Someone please tell me there are many more like him
Yes, there is an Arab who thinks like this. The fact is, Arabs don’t all look alike or think alike. But we are often pushed into a kind of groupthink, a kind of self-censorship that hinders our development and our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.Okay, he grew up in and lives in America, but his story tells you that many Arabs who grew up like he did still retain the ancient Middle East hatreds. But he gives me hope.
We are not a universal group. But some of us believe in a simple universal truth: that every Arab deserves to live in freedom, wherever he or she might call home. Some of us want Arab countries to be more like America and Israel, places where the individual can flourish.
Say those words to many Arabs and they are shocked and angered. Soon, words like imperialist are thrown about, and the subject turns to Israel. Always, it seems, it turns to Israel.
Why the anger when I hint that America and Israel might have something to teach the Arab world? I thought about it for the longest time, and only recently stumbled upon the answer.
It is all about Arab self-doubt. It is all tied to a profound lack of cultural self-confidence, and a deep-seated fear that maybe, just maybe, Arabs won’t be very good at the self-governance thing. That Arab nations won’t be capable of building democratic cultures that engender the flourishing of human freedom, and that these nations won’t have the ability to tap the God-given talents of their people the way Americans and Israelis do.
That maybe, just maybe, the Arab world will never measure up to America or Israel.
Better, goes the logic, to cling to anger over the plight of the Palestinians. Better to cling to international policy disputes and to a deep-seated hatred of Israel. Better to play the role of victim, and the role of self-righteous critic, than to do the hard work of lifting up the conditions of your people.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Arab blame game, Arab misery, Arab obsession with Israel, Arab paranoia, Arab treatment of women, Arab world
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:12 PM
11 Comments:
likely a xtian arab who are on the same boat as us vis a vis Muslims
Behold, the ignorance of Daniel.
Daniel probably hasn't heard of Azmi Bishara, the Christian Arab.
Daniel doesn't know that Sabeel a Christian organisation enjoys far more support in the Christian West, than Hamas Hezbollah or even the PLO do. The BDS and demonisation against Israel has Christian groups like Sabeel behind them.
Daniel is unaware that Arab Christians are more anti semitic than the Muslim ones. Even an Islamophobe like Daniel Pipes acknoweldges that when Europeans brought anti semitism and nazi memes to the Middle East the Arab Christians were the ones to enthusisastically embrace it.
Daniel isn't aware that the Christian Arabs in the USA, are at the forefront when it comes to demonising Israel. James Zogby is a good example.
Daniel isnt' aware that Al Jazeera has some specatacular Christian Arabs alwasy demonising Israel (Marwan Bishara is just one), Marwan is Azmi's Bishara's brother.
Daniel isn't aware that Suha Arafat who spread the jew blood libel in front of Clinton is a Christian Jew hater with little regard for Palestinians.
Daniel isn't aware the Arafat's SECULAR PLO had anti semitic Christians at the top, almost all were Christian.
Daniel isn't aware that Hezbollah in Lebanon enjoys Christian support.
Daniel isn't aware that Arab Christians who have no state in the Muslim Middle East, resent the Jews having one.
Daniel isn't aware that where as the Muslim anger against Israel is because of the uprooting and expulsion of natives living there, the Chrisitan one includes all the anti semitism that Christianity traditioanlly held.
Daniel isn't aware that during the Muslim Caliphates and the Ottoman ones, Christian Arabs were not permitted to excercise any Jew hate against Jews.
Daniel isn't aware that only came about after the European colonisation of the Middle East.
BEHOLD HIS IGNORANCE.
Behold the utter ignorance of Chayma,
Chayma probably has never heard of Brigitte Gabriel.
Chayma doesn't know that the Lebanese christians supported us in the Lebanese war.
Chayma doesn't know that Major Haddad was a Greek Orthodox.
Chayma doesn't know that the only middle eastern nation with a grown christian population is Israel.
Chayma doesn't know that Suha arafat who spread Jewish blood lbel in front of Hitlery is a muslim convert.
Chayma doesn't know that Justim Amash is a pro likud ,zionist congressman from Michigan who is a christian arab.
