The Heart of Darkness

Is this what Palestinians and the Muslims of the world want?

Something interesting happened to me the other day. I was watching a movie, the title is not important, and at the end of it one of the characters - a member of one of those "secret societies" that guard something or other through the ages - says to the main characters upon parting, "May Allah smile upon you." I cringed - not at the cliche ending - but at the apparently innocuous blessing.

I have travelled around the world and the experience of awakening to the morning call to prayer was one that I had always treasured. I have visited mosques and marveled at their design and art. I made friends with Muslims, learned their greetings, customs and enjoying their feasts on their holidays. I have eaten halal meats, worn a Muslim skull-cap, and here I was, cringing at the mention of the word Allah.

Much has been written about "Why they hate us" - but little has been written about our changed attitudes towards "them" - the Muslims that inhabit or societies. It's obvious in retrospect that the assumption that it was possible for Muslim and non-Muslim to coexist and appreciate one another's cultures and societies was an illusion. Now when I see the burqa clad woman at the local grocery I recognize that we have little in common beyond buying groceries at the same place. She cannot respect me as a human for refusing to believe in her religion; I cannot accept a religion that condones slamming airliners into skyscrapers and dresses their women in bags. From her perspective, dhimmi-hood is the best that she can hope for me: living at the wim of the Sharia as my children are treated as second-class citizens. From my perspective, I hope that a group of Republican lesbians kidnap her and take her shopping at Prada.

In the past I once sympathized and supported the "cause" of Palestinians. Then, after seeing them celebrating in the streets hours after the World Trade Center fell, I realized what their cause was: the destruction of Israel and the United States - killing all Jews and Americans wherever they are found as Bin Laden put it.

The shooting to death of a single Palestinian child once brought me to tears - as the death in October 2000 of a son cowering helplessly as his father tried to shield him from bullets. Now I have little respect for people that parade their children in front of Israeli tanks or use them as human shields to kill children of Jews.

Steven Den Beste writes:

"But increasingly I'm finding myself feeling as if the world would be better off if someone went in and shot every damned one of them and piled the lot in an unmarked grave."

It takes a lot to make a rational man say that about the Palestinians, and it takes even more to make another one agree with him. The Jews never waged a genocidal war against the Muslims, but it is clear that the Muslims have been waging one against the Jews. They have shown that have lost all semblance of humanity - the picture below comes to mind: (thanks to this link)

Their rational grievances are now forever buried with the savagery and barbarism that they have shown not only to the Jews, but also to each other. Every time I see an instance of their barbarity, I ask myself: do these people deserve any kind of benefit of civilization such as independence or statehood? Having a nation is not an inalienable human right. Do those who celebrate savagery such as with the photo below, really deserve anything but annihilation or subjugation?

Deep down the Palestinians know they have lost their humanity. For example, the baby homicide bomber photo above was initially called a Mossad fake by Arab apologists - until the child's family came forward and stated that they hoped their child could die such a glorious death. Organizations like CAIR like to trot out photos of supposed Israeli atrocities against civilians - but are blind to the difference between civilians killed as a collateral damage and civilians killed because they are the primary targets. Israeli soldiers do not bomb malls in the Gaza Strip indiscriminately; Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aksa Martyrs do so as a matter of course without feeling any sense of remorse.

As a rational human being sensitive to injustice around me, I am a natural ally for under-dog causes. But the savagery shown by the Muslim community and the Palestinian people in particular leaves me cold and deaf to their concerns, and the Call to Prayer will never sound the same.