Europeans may believe today, their whole spiritual and humanistic culture come from the biblical prophets, from the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery, and the promotion of human equality and dignity, from the salvific virtue of humility, self-criticism and the asking of forgiveness, from the praise of peace and the separation of religion from the state, and so on. All Christian feasts are Christianized Jewish feasts; Jewish holy books are Christian holy books.
Joining the jihadist camp involves the suppression of those links that structure and support Christianity, thereby weakening it, and leaving it ready to fall apart. And hate destroys its bearer more than its victim. It means to adhere to the jihadist ideology that seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamic rule over the world, a view that does not conceive of human plurality in equality, or accept criticism, or freedom of expression and opinion. It means that Christianity as much as Judaism, as religions and civilizations, are denied and deserve to be destroyed.
Palestinianism endeavors to suppress the links between Christianity and Judaism because it professes that Christianity was born from Islam, from a Jesus who was a Muslim prophet -- the Koranic Isa -- and very different from the Jewish Jesus described by the four evangelists -- themselves nurtured by the First Testament and not the Koran. In Europe, the theological replacement of Judaism triggered by Palestinianism, affects also politics. Except for derogatory comments, the media avoids mentioning Israel as if already it didn't exist, thus suppressing it by a silent boycott. Another European trend consists in imposing a strict historical similarity and equivalence between Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians, whereas there are none.
Since Palestinianism is now the foremost ideology of Europe, it has determined European support for jihadist tactics. And jihad is not like any war, it represents a whole theological war corpus, with its holy strategy and ritual tactics. Europe justified the PLO aim to destroy Israel from the 1970s, its abductions and killings of civilians, its air piracy, kidnapping and terrorism, blaming the victims instead of the perpetrators. In order to justify these crimes that are so contrary to humanist values and morality, Europe had to demonize Israel, to paint it as the biggest enemy of peace and has therefore rejuvenated its passionate love to hate Israel, vilifying it with its own crimes.
That's not all. Most Europeans do not agree with such policy. Many denounced it and fought against it. Hence, through a coordinate campaign monitored by the networks of the European Union bodies, a system linking politics to markets, culture, universities, media and opinion makers, has spread its totalitarian grip over the member-states in order to impose a despicable culture of lies and denial that support Europe's pro-Palestinian foreign policy.
FP: This is all very depressing Bat Ye'or. Is there any hope in the West's confrontation with militant Islam? Is Europe lost for sure? What should those of us in the free world do? What can we do?
Bat Ye'or: The only hope for the West lies in its perception of the global jihad's aim and dangers. This is not a military war only, it is even more a spiritual, intellectual and political debate. But the European Union is taking the opposite direction by even imposing a lexicon that will censure from debate the word "jihad" and its existence in history. The cowardly European position discourages courageous Muslims who struggle for a democratization and modernization of Islamic thought and societies. Europeans are so well conditioned by Palestinianism to hate America and Israel that they are not only in denial but anesthetized.
What we can do? First, in Europe and America reclaiming our universities which have become bastions of 'Saidism'. Rooted in Palestinianism, this school named after the Egyptian Christian Edward Said, replaced Orientalist scholarship with ignorance and hate indoctrination against the West and Israel. We must also put the discussion of ideas in the open and bring it to the public without censorship, boycott and threats. It is the only way to prevent a racism based on frustration and impotency. But -- above all -- Europeans must decide on their values, their future, and fight for their democratic institutions and against the subversion of their culture. They must recover the control of their own security rather than beg for the protection of jihadists and be ransomed.
FP: Bat Ye'or, thank you for joining Frontpage.
Bat Ye'or: Thank you Jamie for inviting me.
Thursday, 26 April 2007
The Emergence of Pallywood.
DEFINITION
The term "Pallywood" refers to the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression. They are able to succeed in this endeavor in large part due to the credulity and eagerness of the Western press to present these images, which reinforce the image of the Palestinian David struggling valiantly against the overpowering Israeli Goliath. Pallywood has led to astonishing lapses in Western journalistic standards in which badly staged scenes regularly appear on the news as "real events." This page attempts to outline how such lapses could have come about, producing the current situation.
MAJOR STAGES IN THE EMERGENCE OF PALLYWOOD
Life Magazine, June 12, 1970.
1982: Lebanon invasion
The earliest clear signs of an emerging Pallywood come from the Lebanese invasion of 1982. There, for the first time, the media seems to have embraced an openly hostile stance towards Israel, which led to a widely discussed article entitled "J'Accuse" (Commentary, September 1983), by Norman Podhoretz who charged America's leading journalists, newspapers and television networks with "anti-Semitism." The alleged hostility was characterized by the following incidents:
- Using Arafat's brother, Fathi Arafat, head of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Palestinian sources claimed 10,000 dead and 600,000 refugees from the Israeli onslaught. Without checking to see how many people lived in southern Lebanon (300,000), the media repeated these figures constantly (pp. 300-301), until they became widely accepted.
- Reporters comparing the siege of Beirut with the Nazi siege of Warsaw. Of all the sieges of cities in 20th century warfare, it would be harder to find a more inappropriate one, and yet the analogy between Israelis and Nazis seems to have had an almost irresistable lure to some journalists. Among the most aggressive reporters was Peter Jennings. For a discussion of his work, see here and here.
- The use of clearly false images by a press eager to believe the worst of the Israeli army, including images of areas devastated in the civil war between Palestinians and Lebanese, dead babies that were not dead, etc (pp. 353-389).
- Coverage of Sabra and Shatilla massacres that left many under the impression that Israeli soldiers had massacred Palestinian refugees, and failed to inform people of why the Phalange wanted to take vengeance. Everyone has heard of Sabra and Shatilla; Only recently have people started to hear of Darfur. The stark contrast between the hundreds of dead at Sabra and Shatilla and the over ten thousand dead at Hama, a town in the heart of Syria, the same year, illustrates both the medias penchant for reporting any Israeli misdeed no matter how removed direct culpability, and the power of intimidation and (no) access journalism to silence them on matters of Arab misdeeds (see Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalém, chap. 4.
- Use of streaming text below footage informing the viewer that the footage had been viewed by "Israeli military censors." No similar indication of the role of Palestinian "authorities" in controlling the images emanating from areas under their control ever appeared. For a discussion of the press's differential treatment of formal Israeli military censorship and informal but pervasive Palestinian censorship via intimidation and violence, (see pp. 353-387).
- Reluctance of the press - especially the "resident" reporters to reveal the extent of PLO brutality in the "state within a state" in southern Lebanon (see pp 219-278).
Given the eagerness of the Western press to report the worst of the Israelis, to avoid reporting on the worst of the Palestinians, their susceptibility to intimidation and the murder of journalists who displeased the PLO, and their remarkably shoddy standards in sifting real from confected evidence, Palestinians clearly understood that they had a valuable ally in the Western media based at the Commodore Hotel - "Chairman Yasser's Best Battalion" (Chafets, Double Vision, chap. 6).
Misunderstanding
COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM
Psychologist refer to cognitive egocentrism as the tendency to project one’s own mentality on others. Thus, the act of empathy can often become an act of projecting onto another “what I would feel if I were in their shoes,” rather than an attempt to understand how the person with whom one is empathizing, has reacted to their situation, how they read and interpret events, rather than how we might were we. One of the products of journalistic egocentrism when confronted with behavior alien to one’s own norms, is to imagine that the situation must be sufficiently bad to provoke in oneself the responses one sees, rather than pay attention to different ways of processing and reacting to situations.
Thus Sherry Blair says, “I can understand suicide bombers, if I my existence were as hopeless as theirs, I would be tempted to blow myself up too.” Aside from the moral grotestequery of a woman with as great commitment to humanity as she contemplating blowing up women, old people and little children, she has imagined that they must be in a situation of hopelessness about leading a decent life because that is the only condition under which she herself would be so tempted.
Different cultures respond to different stimuli differently. If one listens rather than projects... cognitive egocentrism, one hears a different – and alien – tale: “The truth is that the resistance, whether in Iraq or in Palestine… defends the nation's honor…Therefore, the issue…martyrdom (i.e. suicide) operations carried out by boys and girls, and also the operations carried out by the Iraqi resistance – these redeem self-confidence and hope, because a nation that does not excel at the industry of death does not deserve life.” Deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Al-Sayyid Ahmad Al-Habib, made a similar appearance on Hizbullah's Al- Manar TV, on April 8, 2004.
