LTC Joseph C. Myers: Analysis of "The Quranic Concept of War"

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/06winter/win-ess.htm

“The universalism of Islam, in its all-embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political, if not strictly military. . . . The Jihad, accordingly, may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not continuous fighting.”²
                                                           — Majid Khadduri

Political and military leaders are notoriously averse to theory, but if there is a theorist about war who matters, it remains Carl von Clausewitz, whose Vom Kriege (On War) has shaped Western views about war since the middle of the nineteenth century.”³ Both points are likely true and problematic since we find ourselves engaged in war with people not solely imbued with western ideas and values or followers of western military theorists. The Hoover Institution’s Paul Sperry recently stated, “Four years into the war on terror, US intelligence officials tell me there are no baseline studies of the Muslim prophet Muhammad or his ideological or military doctrine found at either the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, or even the war colleges.”⁴

Would this be surprising? When it comes to warfighting military audiences tend to focus on the military and power aspects of warfare; the tangibles of terrain, enemy, weather, leadership, and troops; quantifiables such as the number of tanks and artillery tubes—the correlation of forces. Analysts steer toward the familiar rather than the unfamiliar; people tend to think in their comfort zones. The study of ideology or philosophy is often brushed aside, it’s not the “stuff of muddy boots;” it is more cerebral than physical and not action oriented. Planners do not assess the “correlation of ideas.” The practitioners are too busy.

Dr. Antulio Echevarria recently argued the US military does not have a doctrine for war as much as it has a doctrine for operations and battles.⁵ The military has a deficit of strategic, and, one could add, philosophic thinking. In the war against Islamist terrorism, how many have heard of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Project”?⁶ Is the political philosophy of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in fact well-grounded in western political theory and rigorously rejected it, studied in our military schools? Are there any implications to his statement in 1981 that “Iran . . . is determined to propagate Islam to the whole world”?⁷

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To understand war, one has to study its philosophy; the grammar and logic of your opponent. Only then are you approaching strategic comprehension. To understand the war against Islamist terrorism one must begin to understand the Islamic way of war, its philosophy and doctrine, the meanings of jihad in Islam—and one needs to understand that those meanings are highly varied and utilitarian depending on the source.

With respect to the war against the global jihad and its associated terror groups, individual terrorists, and clandestine adherents, one should ask if there is a unique method or attitude to their approach to war. Is there a philosophy, or treatise such as Clausewitz’s On War that attempts to form their thinking about war? Is there a document that can be reviewed and understood in such a manner that we may begin to think strategically about our opponent. There is one work that stands out from the many.

The Quranic Concept of War

The Quranic Concept of War, by Brigadier General S. K. Malik of the Pakistani Army provides readers with unequalled insight. Originally published in Pakistan in 1979, most available copies are found in India, or in small non-descript Muslim bookstores.⁸ One major point to ponder, when thinking about The Quranic Concept of War, is the title itself. The Quran is presumed to be the revealed word of God as spoken through his chosen prophet, Mohammed. According to Malik, the Quran places warfighting doctrine and its theory in a much different category than western thinkers are accustomed to, because it is not a theory of war derived by man, but of God. This is God’s warfighting principles and commandments revealed. Malik’s attempts to distill God’s doctrine for war through the examples of the Prophet. By contrast, the closest that Clausewitz comes to divine presentation is in his discussion of the trinity: the people, the state, and the military. In the Islamic context, the discussion of war is at the level of revealed truth and example, well above theory—God has no need to theorize. Malik notes, “As a complete Code of Life, the Holy Quran gives us a philosophy of war as well. . . . This divine philosophy is an integral part of the total Quranic ideology.”⁹

Historiography

In The Quranic Concept of War, Malik seeks to instruct readers in the uniquely important doctrinal aspects of Quranic warfare. The Quranic approach to war is “infinitely supreme and effective . . . [and] points towards the realization of universal peace and justice . . . and makes maximum allowance to its adversaries to co-operate [with Islam] in a combined search for a just and peaceful order.”¹⁰ For purposes of this review, the term “doctrine” refers to both religious and broad strategic approaches, not methods and procedures. Malik’s work is a treatise with historical, political, legalistic, and moralistic ramifications on Islamic warfare. It seemingly is without parallel in the western sense of warfare since the “Quran is a source of eternal guidance for mankind.”¹¹

The approach is not new to Islamists and other jihad theorists fighting according to the “Method of Mohammed” or hadith. The lessons learned are recorded

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and form an important part of Quranic surah and jihadist’s scholarship.¹² Islamic scholars both Muslim and non-Muslim will find much to debate in terms of Malik’s view of jihad doctrine and Quranic warfare. Malik’s work is essentially modern scholarship; although he does acknowledge the classical views of jihad in many respects.¹³

Malik’s arguments are clearly parochial, often more editorial than scholarly, and his tone is decidedly confident and occasionally supremacist. The reach and influence of the author’s work is not clear although one might believe that given the idealism of his treatise, his approaches to warfare, and the role and ends of “terror” his text may resonate with extremist and radicals prone to use terroristic violence to accomplish their ends. For that reason alone, the book is worth studying.

Introduction

The preface by Allah Bukhsh K. Brohi, the former Pakistani ambassador to India, offers important insights into Malik’s exposition. In fact, Brohi’s 13-page preface lays the foundation for the books ten chapters. Malik places Quranic warfare in an academic context relative to that used by western theorists. He analyzes the causes and objects of war, as well as war’s nature and dimensions. He then turns attention to the ethics and strategy of warfare. Toward the end of the book he reviews the exercise of Quranic warfare based on the examples of the Prophet Mohammed’s military campaigns and concludes with summary observations. There are important jus en bellum and jus ad bellum implications in the author’s writings, as well as in his controversial ideas related to the means and objectives of war. It is these concepts that warrant the attention of planners and strategist.

Zia-Ul-Haq (1924-88), the former President of Pakistan and Pakistani Army Chief of Staff, opens the book by focusing on the concept of jihad within Islam and explaining it is not simply the domain of the military:

Jehad fi sabilallah is not the exclusive domain of the professional soldier, nor is it restricted to the application of military force alone.

This book brings out with simplicity, clarity and precision the Quranic philosophy on the application of military force within the context of the totality that is JEHAD. The professional soldier in a Muslim army, pursuing the goals of a Muslim state, cannot become ‘professional’ if in all his activities he does not take the ‘colour of Allah,’ The nonmilitary citizen of a Muslin state must, likewise, be aware of the kind of soldier that his country must produce and the only pattern of war that his country’s armed forces may wage.¹⁴

General Zia states that all Muslims play a role in jihad, a mainstream concept of the Quran, that jihad in terms of warfare is a collective responsibility of the Muslim ummah, and is not restricted to soldiers. General Zia emphasizes how the concept of Islamic military professionalism requires “godly character” in order to be fully achieved. Zia then endorses Malik’s thesis as the “only pattern of war,” or approach to war that an Islamic state may wage.

