As If Only Followers of Islam Take Offense

 

In the wake of the “Draw Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Texas, the world of reporting and opinion journalism has largely taken the side of the Jihadists taking great offense each attempting to out-do the Muslims in taking insult. Their grand excuse is that what Ms. Geller, Mr. Spenser and Mr. Wilders were not expressing free speech but were expressing hate speech and therefore not worthy of Constitutional protection. I wonder if this exception which makes the “Draw Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” not protected speech as it gives strictest followers of Islam so upset that they believe that Ms. Geller, Mr. Spenser and Mr. Wilders, especially Ms. Pamela Geller, deserve to be put to death for their insult to Islam also apply to my distaste and deep seated ire when Islamic Imams and others when they call for “Death to Israel” or compare Jews to Apes and Pigs. Would the same self-righteous giants of the world of news and opinion journalism and other media moguls give the same leeway to Jews if they were to respond to such insult in a similar manner as the two would-be jihadists and assaulted the Imam making such reference and took out the same righteous indignation taken from such insult? We all know the answer to such a situation, they would claim that the Imam’s speech was protected as free speech and religious freedom and my insults taken were insufficient for me or others so taken with insults and angers to be permitted to take such drastic actions. There appears to be a slight difference of standards to which Jews, Christians, Hindus, Bahá’í, Buddhists, Shinto or virtually any religion other than Islam are held but to such behavioral expectations the most violent and easily offended practitioners of Islam are granted a special sympathy and understanding. So, according to some of the greatest stalwarts of the left, right and center of the media who control the reporting of news, opinion and the making of standards for the masses concerning that which is to be tolerated and that which must be persecuted as they deem that Islam has special rights when it comes to expectations of actions, commentary, even the simple drawing of pictures of the Prophet Mohammad even should they be honorable and perfectly good taste and distinctly noble by those outside Islam and even presumably by the adherents to Islam. Never mind that there exist a plethora of renditions representing the Prophet Mohammad in books and paintings from numerous periods of Islamic history.

 

Still, the lack of nerve shown by so many but at least there have been those who did stand upright and take a stand for free speech such as Foxx News Megyn Kelly and former CNN host Piers Morgan, while I doubt this will endear him to his old bosses and regain him his position with them, though perhaps it would be to their credit to take him back for showing a modicum of fortitude taking the path less taken. There were many others who have usually stood when others crumbled like a house of cards but this time they too tumbled and trembled from the fear of Islamist disapproval and violence. Such former heavyweights as Don Imus and the No Spin Zone’s own Bill O’Reilly among others went limp and wilted blaming Pamela Geller, and interestingly enough Pamela Geller alone not mentioning Robert Spenser and Geert Wilders taking on the most vulnerable target, the one already targeted for her standing against Islam and the attacks from so many Islamist groups such as CAIR which is tied to Hamas, Muslim American Society which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups which have also slandered and assaulted the reputation of Pamela Geller as well. It was a disgusting case of piling-on the weakest target. Fortunately for Ms. Geller, she has experienced such targeting before and continued to bounce back and continue in her crusade to uncover the less attractive sides of Islam and its most vehement and violent reactions which go beyond the accepted norms and expectations placed on all other religions.

 

The vehement attacks on Ms. Geller is a reaction she has faced before which will not have the effect which her attackers may hope it might as she has made a practice of walking the edge in her efforts to display the duplicity of the reactions to Islam and Israel and the media hypocrisy. We should not expect for Ms. Geller to calm her approach continuing forward though it is very likely she may not see any sympathetic media coverage with perhaps a few brave souls who have already warmed to her side already claiming that her freedom of speech though controversial is exactly the kind of speech the Constitution’s First Amendment was designed to protect. Where the First Amendment also protect the free exercise of religion, such freedom of religious exercise does not include murdering those who may not follow the precepts of ones’ religion and no matter what rules the religion exercises. Ms. Geller will continue pushing the envelope and continue proving that in the United States the people’s freedoms are paramount and will not be compromised simply because somebody’s sensitivities might be upset beyond measure and to the point of violence. Instead, if one uses violence to silence any American they may likely find the freedoms are better protected than initially believed. Let us hope that the freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution continue to be kept sacred and not compromised in order to placate the sensitivities expressed and even to respond to the fact that some were driven to violence as a response. Violence must not be used to sacrifice freedoms as once such a response to violence destroys freedoms then all freedoms will become suspected as vulnerable to violence attacks over time. Such weakness can eventually lead to the compromise of all the Constitutional freedoms and the end of the promises of the Constitution and Bill of Rights which have survived just over two-hundred years. Could this be the first assault which will lead to the compromise of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and an end to the freedoms which have been taken for granted by the American people since the institutions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified and took their place as laws never before enshrined by any government in history. That may depend on the reaction of We the People and fortunately not on the weak kneed media elites, and for that the world can be thankful.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

