The Turkish Two Step

In the last decade, Turkey has moved forward with significant political and economic reforms. But, at times it seems as if they are doing the a dance which I call the "Turkish Two Step," in which Turkey moves two steps forward and then two (and sometimes) three steps back. This is especially true with issues involving minorities. This was highlighted in a recent ruling by the Turkish Supreme Court that usurped a substantial portion of Mor Gabrield Monastary to the Turkish State. Founded in 397 AD, Mor Gabriel is one of the oldest monasteries in Christendom. Beyond that, it is a cultural remnant of the once great Syriac Christian presence in South Eastern Anatolia that was substantially reduced during the Assyrian Genocide. We hope that international pressure and more importantly the growing democratization of large segments of Turkish Society will help avert the disappearance of the 5,000 year Assyrian Presence.

MARCH 7, 2009.Defending the Faith

Battle Over a Christian Monastery Tests Turkey's Tolerance of Minorities.

By ANDREW HIGGINS
KARTMIN, TURKEY -- Christians have lived in these parts since the dawn of their faith. But they have had a rough couple of millennia, preyed on by Persian, Arab, Mongol, Kurdish and Turkish armies. Each group tramped through the rocky highlands that now comprise Turkey's southeastern border with Iraq and Syria.

The current menace is less bellicose but is deemed a threat nonetheless. A group of state land surveyors and Muslim villagers are intent on shrinking the boundaries of an ancient monastery by more than half. The monastery, called Mor Gabriel, is revered by the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Battling to hang on to the monastic lands, Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas is fortifying his defenses. He's hired two Turkish lawyers -- one Muslim, one Christian -- and mobilized support from foreign diplomats, clergy and politicians.

Also giving a helping hand, says the bishop, is Saint Gabriel, a predecessor as abbot who died in the seventh century: "We still have four of his fingers." Locked away for safekeeping, the sacred digits are treasured as relics from the past -- and a hex on enemies in the present.

A Syriac Christian monk walks to attend a service at Mor Gabriel. The monastery is fighting over land it says it's had since the 4th century.

The outcome of the land dispute is now in the hands of a Turkish court. Seated below a bust of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's secular founding father, a robed judge on Wednesday told the feuding parties that he would issue a ruling after he visits the disputed territory himself next month.

The trial comes at a critical stage in Turkey's 22-year drive to join the European Union. When it first came to power in 2002, the ruling AK party, led by observant Muslims, pushed to accelerate legal and other changes demanded by Europe for admittance into its largely Christian club. But much of the momentum has since slowed. France has made clear it doesn't want Turkey in the EU no matter what, while Turkey has seemed to have second thoughts.

A big obstacle is Turkey's continuing tensions with its ethnic minorities, notably the Kurds, who account for more than 15% of the population and are battling for greater autonomy. Also fraught, but more under the radar, is the situation confronting members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the world's oldest and most beleaguered Christian communities. The group's fate is now seen as a test of Turkey's ability to accommodate groups at odds with "Turkishness," a legal concept of national identity that has at times been used to suppress minority groups.

Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas says Turkey's claim to Mor Gabriel's land is an attempt to rid the country of Syriac Christians entirely.

.The dispute over Mor Gabriel is being closely watched here and abroad. The EU and several embassies in Ankara sent observers to a court hearing in February, and a Swedish diplomat attended this week's session. Protection of minority rights is a condition for entry into the EU.

Founded in 397, Mor Gabriel is one of the world's oldest functioning monasteries. Viewed by Syriacs as a "second Jerusalem," it sits atop a hill overlooking now solidly Muslim lands. It has just three monks and 14 nuns. It also has 12,000 ancient corpses buried in a basement crypt.

The bishop's local flock numbers only 3,000. Mor Gabriel's influence, however, reaches far beyond its fortress-like walls, inspiring and binding a community of Christians scattered by persecution and emigration. There are hundreds of thousands more Syriac Christians across the frontier in Iraq and Syria and in Europe. They speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ.