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Battling Counter-initiatory Forces

In the preface Ambassador Brohi details what might be startling to many readers. He states that Malik has made “a valuable contribution to Islamic jurisprudence” or Islamic law, and an “analytic restatement of the Quranic wisdom on the subject of war and peace.” Brohi implies that Malik’s discussion, though a valuable new version, is an approach to a theme already well developed.¹⁵

Brohi then defines jihad, “The most glorious word in the Vocabulary of Islam is Jehad, a word which is untranslatable in English but, broadly speaking, means ‘striving’, ‘struggling’, ‘trying’ to advance the Divine causes or purposes.” He introduces a somewhat cryptic concept when he explains man’s role in a “Quranic setting” as energetically combating forces of evil or what may be called, “counter-initiatory” forces which are at war with the harmony and the purpose of life on earth.¹⁶ For the true Muslin the harmony and purpose in life are only possible through man’s ultimate submission to God’s will, that all will come to know, recognize, and profess Mohammed as the Prophet of God. Man must recognize the last days and acknowledge tawhid, the oneness of God.¹⁷

Brohi recounts the classic dualisms of Islamic theology; that the world is a place of struggle between good and evil, between right and wrong, between Haq and Na-Haq (truth and untruth), and between halaland haram (legitimate and forbidden). According to Brohi, it is the duty of man to opt for goodness and reject evil. Brohi appeals to the “greater jihad,” a post-classical jihad doctrine developed by the mystical Sufi order and other Shia scholars.¹⁸

Brohi places jihad in the context of communal if not imperial obligation; both controversial formulations:

When a believer sees that someone is trying to obstruct another believer from traveling the road that leads to God, spirit of Jehad requires that such a man who is imposing obstacles should be prevented from doing so and the obstacles placed by him should also be removed, so that mankind may be freely able to negotiate its own path that leads to Heaven.” To do otherwise, “by not striving to clear or straighten the path we [Muslims] become passive spectators of the counter-initiatory forces imposing a blockade in the way of those who mean to keep their faith with God.¹⁹

This viewpoint appears to reflect the classic, collective duty within jihad doctrine, to defend the Islamic community from threats—the concept of defensive jihad. Brohi is saying much more than that; however, he is attempting to delineate the duty—the proactive duty—to clear the path for Islam. It is necessary not only to defend the individual believer if he is being hindered in his faith, but also to remove the obstacles of those counter-initiatory forces hindering his Islamic development. This begs the question of what is actually meant by the initiatory forces. The answer is clear to Brohi; the force of initiative is Islam and its Muslim members. “It is the duty of a believer to carry forward the Message of God and to bring it to notice of his fellow-men in handsome ways. But if someone attempts to obstruct him from doing so he is entitled as a matter of defense, to retaliate.”²⁰

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This formulation would appear to turn the concept of defense on its head. To the extent that a Muslim may proclaim Islam and proselytize, or Islam, as a faith, seeks to extend its invitation and reach—initiate its advance—but is unable to do so, then that represents an overt threat justifying—a defensive jihad. According to Brohi, this does not result in the “ordinary wars which mankind has been fighting for the sake of either revenge or for securing . . . more land or more booty . . . [this] striving must be [is] for the sake of God. Wars in the theory of Islam are . . . to advance God’s purposes on earth, and invariably they are defensive in character.” In other words, everywhere the message of God and Islam is or can be hindered from expansion, resisted or opposed by some “obstruction” (a term not clearly defined) Islam is intrinsically entitled to defend its manifest destiny.²¹

While his logic is controversial, Brohi is not unique in his extrapolation. His theory in fact reflects the argument of Rashid Rida, a conservative disciple of the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh. In 1913 Abduh published an article evaluating Islam’s early military campaigns and determined that Islam’s early neighbors “prevented the proclamation of truth” engendering the defense of Islam. “Our religion is not like others that defend themselves . . . but our defense of our religion is the proclamation of truth and the removal of distortion and misrepresentation of it.”²²

No Nation is Sovereign

The exegesis of the term jihad is often debated. Some apologists make clear that nowhere in the Quran does the term “Holy War” exist; that is true, but it is also irrelevant. War in Islam is either just or unjust and that justness depends on the ends of war. Brohi, and later Malik, make clear that the ends of war in Islam or jihad are to fulfill God’s divine purpose. Not only should that be a holy purpose, it must be a just war in order to be “Holy War.”²³

The next dualism Brohi presents is that of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the house of submission and the house of war. He describes the latter, as “perpetuating defiance of the Lord.” While explaining that conditions for war in Islam are limited (a constrained set of circumstances) he notes that “in Islam war is waged to establish supremacy of the Lord only when every other argument has failed to convince those who reject His will and work against the very purpose of the creation of mankind.”²⁴ Brohi quotes the Quranic manuscript Surah, al-Tawba:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.²⁵

Acknowledging western critics who believe that Islam is in a state of perpetual struggle with the non-Islamic world, Brohi counters in a clearly dismissive tone by explaining that man is the slave to God, and defying God is treason under Islamic law. Those who defy God should be removed from humanity like a cancerous growth. Islam requires believers “to invite non-believers to the fold of Islam” by using “persuasion” and “beautiful methods.” He continues, “the first duty” of a Muslim

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is dawa, a proclamation to conversion by “handsome ways.” It is only after refusing dawa and the invitation to Islam that “believers have no option but in self-defense to wage a war against those threatening aggression.”

Obviously, much turns on how threats and aggression are characterized. It is difficult to understand, however, based on the structure of his argument, that Brohi views non-believers and their states as requiring conversion over time by peaceful means; and when that fails, by force. He is echoing the doctrine of Abd al-Salam Faraj, author of Al-Farida al-Ghaibah, better known as The Neglected Duty, a work that is widely read throughout the Muslim world.²⁶

Finally, Brohi examines the concept of the ummah and the international system. “The idea of Ummah of Mohammad, the Prophet of Islam, is incapable of being realized within the framework of territorial states.” This is a consistent view that underpins many works on the concept of the Islamic state.²⁷ For Muslims, the ummah is a transcendent religious and cultural society united and reflecting the unity (tawhid) of Islam; the idea of one God, indivisible, one community, one belief, and one duty to live and become godly. According to the Prophet, “Ummah participates in this heritage by a set pattern of thought, belief and practice . . . and supplies the spiritual principle of integration of mankind—a principle which is supra-national, supra-racial, supra-linguistic and supra-territorial.”²⁸

With respect to the “law of war and peace in Islam” Brohi writes it “is as old as the Quran itself. . . . ” In his analysis of the law of nations and their international dealings, he emphasizes that in “Islamic international law this conduct [war and peace] is, strictly speaking, regulated between Muslims and non-Muslims, there being, from Islamic perspective, no other nation. . . . ” In other words, war is between Muslims and non-Muslims and not in actuality between states. It is transnational. He adds, “In Islam, of course, no nation is sovereign since Allah alone is the only sovereign in Whom all authority vests.”²⁹Here Brohi is echoing what Islamic scholars such as Majid Khadduri have described as the “dualism of the universal religion and universal state that is Islam.”³⁰

The Divine Philosophy on War

General Malik begins by categorizing human beings into three archetypes: those who fear Allah and profess the Faith; those who reject the Faith; and those who profess, but are treacherous in their hearts. Examples of the Prophet and the instructions to him by God in his early campaigns should be studied to fully understand these three examples in practice. The author highlights the fact that the “divine philosophy on war” was revealed gradually over a 12 year period, its earliest guidance dealing with the causes and objects of war, while later guidance focused on Quranic strategy, the conduct of war, and the ethical dimensions of warfare.³¹

In Chapter Three, Malik reviews several key thoughts espoused by western scholars related to the causes of war. He examines the ideologies of Lenin, Geoffery Blainey, Quincy Wright, and Frederick H. Hartman each of whom spoke about war in a historical or material context with respect to the nature of the state system. Malik finds these explanations wanting and turns to the Quran for explanation, “war could only be

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waged for the sake of justice, truth, law, and preservation of human society. . . . The central theme behind the causes of war . . . [in] the Holy Quran, was the cause of Allah.”³²

