An Inconvenient Truth

The massive antisemitic street marches unleashed by the October 7^th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s response has underscored the difference in reactions by many around the world have between violence that includes Israel and when it only concerns Arab or Islamists.

When asked by Newsweek recently about the promotion of violence across the Arab and Islamic world, former Jordanian Senator Muhannad Alazzeh said that there's an Arabic proverb that helps explain the violence that's become a feature of the Arab world: "Knowledge in childhood is like engraving on a stone."

What a child learns is rooted in his mind and remains the cornerstone of his conscience throughout his life. The sad truth in most of the Muslim world is that our children are being taught fundamentalist Islamic ideas that glorify violence.

He went on to note that in most Muslim-majority countries, the religious and historical curricula contain narratives that violate the principles of human rights and international humanitarian law. These curricula are taught to impressionable children as sources of holiness and pride—even given a tinge of divinity.

This explains the Muslim fetish of celebrating martyrdom and death rather than life itself.

But what explains the tens of thousands of non-Muslims who have taken advantage of the current conflict in Gaza to chant death to the Jews and Israel, and attack Jewish institutions and individuals around the world?

This is the latent and blatant antisemitism that has awakened in every generation of every culture throughout history.

Violence in the Arab and Islamic world is as endemic as it is practically ignored by the rest of the world, especially global media, and antisemites everywhere.

In Sudan, 1.5 million people have been killed and 5 million displaced in intra- Muslim violence.

No global marches to protest this barbarity.

In Syria, over 600,000 people have been murdered by dictator Bashir al Assad since 2011. Yet he is feted in Arab and Muslim circles and is courted by Russia, Iran, and others.

So far, no global marches of late although the killing goes on.

In Yemen, over 377,000 people have died from military attacks or the subsequent starvation due to lack of resources. Saudi Arabia and Iran, both Muslim countries, back opposing sides and the violence shows no sign of let-up.

The Muslim Houthi terrorists who lead one side of the conflict have taken to attacking international shipping in the Red Sea to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Tens of thousands of antisemitic protestors around the world applaud this action and support the Houthis even though most of them have no clue as to where Yemen actually is or the nature of its civil war.

In another Muslim country, Turkey, the government has killed over 40,000 Kurds in recent years, the vast majority of whom were civilians. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for thousands of human rights abuses.

Yet Turkey lectures Israel on Gaza – a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

A century ago, Turkey murdered 1.5 million Armenians in one of the worst genocides of the century. I have yet to see any mass demonstrations on the scale of what we are seeing now against Israel, against Turkey’s crimes.

Finally, ISIS in the Sahel, with its allies Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and other Islamist terrorist groups, have murdered tens of thousands of fellow Muslims and Christians in their quest to impose Sharia around the world. They are destabilizing a number of central African states in their quest to exert greater Islamist control over the region.

As Senator Alazzeh noted, the sad truth in the Arab world is that their children are being taught fundamentalist Islamic ideas that glorify violence from birth.

Is confronting this Islamophobia, or is it simply an inconvenient truth?

Is it Islamophobia when tens of thousands of protestors glorify Islamist violence in the streets of world capitals but remain silent when the situation does not involve Jews or Israelis?

Is it Islamophobia to criticize Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and others when they clearly state that their aim is to destroy Israel, to rid the world of all Jews and to impose Sharia wherever they can?

As the saying goes, no Jews, no news.

Global media, mainstream and biased, remain silent when Arabs murder Arabs or Islamists murder Christians and Jews. Many political leaders are quick to come out against attacks on Islam, but reluctant to call a spade a spade and take action to rid their societies of those who preach hatred and violence.

Many European governments have finally begun to take stronger measures against instigators of Islamist violence and are now beginning to deport those who come from abroad to stoke the flames of hatred.

But yet, many governments, among gthem Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Australia have renewed funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) some of whose employees are Hamas operatives and took an active role in the October 7th terrorist attack.

It is time for all governments to act to defend Western values and defeat those who would destroy our way of life.

Some on-line commentators are asking if Gaza is not Israel’s Vietnam.

Rather, could it not be the first step in liberating the Muslim world of the jihadist cultists that terrorist groups have propagated against their own people for ages.

If Islam is truly the religion of peace, Muslim governments must take charge in fighting the various global terrorist groups that act in their name . They must begin to de-indoctrinate Muslims everywhere away from a culture of violence and death towards one of peace and respect for non-Muslims.

In short, if Islam is to transcend Islamophobia, it must reform as have other religions in their time.

This is not Islamophobia.

It is simply an inconvenient truth born from decades of history.