Psychologist refer to cognitive egocentrism as the tendency to project one’s own mentality on others. Thus, the act of empathy can often become an act of projecting onto another “what I would feel if I were in their shoes,” rather than an attempt to understand how the person with whom one is empathizing, has reacted to their situation, how they read and interpret events, rather than how we might were we. One of the products of journalistic egocentrism when confronted with behavior alien to one’s own norms, is to imagine that the situation must be sufficiently bad to provoke in oneself the responses one sees, rather than pay attention to different ways of processing and reacting to situations.
Thus Sherry Blair says, “I can understand suicide bombers, if I my existence were as hopeless as theirs, I would be tempted to blow myself up too.” Aside from the moral grotestequery of a woman with as great commitment to humanity as she contemplating blowing up women, old people and little children, she has imagined that they must be in a situation of hopelessness about leading a decent life because that is the only condition under which she herself would be so tempted.
Different cultures respond to different stimuli differently. If one listens rather than projects... cognitive egocentrism, one hears a different – and alien – tale: “The truth is that the resistance, whether in Iraq or in Palestine… defends the nation's honor…Therefore, the issue…martyrdom (i.e. suicide) operations carried out by boys and girls, and also the operations carried out by the Iraqi resistance – these redeem self-confidence and hope, because a nation that does not excel at the industry of death does not deserve life.” Deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Al-Sayyid Ahmad Al-Habib, made a similar appearance on Hizbullah's Al- Manar TV, on April 8, 2004.
Gullible
MOEBIUS STRIP OF COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM:
Demopaths are particularly adept at exploiting LCE. They speak in precisely the terms that appeal to LCE, insisting that their struggle is for human rights, fairness and justice, even as their notions of these matters differ wildly from those of the liberals to whom they appeal (DCE). Liberals find themselves confused, since both genuine moderates and demopaths use more or less the same language. Forced to judge, many liberals, eager to believe anything civil these people might say and any hope for peace now they may hold out, prefer to project good faith, taking the protestations of demopaths at face value, becoming their dupes.
As a result, a dysfunctional relationship between demopaths (DCE) and their dupes (LCE) has emerged. Under current circumstances, where most liberals cannot even detect the existence of their own LCE nor imagine the possible DCE of others, this dysfunctional relationship works radically to the advantage of the demopaths. When Western authorities empower demopaths rather than sincere moderates, they hurt the forces of civil society and human rights and empower the forces of dominion and war.
The surprise of the British to the 7-7 bombings, and subsequently to the much higher levels of support for it in an English Muslim population than they had previously been led to believe (by a paradigmatically credulous press and intelligentsia), reflect precisely this dynamic. Europe may fall to this dysfunctional dynamic, although the emergence of hard questioning has begun to identify demopaths disguising themselves as moderates, and to reveal the jihadi discourse beneath the moderate rhetoric.
Demopaths are particularly adept at exploiting LCE. They speak in precisely the terms that appeal to LCE, insisting that their struggle is for human rights, fairness and justice, even as their notions of these matters differ wildly from those of the liberals to whom they appeal (DCE). Liberals find themselves confused, since both genuine moderates and demopaths use more or less the same language. Forced to judge, many liberals, eager to believe anything civil these people might say and any hope for peace now they may hold out, prefer to project good faith, taking the protestations of demopaths at face value, becoming their dupes.
As a result, a dysfunctional relationship between demopaths (DCE) and their dupes (LCE) has emerged. Under current circumstances, where most liberals cannot even detect the existence of their own LCE nor imagine the possible DCE of others, this dysfunctional relationship works radically to the advantage of the demopaths. When Western authorities empower demopaths rather than sincere moderates, they hurt the forces of civil society and human rights and empower the forces of dominion and war.
The surprise of the British to the 7-7 bombings, and subsequently to the much higher levels of support for it in an English Muslim population than they had previously been led to believe (by a paradigmatically credulous press and intelligentsia), reflect precisely this dynamic. Europe may fall to this dysfunctional dynamic, although the emergence of hard questioning has begun to identify demopaths disguising themselves as moderates, and to reveal the jihadi discourse beneath the moderate rhetoric.
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
Demopaths and their Dupes
DEMOPATHS:
Demopaths are people who use democratic language and invoke human rights only when it serves their interests, and not when it calls for self-criticism or self-restraint. Demopaths demand stringent levels of human “rights” but do not apply these basic standards for the “other” to their own behavior. The most lethal demopaths use democratic rights to destroy democracy.
Demopaths differ from civil-society free-riders; the latter enjoy more rights than they grant to others simply out of selfishness or laziness. Demopaths are fundamentally hostile to granting others’ rights, and secretly despise the values of civil society (which demands that they tolerate and respect others). Instead of coming along for the ride, they want to sink the boat.
Demopaths use the jargon of civil society and human rights to convince their targets. Through this progressive discourse, demopaths exploit on people eager to believe that civic values can resolve the problem. Sometimes demopaths are completely hostile to the cultures in which they live, and manipulate human rights as a Trojan horse to enter the city and sack it.
Demopathy is a zero-sum to negative-sum game. It pursues the destruction of the system (demopaths win and reestablish plunder-or-be-plundered aristocracy); in the process, it destroys the system’s very capacity to produce what made it attractive to plunder in the first place. Demopaths do not view opponents as members of a positive-sum collective, but as enemies to be destroyed. In its most virulent stages, demopathy is violently paranoid.
CHARECTERISTICS:
- Radical imbalance between their insistence on asserting their own rights, and their lack of interest in defending the rights of others.
- Moral rhetoric expressing great indignation when appealing for personal rights.
- Tendency to tell demonizing tales of the enemies (of “human rights”)
- Tendency to think in conspiratorial terms (they are conspirators themselves), and to project ill will onto opponents/enemies.
- Do minimal (required) work protecting the rights of others, especially opponents/enemies.
A demopathic organization would protest the media portraying its ethnic/religious affiliates as “terrorists” (inadmissible negative stereotyping), but would not protest the terrorist acts perpetrated by members of their ethnic/religious group (permissible wanton murder of civilians).
As long as civil society is healthy, demopaths stay hidden. Ever since the bombings in London, the number of demopaths revealed by the investigative energy of its own reporters or the brazenness of the demopaths themselves has risen substantially. Since most cases of demopathy must be approached carefully without pre-judging the evidence, we prefer to use these examples and leave the larger questions to each individual.
Bad Joke?
According to one version, the definition of chutzpah is when someone kills their parents and pleads to the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. The joking definition of a demopath, then might be the foreigner who applies for a loan from the agricultural department in a democratic country in order to buy a crop duster with outsized tanks. Although his intention is to spray poison on the local population, when his loan is refused because he is a foreigner with no obvious need for a crop duster, he accuses the agency of racist xenophobia. Is this an urban legend?
DEMOPATHIC DISCOURSE
Demopaths believe that all interaction between people works according to the principle “rule or be ruled” – the dominating imperative. In order for me to prevent you from dominating me, I must dominate you first. This approach to others normally produces prime divider societies where the elite (aristocracy) use their power to dominate the masses. But civil society clips the wings of those who would use force to dominate others. In such conditions, people who refuse to give up the dominating imperative go underground and become demopaths, using all the freedom that civil societies offer to work for their destruction. Until recently, the attitude of civil societies has been to grandfather demopathic tendencies, assuming that the benefits of civic abundance will win over all but the most mean-spirited player.
Demopathic discourse mirrors that of human rights. Thus, it is often difficult to detect the difference. Because discerning demopaths means assessing motive, it requires personal judgment. Therefore, demopathy is best illustrated through examples. In the cases presented below, we invite you to comment on whether or not, in your opinion, the particular case reflects demopathy or sincere commitment to human rights.
EXAMPLE 1: HIZB-UT-TAHRIR (ISLAMIC LIBERATION PARTY)
The UK branch of Hizb ut Tahrir, an Islamic group outlawed in central Asia, constitutes a powerful example of a demopath group working within a Western civil society. The group and some of its members, after being banned from their home countries, found refuge in the UK where Hizb ut Tahrir has been operating as a legal organization for years. Its ideology vows to establish a worldwide caliphate where all religious practice would be regulated by Sharia Law. Websites connected to the group have been openly promoting Jihad, suicide bombers as martyrs, racism and anti-semitism.