American Anti-Semitism Alive and Flourishing

 

What happened to Pamela Geller with her being raked over the coals for provoking the attack by a pair of ISIS wannabes by insulting Muslim sensitivities and asking to be assaulted as she had invited people to draw the prophet Mohammad and was honoring those instigators from Charlie Hebdo who also provoked an assault by Islamic enforces of the Sharia. Pamela Geller had gone beyond accepted speech and had all but yelled “fire” in a crowded theater or its equivalent which was unprotected speech. After all, did not Ms. Geller have this coming as she had been tweaking the noses of Muslims everywhere at every opportunity with her support for the Apartheid State of Israel and its genocidal policies towards the Palestinians whose lands they occupied. She had been a defender of the indefensible, a stick in the eye of every sensible person, an itch which just had to be scratched out of existence and came close to finally getting her just rewards there in Garland, Texas. The real problem with these provocative actions of Pamela Geller was the fact that she always had innocents who she would inevitably place in danger and this time one of the guards who checked the invitations of the participants who received a bullet to the leg before the off-duty traffic cop who managed to shoot and kill the two ISIS wannabes in a flash of an exchange of bullets where the two would-be jihadists were encased in full body armor armed with AK-47 .30-calibre high powered rifle rounds capable of penetrating straight through the light chest-protector armor worn by the officer who was shooting back with the Glock version of a M-1911A-1 semi-automatic pistol firing .45 caliber pistol rounds which was incapable of doing more than leaving the smallest of indentations to the heavy body armor and would only prove effective by a shot to the head or a number of shots to the exact same location fired at close range. The wannabe-Jihadists likely thought they were invulnerable against the handgun used by the officer who, unbeknownst to the world, was probably the highest scoring officer in his department every year during qualifying as he placed head shots, the only place the officer could strike the assailants and do any damage, on both assailants as they moved towards the entrance dispatching both to Allah within fifteen seconds from the first shot. Pamela Geller is so absolutely fortunate that the officer at the front entrance was so cool under distress and engaged in a lethal firefight with all the odds stacked against him yet he calmly set his aim at the one place the assailants were vulnerable, a target of less than a square foot on each attacker and struck them both while under a hail of bullets fired from the two AK-47s which would have proven lethal if any round had struck the officer in the torso or head; yet he remained uninjured and saved the day for all inside the event, a real and perfect hero whose name must remain unspoken such that he does not become a target for other Jihadists but who knows he is a hero.

 

The above is the gist of the coverage Pamela Geller has received from the mainstream media from both ends of the political spectrum. She has been berated by both those on the left and those on the right though a few brave individuals on the right have bothered to place the blame where it belonged, to the two heavily armored jihadists who came guns blazing with ineffective fire and were put down by very effective and well placed shots which put an end to their assault almost before it began. So few, Fox News’s Megyn Kelly and CNN’s Piers Morgan both proved the exception and stood with Pamela Geller and the First Amendment guarantees of the freedom of speech, all speech, especially political and controversial speech as popular and easy, uncontroversial and uncontested speech needs no protection, only that speech which is likely to draw opposition or hatreds with threats of violence to silence one is the speech which requires protection from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. How soon we forget that the speech which requires protection is solely such speech which is most likely to ruffle some tail-feathers which requires protection such that freedom of speech is one of the five protected items in the First Amendment and the officer at the front entrance used the Second Amendment for the exact reason it is the Second Amendment and the enforcer of the First Amendment freedoms and the rest of the rights listed within the Bill of Rights and those from without but still guaranteed free men everywhere though some will face the scorn of their governments and its peoples who, like the majority of the United Stated mainstream media, refuse to step-up to protect the very Amendment which guarantees their very existence and rights to deliver the news, all the news and not just the light news of flower shows and other events having no controversies, having no enemies of freedom who will always attempt to silence those who brace the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and outrageous speech needful of the protection of the Second Amendment and the willingness for the rest of us to protect by echoing their words loudly bringing them into the light where the haters fear to tread.