The author recounts the progression of revelations by God to the Prophet that “granted the Muslims the permission to fight . . . .” Ultimately, God would compel and command Muslims to fight: “Fight in the cause of Allah.” In his analysis of this surah Malik highlights the fact that “new elements” were added to the causes of war: that in order to fight, Muslims must be “fought first;” Muslims are not to “transgress God’s limits” in the conduct of war; and everyone should understand that God views “tumult and oppression” of Muslims as “worse than slaughter.”³³ This oppression was exemplified by the denial of Muslim’s right to worship at the Sacred Mosque by the early Arab Koraish, people of Mecca. Malik describes the situation in detail, “. . . the tiny Muslim community in Mecca was the object of the Koraish tyranny and oppression since the proclamation of Islam. . . . The enemy repression reached its zenith when the Koraish denied the Muslims access to the Sacred Mosque (the Ka’aba) to fulfill their religious obligations. This sacrilegious act amounted to an open declaration of war upon Islam. These actions eventually compelling the Muslims to migrate to Medina twelve years later, in 622 AD. . . .”³⁴

Malik argues that the pagan Koraish tribe had no reason to prohibit Muslim worship, since the Muslims did not impede their form of worship. This historical example helps to further define the concept that “tumult and oppression is worse than slaughter” and as the Quran repeats, “graver is it in the sight of Allah to prevent access to the path of Allah, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members.” Malik also notes the Quran distinguishes those who fight “in the cause of Allah and those who reject Faith and fight in the cause of evil.”³⁵ In terms of Quranic just war theory, war must be waged “only to fight the forces of tyranny and oppression.”³⁶

Challenging Clausewitz’s notion that “policy” provides the context and boundary of war; Malik says it is the reverse, “‘war’ forced policy to define and determine its own parameters” and since that discussion focuses on parochial issues such as national interests, and the vagaries of state to state relations it is a lesser perspective. In the divine context of the Quran war orients on the spread of “justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere.” According to the author war is to be fought aggressively, slaughter is not the worst evil. In the course of war every opportunity for peace should be pursued and reciprocated. That is every remonstrance of peace by the enemies of Islam, but only as prescribed by the Quran’s “clear-cut philosophy and methodology” for preserving peace.³⁷

Understanding the context in which the Quran describes and defines “justice and peace” is important. Malik refers the reader to the battle of Badr to elucidate these principles. There is peace with those pagans who cease hostilities, and war continues with those who refuse. He cites the following surah, “as long as these stand true to you, stand ye true to them, for Allah doth love the righteous.”³⁸ Referring to the precedent setting Hodaibayya treaty in the ninth year of the hijra, or pilgrimages to Mecca, Malik outlines how Allah and the Prophet abrogated those treaties with the pagan Meccans.

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Pagans who accepted terms voluntarily without a treaty were respected. Those who refused, the Quran directed, were to be slain wherever found. This precedent and “revelations commanded the Muslims to fulfill their treaty commitments for the contracted period but put them under no obligations to renew them.”³⁹ It also established the precedent that Muslims may conclude treaties with non-believers, but only for a temporary period.⁴⁰ Commenting on western approaches to peace, Malik views such approaches as not standing the “test of time” with no worthwhile role to play even in the future.⁴¹ The author’s point is that peace between states has only secular, not divine ends; and peace in an Islamic context is achieved only for the promotion of Islam.

As the Prophet gained control of Mecca he decreed that non-believers could assemble or watch over the Sacred Mosque. He later consolidated power over Arabia and many who had not yet accepted Islam, “including Christians and Jew, [they] were given the option to choose between war and submission.” These non-believers were required to pay a poll-tax or jizya and accept the status of dhimmitude[servitude to Islam] in order to continue practicing their faith. According to Malik the taxes were merely symbolic and insignificant. In summarizing this relationship the author states, “the object of war is to obtain conditions of peace, justice, and faith. To do so it is essential to destroy the forces of oppression and persecution.”⁴² This view is in keeping with that outlined by Khadduri, “The jihad, it will be recalled, regarded war as Islam’s instrument to transform the dar al-harb into dar al-Islam . . . in Islamic legal theory, the ultimate objective of Islam is not war per se, but the ultimate establishment of peace.”⁴³

The Nature of War

Malik argues that the “nature and dimension of war” is the greatest single characteristic of Quranic warfare and distinguishes it from all other doctrines. He acknowledges Clausewitz’s contribution to the understanding of warfare in its moral and spiritual context. The moral forces of war, as Clausewitz declared, are perhaps the most important aspects in war. Reiterating that Muslims are required to wage war “with the spirit of religious duty and obligation,” the author makes it clear that in return for fighting in the way of Allah, divine, angelic assistance will be rendered to jihad warriors and armies. At this point The Quranic Concept of War moves beyond the metaphysical to the supernatural element, unlike anything found in western doctrine. Malik highlights the fact that divine assistance requires “divine standards” on the part of the warrior mujahideen for the promise of Allah’s aid to be met.⁴⁴

The author then builds upon the jihad warrior’s role in the realms of divine cause, purpose, and support, to argue that in order for the Muslim warrior to be unmatched, to be the bravest and the most fearless; he can only do so through the correct spiritual preparation, beginning with total submission to God’s will. The Quran reveals that the moral forces are the “real issues involved in the planning and conduct of war.”⁴⁵ Malik quotes the Quran: “Fighting is prescribed for you . . . and ye dislike a thing which is good for you and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”

The Quran instructs the jihad warrior “to fight . . . with total devotion and never contemplate a flight from the battlefield for fear of death.” The jihad warrior,

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who dies in the way of Allah, does not really die but lives on in heaven. Malik emphasizes this in several Quranic verses. “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. . . . Nay, they live finding their sustenance in the Presence of the Lord.” Malik also notes that “Not equal are those Believers . . . Allah has granted a higher grade to those who strive and fight . . . .”⁴⁶

The Quranic dimensions of war are “revolutionary,” conferring on the jihad warrior a “personality so strong and overbearing as to prove themselves equal to, indeed dominate, every contingency in war.”⁴⁷This theme of spiritual preparation and pure belief has appeared in the prolific jihad writings of Usaman Dan Fodio in the early 1800s and repeated by the Saudi writer Abdallah al-Qadiri in 1992, both emphasizing the role of the “greater jihad.” Becoming a purer and more disciplined Muslim serves the cause of Islam better in peace and war.⁴⁸

Malik, like Brohi, acknowledges critics who say that Islam has been “spread by the sword,” but he responds that Islam is spread through restraint in war and in “the use of force [that] have no parallel.” He then argues that restraint in warfare is a “two-sided affair.” Where the enemy (not defined) fails to exercise restraints and commits “excesses” (not defined) then “the very injunction of preserving and promoting peace and justice demands the use of limited force . . . . Islam permits the use of the sword for such purpose.”⁴⁹ Since Malik is speaking in the context of active war and response to the “excesses of war” it is unclear what he means by “limited force” or response.

The author expands on the earlier ideas that moral and spiritual forces are predominate in war. He contrasts Islamic strategic approaches with western theories of warfare oriented toward the application of force, primarily in the military domain, as opposed to Islam where the focus is on a broader application of power. Power in Malik’s context is the power of jihad, which is total, both in the conduct of total war and in its supporting strategy; referred to as “total or grand strategy.” Malik provides the following definition, “Jehad is a continuous and never-ending struggle waged on all fronts including political, economic, social, psychological, domestic, moral and spiritual to attain the objectives of policy.”⁵⁰ The power of jihad brings with it the power of God.

