IPFS Mike Renzulli

More About: TERRORISM

The Crescent, the Torch, and the Sickle

Vittorio Arrigoni is one more casualty in a morally bankrupt cause undertaken by hardcore leftists to defend terrorists and obstruct Israel’s ability to defend herself.
 
Upon volunteering to do so, Arrigoni was sent to Gaza by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). ISM really stands for I Support Murderers and is the same group responsible for recruiting people such as Rachel Corrie and Angelo Frammartino. Arrigoni and Frammartino were murdered by Islamic jihadists while on assignment in Gaza and (despite the lies told by her apologists) Corrie actually died attempting to block the destruction of an entrance to a tunnel used to smuggle weapons into Israel enabling Jihadists to conduct terrorist attacks.
 
It is unfortunate that all three of these albeit naïve idealists are dead. However, the sad irony is that their lives were wasted for a cause that embraced the very violence they abhorred so long as it was directed at Israel and not Gaza Palestinians. Both Corrie and Arrigoni's parents are continuing their kid's work and are conducting themselves in true Marxist form. They obviously consider sacrifice (even of their own children) as their highest value despite their well-to-do lifestyles and the true intentions of the people they staunchly defend.
 
A short time ago I had an exchange with a local Code Pink activist on Facebook who has also conducted some activities with a libertarian in Phoenix. I borrowed from the logic of David Horowitz and asked this individual if she denounced Hamas as a terrorist organization. Her reply was only that denounced violence and despite my pressing her numerous times on a discussion thread and emails she would not condemn Hamas.
 
Upon my beginning to post commentaries on this site, in cyberspace and real life discussions I have had with libertarians, I am told by some of them that I have been brainwashed or am a victim of propaganda for defending Israel. Am I?
 
Let’s consider the actual words of the people some claim are the victims of Israeli oppression and those they so rigorously defend. Consider these quotes from the charter of Hamas:  
 
Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. And [The Jews’] scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there.
 
Then there is the Quran:  
 
The unbelievers (i.e. non-Muslims) are your invenerate enemy. (48:29)  
 
Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. (9:73 & 66:9)
 
Then there is Islam's prophet Muhammad:  
 
I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’. And You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews till some of them hide will behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying: ‘O Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him’.
 
Finally consider the wisdom of these prominent Muslim scholars:  
 
In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations. - ibn-Khaldun, 14th century Muslim scholar
 
The meaning of the term terror used by the media … is jihad for the sake of Allah. Jihad is the peak of Islam. Moreover, some of the clerics … see it as the sixth pillar of Islam. Jihad – whether Jihad of defense of Muslims and of Islamic lands such as Chechnya, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, or Jihad aimed at spreading the religion – is the pinnacle of terror, as far as the enemies of Allah are concerned.Sheikh Wajdi Hamza Al-Ghazawi, October 6, 2001
 
And
 
Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which nation assumes the role of the standard-bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. ... Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution and a composite term for the use of all these forces is ‘Jihad’. .... the objective of the Islamic ‘ Jihād’ is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule.Abul Ala Maududi
 
Considering what Sheik Al-Ghazawi stated above consider the double talk in a statement Colonel Muhammar Ghaddafi made prior to the invasion of Libya. One the one hand Ghaddafi rejected terrorism but had this to say about Jihad:
 
We will not abandon Jihad because it is Islamic duty, he said. It is the defense of oneself, defense of religion, defense of the Prophet, defense of the Qura'an … defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and defense of our independence.
 
Finally, let's not forget a 1991 memo published by the Muslim Brotherhood which was uncovered by the F.B.I. entitled An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America which is the group's manifesto for Stealth Jihad against the United States:  
 
The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Proecess" with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.
 
Islamic scholar and Middle Eastern expert Bernard Lewis summed it up beautifully in his essay Communism and Islam about how the two ideologies are two sides of the same coin:  
 
Quite obviously, the Ulama of Islam are very different from the Communist Party. Nevertheless, on closer examination, we find certain uncomfortable resemblances. Both groups profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and earth; the answers are different in every respect, alike only in their finality and completeness, and in the contrast they offer with the eternal questioning of Western man. Both groups offer to their members and followers the agreeable sensation of belonging to a community of believers, who are always right, as against an outer world of unbelievers, who are always wrong. Both offer an exhilarating feeling of mission, of purpose, of being engaged in a collective adventure to accelerate the historically inevitable victory of the true faith over the infidel evil-doers. The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, two necessarily opposed groups, of which- the first has the collective obligation of perpetual struggle against the second, also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs. There again, the content of belief is utterly different, but the aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet! was laying his finger on a real affinity. The call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith-a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy-might well strike a responsive note.
 