 

But speaking to protect Israel and her people, the Jews, is no longer affordable speech and has been relegated to the darkness hidden in the shadows where it is spoken only in whispers for to do otherwise brings forth those who would slay us for less. On numerous college and university campuses whenever there is a counter protest in response to a pro-Israel rally, the pro-Israel rally is more often than not made to pack up and end their rally even if the pro-Israel rally had been set and received all the required approvals and the counter rally was apparently an impromptu response which occurred as a popular response. These counter rallies are often just as planned and have even been known to have approached the administration of the college or university demanding that when their demonstration begins it would be wise to close down the pro-Israel rally before anybody was injured as to allow the pro-Israel rally to continue would be an affront to their demonstration and a provocation to violence. A study performed by the Louis Brandeis Center in Washington resulted in findings that over half of Jews had been subjected to or witnessed an anti-Semitic act in the past year with a sizable number having witnessed or suffered multiple such acts. In the majority of instances the student was advised to let it pass rather than file a complaint. It is becoming more common on American university and colleges for Jewish students to be forced to prove their disapproval of Israel or face what can only be described as hate actions which will only be terminated once they have performed a mia-culpa and satisfactorily renounced any pro-Israel feelings. Student body election candidates have been requested to sign agreements whereby they promise to refuse any trips to Israel offered them by numerous Jewish organizations which have Zionist support but they are not made to sign any similar promise against Israel tours offered by pro-Palestinian or Muslim outreach organizations. When such petitions are brought to the attention of the administration there is often a lax attitude claiming such petition demands of the candidates cannot be turned away as such is simply freedom of speech issue. One can only wonder what their reaction might be if the petitions were made from the opposing viewpoint. Many of the anti-Israel campus efforts are well-organized, well-financed and often work in partnership with one or more parent organization which will arrange for additional support for any counter-rally in order to force the termination of any pro-Israel rallies. These coordination of events are mostly occurring on major universities and have turned particularly disconcerting in California university systems. The America college and university campus is rapidly becoming a hostile environment for Jewish students, especially any who are religious or particularly pro-Israel. One can only wonder how much longer before Jewish students are simply found unacceptable to attend college or university in many of the mainstream campuses in the United States. Another item to keep in mind and this is an item of great foreboding, or at least should be taken as such, what one witnesses on the university or college campus today will be main-stream in society a decade later. Imagine the average large sized company being slowly forced to let every Jewish employee go if they hope to keep order in their company and avoid unrest and potentially rioting at their front door threatening all their employees not to cross their demonstration lines and those who refuse the warnings find their vehicles damaged or destroyed when leaving that day. How many vehicles need be damaged before their employees are afraid for their lives and inform their superiors they will be unable to return to work until the demonstrators’ demands are satisfied? Whatever you so please do not make the same mistake the Jews in Germany during the Weimar Republic and even the initial two years after the Nazis initially took power and tell yourself, “It cannot happen here. We have an advanced and open culture where everybody is treated equally.” This is not true on many college and university campuses right now, how much longer before it invades the society when sufficient numbers of students have been so conditioned at their university or college? It most definitely can happen in the United States and has already started in Europe. How much longer before the United States society and governance is demanded to turn on Israel and then soon followed by demanding they turn against their Jews? Twenty years? Ten years? Five Years? Watch your local university and college campuses and see what happens should a pro-Israel individual be invited to give a presentation and see if they are permitted to speak freely. There was one instance last year where one such speaker was permitted to give his speech he had prepared but was told there might not be anyone attending their lecture. This was almost the case but a couple dozen students braved all opposition and the event was transferred at the last minute to a classroom and not the school’s auditorium. The even more frightening question is how long before these activities and hate campaigns move to the high schools and permeate the entire school curriculum. Think this is impossible? Check your school board or the textbook committees in your state and see what choices they have made for history and other course books. These school boards and particularly the state committees that choose the textbooks are often being infiltrated by people who choose books which omit mentions of Jews from their history lessons and show Jews in a dark light when they are mentioned. The history lessons and often the reading assignments in English classes include subtle anti-Semitic phraseology and in some cases outright anti-Semitism. This is an insidious creeping infestation of the secondary school curriculum and is slowly moving into earlier and earlier levels of education. Do not simply think that this is impossible and cannot happen in the United States as that has been the response throughout history and in just about every case it did happen here and the people eventually accepted it as an inevitability and would make the excuse simply asking, “What could I do against the whole of society?” It would do well for every person of good faith to remember and be mindful of the warning which was initially sounded by John Stuart Mill though also often credited to Edmund Burke which stated, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” The variant most often heard and probably more familiar goes something like this, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” So, when you see this evil approaching do not rely on your neighbors to launch into action, take the charge and lead them to action, the feeling of empowerment to have acted and thwarted such evils is reward in and of itself, the gains of society are immeasurable.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Campus Attitudes Indicator of Future Societal Hatreds

