In 1798 Napoleon sailed to Egypt, accompanied by scores of Orientalists from his Institut d’Egypte. At Alexandria he addressed the Egyptian crowd with the claim: “Nous sommes les vrais musulmans.” Then he had sixty sheikhs of al-Azhar, the great mosque in Cairo, brought with full military honours into his quarters. He carefully praised the prophet, discussed with them Voltiare’s Mahomet and seems to have held his own with the learned ulema. (K. Armstrong, Muhammad, p.38)
In his magisterial two-volume work Modern Egypt, Lord Cromer argued that the ‘Oriental’, meaning Semites, was irredeemably childish and the diametrical opposite of ‘us’: “Sir Alfred Lyall once said to me: ‘Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental mind. Every Anglo-Indian school always remembers that maxim.’ Want of accuracy, which easily degenerates into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the Oriental mind. The European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by nature skeptical and requires proof before he can accept the truth of any proposition; his trained intelligence works like a piece of mechanism. The mind of the Oriental, on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. Although the ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of dialectics, their descendants are singularly deficient in the logical faculty. They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth.”
(Quoted in Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient New York and London, 1985. p.38)
The influential French philologist E. Renan attempted a “scientific” explanation for new racist and imperialist myths. He argued that Hebrew and Arabic were degraded languages, deviations from the Aryan tradition, which had become irredeemably flawed. These Semitic tongues could be studied only as an example of arrested development and lacked the progressive character of ‘our’ linguistic systems. That was why Jews and Arabs were both ‘une combinaison inferieure de la nature humaine: “One sees that in all things the Semitic race appears to us to be an incomplete race by virtue of its simplicity. This race – if I dare use the analogy – is to the Indo-European family what a pencil sketch is to a painting; it lacks that variety, that amplitude, that abundance of life which is the condition of perfectibility. Like those individuals who possess so little fecundity that, after a gracious childhood, they attain only the most mediocre virility, the Semitic nations experienced their fullest flowering in their first age.
One of the most interesting transformations has been from the Jesus whom Ernest Renan (1823-92) stated in his famous Life (1863) that fundamentally there was nothing Jewish, to the full acknowledged Jewishness of Jesus in recent scholarship.
The modern Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1893-1981) explains that ever since the Jews taught the world monotheism, the fire, water, and trees that the pagans worshiped have became enraged and persecuted them. Jesus was a Jewish prophet, but his message went unheard, for the goyim have not been weaned away from paganism. Their blood calls them to return to their old gods, to whom they bring the blood as an offering. There is then, a sense in Greenberg that the Jews remain trapped in the struggles of ancient Israel; there is no escape from history.
The astonishing exclamation of March 21, 2000 in the Holy Land: “May St. John the Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan...” [Cf. “Papal Homily in the Holy Land,” vatican.va].
Pope John Paul’s active participation in pagan worship at a “sacred forest” in Togo.
The bestowal of pectoral crosses – symbols of episcopal authority – on George Carey and Rowan Williams.
..the new Archbishop of Canterbury was inducted as a druid in a 200-year-old ceremony with pagan roots in Wales. As the sun rose over a circle of Pembrokeshire bluestones, the Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Dr Rowan Williams, donned a long white cloak while druids chanted a prayer to the ancient god and goddess of the land. (The Great Goerby...Blog2)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148556#.To4D33JiK-U
According to the oft-controversial French magazine Le Canard Enchaîne, President Nicolas Sarkozy thinks the idea of a Jewish state is "silly."
"It is silly to talk about a Jewish state," Sarkozy said in reference to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's assertion no true peace could be made until officials in Ramallah accepted Israel's essential Jewish identity.
"It would be like saying that this table is Catholic," he added. "There are two million Arabs in Israel."
Sarkozy also placed sole blame for failed negotiations between Israel and PA officials on Netanyahu's shoulders.
"The US has been asking Abbas for years to come to the negotiating table. He is willing to do it because he is a statesman. Netanyahu, on the other hand, never fails to disappoint us," Sarkozy said. "Only now, he announced the construction of 1,100 housing units in the Arab part of Jerusalem."
Sarkozy seemed to deem two years of mounting preconditions for negotiations by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas immaterial to failed talks.Nor did he concede Israel has frozen construction in the disputed territories for 10-months in a bid to bring Abbas to the negotiating table only to find new preconditions existed.