The Quranic concept of strategy is therefore divine theory. The examples and lessons to be derived from it may be found in the study of the classics, inspired by such events as the battles of the Prophet, e.g., Badr, Khandaq, Tabuk, and Hudaibiyya. Malik again references the divine assistance of Allah and the aid of angelic hosts. He refers to the battles of Hunain and Ohad as instances where seeming defeat was reversed and Allah “sent down Tranquility into the hearts of believers, that they may add Faith to their Faith.” Malik argues that divine providence steels the jihadi in war, “strengthens the hearts of Believers.” Calmness of faith, “assurance, hope, and tranquility” in the face of danger is the divine standard.⁵¹

Strike Terror into their Hearts

Malik uses examples to demonstrate that Allah will strike “terror into the hearts of Unbelievers.”⁵² At this point he begins to develop his most controversial and conjectural Quranic theory related to warfare—the role of terror. Readers need to understand that the author is thinking and writing in strategic terms, not in the vernacular

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of battles or engagements. Malik continues, “when God wishes to impose His will on his enemies, He chooses to do so by casting terror into their hearts.”⁵³ He cites another verse, “against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts) of the enemies of Allah . . . .” Malik’s strategic synthesis is specific: “the Quranic military strategy thus enjoins us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost in order to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, known or hidden, while guarding ourselves from being terror-stricken by the enemy.”⁵⁴ Terror is an effect; the end-state.

Malik identifies the center of gravity in war as the “human heart, [man’s] soul, spirit, and Faith.” Note that Faith is capitalized, meaning more than simple moral courage or fortitude. Faith in this sense is in the domain of religious and spiritual faith; this is the center of gravity in war. The main weapon against this Islamic concept of center of gravity is “the strength of our own souls . . . [keeping] terror away from our own hearts.” In terms of achieving decisive and direct decisions preparing for this type of battlefield first requires “creating a wholesome respect for our Cause”—the cause of Islam. This “respect” must be seeded in advance of war and conflict in the minds of the enemies. Malik then introduces the informational, psychological, or perception management concepts of warfare. Echoing Sun Tzu, he states, that if properly prepared, the “war of muscle,” the physical war, will already be won by “the war of will.”⁵⁵ “Respect” therefore is achieved psychologically by, as Brohi suggested earlier, “beautiful” and “handsome ways” or by the strategic application of terror.

When examining the theme of the preparatory stage of war, Malik talks of the “war of preparation being waged . . . in peace,” meaning that peacetime preparatory activities are in fact part of any war and “vastly more important than the active war.” This statement should not be taken lightly, it essentially means that Islam is in a perpetual state of war while peace can only be defined as the absence of active war. Malik argues that peace-time training efforts should be oriented on the active war(s) to come, in order to develop the Quranic and divine “Will” in the mujahid. When armies and soldiers find limited physical resources they should continue and emphasize the development of the “spiritual resources” as these are complimentary factors and create synergy for future military action.

Malik’s most controversial dictum is summarized in the following manner: in war, “the point where the means and the end meet” is in terror. He formulates terror as an objective principal of war; once terror is achieved the enemy reaches his culminating point. “Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose . . . .” Malik’s divine principal of Islamic warfare may be restated as “strike terror; never feel terror.” The ultimate objective of this form of warfare “revolves around the human heart, [the enemies] soul, spirit, and Faith.”⁵⁶ Terror “can be instilled only if the opponent’s Faith is destroyed . . . . It is essential in the ultimate analysis, to dislocate [the enemies] Faith.” Those who are firm in their religious conviction are immune to terror, “a weak Faith offers inroads to terror.” Therefore, as part of preparations for jihad, actions will be oriented on weakening the non-Islamic’s “Faith,” while strengthening the Islamic’s. What that weakening or “dislocation” entails in practice remains ambiguous. Malik concludes, “Psychological dislocation is temporary; spiritual dislocation is permanent.” The soul of man can only be touched by terror.⁵⁷

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Malik then moves to a more academic discussion of ten general categories inherent in the conduct of Islamic warfare. These categories are easily translatable and recognizable to most western theorists; planning, organization, and conduct of military operations. In this regard, the author offers no unique insight. His last chapter is used to restate his major conclusions, stressing that “The Holy Quran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test . . . lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of our enemies.”⁵⁸

Evaluation of The Quranic Concept of War

While the extent and reach of Malik’s thesis cannot be confirmed in the Islamic world neither can it be discounted. Though controversial, his citations are accurately drawn from Islamic sources and consistent with classical Islamic jurisprudence.⁵⁹ As Malik notes, “Quranic military thought is an integral and inseparable part of the total Quranic message.”⁶⁰ Policy planners and strategists striving to understand the nature of the “Long War” should consider Malik’s writings in that light.

Malik makes clear that the Quran provides the doctrine, guidance, and examples for the conduct of Quranic or Islamic warfare. “

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MG J.F.C. Fuller: Soviet Revolutionary Warfare (1968)

Download now or preview on posterous

20459461-Fuller-MG-J-F-C-Soviet-Revolutionary-Warfare.pdf (168 KB)

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Imperial History of the Middle East

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Europeans...the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question. 

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Why no one robs a 7-11 in Israel

 

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The Pathology of Jewish Anti-Semitism

1.  The Pathology of Jewish Anti-Semitism:

 

The Plague of Jewish Anti-Semitism

By Steven Plaut

(a slightly shortened version of this article appears at http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/42500 )

 

   It sounds like a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron.  And if only it were.

 

    Jewish-anti-Semitism is a modern disease.  In the twenty-first century the world is experiencing an explosion of it, a virtual plague.  Among the most malicious and venomous of all bigots, the Jewish anti-Semites are at the forefront of each and every smear campaign against Israel and other Jews.  Jews today are leaders in the campaigns to boycott and “divest from” Israel, including the “Solidarity with Terrorists” groups.  They make pilgrimage to the terrorist camps of the Hamas and the Hezb’Allah, cheering on terrorist atrocities against Jews.  They pioneered the smear campaign to paint Israel as an apartheid regime and denouncing Israel as equivalent to Nazi Germany is their favorite pastime.

      Western campuses are crawling with them.  Some of the Jewish anti-Semites even hold leadership positions in Hillel houses.  Many others are tenured professors.  An anti-Semitic Jewish judge chaired a UN commission demonizing Israel.  A Jewish member of Britain’s Parliament (Gerald Kaufman) compared Hamas terrorists to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto and denounced Israel as a Nazi entity.  And a shockingly large number of Jewish anti-Semites are Israelis or ex-Israelis.

     Most Jews dismiss such people as “self-hating,” but that term is misleading.  These rogues do not hate themselves.  Indeed they are masters of narcissism.  They hate other Jews and wish them harm.  These are not the assimilationists of Jewish descent who have simply lost interest in Jewish heritage, or those indifferent towards Jewish history and Israel.  Anti-Semitic Jews often make a point out of waving their own Jewish “roots” as artillery support for their anti-Semitism.  In some extreme cases they collaborate with Neo-Nazis, Islamist terrorists, and even Holocaust Deniers.  No, that is not a misprint; there are today in the world Jewish Holocaust Deniers!

 

   Jewish anti-Semitism was once considered a bizarre irrelevance.  It was touched upon gingerly in the 1947 Gregory Peck film, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” but long ignored by the organized Jewish community.  Modern Zionists expected that the very creation of Israel would put an end to any neurotic self-hatred that afflicted Diaspora communities.  It was expected to end not only Jewish physical insecurity but also spiritual pathology.  Alas, psycho-history had a surprise up its sleeves: many of the very worst Jewish anti-Semites on the planet have emerged from the more radical fringes of the Israeli Left, its academic institutions, and its “intelligentsia”! 

 

    Among the most open Israeli promoters of anti-Semitic mythology today is Professor Shlomo Sand, a hardcore communist on the history faculty of Tel Aviv University.  Sand last year published a “book” with a far-leftist anti-Israel publisher claiming to prove that Jews are not and never have been a “people.”  Recycling myths popularized by Neo-Nazi web sites, Sand’s entire book is a sort of Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion, a pseudo-analysis that claims that most Jews today are frauds, converts from the Khazar Turkic tribe, impersonators of Jews.  All real Jews, according to the learned professor, became Palestinian Arabs centuries ago.  Hence Israeli “Jews” are not Jews at all, certainly having no right to their own state. 