MEMBERS:
SHEIKH BAKRI MOHAMMED the founder of the first UK branch of Hizb ut Tahrir, has regularly preached Jihad against the West and praised the 9/11 hijackers as "the magnificent 19". When the UK government decided to deport him in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings, the radical Muslim, who was on welfare, cried foul and said that it was an injustice because his four wives and families would suffer (see also here). Here is a prime example of a demopath who has worked for a long time to undermine the values and principles of civil society and, when his own self-interest is threatened, invokes the principles of civil society in order to make his case and protect himself. Bakri Mohammed deserves the demopathic chutzpah award.
DILPAZIER ASLAM is an English-born Pakistani Muslim hired as a journalist by the Manchester Guardian. In addition to his news articles, Aslam wrote an editorial using first person plural pronouns to speak about England and the English. He argues that, because ‘we’ (the English) have committed so many wrongs against ‘them’ (the Arabs, Muslims), ‘we’ cannot be surprised by ‘their’ understandable responses of rage and terrorism. See, "Today's muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice". So while, he was claiming to be an understanding outsider representing the oppressed minority’s views to his co-citizens, he was actually one of “them”, using the protection of the press, the right to freedom of speech, the right to respect – and even to a job – in order to slip a justification for Jihad, and an opportunity to chastise the West for the hatred and regressive revolution that he foments. Initially, after the discovery of Aslam’s concealed activities, the Guardian refused to fire him, saying the matter was "under review". Eventually, when they did fire him, (not a consensual process though, one editor resigned) Aslam was outraged and invoked the principles of journalistic freedom, despite the fact that his Jihadi ideology rejects that value.
Demopaths are people who use democratic language and invoke human rights only when it serves their interests, and not when it calls for self-criticism or self-restraint. Demopaths demand stringent levels of human “rights” but do not apply these basic standards for the “other” to their own behavior. The most lethal demopaths use democratic rights to destroy democracy.
Demopaths differ from civil-society free-riders; the latter enjoy more rights than they grant to others simply out of selfishness or laziness. Demopaths are fundamentally hostile to granting others’ rights, and secretly despise the values of civil society (which demands that they tolerate and respect others). Instead of coming along for the ride, they want to sink the boat.
Demopaths use the jargon of civil society and human rights to convince their targets. Through this progressive discourse, demopaths exploit on people eager to believe that civic values can resolve the problem. Sometimes demopaths are completely hostile to the cultures in which they live, and manipulate human rights as a Trojan horse to enter the city and sack it.
Demopathy is a zero-sum to negative-sum game. It pursues the destruction of the system (demopaths win and reestablish plunder-or-be-plundered aristocracy); in the process, it destroys the system’s very capacity to produce what made it attractive to plunder in the first place. Demopaths do not view opponents as members of a positive-sum collective, but as enemies to be destroyed. In its most virulent stages, demopathy is violently paranoid.
CHARECTERISTICS:
- Radical imbalance between their insistence on asserting their own rights, and their lack of interest in defending the rights of others.
- Moral rhetoric expressing great indignation when appealing for personal rights.
- Tendency to tell demonizing tales of the enemies (of “human rights”)
- Tendency to think in conspiratorial terms (they are conspirators themselves), and to project ill will onto opponents/enemies.
- Do minimal (required) work protecting the rights of others, especially opponents/enemies.
A demopathic organization would protest the media portraying its ethnic/religious affiliates as “terrorists” (inadmissible negative stereotyping), but would not protest the terrorist acts perpetrated by members of their ethnic/religious group (permissible wanton murder of civilians).
As long as civil society is healthy, demopaths stay hidden. Ever since the bombings in London, the number of demopaths revealed by the investigative energy of its own reporters or the brazenness of the demopaths themselves has risen substantially. Since most cases of demopathy must be approached carefully without pre-judging the evidence, we prefer to use these examples and leave the larger questions to each individual.
Bad Joke?
According to one version, the definition of chutzpah is when someone kills their parents and pleads to the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. The joking definition of a demopath, then might be the foreigner who applies for a loan from the agricultural department in a democratic country in order to buy a crop duster with outsized tanks. Although his intention is to spray poison on the local population, when his loan is refused because he is a foreigner with no obvious need for a crop duster, he accuses the agency of racist xenophobia. Is this an urban legend?
DEMOPATHIC DISCOURSE
Demopaths believe that all interaction between people works according to the principle “rule or be ruled” – the dominating imperative. In order for me to prevent you from dominating me, I must dominate you first. This approach to others normally produces prime divider societies where the elite (aristocracy) use their power to dominate the masses. But civil society clips the wings of those who would use force to dominate others. In such conditions, people who refuse to give up the dominating imperative go underground and become demopaths, using all the freedom that civil societies offer to work for their destruction. Until recently, the attitude of civil societies has been to grandfather demopathic tendencies, assuming that the benefits of civic abundance will win over all but the most mean-spirited player.
Demopathic discourse mirrors that of human rights. Thus, it is often difficult to detect the difference. Because discerning demopaths means assessing motive, it requires personal judgment. Therefore, demopathy is best illustrated through examples. In the cases presented below, we invite you to comment on whether or not, in your opinion, the particular case reflects demopathy or sincere commitment to human rights.
EXAMPLE 1: HIZB-UT-TAHRIR (ISLAMIC LIBERATION PARTY)
The UK branch of Hizb ut Tahrir, an Islamic group outlawed in central Asia, constitutes a powerful example of a demopath group working within a Western civil society. The group and some of its members, after being banned from their home countries, found refuge in the UK where Hizb ut Tahrir has been operating as a legal organization for years. Its ideology vows to establish a worldwide caliphate where all religious practice would be regulated by Sharia Law. Websites connected to the group have been openly promoting Jihad, suicide bombers as martyrs, racism and anti-semitism.
MEMBERS:
SHEIKH BAKRI MOHAMMED the founder of the first UK branch of Hizb ut Tahrir, has regularly preached Jihad against the West and praised the 9/11 hijackers as "the magnificent 19". When the UK government decided to deport him in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings, the radical Muslim, who was on welfare, cried foul and said that it was an injustice because his four wives and families would suffer (see also here). Here is a prime example of a demopath who has worked for a long time to undermine the values and principles of civil society and, when his own self-interest is threatened, invokes the principles of civil society in order to make his case and protect himself. Bakri Mohammed deserves the demopathic chutzpah award.
DILPAZIER ASLAM is an English-born Pakistani Muslim hired as a journalist by the Manchester Guardian. In addition to his news articles, Aslam wrote an editorial using first person plural pronouns to speak about England and the English. He argues that, because ‘we’ (the English) have committed so many wrongs against ‘them’ (the Arabs, Muslims), ‘we’ cannot be surprised by ‘their’ understandable responses of rage and terrorism. See, "Today's muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice". So while, he was claiming to be an understanding outsider representing the oppressed minority’s views to his co-citizens, he was actually one of “them”, using the protection of the press, the right to freedom of speech, the right to respect – and even to a job – in order to slip a justification for Jihad, and an opportunity to chastise the West for the hatred and regressive revolution that he foments. Initially, after the discovery of Aslam’s concealed activities, the Guardian refused to fire him, saying the matter was "under review". Eventually, when they did fire him, (not a consensual process though, one editor resigned) Aslam was outraged and invoked the principles of journalistic freedom, despite the fact that his Jihadi ideology rejects that value.
Monday, 23 April 2007
Promote Palestine, integration, and lie.
The Eurabia Code, Part I
From the desk of Fjordman on Sun, 2006-10-01 08:53
I decided to write this essay after a comment from a journalist, not a Leftist by my country’s standards, who dismissed Eurabia as merely a conspiracy theory, one on a par with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I do not disagree with the fact that conspiracy theories exist, nor that they can be dangerous. After all, the Protocols and the Dolchstosslegende, or “stab in the back myth – the idea that Germany didn’t lose WW1 but was betrayed by Socialists, intellectuals and Jews – helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis before WW2.
However, what puzzles me is that it is a widely-held belief of many (not just in the Islamic world but in Europe and even in the United States) that the terror attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11th 2001 were really a controlled demolition staged by the American government and then blamed on Muslims. I have seen this thesis talked about many times in Western media. While it is frequently (though not always) dismissed and mocked, it is least mentioned.
