Free Speech Only For the Followers of Muhammad?

ב"ה

Maybe it's because I'm an American. Maybe it's because I've seen, in my life, what suppression of Free Speech has done around the world, the repressive, anti-equality, anti-Freedom, anti-feminist, anti-Jewish, anti-American regimes it has created. But I cringe when I hear about groups of people trying to kill others based totally on something that the other group believes or said.

That's why my feathers are ruffled. That's why I'm incensed that Hillary Clinton is talking and other people are talking about mobs attacking US embassies and talking about the Ambassador being killed in an attack in Libya over a movie that THEY see as being uncomplimentary about Muhammad.

It is time for the talking and the rhetoric and the speechifying to stop. It is past the time of asking Muslim leaders to control their people. It is past the time of diplomacy and negotiations. It is time for us to protect our rights to create a movie that is controversial. It is time for us to protect our television producers and our movie makers. It is time for us to show our enemies that we can "talk their language", that we can fight back and that we have just as much of a right to our opinions as they do.

The only way to do this is to fight for our rights, literally. And, while I don't for one moment underestimate the sacrifice our military people make, but the reason we have a strong military is to protect our freedom, our way of life and our lives. I appreciate the brave men and women who protect our freedom and our lives, but we are not being fair to them if we send them in to do a job and many of them lose their limbs or lives and then we pull out before the job is done. It's sort of like having a virulent, life-threatening infection and only treating part of it. By doing that, you create antibiotic resistant bacteria. By only fighting part of the war, we create an enemy that thinks we are weak and that strengthens them.

We, unfortunately, have a long history of striking hard and moving out. This started with Carter and his washy-washy way of handling the Ayatollah. It continued with Bush hitting but not finishing off Saddam Hussein. And it's still going on today with our indecisive handling of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Al-Qaeda, post 9-11.

This embassy attack is a symptom of the problem. It's a symptom of the entitlement that men in the Muslim world feel. It's a symptom of the Muslim world's belief that they are better than everyone else. As long as we appear weak to them, they believe that G-d is on their side. And we can't allow them to believe that. We have to fight for the real Face of G-d, the G-d who gave us an equal chance to succeed, an equal chance to shine in His/Her world. If we allow them to define G-d, if we allow the worst opinion of G-d to hold sway, we do ourselves and this world a disservice. Let's stand up for our values. Let's show our strength. Let's prove to the Muslim world that freedom is something we think is worth fighting for.

Peace Demonstration

B"H

I heard after Shabbat yesterday that there was a peace demonstration in Israel. I found this rather amusing, mostly in the ironic sense. It kind of struck me as amusing in the same way it would strike me as amusing for a child to throw a tantrum until there was snow on the ground. The government of Israel can't make peace any more than the child's parents can make it snow.

There's a saying (I'm not sure who originated it, but it is so true): "If the Arabs put down their guns tomorrow, there would be no conflict. If the Israelis put down their guns tomorrow, there would be no Israel." This isn't just a bit of doggerel -- it's very, very true.

The roots of this "conflict" are in the corrupt demagogues who rule the area and the rabid anti-Jewish feelings the pervade the earth. Because there are only about 15 million Jews in a world of six and a half billion people (with most of the Jews concentrated in the US -- mostly the Northeast, Florida and California -- and Israel -- Only 5 countries have Jewish populations greater than 1% of their population and in no countries do Jews make up more than 2.5% of the population), most people in the world have never met a single Jew in their entire lives. They depend on the media for their view of the Jews and Israel (mind you, the entire population of Israel is barely over 7 million with Jews making up less than 5.5 million).

It is amazing that so many people see the Jews (who make up about .2% of the world's population) and Israel (which is populated by barely over .1% of the world's population in an area that is less than .15% of the world's land mass*) as the central "problem" of the world.

But this world view stems from the inability (or unwillingness) of the leaders of the surrounding countries to give their people a reasonable standard of living. The leaders of most of the countries in the Middle East are corrupt and self-centered. They need to get the minds of their people away from blaming them for their poverty and their harsh lives. Toward this end, they give the people something and someone to hate, a scapegoat to direct all their vitriol toward. That something is Israel and those someones are the Jews.

If the people in the countries that surround Israel were ever to ween themselves from the constant nursing at the breast of hatred they might actually notice that the people in Israel have the highest standard of living in the Middle East. They would notice that in Israel, all are welcome (whereas the rest of the Middle East, for all intents and purposes, is Judenrein[free of Jews] and relatively free of Christians and other non-Muslims), in Israel we agree to disagree without killing our detractors, in Israel women are not treated like chattel. And their leaders are afraid of this. So, in order to keep their people "in place", they feed them a consistent diet of hatred.

Despite this unvarying diet of animosity, there are people who are realizing that Israel is the solution not the problem. There are Muslims and former Muslims (like Salmon Rushdie, Irshad Manji, Nonie Darwish and others) and non-Muslims who grew up in Muslim countries or spent a lot of time around Muslims (like Brigitte Gabriel, Joseph Farrah and the late Oriana Fallaci) who are raising their voices and working hard to bring true peace to the world.

It is unfortunate that it will probably take war to reach that true peace because it will only be through war that we will be able to show the majority of Muslims that their lives don't have to be horrible. We need to be in a position to show these people that Islam can be a religion of peace and that everyone prospers when we all live in peace. But as long as these countries are governed by unscrupulous men who don't have their people's best interests at heart there can never be true peace.


* These percentages mean that there are about 2 Jews for every 1000 people in the world and 1 Israeli for every 1000 non-Israelis and that Israel has 1 1/2 square kilometers for every 1000 square miles in the world. By way of comparison, there are 50 Americans per 1000 people in the world, about 323 Christians per 1000 people and about almost 170 Muslims per 1000 people on earth.