  

     Sand travels the globe with Tel Aviv University funding to tout his book and advocate the extermination of Israel.  He is surpassed in his anti-Semitism only by one other Israeli professor, now retired, Ariel Toaff, who claimed to have evidence that Jews use gentile blood in religious ritual.  Other anti-Semitic Israeli academics are cataloged on the web site Isracampus.org.il.

 

    Just what makes Jewish anti-Semites tick is harder to explain.  One of the few people to take a serious stab at doing so is Kenneth Levin, a psychiatrist at Harvard and an occasional contributor to these pages.   He attributes Jewish anti-Semitism In part to attempts by some Jews to gain social acceptance in an environment that is hostile towards Jews.  He attributes some of it to infantile attempts at self-blame resembling those in abused small children.  And in part he considers it a cousin to the notorious "Stockholm Syndrome," whereby victims adopt the outlook and agenda of their victimizers.  I personally believe it is a sort of infantile rage by disturbed people, resentful towards their parents for forcing them to become toilet trained.  I am serious.     

 

     Anti-Semitism is today the main common denominator that unites the far-Left with the Neo-Nazi ultra-Right in the United States and in Europe.  There are Jewish anti-Semites to be found in the wings of the political spectrum.  In the American ultra-Left many serve as columnists for the extremist “Counterpunch” web magazine, published by the ex-British Stalinist Cockburn brothers.  Counterpunch is so openly anti-Semitic these days that it goes well beyond merely calling for Israel’s extermination.  It endorses anti-Semitic conspiracy “theories” (such as the Jews being behind the 9-11 attacks!) and increasingly publishes Holocaust Denier columnists.  Some of its columnists moonlight as writers for Neo-Nazi web sites and organizations.  Almost every literate Jewish anti-Semite writes for it.

 

     On the cyber-pages of Counterpunch, Jewish anti-Semites cheer on the jihad and endorse anti-Jewish terrorism.  It would be difficult to find Jewish writers in Counterpunch who are NOT making the de rigueur comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.  The University of Wisconsin’s Jennifer Loewenstein published there “Gaza Holocaust,” in which she writes:  “Israel and its US Master have long since resided in the lowest circle of Hell for betraying the name of humanity.”   She adds that Israel treats Palestinians as subhuman “Untermenschen,” reminiscent of German treatment of Jews in the Holocaust.  Then, in a quote that could easily have been printed by the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer in the 1930s, she adds:  "The Neo-Jewish Masters and their allies in the United States... have no intention of making a just peace with the lower forms of life in their midst."   In Loewenstein’s take on reality, Israel engages in state terror while operating a cabal that enslaves the American government and dictates its policies.   Even Yom Kippur for her is nothing more than a day to be exploited to help the terrorists and demonize the Jews. 

   

    Another Counterpunch anti-Semite is Richard Falk, a retired professor from Princeton, best known for serving on the UN commission that condemned Israel for genocidal war crimes even before it began its investigation of Israel’s Gaza operations.   Falk is not only one of the worst collaborators in the academic wars against the Jews, he is also America’s leading practitioner of the Orwellian inversion.  For Falk, Israel is a terrorist aggressor, while the Arab terrorist aggressors are innocent victims and peace-loving progressives.  For him, Israel is a Nazi-like country seeking genocide, while the Islamofascists of the Hamas and their backers are merely protesters against social inequality inside Israel.  For him, terrorist aggression against Jews is really the pursuit of peace, while self-defense by Israel is criminal, terrorist aggression and genocide.

    Falk has been trying for decades to get Israel obliterated.  In 2007 Falk published, “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” in which he wrote that it was not an “irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians (by Israel)” with the “criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity.”  In it, he accuses Israel of mistreating Palestinians on a scale comparable to the Nazi extermination of Jews.  He writes:

“Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy.”

     One of the regular contributors to Counterpunch is an ex-Israeli anti-Semite named Gilad Atzmon.  He is a saxophone player living in the UK and closely associated with Neo-Nazi and Holocaust Denier groups in Europe.  While active in pro-terror organizations, Atzmon is so openly anti-Semitic that some of these anti-Israel groups shun and refuse to have anything to do with him.  The well-known British writer Oliver Kamm has denounced Atzmon as an open Holocaust Denier.  Atzmon has called not only for Israel to be annihilated but also for synagogues to be burned down.  He heads a small clique of Neo-Nazi followers, mainly in Italy, for whom he serves as cult leader.  Atzmon has repeatedly asserted that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a historically accurate documentation of the crimes by the Jewish people. 

 

     Paul Eisen, another anti-Israel Jewish extremist in the UK, is also an open Holocaust Denier.  He has distributed an essay endorsing Holocaust Denial entitled "Holocaust Wars," which claims - among other things - that the gas chambers of Auschwitz are fraudulent and could not possibly have worked.  Among its “sources” are David Irving and the Neo-Nazi crank Ernst Zundel, deported by Canada and now in prison in Germany. 

 

     Several Jewish anti-Semites engaged in a bizarre form of Holocaust Denial on the anti-Semitic “ALEF” chat list that operates under the auspices of the University of Haifa in Israel, which is not the only forum for Jewish anti-Semites.  Members of that list debated at length whether Hitler was actually guilty of anything, concluding that he was probably not.   Shraga Elam, a Swiss-based ex-Israeli and a member of the same “ALEF” list, published a sycophantic letter praising Holocaust Denier David Irving as a “brilliant researcher.” 

     The most venomous Jewish-born Holocaust Denier of all is one “Israel Shamir.”  An émigré from the Soviet Union, “Shamir” moved to Israel and later left for Sweden, where he changed his name to Adam Ermash and reportedly converted to Christianity.  A vulgar Jewbaiter, he regularly attends Holocaust Denial conferences.  As just one example of his poison, in an interview with the Islamist Mohamed Omar in August 2009, Shamir said:  “I think it is the duty of every Muslim and Christian to deny the Holocaust, to reject this belief, just like Abraham and Moses rejected idolatry. Every person who profess (sic) their (sic) faith to God should deny the Holocaust. I think it's much more serious that people deny God, isn't it?”

   In other cases prominent Jews endorse Holocaust Deniers while carefully tiptoeing around endorsing Holocaust Denial itself explicitly.  The best known of these is Noam Chomsky, an extremist anti-American and anti-Israel professor of linguistics at MIT.  Chomsky’s father had been a Hebrew teacher at Gratz College in Philadelphia (which I attended in the 1960s). 

     A longterm apologist for the Khmer Rouge, Noam is considered to be an unrepentent Stalinist.  He despises Israel almost as deeply as he hates America.  He considers both countries worse than Nazi Germany.  Chomsky has campaigned on behalf of the French Holocaust Denier Robert Faurisson and other European Neo-Nazis.  He does not only demand that this hate be protected under freedom of speech.  As Professor Werner Cohn has proven, Chomsky also endorses the contents of their speech: “But in fact we saw that Chomsky justified Faurisson's Holocaust-denial, we found Chomsky publishing his own books with neo-Nazi publishers, we saw him writing for a neo-Nazi journal, we saw that the neo-Nazis promote Chomsky's books and tapes together with the works of Joseph Goebbels. It is this complex of anti-Semitic activities and neo-Nazi associations, not his professed ideas alone, that constitutes the Chomsky phenomenon.”  