 

David Horowitz Freedom Center has launched the “Jew Hatred on Campus” campaign which produced a list of the “Top Ten” offenders guilty of allowing harassment against Jewish students. The top ten universities played host to numerous incidents of anti-Jewish actions, such as Israeli Apartheid Weeks, interrupting university activities by staging mock “checkpoints” on campus, campus speakers that call for the destruction of the Jewish state, as well as verbal and/or physical harassment and violence against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

 

Jew Hatred on Campus founder David Horowitz stated, “These anti-Semitic incidents occur on university property, often with the support of university funds, despite the fact that such behavior is explicitly forbidden under campus codes of conduct. We made the decision to form ‘Jew Hatred on Campus’ to expose anti-Semitic student groups who support or are associated with known terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and which call for the destruction of the Jewish State. These activities against Jewish and pro-Israel students would not be tolerated by university administrators if they were committed against students from any other ethnic group. But because Jews are the target, they have been largely ignored. It is an obligation of university administrators to recognize and condemn acts of anti-Semitism by campus hate groups and to withdraw campus privileges and university support from them.”

 

Now, without further delay, here are the top ten listings of those colleges and universities found to have the highest antagonism and biases anti-Israel, anti-Zionism and ordinary anti-Semitism which led to a threat based attitude towards Jewish and pro-Israel students endangering the safety of such students. “Jew Hatred on Campus” top ten list reveals some very noticeable names as well as some surprises and also some well-respected educational institutions which permitted and even enabled and abated such animosities leaving a very poisonous atmosphere which stifled and had serious negative impacts according to extensive surveys and various data collection techniques revealed:

1) Columbia University
2) Cornell University
3) George Mason University
4) Loyola University Chicago
5) Portland State University
6) San Diego State University
7) San Francisco State University
8) Temple University
9) University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
10) Vassar College

 

These increases over the last few years have caused some Jewish students to drop from their first choice college or university due to the negative and even hostile environment which made them feel threatened and uncomfortable on campus. As David Horowitz stated, these actions of hatred often occurred “with the support of university funds, despite the fact that such behavior is explicitly forbidden under campus codes of conduct.” Somewhat deeper in his short fact-filled statement he was quoted stating, “These activities against Jewish and pro-Israel students would not be tolerated by university administrators if they were committed against students from any other ethnic group. But because Jews are the target, they have been largely ignored.” Where many have claimed that the reemergence of anti-Semitism in both its traditional form and its closely related new anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel as denying only the Jewish Peoples not to have the same rights to self-government is definitely another face of the same monster simply hiding behind righteousness when calm discourse breaks down and the full extent of rage becomes revealed and easily identifiable as the pure hatred of the Jewish Peoples. This is an unfortunate hatred for one to face, especially when so young and often unlikely to have sufficient knowledge to defend themselves from the prepared sheet of memorized items with which to launch their diatribe of accusations. Despite reports which make it appear that this is a modern problem which had lain dormant for half a century or longer in much of the world after the extent and the horrors of the Holocaust had been revealed, I had the misfortune being a blonde haired blue eyed Jew which looks gentile to the point that nearly anybody else compared to me would win the look Jewish contest which allowed for many to confide their dislike and even raw hatreds towards Jews. Had anti-Semitism lie dormant for decades, mostly but far from completely as there has been that constant tinge that refused to die which was exemplified in the Chicago suburb of Skokie when the National Socialist Party of America (derived from the American Nazi Party) won its court battle to parade through the heavily Jewish section of town and immediately in front of a Holocaust survivor’s home. Despite winning their court battle, in the end they marched in Chicago instead. Still this was a victory for hate speech, a victory for free speech, and horrifying for one Holocaust survivor. The entire series of events was made into a feature length movie titled “Skokie” and starring Danny Kaye, John Rubinstein, Carl Reiner, Kim Hunter, Eli Wallach and Brian Dennehy.