In contrast, Eurabia – which asserts that the Islamicization of Europe didn’t happen merely by accident but with the active participation of European political leaders – is hardly ever referred to at all, despite the fact that it is easier to document. Does the notion of Eurabia hit too close to home? Perhaps it doesn’t fit with the anti-American disposition of many journalists? Curiously enough, even those left-leaning journalists who are otherwise critical of the European Union because of its free market elements never write about Eurabia.
Because of this, I am going to test whether the Eurabia thesis is correct, or at least plausible. I have called this project The Eurabia Code, alluding to author Dan Brown’s massive bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Brown’s fictional account “documents” a conspiracy by the Church to cover up the truth about Jesus. I’m not sure my work will become equally popular, but I’m pretty sure it’s closer to reality.
The next time Mr. Brown wants to write about massive conspiracies in Europe, he would be well-advised to set his eyes at Brussels rather than Rome. It would be a whole lot more interesting. What follows is a brief outline of the thesis put forward by writer Bat Ye’or in her book “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.” My information is based on her book (which should be read in full). In addition I have drawn from some of her articles and interviews. I republish the information with her blessing, but this summary is completely my own.
In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Bat Ye’or explained how French President Charles de Gaulle, disappointed by the loss of the French colonies in Africa and the Middle East as well as with France’s waning influence in the international arena, decided in the 1960’s to create a strategic alliance with the Arab and Muslim world to compete with the dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union.
“This is a matter of a total transformation of Europe, which is the result of an intentional policy,” said Bat Ye’or. “We are now heading towards a total change in Europe, which will be more and more Islamicized and will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world. The European leaders have decided on an alliance with the Arab world, through which they have committed to accept the Arab and Muslim approach toward the United States and Israel. This is not only with respect to foreign policy, but also on issues engaging European society from within, such as immigration, the integration of the immigrants and the idea that Islam is part of Europe.”
“Europe is under a constant threat of terror. Terror is a way of applying pressure on the European countries to surrender constantly to the Arab representatives’ demands. They demand, for example, that Europe always speak out for the Palestinians and against Israel.”
Thus, the Eurabian project became an enlarged vision of the anti-American Gaullist policy dependent upon the formation of a Euro-Arab entity hostile to American influence. It facilitated European ambitions to maintain important spheres of influence in the former European colonies, while opening huge markets for European products in the Arab world, especially in oil-producing countries, in order to secure supplies of petroleum and natural gas to Europe. In addition, it would make the Mediterranean a Euro-Arab inland sea by favoring Muslim immigration and promoting Multiculturalism with a strong Islamic presence in Europe.
The use of the term “Eurabia” was first introduced in the mid-1970s, as the title of a journal edited by the President of the Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity, Lucien Bitterlein, and published collaboratively by the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), and the Middle East International (London). Their articles called for common Euro-Arab positions at every level. These concrete proposals were not the musings of isolated theorists; instead they put forth concrete policy decisions conceived in conjunction with, and actualized by, European state leaders and European Parliamentarians.
During a November 27, 1967 press conference, Charles de Gaulle stated openly that French cooperation with the Arab world had become “the fundamental basis of our foreign policy.” By January 1969, the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples, held in Cairo, in its resolution 15, decided “to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance.” Five years later in Paris, July 1974, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation was created, under the Euro-Arab Dialogue rubric.
Bat Ye’or has highlighted this shared Euro-Arab political agenda. The first step was the construction of a common foreign policy. France was the driving force in this unification, which had already been envisaged by General de Gaulle’s inner circle and Arab politicians. The Arab states demanded from Europe access to Western science and technology, European political independence from the United States, European pressure on the United States to align with their Arab policy and demonization of Israel as a threat to world peace, as well as measures favorable to Arab immigration and dissemination of Islamic culture in Europe. This cooperation would also included recognition of the Palestinians as a distinct people and the PLO and its leader Arafat as their representative. Up to 1973 they had been known only as Arab refugees, even by other Arabs. The concept of a Palestinian “nation” simply did not exist.
During the 1973 oil crisis, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced that, due to the ongoing Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors Egypt and Syria, OPEC would no longer ship petroleum to Western nations that supported Israel. The sudden increase in oil prices was had lasting effects. Not only did it create a strong influx of petrodollars to countries such as Saudi Arabia, which permitted the Saudis to fund a worldwide Islamic resurgence, but it also had an impact in the West, especially in Europe.
However, Arab leaders had to sell their oil. Their people are very dependent on European economic and technological aid. The Americans made this point during the oil embargo in 1973. According to Bat Ye’or, although the oil factor certainly helped cement the Euro-Arab Dialogue, it was primarily a pretext to cover up a policy that emerged in France before that crisis occurred. The policy, conceived in the 1960s, had strong antecedents in the French 19th-century dream of governing an Arab empire.
This political agenda has been reinforced by the deliberate cultural transformation of Europe. Euro-Arab Dialogue Symposia conducted in Venice (1977) and Hamburg (1983) included recommendations that have been successfully implemented. These recommendations were accompanied by a deliberate, privileged influx of Arab and other Muslim immigrants into Europe in enormous numbers.
The recommendations included:
1. Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread the Arabic language and culture in Europe,
2. Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals,
3. The necessity of supplying European institutions and universities with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans,
4. The necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists in order to present a positive picture of Arab-Islamic civilization and contemporary Arab issues to the educated public in Europe.
These agreements could not be set forth in written documents and treaties due to their politically sensitive and fundamentally undemocratic nature. The European leaders thus carefully chose to call their ideas “dialogue.” All meetings, committees and working groups included representatives from European Community nations and the European Council along with members from Arab countries and the Arab League. Proceedings and decisions took place in closed sessions. No official minutes were recorded.
The Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) is a political, economic and cultural institution designed to ensure perfect cohesion between Europeans and Arabs. Its structure was set up at conferences in Copenhagen (15 December 1973), and Paris (31 July 1974). The principal agent of this policy is the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, founded in 1974. The other principal organs of The Dialogue are the MEDEA Institute and the European Institute of Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation, created in 1995 with the backing of the European Commission.
In an interview with Jamie Glazov of Frontpage Magazine, Bat Ye’or explained how “in domestic policy, the EAD established a close cooperation between the Arab and European media television, radio, journalists, publishing houses, academia, cultural centers, school textbooks, student and youth associations, tourism. Church interfaith dialogues were determinant in the development of this policy. Eurabia is therefore this strong Euro-Arab network of associations – a comprehensive symbiosis with cooperation and partnership on policy, economy, demography and culture.”
Eurabia’s driving force, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, was created in Paris in 1974. It now has over six hundred members – from all major European political parties – active in their own national parliaments, as well as in the European parliament. France continues to be the key protagonist of this association.
A wide-ranging policy was sketched out. It entailed a symbiosis of Europe with the Muslim Arab countries that would endow Europe – and especially France, the project's prime mover – with a weight and a prestige to rival that of the United States. This policy was undertaken quite discreetly, and well outside of official treaties, using the innocent-sounding name of the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The organization functioned under the auspices of European government ministers, working in close association with their Arab counterparts, and with the representatives of the European Commission and the Arab League. The goal was the creation of a pan-Mediterranean entity, permitting the free circulation both of men and of goods.
On the cultural front there began a complete re-writing of history, which was first undertaken during the 1970s in European universities. This process was ratified by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in September 1991, at its meeting devoted to “The Contribution of the Islamic Civilisation to European culture.” It was reaffirmed by French President Jacques Chirac in his address of April 8, 1996 in Cairo, and reinforced by Romano Prodi, president of the powerful European Commission, the EU’s “government,” and later Italian Prime Minister, through the creation of a Foundation on the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations. This foundation was to control everything said, written and taught about Islam in Europe.
Over the past three decades, the EEC and the EU’s political and cultural organizations have invented a fantasy Islamic civilization and history. The historical record of violations of basic human rights for all non-Muslims and women under sharia (Islamic Law) is either ignored or dismissed. In this worldview the only dangers come from the United States and Israel. The creators of Eurabia have conducted a successful propaganda campaign against these two countries in the European media. This fabrication was made easier by pre-existing currents of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in parts of Europe, although both sentiments have been greatly inflated by Eurabians and their collaborators.
On January 31, 2001, with the recrudescence of Palestinian terrorist jihad, European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten declared to the European Parliament that Europe's foreign policy should give special attention to its southern flank (the Arab countries, in EU jargon), adding that he was delighted by the general agreement to give greater visibility to the Mediterranean Partnership.