Chayma doesn't know that as stated by Martin Gilbert the Jews of muslim lands never had it as good or as bad as in christian lands.
chayma obviously does not know of the 18th century Damascus affair. I mean this is Middle East 101 and for chayma not to know this speaks for itself.
chayma doesn't know that the Jews are the natives of Israel and that the Muzzies are interlopers
BEHOLD CHAYMAS NAKED IGNORANCE.
BTW ,
Chayma , the only reason that there is no christian state is that in Lebanon (which was one) the invading muzzies had a higher birth rate.
And habeeb is a Maronite
Daniel, you are a stupid ass, the Lebanese Christians supported you in that particlar war, for their own agenda. Not yours,
Lebanons Christians are not pro Israel, neither are Mid East Christians in general. If Israel has a growing Christian community why is the Christian world against Israel? and why was Azmi Bishara declared a traitor by Israel? Why did Mordecai Vananu and Israel Shamir convert to Christianity?
You are an ignorant fool. Let me gues, you're living off a few cents that the CUFI crowd throw your way, or is that Brigette Gabriel? Stupid fool, the Armeggedon is what that crowd are after,
You can live in denial if you want, but the truth is there for you to see.
the truth is there is no Muslim activism in the WEst regarding Israel. it is all Christian. Sabeel, the Christian Churces, and even in the USA, the Evangelical churches have a formidable foe in the christian mainstream churches.
There is no Muslim activism against Israel, we do not need to do any. The BDS movement, is all Christian led.
Brigette Gabriel, of course i've heard of her, how does she benefit Israel other than fund Messianics? Despite their best attempts they havn't acheived anything for Israle. The Evangelical right wing are the poorest most ignorant illiterates in the USA. Brigette Gabriels one cent funders. As they move up the social scale they dump their faith for the left wing anti Israel crowd. Obama's election was proof of that.
Suha Arafat is not a Muslim, she went through the motions to make herself acceptable to the Palestinian people, but she is about as Muslim, as Brigette Gabriel is Jewish, By the way you fool, those who genuinely care about Israel would convert to Judaism not Evangelism like Gabriel did, but that's not the point,
Suha was having an affair in France with one of Arafat's Christian aides, that suited Arafat, because Suha wanted his money (she is living off stolen PLO funds) and he wanted an open marriage. Suha is not Muslim, though she pretends to be.
if you didn't know that the 18th century Damascus affair was Christian, it was a blood libel, then you need to get out of your shtetl and learn history.
As for Martin Gilbert, is that the best you can do? You are aware that he discredited himself with the book that you are lauding. His peers have given him a lot of flak, and called for his book history revising. That is UK, not USA. Do your homework, you dolt.
As I said, you can live in denial, but as the next election will prove when Obama is re elected, it is the anti Israel churches that rule the roost. The Tea potty (your Brigette Gabrielle crowd) is only good for throwing a few cents your way.
They won't move the embassy to Jerusalem, and you'll have to get a life and a job, because you can't live as a 'schnorrers' for ever, from the likes of Brigette Gabriel, who only support you for a Christian Israel.
Daniel, the ‘schnorrer’ who probably lives of Brigette Gabriels handouts in the settlements, brought a Christian 1840 blood libel to discredit the Muslim Arabs. The ‘schnorrer' doesn’t know it was inspired by Christians.
I'll bring you more on Martin Gilbert later, but first this (see below)
Blood libel & host desecration myths
Christian myths against Jews 1144 CE to now
http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_blib2.htm
1840: An elderly Italian monk-priest, Padre Tommaso, and his servant disappeared in Damascus, Syria, after having visited the Jewish quarter in the city. A French consol to the Ottoman Empire, Ratti-Menton, promoted a groundless theory of ritual murder that the local Muslim government largely accepted. 3 Yhe consul then requested permission from the Syrian government to murder the rest of his suspects.
This event introduced the blood libel myth to the Arab world, where it is still circulating.