"The monastery is all we have left," says Attiya Tunc, who left for Holland as a child and returned this February to find her family's village near here reduced to ruins and overrun with sheep, since most of the villagers abandoned it. Ms. Tunc says she came in response to telephone call from Bishop Aktas appealing to former residents to come back and show their support in the land battle.
Historical Claims

Turkish officials say they have no desire to uproot Christianity. They point to new roads and other services provided to small settlements of Syriac Christians who have returned in recent years from abroad.

Mustafa Yilmaz, the state's senior administrator in the area, says Turkey wants to clarify blurred property boundaries as part of a national land survey, something long demanded by the EU. He says the monastery could lose around 100 acres of land currently enclosed within a high wall, meaning a loss of about 60% of its core property. Some of that could be reclassified as a state-owned forest, with the rest claimed by the Treasury on the grounds that it's not being used as intended for farming or other purposes.

Mr. Yilmaz says none of this would affect the monastery's operations as the land targeted isn't being used by monks or nuns, and he notes that the court could yet side in part with the monastery. He says the government has no desire to hurt a monastery he describes as a "very special place" that, among other things, helps boost the region's economy by bringing in throngs of pilgrims and tourists.

Christian activists, says Mr. Yilmaz, have "blown up" a mundane muddle into a religious issue. "Look, everyone wants to have more land," he says.

Syriac Christians see a more sinister purpose. They say the Turkish state and Muslim villagers want to grab Christian land and force the non-Muslims to leave. "There is no place for Christians here" until Turkey changes in fundamental ways, says Ms. Tunc.

The dispute has spurred some Muslims in neighboring villages to launch complaints against the monastery. Mahmut Duz, a Muslim who lives near Mor Gabriel, lodged a protest last year to the state prosecutor in Midyat, a nearby town. Mr. Duz alleged that the bishop and his monks are "engaged in illegal religious and reactionary missionary activities."

Mr. Duz urged Turkish authorities to remember Mehmed the Conqueror, a 15th-century Ottoman ruler who routed Christian forces and conquered the city now called Istanbul for Islam. He said Turkish officials should recall a vow by the Conqueror to " 'cut off the head of anybody who cuts down even a branch from my forest.' " Bishops and priests, Mr. Duz told the prosecutor, can keep their heads, but "you must stop the occupation and plunder" of Muslim land by the monastery.

No one at the monastery has been prosecuted for the crimes alleged by Mr. Duz and other villagers. The monastery says these claims are ludicrous. It says it tutors 35 Syriac Christian school boys in Aramaic and religion but conducts no missionary activities.

Syriac Christians take an even longer view than Mr. Duz. They deride local Muslims as newcomers, saying Mor Gabriel was built two centuries before Islam was founded. "Mohammed did not exist. The Ottoman Empire did not exist. Turkey did not exist," says Issa Garis, the monastery's archdeacon.

A Long List of Raids

Syriac Christians have indeed been living -- and often suffering -- here for a very long time. Mor Gabriel's history is a "long list of raids, wars, droughts, famines, plagues and persecutions," says British scholar Andrew Palmer. "Time and again, they've had to start again from nothing."

In the eighth century, plague swept through the area and took the lives of many of Mor Gabriel's monks. Survivors dug up the body of Saint Gabriel, the monastery's seventh-century abbot, and propped him up in church to pray for help. The plague, according to tradition, passed.

When disease later ravaged a Christian center to the north, Saint Gabriel's right hand was cut off and sent there to help. One of the fingers was then removed and dispatched to avert another crisis elsewhere. The finger is now missing.

As Islam extended its reach, the monastery shut down repeatedly, but always reopened. It was attacked by Kurds, Turks and then Kurds again. In the 14th century, Mongol invaders seized the monastery and killed 40 monks and 400 other Christians hiding in a cave. Perhaps the biggest blow of all came in the modern era, when Turkey's slaughter of Christian Armenians during World War I led to massacres of Syriac Christians, too. The patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church later decamped to Syria.

Ms. Tunc, the woman now living in Holland, grew up with stories of massacred relatives. Her father "told us never to trust Turks or Kurds," and ordered her to master Dutch ways "because we could never go back."