"The Palestinians have been waiting for a state they deserve for 60 years now," Sarkozy said. "Is it not fair that Palestine is recognized by the UN even in an observer status?"
Sarkozy, whose statements were strongly reminiscent of comments made two weeks ago by former US president Bill Clinton, had previously (like Clinton) presented himself as a staunch ally of Israel.
Now, observers say, Sarkozy has removed his mask and made his true face concerning Israel clear.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148534#.To2-mHJiK-U
Although its Security Council statehood bid is stalled, the Palestinian Authority is set to receive another important UN posting – membership in UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The UNESCO board voted Wednesday to put the PA's prospective membership in the U.N. culture organization up for a vote at the next UNESCO General Conference, beginning on October 25. As all 193 U.N. member nations get to vote on admitting the PA, it's likely that the bid will be approved.
If it is, says Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), she will move to cut off U.S. funding for the group. And as chairwoman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, the Congressional body responsible for forwarding American funds to U.N. activities, she is a in a unique position to make good on that threat.
“Since April, I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership that I would not support sending U.S. taxpayer money to the Palestinians if they sought statehood at the United Nations," Granger said in a statement. “Making a move in another U.N. agency will not only jeopardize our relationship with the Palestinians, it will jeopardize our contributions to the United Nations. As chairwoman of the Subcommittee, I will advocate for all funding to be cut off. This is consistent with current law and I will consider additional actions as needed. There are consequences for short-cutting the process, not only for the Palestinians, but for our longstanding relationship with the United Nations.”
Granger is far from the only U.S. official opposed to UNESCO membership for the PA. U.S. ambassador to UNESCO David Killion issued a statement in which he urged all UNESCO members to vote against the PA bid, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that it was “inexplicable” that the U.N. would undertake a unilateral move to provide the PA with the accoutrements of statehood before the Security Council has even had a chance to discuss it. UNESCO, she said in a statement, should “think again before proceeding with that vote because the decision about status must be made in the (Security Council) and not in auxiliary groups that are subsidiary to the United Nations.”
If the PA is admitted, said Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Nimrod Barkan, it would just further delegitimize the organization, whose agenda was long ago diverted to largely anti-Israel activities. “The problem is that the politicisation of UNESCO is detrimental to the ability of the organization to carry out its mandate,” he said in an interview. “It is not too late to wake up and save this organization from politicization."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10684#.To3Al3JiK-U
After the October 3rd vote at the Council of Europe (CoE) in Strasbourg on the Palestinian request for the status of “Partner for Democracy” within the CoE Parliamentary Assembly and in view of President Abu Mazen’s address before the Assembly this Thursday, some parliamentarians, delegates to the CoE from their national assemblies, expressed their concern in a letter sent to all their Colleagues.
The letter conveys the parliamentarians’ perplexity about the rapidity and superficiality of the upgrading procedure adopted by the CoE Assembly.
It has been undersigned by several MPs and among them: Hon. Roland Blum (UMP/France), Sen. Rosanna Boldi (Ldp/EDG), Hon. Fiamma Nirenstein (Pdl/PPE), Hon. Rudy Salles (EPP/France), Sen. Giuseppe Saro (EPP/Italy), Hon. Giacomo Stucchi (EDG/Italy), Hon. Marco Zacchera (EPP/Italy).
The following is the full text of the letter:
Dear Colleagues,
It is with some perplexity and disconcertment that we witness the quick approval of a request for Partner for Democracy status within the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly.
We do not think that the way the subject as a whole has been managed and is going to be concluded will really help the Palestinian Authority in its effort to become a democratic State, a highly desirable goal for which we praise Mr Abu Mazen, while we convey to him our warmest wishes for his upcoming visit to our Assembly.
We also extend our wishes to both the Palestinians and Israelis for a prompt return to the negotiating table in order to achieve the aim that we all hope for, two States for two peoples living side by side in security and peace.
Our perplexity stems from the fact that it appears very difficult to reconcile the reality of the Palestinian Authority with the picture outlined in the Draft resolution that is going to be voted on Tuesday.
While we wish that its aims could be pursued without delay, still we think that many principles and encouragements listed in this document ought to have been more thoroughly checked before we embark on the upgrading of the delegation sitting in the Council of Europe.