   Within Israel, one of the most openly anti-Semitic Jews was the late Professor Israel Shahak, who taught chemistry for decades at the Hebrew University.  He specialized in endorsing medieval anti-Jewish blood libels.  He insisted that Judaism teaches Jews to worship Satan, to connive against non-Jews and to murder them.  He stopped just millimeters short of saying that Jews use gentile blood for ritual purposes.  He claimed that the Talmud is filled with calls to murder gentiles, and that Jews regard gentiles as subhuman.  He collaborated with Neo-Nazis all over the planet.  Naturally he wanted Israel to be speedily destroyed, and he was one of the first Israeli open collaborators with Palestinian terrorism, long before the Oslo “process” commenced and produced so many.

     In an analysis of Shahak, the British writer Paul Bogdanor notes: ‘According to Shahak, the Jews think of nothing but making money for the benefit of the Jewish state (“The force of Jewish devotion in assembling money is thought to be infinite”). According to Shahak, the Jews plan to dominate much of the world through an Israeli empire (“extending from ‘Algeria or Morocco’ from the west to China in the east, and from Kenya or even South Africa in the south to the USSR in the north”). According to Shahak, the Jews facilitate the spread of vice in order to enslave the masses (“Part of the motivation” must be “encouraging drug addiction and thus promoting political apathy”)…. Shahak also found excuses for the near-genocidal Chmielnicki pogroms, which he classified as a “revolt of the oppressed.”’

      Only marginally less openly anti-Semitic is Norman Finkelstein, who had been on the faculty of DePaul University until he was fired three years back (and has been unemployed ever since).  Finkelstein has built an entire career out of smearing Holocaust survivors as frauds and liars, and cheering on Islamofascist terrorism against Jews.  His personal web site is a vulgar gutter of juvenile anti-Semitic catcalls.  He claims that Zionists exaggerate the dimensions of the Shoah to steal money and invent Holocaust survivors to exploit Germany.  He has made pilgrimage to the Hezb’Allah terrorists and was denied entry into Israel on grounds that he is a terrorist agent.  Finkelstein wrote a “book” entitled “The Holocaust Industry,” today the basic textbook used by all Neo-Nazis and Holocaust Deniers.  He has praised Holocaust Denier David Irving as a great and reliable historian.  (Irving, in turn, claims the entire Holocaust is a Zionist hoax and that no Jews were murdered in Auschwitz.)

      While Finkelstein is a pseudo-academic and a fraud, dismissed as a crackpot by all serious historians, he is nevertheless celebrated by all other Jewish Anti-Semites.  One Israeli academic in particular, Neve Gordon, an Israel-hating extremist who teaches political science at Ben Gurion University, has devoted much of his career to celebrating Finkelstein and endorsing Finkelstein’s “ideas.”   When he is not denouncing Israel as a fascist apartheid terrorist regime that needs to be eliminated, Gordon has even compared Finkelstein ethically to the Prophets of the Bible. 

     The creation of Israel was supposed to turn Jews into a “normal” people.  But the psychosis of Jewish anti-Semitism has no comparable analogue among the nations, making the Jews a therapist’s sui generis.   The disease of Jewish anti-Semitism not only illustrates the absence of “normality” among 21^st century Jewry, it threatens the very survival of Israel and of Jewish communities around the world.

 

2.   More on Jewish Anti-Semitism

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=168265

 

Candidly Speaking: Confronting Jews who defame Jews

By ISI LEIBLER
09/02/2010 22:46

The time has come to draw red lines between legitimate criticism and initiatives seeking to demonize Israel.

 

 

Richard Goldstone’s infamous role as the token head of the UNHRC report accusing the IDF of war crimes is only one example of prominent Jews who exploit their origins as a way to defame their people. In fact, until recently, Goldstone was considered a respectable Jew, even a Zionist. He was blinded by hubris and ego, and allowed himself to be seduced by the bitterest enemies of his people into providing legitimization for a blood libel against the Jewish state.

Unlike Goldstone, most Jewish renegades were driven by desperation to unburden themselves from what they regarded as their repressive ethnic and cultural roots. Historian Jacob Talmon described such deviant behavior as “a Jewish neurosis” in response to centuries of oppression and pariah status.

The purported commitment of these Jews to universal and humanitarian values was usually belied by extreme attacks on their own people and association with sponsors who were outright anti-Semites.

Streams of such Jews emerged during the 19th century in the wake of emancipation. A classic example was Karl Marx, whose anti-Semitic diatribes were reflected in outbursts like “money is the jealous god of Israel, by the side of which no other god may exist... The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”

In czarist Russia, some Jewish social revolutionaries even endorsed pogroms against their own kinsmen, hoping that by venting their frustrations on Jews, the masses would ultimately turn on the czar.

Their successors, the Yevsektsiya, the notorious Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party, became the most vicious persecutors of their own people, frenziedly suppressing all manifestations of Jewish cultural and religious life. Ultimately they too were liquidated in Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaigns.

Many Jews outside the Soviet Union joined the Communist Party out of a mistaken conviction that it represented the most effective way to combat Nazism. But once in the party, they became brainwashed, and applauded as the evil Soviet regime executed their kinsmen and institutionalized state-sponsored anti-Semitism.

AFTER THE Holocaust and the struggle to create the State of Israel, most Jewish anti-Semites hibernated. As the plight of Soviet Jewry became a rallying call uniting Jews throughout the world, the few remaining Jewish communists were marginalized.

Modern Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, a genuine social democrat, appreciated the dangers posed by left-wing nihilists. He strove strenuously to neutralize the extremists and post-Zionists, who only became influential after his retirement and the end of Mapai-Labor Party hegemony.

Today, despite representing a small fringe, the disproportionate influence of anti-Zionist Jewish extremists in global campaigns demonizing Israel has reached an all-time high.

Ironically, the worst elements emanate from Israel.

There is the frenzied agitation by Israeli academics who abuse academic freedom by utilizing their universities as launching pads to delegitimize their own country. Neve Gordon, a political science lecturer at Ben-Gurion University and a typical Jewish defamer of Zion, published an opinion piece last year in The Los Angeles Times calling on the international community to boycott Israel. He and others like him, funded by the Israeli government and philanthropic Diaspora Zionists, exploit their academic positions to support those seeking to destroy us.

A recent study by Im Tirtzu claims that more than 90% of the allegations of Israeli war crimes originating from non-official Israeli sources cited in the Goldstone Report were provided by 16 NGOs who received close to $8 million from the New Israel Fund between 2006 and 2008 – an organization purporting to promote social integration and welfare headed by former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan. The NIF also supports (but does not fund) Arab-Israeli groups promoting a binational state and US lecture tours by Arab Israelis on Israel Independence Day promoting the Nakba.

Last year Haaretz highlighted reports accusing the IDF of war crimes which were subsequently proven false. These received massive global media exposure and made a major contribution toward creating the hostile anti-Israeli climate preceding the Goldstone report.

THE ROT extends to the Diaspora, where as a matter of course anti-Israeli groups now employ Jewish spokesmen to cover up their bias and double standards. In the US, the demonizers of Zion are exploiting the eroding relationship between the Obama administration and Israel. Former American Jewish Congress director Henry Siegman described Israel as “the only apartheid regime in the Western world.” Jewish students at campuses are increasingly bombarded with anti-Israel diatribes by Jewish academics such as Norman Finkelstein, who supports Iranians and terrorists, even exploiting the Holocaust suffering of his parents to delegitimize Israel.

In the UK, Jewish parliamentarian Gerald Kaufman compares Hamas to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, disregarding the Hamas Charter which declares that the Day of Judgment will not come until all Jews are killed.

In Belgium, a Jewish playwright scripted a play in which the Philistines assume the role of Israelis and Samson emerges as a heroic Palestinian using a dynamite-loaded vest to blow up his oppressors.