Her family and many others left Turkey in the 1980s during a brutal conflict between Turkish soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas. Syriac Christians, viewed with suspicion by both sides, frequently got caught in the crossfire.

The exodus drained towns and villages of Christians, including Midyat, the town where the court is reviewing the land dispute. Midyat used to be almost entirely Christian but now has just 120 non-Muslim families out of a population of 60,000. The town has seven churches, but just one preacher.

Running a Tight Ship

As Christians fled, Bishop Aktas took charge of Mor Gabriel. He'd earlier studied in New York but found the U.S. too permissive. "I didn't like America. It is not for monks like me," he says.

By some accounts, he ran a very tight ship. Aydin Aslan, a student there from 1978 until 1983, says discipline was extremely strict, each day devoted to study and prayer. "It was like a prison," recalls Mr. Aslan, who emigrated to Belgium.

Alarmed by a spate of thefts and determined to keep Muslim neighbors from encroaching, Bishop Aktas started building a high wall around his land. When Muslims from the village of Kartmin planted crops and grazed livestock near a well on monastic property, monks and school boys filled the well with stones to keep them away.
Since 2000, Syriac Christian émigrés have poured money into rebuilding churches and putting up summer homes like those at top.

Muslim resentment grew against the monastery, which was being bolstered thanks to funds from abroad. Following a drop-off in fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdish guerrillas after 2000, Syriac Christian émigrés seized on the relative calm. They poured money in to rebuild old churches, expand the monastery compound and build summer homes.

A few decided to move back for good. Jacob Demir returned from Switzerland with his family to a new villa on the outskirts of Midyat. "They thought we would go to Europe and melt away," says Mr. Demir. Instead, he says, exile only made him more aware and assertive of his Syriac identity. (His older children are less enthusiastic: A daughter stayed behind in Europe and a son who came back to Turkey left when he discovered how low local salaries are.)

The return to Turkey of relatively prosperous Christians helped the economy and provided jobs in construction. But it also needled some Muslims, especially when returnees began to claim abandoned property occupied by Muslims.

Turmoil in neighboring Iraq added to the unease. After the 2003 U.S. invasion, hundreds of thousands of Syriac Christians in Iraq fled mainly to Syria and Jordan as security collapsed and Muslims turned on their neighbors. Iraq's most prominent Syriac Christian, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Tariq Aziz, was arrested by the U.S. Acquitted this week in the first of three cases against him, he remains in jail on other charges relating to the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

As uncertainty mounted about the future of the Syriac church, officials in Midyat were ordered to survey all land in their area not yet officially registered. Surveyors, armed with old maps and aerial photographs, began fanning out through villages trying to work out who owned what.

Last summer, officials informed the monastery that big chunks of territory it considered its own were actually state-owned forest land. The monastery wall was declared illegal. Surveyors also redrew village borders, expanding the territory of three Muslim villages with which the monastery had long feuded.

The monastery went to court to challenge the decisions. Three village chiefs filed a complaint against the monastery with the Midyat prosecutor. Bishop Aktas, they complained, had destroyed "an atmosphere of peace and tolerance" and should be investigated.

The monastery's émigré lobby swung into action. Late last year and again in January, Syriac activists organized street demonstrations in Sweden and Germany. Yilmaz Kerimo, a Syriac Christian member of the Swedish parliament, protested to Turkey's Ministry of Interior, demanding an end to "unlawful acts and brutalities" at odds with Turkey's desire to join the EU.

Ismail Erkal, the village head here in Kartmin, one of the three settlements involved in the dispute, blames Bishop Aktas for stirring tempers. "This bishop is a difficult person," says Mr. Erkal. Standing on the roof of his mud-and-brick house. Looking out towards the monastery, he points to swathes of monastic land which he says should belong to Kartmin. His village used to have a church but, with no Christians left, it is now a stable. Next door is a new mosque.

Mr. Erkel says Islam "does not allow oppression," and denies any plan to get the last Christians in the area to leave.

