83 -Libië vergelijkt situatie Gaza met concentratiekampen

NEW YORK 24/04 (BELGA/AFP) =

Verschillende westerse landen, waaronder Frankrijk, hebben woensdag een zitting van de VN-Veiligheidsraad over het Midden-Oosten verlaten nadat Libië de situatie in de Gazastrook met deze in de nazi-concentratiekampen had vergeleken. Dat vertelden diplomaten. Na de uitlatingen van de ambassadeur van Libië, Giadalla Ettalhi, nam de Franse ambassadeur Jean-Maurice Ripert zijn hoofdtelefoon af, stond op en verliet de zaal, gevolgd door andere westerse ambassadeurs, aldus een diplomaat die anoniem wenste te blijven./. (GEJ)

De Belgische gezant heeft de zaal eveneens verlaten.

Ik vraag mij trouwens af, waarom er nooit dergelijke beschuldigingen aan het adres van Egypte worden geuit. Tenslotte maakte de Gaza voor de oorlog deel uit van Egypte. We hebben gezien wat de Egyptenaren deden met de Palestijnen die de grens overstaken om aan voedsel te geraken vorig jaar. Met man en macht werden ze terug achter de grensposten gesleurd.
Ze zijn hun 'broeders' dus ook liever kwijt dan rijk.

83 - What really happened

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Z4_11wLjw

82 - Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Today I received this email from the United States:

The commentary below is circulating on the internet and provides an excellent historical context for us to view the current rising tide of militant Islam. Let us not forget George Santayana’s remarkable insight: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

A German's point of view on Islam.

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,' but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march.

It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide.

It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.

It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill.

It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.

It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands world wide, read this -think about it - and send it on.

81 - Conversion: A one-way street?

By Cal Thomas

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

Pope Benedict XVI last week baptized a man into the Catholic Church. The man, Magdi Allam, had converted from another faith. There is nothing unusual about that. People convert from non-faith to faith, or from one religion to another, or within faiths to different denominations all the time. However, this conversion was different.


Mr. Allam, who has taken a new name, Magdi Cristiano Allam, was a Muslim, and not just your average, everyday Muslim. Mr. Allam was a prized "moderate" Muslim, upon whom many in Italy and the West have pinned their hopes for a new generation of similarly moderate Muslims who would renounce terrorism and violence and lead Islam into a bright new promised land of tolerance, inclusion and religious pluralism.


From the reaction in the Muslim world to Mr. Allam's conversion, there apparently remains a very long way to go before moderation is achieved. The Children of Israel wandered 40 years in the wilderness before they arrived in the Promised Land. The journey to the promised land of Islamic moderation may take a lot longer — if the wanderers get there at all.


The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Allam's conversion had produced "fury in Muslim lands," which is becoming increasingly easy to do.
The baptismal ceremony was televised, its pictures flashed around the world, prompting some to worry that the Vatican was engaging in a ritual of triumphalism. Mr. Allam is giving his critics plenty of fuel for their fires. He says his conversion has "liberated" him from "darkness" and allowed him to see Islam more clearly. "I realized that Islam is not compatible with core values such as respect for life and freedom of choice," he said in an interview.


As if to underscore his point, three bodyguards provided by the Italian government stood nearby. When someone converts to Islam in the West, there is no need for security.


The Vatican issued a statement that said that Mr. Allam's views "remain his personal opinion without in any way becoming the official expression of the position of the pope or the Holy See."


Maybe not, but they are increasingly the expressions of many other converts from Islam and one wonders why we aren't listening to what these converts have to say about their old faith, instead of to those still in the faith who, it could be fairly concluded, might have an agenda that is not in the best interests of the West.


The director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan, Aref Ali Nayed, denounced Mr. Allam's conversion and the ceremony surrounding it as a "triumphalist tool for scoring points." Most religions celebrate in some way the conversion of people to their faith and Islam is no exception.


The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., but with chapters in many states, recently sent out a press release touting the election of the second Muslim to the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Andre Carson, a Democrat like his Muslim colleague, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, won a special election in Indiana's 7th District. Raised a Baptist and attending inner-city Catholic schools, Mr. Carson converted to Islam after reading, among other things, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." When his grandmother, Rep. Julia Carson, died in December, Nation of Islam firebrand Louis Farrakhan delivered a eulogy at her funeral.


The CAIR press release read like triumphalism to me. And why is CAIR encouraging other Muslims to run for office in state, local and federal races? Does CAIR have an agenda that could lead to triumphs of a different sort?


When someone converts to Islam, the religion the person left behind doesn't issue threats or express fury. Only when someone converts from Islam to something else, or to unbelief, is there rage and proclamations that the convert is deserving of death.


In Christianity and Judaism, among other faiths, people enjoy freedom of conscience. In Islam, they are mostly intimidated to stay in that faith. That's what the converts from Islam tell us in increasing numbers. We should be listening more to what they are saying instead of investing too much faith in "moderate" Islam. Faith in moderate Islam may be the biggest counterfeit faith of all.