Shlomo Sand, a political science lecturer at Tel Aviv University, achieved celebrity status in Europe by publishing a book titled The Invention of the Jewish People, a farrago of utter nonsense promoting the thesis that being the descendents of the Khazars from the Black Sea region who converted to Judaism in the eighth century, Jews have no historical affinity with the Land of Israel.

This was endorsed in a recent UK Financial Times article by Tony Judt, an American historian who regards the creation of Israel as a mistake and favors a binational state. Under the title “Israel must unpick its ethnic mix,” Judt expressed the hope that American Jews would detach themselves from Israel, as Irish-Americans did from Ireland.

The time has come for action – not to suppress freedom of expression, but to draw red lines between legitimate criticism of government policies and initiatives seeking to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. The first step must be to deny tenure in government-sponsored educational institutions to academics who brazenly collaborate with our enemies.

It is gratifying that opposition Kadima MKs are now calling for what will hopefully become a bipartisan investigation into the activities and sources of funding for the NIF and other NGOs.

Whenever criticized, those who call for boycotts of their own country and demonize the IDF as war criminals have the chutzpah to try to defame their critics as McCarthyites and fascists, and threaten libel proceedings. It is their behavior which is morally reprehensible, and we must not be intimidated by such hypocritical tactics.

Israelis and the global Jewish community should be under no illusions. The damage inflicted by Jews collaborating with Israel’s enemies to demonize or delegitimize their country is immense. The only way to neutralize the impact of these renegade groups is to expose and confront them.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

 

 

3.  http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a17867/News/National.html##

 

Studying Hate

Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, who teaches Jewish studies at Indiana University. He recently created an institute on campus to study anti-Semitism, which some critics claim might become too politicized.

by Eric Herschthal
Staff Writer

In recent years, Jewish intellectuals have sometimes bemoaned the anti-Zionist views heard on college campuses, and among liberal intellectuals generally, but have failed to do much about it. But that may be changing.

Last month, the chair of the Jewish studies department at Indiana University in Bloomington, Alvin Rosenfeld, announced the foundation of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism. His goal is to study, in a dispassionate, scholarly way, what he thinks is just a new version of a very old kind of hate: anti-Semitism.

“I don’t see anything political about it,” Rosenfeld said about the institute in a phone interview. “But when I looked at what was going on at academic universities in America, I said, ‘This is

not good,’ and decided it was time to create [an anti-Semitism center] here.”

Not surprisingly, there are critics. Some doubt whether independent centers are necessary given the existence of courses and scholars that already specialize in the topic. Others say that the debate over whether Israel’s harshest critics are actually anti-Semites is hardly settled. And many wonder whether anti-Semitism centers can truly be as independent and objective as they say.

“I think there is a risk of [these centers] becoming places for advocacy,” said David Myers, a professor of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, he said, “My sense is that the motivation for them comes from a misreading of anti-Semitism in America and on the college campus.” He emphasized, however, that anti-Semitism demands serious study, but stopped short of endorsing a need for stand-alone centers.

Rosenfeld, whose center is only the second of its kind in the U.S., after Yale established one five years ago, says that the problem is not that anti-Semitism is not studied. It’s that newer forms have been ignored. And he hopes the creation of more centers that are willing to fund research on contemporary forms of anti-Semitism will attract scholars’ attention. “Over the past 10 years there’s been a re-emergence of anti-Semitism,” he said. “But there are precious few scholars in America” who are actually studying it.

Despite his calls for civility, Rosenfeld is familiar with controversy. In 2007, he was at the center of a public uproar after he published an essay attacking liberal Jewish critics of Israel, including the playwright Tony Kushner and the New York University scholar Tony Judt. In an essay titled “‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” published on the American Jewish Committee’s Web site, Rosenfeld argued that criticizing Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories might be valid, but questioning Israel’s right to exist was not.

But even that view could be more finely tuned. For example, liberals sometimes advocate for a binational state, which means creating one state for both Israelis and Palestinians. But Israel’s more ardent supporters say that such a proposal is tantamount to the dissolution of a Jewish state, and thus may constitute a sort of intellectual cover for anti-Semitic views. On that issue, Rosenfeld allowed some wiggle room. “There’s nothing illegitimate about binationalism,” he said. “It may be a misguided view, it may be an impractical view, but, no, there’s nothing inherently anti-Semitic about it.”  

Rosenfeld’s institute is still in its nascent phase, and is being funded with money from the newly created Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, which Rosenfeld will now occupy. He said he plans to grow the institute considerably in the coming year, soliciting outside donations with the hope of being able to fund research and bring visiting faculty to teach new courses.

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Why Are Fire Engines Painted Red?

Because newspapers are read, too.  Two and two is four.  Four and four is eight.  Eight and four is twelve.  Twelve inches is a ruler.  Queen Mary was a ruler.  Queen Mary was a ship that sailed the seas.  There are fish in the sea.  Fish have fins.  The Russians fought the Finns.  Fire engines are always rushin', and that's why they're painted red.

Ish Kabibble

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PROOF: the origin of human language is Hebrew

David C. Cooper  PROOF: the origin of human language is Hebrew http://cooperdavidc.wordpress.com/2010...

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Has Treason Been Legalized in Israel? A Logico-Political Analysis

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/Player.htm#2#495

During Israel’s February 2009 election campaign, Binyamin Netanyahu was studiously silent about the paramount issue of that election: the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Since Netanyahu had been widely perceived as a “right-winger,” many people were surprised, a few months later on June 14, when the golden orator, speaking at Bar-Ilan University, endorsed a Palestinian—really an Arab-Islamic—state in Judea and Samaria. 

No public outrage followed despite the absence of any debate on this issue in Israel’s parliament.  Thus, even though Netanyahu called for a demilitarized Palestinian state, and now adds that it must have an Israeli presence on its borders, I ask:  “From what source did he derive the authority to give away the heartland of the Jewish people? Is Israel a parliamentary democracy, or is it a prime ministerial dictatorship?  If it is a democracy based on the rule of law, why wasn’t he formally accused of violating the Treason Law concerning the State of Israel?

Perhaps this law was rendered obsolete by the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of 1993?  In other words, perhaps that agreement legalized what hitherto was deemed treason? If so, let’s examine the four categories of acts no longer prohibited by that law:

1.  Acts which "impair the sovereignty" of the State of Israel—section 97(a);

2.  Acts which "impair the integrity" of the State of Israel— section 97(b);

3. Acts under section 99 which give “assistance to an enemy” in war against Israel, which the Law specifically states includes a terrorist organization;

4. Acts in section 100 which evince an intention or resolve to commit one of the acts prohibited by sections 97 and 99.

If we consider the meaning of these acts as layman, not as lawyers, it would be reasonable to conclude that since the 1993 signing of the Oslo Agreement, every government of Israel—its prime ministers, foreign ministers, defense ministers, and other cabinet ministers, as well as every Knesset Member that voted for withdrawal from any part of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza—is prima facie guilty of treason!  Perhaps this is why the Treason Law has not been applied to territorial withdrawal, for that would be tantamount to making treason legal! 

Of course, some lawyers might challenge the basis of this conclusion by saying that Judea, Samaria, and Gaza do not belong to the Jews.  Canadian attorney Howard Grief disagrees.  His monumental work, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law, offers an abundance of legal evidence that this land belongs exclusively to the Jewish People.  Eminent American jurists and professors of international law agree with Grief’s conclusion.

The trouble is that this conclusion has been rejected by Israel’s Supreme Court.  In fact, the Court rejected petitions challenging the legality of the Oslo Agreement—including petitions attorney Grief drafted on behalf of prominent Israeli citizens.  (See, for example, HC3414/96.)

