1．I wonder what the‘Israel Lobby' means in the first place? Is there no‘Arab Lobby’ which intimidates non-Muslims at all, then?
2．And I totally agree with Mr. Raymond Ibrahim when he says:
‘Consider the issue of “interfaith dialogue.” In principle, it is a decent thing: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others trying to reach a common ground and professing mutual respect. But what does one make of the gross contradictions that emerge when a human-rights violating nation calls for “dialogue,” even as it enforces religious intolerance on its own turf?' (Lily)
1. Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com)
Senator Hagel, Senator Graham, and the Israel Lobby, 5 February 2013
Of the many controversial statements made by Senator Chuck Hagel over the years, none seemed to enrage Senator Lindsey Graham more than his remark that the Israel lobby intimidates U.S. Congressmen into advocating "stupid" policies. He challenged Hagel to name one such senator and to identify one such stupid policy.
The challenge created an unusual opportunity for Hagel, for there could be no better and conclusive evidence of the Israel Lobby's power of intimidation of U.S. senators on the subject of Israel than these hearings themselves, and most particularly Senator Graham's own behavior.
Unfortunately, Hagel could not take advantage of that opportunity. Had he done so, his nomination by President Obama to head the Department of Defense would undoubtedly have been dead in the water, for his former Democratic colleagues are no less guilty of yielding to that intimidation than Hagel's former Republican colleagues.
But the truth of Hagel's charge must be affirmed, particularly by those who are more concerned about Israel's ability to survive as a Jewish and democratic state than about jeopardizing contributions to their own electoral campaigns. The truth that needs to be affirmed speaks not only to the existential dangers created by the current Israeli government's illegal and often immoral behavior in the Occupied Territories but to the violation of the shared values that supposedly form the foundation of the unprecedentedly close ties between Israel and the United States.
It is not enemies of Israel but some of its most loyal and patriotic citizens, six former heads of Israel's Shin Bet, the internal national security agency on which Israel's security and existence depend, who blasted the policies of the government headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu as threatening Israel's very survival because of its colonial ambitions in the West Bank and its lack of interest in reaching a peace accord with the Palestinians. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand lectured Senator Hagel that America's ties with Israel are "fundamental" and not to be questioned, even if according to Israel's president, Shimon Peres, its right wing government's policies have put the country on a path to apartheid, a judgment with which two former Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, concur.
The heads of the IDF reportedly refused to implement a demand by Prime Minister Netanyahu to prepare for an assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, believing it would have catastrophic consequences for Israel. Whether they are right or wrong--given their unanimity, the high likelihood is that they were right--no one can question the patriotism of these generals and security chiefs or their motives. Successive Israeli governments trusted them and relied on their judgments in safeguarding Israel's existence. But such words of caution, when expressed by an American Congressman, are considered heretical, because the Israel lobby says so.
This record of Senate and House members' gutlessness in their subservience to the Israel Lobby was exemplified by Senator Graham's rudeness in his questioning of former Senator Hagel, repeatedly cutting him off as he was speaking. Apparently he believes that if he could have gotten Hagel to admit even one instance of disagreement with a policy of the current Israeli government, he would have made his case that Hagel is an enemy of the Jewish State, if not the Jewish People.
Of the many letters adopted by the Senate and the House to which Graham and other Senators referred, including letters criticizing Hamas, some of which Hagel would not sign onto, not one addressed the fact that the Likud, the party headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, to this day officially opposes a Palestinian state in even one square foot of the West Bank, or that even after Netanyahu made his speech committing his government to a two-state solution, members of his cabinet and his party established a "Greater Israel" Parliamentary Caucus whose official goal is the prevention of Palestinian statehood and the annexation of all Palestinian territories.
The attacks on Hagel for his occasional dissent from Israel's policies came from a man from a political party that has established entirely new depths of abusive attacks on the policies and the personality of the President of the United States and on the policies of their Democratic colleagues. Neither Graham nor any of his Republican colleagues have, to the best of my knowledge, expressed publicly a word of criticism of colleagues who established as their goal the defeat of every policy proposal that would be made by President Obama, irrespective of its merit, in the expectation that their stonewalling would lead to his defeat in the upcoming presidential elections. Yet they proclaim that the slightest criticism of even the most reprehensible policies of Netanyahu and Israel's government disqualifies a person from serving in a high office in the U.S. government. How does one explain the Senators' bizarre notion that criticism of their own government's policies is a responsible exercise of their duties but criticism of a foreign government's behavior--in the case of Israel, of course, but not of any other foreign government--is not, except in terms of the Israel lobby's "influence" (to use the term preferred by Senator Graham).
Senator Hagel's confirmation has to await action by the Senate Committee and by the full Senate. But we do not have to wait for confirmation that with respect to the Middle East peace process, the U.S. Congress remains in the grip of the Israel lobby. This was more than fully confirmed at last week's hearing.