Bishop Aktas says the message is clear: "They want to make us all go away."

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com

While You Were "Marching For Palestine"...

Hey university douchebags; while you were "marching for Palestine," the 5,000 year presence of the indigenous Syriac Christians, Jews , Mandeans and other minorities of Iraq has nearly been extinguished by islamic fundamentalists. Sorry, I forgot, you only protest when America or a western oriented democracy, such as Israel, is the alleged persecutor and the noble people of the third world are the so called victims. Enclosed are excerpts from an interview with Peter Bet Basoo, an Assyrian journalist, for the full article, click on the following link: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32012

Islamist Ethnic-Cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq

By: Jamie Glazov

FrontPageMagazine.com

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Peter BetBasoo, co-founder and director of the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org). He was born in Baghdad in 1963 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1974. He obtained a B.S. in Geology at the University of Illinois Chicago (1980-1985) and a minor in Philosophy. In 2002, he worked in the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, in the Water, Agriculture and Environment group. In 2007, he authored the report, Incipient Genocide: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Assyrians of Iraq.

FP: Peter BetBasoo, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

BetBasoo: Thank you, Jamie.

FP: What has happened in the past 5 years?

BetBasoo: We are all aware of the sectarian violence that befell Iraq, the endless Shiite-Sunni violence, yet little reported was the plight of Iraq's non-Muslim minorities, the Assyrians and Mandaeans in particular, who have been driven out of Basra and Baghdad by both Shiites and Sunnis. Before 2003 Assyrians were estimated to be 8% of the population (1.5 million), now they are down to about 1 million. Of the refugees in Syria and Jordan, it is estimated that nearly 25-40% of them are Assyrians, though they only make up 8% of Iraq's population. This is no accident. They were driven out by the Islamists. The Mandaeans once numbered 60,000 in Iraq, now they are about 4,000. Most have fled the country because of Muslim persecution.

FP: Who are the Assyrians and other minorities? How did they receive the liberation of Iraq?

BetBasoo: There are five main minorities in Iraq: Assyrians, Turkmen, Yazidis, Shabaks and Mandaeans. Of these, the Assyrians are the only indigenous group, the only autochthonous group. The Assyrians are the descendants of the Assyrians you know from ancient history, the ones that build the Mesopotamian civilizations. Assyrians became Christians in 33 A.D. their language is Syriac (neo-Aramaic), and they have lived in their ancestral lands in north Iraq for nearly 7000 years. In recent times they moved to Baghdad and Basra. Assyrians are also present in Syria, Iran and Turkey and now the West, of course.

The Mandaeans are an ancient community, followers of John the Baptist. They are not Muslims, their language is Aramaic -- though this is being lost to Arabic. They historically lived in south Iraq.

The Yazidis live in north Iraq. They are erroneously called the "devil worshippers." Their religion is an amalgam of Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. It is not clear what their ethnicity is, but they consider themselves distinct from others. There are about 500,000 of them.

The Turkmen are of Turkish origin and are in general Sunni Muslims. They live in north Iraq.

The Shabaks are a Muslim group (70% Shiite, 30% Sunni) that also considers itself distinct from others. They live in north Iraq.

It goes without saying that these groups welcomed the liberation of Iraq. Though they were relatively safe under Saddam's regime, they were not free, they were living in a police state, and many suffered at the hands of Saddam's thugs. The promise of liberty was whole-heartedly received. But none of the groups anticipated what followed when Pandora's box was opened after Saddam's iron-grip regime was ousted.

FP: How did the Islamists treat these minorities?

BetBasoo: That depends on the minority. Non-Muslim minorities were targeted by both Sunnis and Shiites. The Assyrians and Mandaeans have suffered tremendously. As I document in the Incipient Genocide report, Baghdad and Basra have been essentially cleared of Assyrians.