We are worried that this well-intentioned upgrading could result in the opposite of what we expect and hope for the future of the Palestinian Authority.
The PA is very dramatically divided, from the political point of view, basically into two factions, Fatah and Hamas. In May 2011 there was a controversial pact of reconciliation and now, notwithstanding several disagreements, Mr Abu Mazen is trying very hard to renew it and make it effective.
But Hamas is listed among the terrorist organizations in the European Union and in the USA; it bases its work on an anti-Semitic and anti-Western charter in which it promises to destroy Israel; it keeps the soldier Gilad Shalit as a prisoner in a secret refuge while nobody, not even the Red Cross, has ever been allowed to get direct information about him; it keeps its population under strict Sharia law.
The mandate of Abu Mazen’s presidency of the Palestinian Authority started on February 9th 2005, and actually ended on 9th of January 2009. He extended his term for one year, and afterwards he renewed it again. We hear now that elections are on their way: we wish that the Council of Europe will see the return of the Palestinian Authority to the electoral system soon.
About citizens’ rights: according to the 2010 report of Freedom House, women “are subjected to restrictive personal status law, which retain discriminatory provisions related to marriage, divorce, and child custody. Domestic abuse remains a significant problem and violence against women has increased in the recent years… Discriminatory laws and tradition also affect inheritance, alimony, employment opportunities… So-called "honor killings," which typically involve the murder of women by relatives as punishment for extramarital sex, have also escalated”.
As far as Hamas is concerned, the Islamist organization has incorporated in Gaza the hudud, a seventh century unified penal code that features punishments as amputations, whipping, stoning.
The Palestinian Authority applies the death penalty and, according to Human Rights Watch, at the moment at least 21 persons are waiting in prison for execution. In 2011 there have been three executions and two more persons have been condemned to death. In July 2011 two men were hanged for the accusation of “collaboration" with Israel.
We must nevertheless recognize that President Mahmoud Abbas has requested from the judges a suspension of the death penalties since 2005.
‘Accidental’ but actually deliberate killings happen day after day without the possibility of the Security Forces to intervene in a decisive way, because there are factions and militias on political and family basis, fighting each other in the streets. We know that the Palestinian leadership tries to combat this phenomenon that nevertheless has a strong impact on society.
The Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Israelis have been lynched or gunned in the streets, sometimes after being taken away from the jails where they were imprisoned.
Since the Palestinian law, based on the 1960 Jordanian penal code, prohibits homosexual activity, the gay community in the Palestinian Authority has a very hard life, subjected to sanctions and persecutions. Consequentially many gay people run away and seek refuge in Israel.
Even if the law prohibits it, many underage children (with estimates as high as 72 per cent) work in shops, family farms, factories, enterprises.
As for freedom of opinion, we read that in 2006 at least 16 Palestinian journalists were either killed or wounded by armed groups and PA security forces. Security forces of the PA, writes Human Rights Watch, have arbitrarily detained and sometimes abused many West Bank journalists.
As far as the condition of Christians is concerned, we have many witnesses who tell of discriminating behaviour or even persecution from the Muslim side: in Bethlehem, in the last decades, the Christian population has been squeezed from 90 to 15 percent. Not to speak about Gaza, where persecutions continue on a daily basis and do not stop at murder.
It must also be mentioned that it has been stated in many declarations of the Palestinian Fatah leadership that a future Palestinian State will not admit the presence of any Jews, and we certainly cannot accept this as a good premise for democracy and coexistence.
It is for these and other reasons that, while wishing a future of democracy and peace to the Palestinian Authority and appreciating the commitment implied in the demand of an upgrading at the Council of Europe, we see the need for an enormous effort in future in order to fulfil this commitment and on our side, the side of the European institutions, the necessity of being more accurate and thorough in monitoring and accepting this process.
Sincerely yours,
Hon. Fiamma Nirenstein (EPP/Italy)
Sen. Rossana Boldi (EDG/Italy)
Hon. Marco Zacchera (EPP/Italy)
Hon. Giacomo Stucchi (EDG/Italy)
Sen. Giuseppe Saro (EPP/Italy)
Hon. Rudy Salles (EPP/France)
Hon. Roland Blum (UMP/France)
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