・Henry Siegman is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project. He also serves as a non-resident research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
2. FrontPage Magazine
Saudi Hypocrisy At Its Best,8 February 2013
by Raymond Ibrahim
Few things offer surreal experiences as when Islam and the West interact―when 7th century primordialism encounters 21st century relativism. Consider the issue of “interfaith dialogue.” In principle, it is a decent thing: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others trying to reach a common ground and professing mutual respect. But what does one make of the gross contradictions that emerge when a human-rights violating nation calls for “dialogue,” even as it enforces religious intolerance on its own turf?
U.S. President Obama bowing before Saudi King Abdullah in 2009
Enter Saudi Arabia. Birthplace of Islam, the Arabian kingdom is also the one Muslim nation that regularly sponsors interfaith initiatives in the West―even as its official policy back home is to demonize and persecute the very faiths it claims to want to have an interfaith dialogue with.
Back in 2008, for example, in what was deemed an unprecedented move, Saudi King Abdullah “made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews,” going so far as to refer to the latter two as “our brothers.” His stated goal was to develop “respect among religions.”
The Saudi monarch’s most recent initiative reached fruition on November 26 2012, when the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue was launched in the Austrian capital, Vienna. According to its own website, the center “was founded to enable, empower and encourage dialogue among followers of different religions and cultures around the world.” Lending international legitimacy to this Saudi gesture of goodwill, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was among those who attended the opening.
While all this ostensibly sounds well and good, consider the many incongruities, the many absurdities―initially demonstrated by the simple fact that Saudi Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, who was quoted praising the Austrian-based center as proof that “Islam is a religion of dialogue and understanding and not a religion of enmity, fanaticism, and violence,” is also on record calling Jews “monkeys and pigs” and Christians “cross worshippers.”
Nor is he just a run-of-the-mill sheikh: he is the government-appointed imam of Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mosque in Mecca―Islam’s holiest site, where Christians, Jews, and others are routinely condemned and cursed during the prayers of the faithful.
But this is not surprising. Even the State Department’s most recent internal religious freedom report on Saudi Arabia notes that “Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice. The public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited, and there is no separation between state and religion.”
And this is the key point: Saudi Arabia’s brand of religious intolerance is not a product of the “Arab street,” terrorists, or mob violence. It is institutionalized; it is enforced by the state itself. In other words, religious intolerance is being implemented by the very people who claim to want to have dialogue with Christians and Jews under the umbrella of “tolerance” and “mutual respect.”
In this context, what, exactly, do they wish to talk about?
Do they wish to talk about how the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia―yet another top ranked Saudi religious official―declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region,” basing his verdict on the commands of Muslim prophet Muhammad?
Do they wish to talk about how, despite promising to reform their school textbooks, the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate Muslim children with hatred and incitement, teaching that “Christians are the enemies of the Believers” and that the “the Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians”? Little wonder the imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque uses such monikers―even as he gushes about the Saudi-sponsored Vienna-based initiative for “dialogue.”
Maybe they wish to talk about the 28-year-old Saudi woman, Maryan, who, after converting to Christianity, had to flee the nation, and is reportedly currently hiding in Sweden, even as authorities try to extradite her back to Saudi Arabia to face the crime of apostasy, which calls for the death penalty? Earlier Maryam had said that, though she “was raised to hate Judaism and Christianity she has come to love those religions since finding peace in Christianity.”
Do they wish to talk about how 35 Christian Ethiopians were arrested and abused for almost a year, simply for holding a private house prayer? Upon release, one of the Christians observed that “The Saudi officials do not tolerate any religions other than Islam. They consider non-Muslims unbelievers. They are full of hatred towards non-Muslims.”
Or do they wish to talk about how just last December 2012, Saudi “religious police” stormed a house in the province of al-Jouf, detaining more than 41 guests for, in the words of the police statement, “plotting to celebrate Christmas”?
Of course, the Vienna-based King Abdullah International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue does not wish to talk about any of these instances of state-enforced religious intolerance. Instead, the purpose of the center’s existence is to deflect criticism from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, and direct it onto the West. This was amply demonstrated during the center’s inaugural symposium, when Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, urged Western governments to enact laws countering “Islamophobia,” because it “leads to hate crimes and as such, it generates fear, feelings of stigmatization, marginalization, alienation and rejection.”
In other words, Saudi-sponsored “interfaith dialogue” is about one-way tolerance, that is, pressuring the West to show “tolerance” to Muslims by not criticizing them for persecuting others, which would be portrayed as “Islamophobia.”
It still remains to determine which is more surreal, more unbelievable: that Saudi Arabia, which tops the charts of state-enforced religious intolerance, is sponsoring “religious dialogue,” or that the West, including leaders of those religions whose adherents are daily persecuted by Saudi and Muslim intolerance, are going along with the gag―and all of them with a straight face.
(End)