After the liberation of Iraq in 2003 the murder of Assyrians was 2937% higher than for the years 1995-2002. The geographic distribution of the murders was 36.9% in north Iraq, 60.4% in central Iraq and 2.7% in south Iraq. Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and al-Qaeda engaged in murdering Assyrians. Examples included:
• A 2 month old infant kidnapped, beheaded, roasted and returned to its parents on a bed of rice

• 14 year old Ayad Tariq decapitated because he is a "dirty Christian sinner"

• A 14 year old boy crucified in his own village in Mosul

• Fr. Paulos Iskander (Paul Alexander) kidnapped, beheaded and dismembered

5 priests were kidnapped and released after ransom was paid. 5 priests and 3 deacons were murdered, for a total of 12. 6 of these occurred in Baghdad, 7 in Mosul. 52 churches were attacked or bombed since June, 2004: 33 in Baghdad, 13 in Mosul, 5 in Kirkuk and 1 in Ramadi.

At least 13 young women were abducted and raped, causing some of them to commit suicide. Female students were targeted in Basra and Mosul for not wearing veils; some had nitric acid squirted on their faces. Elders of a village in Mosul were warned not to send females to universities. Mahdi Army personnel circulated a letter warning all Christian women to veil themselves.

Al-Qaeda moved into Dora, Baghdad (an Assyrian neighborhood) and began collecting the jizya and demanding that females be sent to the mosque to be married off to Muslims. Assyrian businesses were targeted. 95% of liquor stores were attacked, defaced or bombed. 500 Assyrian shops in a Dora market were burned in one night.

The Mandaeans suffered no less and proportionately have been hit harder. Nearly 90% of this community has fled Iraq. The full details of this horror are documented in a report by the Mandaean Human Rights Group. This community has been the object of murder, intimidation, threats and forced conversion.

The effect of this was to drive these communities into exile. Only 4000 Mandaeans remain in Iraq. About 500,000 Assyrians have fled to Syria and Jordan and 200,000 to the Assyrian areas in North Iraq.

FP: How did the Kurdish authorities treat them?

BetBasoo: The minorities living in or near Kurdish areas (in the north) are Assyrians, Yazidis, Shabaks amd Turkmen. The Kurds do not, in general, engage in religious violence, however, they are actively engaged in political violence and cultural oppression and denial of the rights of these groups in pursuit of their vision of a greater "Kurdistan." The Kurds are working on a subtler level.

Regarding Shabaks, Kurds insist this group is ethnically Kurdish and are aggressively attempting to annex their villages into the Kurdish region. The Shabaks categorically deny this. According to Dr. Hunain Al-Qaddo, General Secretary of the Democratic Shabak Assembly. "Shabaks enjoy different norms, values, traditions, recipes and clothes from Kurds and Arabs. They are neither Arabs nor Kurds and they do not intermarry with Kurds. Their language, Shabaki, is a mixture of Farsi, Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish and cannot be understood by Kurds." Shabaks have accused Kurds of killing one of their leaders. Muslims have also targeted this community.

The Yazidis face a similar situation.

The Assyrians are a special target of the Kurds because the Assyrians are the legitimate historical owners of north Iraq, which the Kurds are claiming as their own. Kurdish policy toward Assyrians is multi-faceted. There is the transparent attempt to buy the Assyrians through an Assyrian working for the Kurdish government, Sargis Aghajan. He is the Assyrian face of the Kurdish regime. He spends lavishly on Assyrians, building churches, rebuilding villages, but always delivering the Kurdish message and attempting to convince Assyrians to come under Kurdish Regional government rule. He has worked tirelessly to marginalize the legitimate representative of the Assyrians, the Assyrian Democratic Movement.

The Kurds blocked Assyrians from voting in the 2005 general elections. The Kurdish authorities charged with delivering ballot boxes to Assyrian districts in the north failed to do so. Assyrian election workers were fired on and killed.

