I had an interesting experience the other
day. After spending a good deal of the
morning in an interesting and
intellectually stimulating discussion with a
very bright and pleasant Irishman about
the right of the State of Israel to exist, I
spent the afternoon in a heated and
acrimonious debate with a very irate and
extremist Israeli who believed that ''blacks
were slaves of islam'', that ''Arabs are
animals'' and that ''muslims were evil''.
In the morning I was defending the Jews
and the State of Israel with all the logic,
passion, debating skills, historical
knowledge, powers of persuasion and
sincerity that I could muster and in the
afternoon I found myself vigorously
confronting the excesses, religious bigotry,
racism and sheer arrogance of a
misguided Jew and the malevolent mindset
and disposition that virtually all extremist
and right-wing Israelis suffer from.
What a day it was. I experienced as much
hate and as much violence in temperament
and language from that Jew as I have ever
done from the most extreme and militant
Islamic fundamentalist and jihadist.
Naturally he got far more than he
bargained for from me and he left the
discussion a very sober man indeed because
I was compelled to tell him the bitter truth
about his own people, his own faith and his
own intellectual and emotional disposition.
Yet all in all the entire discussion troubled
me. This is especially after I was labelled
as being ''anti-Semitic'' by many American
and European Jews and Christians on
twitter simply for speaking the truth.
I have also been labelled as being ''anti-
Muslim'' by many of my Muslim friends
and detractors simply because of my
relentless and unyielding opposition to
Islamist terror and Muslim
fundamentalism over the years.
Having been involved in public discourse
and debates for over 20 years now I loose
no sleep about what others think about me
but what I always find troubling is the fact
that some people find it very difficult to
cope with the bitter truth when confronted
with their own shortcomings, fallacies and
errors.
Worse still once you point those bitter
truths out to them they go on the
defensive, lash out at you, seek to
demonise you and label you as public
enemy number one. I am used to getting
that from the Muslim extremists in our
midst but I was surprised to get it from the
Jews, whom I have always defended, as
well.
And frankly the extraordinary brand of
arrogance and high level of historical
revisionism, double-speak, stubborness and
selective memory of the right-wing
orthodox Jewish extremists is worse than
any that I have ever come across in my
life because, more often than not, they
speak from the position of being the
helpless victim and they feel justified in
all that they say and do.
Their rhetoric is powerful, compelling and
convincing and the rationale for all that
they do and say is laced with emotion. This
is pretty potent stuff and these are very
serious people with an extremly dangerous
mindset. They are indeed the very same
people that murdered the moderate
Israeli Prime Minister and great
peacemaker, Mr. Yizhak Rabin, simply
because he had the decency and presence
of mind to sign the American-sponsored
Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat's
Palestinian Liberation Organisation in
1995.
I kept asking myself one question: how on
earth do the Arabs cope when faced with
such insolence, intolerance and racism
from the Jewish far right? Many of us love
Israel and consider ourselves to be friends
of Israel but, like I told my Jewish
orthodox antagonist, real friends are
compelled to tell the truth, even if that
truth is bitter and unpleasant.
Only fake friends will endorse every act of
Israel even when that act is wrong,
counter-productive, ill-conceived,
irrational and unreasonable. Only fake
friends will support the display and
expression of every inappropiate,
disproportionate and indefensible Israeli
action and utterance.
If you are not prepared to tell the State
of Israel or the Jews the truth when and
where they have gone wrong then you
cannot call yourself a lover of Israel or a
believer in the Jewish cause.
I sought to teach my right wing Jewish
orthodox friend a few lessons in that
debate and those lessons are as follows.
Not all Muslims are bad, not all Christians
are good and not all Jews are civilised.
Again not all Arabs are demons, not all
Jews are angels and not all Christians are
as holy as the Pope.
Racial bigotry and religious intolerance is
the worse form of ignorance that exists. It
is a cancer and it is evil. That is why I am
a secularist and I believe that religion
must be kept out of the affairs of state
and politics.
Whether you are black, white, brown, red
or yellow or whether you are a Muslim,
Christian, Arab, Jew, Persian or anything
else, if you are a racist or a religious bigot
I despise you and I have nothing but
contempt for you.
I harbor the same degree of disdain and
contempt for a Muslim fundamentalist
and Islamist terrorist as I do for a
christian terrorist, a Jewish terrorist and a
Hindu terrorist. Terror is terror. It has no
race or creed. It is evil and it is
unacceptable.
Those that believe that such atrocities are
only committed by Muslims have not read
their history very well. They forget that it
was a christian by the name of Adolf
Hitler, with the full backing and
endorsement of the Pope of his day, who
gassed 6 million Jews, Slavs and Gypsies
and who caused the death of 50 million
people during the Second World war.
They forget that it was a christian by the
name of Kaiser Wilhelm 11 of Germany
who started the First World War which led
to the death of 20 million people.
They forget that it was a christian militia
backed by the Jewish State of Israel and
the Israeli Defence Force that killed
thousands of innocent Palestinian and
Arab women and children in the refugee
camps of Sabra and Shatilla.