Bat Ye’or thinks that “Our politicians are perfectly informed of Islamic history and current policies by their embassies, agents and specialists. There is no innocence there, but tremendous inflexibility in corruption, cynicism and the perversion of values.”
In the preface to her book, she states that “This book describes Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers.”
The new European civilization in the making can correctly be termed a '”civilization of dhimmitude.”' The word dhimmitude comes from the Islamic legal designation “dhimmi.” It refers to the subjugated, non-Muslim individuals who accept restrictive and humiliating subordination to Islamic power in order to avoid enslavement or death. The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunction and dhimmitude. The dhimmis are inferior beings who endure humiliation and aggression in silence. This arrangement allows Muslims to enjoy an impunity that increases both their hatred and their feeling of superiority, under the protection of the law.
Eurabia is a novel new entity. It possesses political, economic, religious, cultural, and media components, which are imposed on Europe by powerful governmental lobbies. While Europeans live within Eurabia’s constraints, outside of a somewhat confused awareness, few are really conscious of them on a daily basis.
This Eurabian policy, expressed in obscure wording, is conducted at the highest political levels and coordinated over the whole of the European Union. It spreads an anti-American and anti-Semitic Euro-Arab sub-culture into the fiber of every social, media and cultural sector. Dissidents are silenced or boycotted. Sometimes they are fired from their jobs, victims of a totalitarian “correctness” imposed mainly by the academic, media and political sectors.
According to Ye’or, France and the rest of Western Europe can no longer change their policy: “It is a project that was conceived, planned and pursued consistently through immigration policy, propaganda, church support, economic associations and aid, cultural, media and academic collaboration. Generations grew up within this political framework; they were educated and conditioned to support it and go along with it.”
Are Bat Ye’or’s claims correct, or even possible?
Bernard Lewis has pointed out that, by common consent among historians, “the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte – who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease.”
In an unsuccessful effort to gain the support of the Egyptian populace, Napoleon issued proclamations praising Islam. “People of Egypt,” he proclaimed upon his entry to Alexandria in 1798, “You will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that more than the Mamluks, I respect God, his Prophet, and the Qur’an.”
According to an eyewitness, Napoleon ended his proclamation with the phrase, “God is great and Muhammad is his prophet.” To Muslim ears, this sounded like the shahada – the declaration of belief in the oneness of Allah and in Prophet Muhammad as his last messenger. Recitation of the shahadah, the first of the five pillars of Islam, is considered to mark one’s conversion to Islam. Muslims could thus conclude that Napoleon had converted to Islam. In fact, one of his generals, Jacques Ménou, did convert to Islam.
The French were later defeated and forced to leave Egypt by the English admiral Lord Nelson. Although the French expedition to Egypt lasted only three years, it demonstrated that the West was now so superior to the Islamic world that Westerners could enter the Arab heartland, then still a part of the Ottoman Empire, at will. Only another Western power could force them to leave. The shock of this realization triggered the first attempts to reform Islam in the 19th century.
A positive result of Western conquest was the influx of French scientists into Egypt and the foundation of modern Egyptology. Most importantly, it led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which was later used by French philologist Jean-François Champollion to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, the encounter also left a lasting impact in Europe, and above all in France.
The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 marked another chapter in this tale. Later, the French ruled Tunisia and Morocco. Finally, after the First World War, the French gained mandates over the former Turkish territories of the Ottoman Empire that make up what is now Syria and Lebanon. After the Second World War, French troops gradually left Arab lands, culminating with war and Algerian independence in 1962. However, their long relationship with Arabs resulted in France's belief that she had a special relationship with and an understanding of Arabs and Muslims. Along with French leadership in continental Europe, this would now provide the basis of a new foreign policy. President de Gaulle pushed for a France and a Europe independent of the two superpowers. In a speech, he stated that “Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the destiny of the world.” In 1966, he withdrew France from the common NATO military command, but remained within the organization.
Following the Six Days War in 1967, de Gaulle’s condemnation of the Israelis for their occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marked a significant change in French foreign policy. Previously, France – as well as the rest of Western Europe - had been strongly pro-Israel, even going to war together with Israel as late as 1956 against Nasser’s Egypt. From 1967 on, however, France embarked on a decidedly pro-Arab course.
It has been said that English foreign policy has remained the same since the 16th century. Its goal was to prevent any country, whether Spain, France, or later Germany, from dominating continental Europe to the extent that it represents a threat to England. On the other hand, one could argue that French foreign policy has also remained the same for several centuries; its goal is to champion French leadership over Europe and the Mediterranean region in order to contain Anglo-Saxon (and later Anglo-American) dominance. This picture was complicated by the unification of Germany in the late 19th century, but its outlines remain to this day.
Napoleon is the great hero of French PM de Villepin. Several prominent French leaders stated quite openly in 2005 that the proposed EU Constitution was basically an enlarged France. Justice Minister Dominique Perben said: “We have finally obtained this ‘Europe à la française’ that we have awaited for so long. This constitutional treaty is an enlarged France. It is a Europe written in French.” From its inception, European integration has been a French-led enterprise. The fact that the French political elite have never renounced the maintenance of their leadership over Europe was amply demonstrated during the Iraq war.
President Chirac famously said in 2003 after Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic backed the US position “They missed a good opportunity to shut up,” adding “These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position.”
Jean Monnet, French economist never elected to public office, is regarded by many as the architect of European integration. Monnet was a well-connected pragmatist who worked behind the scenes towards the gradual creation of European unity.
Richard North, publisher of the blog EU Referendum and co-author (with Christopher Booker) of The Great Deception: Can The European Union Survive, relates that for years – at least from the 1920s – Jean Monnet had dreamed of building a “United States of Europe.” Although what Monnet really had in mind was the creation of a European entity with all the attributes of a state, an “anodyne phrasing was deliberately chosen with a view to making it difficult to dilute by converting it into just another intergovernmental body. It was also couched in this fashion so that it would not scare off national governments by emphasising that its purpose was to override their sovereignty.”
In their analysis of the EU's history, the authors claim that the EU was not born out of WW2, as many people seem to think. It had been planned at least a generation before that.
The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, widely presented as the beginning of the efforts towards a European Union and commemorated in “Europe Day,” contains phrases which state that it is “a first step in the federation of Europe”, and that “this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation.” However, as critics of the EU have noted, these political objectives are usually omitted when the Declaration is referred to, and most people are unaware of their existence.
A federation is, of course, a State and “yet for decades now the champions of EC/EU integration have been swearing blind that they have no knowledge of any such plans. The EEC/EC/EU has steadily acquired ever more features of a supranational Federation: flag, anthem, Parliament, Supreme Court, currency, laws.”
The EU founders “were careful only to show their citizens the benign features of their project. It had been designed to be implemented incrementally, as an ongoing process, so that no single phase of the project would arouse sufficient opposition as to stop or derail it.” Booker and North call the European Union “a slow-motion coup d'état: the most spectacular coup d'état in history,” designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so publicly.
The irony is that France is now held hostage by the very forces she herself set in motion. The Jihad riots by Muslim immigrants in France in 2005 demonstrated that Eurabia is no longer a matter of French foreign policy, it is now French domestic policy. France will burn unless she continues to appease Arabs and agree to their agenda.
The growth of the Islamic population is explosive. According to some, one out of three babies born in France is a Muslim. Hundreds of Muslim ghettos already de facto follow sharia, not French law. Some believe France will quietly become a Muslim country, while others are predicting a civil war in the near future.
Maybe there is some poetic justice in the fact that the country that initiated and has led the formation of Eurabia will now be destroyed by its own Frankenstein monster. However, gloating over France’s dilemma won’t help. The impending downfall of France is bad news for the rest of the West. What will happen to French financial resources? Above all, who will inherit hundreds of nuclear warheads? Will these weapons fall into the hands of Jihadist Muslims, too?
From the desk of Fjordman on Sun, 2006-10-01 08:53
I decided to write this essay after a comment from a journalist, not a Leftist by my country’s standards, who dismissed Eurabia as merely a conspiracy theory, one on a par with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I do not disagree with the fact that conspiracy theories exist, nor that they can be dangerous. After all, the Protocols and the Dolchstosslegende, or “stab in the back myth – the idea that Germany didn’t lose WW1 but was betrayed by Socialists, intellectuals and Jews – helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis before WW2.