The Kurds are engaged in historical revisionism. They claim that Arbel ("Howlar" in Kurdish) is their "capital" but it is not, Arbel is the oldest extant city in the world; it dates back to more than 4000 B.C., its name means "four gods" (Arb-El) in Assyrian. The Kurds base the beginning of their calendar on the fall of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. The current Kurdish year is 2620. Assyrian fell in 612 B.C. You do the math. The Kurds also assert that the Kingdom of Adiabene, an Assyrian Kingdom that was the first to accept Christ in 33 A.D., was "Kurdish", their historians and their apologists make this assertion. The purpose of this, of course, is to deny the legal right of Assyrians to claim their lands, which the Kurds want to incorporate into a greater Kurdistan. Assyrians have continuously lived in their ancestral lands, north Iraq, north-east Syria, south-east Turkey and north-west Iran, since about 4700 B.C. Kurds are from south-west Iran. They came to north Iraq circa 1100 A.D., when they were installed there to act as a buffer between the Turks and the Persians.

Assyrians are not seeking to re-establish Assyria, that is an unrealistic dream. Assyrians simply want to live in peace and freedom, to practice their religion, to teach their language and history. In the last 1400 years, thus has proven to be elusive, as every power that be wanted to assimilate Assyrians. We are called Arab-Christians, Iranian-Christians, Turkish-Christians and now Kurdish Christians, from a group who should know better, having suffered the same under Saddam. For many Assyrians, the Kurds are no different than the Arabs. The Arabs had their Ba'ath ideology, with its pan-Arabism, where everyone was an Arab, even if he wasn't, and the Kurds have their pan-Kurdism. Does no one learn from history?

The nexus of this tension and conflict is the city of Kirkuk, Iraq, a region rich in oil and coveted by Kurds. The Turkmen, Assyrians and Arabs vehemently contest that this is a Kurdish city and are not willing to cede it to the Kurds. For the record, Kirkuk

FP: What may the US departure precipitate? There is the possibility of an ethnic cleansing/genocide, no?

BetBasoo: With 140,000 US troops in Iraq, we witnessed the near eradication of the Mandeans from Iraq and the cleansing of Assyrians from Basra and Baghdad. The only Assyrian safe-haven now is in the ancestral Assyrian homelands in north-Iraq. If the US departs, leaving only one brigade in Baghdad, should we expect the situation for minorities to improve? Unless the Iraqi government reigns in the militias, makes political reform the top priority, engages in a massive reconstruction program and -- most importantly -- explicitly guarantees the protection of non-Muslim minorities through educational, civic and security measures -- the situation will probably get worse. With the US gone, the pressure on the Kurds would have been removed, and with their protectorate gone, they would very likely become defensive, assertive and bellicose.

I recently interviewed an Assyrian witness to the Muslim cleansing of Assyrians in the Dora district of Baghdad, between 2004 and 2007 (the interview will soon be published on AINA), and the overwhelming impression I came away with was this kind of ethnic cleansing can happen at any time and start frighteningly fast, within a day or two, and there is nothing that unprotected minorities can do to stop it.

FP: What can be done to protect these minorities?

BetBasoo: The best solution is let these vulnerable minorities protect themselves. The Assyrians, Shabaks and Yazidis must have their own local civil administration and police force, in accordance with article 125 of the Iraq constitution. The Turkmen are in less danger because they are backed by Turkey. For the Assyrians, this is slowly being realized in the push to establish an Assyrian administered area in the Nineveh Plain, the center of the Assyrian area. A police force of 700 Assyrians is now in training and it will be stationed in the Nineveh Plain.

The short term solution is to offer physical protection for these minorities -- they must be guarded with extra vigilance precisely because they are unable to defend themselves. The long term solution is to codify minority rights -- especially for non-Muslims -- into the laws of the land and to zealously enforce these laws. The culture has to be changed. This is admittedly difficult, but there is no other lasting way to achieve this. What is needed is affirmative action, not for jobs but for civil rights.

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Thank you Dr. Tim!

Imagine that every week you came to the doctor with a different ailment. One week you came in with a headache and the doctor told you "take this aspirin and you'll feel better..." The next week you came in with a cough and the doctor told you "take this cough syrup and you'll feel better..." At first you would be relieved, but soon you would be troubled that the doctor was not addressing the underlying illness. Without doing so, new and progressively worse symptoms would arise.This is how I look at many social, cultural and political phenomena that the western world faces.