------------------------------
Examples of anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/html/final/eng/sib/4_04/as_syria.htm
In Syria, anti-Semitic books , newspaper articles, cartoons and television shows appear regularly. In general they are inspired by classic Christian-European anti-Semitism . The anti-Semitic “products” are exported to the entire Arab and Muslim world; the two closest target audiences are in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority-administered territories.
------------------------
What are the origins of Muslim anti-Semitism?
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/what-are-the-origins-of-muslim-anti-semitism-1.274106
The blood libel against the Jews was an anomaly in the lands of Islam until the 19th century.
By Yaron Harel
The phenomenon of a blood libel against the Jews was until then an anomaly in the lands of Islam. The Muslim majority lived under the Ottoman rule in Syria alongside two minorities, the Christians and the Jews.
Another libel almost every Pesach
During the years 1841-1860 there were at least 13 blood libels in Syria that became known to the general public, 10 of them in Damascus and three in Aleppo. Sometimes the Christians would use the threat of a blood libel as a means to blackmail the Jews, so that the accusations of ritual murder could be heard almost every year before Passover. The Christian incitement inspired Muslims to invent their own blood libels. They, too, began attributing to the Jews responsibility for the disappearance of a boy or girl from their home, whether out of a desire to take revenge or to squeeze money out of them.
Following the events in Damascus in July 1860, when the Muslims massacred thousands of Christians, the Christian community there was greatly weakened and consequently the phenomenon of blood libels began subsiding. As the final decade of the 19th century began, however, the bleak days of 1840 returned.
-------------
Toward the end of the 19th century, two anti-Semitic pamphlets were distributed in the region. One, published in Arabic in Cairo, was written by a Lebanese Christian journalist who had settled there; the other, by a French priest, was printed in Paris under the title "Murdered by Jews: A History of Ritual Murder."
The incitement from French Catholic quarters increased the ferment among the Christian population and led to attacks on Jews, who found themselves beaten in the streets of Damascus. A few days after Passover, two Capuchin priests in Damascus incited the Christian masses to riot against the Jews.
Some of the frequent blood libels of the period were short-lived and drew minimal attention, but others led to outbursts of violence. In the end, blood libels spread to many other cities in the Middle East.
Daniel the 'schnorrer'
Your so called allies the Maronites are sucking up to Hezbollah now. See the date chronology below. Notice the similarity to the Evangelics in the USA?
The opportunistic Brigette Gabriel married some sucker for a passport, but the Maronite 'schnorrer's' below (like you) below are now sucking up to Hezbollah.
--------------
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Right Wing Christian Phalange Party To Support Hezbollah Against Israeli Aggression
http://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com
Let me give you an example of how the barbaric Maronite peasants that make up the bulk of the Phalange Party lost the war. The premise of these idiots was, and is still today, is the belief that the West will come to their rescue. They thought that because the West was "Christian", it will come to the assistance of their fellow Christian Lebanese. Little did they realize that the West - especially France - is largely secular and hates everything religious. Therefore, the image the Phalange presented of the Lebanese Christian Resistance was one that repulsed the West, leading ultimately to the West siding with the Syrians and the Palestinians against the Lebanese.
--------------------
And here they are today one more time displaying their lack of principle. After years of pretending to be anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah, today the Phalangists have decided to support Syria and Hezbollah. Like Walid Jumblatt's chameleonic reversal last year, the Phalangists of Amine Gemayel have turned their coat. No principles, just primitive opportunism. Because Obama wants to "engage" with Syria's dictatorship, it is giving it a free hand in Lebanon, and Syria is back in control in Lebanon, again. Saudi Arabia, the United States prime ally, has heard Obama's directive and has made up with Syria, and the Lebanese dummy politicians have followed suit. After the so-called Cedars Revolution in 2005 - after the killing of the fat bastard Saudi Rafik Hariri by Syria and Hezbollah - these traditionalists followed the Americans and their Saudi poodles into an anti-Syrian, anti-Hezbollah stance. Now that the Americans have changed and want to be nice with the Syrian tyrant, all the dummies line up behind the Saudis and the Americans and suddenly become friends with Syria and Hezbollah again. The last coffin in the nail of the Cedars Revolution was driven yesterday, with the Phalangists declaring that "they will support Hezbollah against an Israeli aggression." I never thought I'd live to see this turnabout again... but there it is. (See below). And the worst part of all of this is that like the Druze herds follow Jumblatt, the Maronite herds will follow Gemayel.