However, what puzzles me is that it is a widely-held belief of many (not just in the Islamic world but in Europe and even in the United States) that the terror attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11th 2001 were really a controlled demolition staged by the American government and then blamed on Muslims. I have seen this thesis talked about many times in Western media. While it is frequently (though not always) dismissed and mocked, it is least mentioned.
In contrast, Eurabia – which asserts that the Islamicization of Europe didn’t happen merely by accident but with the active participation of European political leaders – is hardly ever referred to at all, despite the fact that it is easier to document. Does the notion of Eurabia hit too close to home? Perhaps it doesn’t fit with the anti-American disposition of many journalists? Curiously enough, even those left-leaning journalists who are otherwise critical of the European Union because of its free market elements never write about Eurabia.
Because of this, I am going to test whether the Eurabia thesis is correct, or at least plausible. I have called this project The Eurabia Code, alluding to author Dan Brown’s massive bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Brown’s fictional account “documents” a conspiracy by the Church to cover up the truth about Jesus. I’m not sure my work will become equally popular, but I’m pretty sure it’s closer to reality.
The next time Mr. Brown wants to write about massive conspiracies in Europe, he would be well-advised to set his eyes at Brussels rather than Rome. It would be a whole lot more interesting. What follows is a brief outline of the thesis put forward by writer Bat Ye’or in her book “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.” My information is based on her book (which should be read in full). In addition I have drawn from some of her articles and interviews. I republish the information with her blessing, but this summary is completely my own.
In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Bat Ye’or explained how French President Charles de Gaulle, disappointed by the loss of the French colonies in Africa and the Middle East as well as with France’s waning influence in the international arena, decided in the 1960’s to create a strategic alliance with the Arab and Muslim world to compete with the dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union.
“This is a matter of a total transformation of Europe, which is the result of an intentional policy,” said Bat Ye’or. “We are now heading towards a total change in Europe, which will be more and more Islamicized and will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world. The European leaders have decided on an alliance with the Arab world, through which they have committed to accept the Arab and Muslim approach toward the United States and Israel. This is not only with respect to foreign policy, but also on issues engaging European society from within, such as immigration, the integration of the immigrants and the idea that Islam is part of Europe.”
“Europe is under a constant threat of terror. Terror is a way of applying pressure on the European countries to surrender constantly to the Arab representatives’ demands. They demand, for example, that Europe always speak out for the Palestinians and against Israel.”
Thus, the Eurabian project became an enlarged vision of the anti-American Gaullist policy dependent upon the formation of a Euro-Arab entity hostile to American influence. It facilitated European ambitions to maintain important spheres of influence in the former European colonies, while opening huge markets for European products in the Arab world, especially in oil-producing countries, in order to secure supplies of petroleum and natural gas to Europe. In addition, it would make the Mediterranean a Euro-Arab inland sea by favoring Muslim immigration and promoting Multiculturalism with a strong Islamic presence in Europe.
The use of the term “Eurabia” was first introduced in the mid-1970s, as the title of a journal edited by the President of the Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity, Lucien Bitterlein, and published collaboratively by the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), and the Middle East International (London). Their articles called for common Euro-Arab positions at every level. These concrete proposals were not the musings of isolated theorists; instead they put forth concrete policy decisions conceived in conjunction with, and actualized by, European state leaders and European Parliamentarians.
During a November 27, 1967 press conference, Charles de Gaulle stated openly that French cooperation with the Arab world had become “the fundamental basis of our foreign policy.” By January 1969, the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples, held in Cairo, in its resolution 15, decided “to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance.” Five years later in Paris, July 1974, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation was created, under the Euro-Arab Dialogue rubric.
Bat Ye’or has highlighted this shared Euro-Arab political agenda. The first step was the construction of a common foreign policy. France was the driving force in this unification, which had already been envisaged by General de Gaulle’s inner circle and Arab politicians. The Arab states demanded from Europe access to Western science and technology, European political independence from the United States, European pressure on the United States to align with their Arab policy and demonization of Israel as a threat to world peace, as well as measures favorable to Arab immigration and dissemination of Islamic culture in Europe. This cooperation would also included recognition of the Palestinians as a distinct people and the PLO and its leader Arafat as their representative. Up to 1973 they had been known only as Arab refugees, even by other Arabs. The concept of a Palestinian “nation” simply did not exist.
During the 1973 oil crisis, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced that, due to the ongoing Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors Egypt and Syria, OPEC would no longer ship petroleum to Western nations that supported Israel. The sudden increase in oil prices was had lasting effects. Not only did it create a strong influx of petrodollars to countries such as Saudi Arabia, which permitted the Saudis to fund a worldwide Islamic resurgence, but it also had an impact in the West, especially in Europe.
However, Arab leaders had to sell their oil. Their people are very dependent on European economic and technological aid. The Americans made this point during the oil embargo in 1973. According to Bat Ye’or, although the oil factor certainly helped cement the Euro-Arab Dialogue, it was primarily a pretext to cover up a policy that emerged in France before that crisis occurred. The policy, conceived in the 1960s, had strong antecedents in the French 19th-century dream of governing an Arab empire.
This political agenda has been reinforced by the deliberate cultural transformation of Europe. Euro-Arab Dialogue Symposia conducted in Venice (1977) and Hamburg (1983) included recommendations that have been successfully implemented. These recommendations were accompanied by a deliberate, privileged influx of Arab and other Muslim immigrants into Europe in enormous numbers.
The recommendations included:
1. Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread the Arabic language and culture in Europe,
2. Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals,
3. The necessity of supplying European institutions and universities with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans,
4. The necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists in order to present a positive picture of Arab-Islamic civilization and contemporary Arab issues to the educated public in Europe.
These agreements could not be set forth in written documents and treaties due to their politically sensitive and fundamentally undemocratic nature. The European leaders thus carefully chose to call their ideas “dialogue.” All meetings, committees and working groups included representatives from European Community nations and the European Council along with members from Arab countries and the Arab League. Proceedings and decisions took place in closed sessions. No official minutes were recorded.
The Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) is a political, economic and cultural institution designed to ensure perfect cohesion between Europeans and Arabs. Its structure was set up at conferences in Copenhagen (15 December 1973), and Paris (31 July 1974). The principal agent of this policy is the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, founded in 1974. The other principal organs of The Dialogue are the MEDEA Institute and the European Institute of Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation, created in 1995 with the backing of the European Commission.
In an interview with Jamie Glazov of Frontpage Magazine, Bat Ye’or explained how “in domestic policy, the EAD established a close cooperation between the Arab and European media television, radio, journalists, publishing houses, academia, cultural centers, school textbooks, student and youth associations, tourism. Church interfaith dialogues were determinant in the development of this policy. Eurabia is therefore this strong Euro-Arab network of associations – a comprehensive symbiosis with cooperation and partnership on policy, economy, demography and culture.”
Eurabia’s driving force, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, was created in Paris in 1974. It now has over six hundred members – from all major European political parties – active in their own national parliaments, as well as in the European parliament. France continues to be the key protagonist of this association.
A wide-ranging policy was sketched out. It entailed a symbiosis of Europe with the Muslim Arab countries that would endow Europe – and especially France, the project's prime mover – with a weight and a prestige to rival that of the United States. This policy was undertaken quite discreetly, and well outside of official treaties, using the innocent-sounding name of the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The organization functioned under the auspices of European government ministers, working in close association with their Arab counterparts, and with the representatives of the European Commission and the Arab League. The goal was the creation of a pan-Mediterranean entity, permitting the free circulation both of men and of goods.
On the cultural front there began a complete re-writing of history, which was first undertaken during the 1970s in European universities. This process was ratified by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in September 1991, at its meeting devoted to “The Contribution of the Islamic Civilisation to European culture.” It was reaffirmed by French President Jacques Chirac in his address of April 8, 1996 in Cairo, and reinforced by Romano Prodi, president of the powerful European Commission, the EU’s “government,” and later Italian Prime Minister, through the creation of a Foundation on the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations. This foundation was to control everything said, written and taught about Islam in Europe.
Over the past three decades, the EEC and the EU’s political and cultural organizations have invented a fantasy Islamic civilization and history. The historical record of violations of basic human rights for all non-Muslims and women under sharia (Islamic Law) is either ignored or dismissed. In this worldview the only dangers come from the United States and Israel. The creators of Eurabia have conducted a successful propaganda campaign against these two countries in the European media. This fabrication was made easier by pre-existing currents of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in parts of Europe, although both sentiments have been greatly inflated by Eurabians and their collaborators.