Leaving the Court’s ruling aside, I want to raise an issue that has not been considered by lawyers and laymen:  “Does the Land of Israel belong to the People of Israel or does it belong to the Government of Israel? This is a constitutional issue.  But lo and behold, the People of Israel have been deprived of a Constitution!  The Government failed to draft a Constitution, even though it was obliged to do so by Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence. 

In contrast, the French Constitution stipulates that the territory called France belongs to its People, not to its Government.  This is quite reasonable.  After all, governments are transient, whereas a people constitute an enduring cultural entity.  If the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel, we may infer that only the people can relinquish part of their land. The most fitting way of doing this is by a national referendum. 

Ah, but no national referendum has ever been held in Israel on any issue—not even on Israel’s form of government!  Does this mean the Government of Israel is illegitimate?  Perhaps, but that would make the Treason Law and every law enacted by the Knesset a mere act of arbitrary power.   Allow me to skirt this issue by assuming that tacit public consent to Israel’s form of Government makes it legitimate.

Assuming that the Government is legitimate, it does not follow that it can legitimately enter into agreements with a terrorist organization and give it any part of the Land of Israel.   According to Professor Louis René Beres, agreements with terrorist organization constitute violations of international law. 

Speaking more generally, agreements between Israel’s Government and any foreign entity are usually submitted to the Knesset for approval, although Knesset approval is not legally required. Notice, too, that the Knesset, unlike any legislature except Finland’s, does not require a quorum or minimum number of Knesset members to enact laws binding on the country.  Therefore, the Government, supported by a minute plurality of the Knesset, can give away any Jewish territory Israel recovered in the Six Day War of June 1967.  This also applies to the Jewish territory Israel recovered in the 1948-1949 War of Independence.  Hence the Government can commit national suicide—and not only theoretically! 

This leads to the conclusion that Israel’s Government is not the custodian but the owner of the Land of Israel.  As owner, the Government can discard any part of this land regardless of the wishes of the people.  Furthermore, as the owner, the Government can expel any number of people from this land.

However, the Treason Law implies that the Government does not own the Land of Israel, hence, that it cannot arbitrarily expel anyone from this land.   Since governments come and go, the punishment prescribed by the Treason Law—death or imprisonment for life—indicates that treason involves acts against the People of Israel, affirming that the people own the Land of Israel.

This means that the People own Judea and Samaria.  What about Gaza, or the part which the Government gave to Hamas?   Giving this land to Hamas was an arbitrary act of the Sharon Government. 

In fact, the political parties that opposed withdrawal from Gaza in the 2003 national election won 84 seats or 70 percent of the Knesset’s membership, and the paramount issue of that election was withdrawal from Gaza!  Gaza is relevant to the issue of Judea and Samaria.  It indicates that for reasons of security, cultural continuity, and simple humanity, a larger percentage of the voters would oppose withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, since this would entail the expulsion from their homes of some 300,000 Jewish men, women, and children. If this projected expulsion is not treason as well as a crime against humanity, we have abandoned logic and common sense as well as human decency. 

Surely this is not beyond the comprehension of Prime Minister Netanyahu?  Yet the crime of ethnic cleansing would logically follow the creation of an Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria.  A Government that would commit such a crime can hardly be deemed legitimate.

Logic and common sense tell me the Netanyahu Government has forfeited its legitimacy.  Logic and common sense tell me this Government, like any dictatorship, stands above the law.  Logic and common sense tell me this Government has betrayed its trust: to serve the people of Israel, to protect their lives and property including their homeland.  Admittedly, this Government came to power by a democratic election.   But a democratic election is nothing more than a means of securing the people’s God-given rights—as America’s Founding Fathers put it, their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rights which may not be voted away or taken away by any majority—certainly not by the Government.

Mr. Netanyahu has virtually expressed the intention of nullifying these rights by endorsing an Islamic state in Judea and Samaria in contravention of section 100 of the Treason Law.  True, he has been authorized by a ruling of a politically motivated Supreme Court to violate the plain meaning of that law.  But this only confirms what Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin indicated in an interview published in Ha'aretz on 5 June 2003.  Speaker Rivlin said, “instead of the rule of law, we have in Israel a gang of the rule of law."  In that interview he alluded to Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Supreme Court President Aharon Barak.

It was in 2003 that Sharon became Labor’s surrogate prime minister by adopting Labor’s policy of disengagement from Gaza.  Sharon effectively nullified the 2003 election.  He was given authority to expel the Jews from Gaza by Judge Barak’s disingenuous ruling that Gaza is “belligerent occupied territory.”   If, as Mr. Rivlin said, “instead of the rule of law, we have in Israel a gang of the rule of law,” no wonder treason has been legalized in this country. 

 ___________________________

*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, January 25, 2010.

 

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New Elements for the Periodic Table

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons,
88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. 

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. 

A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. 

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years.   It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons !!!

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Paul Eidelberg: On Nietzche and Nihilism

 http://foundation1.org/

Those who have studied Nietzsche’s works rightly regard him as one of the greatest psychologists of his time, perhaps even greater than Dostoyevsky.  Few understand Nietzsche, largely because of his bombastic style.

 

It so happens, however, that hardly any gentile philosopher understood Judaism as well as Nietzsche.  Unlike his sister, he was not an anti-Semite; indeed, he despised anti-Semites like Wagner.   His contempt for German culture is punctuated by penetrating humor.   Perhaps Nietzsche’s most serious flaw as a philosopher is his unrestrained rhetoric, which armed the wicked, including the Nazis.

 

Nietzsche saw in modernity what he famously called in Zarathustra, the “last man”— man steeped comfort and complacency and devoid of any noble aspiration.  This stands in striking contrast with Nietzsche’s definition of man as “the esteeming animal.”

 

Nietzsche is often referred to as a nihilist or moral relativist.  This is superficial.  For Nietzsche, relativism is true but deadly, and therefore false.  The reason is this: relativism undermines creativity, and no one will be truly creative—will undertake the arduous task of creating new values—unless he believed in their absolute worth and validity.  It is precisely creativity that distinguishes the human from the subhuman, i.e., the “last man.”

 

 Like other serious gentile thinkers, Nietzsche regarded the Jews as the most creative of people.  In his Will to Power, he says the Jews brought reason to mankind.  And in The Gay Science, he expresses the fond hope that the Chosen People will yet save Europe from decadence. 

 

But let me go back to his definition of man as “the esteeming animal.”  In Beyond Good and Evil, he defines man as “the beast with red cheeks”—signifying that man alone has a sense of shame.  These two definitions of man are correlative. 

 

Turn now to the renowned Lebanese-born scholar, Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University.  In The Dream Palace of the Arabs, Ajami portrays the most prominent literati of the Arab-Islamic world as men who sorrowfully behold the “death of Arab civilization.” Ajami himself writes, “Arab society had run through most of its myths, and what remained in the wake of the word, of the many proud statements people had made about themselves and their history, was a new world of cruelty, waste, and confusion.”  In short, Arab culture is decadent, devoid of creativity. 

 

The conscious or subconscious awareness of this decadence has resurrected the cruelty exemplified by the life of Muhammad—for Muslims, the personification of all that is good and noble.  Accompanying this cruelty is the love of death—a nihilism that drives Muslims to suicidal, murderous insanity.

 

There is, of course, a non-violent form of nihilism, the nihilism that permeates the universities of the democratic world.  One sees this nihilism manifested in the Jewish self-effacement of Israel’s government, whose politicians lack the stamina to uphold the cause of Judaism or even of its truncated form, political or territorial Zionism.  These politicians can think of nothing more exalted than peace—which for them means nothing more than comfortable self-preservation.  These are Nietzsche’s “last men”—nihilists anxious to make peace with Islam’s nihilistic culture of death.

       

 

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