Most notable among the symptoms of an underlying existential illness is the extreme and irrational hatred of Israel that is mostly seen among more liberal westerners. Before I go on I must state that yes Israel (like all nations) does things that merit criticism and no, not all criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitic, but it is mind boggling how the criticism has become so obsessive and unbalanced.

In the last few days a hospital in Sri Lanka was shelled 4 separate times by the government, killing numerous civilians. I have yet to see one student march protesting this and calling for an "end to the occupation of the Tamil homeland by the Sri Lankan government..."

In the last 20 years over 1.0 million Christians and Animists have been murdered by the Arab-Islamic regime in Sudan, but how many protests have we seen against Sudan? How many westerners have demanded an "end to the Arab-Islamic occupation of Southern Sudan?"

And in the face of slaughter of Kurds in Turkey...Assyrian Christians in Iraq...Chechens in Russia...mass starvation in North Korean and we are faced with a deafening silence.

Hamas, a radical islamic terrorist group launched 1000's of missiles at civilian targets in Israel and Europe remained silent, but when Israel responded with a targeted response it was met by howls of protest. Well respected intellectuals throughout Europe even called on the destruction of the State of Israel.

The question plagued me: "Israel is the only nation in the middle east that is prosperous, pluralist, democratic, dynamic, creative and capitalist...Israel is a staunch defender of western civilization against some of the most radical, hateful, anti-western groups to cast their shadow on the world stage...so why do so many "progressive" Europeans side against Israel?"

One day I presented this question to my friend Tim. His response was "perhaps Europeans and leftist Americans hates Israel not IN SPITE of its successful affirmation of western civilization, but BECAUSE of this successful affirmation."

Tim's insightful comment struck me like lightening. The segments of Europe and to a lesser extent America that have lost confidence in and even become hostile to western civilization would naturally be troubled and even repelled by a nation that affirms and fights to maintain that very civilization. People who march away from the west's Judeo-Christian foundation will never sympathize with those who live and even dies to maintain that foundation. People who march towards a socialist nanny state will be unsettled by nations, such as Israel, that successfully are moving towards the free-market and limited state.

I believe that the spiritual malaise, this crisis of confidence that inflicts much of the west manifests itself in other symptoms, like the multi-culturalist philosophy that dominates most academic, corporate and government organizations. The merits of assimilating native born, as well as immigrant students to western and American culture is another larger topic, open to debate and discussion. But, there is no question, there is no debate that when a people do not seek to maintain and propagate their culture, they do not believe in the worth of their culture, as well as the worth of themselves.

I guarantee that with keen, honest observation you will see many more symptoms of this ailment. I will leave you with a few of the accomplishments of the "terrible Zionist entity.


Modern Israeli Inventionshttp://www.freerepublic.com/%5Ehttp://www.inreview.com/archive/topic/15785.html

Posted on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 10:33:57 AM by fishtank
Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following:
Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people - as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.
Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.
Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.
With an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16s, Israel has the largest fleet of the aircraft outside of the US.
Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.
On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups.
Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees - ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland - and 12 percent hold advanced degrees.
Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.
When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.
When the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day - and saved three victims from the rubble.
Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship - and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.
Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.
Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."
According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. U. S. officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.
In 1991, during the Gulf War, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra played a concert wearing gas masks as scud missiles fired by Saddam Hussein fell on Tel Aviv.
Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.
Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.
Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
Medicine... Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized,no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper
administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U. S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.
Israel's Givun imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.
Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.
Technology... With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from the Silicon Valley).
In response to serious water shortages, Israeli engineers and agriculturalists developed a revolutionary drip irrigation system to minimize the amount of water used to grow crops.
Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.
Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U. S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.
The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.
Most of the Windows NT operating system was developed by Microsoft-Israel.
The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.
The AOL Instant Messenger was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device,produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct - all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.
An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California's Mojave desert."
All the above while engaged in regular wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction, and an economy continuously under strain by having to spend more per capita on its own protection than any other country on earth. This from a country just 55 years young having started off life on a very frontiers-like basis, whose population had mostly just emerged from the devastating World War II years.