On January 31, 2001, with the recrudescence of Palestinian terrorist jihad, European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten declared to the European Parliament that Europe's foreign policy should give special attention to its southern flank (the Arab countries, in EU jargon), adding that he was delighted by the general agreement to give greater visibility to the Mediterranean Partnership.
Bat Ye’or thinks that “Our politicians are perfectly informed of Islamic history and current policies by their embassies, agents and specialists. There is no innocence there, but tremendous inflexibility in corruption, cynicism and the perversion of values.”
In the preface to her book, she states that “This book describes Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers.”
The new European civilization in the making can correctly be termed a '”civilization of dhimmitude.”' The word dhimmitude comes from the Islamic legal designation “dhimmi.” It refers to the subjugated, non-Muslim individuals who accept restrictive and humiliating subordination to Islamic power in order to avoid enslavement or death. The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunction and dhimmitude. The dhimmis are inferior beings who endure humiliation and aggression in silence. This arrangement allows Muslims to enjoy an impunity that increases both their hatred and their feeling of superiority, under the protection of the law.
Eurabia is a novel new entity. It possesses political, economic, religious, cultural, and media components, which are imposed on Europe by powerful governmental lobbies. While Europeans live within Eurabia’s constraints, outside of a somewhat confused awareness, few are really conscious of them on a daily basis.
This Eurabian policy, expressed in obscure wording, is conducted at the highest political levels and coordinated over the whole of the European Union. It spreads an anti-American and anti-Semitic Euro-Arab sub-culture into the fiber of every social, media and cultural sector. Dissidents are silenced or boycotted. Sometimes they are fired from their jobs, victims of a totalitarian “correctness” imposed mainly by the academic, media and political sectors.
According to Ye’or, France and the rest of Western Europe can no longer change their policy: “It is a project that was conceived, planned and pursued consistently through immigration policy, propaganda, church support, economic associations and aid, cultural, media and academic collaboration. Generations grew up within this political framework; they were educated and conditioned to support it and go along with it.”
Are Bat Ye’or’s claims correct, or even possible?
Bernard Lewis has pointed out that, by common consent among historians, “the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte – who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease.”
In an unsuccessful effort to gain the support of the Egyptian populace, Napoleon issued proclamations praising Islam. “People of Egypt,” he proclaimed upon his entry to Alexandria in 1798, “You will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that more than the Mamluks, I respect God, his Prophet, and the Qur’an.”
According to an eyewitness, Napoleon ended his proclamation with the phrase, “God is great and Muhammad is his prophet.” To Muslim ears, this sounded like the shahada – the declaration of belief in the oneness of Allah and in Prophet Muhammad as his last messenger. Recitation of the shahadah, the first of the five pillars of Islam, is considered to mark one’s conversion to Islam. Muslims could thus conclude that Napoleon had converted to Islam. In fact, one of his generals, Jacques Ménou, did convert to Islam.
The French were later defeated and forced to leave Egypt by the English admiral Lord Nelson. Although the French expedition to Egypt lasted only three years, it demonstrated that the West was now so superior to the Islamic world that Westerners could enter the Arab heartland, then still a part of the Ottoman Empire, at will. Only another Western power could force them to leave. The shock of this realization triggered the first attempts to reform Islam in the 19th century.
A positive result of Western conquest was the influx of French scientists into Egypt and the foundation of modern Egyptology. Most importantly, it led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which was later used by French philologist Jean-François Champollion to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, the encounter also left a lasting impact in Europe, and above all in France.
The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 marked another chapter in this tale. Later, the French ruled Tunisia and Morocco. Finally, after the First World War, the French gained mandates over the former Turkish territories of the Ottoman Empire that make up what is now Syria and Lebanon. After the Second World War, French troops gradually left Arab lands, culminating with war and Algerian independence in 1962. However, their long relationship with Arabs resulted in France's belief that she had a special relationship with and an understanding of Arabs and Muslims. Along with French leadership in continental Europe, this would now provide the basis of a new foreign policy. President de Gaulle pushed for a France and a Europe independent of the two superpowers. In a speech, he stated that “Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the destiny of the world.” In 1966, he withdrew France from the common NATO military command, but remained within the organization.
Following the Six Days War in 1967, de Gaulle’s condemnation of the Israelis for their occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marked a significant change in French foreign policy. Previously, France – as well as the rest of Western Europe - had been strongly pro-Israel, even going to war together with Israel as late as 1956 against Nasser’s Egypt. From 1967 on, however, France embarked on a decidedly pro-Arab course.
It has been said that English foreign policy has remained the same since the 16th century. Its goal was to prevent any country, whether Spain, France, or later Germany, from dominating continental Europe to the extent that it represents a threat to England. On the other hand, one could argue that French foreign policy has also remained the same for several centuries; its goal is to champion French leadership over Europe and the Mediterranean region in order to contain Anglo-Saxon (and later Anglo-American) dominance. This picture was complicated by the unification of Germany in the late 19th century, but its outlines remain to this day.
Napoleon is the great hero of French PM de Villepin. Several prominent French leaders stated quite openly in 2005 that the proposed EU Constitution was basically an enlarged France. Justice Minister Dominique Perben said: “We have finally obtained this ‘Europe à la française’ that we have awaited for so long. This constitutional treaty is an enlarged France. It is a Europe written in French.” From its inception, European integration has been a French-led enterprise. The fact that the French political elite have never renounced the maintenance of their leadership over Europe was amply demonstrated during the Iraq war.
President Chirac famously said in 2003 after Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic backed the US position “They missed a good opportunity to shut up,” adding “These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position.”
Jean Monnet, French economist never elected to public office, is regarded by many as the architect of European integration. Monnet was a well-connected pragmatist who worked behind the scenes towards the gradual creation of European unity.
Richard North, publisher of the blog EU Referendum and co-author (with Christopher Booker) of The Great Deception: Can The European Union Survive, relates that for years – at least from the 1920s – Jean Monnet had dreamed of building a “United States of Europe.” Although what Monnet really had in mind was the creation of a European entity with all the attributes of a state, an “anodyne phrasing was deliberately chosen with a view to making it difficult to dilute by converting it into just another intergovernmental body. It was also couched in this fashion so that it would not scare off national governments by emphasising that its purpose was to override their sovereignty.”
In their analysis of the EU's history, the authors claim that the EU was not born out of WW2, as many people seem to think. It had been planned at least a generation before that.
The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, widely presented as the beginning of the efforts towards a European Union and commemorated in “Europe Day,” contains phrases which state that it is “a first step in the federation of Europe”, and that “this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation.” However, as critics of the EU have noted, these political objectives are usually omitted when the Declaration is referred to, and most people are unaware of their existence.
A federation is, of course, a State and “yet for decades now the champions of EC/EU integration have been swearing blind that they have no knowledge of any such plans. The EEC/EC/EU has steadily acquired ever more features of a supranational Federation: flag, anthem, Parliament, Supreme Court, currency, laws.”
The EU founders “were careful only to show their citizens the benign features of their project. It had been designed to be implemented incrementally, as an ongoing process, so that no single phase of the project would arouse sufficient opposition as to stop or derail it.” Booker and North call the European Union “a slow-motion coup d'état: the most spectacular coup d'état in history,” designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so publicly.
The irony is that France is now held hostage by the very forces she herself set in motion. The Jihad riots by Muslim immigrants in France in 2005 demonstrated that Eurabia is no longer a matter of French foreign policy, it is now French domestic policy. France will burn unless she continues to appease Arabs and agree to their agenda.
The growth of the Islamic population is explosive. According to some, one out of three babies born in France is a Muslim. Hundreds of Muslim ghettos already de facto follow sharia, not French law. Some believe France will quietly become a Muslim country, while others are predicting a civil war in the near future.
Maybe there is some poetic justice in the fact that the country that initiated and has led the formation of Eurabia will now be destroyed by its own Frankenstein monster. However, gloating over France’s dilemma won’t help. The impending downfall of France is bad news for the rest of the West. What will happen to French financial resources? Above all, who will inherit hundreds of nuclear warheads? Will these weapons fall into the hands of Jihadist Muslims, too?