------------------------
2006 July 28 Friday
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/003604.html
Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.
------------------
Poll Finds Overwhelming Majorities in Lebanon Support Hezbollah, Distrust U.S.
August 2, 2006
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/236.php
Eighty-seven percent of the Lebanese back Hezbollah’s response to “Israeli aggression,” the Beirut Center for Research and Information found in survey taken July 24-26. That included strong majorities in Lebanon’s four major religious groups: 96 percent of Shiites, 87 percent of Sunnis, 80 percent of Christians; and 80 percent of Druze.
Daniel
You're quite the hypocrite,
Chayma doesn't know that the only middle eastern nation with a grown christian population is Israel.
I do know that. I also know that is because Israel is secular, not Torah abiding.
I don't get your point.
Are you a not a 'schnorrer' then living off xtian handouts in the settlements?
Are you a secular Israeli? in that case tell me if it became a theocracy, or even had basic Torah law as the law of the land, do you think Christians would emigrate or not?
By the way, you're quite the hypocrite, in one line above you said the Muslims are interlopers in Israel, and Jews are natives, in that case, what are Jews doing in the diaspora, but more importantly, if Jews are native, they were so conditionally, upon the laws of the land, not secular law. After all you only got the land by genocide of the natives Canaanites.
You have it conditionally not unconditionally. There is no reason, another conqueror, China or Russia, or the USA cannot invade and occupy, that is aside from the Muslims.
300 nuclear warheads won't stop another conquest.
Again, you are ignorant. In a year or two the demographs of the Middle East will change when Iran and Saudi ARabia go nuclear.
Daniel,
Ainit it ironic you Islamophobes deny Palestinians, yet it's the secularists who support nationalism. That is why Christian Arabs support nationalism. One of which is Palestinian. By the way, your Israeli Christians like Azmi Bishara are at the forefront, ahem, are you cutting your nose to spite your face? Doesn't make sense to me.
As for me, and my ilk we want the Caliphate. Inshallah, all these tin pot dictators are falling in front of our eyes :)
So it was foretold, so it shall be.
Christians in Israel: A minority within a minority
By Dina Kraft • May 4, 2009
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/05/04/1004898/christians-in-israel-a-minority-within-a-minority
Christians here have taken on prominent leadership roles in the Arab sector disproportionate to their numbers. For example, Christians can be found in the leadership of Arab political parties and prominent civil rights groups.
Like their co-religionists in neighboring Lebanon and the West Bank, many Christians are outspoken voices for Arab nationalism. That has been an avenue for social acceptance by their fellow Muslims. It’s a way, some observers say, to stress their national ties over religious ones.
Some Israeli Christians, especially among the younger generation, are among Israel’s most strident voices for forging a Palestinian identity over an Israeli one.
A significant number of the community’s emerging activists are graduates of St. Joseph’s School in Nazareth -- a complex of courtyards, buildings and playgrounds in the hills above the city known for its academic excellence.
---------------
Robert Fisk: Exodus. The changing map of the Middle East
From Israel to Iraq, a Christian flight of Biblical proportions has begun.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-exodus-the-changing-map-of-the-middle-east-2116463.html
Yet nowhere is the Christian fate sadder than in the territories around Jerusalem. As Monsignor Fouad Twal, the ninth Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and the second to be an Arab, put it bleakly, "the Israelis regard us as 100 per cent Palestinian Arabs and we are oppressed in the same way as the Muslims. But Muslim fundamentalists identify us with the Christian West – which is not always true – and want us to pay the price." With Christian Palestinians in Bethlehem cut off from Jerusalem by the same Israeli wall which imprisons their Muslim brothers, there is now, Twal says, "a young generation of Christians who do not know or visit the Holy Sepulchre".