They forget that it was the Hindu
nationalists that slaughtered hundreds of
thousands of Muslims in post colonial India
which led to the breaking up of that
nation into three separate countries.
They forget that it was the white christian
Boers of South Africa that institutionalis
ed apartheid and that justified it with
verses from the bible.They forget that it
was the Jewish state of Israel that
espoused and still espouses the deeply
racist concept of Zionism.
They forget that it was the Christian Hutus
of Rwanda that slaughtered 800,000 of
their own Christian Tutsi brothers and
sisters in 28 days of madness, fratricide
and genocide with knives, cudgels and
machetes. They forget that it was Christian
America that killed 150,000 innocent
civilians in 3 days when they bombed
Baghdad in an illegal war.
They forget that it was Christian America
that wiped out the Red Indians and that
herded the few that they didn't slaughter
into concentration camps that they called
reservations. They forget that it was
Christian western Europe that
dehumanised and enslaved the black man
and that carved up and colonised the
African continent. They forget that it was
Christian Great Britain that tormented
and plagued pre-independence China and
that turned the Chinese into helpless
victims of a drug called opium.
They forget that it is Christian America
that has killed thousands of innocent
muslim women and children in secret
drone attacks in Pakistan and
Afghanistan in the last few years. They
forget that it was the Christian IRA that
killed thousands of innocent British
civilians over a period of 100 years and
during the time of the ''troubles''.
They forget that it was Christian King
Leopold 11 of Belgium that personally
ordered the slaughter of no less than 10
million Congolese and that actually owned
the entire nation of the Congo and
regarded it as part of his personal estate.
They forget that it was Jewish Israel that
killed 2000 innocent civilians, including
450 infants and young children, during
the just-concluded bombing of Gaza. I
have always believed that Israel has the
right to defend herself and I have always
supported them in their noble cause.
This is because I believe passionately that
the re-establishment of the State of
Israel in 1948 was prophetic and because I
believe that she has the right to exist.
However that does not mean that I ought
to endorse, commend or support the
slaughter of 450 innocent Palestinian
children.
They forget that it is Christian Ukraine
that is shelling, bombing and killing
thousands of their own people in the
eastern part of their country today simply
because those people are trying to exercise
their right of self-determination and are
fighting for their freedom and liberty.
They forget that it was the Christian Serbs
that were indulging in ethnic cleansing
and slaughtering the Muslim Kosovars and
Bosnians and the christian Croats in
eastern Europe approximately 20 years
ago. They forget that it was the Christian
crusaders that massacred every single
muslim man, woman and child when they
took the City of Jerusalem in the Middle
Ages.
They forget that it was a Muslim by the
name of Salahudeen who, 100 years later
when he re-took Jerusalem back from the
Christians, refused to retaliate and
instead gave every christian safe passage
to leave the city and ordered that not one
of them should be harmed.
Those that argue that all Muslims are
butchers, animals and terrorists have
forgotten the compassion of Salahudeen
and those that argue that all Christians
are beasts and sadistic killers have
forgotten the compassion of King Richard
the Lionheart of England, a God-fearing
and profoundly good man who led the
later crusades, who liberated Jerusalem
from the Muslims and who was a respected
friend and worthy adversary of the great
Salahudeen.
From this it is clear that kindness,
restraint, mercy, compassion,
righteousness and humanity has no
religious or ethnic boundries or identity.
Unfortunately neither does the affliction
of wickedness or the perpetuation and
willful administration of horror and
misfortune.
Terror is unacceptable whether it comes
from a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim and
whether it is being administered by the
state or by a religious or private militia.
Human beings of every race and creed can
be beasts and more often than not they
use religion to justify their beastly
activities and ways and to achieve their
sinister political objectives.
I condemn Islamist terror (particularly
the type of horrific and unprecedented
terror inflicted by groups like Al Qaeda,
the Taliban, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, Al Shabab
and Boko Haram) but I refuse to condemn
Islam as a religion because not all Muslims
are terrorists and not all terrorists are
Muslims.
If I were to condemn all Muslims for the
barbaric actions of a few of them then I
would have to condemn all Christians and
Jews for the barbaric acts, committed
throughout world history, by the adherents
of both of these faiths as well.
Not one of the three major religious faiths
is evil because each of the three accept the
concept and propogate the notion of one
all-powerful and all-knowing God that
rules in the affairs of men and that is the
creator of all that exists. It is mankind
that corrupts and abuses the practice and
interpretation of these three great faiths
and that, more often than not, uses them
to justify the most barbaric and the most
evil acts that one can possibly imagine. If
we really want a better world this has to
stop.
I shall pray for my right wing, orthodox
Jewish antagonist because, as with all
extremists, he has been blinded by hate,
fear and venom. I shall also continue to
pray for and bless the State of Israel
because I have a very soft spot for the
Jews and because my bible compels me to
do so.
Yet whether the Jews continue to see me as
a friend or not is neither here nor there
and neither does it bother me one way or
the other. This is because the Lord sees my
heart and, as a servant of truth, I am
compelled by the laws of the God to
continue to speak the truth no matter how
painful it is and no matter whose ox is
gored. Shalom Al Israel.