The Start of the Eurabia Pact
Bat Ye'or, a historian, has published groundbreaking works on minorities and "dhimmitude" (their inferior status) under Islam, including Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2002). Her latest book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), argues that European governments, especially the French, have developed foreign policies aimed at winning the favor of Middle Eastern regimes and appeasing the growing militant Islamic minorities in their midst. Bat Ye'or addressed the Middle East Forum in New York on February 7, 2005.
Europe is undergoing two profound changes. The first is the weakening of Christianity. The second is demographic decline. Presently, across Europe, there are only two-thirds the number of children born necessary to sustain the population. The consequent drop in population has mostly been made good by immigration of Muslims. The fast-growing Muslim population is generally not integrated into the host societies nor politically acculturated to its norms. To the contrary, radical Islamic movements are gaining in strength among these émigré populations. In addition, European governments, especially the French, have developed foreign policies aimed at winning the favor of Middle Eastern regimes.
The question arises: is this a temporary aberration or is Europe on the road to losing its historic identity? The latter: Europe is rapidly being transformed into "Eurabia," a cultural and political appendage of the Arab/Muslim world that is fundamentally anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-Western and anti-American.
European-Arab Partnership
The four-decade political and economic relationship between Europe and the Arab countries of the Middle East, institutionalized in the annual European-Arab Dialogue, has spawned a virulent and hostile amalgam called "Eurabia." It will not simply go away with a change in European Union (EU) policy. Rather, its roots are deeper. Indeed, how the Eurabia issue is handled today will largely determine Europe's future.
The images of Eurabia are manifest in millions of people burning American and Israeli flags during the Iraq war and openly supporting Yasir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and other brutal dictators. Eurabia is also discernible in the explosion of anti-Semitic activity and a lack of empathy for Jewish rights in various European countries. Increasingly, Jews find themselves under attack, chiefly from Muslim extremists and radicalized youth, and European governments and law enforcement agencies react to these violations of rights only tepidly and only after the sustained pressure of publicity. The Eurabian phenomenon can also be seen in the intimidation into silence of critiques of Islam and Muslim society, epitomized by the slaying in broad daylight of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who had made a documentary on the travails experienced by Muslim women within Muslim societies.
Eurabia in the Making
This pernicious merger began with Charles De Gaulle in the 1960s. De Gaulle saw that the power of France diminished with the loss of its colonies and he believed a more unified Europe would restore some French glory. In order to unify Europe, the continent needed to form an international bloc that could rival America. The Arab nations of the Middle East, unparalleled in their oil wealth, seemed to be good partners. Laying the foundation for this relationship, on November 27, 1967, De Gaulle said that French-Arab collaboration would be a fundamental element in French politics. Since then, France has adopted a highly amiable policy toward the Arab world and a hostile attitude toward Israel.
After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Arabs states proclaimed their oil boycott against Europe and specifically against countries with close ties to Israel. Only twenty days after the start of the war, the European community of nine countries recognized the rights of the Palestinians to participate in political negotiations and demanded Israel's return to the armistice lines of 1949, thus diverging from UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967 and still the basis of a negotiated settlement.
Consequently, the Arab boycott of Europe came to an end; and the French and German governments requested Arab leaders to enter into an official dialogue with European leaders to cement a solid relationship. The Arab leaders agreed but on condition that the Europeans had a unified foreign policy in synchrony with the interests of the Arab states.
Elements of this relationship are plenty evident. For example, European leaders see Arab reform running parallel to the resolution of the Israeli-Arab peace process. Again and again, Arab and European leaders exploit impasses in the Arab-Israeli conflict conveniently to delay democratic reforms.
The goal of Eurabia is to bring together the two shores of the Mediterranean with the interests of European society mirroring the interests of the Arab world. There should be a homogenization of culture, politics, and policy between the two shores. As a byproduct, American leaders have to deal with the growing Eurabian political culture instead of the former European body politic.
Unfortunately, most Europeans are not aware of the Eurabia merger. The new hatred found in Europe against America and Israel is commonplace and intertwines with many sectors of society, including the media, the culture, and the economy. Europe now facilitates the jihadist values of the Arab world. This is evident in its reluctance to forthrightly denounce Islamic terrorism and its need to indict America and Israel as the causes of conflict, rather than the victims of Islamic aggression. Mass immigration of Arabs across the Mediterranean to Europe, which was part of the friendship agreement, will only strengthen the Eurabian phenomenon. If Europe continues to respond with appeasement to Islamist terror attacks like that in Madrid in 2004, Eurabia will eventually become the complete European reality.
Europe is undergoing two profound changes. The first is the weakening of Christianity. The second is demographic decline. Presently, across Europe, there are only two-thirds the number of children born necessary to sustain the population. The consequent drop in population has mostly been made good by immigration of Muslims. The fast-growing Muslim population is generally not integrated into the host societies nor politically acculturated to its norms. To the contrary, radical Islamic movements are gaining in strength among these émigré populations. In addition, European governments, especially the French, have developed foreign policies aimed at winning the favor of Middle Eastern regimes.
The question arises: is this a temporary aberration or is Europe on the road to losing its historic identity? The latter: Europe is rapidly being transformed into "Eurabia," a cultural and political appendage of the Arab/Muslim world that is fundamentally anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-Western and anti-American.
European-Arab Partnership
The four-decade political and economic relationship between Europe and the Arab countries of the Middle East, institutionalized in the annual European-Arab Dialogue, has spawned a virulent and hostile amalgam called "Eurabia." It will not simply go away with a change in European Union (EU) policy. Rather, its roots are deeper. Indeed, how the Eurabia issue is handled today will largely determine Europe's future.
The images of Eurabia are manifest in millions of people burning American and Israeli flags during the Iraq war and openly supporting Yasir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and other brutal dictators. Eurabia is also discernible in the explosion of anti-Semitic activity and a lack of empathy for Jewish rights in various European countries. Increasingly, Jews find themselves under attack, chiefly from Muslim extremists and radicalized youth, and European governments and law enforcement agencies react to these violations of rights only tepidly and only after the sustained pressure of publicity. The Eurabian phenomenon can also be seen in the intimidation into silence of critiques of Islam and Muslim society, epitomized by the slaying in broad daylight of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who had made a documentary on the travails experienced by Muslim women within Muslim societies.
Eurabia in the Making
This pernicious merger began with Charles De Gaulle in the 1960s. De Gaulle saw that the power of France diminished with the loss of its colonies and he believed a more unified Europe would restore some French glory. In order to unify Europe, the continent needed to form an international bloc that could rival America. The Arab nations of the Middle East, unparalleled in their oil wealth, seemed to be good partners. Laying the foundation for this relationship, on November 27, 1967, De Gaulle said that French-Arab collaboration would be a fundamental element in French politics. Since then, France has adopted a highly amiable policy toward the Arab world and a hostile attitude toward Israel.
After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Arabs states proclaimed their oil boycott against Europe and specifically against countries with close ties to Israel. Only twenty days after the start of the war, the European community of nine countries recognized the rights of the Palestinians to participate in political negotiations and demanded Israel's return to the armistice lines of 1949, thus diverging from UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967 and still the basis of a negotiated settlement.
Consequently, the Arab boycott of Europe came to an end; and the French and German governments requested Arab leaders to enter into an official dialogue with European leaders to cement a solid relationship. The Arab leaders agreed but on condition that the Europeans had a unified foreign policy in synchrony with the interests of the Arab states.
Elements of this relationship are plenty evident. For example, European leaders see Arab reform running parallel to the resolution of the Israeli-Arab peace process. Again and again, Arab and European leaders exploit impasses in the Arab-Israeli conflict conveniently to delay democratic reforms.
The goal of Eurabia is to bring together the two shores of the Mediterranean with the interests of European society mirroring the interests of the Arab world. There should be a homogenization of culture, politics, and policy between the two shores. As a byproduct, American leaders have to deal with the growing Eurabian political culture instead of the former European body politic.
Unfortunately, most Europeans are not aware of the Eurabia merger. The new hatred found in Europe against America and Israel is commonplace and intertwines with many sectors of society, including the media, the culture, and the economy. Europe now facilitates the jihadist values of the Arab world. This is evident in its reluctance to forthrightly denounce Islamic terrorism and its need to indict America and Israel as the causes of conflict, rather than the victims of Islamic aggression. Mass immigration of Arabs across the Mediterranean to Europe, which was part of the friendship agreement, will only strengthen the Eurabian phenomenon. If Europe continues to respond with appeasement to Islamist terror attacks like that in Madrid in 2004, Eurabia will eventually become the complete European reality.
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