Daniel, said:
Chayma , the only reason that there is no christian state is that in Lebanon (which was one) the invading muzzies had a higher birth rate.And habeeb is a Maronite
I already told you Maronites are supporting Hezbollah. They are NOT pro Israel and certainly not pro Jewish.
You are a liar about the demographics, and a typical low life ignoramus Islamophobic Zionist.
------------------
Demography and Democracy in Lebanon
http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0801/0801_2.htm
Nevertheless, two major demographic trends can be discerned.
Emigration
The first trend is a disproportionately high rate of Christian emigration from the mid-nineteenth through the twentieth century, particularly during and after eruptions of civil strife in 1860, 1914-1918, and 1975-1990.[16]
Over 900,000 Lebanese emigrated between the outbreak of civil war in 1975 and 2001 (about 45% during the last decade of Syrian tutelage).[17] Although it was once assumed that a majority of these recent emigrants are Christian, one study estimates the percentage departure rates within each confession as 22% of Sunnis, 21% of Shiites, 21% of Maronites, 23% of Greek Orthodox Christians and 15% of Druze.[18]
A 2006 study conducted by the Lebanese Emigration Research Center at Notre Dame University (in Lebanon) found that emigration is equally sought by Muslims (59.7%) and Christians (61.3%), and for virtually the same socio-political reasons.[19]
The available data thus raises questions about the longstanding assumption that the large majority of Lebanese citizens living abroad are Christians. This is politically relevant because a number of Christian politicians have called for the inclusion of absentee ballots in elections, believing that this would favorably alter the confessional profile of the electorate. Hoping to expand the prospective pool of expatriate Christian voters, MP Nimtallah Abi Nasr has gone further in campaigning for a (re)naturalization of second and third generation Lebanese abroad. Hezbollah has reportedly encouraged first-generation Shiite emigrants to register their children as citizens for much the same reason.
Fertility Rates
The second major Lebanese demographic trend is higher Muslim fertily rates. In 1971, Shiites showed the highest fertility rate of 3.8, followed by Sunnis (2.8), (Maronite and non-Maronite)
Catholics (2), Druze (1.8) and non-Catholic Christians (1.7).[20] By 1988, according to one projection, the percentage of Shiites in Lebanon had risen to 32%, while the number of Maronites had dwindled to 17% .[21] Until very recently, projected estimates of a Shiite plurality as large as 40% were a staple of Western media.
However, data published by the Lebanese government in 1996 suggests that Sunni and Shiite fertility rates are now roughly equal. While the more cosmopolitan Sunnis of Beirut tend to have small families, the cumulative fertility rate (the average number of children born to married women) in the predominantly Sunni muhafaza of North Lebanon (4.2) is higher than in largely Shiite Nabatiyye (3.6) and the Beqaa (3.9).[22]
In any event, projections based on fertility (and emigration) rates ignore a host of intervening variables. Lower infant and child mortality rates among Christians, for example, have counterbalanced higher Muslim birthrates to some extent.[23] Most significantly perhaps, the highly controversial 1994 naturalization of over 160,000 Syrians and Palestinians tipped the sectarian balance in Lebanon in favor of Sunnis[24] (which was one reason why the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri supported it).[25]
Proxy Measures
Analysts have pursued other methods of estimating the waxing and waning of Lebanon's sectarian communities.
Daniel,
your Suha Arafat, and her fake conversion, as fake as your Maronites ‘support’ for Israel :)
One would think an opportune would recognise another opportune, but alas..
http://www.al-bushra.org/latpatra/christians1.htm
Significantly, Suha Arafat converted to Islam - at least publicly - out of recognition that political necessity dictated that the first lady of Palestine could never be a Christian.
Suha Arafat
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Suha_Arafat.html
Despite her conversion to Islam, her apartment was decorated with images of Jesus Christ, Pope John Paul II and a young Yasser Arafat.
Suha developed a reputation for extravagance after moving to Paris, where she receives a $100,000 monthly allowance from the PA budget. Her dyed-blonde hair, frequent purchases of expensive French designer clothes and high-profile social life provoked critics in the territories to distribute leaflets with reports from the Arab and Western media about her shopping sprees.
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