 

The rapid increase in anti-Semitic hatreds once again and the fact that it appears to be growing fastest on the college and university campuses is distressing in so many ways. Anti-Semitism has begun to spread onto the campus of Brandeis University and City University of New York (CUNY), which are two schools which have a Jewish history spread back to their founding with Brandeis, which was named for the late Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, even having Zionism written into its founding mission statement. It was once held that simply looking at our university campuses, you get a glimpse into the future as the students there are the leaders of tomorrow. If that statement is true, then our future as a tolerant, multicultural and intelligent people is doomed. The political correctness found on many college and university campuses is anything but acceptive and often is exclusively dogmatic and selectively defined as to what is politically correct by binding to far leftist ideals and slogans such as group-think to define their efforts. The acceptable ideas on most campuses appears to be a message in a bottle where holding any other view is defined as an abomination. Whether your ideas will be accepted at your university depends on numerous functions and ideas, all of which are just featured prominently on your application.

 

On no subjects is this more evident than the Middle East with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement and Muslim Brotherhood sponsored groups. Be it because the Muslim world, and particularly the Arab Muslim world, donates billions of dollars to build entire buildings and buy other necessities for universities in exchange for control over, or even the establishing of, Departments of Middle East Studies and the chair that goes along with that honor; by literally bribing to gain these positions these departments become centers which spread the ideology of Islam while concurrently defaming Israel positing that Israel is a stolen and illegal entity and that the Jews have no actual claim to anything in the Middle East and that the ancient Hebrews became today’s Arab Muslims or all died out and that the Jews are all interlopers who actually trace their lineage back to a King of the Khazars in the area of Turkey today who had his people adopt Judaism in the eighth century, about the same time as Mohammad established Islam, a very convenient coincidence. Genetic testing has proven that both Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews have Middle East ancestry. This theory also does not explain why the Sephardim Jews who make up approximately half of the Israeli Jewish population are not entitled to their ancient homelands even if the Ashkenazi might have a questionable claim. Almost all the claims against European Jews do nothing to discount the claim of the Jews, many who were forced from their homes and forced to sacrifice almost all their belongings when their Muslim national leaders forced them out by threat of pogrom or even laws passed forcing them out have no claims to the lands of Israel. Still, this is the subject line taught across the United States and Europe in many universities.

 

Concurrently to these teachings you have the establishing of Muslim and Palestinian groups which have in turn established a series of activities with the singular aim of disestablishing the legality of Israel or at least causing students to question and eventually reject the claims of the Jewish People to their homelands. This is established with a combination of very well practiced and advanced campaigns combined on playing on historically established anti-Semitic tropes, slogans and defamations. They play on themes that the Jews have been chased from every nation as they destroy any nation from within that harbors them. Somehow they are unable to explain why the United States has succeeded despite having the second largest population by size in the world only recently exceeded by the numbers of Jews living in Israel. This last leg of the demonization of the Israel primarily and the Jewish People secondarily completes the efforts to conspire against Israel and the Jews leading to the problems documented by David Horowitz’s “Jew Hatred on Campus” research group and their top ten colleges and universities offenders guilty of allowing harassment against Jewish students. It would be a great hope that this listing might shame some college and university leadership to take steps to remedy this problem but the continuous flow of mostly Saudi Arabian and the other Gulf oil states monies into these universities and colleges that they will remain forever bought as long as oil remains as lucrative as it has proven in our world. The sole path to ending this horrific conspiracy would be for the students themselves to reject this propaganda, but that is something probably beyond hope as they too face the moneyed campaign demonizing Israel and the Jews and for some reason anti-Semitism seems to have its own allure and has throughout the last four-thousand years of human history. It really is a sad but true tale that tells us a lot about the human situation that mankind has never been capable of shaking off this stain on humanity. It is not for lack of knowledge as they know of this evil’s existence, so it must be due to a level of warmth and satisfaction derived by this hatred which assists in fueling its red hot slavery to the concept of the daemon Jew while ignoring the Biblical promises granting the Jewish People the Promised Lands into perpetuity .

 

Beyond the Cusp