If anything the left is allied with Islamists solely to bring down Western civilization and not out of any high-minded, noble concern for the plight of the downtrodden, opposition to warfare, or for our liberties. Nor are Muslims conducting acts of terrorism as a result of backlash against U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
 
Unfortunately, even libertarians have jumped on the bandwagon. The ones I am refering I have been in contact with locally and nationally and do tend to side with the Gazans in the Israeli-Gaza conflict. They see the U.S.'s support of Israel as an extension of the American Empire (so-called) and, as a result, sign on to the left's logic alleging that Gazans are oppressed and also borrow somewhat from Ron Paul's criticism of Israel and his assertion that Israel created Hamas. Both points are not true at all.

Libertarians have also included leftists in their events and activities. For example, a 2008 conference sponsored by the Future of Freedom Foundation had a line up not only of libertarian speakers but also socialists as well. Antiwar.com has leftists among its line up of authors who contribute to the site's commentaries. After 9/11 I opposed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and associated with an antiwar group that was made up mostly of leftists. I also conducted protests and activities with them.
 
Over time I came to the realization that the United States is not conducting imperialist adventures nor is it looking to dominate the world. If it did, I think people like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would not have been elected to Congress and the U.S. would be conducting a foreign policy similar to how the British Socialist government did in George Orwell's book 1984.
 
What the U.S. government is doing is what a government is supposed to do in its function to protect individual rights: respond to force initiated by terrorists and the regimes that support them with force.
 
Let me stress that not all Muslims are terrorists and not all terrorists are Muslims. However, it is the facts not only about Islamic terrorism but also the Israeli-Gaza conflict that, by and large, libertarians seem to have largely ignored. Either out of anger that they do not hold the reins of power; their ideas have not been fully realized by the general populace; a willful ignorance of the enemy we face or out of an intrinsic, subjective notion of being consistent for the sake of being consistent.
 
Leftists who ally with Islamists or refuse to condemn them do so not only out of their hatred of capitalism (i.e. Western civilization) but also due to both ideologies wishing to subject the individual to the collective will. This is antithetical to liberty and it is wrong for libertarians to affiliate with individuals or groups that claim to be peaceful but indirectly support violence against Western countries like the U.S. and Israel.
 
Those that do will not be remembered for their principled defense of freedom but for the company they kept exemplifying intellectual daftness and useful idiocy for enabling the very people who want them and their loved ones enslaved or dead.

2 Comments in Response to

Comment by Mike Renzulli
Entered on:

Thank you for your response. I disagree with your assertion of guilt as far as wars are concerned. As far as the Bible is concerned, you are correct except that the religions centered around it can reinterpret it and freely ignore parts of the Bible if it is incompatible with a believer's lifestyle or today's culture. Christianity and Judaism specifically are fractured to where a believer in either religion can migrate to another denomination or leave altogether at their choosing. In Islam it is a whole different story. The Wahabbist sect is the dominant voice among Sunni Muslims since it enjoys the backing of the Saudi monarchy and in Shi'a Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood has been responsible for most of the orthodoxy seen among Shi'ites. Yet both sects mostly interpret the religion's 3 central books (i.e. the Quran, Sunnah and Shia) literally thanks to the influence of the MB and Wahabbists. As a result any Muslim who tries to ignore what declared in Islam's 3 holy texts is considered an apostate in which the penalty for doing so is excommunication or death.

Comment by Anonymously Yours
Entered on:

Most religions, that I'm aware of, promote the elimination/murder of non-believers. I don't remember the exact passage in the Bible but it is in the Old Testament. The Bible also promotes ostracism of non-believers as I was a victim in my youth by my supposedly very best friend at the age of 13. I was no longer allowed to associate with my best childhood friend because of his wacky overly self righteous Christian fundamentalist grandmother. Religions promote it but yet a number of my friends are Christians today including my very best friend so therefore religion is really just an excuse by those that wish to exercise it. Throwing all people into one basket is wrong. With the Israel/Gaza conflict it is easy to show the faults of both sides. Fighting over which group is God's chosen people and therefore who is rightfully the owner of that land is an unwinnable position and will probably create conflict until eternity. If they cannot work it out, then neither is obviously worthy of that property. War is a disgrace to mankind and siding with anyone that is continually using the excuse of self defence is wrong. Without interventionism of various governments like the U.S., I would doubt that this conflict would have gone on for so long. We reap what we sew.  Except for those who cannot leave as they have no other place that they can go, I believe the rest to all be guilty of contibuting to the deaths of so many people.  It is surely time to stop fighting.